‘Went to see Alejandro Escovedo at the Birchmere last night (thank you, Dave and Emily!) and enjoyed a wonderful surprise in the form of opening act Sometymes Why, pictured above, whose stripped down music and pretty blend of voices you can sample here.
I especially liked the intense solos by Aoife O’Donovan, and “Hush Child” and “Crayola” sung by Kristin Andreassen (the latter is on her new solo album, which you can sample on her MySpace page…special fact: she used to live around here, working full time for the Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble).
In researching the band online, I found out that they were apparently featured in a recent New York Times article on the “bold, new string-band aesthetic” (reference: Boston Herald). I’m not quite sure what this means, exactly, but I’m sure it will mean something to some of you. :)
Alejandro was great, too, but played pretty much the same set, and told the same stories, as he did a year ago, when I saw him at the Birchmere for the first time. Yes, we know Dubya has you on his iPod! I marveled that the musicians could be (seem?) so incredibly into the music they were playing, when it seems they play pretty much the same set of songs at show after show. But when they hit one of those crescendos — man oh man…
Oh, one more special fact: Ruth Unger, the third member of Sometymes Why, is daughter of Jay Ungar, a fiddler who wrote Ashokan Farewell, which many of us know from Ken Burns’ Civil War. And I used to work at PBS. Whoah.
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I’m kinda curious as to what they’re called the “bold new string aesthetic”… From what I’ve heard of Sometymes Why, the only other band I can think of that’s real string heavy in that vibe is Nickel Creek. (Unless they’re just describing strings as stringed instruments, which is kinda weird.) Can’t find the NYT article for clarification. I’d put them more in the general “new hip country/bluegrass” world, with folks like the Decemberists, Old Crow Medicine Show, Gillian Welch or Neko Case. And that’s a very good place to be.
Sadly, no tours up in Wisconsin. :(