Folk with punk edge from North Carolina
Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – [email protected]
The Tan & Sober Gentlemen, who hail from the Piedmont region of North Carolina, will play a free show in Róisín Dubh this Saturday, June 23. The band are Ben Noblit (double bass), Alan Best (accordion/mandolin/whistle), William Maltbie (vocals), Tucker Jackson Galloway (banjo), Eli Howells (fiddle), Jake Waits (drums) and Courtney Raynor (guitar).
The Tan & Sober Gentlemen play a style of music they call ‘Celtic punk-grass’. Ben Noblit explains how they came up with this description.
“North Carolina is a very musically rich State, and if you're lucky enough to grow up in certain parts of it, you'll take to music like a fish to water,” he says. “We've all been playing since we were little, playing the music our families played. Alan's kin have been playing dance music for many generations, and Tucker’s family host one of the longest-running barn dances in the State.
“North Carolinian traditional music, what we call ‘hillbilly’ music, is bluegrass, some country and blues, and old-time music. All of that is a direct descendant of the music brought over here by the Scotch-Irish in the 1700s.”
“We play our own native music but also explore the Celtic roots of it, playing both really old Celtic tunes and some more modern stuff,” Ben adds. “As for the ‘punk’ element, we think that modern-day punk and old-school hillbilly music are pretty much the same; they're both played fast and hard and rough by common folks, for common folks to drink, dance, and make merry to. I reckon that a lot of folk bands these days focus too much on being pretty and polished and forget about that.”
Ben is a lively double-bass player and when you watch clips of the band playing, it’s clear he gets a kick out of what he does. He started playing the distinctive instrument at an early age, he says with a laugh.
“My father was a doghouse bass player also, so I never really had a chance at a productive life!
“He played with some of the greats of Appalachian music, such as Lee Boy Sexton and Jean Ritchie. Growing up surrounded by those people, hearing them sing on the porch, I got the music bug in me by the time I was knee high to a grasshopper.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.