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Tickets $15.00 or $20 at the door
Doors open at 6:30 PM show starts at 7:30 PM.
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When speed doesn't kill, it can thrill, and the
lightning-strike success of The Greencards has been
decidedly of the latter variety. To be them is to
be on a rocket ship disguised as a touring van,
on a highway where there are no speed limits. Four
short years ago, a green card was an immigration
document. Now The Greencards are an acoustic music
phenomenon that's played around the world, headlined
major festivals, won awards, and toured with Bob
Dylan and Willie Nelson. They've released a couple
of fine albums, and they've got a new opus called
Viridian that's going to delight and surprise a
lot of folks. But with The Greencards, the albums
and shows are like chickens and eggs;
one begets the other. Their label debut Weather
and Water was strong enough to secure their slot
on the Dylan/Nelson tour, but then they had to stand
and deliver. Fortunately,
The Greencards have this great trick they do. They
go out on stage in front of 20,000 strangers, and
whaZAM, they turn them into friends and fans.
It's happened at Merlefest and Telluride, on both
coasts, Down South and Down Under, and of course
many times in Austin "The Live Music Capital
of the World" Texas, city of
the band's chance origins and initial successes.
They're a trio, in case you haven't met. The lady
fair with the electric bass, the serene voice and
the raven tresses, that's Carol Young. Mr. Intense
Guy over there shooting
roman candle flames out of the mandolin and other
smallish stringed instruments is Kym Warner. The
dynamic red-headed fiddler who just ever-so-slightly
resembles Tim O'Brien is Eamon McLoughlin. The most
conspicuous thing they have in
common, these new stars of Americana, is that they
ain't American.
McLoughlin is English. Warner and Young are Australians.
But all three grew up in households full of honest
American roots music, from Merle, Lefty, Ricky,
Dolly, Loretta and their blessed ilk. Their training
ground were jam sessions. Their passion and talent
was evident, but their idols and holy shrines were
in the U.S., so that's where they went.
When Kym and Carol met Eamon at a recording session
in Austin, the chemistry was there from the outset.
Before long, their friendly bluegrass jams blossomed
into one of the city's most popular bar bands. They
made fans and friends of scene leaders like Robert
Earl Keen and the
Bruce Robison/Kelly Willis family, who took them
on the road and introduced them to large audiences.
Their self-released debut album Movin' On pushed
them to create original music, writing and scouting
for songs that broke the rules of bluegrass and
that began to carve out a fresh hybrid of styles
somewhere between classic folk balladry and jam
band rock and roll.
Accolades followed. They took Best New Band at the
Austin Music Awards in 2004. The Houston Chronicle
ranked their live show among the city's top five
nights of music of the
year. The Greencards landed a deal with Dualtone
in 2005 and released Weather and Water to great
acclaim.
Dylan and Nelson tapped them to open their now-famous
U.S. tour of minor league baseball parks in the
summer of 2005, 30 dates in all. Their video for
the song "Time" became one of the most
played on GAC and CMT's Americana shows. They were
nominated for New/Emerging Artist of the Year at
the Americana Awards in 2004 and then won that prize
in the fall of 2006.
That's what faced The Greencards when they entered
a Nashville studio to record again. Kym says their
experience made it easier, not harder, to confront
the challenge. "We've done a lot of miles since
that first album," he reflected. "We've
played a lot and traveled a lot and learned a lot
more about ourselves. We're probably a lot more
comfortable musically. I think it would just be
natural for any artist to be more comfortable with
what they're
producing as time goes on. So this record feels
very comfortable. It feels right in synch with where
we are."
That's not to say they didn't reach beyond what
their fans or critics might expect from them. It's
far too early in The Greencards' career for anyone
to assume they know all that
the band is capable of. With guitarist and Patty
Griffin collaborator Doug Lancio in a co-producer's
role, Young, Warner and McLoughlin trusted their
guts, stepped out of the safety of recording studio
isolation booths and threw down in a big open room
in real time. They picked songs with their hearts,
eschewing the luxury of road-tested material,
opting instead for new music that would challenge
them to create on the fly.
"Obviously you have to be prepared,"
says Eamon. "But you can be over-prepared,
where you have blinkers on completely and you can't
hear anymore because you're playing to a very strict
idea of what you think it should be. In order to
get that honesty you have to go in and say, 'Right,
I don't know what I'm going to play here. I don't
know what I'm going to sing. Let's figure it out.'"
That spontaneity is evident from the first notes
of the opening track "Waiting On The Night,"
a slinky boogie backed by romantic rooftop-in-the-city
guitar and a deftly arranged string section. When
Carol, who wrote the song with old friend and collaborator
Jedd Hughes, sings "To be young and living
life, free as a bird in the in the sky,” there’s
a first-hand truthfulness about it that might well
have come from the band’s detailed and
absorbing road blog.
The Greencards’ move to Nashville put them
in proximity to a huge array of fellow songwriters,
and Kym
took particular advantage of the opportunity to
stretch. Sessions with pop master David Mead produced
“River of Sand,” a melancholy and melodically
spellbinding song that wound up fitting Carol’s
voice perfectly.
It’s one of several examples of Carol’s
mature and involving touch with ballads (be sure
to check out the Kim
Richey/Mike Henderson song “I Don’t
Want To Lose You” as well), and it may become
the “Time” of this
release.
Kym and Carol collaborated with bluegrass great
Ronnie Bowman on “Who Knows,” a true
blue slice of
Kentucky sod, with a “Walls of Time”
groove laid down by master drummer Larry Attamanuik.
Two songs
come from Kym’s co-writes with veteran Jerry
Salley, including the uplifting “Shinin’
In The Dark” and
“Lonesome Side of Town,” which Carol
accurately tags as the hardest core bluegrass tune
the band’s ever
committed to tape. Kym’s writer’s journey
also found him tapping his own family history for
the first time in
“All The Way From Italy,” a portrait
of his grandparents’ emigration from Italy
to Australia many decades
ago. Again Carol interprets Warner’s words
with an emotional connection as sure as if she’d
written them
herself.
Eamon contributed another tune sure to re-calibrate
expectations of The Greencards. He says when he
demoed “When I Was In Love With You”
for Lancio, the co-producer said immediately he
wanted to hear a
“Ramones meets The Pogues” production,
which suited Eamon exactly. “I felt like he
really captured it there.
Because the song was written like an English folk
song, and I wanted to sing it like that. The lyrics
actually
come from an English poet. So when Doug heard it
he immediately decided to go punk. It was a good
synthesis of ideas there.”
Finally, a band as known for its instrumental
chops as The Greencards wasn’t going to complete
an album
without some solid tunes. Kym’s CD-closing
“Mucky The Duck” embraces the Celtic-influenced
newgrass sound
that will probably always be in the band’s
DNA. And Eamon contributes “Su Prabhat”
a lovely modal piece
that marries East and West with sweet musical diplomacy.
The Greencards pull all this off with musical
super-conductivity, a whirling dervish attack, a
respect for tradition, and a zest for innovation.
They fit into history on a line that connects Fairport
Convention to New Grass Revival to Patty Griffin,
but they remain vibrantly independent, mingling
discipline and daring in exquisite balance. They’re
nice folks who still admire their heroes as much
as they did before their heroes admired them. So
if you think it’s too rare that good things
happen to good musicians, indulge in some Greencards,
for these days, in their camp and in their ever-rolling
rocket van, it’s all good.
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