Bing Bang Boys – I’m Feelin’ Good
I’ve been listening all week and I can’t think of a single thing about this music that I don’t like. It’s modest, true, but that’s a good part of what’s likable about it — all covers and minor rearrangements of a broad swath of upbeat old-time tunes, played on banjo-guitar, banjo-mandolin, and banjo-uke (no 5-strings or tenors), with fiddle on top and cello-bass or tuba underneath.
Jere Canote plays the banjos and harmonica, his brother Greg handles fiddle, W.B. Reid plays more banjos and fiddle, and Mark Rubin stays down low. They all sing, and they harmonize just fine. They met at one of those picking parties in Port Townsend, Washington, and liked themselves so much they got together later and made this — sixteen songs from sixteen different sources, brief liner notes that are actually worth reading, not a false note struck anywhere. Cornpone is a good word. Corndog. Cornball. Any description with “corn” in it probably won’t lead you astray here.
Sounds like it was fun, but it probably won’t happen again. Rubin, who put his face in front of a lot of people some time back as a Bad Liver, has since shot off in all kinds of idiosyncratic directions. Reid is a busy journeyman, and the Canotes are regulars on the old corn circuit. Glad they got it together when they could.