Followers of the hard-nosed Philadelphia-bred rock band Marah have traced a career course that has taken plenty of zigs and zags (and ups and downs) in recent years. Brace yourself for another zag.
In recent years, core members Christine Smith and Dave Bielanko have retreated to Amish country in rural Pennsylvania. Founding member Serge Bielanko, who has become an active and entertaining dad blogger and who made headlines here and elsewhere recently when he lost his home to fire early in the new year, has moved closer by and has made tentative return steps to gigging with the group.
Now comes word that Dave and Christine are serving as musical directors on a potentially fascinating new project. The pair are working with local musicians on something called the Mountain Minstrelsy Project. It’s based on a collection of folk songs collected in an old, locally published compendium of old-timey songs Bielanko and Smith discovered.
In this video detailing the project, Dave describes the undertaking not as a reverential recreation of the original songs, but as a respectful reinterpretation. “It seemed like a viable, doable completely rewarding thing to do. It is our vision right now to take what we can take from the book and create music to it, take life to it again and create our own thing to it that would at least be available for consideration by people, as opposed to being lost in the mountain wind forever.”
Hearing about the project, I was reminded that back in 2004 when I wrote about Marah for No Depression, Dave told me his intention for the follow-up to the band’s LP 20,000 Streets Under The Sky was to record a “brutal fucking folk record” next because “folk is more punk than punk and it seems like this time we should strip it all away.” Time will tell whether the Mountain Minstrelsy Project delivers on that intent, but … the kid in this video can sure fiddle.
