It may be old-time music, but it’s not the old ways of thinking. That’s the main takeaway from the debut album of clawhammer banjo player Allison de Groot (Molsky’s Mountain Drifters) and masterful fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves (Gillian Welch, Laurie Lewis). In this self-titled album, De Groot and Hargreaves curate a powerful, vibrant batch of traditional songs that vividly speak to the concerns of Americans in 2019. In doing so, they reckon with their own place in traditional American music. As they put it in the liner notes for this album: “As two musicians who have come from outside of the cultural and geographic communities this music originated in, we are so appreciative of those who have welcomed us and shared their musical and cultural knowledge. We would like to thank all of the musicians who came before us, especially those who never received the credit they deserved: the Indigenous, Black, Queer and female musicians who weren’t always visible but kept, and still keep the music moving forward.”
This collection highlights some of the contributions from people who have been too often overlooked in the canon — and the pair’s thoughtful and quirky liner notes breathe as much life into the songs as their spirited performances do. The duo’s rendition of “I Don’t Want to Get Married” (with a few verses added by Edna Poplin) is joyful and cheeky. Contrast that with Alice Gerard’s “Beaufort County Jail,” the story of Joan Little, a black woman who killed a white male jail guard and became the first woman to be exonerated for self-defense against sexual assault. Here, Hargreaves and de Groot transform their harmonies into impassioned demands for justice.
De Groot and Hargreaves also have a lot to say in their choices of instrumental pieces. In “Farewell Whiskey,” my favorite track on the album, they pay homage to John Hatcher, whom they describe as an avant-garde fiddler. For me, the playing on this song is distinctive — and reminds us that the types of music that have become enshrined in our collective consciousness are by no means representative of the fascinating stuff happening at the margins. De Groot and Hargreaves have used their platform to broaden our horizons, both of the music our forebears created and the causes they sought to advance in their art.
