Happy Traum and Ernest Troost at McCabe’s-A Review

Some dream bils have yet to be dreamed of, but happen anyway. That’s one way to describe the double-header show at McCabe’s Guitar Store in Santa Monica last Saturday, January 18. The week before the National Association for Music Merchant’s annual conference in Anahaiem, California brings artists together from across the globe getting ready to spend a few days in a Mecca like trance exploring new instruments and technology. In 2013, the great acoustic country blues player from Woodstock, Happy Traum, met movie score composer and late-blooming L.A. singer-songwriter, Ernest Troost.  Traum, a veteran of the folk music revival Greenwhich Village and compatriot of Bob Dylan between 1962 and 1972, introduced himself as the ‘Llewyn Davis part of the show.’   This was not a far stretch at all. He began his career learning Piedmont blues from Brownie McGee and drawing influence from Mississippi John Hurt in Greenwich Village before he settled in Woodstock, New York, where he lives today.