Tracy Webb often has to convince people that his band mate Frederick “Scotty Karate” Leeman exists.
“Someone we just saw the other day was talking about drinking a Scotty Karate Scotch Ale, and I said, ‘You know that’s named after my friend, right?'” Webb says. “A lot of people we meet even around here don’t even realize he’s a real person.”
The beer by Dark Horse Brewing Co. in Marshall, Mich., was in fact named after Leeman, the alt-country solo artist who has since joined forces with Webb and his wife, Andie, to form the Detroit-based folk/bluegrass trio The Webbs. The band released the single “I Have an Aged Mother”/”When I Go” both digitally and on vinyl in 2012, as well as a six-song digital EP last year, and are currently working on their first full-length album. Tracy Webb, who plays bass in the trio, recently spoke about The Webbs by telephone from his home in Detroit.
Q You’ve described The Webbs’ sound as something called psychedelic bluegrass. Can you expand on that description?
A We sort of coined the phrase psychedelic bluegrass. We play a lot of old Appalachian murder ballads, and a bunch of original songs. We do some of the songs our singer Scotty Karate wrote and some of my wife’s songs that she wrote. Scotty plays both electric mandolin and banjo, and he puts a lot of effects on the instrument, like a delay and echo, that makes them sound trippy. So it’s not traditional bluegrass or honky tonk or folk, although that’s the music we play. I think that’s the best way to describe our sound.
Q How did the three of you come together to form The Webbs?
A I grew up mostly in Alabama, and I lived in Adrian, Mich. for a little while. My wife is from the east side of Detroit. We all met several years ago running around in Ann Arbor. We had been friends for a lot of years. Scotty Karate used to be a one-man band, and my wife and I used to play in an old honky-tonk band under the name Andie & Tracy. Some of our members moved down south and he was tired of playing alone, so we decided to team up about three years ago to see if we could make some music together.
Q Is growing up in the deep South how you first got interested in honky tonk and country music?
A Yeah, pretty much. It’s also how Scotty and I became friends. He was into the same kind of music. His family is from Oklahoma. We had a lot of common with our family backgrounds and the music we listened to growing up. I was over at his house and his mom was talking to him, and I said, “Hey, your mom talks just like my grandma does!” I’d play with him here and there over the years. My wife was a solo folk singer, so she had that background more than the honky-tonk and country stuff. But when we put it all together the three of us decided to go back as far as we could go to get to the roots of the old Appalachian songs as a starting point. As we’ve been progressing we’ve worked on our own original songs, but we still keep that in our repertoire.
Q What are some of those old traditional tunes where the three of you found that common ground?
A Oh, let’s see. “Little Liza Jane” is an old song that we do. We play some Carter Family tunes like “I Have an Aged Mother.” There’s an old bluegrass tune, “White Dove,” that we play. We play some Bill Monroe tunes like “With Body and Soul.” The Osborne Brothers are a big influence on us, too.
Q Have you been in the studio recently? When can we expect to hear more from The Webbs?
A We released a 7-inch single on New Fortune Records, which is a local Detroit label. We had only been a band for a month or two and put it right out. It has an original song on there that Scotty wrote called “When I Go.” It’s a story about everyone coming to his funeral when he passes away. It’s got some pretty funny lyrics in it.
Recently, we’ve been recording in a studio here in Detroit. We still have a couple more tracks to finish up. We’ve actually been working on this recording for a little over a year. We’ve been pacing ourselves because we want to do a good job. It will be our first full album so we’re taking our time with this one. We hope to have that out early next year.
