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Smarten Up! Tracknotes
Memphis
We used to stay at a buddy’s in mid-town and play the Blues City Café on Beale Street. Our R&B/Scots-Irish fusion really struck to the heart of that audience and we had some tremendous late night musical free-for-alls, full of dancing and laughter and high spirits. A surreal and beautiful all American city where a deep rooted past can be seen mingling daily with the present in search of the future.
Smarten Up!
Canadian vernacular for “you are being butt stupid, get it together!” Three traditional tunes, the last two being Kerry reels. If ‘Kerry reel’ had another name it might be ‘Jackie Daly’, a tremendous Irish box player and minstrel of Kerry music. I first heard Kerry music in the 1980’s listening to DeDannan at folk festivals I played with Rare Air.
James Brown Ate my Bagpipe
The name says it all. It’s the bagpipe-funk. Hail James. Hail the Meters.
Cut Me A Key
I grew up listening to a good amount of country music because my dad came off the farm and he liked that music. This is a tip of the hat to Merle Haggard musically with a piss and vinegar love story thrown in.
Buck A Joy
This song came directly out of a dream. There is a new rural homestead in Ontario called the party farm, a farm that can no longer sustain itself and is rented out to university students. In this dream the aging farmer next store got caught in the female crossfire of a young party scene. He uttered the chorus to me from the bottom of a country lane before I opened my eyes.
Tandoori Mustache
A friend was traveling in the east. He was getting a haircut and shave in a Marcetplace one day when he suddenly realized he was in a completely foreign culture letting a total stranger drag a dull razor across his throat. Every time the razor passed his nose he smelled curry.
It’s Your Birthday
Historical fiction I think they call it. A little fantasy, a little biography, a little mythology, a little border music, a little tin whistle, a little Willie Nelson, a little Rubén Gonzalez… a kind warm breeze blowing in from the south.
Zimbobby
A jig I wrote originally named, ‘White Man’s Blues’, which the band courted with an 80’s African groove and a fairy sprinkling of jazz. To my mind very much in the musical tradition of Rare Air.
Memphis Reprise
Floating back down the Mississippi… to the broken streets of Memphis. Take me there.
Hope this music leaves you smiling. Grier Coppins - January, 2004
