Clothesline Revival

Four years ago, Snakefarm's Songs From My Funeral showed one way forward for Americana, adding beats and loops to re-interpreted songs. They cleared the path (and where's the follow-up?), but no one seemed interested in taking things farther. At least, not until Clothesline Revival arrived late last year with Of My Native Land. There are beats and atmospheres, lap steel, guitar, mandolin, fiddle…and voices. Not just singers in the studio, but entire vocal tracks taken from old recordings, like the unidentified train caller taped by Alan Lomax at Parchman Penitentiary on "Calling Trains."

The inspiration belongs to Conrad Praetzel (who, incidentally, has never heard the Snakefarm record), responsible for the beats and some of the instruments, and Robert Powell, who provided a lot of the guitar work, both frets and slides.

"Some people have thought this album is too all over the place, so I'm debating whether to do all traditional songs."

"It was my idea, and I've worked with Robert for a long time," Praetzel explained. "Like me, he comes from folk and country. The last album I did, Receive, was with Sukhawat Ali Khan, a mix of electronics and traditional, with an Eastern feel. After I found that worked I thought I should try something with my roots."

It all began with "Cow Cow Yicky Yicky Yea," a startling piece with its Leadbelly vocal, recorded in 1944.

"I got a CD from a friend of mine who'd recorded with Smithsonian Folkways back in the '50s, and the Leadbelly piece was on it. Within half an hour of working with it, I discovered that it was something new I wanted to pursue." Originally, it was simply going to be one track for what would be his fifth album, but after about a year he decided "'This is the song I like, this is the direction I want to go.' That's when I started exploring ideas, picking up guitar or mandolin and saw what happened." And really, the approach was elegantly simple: " I added a few beats and some ideas to his vocal. I started by transferring his part to a sampler, so I could put it where I needed it. I work in a strict tempo, which is almost contrary to folk music."

He used a similar approach on several other songs, especially the tracks sung by silken-voiced Wendy Allen, including the traditional "Gypsy Laddie," a variation on "Raggle-Taggle Gypsy-O," where "Wendy sang to a basic beat track, no other accompaniment, but she has perfect pitch. Then I'd see where the song went from there - I like having an open canvas. Once you even put acoustic guitar along with the vocal, it has a definition to the rhythm and the chord structure." One place it did head was East, when Shabaz's Sukhawat Ali Khan added the vocal ornamentation that forms a perfect top and tail to the track.

"He fit as the gypsy, that seemed natural, and the modal tone and the beats suggested him to me. Eventually we're going to do another CD, and I wanted him on here, although it didn't seem possible. We thought we'd try this, and it was a first take."

The CD is an intriguing mix of familiar traditional pieces like "Wade In The Water" and "The Turtledove," songs by Hank Williams and Bill Monroe, which have become part of the fabric of Americana, one original (Praetzel's "Bodie," "which I wrote in 1972"), and pieces that take old vocals, sung or spoken, and rejuvenate them with entirely new arrangements, like Ora Dell Graham's "Pullin' The Skiff," recorded by John A. Lomax in 1940; in its rebirth its could almost be proto hip-hop.

"It's probably a schoolyard song, something kids would sing. I pretty much left the performance intact, rather than taking one line and using it over and over. I wanted to keep the performance as it was."

There is one song, however, that could never be considered American, a version of the Anne Briggs classic, "The Time Has Come." It was a song that Praetzel, whose formative years were spent listening to folk music in the 1960s, loved, but hadn't intended to play.

"I just love that song," he said. "I was playing dobro along with the very odd sample on the track. I was experimenting - as we did a lot on the record - trying to find a connection between a 'real' instrument and the beats and electronics, and that song just came out. I knew the song, of course, and I decided to try it. It's a really odd combination, with a strange loop, but with the vocal, it works."

While the record took a long time to complete, "most of it came together in a year and a half, and a lot of it in six months in 2002. I had my parts done, and it was getting the other folks in. Some of it went down very fast. Tom Armstrong did his vocal tracks in about two hours. He'd never sung "Ramblin' Man" before, and we used the second take of that. He's an amazing vocalist. Brantley Kearns played for one afternoon on a few tracks. But Robert and I spent a lot of time on the other stuff."

While Clothesline Revival aren't planning any shows - Praetzel, by his own admission, is definitely not a live performer - there are already thoughts about another album.

"I can't wait to get started on another one. To some degree we'll be doing the same kind of thing. There's just so much to explore. Some people have thought this album is too all over the place, so I'm debating whether to do all traditional songs. But that's not my nature, I'll probably let it do what it wants."

Clothesline Revival

"Some people have thought this album is too all over the place, so I'm debating whether to do all traditional songs."

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