Recorded without overdubs and no chance to listen to the tapes (other than for producer Matt Sohn) it’s an unholy mess but wonderfully so. Instead it has the same irreverent yet respectful take on old time American music going back to minstrel shows and up to early rock’n’roll. While that may have been Stampfel’s original vision, with Hurley, Frederick and Presti out of the equation it couldn’t be. It’s important to state that this is not an attempt to remake the earlier album. With original collaborators Jeffrey Frederick and Paul Presti deceased and Michael Hurley eventually declining an invite Stampfel still had Robin Remailly and Dave Reisch from the original disc and in a reflection of the earlier sessions managed to marry New York and Oregon freakiness with his inspired invite to Baby Gramps and Jeffrey Lewis to join in, the stage then set for this second summit meeting. The genesis of the album is too long to be repeated here but Stampfel had been considering some sort of sequel for some time. Stampfel sings, “Lovers or strangers we’ll all go through changes when we get the good old spirit down at the hoodoo bash.” Fittingly enough The Hoodoo Bash is the given title for this long waited follow up of sorts to the 1975 masterpiece. Have Moicy! ended with the song Hoodoo Bash, a saw fiddle fuelled and surreal gathering of the tribes all bringing Thunderbird wine and a pound of hash. Songs about hamburgers, alimentary canals and robbing banks delivered with zest, rock’n’roll, doo wop and folk reimagined in their imaginary world. What Marcus missed was the true keepers of the spirit of Smith’s groundbreaking collection, the musical misfits, smokers and tokers who constituted the extended Holy Modal Rounders family and who were responsible for the delights contained in Have Moicy! After surviving the sixties (and leaving behind him a slew of discs that, among other things, added the word psychedelic to the folk lexicon, graced the soundtrack to Easy Rider and funked up The Fugs) Peter Stampfel regrouped the Rounders without Steve Weber and with Michael Hurley and Jeffrey Fredericks and his Clamtones recorded what critic Robert Christgau called “the greatest folk album of the rock era.” While in 1975 Neil Young was heading for the ditch, Stampfel and his allies were manning a gleeful and zany outpost armed with fiddles and guitars taking aim at the absurdities of the day.
And … he’s one of ours, … always has been.The 1975 album Have Moicy! was the summit of what Greil Marcus has called The Old, Weird America, a term he coined to describe Dylan’s basement tapes which he saw as a continuation of the spirit of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. He plays an acoustic antique National Steel guitar and sings his own unique arrangements of rags, jazz, & blues songs from the 20’s & 30’s and many originals with wordplay, humor, and throat singing. Tony also played a couple of shows with Gramps during his last NYC tour.īaby Gramps is a high energy humorously entertaining performer with an endless repertoire. The Rogues Gallery CD, produced by Johnny Depp and Hal Wilner in connection with The Pirates of the Caribbean film, landed Baby Gramps on the David Letterman Show with Tony Garnier, Bob Dylan’s bass player and band leader, backing him up on bass.
He is credited with making Seattle audiences aware of old blues and novelty songs that the rest of the world has mostly forgotten.īaby Gramps toured England and Ireland a while back as part of the Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys CD Concert Tour with Tim Robbins (actor), Martha and Rufus Wainright, Jenny Muldaur (Maria and Geoff’s daughter), Lou Reed, The Watersons, Martin Carthy and Eliza, Suzanne Vega, Ralph Steadman, and many other internationally known performers.
According to an article in the special issue City of Music in Seattle Metropolitan Magazine, Baby Gramps is acknowledged as one of the top 50 most influential musicians in the last 100 years along with Ray Charles, Jelly Roll Morton, Ernestine Anderson, John Cage, Bill Frisell, Jimi Hendrix, Quincy Jones, The Wailers, The Ventures, Sound Garden, and Pearl Jam.
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