LISTEN: Local Bluegrassers New North String Band

    You might wonder what Eau Claire has that would be the envy of Nashville. After all, Music City has, in the lyrics of John Sebastian, “thirteen hundred and fifty two guitar pickers” and no shortage of young, eager talent. What Nashville doesn’t have is the New North String Band. With the release of their self-titled first CD, the NNSB has shown that even Wisconsin can produce music that is as finger-pickin’ good as any coming from below the Mason-Dixon line.

    The group formed a year ago at the annual Minnesota Homegrown Kickoff Festival in Richmond, and their high score at the Harvest Jamboree Festival Band Contest in November of 2008 earned them audiences throughout the region. They have been barnstorming ever since, and now have a first-rate CD to show for it.

    Most bluegrass fans expect to hear a nod to the past (e.g. a Bill Monroe fiddle tune or a Stanley Brothers mournful lament) by which they can assess the credibility of a band that claims to play bluegrass. On this, the New North String Band does not disappoint. There are 10 original tunes and only two traditional numbers included on the disc (one of which is Monroe’s gospel gem Wicked Path of Sin). When talent like this can create original, straight ahead, hot pickin’ versions of the best of the genre, why dwell on the past?

    Seven of the tracks come from the pen of mandolinist and lead singer Jake Henry, the band’s Eau Claire native. With the opening track, Bills (a treatise on the trials and tribulations of life in the working man’s world) and throughout the recording, Jake’s talent for crafting songs of hard livin,’ hard drinkin,’ love, longing, and loss never fades.

    Jake even wrote original lyrics to the classic fiddle tune Billy In The Lowground. It takes courage to adopt an old standard covered by the likes of Doc Watson and Mark O’Connor and put your own words to it. Jake’s tale of friendship and fate for two Civil War rebel soldiers evokes the echo of bugle and drum and one can almost smell the dogwood flowers.

    I asked Jake where he got the idea to put words to this old tune and he explained, “I heard the instrumental on a Kentucky Colonel’s recording and really liked the melody – enough to want to make a song of it.” Good thinking Jake. This is a triumph.