Steve Howell & Fats Kaplin – Know You From Old
This trio interprets early American music with generous dips into genres like rural blues, ballads, gospel, folk, & early jazz traditions. With a dash of spontaneity, they polish dust off vintage melodies & present them as newly minted coins. It’s a rediscovery that leads to the roots of some of today’s music hybrids.
Many songs were long before the advent of records, CDs & streaming. They were showcased in parlor performances, back-porch sing-alongs, taverns, church socials, dancehalls & later, radio. The 13 assorted tracks are as vintage & smooth as lard on Know You From Old (Dropped Nov 7/Out of the Past Music/51:31) produced by Jason Weinheimer & recorded in Little Rock, Arkansas & Nashville, TN.
It features the versatile duo of Texas-born Steve Howell (vocals/guitar) & NYC-born Fats Kaplin (fiddle/mandolin/5-string banjo/tenor banjo/bouzouki). Howell’s perfectly seasoned voice & fingerstyle guitar picking is reminiscent of country blues enthusiasts Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, to folk traditionalists Dave Van Ronk & Doc Watson. Weaved from a more old-world grit is Kaplin’s signature accompaniment.
“Black Dog” opens the album — a rag from Kentucky, 1930. The duo’s technique is faithful to the original song with an air of tube-studio production of a hundred years ago, but with no scratchy needle in a piece of shellac. There are clusters of traditions that sprang from the late John Fahey’s (“Poor Boys Long Way From Home”) uprooting of old traditional pieces, which was his forte. Even some of his originals for the Takoma label sounded like they were composed in the ‘30s.
“San Francisco Bay Blues” is played with finesse & style. Captured pristinely while Steve’s voice sounds like a field worker on a break. Some spots find his vocal tone in the same wheelhouse as John Hammond, Jr. These songs sound co-opted from Harry Smith’s Anthology of Folk Music or field recordings cut by Alan Lomax. And probably are. The duo laid down these tracks with a mind toward authenticity. It’s there. The playing is proficient but not flashy. “Buffalo Skinners” has its rural melodic spray & the antiquity is in its notes.
The charm of “The Escape of Old John Webb” finds Steve’s vocals effectively similar in tone to veteran folk/actor Burl Ives. There are musicians who, despite their long resume of influences, show absolutely no sign of those influences in their performance, unlike this duo. Steve Howell & Fats Kaplin do provide splinters of how these vintage old-world musicians attracted younger players who made them pick up an instrument & develop to keep the spirit of these old genres alive through their fingers. Miraculously, two musicians from Texas & New York City came together to carbonate this old sweet music. And we have it on this album.
Highlights – “Black Dog,” “San Francisco Bay Blues,” “Buffalo Skinners,” “Bugger Burns,” “Gospel Plow,” “The Cuckoo,” & “The Escape of Old John Webb.”
CD @ Parkside Records & Josey Records + https://blindraccoon.com/clients/steve-howell-fats-kaplin/
