The Improbabillies

Much of old-time country music, with roots in the Scots-Irish tradition, oozes the blues. The pain and suffering of generations of farmers, slaves, and moonshiners is clearly evident in mountain ballads as well as fiddle, banjo, and guitar melodies from the deep south.

	The concept of highlighting the blues in old-time music came together for us over a period of several years. Alaskan old-time fiddler Scott Meyer and Seattle blues musicians Grant Dermody and Forrest Gibson had been playing together in various configurations for several years, with a focus on old-time music. The blues, however, was a common thread running through most of our repertoire. The old time tunes Reuben, Raleigh and Spencer, and John Henry inevitably moved us in a bluesy direction every time we played them.

Al Tharp heard some of this music and offered to engineer an album. We all agreed that a bass and banjo were needed to complete the sound. After spending many long nights playing music with bassist June Drucker at the Alaska Folk Festival, we had come to both respect her skill and her sensibility. We quickly recognized the choice of a banjo player would be more difficult. As comedian Steve Martin points out, "you just can't play a sad song on the banjo." After a little thought, we contacted the very talented and inventive Richie Stearns. Richie was excited at the prospect, pointing out that his musical career was weaned on the likes of Muddy Waters.

It was exciting when we got together for the first time as a group at Al's studio in New Orleans. We found the groove relatively quickly and got down to work. Everyone was amazed at how much Grant could eat, and at the skill with which Richie could read Newsweek magazine and play banjo at the same time. Al introduced us to Wallace and Grommet, and it was much harder to get any work done afterward. One recurring theme of late-night conversations was what a tongue-in-cheek reviewer might say about us: "Just listen to the first cut - it doesn't get any better than that!" "You will indeed be fortunate if you can listen to this." "There's nothing like good old-time music, and this is nothing like good old-time music." "Listen to this recording - there's no better waste of time."

As is often the case, coming up with a band name was one of our most formidable tasks. Same old story - we wanted a name that was clever and catchy, but not too corny. And being scattered all over North America, our future as a band was uncertain. After months of creative drought and hundreds of pointless and vulgar suggestions, we decided that "The Improbabillies" would be suitably difficult for radio pronunciation. Along the way, we did save and still savor some of the more entertaining and inappropriate candidates:

Common Taters Square Roots Head Lies The Crandall Brothers	Hold Still Billies French Foreign Lesion This Got Mired Quintet Who Lied Dogs on My Throw?
Special thanks to Willy Dunne for several of these, as well as the winner.

The sessions went really well, with some killer late-night jamming in the control room with Al on guitar and Scott on the garbage can. After a great week of getting tracks to tape and torturing Al's neighbors, we adjourned the fun and merriment until Forrest and Grant headed back to New Orleans to finish up the mixing with Al. Mastering, artwork and pressing behind us, we were left with our project melted into endless cases of shiny plastic orbs.
Oddly enough, we have just enough left for you to own your own copy!