The Bigger Picture

Down Home Radio Show: New Lost City Ramblers

by Eli Smith/Down Home Radio Show

We’re delighted to bring Down Home Radio Show programming to Smoke. Host Eli Smith describes DHRS as a “hardcore, unreconstructed, paleo-acoustic folk music program,” and that suits us fine. Maybe the punk rock of folk… visit, listen and grab the podcast of the Down Home Radio Show.

In our first borrowing, we reunite the New Lost City Ramblers – digitally, anyway — combining a recent interview Eli did with John Cohen and Tom Paley, and an older interview (Eli’s first, in fact!) with Mike Seeger.

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John Cohen and Tom Paley

Listen to interview here.
The New Lost City Ramblers (John Cohen, Mike Seeger & Tom Paley) formed as a band in 1958, and this year marks their 50th anniversary. In fact, this interview, recorded on September 13th, 2008, was 50 years to the day after their first concert, held on September 13th, 1958 at a chapter hall of Carnegie Hall. On today’s show I speak with John Cohen and Tom Paley about their memories of the birth of the band, how it happened, how they met, began playing together, chose the name, got their sound, made recordings and started touring. John and Tom don’t remember it quite the same way, but some where in there lies the truth!

Tom left the band in 1962 and moved to Europe where he still lives. But he and John were both in New York where they played together at the “11th Annual Park Slope Bluegrass & Old-Time Jamboree” at the Society for Ethical Culture. I was able to catch up with them there and we sat in the basement and talked.

The New Lost City Ramblers have been a tremendously influential band in the folk revival of the last 50 years as well as in the parallel revival of interest in old-time string band music. Their enthusiasm for and devotion to the old-time sound changed the debate in the folk music world of the 1950’s and 60’s and made musicians and listeners take a much deeper and nuanced listen to the rural sounds they were hearing on records. The NLCR made urban, non-traditionally schooled musicians approaching the material, aware of not the just songs, but the style and challenged them to grapple with that issue. This is still a serious question and one that is very relevant today.

The Ramblers were and are a highly skilled string band, and through their concerts and records were able to share songs in a dynamic way with audience after audience. The members of the NLCR made deep researches into the world of folk music, listening, reading, talking with researchers and fieldworkers and gathering information in ways that few others were in a position to do. Everybody needs a good editor and the NLCR were in many ways the editors of the folk revival, shaping the narrative of material being performed, listened to and learned from. Countless musicians have not only enjoyed and learned from their records, but used them as a road map back into the trove of material from which they were drawn.

John Cohen and Mike Seeger of the The New Lost City Ramblers have also done extensive field work of their own, recording and promoting musicians such as Roscoe Holcomb, Doc Boggs, Cousin Emmy and many others. The NLCR have also had a profound impact on the world of popular music through their influence on Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and many other popular music groups.

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