August 6th found me and Kristen and Rowan in Homer, NY for Bones Fest XX. Here comes a photodump of Bones Fest pics here so goodness knows how that’ll effect Journal continuity, but you, dear reader, have persevered through this before, and you’ll manage again.
How do I go about even explaining Bones Fest? On the surface it’s simple : one of the oldest and most traditional of instruments – literally two rib bones – being whacked together. Rowan Corbett plays them. He’s AMAZING at playing them. But I don’t have a whole lot to compare him to.
I think I’ve only really ever encountered three or four other bones players. Brennan, inspired by Rowan, has made considerable headway with the instrument and follows in his aggressive footsteps with lots of darting, lateral motions. There’s Greg Adams: Rowan brought him to my open mic and the two of them brought out a whole other spectrum of the instrument, sitting (you can play them SITTING!!??) at the Board and Brew trading licks back and forth in what seemed like a much more “living room” kind of style – gentler and interactive, playful rather than aggressive. With Rowan I’m used to him getting up into my space and jamming and pushing and whirling – and this was a much gentler approach that I hadn’t seen before. Add Hubby of the Carolina Chocolate Drops – going to see them at the 9.30 Club and watching Rowan have a whole OTHER persona with the bones as he jammed back and forth with the band that’s really made him famous – Hubby is much more contained, rarely leaving his personal bubble of space even as the jam gets more and more energetic, tight at the elbows and precise – Rowan often is like a pulsing engine and he’s COMING FOR YOU with these whirling sticks like a martial artist, and Hubby was more like watching a really good banjo player – where a WHOLE lot of sound is coming forth but at first you don’t understand where it’s coming from because there’s so little motion.
And so Bones Fest XX with twenty-five players and another two dozen attendees (not counting audience) was eye-opening to say the least – I could probably use the term mind-blowing without too much fear of hyperbole.
Now – we could’ve been at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival – Heather split off from us after the first night in Hammondsport, NY and headed back East to do Falcon Ridge and her posts and pics (not to mention all the OTHER posts and pics from our friends – ALL of whom seem to be in Hillsdale, NY right now) certainly hammer home that I’m missing one of the more amazing collections of folk singer/songwriter performers on the entire eastern seaboard right now.
But… I’ve seen that before, and beyond that, it’s the world I Live in. Rowan’s invitation to join him at Bones Fest was kind of a leap of faith into completely alien waters – or maybe even more interestingly – waters which I sort of THOUGHT I knew and in which I figured everyone sort of swam the same (i.e. like Rowan Corbett or Hubby).
Man oh man there are a lot of different ways to play bones. Though I was told a couple of times there were “really two different ‘schools’ of bones, even though we don’t really have schools of course, haha” even the two “schools” were different depending on who you asked – and I’d argue that with 25 different performers there were about 25 different schools on display.
I’ll be frank. I’m not going to remember a lot names, and even then, especially after WE played I was a little tuned out at times just letting the spectacle wash over me, so bear with me if my descriptions are a little tangled. My Journal is as close as I get to having a decent memory, and I want to get this down as much as I’m able…
In any case – two schools: Version “A” of the two schools statement, given to me by people who were a little more apt to talking about the history of the instrument and it’s place in folk music, the two schools are two families who’ve been passing down and teaching two distinct styles of playing. Version “B” as the idea that one school treated bones as a more distinct instrument, focusing on triplets and a certain kind of precision that’s only found with specific grips – and then the second school treated it as more of a generalized percussion instrument with more space brought to compositions, often combined with other shakers and drums. The latter two school explanation was generally brought to me by the more intuitive / naturalistic players more likely to be talking to me about community and jamming. A couple of people had learned inside their families, one guy in particular had chops handed down to him from his grandfather, who was a real luminary in bones circles and is popularly held to have brought about the rebirth of bones playing (arguably saving the instrument from obscurity)… other players have just sort of picked it up, fascinated with it, maybe even obsessed with it…
Over the course of the night I don’t know that anyone else matched the sheer energy output of Rowan, but there were a lot of standout performances : a guy known for playing bones in styles definitely not generally considered bonesy had brought us some disco, complete with lights and costume changes – and some really great cabasa playing. Another guy known for being pretty unconventional did a rambly rendition of a Paul Simon song with just his voice and his bones (I guess it’s important to note that though there was a “house band” made up of mandolin, violin and a really killer guitarist, a number of performers played to pre-recorded material). One of those to play along to pre-recorded tunes was Tim – he was also selling bones, traditional bone bones, that were way larger than anything else I’d ever seen, appropriate to his style which allowed for lots of space and beauty with the instrument. He also used a couple of asymmetric grips that I didn’t know were possible till last night… Jonathan Danforth… he of the famous Danforth line that’s brought bones back to the limelight (for a given value of limelight) had brought a number of metal bones with him (steel, aluminium and even titanium) but didn’t use any of those for his performance – over the course of the night I’d gotten the impression of Jonathan as something of a rockstar, so when he hit the stage I was surprised by the understated beauty of his slow piece, just a spacious bones and whistle composition.
There were light up bones and comedic bones more appropriate to a Vaudeville stage than any time in our current millennia. A beautiful waltz (the guitarist really shined for this piece) played by a guy from roughly our area named Ben, and he described how Skeffington Flynn (who’d kicked off the night with Ben backing him on banjo) had sort of introduced him to bones playing along White Zombie’s “Dragula” – something I’ll need to hear at some point.
A really marvelous night, capped off by the happening that I was hoping to have happen : all the bones performers plus anyone else with bones hidden in their pockets plus some people who were just willing to make some noise marching around the room and playing together. A cacophony fit to get the dead on their feet.
We played with Rowan of course – we broke out one of our oldest, most audacious tunes – and LooseN brought the house down and sold a bunch of CDs to boot. I was not in best form, slightly out-of-breath from my allergies, but it was very cool to strut and to be accepted in such a unique environment.
Really unique environment : one of the things that came up a couple of times was the community. When you’re talking about a group of people playing a relatively unknown instrument, you can either be pretty exclusive and snooty about it, keeping it in the family and frankly probably eventually dooming it to extinction, or you can be inclusive and welcoming of anyone who shares your interest – and this is definitely the latter. Friendly and humble, even among the rockstars. We were invited in and made to feel comfortable, even though… uh… we don’t do that.
The next one will be in San Antonio. Maybe I’ll make an effort to make it down. But I should learn how to get my bones on first (especially since Rowan probably can’t make it). I have shown no capacity for it yet. But that was INSPIRING.
