Digging into the tradition, playing vintage material for young hipsters, making musicology fun Maria Muldaur started doing that in the Boston coffeehouses five decades ago, and Tuba Skinny is doing it in New Orleans now. So, it’s no surprise that they’ve been circling around each other for a while (Muldaur sat in with Tuba Skinny at d.b.a. two years ago) and that they’ve now made an album out of it.
The pairing makes sense on a few levels: Tuba Skinny have lacked a good frontwoman since regular singer Erika Lewis went part-time, and Muldaur can always use a band to click with. They’re enough on the same wavelength that this project avoids the clumsiness often found in cross-generational collaborations. Muldaur’s persona has always been a bit bawdy it was she who made a ’70s hit out of Blue Lu Barker’s “Don’t Feel My Leg” so Tuba Skinny can play loose and be respectful at the same time. Muldaur’s voice has deepened over the years, but these sessions bring out th
Maria Muldaur teams up with Tuba Skinny for vintage jazz and blues album
Six-time Grammy nominee Maria Muldaur, who’s been dubbed “The First Lady of Roots Music” for previous albums touching on her wide-ranging influences from blues, country, folk, jazz and even jug band music, continues her exploration of the great American roots music songbook. On her latest excursion, this time into the vintage jazz and blues sounds of the 1920s/’30s, Maria teams up with acclaimed New Orleans street band Tuba Skinny for
Let’s Get Happy Together, scheduled for release on May 7 on Stony Plain Records.
Muldaur recorded
This is the second release that Tuba Skinny member Max Bien-Kahn has done in the past six months under the Max and the Martians banner, and they couldn’t be more different: Last year’s
Stay at Home Demos was made for the moment, a set of Covid-themed songs with a proudly homemade sound; while this more-produced album is in a more timeless power-pop vein.
There’s still a Covid reference or two between the lines or maybe it’s just that any album that begins with a reference to sitting in a burning building is bound to sound timely in 2021. But these songs are all concerned with the classic pop topic of romantic loss. No idea whether Bien-Kahn was going through a split when writing these songs, but it does play like a model breakup album, and the emotional tone is in fact miserable from start to finish. That doesn’t mean it’s a depressing album, but it does mean that the hooks and grooves are there for reassurance as the singer picks up the pieces.