The
Dickel Brothers
CD
Release Party
The Delta Cafe
4607 SE Woodstock Blvd., 771-3101
10 pm Saturday, May 20
All ages
The
Dickel Brothers
Volume Two
Empty Records
Playing at the
expanded Delta will bring the Dickels full circle, since
they debuted at the hipster-Southern eatery long before
blooming into a full-on five-piece.
The vinyl version
of Volume Two contains a pair of songs not available
on compact disc.
"Christ, one beer here costs just as much as a half-rack
of Pabst!"
Marcus Dickel is not impressed with the prices at
a self-styled "public house" in Southeast. And why should
he be? As banjo-slinger for the riotous Dickel Brothers,
Portland's gang of string-band hellions, he can probably
snag cheap hooch most anytime he wants.
The Dickels' rawboned hillbilly music, inspired by the
Old Time sound of Depression-era Appalachia, heats up crowds
like shotgunned hits of Sweet Mother Liquor. Someone usually
manages to buy the sharp-suited quintet a round.
Still, if they have to pay art-beer prices to talk Old
Time, the Dickels will do it. When it comes to their adopted
music, these guys have become fishers of men, proselytizers
for Old Time's serrated simplicity. Their new album, Volume
Two, elevates the ministry they began with last
year's Volume One to new heights of passion; this
summer, a tour takes it national.
As much as they love to play--hard to miss that feral joy
in the frenzy of banjo, bass and fiddle, the dogpile of
mandolin, guitar and holler--these boys love to Spread the
Word. Sit down with a quorum of Dickels (at our meeting,
Michael Dickel, professor of mandolin and washboard,
was absent) and you'll hear plenty about what drives five
young men to breathe life into music already ancient before
Hoover came to power.
"It's a release from our everyday lives, just like it was
for people back then," says fiddle-sawing Clancy Dickel.
"We're all doing these sort of traditional jobs--"
"I get people drunk, for example," interjects Matt Dickel,
guitarist and Fellini suds-slinger. "That's an old, honorable
profession."
"--and so it feels good to play this music that people
traditionally played as a release from their working lives,"
Clancy continues. "We may wear suits when we play, but we
always go to gigs with dirty hands. We first started dressing
up because these old guys, they'd have to put on their Sunday
best to play. And now, since we've been doing it for so
long, it's like I get into this mode when I put on my suit."
While both recorded volumes contain a pair of fine original
songs, the Dickels cop the backbone of their repertoire
from recordings made in Old Time's eastern heartland between
1925 and 1935. The songs pack more fury and dread than any
up-to-date fare, but their antiquity and the Dickels' natty
stage presence has led some to pigeonhole them as a clever
vaudeville act, a sort of Cap'n Dickel 'n' His Travelin'
Old-Time All-Stars.
"I was talking to this guy the other day who got it as
wrong as you could possibly get it," Marcus says. "It was
like, 'What's with the suits, you retro posers?' People
look at the suits and think the goal is to have a cute gimmick.
The point is to capture the feeling of this music, and appearance
is just part of that.
"If you were to try to go and get any original version
of the songs that we're putting on these albums, you'd have
a hell of a time. I mean, you can't find the Skillet
Lickers. We're just putting them back into circulation
as best we can."
"We're doing songs that, in general, no one else is playing,"
adds Bryan Dickel, who hauls the band's massive stand-up
bass.
For sure, Volume Two doesn't carry too many cobwebs.
With hotter highs and crisper sound in general than the
first album, the disc gives a taste of the band's hell-for-leather
live feel. While they say recording two albums in a year
was something of a trial, the Dickels are clearly on a sharp
learning curve.
"We never really heard this music until five or six years
ago," Matt says. "We have no special authority on Old Time
music. We're five guys who get together to play. We're learning,
and we hope other people will learn with us."
Their self-applied education may well be tested when they
hit the Galax Festival, a summit meeting of Old Time hardcores
that convenes in Virginia in the second week of August.
"The whole reason we're going to the South," Clancy says,
"is to see if we're doing the right thing, or if we're totally
off base."
My guess would be that things'll work out, fellas.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 26,
2000
|
