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MP3 The Javelinas - All I Know
13 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Folk Blues, COUNTRY: Bluegrass
Details:
The Javelinas are primarily a duo, with occasional guest artists, that play an pastiche of original, acoustic roots music. From the Mississippi Delta to the Appalachians, from gospel to blues, they cover the spectrum of American roots music.
The Band:
Bruce "Bruiser" Rummenie - lead vocals, guitar, dobro;
John "JT" Tubbs - bass, mandolin, violin, (live - guitar, mandolin and backing vocals)
Guest additions - Dawna Nelson, Brandon T. Washington - vocals; Doc Lecouris - harmonica; Neal Robinson - accordian
From the HUB Weekly, by Zack Adcock:
If you think about it, Champaign-Urbana is the perfect place for a duo to produce music that falls into categories as diverse as country-blues, folk, gospel and bluegrass (to name a few). It''s the place of cultures meeting; the middle of the country. And Bruce "Bruiser" Rummenie (guitar and dobro, of the Impalas and Virtues, recently, and numerous other projects past) and John "J.T." Tubbs (about as varied a bass player/producer as they come) are two local musicians who have made this concept a reality. The duo plays under the name Javelinas, though they play together in both the Virtues and the Impalas, as well. The record, All I Know... , out now and self-released, brings with it the feeling both of a modern folk record and of the vintage recordings of eras past.
"We wanted to do something kind of different, you know?" Rummenie says. "The Virtues is a jump band with two horns and a piano. John''s been in the Impalas which is a straight-up electric blues band. We wanted this to stand out a little more. Make it sound, as John said all the time, like two dead guys playing on the back porch."
Rummenie wrote all of the record''s songs, save the last one, written by a friend named Kent LeCouris, and Tubbs mixed the record while in Slovakia for five months earlier this year. Rummenie laments the process by which the record was produced, with Tubbs mixing overseas and uploading the songs to a Web server for him to download and comment on or approve. The two agree that the culmination of these specific songs, some of which took form in the studio and some compositions came from up to 20 years ago, was originally to simply get them on tape.
"We just started playing acoustic guitar and laying tracks," Rummenie says. "I didn''t write them all thinking this was going to be an acoustic record. They''re just songs that didn''t seem like they''d fit anything else we were doing. And like John said, we wanted to get them down. I didn''t think we were really going to do a record at all. I thought we were just messing around in the studio, but after a while it sounded good and we started bringing other people in."
But to this duo of musicians, knowledgeable about the history of music and conscious of where they are currently dabbling (especially in light of O Brother, Where Art Thou?''s reinvention of the "roots" genre in popular context), it''s not as simple as sitting down and deciding to play a certain type of music..
"I think of roots music more as an eclectic kind of music than a specific genre," Tubbs says. "I really came to realize that what I was listening to growing up [in Minnesota] was not really bluegrass, but it was roots music. The way I came with my parts to the recording and what I added to Bruiser''s songwriting was the kind-of bluegrassy, kind-of folk, old string swing, western swing kind of stuff, which was exactly what I was listening to in Minneapolis in the late ''70s and early ''80s ... all these great bands, a lot of which came through Garrison Keillor''s show.
"For me, it was like going back to those roots," Tubbs continues. "But those roots were all drawing from a lot of American stuff ... anything but plugging in an electric guitar and bashing drums kind of counted in the definition of ''roots'' I grew up in. Even playing electric guitar and drums has its place, too, but specifically in our project it tended to be more acoustic because the two of us in other contexts have done a lot of electric things."
Rummenie comments that his brother suggested the record was more Midwestern than anything, and despite a pensive silence from both Rummenie and Tubbs, there seems to be an agreement.
"I thought that was a pretty good appraisal of what it is," Rummenie says. "It sounds pretty honest. It''s simple. And I realized it is probably pretty Midwestern."
As producer, Tubbs'' task in the process was crucial. Somehow, he found a way to make a record that was recorded over nine months sound as if it were an impromptu gathering of friends on the porch on a hot summer night.
"Its surprising that we were able to actually get that feeling," Tubbs says. "Bruiser has got the most awesome acoustic guitar time in the world and we would sit down and he would stomp stuff out with a big guitar sound. The spontaneity of those core rhythm tracks we put down ... that''s what gave it that life, that good, chunky feel, and we built it from there.
"Everyone who played on the album has worked amongst this group of buddies and pals for a long time, so we kind of knew how each other played to start with. So it hides that it''s a big overdub job. I think a lot of the history and the people helped keep that whole vibe going."
Tubbs contends that the band, like many other bands, is a reflection of its audience.
"Where we''re at in our personal playing evolution ... [our listeners] are less likely to go to a big, loud, bashing blues gig," Tubbs says. "They want something to be a little more on the intimate setting. Just people gathered around, singing. That''s what this reflects ... it''s not the only thing I want to do for the rest of my life, but it seems to fit right now with where my head''s at and where my playing''s at. There are smaller venues around town that makes sense in, and those are the places we''re trying to exploit right now. We try to create a vacuum into the venue ... pull people in and force them to be in it with you."
"John, as you can tell, has so much more experience than I do playing with bands and music," Rummenie adds. "Some of these songs, since I''ve been living with them for 20 years, are fresh to him. It works real well. It''s nice to see how he hears it, suggests how to do it. It came out in a very different way than it might have if I did it myself. We bring out different aspects of each other in that way."
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