blue moose and the unbuttoned zippers
BMUZ is a featured band in the Jan/Feb 2010 Issue (#145) of Dirty Linen Magazine!
Click on the cover to see a sneak peak online.
Paul Hartman on Dirty Linen
Paul Hartman is interviewed by Tim O'Shea.
O’Shea: How odd is it to be in the position to have covered musicians like Richard and Linda Thompson, Steve Earle and Loudon Wainwright III, and now to find yourself covering their next generation—Teddy Thomson, Justin Townes Earle as well as Rufus and Martha Wainwright?
Hartman: Now you’re making me feel old!
The next generation, not only children of professional musicians, but others as well, shows that folk/roots music is in good hands and will continue to be played and evolve. It’s not a dusty relic on a museum shelf, fixed in time forever. People continue to add to and change the music.
Just a few of the younger artists are Carolina Chocolate Drops, Crooked Still, Blue Moose & the Unbuttoned Zippers, Julie Fowlis, Leela & Ellie Grace, and Maeve Gilchrist.
Click here to read the rest of the interview.
"Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers are a band you can't put a label on. They take songs and tunes, old and new, and infuse them with an almost punk-rock kind of energy, all the while respecting the traditions. Labels are good for marketing - what BMUZ has is good for MUSIC!"
-Matt Smith
Manager of Club Passim, Cambridge, MA
”Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers is an extraordinary group of wonderful young musicians who play a wide range of intoxicating music with instruments that you don’t hear everyday. There are a lot of young bands out there, but these folks are really my favorite!”
-Matt Glaser
Artistic Director of the American Roots Music Program
Berklee College of Music
“Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers is one of the dynamic new fiddle bands arising out of the bubbling Boston neo-trad scene. Weaving influences from Appalachian old-time to Celtic to Scandinavian mixing tunes and songs from varied traditions with their own sparkling originals, BMUZ bring chops, inventiveness, elán, and camaraderie to their music--and know how to rock the house to boot. All Berklee students, their sound is clearly in the tradition-busting tradition of eclectic improvisatory fiddle music pioneered by the likes of Darol Anger and Matt Glaser (head of Berklee's Strings Department.) Don't be surprised to find Blue Moose out there as well, spreading the World Fiddle gospel in days to come.”
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-Mark Simos
“Blue Moose was the only band to pack the Saturday showcase concerts and the only one that lured the young folks out of the water. Like Canada’s The Dukhs, Sweden’s Vasen, or the rising American bluegrass band Crooked Still, they embody hope for the future of acoustic music…”
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-Pheonix Brown & Lars Vigo, Review of Champlain Valley Folk Fest
Concert Review: Blue Moose & the Unbuttoned Zippers at Trinity Church, NYC - April 16, 2009
The hippy-dippy name is deceptive. Blue Moose & the Unbuttoned Zippers are not a jam band (although they probably could be) – they’ve taken it upon themselves to introduce American audiences to traditional Swedish fiddle music. Playing completely without amplification in the echoey confines of the beloved old downtown historic landmark, they impressed with their seemingly effortless command and unaffected love for the genre. Along with acoustic guitar, mandolin and violin, the band features a nyckelharpa, a cross between an autoharp and a viola, with keys and a set of resonating strings in addition to the usual four which are bowed or plucked.
Throughout the set, they often alternated between bouncy folk dance numbers and darker, more stately instrumentals, in addition to a vivid sea chantey and a wistful ballad, both with English lyrics, the latter delivered by the band’s two women on vocals and nyckelharpa. Several of the other pieces on the bill managed to be both rousing and hypnotic at the same time, aided by the band’s fondness for tunings that maximized the eerie overtones emanating from the strings. An original titled Burbank Street began with scatty vocalese from the two women, turning slow and dark and then light again with split-second precision. They wound up the show with a pretty, atmospheric waltz and a tongue-in-cheek original called Welcome to My Cave, its silly lyrics offset by the almost gleefully dark atmospherics of the melody. Fans of the well-known Scandinavian string bands like Frigg and JPP will enjoy this stuff; bluegrass fans should also check them out, they’re a lot of fun. If the hour had been later, there doubtlessly would have been people dancing in the aisles.
Freight and Salvage:
One of the dynamic new fiddle bands to come bubbling up from that frenzied, percolating hotbed of creativity "the Boston neo-trad scene," Blue Moose & the Unbuttoned Zippers (BMUZ to their friends) is quite the band to catch. Weaving influences from Appalachian mountain music to Celtic to traditional Scandinavian, the four members of the group mix tunes and songs from varied traditions and their own sparkling originals, with startling rhythms and innovative arrangements a-plenty. Like fellow Berklee College of Music graduates, Crooked Still, BMUZ offers amazing chops, inventiveness, and verve—and they surely do know how to rock the house, as well.
In the venerable tradition of bands that start as a group of friends jamming and swapping tunes, BMUZ features an eclectic lineup of instrumental skills. Bronwyn Bird plays accordion and nykelharpa (a traditional Swedish bowed, keyed instrument that's difficult to describe, but sounds heavenly); Andy Reiner is a fine, fiery fiddler in the Cape Breton tradition; Mariel Vandersteel specializes in Norway's haunting hardanger fiddle; and guitarist Stash Wyslouch propels it all along with his driving grooves.
Enter the Young - BMUZ @ Champlain Valley Folk Festival
Phoenix Brown & Lars Vigo
Blue Moose tears up the stage at the Champlain Folk Festival.
We’ve just come back from the 26th annual Champlain Folk Festival held at Kingsland Bay State Park and would like to report that acoustic music is alive and well in Vermont. We’d like to, but it’s not so.
This is not a slam against the Champlain Festival. It’s a miracle that it took place at all given the loss of corporate sponsorship and an economic collapse that has shrunk the donor list to one that fits on a single column of the program. And bad weather on Friday and Sunday didn’t help.
And it’s certainly no slam at the performances. Among the highlights were Jeni Hankins and Billy Kemp singing gorgeous songs of hardship and hope dug from the hills of West Virginia; Laura Risk, just one month removed from the birth of her second child, laying down misty Scottish fiddle tunes and lively Quebec reels; Sana Ndiaye explaining the intricacies of the ekonting, a three-stringed West African banjo ancestor; The MacArthurs anointing the new stage named for their late mother; Annie Rosen amazing with unexpected tender vocal moments; and Marc Maziade showcasing an unheard of thing: French-Canadian banjo picking. The dance floor was sizzling and packed, despite treacle-like humidity.
So what was lacking? Young folks! They were on site on Saturday, but seldom at the music venues. Instead they were busy plunging into Lake Champlain, sunning themselves on floating docks, scarping up Island Ice Cream—the ginger comes highly recommended—and heading back to the lake for more watery fun. To be fair, it was a hot day and the lake was inviting, but a generation ago if you had given young folks a choice between swimming or tunes, music would have won hands down. Music is the altar at which Baby Boomers and Gen X worshiped, but the missionary efforts have been weak. Much of what we see on acoustic music stages, dance floors, and in concert seats is simply too gray to be sustainable.
This brings me to the band that was the surprise hit of the festival: Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers, a saucy band from Boston that was everything that was lacking elsewhere: pathbreaking, energetic, insouciant, and young. Yes, guitarist Stash Wyslouch and fiddler Andy Reiner exude a bit of attitude. No, you won’t hear nyckelharpa maven Bronwyn Bird or fiddler Mariel Vandersteel give academic discourses on traditional playing styles. Blue Moose calls their mash-up of Norwegian, Swedish, and old-time American tunes “Scandilachian,” and good on them. Enough already with preservation—traditional music roots are deep enough. It’s time to get irreverent, funky, and greener. Blue Moose was the only band to pack the Saturday showcase concerts and the only one that lured the young folks out of the water. Like Canada’s The Dukhs, Sweden’s Vasen, or the rising American bluegrass band Crooked Still, they embody hope for the future of acoustic music, if Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and festival organizers can stop reliving the past and make way for the whelps.
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