Feed Your Babies Onions: Fat City Favorites

Highwoods String Band | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 18, 1994)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Rounder Select
• ASIN: B0000003NP
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,892 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A WINNER FROM THE BAND THAT MADE OLD-TIME MUSIC FUN, June 5, 2000

By 

Shlomo Pestcoe - See all my reviews

This review is from: Feed Your Babies Onions: Fat City Favorites (Audio CD)

Submitted for your approval: it's the '70s, and you're an awkward teenager who has just been "initiated" into the little-known parallel universe known as the Old-Time Country Music Revival. In this dimension, the timeframe is permanently locked on the 1920s and '30s-- yet the Revival's festivals, called "FIDDLERS' CONVENTIONS," look like mini-Woodstocks and most of it's participants like Dead Heads... except they're clutching vintage fiddles, guitars, mandolins, upright basses, 5-string banjos and weird "banjoid" instruments, like banjo-ukeleles and banjo-mandolins. All over the given festival's campsite are jam sessions that go on for hours where old friends and new merrily swap obscure tunes learned from scratchy 78 rpm records and field recordings.

Then, you mosey on down to the main stage. Check it out-- there are four guys and one gal up there who look like you and your friends, except for one difference; they can play the grits out of this stuff on high-octane and they're having a blast doing it.

You've now entered the HIGHWOODS STRING BAND Zone.

Thanks to Rounder Records, you can recapture the magic of the Highwoods String Band on this reissue of recordings made from 1972 to 1978. Here you can hear the tight-- but fun-- band arrangements that helped define today's old-time string band sound. Taking the lead are Walt Koken's and Bob Potts' twin fiddling and Mac Benford's racous 5-string banjo, while the rhythm section, made up of Jenny Cleland' bass fiddle and Doug Dorschug's guitar, propels the band and gives it a driving back beat.

The Highwoods repertoire are tunes and songs culled mainly from old-time music's Golden Age, the 1920s and '30s, when fiddlers, banjo players and string bands from all over the South were eagerly recorded by the major labels of the day and the Grand Ole Opry was born. Sources include seminal bands, like Uncle Dave Macon & the Fruit Jar Drinkers and Charlie Poole & the North Carolina Ramblers, and the great fiddle & guitar duos, such as Grayson & Whittier and Narmour & Smith, too name but a few. Yet, the Highwoods main influence is clearly the racous North Georgia style of Gid Tanner & His Skillet Lickers.

Old-time musicians coming up today could definitely learn a thing or two about performance style and presentation from Highwoods. For example, the Highwoods String Band, emulating their sources, saw themselves as professional performers and were not adverse to using "shtick" like Skillet Licker-style funny skits to introduce numbers and entertain their audiences. Likewise, our current generation of old-time banjo players should follow Mac Benford's example and delve into the rich variety of playing styles found in those early recordings-- ranging from two and three-finger picking to the present-day favorite, clawhammer.

The sound quality and production of this album are first rate. My only complaint is that the liner notes tell us nothing about the individual cuts or the sources of the material presented.

Be that as it may, I highly recommend this album: it's great for parties and car trips. So, pop FEED YOUR BABY ONIONS into your Shopping Cart... if for no other reason than to find what the heck the title means.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars True music with heart and soul., March 15, 2000

By 

David J. Jennings (Midlothian,Virginia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Feed Your Babies Onions: Fat City Favorites (Audio CD)

If you never had the chance to see and hear the Highwoods String Band live then you need to get this CD. It will be the closest you will ever get to true mountain music. You can feel the closeness Mac, Walt, Doug,Bob, and Jenny share and experience their love of the root of music as it must have been so many years ago. I'm not a writer, I'm a lover of music. I long for the days back in 1972 in Norfolk, Va. at the Old Dominion Folk Festival seeing this group in action. You owe it to yourself to own this piece of art. I want more!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best of them all, June 12, 2001

By 

mattgb1 "mattgb1" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Feed Your Babies Onions: Fat City Favorites (Audio CD)

If you can only listen to one old-timey pickin' album, this is it! The energy alone is downright incendiary, and the virtuosity is first rate. I can't count how many times I've listened to it, completely under its spell. The best!

If that's not high enough praise, let me tell you some of the other reasons I love it. First of all, the rendition of "Wild Bill Jones" is so far above any other I ever heard, that I consider this now to be THE Definitive version of that song. Even the subtle baritone harmonies behind the twangy lead voice give it a fullness and energy unheard elsewhere. And the instrumentals are downright breathtaking, for an overall transcendent listening experience. I'd buy the album just for that song.

But wait -- there's more. They don't let the sublime quality of their music interfere with the need to be plain old silly when they feel like it. In the song "Who Broke the Lock" (of the chicken coop), they have fun making whacky chicken sounds with the fiddle, and shucking and clucking in their lyrics. You'll feel like you're right there, joking around with them. And despite their mastery of instruments, the lyrics are always clear and easy to follow so you won't miss out on any of the fun.

I've shown this album to many friends. After they see the title, they look at me like I'm nuts; then they hear the music and ask if they can "borrow" it for a while. I just email them the Amazon link so they can buy their own. So there!