5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
High-geared musicians that really feel their old-timey oats, August 19, 2003
This review is from: Unfortunate Rake 2: Yellow Mercury (Audio CD)
Total Playing Time - 66:58 -- An old-timey band from the San Francisco Bay area, The Crooked Jades have a motto that "Old Time is Not a Crime." Guitarist Jeff Kazor formed the band in 1994. Besides Kazor, this album features four other Jades (Lisa Berman, Tom Lucas, Stephanie Prausnitz, Dave Bamberger), along with seven other special guests. On 23 tracks, the various instruments played include 6-string guitar, tenor guitar, high-strung guitar, fiddle, Hawaiian slide, banjo ukelele, baritone ukelele, organ, banjo, resophonic guitar, mountain dulcimer, pedal steel, tiple, single quill, mortar & pestle, and bass. The album's subtitle, Yellow Mercury, and the inspiration for the two Kazor instrumentals, "Yellow Mercury No. 1" and "Yellow Mercury No. 2" refer to the slang term for gold. Kazor uses it as an analogy for the greed, corruption, deception and environmental damage that resulted from the gold rush and its byproducts.
Their material draws heavily from the traditional, and liner notes acknowledge the sources for all pieces from Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia and elsewhere. The band is at its best with lively twin fiddled favorites like "Indian Ate A Woodchuck," and "Tell Her To Come Back Home," snappy numbers with plenty of pep. Seven Jeff Kazor originals are also included, and he tends to write slower ballads and laments. His most interesting offering, co-penned with Tom Lucas, is "New Lost Mission Blues," a lament about San Francisco's Mission District where restoration by the middle class is displacing low-income folks. The song includes minstrel banjo, a grinding stone's rhythm and a fife-like instrument called the single quill. Fiddler Adam Tanner also composed "The Bull and The Bear" and "A Broken Time," two bouncy instrumentals.
The Crooked Jades have recorded three albums for Copper Creek, but this is their first after a three year hiatus. The sheer number of tracks, and the variety of instruments, make this an interesting and worthy old-time project. The Crooked Jades are a band of high-geared musicians that really feel their old-timey oats. (Joe Ross, staff writer, Bluegrass Now)
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