The Rodeo Eroded

Tin Hat Trio

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 10, 2002)
• Original Release Date: September 10, 2002
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Rope a Dope
• ASIN: B00006I07J
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #165,651 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Like good musical ramblers, the Tin Hat Trio traveled around the world on their first two albums, Memory Is an Elephant and Helium. Theirs was a tango that could fill classical music's archways. A jazz that melded continents. With The Rodeo Eroded, the San Francisco-based threesome heads home. Rob Burger's accordions, piano, and myriad acoustic keyboards, Carla Kihlstedt's violin and viola, and Mark Orton's twangy guitar and Dobro take the Rodeo on a Great American Music Tour. "Bill" opens the album with a bluesy, waltz-like slow jam that Kihlstedt violins through with long-stroked dramatic flair. From there, Rodeo has the feel of a great, cinematic drama. Drunken, percussive piano marks "Holiday Joel" before a woozy take on "Willow Weep for Me" emerges from the mist with Willie Nelson(!) emoting atop a sagebrush orchestral mesa. A horse clip-clops in the form of Orton's guitar on "The Last Cowboy," just as Morricone might have envisioned. There are great, wobbly chase scenes, circus tumbles, and a host of Americanisms that bounce in, kick it up, and split with a sonic impression of the desert's parched stretches and the boundless madness of a simply warped community dance. --Andrew Bartlett

Product Description
Third outing from San Francisco based group. Their musical potion blends tango, bluegrass, contemporary classical, and Eastern European folk traditions with an avant garde edge. Featuring Willie Nelson, Jonathan Fishman, & Billy Martin. 15 tracks. 2002.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars They just keep getting better!, March 17, 2003

By	bimwa (Australia) - See all my reviews

The Tin Hat Trio's sound has been getting more refined and more sophisticated from each album to the next - their debut was mostly just the trio, live and raw in the studio; 'Helium' added some overdubs, some guests, guitarist Mark Orton played some dobro, Rob Burger played some piano, the sound was fuller and bassier.

For 'The Rodeo Eroded', they've just gone all-out. There are guests wherever needed, overdubs wherever needed, the members of the trio play a wide variety of wonderful instruments, and the result is this, one of the most sublime albums I've heard in a long while.

The album opens with 'Bill', a beautiful dobro-driven waltz, no doubt a tribute to the great Bill Frisell (who has worked with and obviously inspired all three members). 'Holiday Joel' is a more frenetic discordant latin number, a strange feature for guest percussionist Billy Martin. 'Nickel Mountain' is one of the most haunting, beautiful pieces on the album, surprisingly one of the only times the Tin Hat Trio have coupled dobro with piano.

All of the three pieces mentioned above are by Mark Orton, who wrote and arranged most of the material on the album. There seems to be just that little bit more attention to detail than in his previous work - for example check out the final phrase of 'Bill' where he reharmonises each note to perfection; or his amazing orchestration of 'Willow Weep For Me' (featuring none other than Willie Nelson on vocals), adding clarinets, harp, cello, bass and drums to the Tin Hat Trio palette.

The other members' compositional skills should not go without mention. Rob Burger's 'Happy Hour' is an incredibly funky latin tune; and Carla Kihlstedt's 'Sweep' is one of the most beautiful and different pieces on the album.

If there's one criticism I have of 'The Rodeo Eroded', it's that there are a handful of tunes that don't go very far. The band's great sound tends to pull them through though. 'Fear Of The South' is nice enough but perhaps a bit pedestrian. Similar comment for 'Rubies, Pearls and Emeralds' and one or two others.

But that aside, basically the Tin Hat Trio is a brilliant ensemble and this is a brilliant album!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A language all their own, November 9, 2002

By	Andrea Kihlstedt (Lancaster, PA USA) - See all my reviews

Now I must confess to being biased about The Rodeo Eroded as the violinist of Tin Hat Trio is my daughter, but from that priviledged position (and it is a priviledge), here goes. My test of all cds is whether they bear repeated listening. I put them in my car cd player and listen again and again. Some pale after only one or two takes. Others, like Glen Gould's Bach get richer and richer as my ear hears more. I find that all of the Tin Hat CDs stand the repetition test. Listening after listening they yield things I hadn't heard before. The music does pull from many roots, but it speaks a complex and cohesive language of its own, and that language becomes clearer the more one listens. The trio's live performances reveal an improvisational vitality not fully apparent in the CDs.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Paris, Texas, May 31, 2004

By	B. Lane "baronl" (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Think of a French cafe being suddenly transported to a Texas border town...what would the house band sound like? I think it might sound something like THT.

Cowboy noir at its finest.