Stacey Earle, Burning Spear, Jiggle the Handle, Wish List
By Seth Rogovoy

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., August 3, 2000) - Stacey Earle: Closet punk?
It only comes as a slight surprise to see that among the many clubs and coffeehouses where country-folk singer-songwriter Stacey Earle has performed this year is the Knitting Factory, the temple of New York’s downtown avant-garde.

The Knitting Factory isn’t exactly considered a hotbed of country music, unless a punk undercurrent is attached to it. But Earle’s music, as heard on her wonderful new album, “Dancin’ With Them That Brung Me” and in a show a few months back at Club Helsinki, could easily pass for straightforward country-folk in the tradition of Nanci Griffith or Iris Dement.

But if you listen closely to her lyrics, or even better, if you see her perform live, you get the sense that Earle is a bit of a punk in country-folk clothing. She has certainly earned her fair share of attitude. A high school dropout, she raised her two children by herself while waiting tables, all the while she was watching her older, famous brother Steve practically destroy his successful career in country-rock music in favor of heroin addiction and prison.

Somehow, all this history gets channeled through Earle’s deceptively homespun material and girlish vocals. Her songs are full of aching, longing and heartbreak, but they’re also populated with scenes of innocence, like the catalog of her favorite things in “Makes Me Happy.” Earle performs with her husband Mark Stuart and he son, Kyle Mims, tomorrow night at the Guthrie Center in Great Barrington.

Burning reggae

Earlier this year, Jamaica’s Burning Spear hit several milestones. The reggae legend, born Winston Rodney, received his eighth Grammy nomination and his first win when “Calling Rastafari” (Heartbeat), his 34th album in his 30 year career, garnered Best Reggae Album honors. The album features classic-style reggae in the tradition of reggae pioneer Bob Marley, with conscious, uplifting lyrics and arrangements untouched by contemporary trends like dancehall and hip-hop.

Spear’s new songs are infused with references to Marley, Rastafari and history, including the story of his struggle to enter the music business in Jamaica, which includes a chance meeting with Marley, a fellow native of St. Ann’s. Marley steered Rodney to Coxsone Dodd’s famed Studio One in Kingston, and the rest is reggae history.

Spear won the everlasting appreciation of Grateful Dead fans last year when he wrote a song called “Play Jerry,” a tribute to the late Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead culture, which was included on his previous album, “Appointment with His Majesty.” Spear is in the midst of a barnstorming tour of clubs and theaters across the nation which brings him to Club Helsinki in Great Barrington for a rare, two-night stand this coming Sunday and Monday nights.

Jiggle jam

Noodle dancer alert: Consider tonight’s appearance by Boston-based jam-band Jiggle the Handle at Club Helsinki in Great Barrington a sneak preview of next weekend’s Berkshire Mountain Music Festival at Butternut Basin Ski Area. Jiggle’s post-Grateful Dead mix is mainstream groove, building on funk, disco, reggae, world-beat, underneath white-soul harmonies. “Fine Line” on the band’s “In It Again” owes as much to mid-‘70s white rockers like Chicago and Peter Frampton as to the usual Allman Brothers/Grateful Dead axis, and the group’s lyrics are infused with a vague, neo-hippie mysticism (“Everything you give comes back to you”).

The group has impeccable groove credentials, including a spot on the 1998 H.O.R.D.E. tour, an opening slot on five dates for the Allman Brothers, playing a private party for the Furthur Festival, and feature articles in jam-band bibles like Relix and Gig magazines. Jiggle is a kind of BerkFest house band, sharing management with the festival promoters, Gamelan Interactive. You can catch them tonight, and again next week at BerkFest.

Wishing you were here

Club Helsinki in Great Barrington has a well-established reputation as a hip party spot for its menu of funk, blues, r&b, reggae and rock bands. The phenomenal response to last week’s shows by Phoebe Legere and Hamiet Bluiett, however, suggest that there’s another void waiting to be filled in these parts: that of sophisticated, experimental music. While no one expects Helsinki or any nightspot to totally forsake the primary goal of making crowds of people happy, clearly there’s a demand for serious, cutting-edge, improvisational music in the Berkshires.

It’s not up to us whether Helsinki or someone else fulfills that need. But along the way, we’d be thrilled to see more adventurous programming along the lines of Legere and Bluiett. And to push matters further, here’s a list of artists we’d like to see:
Clarinetist Don Byron, saxophonist John Zorn and/or his group Masada,
saxophonist Roy Nathanson and/or his group Jazz Passengers,
keyboardist Anthony Coleman and/or his group Selfhaters,
reedman Matt Darriau and/or his Balkan-jazz group Paradox Trio or his swing group Ballin’ the Jack,
guitarist Gary Lucas and/or his group Gods and Monsters,
trumpeter Frank London and/or any of his groups, including Di Shikere Kapelye, Hasidic New Wave and Psychedelicatessen.

Also, Steve Bernstein and/or his group Sex Mob, keyboardist Uri Caine, world-beat group Pharaoh’s Daughter, New York Ska Jazz Ensemble, DJ Logic, saxophonist David Murray, Cyro Baptista’s Beat the Donkey, trumpeter Dave Douglas, the Lounge Lizards, Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos, the Joey Baron Trio, the Ben Perowsky Trio, cellist Erik Friedlander, Phillip Johnston, Tom Tom Club, The Other Quartet, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes Catfish Corner, Zeena Parkins, clarinetist Andy Statman, guitarist Brad Shepik, reedmen Ned Rothenberg, Steve Lacy and Marty Ehrlich.

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Aug. 3, 2000. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2000. All rights reserved.]

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