Sauntering ahead

Geoff Muldaur and Chris Smither: old ways, new personas

by Jim Macnie

Geoff Muldaur

As a teen interested in pre-rock roots music, Geoff and Maria Muldaur's Pottery Pie and Sweet Potatoes offered me quite a few highway signs. I heard Geoff's voice trumpet Bessie Smith's "New Orleans Hop Scotch Blues" before I ever owned an album by the Empress. And it was Maria's saucy way of cooing "I want you to ride me" that brought the true thrust of Memphis Minnie's "Me and My Chauffeur Blues" into focus. Laying in bed together on the cover of Pottery Pie, the Muldaurs looked like a perfect pair: music-obsessed '60s bohos, relaxing after a hard day of dredging songbooks for obscure folk nuggets.

That kind of cultural curating was an act of love, but aspects of scholarship filtered into it somewhere, too. The folk and blues scenes of Cambridge and Greenwich Village were crucial in deciphering, cataloging and updating historic music. Of course, danger was in the air as far as interpretation went. Those who overly formalized colloquial pieces came off as pious wonks. To be deemed a true artist, you had to be a great translator. At worst, the champs sustained a natural feel for hermetic languages; at best, they conjured something contemporary. A handful, including Dave Van Ronk, Peter Stampfel, Eric Von Schmidt and Geoff Muldaur, usually brought a novel spin to the archival tunes.

Only a few of Muldaur's pointedly eclectic and eccentric records have been reissued on compact disc. Maybe that's what you get for trying to connect the dots between the Memphis Jug Band and Sabu the Elephant Boy films as he did on the nutsy Warner Bros. album Having a Wonderful Time. But Hannibal put out Pottery Pie several years ago (it contains a surrealistic take on Brazil that inspired Terry Gilliam's equally surrealistic film). And Rhino coughed up the two titles by Paul Butterfield's Better Days, which in part offers Muldaur's substantial vocal skills. Lately, a handful of artifacts from the singer's past have also trickled forth. Four acoustic songs from his Prestige debut are part of a compilation entitled Blues Blue, Blues White, which also includes Tom Rush, Tracy Nelson and Van Ronk. The recent arrival of Jim Kweskin's Acoustic Swing & Jug (Vanguard) also reminded the faithful of Muldaur's youthful wit.

But the place where this mini-revival takes on a contemporary status is The Secret Handshake (Hightone), an out-of-the-blue gem that reminds us just how devout and instinctive the singer-arranger is about American folk music. Muldaur has been sub rosa for the last couple of decades -- he hasn't recorded under his own name since he shared a so-so Flying Fish disc with guitarist Amos Garrett in the mid-'70s. The exuberant press response to The Secret Handshake is fitting. Combining ragtime, jazz, Appalachian and other strains, it resubstantiates Muldaur's rep as an always cagey, sometimes kooky interpreter.

Muldaur is fastidious when it comes to arrangements. He knows there's a right and a wrong way to approach his beloved material, and he's often spot-on regarding nuances. Tenderness helps. The warbling yodel he uses on Vera Hall's "Wild Ox Moan" is accompanied by a sympathetic bass/drums/guitar unit that acknowledges each subtlety of the leader's voice. And when he brings in horns for a sleek rendition of the gospel classic "This World Is Not My Home," they float in accord instead of erupting in punctuation -- a thoughtful move.

Stylistic melange is a modernist norm, but Muldaur has been mixing and matching with insight for ages. A purist in some ways, he's nonetheless unafraid of tweaking orthodoxy. The Secret Handshake sustains his wide-angle approach by bolstering Dock Boggs's "Mistreated Mama" with clarinet, bassoon and French horn. Brushing up against the fiddle-and- banjo melody line, the woodwinds and brass are slightly jarring and absolutely beautiful.

Rhythm defines much of the blues, and the singer has never been afraid of giving it the gas. Echoing his take on "Rule the Road" from the first Better Days album, every accent of "Someday Baby" has a clear affirmation to it. And Leadbelly's "Alberta" finds the band kicking it zydeco style. Led by Muldaur's trumpeted vocal, its grooves are adamant. The disc's one bit of overreach is an ambitious move that doesn't quite come off. Revealing a shared lingo between fife-and-drums syncopation, Bo Diddley beats, and hambone rhythms, Muldaur blends the traditional groover "Chevrolet" with Don Pullen's "Big Alice," a modern jazz melody written to fit the style. It almost works, marred mainly by a funk bass solo that doesn't sustain itself.

Chris Smither does something a bit more obvious, but almost as compelling as Muldaur, on his ninth record in 29 years, Drive You Home Again (Hightone). He turns the venerable blues tune "Duncan and Brady" into unfettered rock 'n' roll. All the bouncing and grooving is oddly aggressive for this middle-aged folkie -- even at their most snaggletoothed, his tunes have an introspective tone. But Smithers is a New Orleans native, and the track's kinda/sorta Fats Domino vibe brings a new dimension to both the singer and the song.

Like Muldaur, Smither was on the scene in Cambridge when the folk, blues and bluegrass revivals held sway. His chum Bonnie Raitt went on to record two of his better blues pieces, "Love Me Like a Man" and "I Feel the Same." Over the years, between bouts with the bottle and victories in the field of eloquence, he has recalibrated his blues feel, fitting it snugly into a singer-songwriter esthetic. His last few Hightone discs have found him assessing the existential questions that boggle most minds, and the plain-toned poetry of his answers has earned him the highest visibility of his career. With the passing of Townes Van Zandt, Smither's importance as a great ghostly folk figure takes another step forward. Known to guitar zealots as a very hip picker, Smither can put his hands on a whole Crayola box of melancholy colors with just a six-string in hand. But the arrangements give Drive You Home Again its sometimes poignant, sometimes grim demeanor. A full band interprets most of the pieces, adhering to specifics of mood; producer Stephen Bruton, who is also integral to the achievements of The Secret Handshake, makes sure everything is in its place. The soprano sax on "Hold On," the shadowy harp on the title cut, the rhythmic whomp on Danny O'Keefe's "Steel Guitar," the distant brass band on "No Love Today" -- this is an album full of small touches. Some parts have a lush gentility reminiscent of Joni Mitchell's Night Ride Home.

Smither's withered voice adds to the anguish on some tunes. Never known for his vocal abilities, his singing has been crumbling bit by bit over the years. Which isn't to say that he's incapable of presenting a suitable disposition: regrets, goodbyes and how-comes dot the record's landscape, and his wrinkled rasp helps each find its emotional center. On Tim Hardin's "Don't Make Promises," such weariness braces the drama. And every phrase of Eric Von Schmidt's "Rattlesnake Preacher" has a measured mixture of gloom and courage. Pretty damn affecting.

Doing time in the dead letter office of folk and blues was once a heroic endeavor. But over the years, in certain quarters, it has accrued a designation as a lazy man's job -- the easy route for those who can't fill an album with their own ideas. Muldaur and Smither know that faded tunes are what you make 'em; they've spent whole careers looking over their shoulders while sauntering ahead. The Secret Handshake and Drive You Home Again propose that antiques can not only buff up well, but exhibit new personas in the process. Some may consider the singers as custodians. I hear 'em more like catalysts.

Geoff Muldaur will perform at the Common Fence Point Community Hall in Portsmouth on Saturday, April 17 at 8 p.m. Call 683-5085.