Twang an' Groove was basically Rhythmic Statues, an Austin jam band, rebranded as Peter's backing band. In fact, the first show we did as Peter's backing band (the Halloween Hoedown in Lockhart in October of 2012, the recording of which served as the basis for most of the "Twang an' Groove Vol. 1" live album), we were billed as "Peter Rowan and Rhythmic Statues." Jamie was living in Austin at the time, but he moved back to Tulsa soon after and lived there until his death a couple of years ago. After the July, 2013 Crystal Coast Music Festival tour in North Carolina, Peter re-formed Twang an' Groove as a power trio + special guests, so Mike and Jamie remained as the rhythm section, Peter took over lead guitar (he had gained/regained a lot of electric skills by that point and no longer needed a ringer), and they brought in the likes of Cindy Cashdollar on steel and Blaine Sprouse on fiddle as special guests. I toured with Ulrich Ellison (Austrian guitar shredder) for a couple of years in 2014/2015 while Mike was on the road with Twang an' Groove Mark II, then in 2016 we finished and released Rhythmic Statues' debut album ("One Big Day"-- th-cam.com/video/KvzioTyMqVo/w-d-xo.html ), which was all Mike's songs with the same backing band (except with Pat Manske, drummer for The Flatlanders and numerous other Texas country acts, on drums instead of Jamie.) Carter toured and recorded with The Crazy World of Arthur Brown a lot during that timeframe, and he's now living in the UK. I'm about to leave Austin after 22 years and head to North Carolina. Mike has done several other projects since then, including Big Mon (the songs of Bill Monroe, reggae-style.) This concludes "Twang an' Groove, Where Are They Now?" :)
Peter & Sam are both musical MONSTERS in the acoustic/ bluegrass realm....but I'm not quite sure what they were going for here....sounds like a bar band looking for a place to go...
Twang an' Groove was conceived as a jam band, so basically what you're watching is almost all played "off the cuff." Peter would get together with the band the day before a show and kind of pick through some tunes he had been working on with his other bands, but the band never really knew prior to going on stage what songs would actually be played. On several occasions, such as with "New to the Game", he wrote the song the day before rehearsal, and the band only got to play it once prior to performing it. Often he would pull out some of his old material on a whim, stuff that the band knew but had never played with him before (or hadn't played in years.) Sam Bush was just sitting in, so not only had he never played the new material before, but he had never played with this particular band before either. He was just picking it up as he went along. The whole idea was to create a uniquely new live experience with each show-- similar in concept to what The Grateful Dead did. The arrangements evolved into completely different forms from their originals (just compare the rockabilly version of "The Old School" above to the bluegrass version to see what I mean) and progressed from show to show. On the July tour (North Carolina/Crystal Coast Music Festival), Twang an' Groove added Yungchen Llamo, who sang Tibetan vocals on top of the rockabilly/bluegrass/reggae songs, and a banjo player sat in. It was completely different every time. Sometimes Peter would change the key without telling the band (usually because he was having vocal issues on a particular day, but in the above video, he also forgot to put on his capo for "The Cuckoo Bird", so the band had to very quickly re-learn it on the fly in F#m instead of Gm.) Sometimes he felt like playing a more pensive version of a song, and sometimes he would rock it out. Sometimes he would play a song as reggae, and other times he would play the same song as blues. It's also important to understand that, prior to Twang an' Groove, Peter had not played electric guitar since he was 14. The early days of Twang an' Groove were still about him trying to re-explore that space. After July of 2013, he re-formed Twang an' Groove as a power trio (the same lineup as above, minus lead guitar and keys), and it sounds a lot different now. Peter came into his own as an electric guitarist, and the current incarnation of Twang an' Groove is much more of a rockabilly ensemble driven by Jamie Oldaker's experience in that genre, as opposed to the jam band that was more the brainchild of Mike Morgan (the bass player.) It's certainly tighter now, but it's also less experimental than the early incarnation. Being experimental on stage is risky. You're always riding on a razor-thin edge between brilliance and catastrophe, but it's worth it for those moments when it feels like you're moving planets and everyone is sharing the same brain. What you're watching above is a unique combination of players-- Mike has many decades of jam band experience and runs a very well-known Americana recording studio in the Austin area, and that was combined with Peter's encyclopedic knowledge of folk music, Jamie Oldaker's ability to hold down probably the tightest groove in the world, Carter's background in jazz, and Darrell's background in R&B, Hornsby-style folk piano, and classic country. So yeah, I totally get how this probably does a fly-by on traditional bluegrass fans. It was conceived more for the Old & in the Way/New Riders of the Purple Sage crowd. Re-watch it with the understanding that the band is basically having to read Peter's mind, and it becomes more impressive.
12foothedgehog I just seem to love everything Peter does! This sounds really good to my ears, but, yes, alot more twangy than what Peter usually does. Just a question: You state, Peter hasn't played Electric guitar since he was 14. Not true. For many of his Crucial Reggae/Reggaebilly shows in the early 00s (2001, 2003, 2004, around in there), he played a Telecaster (or Telecaster style). He has an old brown strat that he might have used in Seatrain and I saw him once at the Suwannee for a benefit (Flood Jam) and he played that.
roselovr2004 I stand corrected. On a couple of occasions, he mentioned (both on stage and off) that he hadn't been in a rock band since he was a teenager, so I guess I assumed (incorrectly) that that meant he hadn't played electric since then.
Twang an' Groove was originally a jam band called Rhythmic Statues out of Austin, formed by Mike Morgan. Mike runs a studio (The Zone) in Dripping Springs, a small community 30 minutes west of Austin, and his studio records a who's who of Texas country artists (The Flatlanders, Robert Earl Keen, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Billy Joe Shaver, etc.) The collaboration with Peter started when Mike and keyboardist D. R. Commander were still playing with another Austin jam band, Flounders Without Eyes. Mike had come to know Peter over the years, and Peter had sat in with Flounders during a live album recording at Old Settlers Music Festival in 2010 (that album is available online.) At some point, the idea was hatched to do a show with Flounders as Peter's backing band, and that came together in May of 2012 at the (now defunct) Jovita's restaurant. But Flounders was never a touring band, and since Mike wasn't a founding member of that group, he was relegated to playing rhythm guitar, which is not his primary instrument. Thus, he always had in the back of his mind an idea for a "dream team", consisting of him on bass, Commander on keys, Jamie Oldaker on drums (Jamie was still living in Austin at the time, although he has since moved back to Tulsa), and virtuostic Austin guitarist Carter Arrington. Oldaker was one of the founding members of Clapton's band and recorded on all of Clapton's solo albums in the 70s. He was also one of the founding members of The Tractors and has played with Seger and Ace Frehley and a bunch of other prominent classic rockers. Arrington is widely regarded as one of the best electric guitarists in Austin. He also has strong jam band roots but regularly plays in jazz combos and R&B bands and you-name-it. In October of 2012, Peter got invited to do a small festival (Purple Bee Halloween Hoedown) in Lockhart, south of Austin (perhaps best known outside of Texas as the town where "Waiting for Guffman" was filmed), and Mike decided to take that opportunity to roll out his dream team, "Rhythmic Statues", as Peter's backing band. In fact, in that show, the combo was billed as "Peter Rowan and Rhythmic Statues." Peter decided on the strength of that gig to start playing with that backing band, and the name was changed to Twang an' Groove. They did about 10 shows with the original lineup in late 2012/early 2013: Purple Bee Halloween Hoedown (10/27/12), Antone's (1/30/13) [both of those shows formed the basis of the "Twang an' Groove, Vol. 1" album], SxSW (3/14/13), Old Settlers Music Festival (4/20/13, two shows), Telluride Bluegrass Festival (6/21/13 at the festival and 6/20/13 at Fly Me to the Moon Saloon), and a three-show mini-tour of North Carolina in July of 2013, including the Crystal Coast Music Festival. After Crystal Coast, Peter decided to drop back to a "trio + special guests" format and has not performed with the lead guitar and keys since then, except at a pick-up gig prior to Old Settlers Music Festival this year. When Twang an' Groove first started, Peter had not played electric guitar since he was a teenager, but in the nearly two years since, he's become quite adept at it, and he now has the chops to carry the ensemble on his own. Arrington continues his work with Malford Milligan and as a go-to session and touring guitarist with a variety of other artists (facebook.com/carterarringtonmusic). Commander now plays keys and sings backing vocals for Austrian prog rock/electric blues band Ulrich Ellison & Tribe and is also a singer/songwriter in his own right (facebook.com/drcommander). Morgan and Oldaker are still performing shows with Peter, including this October at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.
12foothedgehog Peter is one of my favorite musicians. I can't believe how many bands he plays in--and in so many styles. I'm always interested in the details! 'o)
Superb, Land of the Navajo, what a great version.
this is top notch, Thanks Peter and the band
Thanks for listening. We all really enjoyed our time playing with Twang an' Groove.
now my native american blood is calling me homee
gotta love Peter-always ready to explore with his great catalogue of tunes.
Anyone know who was in the band?
rnf321 Bass: Mike Morgan; Lead Guitar: Carter Arrington; Keys: D R Commander; Drums: Jamie Oldaker. All Austin guys.
Twang an' Groove was basically Rhythmic Statues, an Austin jam band, rebranded as Peter's backing band. In fact, the first show we did as Peter's backing band (the Halloween Hoedown in Lockhart in October of 2012, the recording of which served as the basis for most of the "Twang an' Groove Vol. 1" live album), we were billed as "Peter Rowan and Rhythmic Statues." Jamie was living in Austin at the time, but he moved back to Tulsa soon after and lived there until his death a couple of years ago. After the July, 2013 Crystal Coast Music Festival tour in North Carolina, Peter re-formed Twang an' Groove as a power trio + special guests, so Mike and Jamie remained as the rhythm section, Peter took over lead guitar (he had gained/regained a lot of electric skills by that point and no longer needed a ringer), and they brought in the likes of Cindy Cashdollar on steel and Blaine Sprouse on fiddle as special guests. I toured with Ulrich Ellison (Austrian guitar shredder) for a couple of years in 2014/2015 while Mike was on the road with Twang an' Groove Mark II, then in 2016 we finished and released Rhythmic Statues' debut album ("One Big Day"-- th-cam.com/video/KvzioTyMqVo/w-d-xo.html ), which was all Mike's songs with the same backing band (except with Pat Manske, drummer for The Flatlanders and numerous other Texas country acts, on drums instead of Jamie.) Carter toured and recorded with The Crazy World of Arthur Brown a lot during that timeframe, and he's now living in the UK. I'm about to leave Austin after 22 years and head to North Carolina. Mike has done several other projects since then, including Big Mon (the songs of Bill Monroe, reggae-style.) This concludes "Twang an' Groove, Where Are They Now?" :)
@@DRCommander Ha! The fiddler you mention is here napping. 😴
Peter & Sam are both musical MONSTERS in the acoustic/ bluegrass realm....but I'm not quite sure what they were going for here....sounds like a bar band looking for a place to go...
Twang an' Groove was conceived as a jam band, so basically what you're watching is almost all played "off the cuff." Peter would get together with the band the day before a show and kind of pick through some tunes he had been working on with his other bands, but the band never really knew prior to going on stage what songs would actually be played. On several occasions, such as with "New to the Game", he wrote the song the day before rehearsal, and the band only got to play it once prior to performing it. Often he would pull out some of his old material on a whim, stuff that the band knew but had never played with him before (or hadn't played in years.) Sam Bush was just sitting in, so not only had he never played the new material before, but he had never played with this particular band before either. He was just picking it up as he went along. The whole idea was to create a uniquely new live experience with each show-- similar in concept to what The Grateful Dead did. The arrangements evolved into completely different forms from their originals (just compare the rockabilly version of "The Old School" above to the bluegrass version to see what I mean) and progressed from show to show. On the July tour (North Carolina/Crystal Coast Music Festival), Twang an' Groove added Yungchen Llamo, who sang Tibetan vocals on top of the rockabilly/bluegrass/reggae songs, and a banjo player sat in. It was completely different every time. Sometimes Peter would change the key without telling the band (usually because he was having vocal issues on a particular day, but in the above video, he also forgot to put on his capo for "The Cuckoo Bird", so the band had to very quickly re-learn it on the fly in F#m instead of Gm.) Sometimes he felt like playing a more pensive version of a song, and sometimes he would rock it out. Sometimes he would play a song as reggae, and other times he would play the same song as blues. It's also important to understand that, prior to Twang an' Groove, Peter had not played electric guitar since he was 14. The early days of Twang an' Groove were still about him trying to re-explore that space. After July of 2013, he re-formed Twang an' Groove as a power trio (the same lineup as above, minus lead guitar and keys), and it sounds a lot different now. Peter came into his own as an electric guitarist, and the current incarnation of Twang an' Groove is much more of a rockabilly ensemble driven by Jamie Oldaker's experience in that genre, as opposed to the jam band that was more the brainchild of Mike Morgan (the bass player.) It's certainly tighter now, but it's also less experimental than the early incarnation. Being experimental on stage is risky. You're always riding on a razor-thin edge between brilliance and catastrophe, but it's worth it for those moments when it feels like you're moving planets and everyone is sharing the same brain. What you're watching above is a unique combination of players-- Mike has many decades of jam band experience and runs a very well-known Americana recording studio in the Austin area, and that was combined with Peter's encyclopedic knowledge of folk music, Jamie Oldaker's ability to hold down probably the tightest groove in the world, Carter's background in jazz, and Darrell's background in R&B, Hornsby-style folk piano, and classic country. So yeah, I totally get how this probably does a fly-by on traditional bluegrass fans. It was conceived more for the Old & in the Way/New Riders of the Purple Sage crowd. Re-watch it with the understanding that the band is basically having to read Peter's mind, and it becomes more impressive.
12foothedgehog I just seem to love everything Peter does! This sounds really good to my ears, but, yes, alot more twangy than what Peter usually does. Just a question: You state, Peter hasn't played Electric guitar since he was 14. Not true. For many of his Crucial Reggae/Reggaebilly shows in the early 00s (2001, 2003, 2004, around in there), he played a Telecaster (or Telecaster style). He has an old brown strat that he might have used in Seatrain and I saw him once at the Suwannee for a benefit (Flood Jam) and he played that.
roselovr2004 I stand corrected. On a couple of occasions, he mentioned (both on stage and off) that he hadn't been in a rock band since he was a teenager, so I guess I assumed (incorrectly) that that meant he hadn't played electric since then.
nevermind, just got the details at the end of the set.
Twang an' Groove was originally a jam band called Rhythmic Statues out of Austin, formed by Mike Morgan. Mike runs a studio (The Zone) in Dripping Springs, a small community 30 minutes west of Austin, and his studio records a who's who of Texas country artists (The Flatlanders, Robert Earl Keen, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Billy Joe Shaver, etc.) The collaboration with Peter started when Mike and keyboardist D. R. Commander were still playing with another Austin jam band, Flounders Without Eyes. Mike had come to know Peter over the years, and Peter had sat in with Flounders during a live album recording at Old Settlers Music Festival in 2010 (that album is available online.) At some point, the idea was hatched to do a show with Flounders as Peter's backing band, and that came together in May of 2012 at the (now defunct) Jovita's restaurant. But Flounders was never a touring band, and since Mike wasn't a founding member of that group, he was relegated to playing rhythm guitar, which is not his primary instrument. Thus, he always had in the back of his mind an idea for a "dream team", consisting of him on bass, Commander on keys, Jamie Oldaker on drums (Jamie was still living in Austin at the time, although he has since moved back to Tulsa), and virtuostic Austin guitarist Carter Arrington. Oldaker was one of the founding members of Clapton's band and recorded on all of Clapton's solo albums in the 70s. He was also one of the founding members of The Tractors and has played with Seger and Ace Frehley and a bunch of other prominent classic rockers. Arrington is widely regarded as one of the best electric guitarists in Austin. He also has strong jam band roots but regularly plays in jazz combos and R&B bands and you-name-it. In October of 2012, Peter got invited to do a small festival (Purple Bee Halloween Hoedown) in Lockhart, south of Austin (perhaps best known outside of Texas as the town where "Waiting for Guffman" was filmed), and Mike decided to take that opportunity to roll out his dream team, "Rhythmic Statues", as Peter's backing band. In fact, in that show, the combo was billed as "Peter Rowan and Rhythmic Statues." Peter decided on the strength of that gig to start playing with that backing band, and the name was changed to Twang an' Groove. They did about 10 shows with the original lineup in late 2012/early 2013: Purple Bee Halloween Hoedown (10/27/12), Antone's (1/30/13) [both of those shows formed the basis of the "Twang an' Groove, Vol. 1" album], SxSW (3/14/13), Old Settlers Music Festival (4/20/13, two shows), Telluride Bluegrass Festival (6/21/13 at the festival and 6/20/13 at Fly Me to the Moon Saloon), and a three-show mini-tour of North Carolina in July of 2013, including the Crystal Coast Music Festival. After Crystal Coast, Peter decided to drop back to a "trio + special guests" format and has not performed with the lead guitar and keys since then, except at a pick-up gig prior to Old Settlers Music Festival this year. When Twang an' Groove first started, Peter had not played electric guitar since he was a teenager, but in the nearly two years since, he's become quite adept at it, and he now has the chops to carry the ensemble on his own. Arrington continues his work with Malford Milligan and as a go-to session and touring guitarist with a variety of other artists (facebook.com/carterarringtonmusic). Commander now plays keys and sings backing vocals for Austrian prog rock/electric blues band Ulrich Ellison & Tribe and is also a singer/songwriter in his own right (facebook.com/drcommander). Morgan and Oldaker are still performing shows with Peter, including this October at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.
12foothedgehog thanks for the history!
*****
My pleasure!
12foothedgehog Peter is one of my favorite musicians. I can't believe how many bands he plays in--and in so many styles. I'm always interested in the details! 'o)
💜Jamie leaves a huge vacant place at the table.