Hot Day at the Zoo
by Dermot Whittaker
Portions of this review appeared as "Hot Day At The Zoo," Middlesex Beat, July 2006. All rights reserved.
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HDATZ -- (l to r) Cleaves, Rosen, Cumming, Dion |
"Welcome to The Grog, y'all," says mandolin player David Cleaves, as he greets Thursday night's audience at the Newburyport restaurant and bar. From the first song, it is apparent that the evening's entertainment -- a four-man locomotive with vocals called Hot Day At The Zoo -- will be fueled by the pint. Says the group's principal singer and songwriter Michael Dion, "I think people like the energy. I've seen so many bands that just seem so lethargic, just everyday, run-of-the-mill. Our stuff's just balls-to-the-wall."
"Balls-to-the-wall" is a phrase one associates with Harper's Ferry or the Chit Chat Club, not Club Passim or the Lowell Folk Festival. Hot Day at the Zoo (HDATZ or the Zoo for short) has played them all. The music, says Joey Newman, a manager and bartender at The Grog "would appeal to anybody from an old-school bluegrass lover to a 20-year-old kid in a bar," because of "the way they funk it all out."
Hot Day At The Zoo consists of Cleaves on mandolin, Dion on guitar and harmonica, Jon Cumming on banjo (formerly on dobro), and Jed Rosen on upright bass. Their instruments suggest old-time string-band music; their rhythms and tempos are those of bluegrass as often as not; and their songwriting and singing have a let-loose, country or jug band quality. The band members' adopted mountain accents, inseparable from the style of music they play, are cut with the clipped, derisive speech of Lowell, Chelmsford, and Amherst. Fans often latch onto the country and bluegrass elements, as well as the band's driving energy that can be a revelation to pubsters who've never been up all night with a bunch of pickers. But the band members are circumspect about their roots.
"The instruments created the music. The instruments found us, " says Cleaves. His mandolin, which he took up five years ago, was in fact a gift. Adds Cummings, "We're a bluegrass medium, so it's pretty easy for people to straight up say, 'Oh, I love bluegrass.' They see it, but then when they hear it ... "
When they hear it ... well, on their first appearance at The Grog, HDATZ wowed a 10 p.m. open-mike audience, first from the men's room where they were loudly rehearsing and then from the performance area where they were called back for one song after another. Fans, staff, and the band members still recall that night, which ended in an off-premises hoot at four in the morning.
Together since 2003, Hot Day at the Zoo is a leading example of a younger band that found its way to traditional music through rock and roll. The usual gateway is an album. For Cumming it was Lynard Skynard's down-home effort Nuthin' Fancy. For Dion and Cleaves, it was Jerry Garcia's old-time and bluegrass collaboration Old And In The Way. Rosen's training was in jazz and classical. After listening to the Zoo live, you quickly sense that the conventions and traditions of bluegrass and its cousin old-time music matter less to the band members than the directness and adaptability of the string-band format. HDATZ creates a musical space with plenty of room for personal songwriting, musical virtuosity, hollerin' and carryin' on. To say they play by ear isn't selling them short -- in every song, they aim to spark a fire and keep it roaring by grabbing chance innovations like kindling, singing loud and clear, and playing their damnedest.
Original songs are front and center: songs about burning pallets, partying, and telling tales in the empty brick mill; songs about a week of possible paternity, full of panicky concern, proffered tenderness, and threatened beatings to the working stiff who's supplanted the singer as daddy; songs of emotionally distant mothers turned inaccessible through death; songs of good friends recalled dimly through a fog of brutal construction work, fast fighting, and booze.
Cleaves says the band played 126 shows last year and another 30 to 40 house parties. All that playing has fostered at least one old-time music tradition: when the Zoo covers a song, they make it their own. This is true for standards like their swinging versions of "Sitting On Top of the World" and "Cripple Creek"; old social comment songs like John Prine's "Paradise" or Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons"; classics like the Grateful Dead's "West Texas Bound" and Bob Dylan's "Mama You Been On My Mind"; or rock and roll numbers like "That's All Right" (which they combine with the "Big Railroad Blues") and Johnny Cash's "Big River." The band has fun with the odd Nirvana or Beatles tune. Where the Beatles approach and retreat from a key change in the bridge of "I Saw Her Standing There," HDATZ follows through and ends the measure singing in a key a half step higher -- a simple choice that makes the song fresh and, frankly, country.
Dion, who writes and sings most of the group's originals, is not aware of anyone else who sets the attitude his native Lowell to this kind of music. Not that his songs necessarily start as urban portraits. "Honestly, they're mostly written about girls and my experiences with them," he says, "and then I tie it into the setting that I either met them in or was with them in." Dion's voice has less hoot and holler than in typical bluegrass or country singing; his vocals are gutsier, bluesier, and more wailing. His hand is a blur on rhythm guitar, and his harmonica playing complements the melody on a few songs. Some of his songs -- like "Mama," about being at loose ends and looking for home -- are reminiscent of the Grateful Dead. Other songs are wails of pain for the sheer exhilarating hell of it. Imagine Tom Waits singing "She had a smile as cool as Tuesday," and you'll understand where his blues song "Devil Woman" is going (or maybe not -- the song's bass-driven creep-and-crawl switches to a double-time rave-up at the end). "Cuando Me Vaya," a Spanish language original with a convincing Latin feel, shows a bit of Dion's versatility as a songwriter. He spent a year teaching English in Ecuador, where he first started singing with his host family's band.
Cumming, of Chelmsford, has a voice less resounding than Dion's, but cleaner, almost winsome, and carrying enough of his Massachusetts accent to color his crowd-pleasing songs "Old Mill" and "Long Way Home." These songs are more traditional in form and subject matter than Dion's. Cumming's dobro playing gave the band a very classic country sound for three years until a recent personnel shake up left the banjo spot open. "When we were trying out other guys, I was going out of my mind," he says. "They were great musicians. They just did not know what the band needed. They were bringing in too much tradition." Cumming's banjo playing puts him in the thick of things musically. He plays in a bluegrass style or strums chords on the more jug-band type tunes. As with the rest of the players, Cumming's soloing seems to be more about following sound where it leads than displaying a lightning technique in strict time.
Cleaves, now of Lowell but originally from California, often serves as spokesman on stage and occasionally adds a deep, resonant note to the choral responses. "I'm not much of a singer," he says, "Haven't found my voice yet." His voice may well be the mandolin, on which he has developed a distinctive style. His thoughtful picking is sometimes a bit behind the beat, perhaps intentionally, but his tremolo sails along with the music, particularly on a spacious number like "I Know You Rider." Soloing confidently at any tempo, Cleaves typifies HDATZ's approach. By listening intently to what's going on and responding with his instrument, he adds intensity to the music at all times.
A crucial element in the mix is bassist Rosen, originally from Amherst. A graduate of Keene State College, Rosen majored in music, studying with Don Baldini who he says showed him how to approach the upright bass "not just as a solo instrument but as a foundation for an ensemble, and playing in jazz bands." Behind the driving rhythm of the group's cover of "That's All Right, Mama" and the "Spoonful" riff that starts "Devil Woman" is Rosen's dead-on bass playing. He doesn't just keep time, he commands it, setting the pace for any given song. He adds a rhythmic percussive flutter to some songs, beats on the body for the jug band tunes, quotes "Shortenin' Bread" or "Owner of a Lonely Heart" as the situation warrants, adds harmony and variety to the longer numbers. His soloing shows some of his music-school chops, mostly thrown in for fun or as part of a space jam the band occasionally finds itself in. Animated and playful where the others are soulful and earnest, Rosen adds high harmonies, low harmonies, and a bit of country corn to the proceedings. "He brings out that hillbilly side in us," says Dion.
Hot Day At The Zoo's first CD of original material, Cool As Tuesday, is available through the band's website and at their shows. The band has seven New England appearances (including four in Massachusetts) booked for July and August 2006. Calendar of upcoming gigs, MP3s, lyrics, and other vital information is available at the band's website, http://www.hotdayatthezoo.com.
Portions of this review appeared as "Hot Day At The Zoo," Middlesex Beat, July 2006. All rights reserved.