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SXSW preview: Carolina Chocolate Drops
“In lots of ways, I don’t have any idea what to make of that,” fiddler Justin Robinson said immediately following the band’s Wednesday afternoon gig at the Paste magazine party. “One, we don’t play bluegrass. It’s amazing. I’m sort of flabbergasted.”
(Official showcase: 9 p.m. Friday at the Victorian Room at the Driskill, 604 Brazos St.)
American-Statesman: What’s your impression of SXSW so far?
Justin Robinson: Well, we’ve been here about a total of two hours (laughs). So, not much to go on, other than there’s a (ton) of people here. We just paid for parking. It was about 4,000 degrees onstage, but it turned out pretty good.
Will you be checking out anyone else this week?
You know, we were just trying to figure that out. It’s pretty overwhelming right now. There are like 300 bands here - probably more like 3,000. I don’t think we’re doing anything tonight, maybe chilling in the hotel.
You just released a songbook. Why take time for sheet music in this download age?
We just one day said, “You know, we should have a songbook.” Lots of people have been asking us where they can find our music and how we play it. We wanted to have something to sell, for one, and also to give people who aren’t ear learners access into the music that they wanted.
‘Cornbread and Butterbeans’ is hard to escape. What drew you to that song?
Probably the same thing that draws you to it - it just sounded good (laughs). It’s a cool pop song from the 1940s.
Why do you think there’s been such a resurgence in string band music with younger musicians?
Well, I think “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” had a lot to do with it. That movie exposed this music to a lot of people who otherwise might not have heard it. The other portion of that is just changing tastes. In general, there’s more of a market for acoustic music, whether it’s contemporary folk or traditional string band stuff.
There seems to be a unique sense of fellowship within the acoustic music community. Would you agree?
Yeah, there’s an aspect of that that plays into the fact that essentially anybody can do it. The only restriction is that you have to be able to play. It’s sort of egalitarian in that way - anybody can join in and be a part of that fellowship.
You’ve talked a lot about (fiddler) Joe Thompson’s impact on the band.
We started playing with him and sitting in his living room and playing his tunes, the same tunes that he’d been playing for 60-odd years, maybe more. Playing with him definitely got our sound solidified as a band. Of course, then you can do anything you want with that, play all kinds of stuff and still sound like us.
Many folks don’t seem to know that the banjo’s origins go back to Africa.
Oh, absolutely. The biggest thing to remedy that would be for a band like us, a band that plays the banjo, to go mainstream. That’s how it’d get into the consciousness. Lots of academic people have known that fact for a long time, but academics has nothing to do with popular perception.
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By Peter
March 21, 2010 5:45 PM | Link to this
I heard the CCD band interviewed on NPR recently. I regret I did not have time to catch them while they were in town. All I can say is they sound awesome !!!