To finish new songs, the South Austin Jug Band spent a week holed up at the Chelsea Hotel

New members, new focus for bluegrass favorites

By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, March 31, 2008

The spring of 2007 found the South Austin Jug Band, once the most promising roots band in town, in a big, Austin-size rut. Bassist Will Dupuy had quit the group, soon followed out the door by guitarist Willie Pipkin, leaving singer-songwriter James Hyland as the lone original member. The group's remaining three players were physically and mentally frayed from too much touring and diminishing returns. Sometimes it just didn't feel like it was worth it.

Hyland had started writing some new songs, but he couldn't finish any. A dramatic change of scenery was called for, so Hyland took band mates Brian Beken and Dennis Ludiker to a haunted place to see if the SAJB could be reborn. They checked into Manhattan's Chelsea Hotel, where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death and Sid stabbed Nancy.

The Chelsea is also where Jack Kerouac wrote "On the Road" and where Bob Dylan penned "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," among other songs.

"There were a lot of ghosts," Hyland says, "and we just soaked it all in." The three rented two adjoining rooms and went to work on finishing "Strange Invitation," an album that Hyland envisioned to be quite different from the band's first two. They ended up recording nearly a dozen demos on their Mac Powerbook, without registering a single noise complaint during their week at the Chelsea. The final album was recorded at Pedernales Studios in Briarcliff in July.

"We had a renewed sense of purpose," Hyland says of the magical week in New York City. "Just walking around recharged us."

Rather than dwelling on losing Dupuy — who had recently married and settled down — and Pipkin, Hyland says he saw the pared-down lineup "as an opportunity to take the music more serious."

The Jug Band had been a democracy, Hyland says, with each member bringing songs to the group. There were folk songs, silly songs and western swing numbers mixed in with Hyland's more brooding, Dylan-influenced material and the requisite bluegrass instrumentals. The blend worked great live, attesting to the range of the musicians, but the albums were left with a sampler feel.

"Strange Invitation" strives to sustain its dark, yet resilient mood from beginning to end, even at the cost of keeping the vocals low in the mix. Besides a cover of Beck's "Jack-Ass," the songs are all original, with lyricist Hyland sharing writing credits on several songs with Ludiker and Beken. The gangly pair, who grew up playing fiddle competitions, met at the national championship in Weiser, Idaho, 12 years ago, when Ludiker was 12 and Beken was 10. The kids, who trade off on fiddle, mandolin and guitar, will blow you away on their repertoire of breakdowns, reels and gypsy jazz.

Hyland, on the other hand, didn't pick up a guitar until he started college at the University of Texas in 1994. "Their strengths are my weaknesses and vice versa," Hyland says of his finger-flying sidekicks. "But there's a comfort level between the three of us because there's so much trust. We've been through it."

The setup at the Chelsea, meanwhile, made collaborating unforced and natural.

"I slept in the room with the equipment," Ludiker says, "so if I had an idea in the middle of the night, I could get up and record it." That's where the string part that "Fall So Fast" is built around was born. Beken, meanwhile, wrote the bridge to the radio-ready "Come to Me," completely changing the feel of the tune.

On a recent Friday night, SAJB was back at Momo's, where it all started for them nine years ago. Back then, they'd pack the upstairs club every Sunday night, bringing such freshness to bluegrass they seemed a can't-miss national prospect. More than a couple labels wanted to sign the group, under the condition that they change the unmarketable name, but the SAJB didn't really need a label's help. They were doing fine on their own, as the ranks of Jugheads expanded at an organic rate.

But then popular fiddler Warren Hood left to go to Boston's Berklee College of Music and was replaced by Ludiker, a shy 18-year-old from Washington state. Matt Slusher, whose heavy metal mandolin style gave the drumless (and Jugless) band its drive, was the next to leave two years later, replaced by Beken, another shy 18-year-old.

Each time SAJB lost a key member, the invisible jug seemed to get heavier on the road uphill. But on that recent Friday night at Momo's, the South Austin Jug Band in no way resembled a group trying to get back what they once had. Though not yet official SAJB members, tasteful, unobtrusive drummer Rob Kidd and adventurous standup bassist Matt Mefford give a creative new kick to the sound.

This band could always rip, but the core of such new songs as "Dive Bar," inspired by McSorley's in Greenwich Village, and the anti-war (on drugs) protest number "Avenue of the Americas," resonate deeper than the wicked fretwork. The Momo's crowd grew restless in spots whenever Hyland pulled out a sullen new number, but the "S.I." material gets better the more you listen to it.

Hyland started writing "Wheatfield with Crows," based on one of Van Gogh's most emotionally bleak paintings, after the band was given a private, in-depth tour of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. But he didn't finish the song about unconditional loyalty until he was hunkered down with his musical brothers in a haunted hotel in NYC.

"After the tour (of the Van Gogh Museum), I bought a poster of 'Wheatfield with Crows,' Hyland says. "And when I got back to the hotel, I saw that Dennis and Brian bought the exact same poster. Out of hundreds, we all, independently, bought the same one. I thought, 'Man, that's spooky.' "

Although they come from completely different musical backgrounds, the latecomer and the prodigies arrive at the same destination on "Strange Invitation," an album of texture and taste. The decidedly unrootsy LP cover photo of a masked man, a tank and a conductor is the perfect setup for songs that show that the trio is not stuck in the past, or the present, but has moved on. Come see them for the first time again.