Folk Concert: Lac La Belle (Detroit). Crow Tongue (Glen Rock, PA)

$5 suggested donation

Crow Tongue

Crow Tongue began after tiMOTHy recorded the particularly apocalyptic album, "Hoofbeat, Caw, and Thunder" which found him singing about huge gatherings of crows he took for harbingers of the End Times. Having previously made music with the acid-experimental-folk band Stone Breath, tiMOTHy was seeking something new. Not a break from what he did before, but something that encompassed more of his influences (which range from Middle Eastern music to reggae to Doom), and represented a sound he has been hearing in his head for many years. The key to this, he knew, was rhythms. At first he experimented with various drum machines and sampled beats, but the final vision became clear with the addition of Æ Hoskin on drums (both kit and hand-drums). Crow Tongue's live sound has been called everything from "a more tribal Neurosis" to "Appalachian doom." The band itself has no name for it - they worship the groove and the low end centered around Hoskin's rhythms and tiMOTHy's own homemade invention, the guimbri-banjo (a bass-like banjo made to be a more stage-friendly version of the Moroccan guimbri bass lute, played clawhammer style).

Lac La Belle

Lac LA Belle is an acoustic trio that echoes Country, Western Swing and Old Timey music, but has carved their own space without succumbing to nostalgia or camp. It seems nearly impossible that singer Jennie Knaggs is Michigan-bred, yet has this music in her back pocket like she learned it on the front porch of an Appalachian cottage. On their new full-length release each member brings years of musical experience to bear. The original songs sit comfortably side by side with classics of the genre, which are delivered in an inimitable style.