April Verch
The Newpart
(Slab Town)
The title track of April Verch’s new album refers to the family room her parents added in the 1970s, where she learned and honed her fiddle, step dance, and vocal skills. It and “Belle Election” are rooted in the Ontario countryside where she grew up, but this album’s true “new part” is material that is more Tin Pan Alley, Appalachian, and Austin than Ottawa Valley.
Verch’s bandmates Hayes Griffin (guitar) and Cody Walters (banjo/acoustic bass) mine early- and mid-20th century American music for an album that places Griffin’s flat-picking on equal par with Verch’s fiddling, which she keeps deliberately sparse and raw to capture bygone days. Old-time songs and deemphasized fiddling invite comparisons to Alison Krauss, but this collection is more Bob Wills than Krauss. It’s swingier and its tunes are as open as the prairies, though Verch’s spare tunes steer clear of the slickness of either Krauss or Wills.
She renders a 1925 song, “If You Hadn’t Gone Away” in waltz time to give it a brighter wrapper, and reworks “Montana Call,” popularized by Texan jazz pianist Seger Ellis, to make it sound like Cole Porter gone cowboy. She even swings a gospel song, “Dry Bones,” and slows and quiets “Cruel Willie” so that Walters’ banjo sounds straight out of Stephen Foster.
The album is so thoroughly retro that homegrown material, a Swedish polksa, and step dance interludes seem more out of place more than change of pace. The album is fun, though one hopes her live shows also feature back-catalogue material. The revival of old songs and tunes is laudable, but I doubt I’m alone among longtime April Verch fans in longing for more from her traditions than a trip through the early recording industry. April Verch will appear at the Parlor Room on April 23.•
