If you enjoy your old time music then you should definitely check out the new self-titled release from The Onlies, a young string band featuring Sami Braman, Riley Calcagno, Vivian Leva, and Leo Shannon.
The album, a generous offering of 16 tracks, is their first release since 2015 and also their first as a quartet since Vivian Leva joined the band on guitar and vocals. The album was produced by Caleb Klauder (Foghorn Stringband, Caleb Klauder Country Band), and features Nokosee Fields (Western Centuries, Steam Machine) on bass. They say it’s a committed engagement with the histories and futures of old time fiddle music. While you can’t disagree with that, it’s so much more – it’s a damn fine listen from start to finish.
There’s no shortage of variety throughout this release with songs sourced through family and less familiar sources as well as tunes you inevitably pick up while touring such as Pretty Polly Ann, learned from the Foghorn Stringband at the fiddler’s convention in Boone, North Carolina.
Among the familiar are some tunes from less obvious sources such as autoharpist Kilby Snow and Queen Belle Randolph, the latter wrote Soldier Boy about her son who served in Vietnam…despite its mournful air it ends on a killer fiddle tune that’s impossible to sit still to.
Among the more familiar is Let Us Be Sweethearts Again, a song generally credited to the Stanley Brothers as it is here. It was also called Lovers Quarrel…although the brothers registered the song in 1961 as their own, it’s virtually identical to Let’s Be Lovers Again by The Carter Family released in the 1930s. When the Stanley Brothers signed to Columbia, Bill Monroe alleged that they, along with the likes of Flatt & Scruggs “stole” his music. All of this gives you an idea of how competitive the scene was back then.
Inspired by less commercial sources is A Few More Years Shall Roll, where they take inspiration from the legendary Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard and Addie Graham.
Closer to home, they celebrate their own roots with The Lonesome Pine Special on which they are joined by Caleb Klauder on mandolin. The song and arrangement were learned from Viv’s parents, Carol Elizabeth Jones and James Leva who have a few albums under their belt as Jones & Leva, who in turn learned the song from The Carter Family. Likewise, The House Carpenter was picked up from Viv’s parents who in turn learned it from Doug Wallin of the Wallin Family from Madison County, NC.
As well as having good ears for a tune, they can also pen them, and Snowtown is a fine example, a delightful driving fiddle tune from Sami that she wrote while ‘procrastinating in a Whitman College Hall of Music practice room.’
They go out on a cracking finale with Billy in the Low Ground, a popular square dance tune of the Pacific Northwest which they learned from Josh Rabie’s recording with Pharis and Jason Romero.
There’s no shortage of variety across this new release, let’s hope they don’t leave it so long until the next album.
Pick up a copy via Bandcamp here: https://theonlies.bandcamp.com/album/the-onlies