It is a marvel how bands with virtually no radio play can come to town and fill a venue with fans who know every word to their songs. Obviously I underestimate the internet and to a lesser extent non-commercial FM stations. Whatever the source of their connection, the Carolina Chocolate Drops; Dom Flemons, Justin Robinson, and Rhiannon Giddens, fit that description.
The last time through Boston they played to a sold out but politely attentive crowd at a seated venue. This time they opted to bring their modern interpretation of black minstrel music to the rockier Paradise Club. With two banjos, acoustic guitar and fiddle, bones, and a beat box and jug for bass on stage, this isn’t something a rock club like the Paradise is used to seeing. But the band wants to play more clubs instead of seated venues, not willing to relegate their sound to a nostalgic PBS Ken Burns treatment, and the venerable rock oriented Paradise was a good test of that direction.
In an earlier interview, Don Flemons, he being the bow tied, suspendered and pork-pie hatted Chocolate Drop, pointed out that the banjo was to the 19th century what the electric guitar is today, an instrument universally used in every genre, an underrated instrument he says, for modern players. This was a point they drove home throughout the set with all their instruments, Dom played the first bottleneck banjo I had ever seen, later he gave a kind of hip-hop treatment to the hand-held bones. The jug was mainly handled by Justin Robinson, the effect much like the thump provided by the tuba in a New Orleans brass band.
Filled to near capacity, the Paradise crowd was a curious mix of folks in a seemingly more curious venue for their music. One woman in the audience had told Giddens before the show that the Paradise was “outside of (her) comfort zone”, however Giddens then noted that it was “a rather nice mix”.
The set began with the band sort of gauging the venue and their audience with two instrumentals, “Was You Ever In Quebec” and “Cindy Gal”. They then went boldly for an early sing-a-long request with “Don’t Get Trouble In Your Mind”. They were rewarded by the generational and racially mixed crowd, elders in the balcony, youthful fans with their PBR’s right in front. Neither needed additional prompts or exhortations, enthusiastically joining in on the chorus right in time. Dancers soon filled the outer edges of the crowd as the evening gained momentum. The band was as animated as the audience. At one point Giddens danced her way from side to side along the stage, later Flemons jigged his way through a tune, his hands rapidly clicking the bones in the best minstrel tradition. In a nod to more modern stage tricks, he even tried a playful Hendrix guitar picking with his teeth.
Their set included boisterous covers of the Johnny Cash/June Carter hit “ Jackson” and the Blu Cantrell R&B hit, “Hit ‘Em Up Style”. The last was wonderfully interpreted by Giddens, whose wonderful voice is as distinctive as was Maria Muldaurs in the 60’s Jim Kweskin Jug Band. Taj Mahal, who has kept the tradition of early black music alive for many decades, has called them “the next generation” and thanked them for coming along. After an almost 2 hour set, the Paradise audience concurred.
The Chocolate Drops tour continues to Europe through November supporting their newest album, Genuine Negro Jig, They return for a swing through the Midwest and South in December.
