I got an earful of what a great fiddler Brittany Haas has become at the 2013 Celtic Colours festival in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. She played several sets of innovative fusion music with her sister, cellist Natalie Haas, fiddler Darrol Anger and players from Cape Breton, Sweden and elsewhere. Now she has teamed up with a couple of different but like-minded players, bassist Paul Kowert and guitarist Jordan Tice in the eponymous Haas Kowert Tice. These three have all kinds of experience erasing any boundaries that remain in acoustic American music, with the likes of Tony Trischka, Anger, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyers and other greats. On their own they’re making beautiful music that blends Appalachian, Celtic, classical, jazz, pop … you name it.
My favorites are Tice’s “Grandpa’s Cheesebarn” which melds all kinds of folk influences and features Kowert’s bowed and plucked bass prominently; and the jaunty last track “Tell Me Whatcha Gonna Do Now” which puts Haas’ syncopated fiddle line atop an arrangement that blends Celtic and Appalachian. The opener “Leadfoot,” which is pretty straight American stringband in style, is also pretty great. My only critique of the album is that Tice’s guitar is sometimes played pretty delicately and could have been recorded a bit higher in the mix.
Here’s a video of the trio playing “Leadfoot,” written by Kowert in honor of his grandmother, who was known as quite a fast driver.
Listening to You Got This I get the sense that these three are just scratching the surface of what they might do together. I hope they continue to make music together. You can download it or order a physical copy on their Bandcamp site.
(Haas Kowert Tice, 2014)
