Published on Oct 16, 2001
It’s like the ad campaign says: fun is good.
Dan Berggren and Dan Duggan have been making music together for
twenty years, a pair of Adirondack folkies and bards who play both
traditional mountain music and their own compositions. They’ve
donated their time to multiple historical and art charities in
upstate New York, they’ve played coffeehouses and concert halls,
and it seems like they’re having fun doing it. On their latest
recording,
Rooted In The Mountains, Berggren and Duggan aren’t trying
to be commercial. There are no musical tricks or compromises; this
is a couple of guys with a bunch of stringed instruments recording
music in their kitchen with family and friends. And damn, it’s fun.
Fun, as we said earlier, is good.
There are a lot of pleasant surprises on
Rooted. The production and recording quality is excellent,
unusual in a small-market folk/traditional recording. The
musicianship is peerless; Duggan plays hammered dulcimer like rain
on the roof in fall, notes cascading almost too fast for the ears
to follow. (I admit it, I’m a sucker for hammered dulcimer, and
Duggan delivers.) Duggan also plays an excellent banjo, bringing
out the instrument’s inherent emotional feel without sounding too
much like a cliché.
Berggren has an expressive, conversational voice, rich and
textured, and unlike many artists you can understand what the hell
he’s saying. This is important on traditional songs like “Bert
LaFountain’s Packard”, songs that truly tell a story. (This one
happens to be about rumrunning across the Canadian border during
Prohibition.)
Rooted In The Mountains is about half original compositions
and half traditional ballads that Berggren and Duggan have rescued
or that they learned from older musicians. “Ballad Of Big Moose
Lake”, for example, Berggren learned from his mother, who learned
it in turn from an older cousin when she was ten; it documents a
famous murder and trial from 1906. Berggren takes his own turn at
this type of story song, recording “Garrow”, about a murderer who
escaped from jail in 1978. “Mister Rogers” is a tribute to
Berggren’s daughter’s favorite TV star, written in 1984. The truly
wonderful “Quiet Night In August” is a mysterious story about one
night in Berggren’s life where he may or may not have had a rather
intense supernatural and spiritual experience, with flute provided
by that same daughter, now much older. “According To The Plan” is a
bittersweet and amused reflection on life, written interestingly
enough two years before Dan Fogleberg’s “Part Of The Plan”. (When
someone gets smart and gives me a radio station to play with, I’ll
be sure to include this particular double shot.)
The best thing on the CD by far, however, is the wickedly funny
“When Spring Comes”, a paean to the wet and mucky moments between
February and May when Old Man Winter and Mistress Spring are
mudwrestling for control of your back yard. There’s a thousand
miles between Indiana and upstate New York, but it astonishes how
many of the jokes translate. “You’re out on the lawn, no coat at
all // When spring comes, spring comes // Rakin’ up stuff that you
missed last fall // When the spring, it does come in…” I
also appreciated the line about running naked through the woods on
the Equinox, but I’m incorrigible.
The only complaint I have is “PieDotCom”, which I thought
strained pretty hard for the rather small jokes inherent in it, but
it’s a minor quibble.
Fun is good.
Rooted In The Mountains is good. Dan Berggren and Dan Duggan
are good. ‘Nough said. Hie thyself online and buy this baby.