Organic farmers Johanna Davis and Adam Nordell spend their off season playing folk shows and contra dances across the country as the Sassafras Stomp. This winter the couple started their tour in late November and traveled across the country to Montana where Nordell grew up. The duo will play shows across the the state during the month of January. Here they are pictured on a snowy road in Missoula, Montana, January 4, 2015.
Maine and Oregon-based folk bands Sassafras Stomp and the Quarks take the stage at the Ellen Theater on Sunday, January 31st in a concert featuring high-energy, traditional fiddle music. Both bands are known for their performances as nationally touring contradance bands, blending styles from various fiddle music traditions with a propulsive rhythmic sensibility that sets toes tapping where ever they go. Sponsored by the Bozeman Folklore Society, the concert starts at 7:00 pm. Advanced tickets are available for $15 at www.theellentheatre.com, or $17 at the door.
Sassafras Stomp is comprised of fiddler Johanna Davis and guitarist / foot percussionist Adam Nordell, who split their time between an organic vegetable farm in Unity, Maine, and an off-season, itinerant life as traveling musicians. The duo creates a rich, dynamic sound blending the rustic, cross-tuned sound of Appalachian old time with the driving rhythms of French Canadian music. The band has Montana roots in Nordell’s home town of Helena, but currently resides in the thriving, fiddle music hub of mid-coast Maine. A yearly road-trip from Maine to Montana has evolved into a more serious winter touring schedule that has introduced Sassafras Stomp’s music to dancers and audiences from Florida to Washington State, Montreal to San Diego.
The Quarks are a super-group of West Coast contradance musicians featuring Betsy Branch on fiddle and guitar, Bill Tomczak on clarinet, saxophone and percussion, and Terry Wergeland on piano and accordion. The trio has been performing together since 2012, and brings together an aesthetic drawn from their experience playing for bands such as the Latter Day Lizards, Wild Asparagus, and the Portland Megaband, which have made a significant impact on the modern sound of contradance music. The Quarks have an improvisational, multi-instrumental approach to fiddle music.
Earlier that weekend, the two bands are performing for Bozeman Folklore Society’s Wintergreen Contradance Weekend, which is a yearly celebration of the thriving traditional dance scene in the Gallatin Valley. Contradance is a social dance accompanied by live music, in which a “caller” teaches a series of simple moves (do-si-do, swing your partner, etc) and assembles them into looping patterns. The result is a laughter-inducing, folk-dance kaleidoscope with deep roots in rural American culture. Contradance music is undergoing a surge in creative ferment around the country, with bands fusing the several-hundred year old genre with modern approaches to rhythm and harmony and experimenting with unconventional instrumentation.
For more information on the concert at the Ellen or the Folklore Society’s monthly contradances visit bozemanfolklore.org.
