Performers: Lorette Velvette (vocals, guitar),
Charlie Burnham (violin),
Dave Soldier (banjo, violin),
Dog (guitar, bass),
Samm Bennett (bass drum & percussion, vocals),
Jonathan Kane (snare drum)
Alex Greene (keyboards)
with
Doug Easley, bass
with BJ Cole, pedal steel guitar
Ron Franklin, fife
They Are There (Charles Ives)
Beulah Land (Burnham)
My Body Lies on the Mountain (Soldier)
Wandering on This Earth (Velvette)
If I Had My Way (Burnham)
Found You in My House (Soldier)
Biloxi (Soldier)
Little Drag Racer (Soldier)
The Yankee Rag (Greene)
Soon As the Rain Lets Up (Bennett)
Bringabye (Bennett)
Grateful Wanderer (Bennett)
Five Points Crawl
2000 Mulatta Records
Performers: Lorette Velvette (vocals, guitar)
Charlie Burnham (violin)
Dave Soldier (banjo, violin)
Dog (guitar, bass)
Maureen "Mo" Tucker (bass drum, vocals)
Jonathan Kane (snare drum) Tunes: Crazy Hannah (Mo Tucker)
Starkweather (James Tucker (Mo's Brother), lyrics, Dave Soldier music)
Truckstop Girls (Soldier)
I Gotta Man (Charlie Burnham)
Drivin' to Spring (Soldier)
Justice Down South (Soldier)
Seconds Past Midnight (Velvette & Soldier)
Sissy Wa Wa (Velvette, Soldier, Rory Young)
Junior's Groove (Vevette)
Forever Motel (lyrics James Tucker, music Soldier)
The Kropotkins 1995
Performers: Lorette Velvette (vocals, guitar), Mark Feldman (violin), Dave Soldier (banjo, violin), Dog (guitar, bass), Samm Bennett (bass drum, vocals), Jonathan Kane (snare drum)
Koch Records, out of print, some copies still available from Mulatta Records: will be re-released
Cold Wet Steel (Soldier)
Shake 'Em on Down Fred (McDowell)
Everdream (Soldier/Rory Young)
On This Earth (Soldier)
Pachman Farm (Bukka White)
Something Crawling Round My Bed (Velevette)
Good Cheap Transportation (Bennett)
Coal Black Wind (Soldier)
Some of the Dust (Bennett)
The Nasadiya (Soldier)
Crow Jane (Soldier, based on anonymous song)
Photos (go ahead and reproduce)
from left: Lorette Velvette, Jonathan Kane, Dave Soldier, Dog (Mark Deffenbaugh), Charlie Burnham, photo by Ron Gott in NYC (2000)
Kropotkins in November 16, 2009 at Poisson Rouge, NYC
Alex Greene, Jonathan Kane, Ron Franklin, Dog, Lorette Velvette, Charlie Burnham, Dave Soldier, photos by Sarah Greene
Alex, Jonathan, Ron Franklin, Dog, Lorette
Ron, Dog, Lorette, Charlie hidden, Dave
Ron, Dog, Lorette, Charlie hidden, Dave
Kropotkins with Othar Turner and his family in Como, Mississippi in 2000 Dave, Maureen, Othar, Dog
Othar Turner and Maureen Tucker - two giants of American rhythm
Lorette, Dog, Dave, Mark Feldman, Samm, Jonathan, 1994 photo by Aldo Mauro
Mark Feldman, Jonathan, Samm, Lorette, Rog, Dave, 1994
History
"Bios"
the Kropotkins consist of
Lorette Velvette (Hellcats, Tav Falco, recorded w. Sonic Youth, Jessie Mae Hemphill) vocals, guitar Charlie Burnham (Cassandra Wilson, James Blood Ulmer, Henry Threadgill), violin Dave Soldier (Thai Elephant Orchestra, Soldier String Quartet, John Cale, Bo Diddley), banjo & violin Dog (Mark Deffenbaugh) (John Cale, Souxie & the Banshees), guitar Alex Greene (Iggy Pop, Jim Dickinson, Reigning Sound), keyboards Jonathan Kane (February, Rhys Chatham, LaMonte Young, Swans), snare drum Ron Franklin, jack of all trades
Nearly eveyrone writes some of the music. On the new CD, there is one "cover", by Charles Ives
on Paradise Square, we are joined by Doug Easley, (Sonic Youth, Jeff Buckley, Cat Power, White Stripes), bass Samm Bennett, (John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, SKIST), percussion BJ Cole, (John Cale, Elton John, Luke Vibert), pedal steel
The Kropotkins were founded by Jonathan Kane and Dave Soldier in 1992 after they heard Mississippi fife and drum music and flipped out on it. We asked was what would rock n' roll sound like if it went down those rural routes? Othar Turner and Sid Hemphill showed you could mix the bass and snare drum with the banjo, fiddle, and guitar and vocals. Everything can be played without electonics at a barbeque.
In detail, in 1992 I was on a tour with John Cale and Bob Neuwirth with John on Bosendorfer piano, the Soldier String Quartet and the British pedal steel player BJ Cole, singers Tiye' Giraud and Sam Butler. We traveled in two enormous tour buses full of equipment and required many hours a day to set up. One day waiting for soundcheck in Stuttgart I heard a Japanese bluegrass band playing Bill Monroe on the street. It took a minute for them to set up and they could play anywhere. Monroe's music was transcendent, many years after he created it and in a foreign country played by unexpected musicians.
Bill Monroe's music, along with Howlin’ Wolf, hearing unreleased north Mississippi tapes by Alan Lomax at the Smithsonian, and cassettes of Junior Kimbrough, RL Burnside and Othar Turner that the writer Robert Palmer had given me, inspired the Kropotkins.
I called up my favorite musician for each part. Locating Lorette Velvette was an adventure, the only player in the group I didn't really know and had only met once when she opened for Othar Turner in 1992 at the Bank on Houston Street - I thought I was hallucinating. I tracked her down in Memphis when the Cale and my String Quartet group performed at the 25th anniversary of Elvis's death. From the Cale entourage, we invited the great Mo Tucker to play. And my favorite violinists, Charlie Burnham and Mark Feldman, and favorite slide guitarist, Dog (Mark Deffenbaugh) as well as percussionist Samm Bennett. Mo Tucker performed with us 1998-2002, and wrote some great material on Truckstop Girls.
It's a great group, we have a great time playing, but farming for Alex and Lorette, as well as work and families keep us from performing as much as we'd like. Also, Alex, Lorette, and Ron live in Memphis, and Charlie, Dog, Dave, and Jonathan in New York.
We've played memorable concerts at the Bottom Line, Knitting Factory, Tonic, Joe's Pub, Poisson Rouge, and Issue Project Room. In August, we'll play at the Blues in Roots Festival in the mountains of British Columbia.
Videos (blue ones from Poisson Rouge, December, 2009, light ones from Issue Project Room, February, 2010) - there are more on YouTube.
“postmodern pre-blues” (R. Christgau, Village Voice)
Village Voice: "Kropotkins left decorous in the dust. Nothing with drummer Mo Tucker, the thundergoddess behind the Velvet Underground, could be described as decorous. Soldier's banjo suggests that the high lonesome sound is an overtone series generated by the open strings of the Delta bottom. Kropotkins find common ground between the non-Western tunings and African beats of the old blues and the barbaric harmonies of early minimalism. Velvette wows with an iron determination to get through at all costs. Reality TV? This is reality music, man, and we need more of it." - David Krasnow, 2001
Entertainment Weekly: "New York avant-gardist David Soldier and a cadre of experimentalists take apart the Mississippi Delta Blues and reassemble them into a jagged, slightly nightmarish soundscape."
Time Out: "Any self-respecting fan of downtown music could tell you that a project involving drummer Jonathan Kane, multi-instrumentalist David Soldier and violinist Charlie Burnham is bound to be both intensely eclectic and a whole lot of fun. Formed in the early ’90s and recently resurrected, the Kropotkins purvey a wild, fantastical blend that draws equally on postmodern Tom Waits–ian clatter and Mississippi fife-and-drum music." (February, 2010)
The New Yorker: "OFF THE WALL. It takes a lot of guts (and a lot of brains) to try to imbue northern Mississippi fife-and-drum music with an anarchic spirit. The composer Dave Soldier, a neuroscientist, and the drummer Jonathan Kane, a downtown no-wave legend, perform as the Kropotkins, with an assist from, among others, the fine Mepmphis-based singer Lorette Velvette." (pick of the week, Feb 8, 2010)
"In 1994, inspired by the fife-and-drum blues of northern Mississippi and the bluegrass inventor Bill Monroe, the iconclastic downtown composer and scientist Dave Soldier (he's a professor of neurology at Columbia) fromed the Kropotkins, named after the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin. While the group is conentional by the standards of some of Soldier's other projects (he once created enroumous instruments for a group of Thai elephants to play), it can nonetheless seamlessly weave a Charles Ives cover into a set of soulful, if sometimes angular, country- or blues-tinged originals. Besides Soldier, who plays violin and banjo, the sextet includes the co-founder Jonathan Kane on snare drum, the Memphis-based singer Lorette Velvette, and the sweet-toned violinist and singer Charlie Burnham. For this performance they'll be celebrating the rlease of "Paradise Square", an engaging collection of new songs named for a vanished nineteenth-century park in lower Manhattan."
Bio for Programs
The Kropotkins were founded by drummer Jonathan Kane and violinist/ banjo player Dave Soldier in NYC in 1992 after they heard Mississippi fife and drum music and flipped out. We asked was what would rock n' roll sound like if it went down those rural routes? Sid Hemphill showed you could mix the bass and snare drum with the banjo, fiddle, and guitar and vocals. Everything can be played without electonics at a barbeque. We asked our favorite musicians on their respective instruments, singer Lorette Velvette from Memphis, violinist Charlie Burnham, guitarist Dog (Mark Deffenbaugh), and drummer Alex Greene, also from Memphis. It's a great group, we have a great time playing, but farming for Alex and Lorette, as well as distance, work and families keep us from performing as much as we'd like. Over nearly 20 years, we have had three CDs, the newest called Paradise Square (Mulatta Records), and we hope to record some new music next year in New Orleans.
