Legend has it that members of Black Twigs first played amongst dusted carousel ponies warehoused by an abandoned fairground. The truth - as always - is more omplex, less 'Live at Pompeii.' These days the band is known best as the core trio of Mike Gangloff, Isak Howell, and Nathan Bowles .. or "GHB" for short. We will offer some brief meditations on this contemporary phenomenon of ancient music with the stand-up rock beat (presently tapped out by Nathan B's feed store, bass player shoes) ! .. but without further t'do, I give you .. the Black Twig Pickers.
Genealogies abound, and th' Pickers have at least two : one in Roanoke, VA at the Local Paper and another hway out in Richmond, where ghosts of the CSA and Art College OD cases compete for lebensraum in the aftertimes. And maybe y'all caught Gangloff on banjo, Howell on guitar, and original fiddle player Ralph Berrier, Jr. at the old Green Dolphin. Charlie Parr was there, already a central part of the players and collectors who emerged in the American 1990's as a sort of new East Coast Blues Mafia, 'cept not Marylandcentric (Christopher King would nab a tweak Grammy for Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton). This human interest rumor posits informal lunchtime "jams" at 201 W. Campbell's rooftop garden.
The Richmond Version, on the other hand, goes a little bit something like this: .. following the blissed-out psychedelic excesses of the 90's, a quieter "farm-to-table" movement emerged: city kids began looking for roots. Some precedence for this deeply personal instinct/trend can be found in such disparate assemblages as Trapezoid and Newfoundland's Figgy Duff. In the case of the former, the classic quartet that produced 1980's Now & Then LP brought awareness of the Hammons Family to a generation of coming-down urbanites (the band had, after all, hoed that particular row during years of living in Elkins, West Virginia).
Genealogies abound, and th' Pickers have at least two : one in Roanoke, VA at the Local Paper and another hway out in Richmond, where ghosts of the CSA and Art College OD cases compete for lebensraum in the aftertimes. And maybe y'all caught Gangloff on banjo, Howell on guitar, and original fiddle player Ralph Berrier, Jr. at the old Green Dolphin. Charlie Parr was there, already a central part of the players and collectors who emerged in the American 1990's as a sort of new East Coast Blues Mafia, 'cept not Marylandcentric (Christopher King would nab a tweak Grammy for Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton). This human interest rumor posits informal lunchtime "jams" at 201 W. Campbell's rooftop garden.
The Richmond Version, on the other hand, goes a little bit something like this: .. following the blissed-out psychedelic excesses of the 90's, a quieter "farm-to-table" movement emerged: city kids began looking for roots. Some precedence for this deeply personal instinct/trend can be found in such disparate assemblages as Trapezoid and Newfoundland's Figgy Duff. In the case of the former, the classic quartet that produced 1980's Now & Then LP brought awareness of the Hammons Family to a generation of coming-down urbanites (the band had, after all, hoed that particular row during years of living in Elkins, West Virginia).
