New Dangerfield are a string band consisting of Jake Blount, Tray Wellington, Nelson Williams and Kaia Kater, who co-wrote ‘Put No Walls Around Your Garden‘ with Billy Keane. It a song that mixes elements of “old timey” string band with folk and more modern Americana elements to produce a song that seems like a centuries old composition which has sprung magically from the ground. It’s good.
It’s a song with a timeless theme – wealth inequality and the greedy guarding of scarce resources, themes that are as relevant now as in any time of inflation, food insecurity, and profiteering. Says Kaia Kater: “I wrote ‘Put No Walls Around Your Garden’ with Billy Keane, a wonderful songwriter from the Berkshires, during a 2023 retreat at The House of Songs in the Ozark Mountains. We used the allegory of a farmer and their seasonal crop yield as a commentary on resource hoarding and climate change. I brought the song to the band and we arranged it for a stringband context, while also inserting a bridge/breakdown meant to illustrate the urgency of the message. Playing and singing the twin banjo and vocal melody makes this song so fitting for stringband music in a new context, and I find it’s a bit of an earworm!”
Whenever we feature a song that in any way decries the all-pervasive internet we do have to remind ourselves that we're a music website on the ummm...the...err...well, wouldn't you know it, on the Internet. Well, that's a paradox and a conundrum that we'll just have to learn to live with,…
And who are New Dangerfield? Well, by any reckoning they are a supergroup - albeit in the rarefied world of "old timey" music, and in particular in the reclaiming of the Black string band tradition. New Dangerfield are Jake Blount, Kaia Kater,Tray Wellington and Nelson Williams, and this first single…
Leaving you this weekend dear readers with news that NPR have just posted the latest in their brilliant small but perfectly proportioned Tiny Desk Concerts, this time with Kaia Kater whose way with a banjo can bring grown men, and women, to a trembling halt. The Afro-Caribbean-Canadian singer and songwriter…
Sure, I could climb high in a tree, or go to Skye on my holiday. I could be happy. All I really want is the excitement of first hearing The Byrds, the amazement of decades of Dylan's music, or the thrill of seeing a band like The Long Ryders live. That's not much to ask, is it?
Very nice!