Dance All Night! Reviving the Old Time Revival with the Highwoods String Band
The Highwoods String Band—Mac Benford, Jenny Cleland, Doug Dorschug, Walt Koken and Bob Potts—are far and away the most important musical group to be associated with the Ithaca region, as well as arguably the most important old time string band of the 1970s. In terms of influence, it is impossible to overstate their significance. A brief list of inheritors would include the Puryear clan (Donna the Buffalo and their coterie), the Horse Flies, Plank Road, the Correctones, as well as almost any other old time band you’re currently digging on. If New York City’s The New Lost City Ramblers (NLCRA) made old time music legitimate, the Highwoods Sting Band made old time music fun. This Saturday, May 3, in honor of the Rongovian Embassy’s 35th Birthday, America’s favorite old time band will reunite for a special one-off performance; admission is $15, the show begins at 7pm, and there’s absolutely no reason to miss it.
Highwoods had its genesis in a trio called Fat City Stringband, which comprised the dual fiddle stylings of Missourian Bob Potts and San Franciscan Walt Koken, as well as New Jersey born banjo virtuoso Mac Benford. At a time when the so-called folk revival was a well-scrubbed and sanitized academic project, Fat City was, in Benford’s words, “all about fun—fun for us and fun for our audiences.” Fat City had an early advocate in Mike Seeger—founding member of NLCRA and half-brother of Pete—who wrote, “The first time I heard that trio I thought it was the most amazing thing I’d heard, rhythmically.”
In 1971, Banford, Potts and Koken made a musical pilgrimage across the country, including stops at the legend Tommy Jarrell’s house and the Smithsonian Folk Festival in Washington, D.C. When the trio arrived in Ithaca, they connected with Jenny Cleland and Dough Dorschug—who were both on leave from Cornell. In Cleland’s words, “I wanted to take them home with me. They seemed to personify the spirit of those times: an innocent sexuality, a benevolent craziness. I wanted to be part of it.”
By the time Fat City had transformed from a trio to a quintet (by 1972), The Washington Post wrote, “They set in motion foot-tapping, head-bobbing and hand-clapping that would continue through the afternoon…if they weren’t all in motion, you would think Norman Rockwell had painted the whole happy scene.”
Re-christening themselves The Highwoods String Band, the group toured throughout the eastern part of the country. Though their repertoire were tunes and songs culled mainly from old-time music’s “Golden Age” of the ‘20s and ‘30s, the group sought less to hermetically re-create the sound—instead opting to capture the vibrant mood of the music.
Seeger said, “The Highwoods String Band was the most important old-time string band of the 1970s in terms of spreading the old-time style of music…They inspired their generation and younger to take up old-time.” Walt Koken has this to add, “Ironically, the more well-known we became, the less necessary we were to the growing old-time music scene, since one of the messages is to do it yourself—unplug it, and take it home!”
But there is another possibility for the difficulties the band faced: a ridiculous “litmus test” of sorts. Jenny Cleland, the self-described “chick bass player,” wrote in an email: “When the National Folk Festival decided that we were ‘revivalists’ and not ‘authentic’ traditional performers, some large festivals…tended to follow their lead. That sea change happened a few years before we de-banded, and more or less defined us out of what we did, because we had not learned the music in a traditional setting.”
Cleland continued, “After that, it was much harder to put together a tour of the usual college coffeehouses and bars, sleeping on floors and eating spaghetti at the homes of generous fans, without that big gig too!”
Now, after a too-long hiatus that saw the release of “Feed Your Babies Onions,” something of a best-of compilation released by Rounder Records in 1994, the members of Highwoods are coming home. Cleland, Benford and Potts will join out-of-towners Koken and Dorschug for a one-off performance at the Rongovian Embassy.
Mac Benford, the modest man who plays banjo for Highwoods, speaking from his home by phone, said, “Ironically, we only played the Rongo a couple of times. There was another spot called the Kosmos—a health food store—which was really the launching pad for our career. But when our friend Mike Barry asked us to play the Rongo, we decided it was time.” Benford continued: “We originally told Mike that the chances were slim and surprisingly enough, all five people said let’s do it. If you’re asking to explain how it happened, I really can’t say exactly. Sometimes things just work out that way.”
Benford called this show a “magical convergence.” He continued: “Though we have various degrees of fondness for the group, the Highwoods String Band had its moment in time; there’s really nothing to be gained from trying to turn the clock back.”
While whether that is true—with a new revivalist movement in the region and throughout the U.S. brewing—is subject to differing opinions, one thing is not. This Saturday, the only complaint one may expect to hear about clocks will be confusion as to why the night can’t last forever. Anticipate few quibbles about nostalgia; folks will be too busy dancing.