g’Earls just wanna have fun!
The members of Uncle Earl are seated in a dimly lit Chinese restaurant. Suddenly a gang of cloggers, led by a vicious Gwen Stefani look-alike in blonde ponytails, charge through the doors and challenge a table of rival cloggers. Uncle Earl, sensing the imminent battle, put down their chopsticks and pick up their instruments to provide the rousing music necessary for a proper kung fu clog-off.
No, this isn’t a dream. It isn’t a Riverdance interpretation of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, although that’s pretty close. It’s Uncle Earl’s hilarious music video for their rendition of the old-time tune “Streak O’ Lean, Streak O’ Fat” (which includes some Chinese lyrics courtesy of bandmate Abigail Washburn). The band is telling me about it at Bristol’s 2007 Rhythm & Roots Reunion just before the video comes out, and when I finally see it on YouTube some time later, the video is a perfect reminder of the quirky humor and stellar musicianship I encountered with this self-proclaimed “all g’Earl” string band. Gorgeous and geeky, the ladies of Uncle Earl are irresistible on stage and off.
After meeting each other at various festivals over the years, the current lineup solidified in 2003, consisting of KC Groves (mandolin, guitar, vocals), Abigail Washburn (banjo, vocals), Kristin Andreassen (guitar, fiddle, clogging, vocals) and Rayna Gellert (fiddle, vocals). But with each member coming from very different musical backgrounds, no one knew precisely what direction the band would take.
“Musically, I was sort of like, ‘Well, we’ll just see what happens,’ ” says Gellert, a longtime resident of Asheville, N.C., and the daughter of musician Sam Gellert. “But the thing that, to me, was driving this group of people staying together—and making the effort to stay together—was just that we wanted to hang out together.”
Ah, so Uncle Earl is really just an excuse to meet up with the g’Earls, have some fun and make some great music in the process. That explains their commitment despite having successful solo careers, living in different parts of the country (Massachusetts, North Carolina, Tennessee and Colorado) and participating in numerous other musical projects (Washburn, for example, is also a member of The Sparrow Quartet with Béla Fleck, Ben Sollee and Casey Driessen). But the musical byproduct of Uncle Earl’s camaraderie is getting a lot of attention, including their 2007 nomination for New and Emerging Artist by the Americana Music Association. For the complete story, please read the Holiday 2008 issue of Marquee Mountain South.
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