I’ll be leaving this on the front page for a while. It’s not a review—you can’t review your friends’ work. Rather, it’s more in the nature of an appreciation. Appreciations are OK, and we once thought them legitimate criticism in the hands of say William Hazlitt, not to compare myself with that adorable genius.
A couple of years back I wrote about my friends, Pattie and Jack Le Sueur from Durham North Carolina. Jack had recently retired from the North Carolina Arts Council, and when I asked him if he and Pattie intended to continue performing around the Research Triangle area as they had since the nineteen-seventies, Jack told me that he was entering “legacy mode”—no more live performing, but that he had in mind to produce some recordings he and Pattie had made over the years.
The first of these (I say first hoping there will be more) is now available, a double CD/DVD set entitled Pattie and Jack Le Sueur and Cedar Creek Live at Learned Place. I hadn’t known about Learned Place, but here’s a history written by proprietors, Deborah Jakubs & Jim Roberts, that’s included with the discs. As you can see it’s as much about Pattie and Jack and the album as it is about the venue. I’ll quote it all in hopes it will interest readers as it interests me.
Learned Place Music was inspired by chance encounters and our growing friendship with Pattie and Jack Le Sueur, first admiring their performances at the wonderful Cedar Creek Gallery in Creedmoor, then conversations at kids’ soccer games. Having expressed admiration for their music, we were invited to hear them play an opening set at Peter Kramer’s farm in Orange County featuring a trio then barely known in the US – the Krüger Brothers. Not only did we hear the amazing Krüger Brothers for the first time, but we also met the full Cedar Creek band, with the multi-instrumentalist and fine singer Rick LaReno on banjo and lead guitar and Mike Foster on bass. Our sons were soon taking private lessons with Rick, and we became groupies of Pattie & Jack Le Sueur and Cedar Creek. And the Krüger Brothers, who have several times collaborated musically with Pattie and Jack and Cedar Creek. [You can read about the Krüger Brothers here. JL].
These friendships inspired us to begin sharing our home for acoustic music performances, what we dubbed Southern Roots music. We are now in our tenth year of the Learned Place Music series and have hosted over 50 concerts. Pattie & Jack Le Sueur and Cedar Creek took part in many of these performances until they ended their collaboration in 2009. This album, with songs recorded between 2003 and 2006, shows both the evolution of the band and the concert series. Through it all is the astonishingly beautiful singing of Pattie Le Sueur, punctuated by some great lead singing by Jack and Rick. In all our experience, it is hard to imagine a finer singer than Pattie. Were it not for day jobs and family commitments, these folks could have been making a mark on the musical world anywhere. But they chose Durham, and we are grateful. Their music is timeless and beautiful and rendered extraordinarily well in this collection.
This is a great collector’s item for fans of Pattie & Jack Le Sueur and Cedar Creek, for the faithful supporters of Learned Place Music, and for anyone devoted to fine acoustic music.
The album contains 34 songs. My favorites at the moment are the second two songs on the first disc: “The One Who knows,” a Dar Williams song about breaking away and letting go that Pattie calls contemplative. It displays some of the best things Pattie does as a singer, quiet and thoughtful things that require mastery both of her voice and of the microphone, as well as maturity and interpretive insight. My other favorite is “Lark in the Morning,” a wistful Kate McLeod song about loss and the memory of love–how’s that for country?–that Pattie and the boys in the band almost turn into a dance hall stomp. I say almost because the song their way still retains its seriousness. It just doesn’t protest too much. For a sentimental listener like me this song is the true gold, in the vein of A. P. Carter, et al.
Rick LaReno does some fine guitar picking in “Lark in the Morning” and many other songs on the album. For the second disc opener LaReno turns a performance of folk chestnut, “The Fox,” into an occasion for some splendid guitar riffs. He also sings well, especially in John Gorka’s “Gypsy Life,” and plays fine Scruggs style banjo. Mike Foster, the bass player, doesn’t get the spotlight much, but provides the solid bottom of the music that never rings false, sings harmony vocals, and sometimes contributes a bit of percussion by thumping his big resonator guitar.
Pattie and Jack’s son, Jon Le Sueur, a professional musician and filmmaker in his own right, plays guitar and accompanies his mother on “A Stor Mo Chroi,” a traditional Celtic lament; and daughter Sarah Le Sueur joins in the choruses of country favorites “New Night Dawning” by John Poythress and Tammy Kidd and Delbert McClinton’s “Two More Bottles of Wine.” Michael Borstleman and Jens Krüger fill out the ensemble with mandolin and banjo as needed.
All in all this new album is a great romp that spans genres from traditional folk to contemporary country and rockabilly. There’s even a good yodeling song, Jimmy Rogers’ “When the Cactus is in Bloom,” that shows off Pattie’s skill as a vocal acrobat. Jack’s “Administrator’s Blues” is included and his lovely wedding song, “Two Paths,” but not his “Waisting My Time,” which I miss; though I already have that song on Pattie and Jack’s earlier CD, Two Paths.
The back and forth banter as Pattie introduces the songs provides more good fun. At one point she quips that Jack is in administration, and Jack fires back that she (of course) is not, eliciting a big laugh all around. One has the sense that the jokes are as familiar to these friends as the songs are. There seems an easy camaraderie between them all, performers and audience alike. Jack plays mostly second guitar, filling in the rhythms and the harmonies, sitting back and letting others take stage. He was always good at that, though I’m sure that much of the thinking that shapes these performances is his.
On the whole this album seems exceptionally well-produced. The sound quality and the mixing are excellent, and the video quality is high. There are some flaws here and there, places where feedback intrudes, an intonation problem or two. But I think such things are to be expected in recordings made at live performances. What one gains from such recordings is a special kind of presence, something more than passion, a kind of focused immediacy, what Hazlitt called gusto. These are fine musicians at the height of their powers performing music that has become part of their being—for an audience of friends and neighbors to whom they are physically present.
Buy this album. It’s available from jack.lesueur@earthlink.net. Prices are $20 for the DVD, $15 for the CD, or $30 for both—plus shipping, of course. I’ve got both, so that I can watch indoors and listen in my car; and I plan to buy more copies for gifts to friends and family.