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Bluegrass

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news

Call Me Mule

March 10, 2021 By wtwo0

Our other exciting news is that award-winning documentary filmmaker, John McDonald, has asked The Crooked Jades to provide music for his current feature-length documentary, Call Me Mule.  We love the film and are honored to participate in this amazing project.

The project, filmed over a 27-month period, is the story of one man’s struggle to roam freely with his mules, seeking a balance between the man-made world and the natural world.  The film raises issues that concern all of us: preserving open space, individual freedom of movement, access to public land, and the system’s treatment of people living outside society’s norms.

Just last week I saw the beautiful film Nomadland, winner of two Golden Globes for best film and best director, Chloé Zhao, and realized one of the nomads, Swankie Wheels, a real life character, also appears in Call Me Mule. Swankie, is one of the growing population of “van dwellers” or “rubber tramps,” is apparently a big Mule fan. She gives him a ‘tour’ of her home/wheels during the film. This clip is from the video diaries of filmmaker John McDonald.

The film is still in post production but we will keep you posted on the release date.

Filed Under: featured news, news

Empathy Moves the Water

November 12, 2018 By wtwo0

The compact disc comes in a beautiful and eco-friendly 6 panel Digi-pak w/8 page booklet. The artwork and design is done by none other than Bob Ciano. Responsible for some of the most provocative, beautiful album covers ever designed for Blue Note, CTI and Kudu Records during the 1960s, 70s. and 80s.


Buy Now

Across the wide seas, distant mountains, and the vast complexity of the soul, The Crooked Jades new release “Empathy Moves The Water" emphasizes the lonesome in "High Lonesome" music. The band’s old-time roots reflect the cultural melange and longing implicit in the shadows of America - from haunting ballads punctuated by hypnotic fiddles that express digital isolation and humanity lost in a rapidly changing land, to the high energy revival songs inspired by early rural gospel blues. Reaffirming their reputation as an innovative old-time string band closer in spirit to Tom Waits and Nick Cave, The Crooked Jades create a unique and soulful modern sound by exploring the roots of Americana and interweaving the diverse musical influences of Europe and Africa.

With a bold vision and drive to innovate and inspire, the Crooked Jades release their brand new album “Empathy Moves The Water" on their own label, Jade Note Music. Largely recorded at Berkeley’s famous Fantasy Studios, this new album is produced by the highly celebrated Bruce Kaphan. The band once again features their signature mix of inspired re-arrangements of rare and obscure old-time gems and beautiful original compositions, all played on vintage and eclectic instruments, including Hawaiian slide, Vietnamese jaw harp, harmonium, ukulele, banjo, ukulele, arco bass, and minstrel banjo.


https://crookedjades.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/The-Crooked-Jades-Empathy-Moves-The-Water-05-Going-Across-The-Sea-copy.mp3

  1. Ryland and Spencer (Rise and Bloom Again) (Trad/Arr. Jeff Kazor, Jade Note Music, BMI)
  2. Featherbed (Trad/Arr. Emily Mann, Jade Note Music, BMI)
  3. Down to the River (Inspired by Mississippi Fred McDowell, Arr. Lisa Berman, Jade Note Music, BMI)
  4. Yellow Mercury 4 (Jeff Kazor, Jade Note Music, BMI)
  5. Going Across the Sea (Trad/Arr. Erik Pearson, Jade Note Music, BMI)
  6. The Water Spirit According to Mike (Erik Pearson, Jeff Kazor, Jade Note Music, BMI)
  7. Empathy Moves the Water (Jeff Kazor, Jade Note Music, BMI)
  8. Mike in the Wilderness (Trad/Arr. Emily Mann, Jade Note Music, BMI)
  9. Long Time Traveling (Trad/Arr. Bruce Kaphan, Jade Note Music, BMI)
  10. Wade in the Water (Trad/Arr. Jeff Kazor, Jade Note Music, BMI)
  11. Am I Born to Die / Long Time Traveling (Trad/Arr. Megan Adie, Emily Mann, Jeff Kazor, Jade Note Music, BMI)
  12. Pretty Little Shoes (Trad/Arr. Emily Mann, Jade Note Music, BMI)
  13. Yellow Mercury 3 (Jeff Kazor, Jade Note Music, BMI)

Filed Under: news

The Crooked Jades are currently working their music alchemy in the studio

October 15, 2018 By wtwo0

making progress on their 9th album, projected for an early spring 2018 release. The band’s following have been clamoring for this, and one fan in particular is helping to make it possible. He was so impressed with the Crooked Jades performance at the California Bluegrass Association Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival this year, that he became a benefactor to financially sponsor the new recordings with the band’s present configuration.

Filed Under: featured news, news

Crooked Jades are gearing up to celebrate their 20th anniversary in 2015!!

October 15, 2018 By wtwo0

The Jades are also pleased to announce a NEW ALBUM! in the works to be released in conjunction with their anniversary celebration tours in the Spring and Fall of next year. Also look out for the Bright Land documentary by Charlie Steiner slated for release this summer. Shot in New York 2011 leading up to the premiere at New York’s Joyce Theatre, the film follows the dancers and musicians during rehearsals and right into opening night and really showcases the nitty-gritty process of this unique collaboration between modern dance and old-time music.

Filed Under: news

The highly anticipated new album Bright Land is here! Available at our shows, website, CD Baby, Amazon and local record stores.

October 15, 2018 By wtwo0

West coast CD release tour in September, San Diego, LA, Los Osos and Pleasanton. And in October the Crooked Jades will be in Nevada and down to N. California, Auburn, Arcata, Ukiah and in the beginning of November we will be home at the Freight and Salvage.

THE CROOKED JADES SOUNDTRACK FOR BRIGHT LAND WITH KATE WEARE COMPANY
Jade Note Music CJ009

This San Francisco-based band boldly goes where no old-time string band has gone before. The Crooked Jades new release “Bright Land” is a soundtrack of 20 songs and tunes for a 50-minute work of contemporary dances set to old-time music composed and re-arranged by The Crooked Jades. The project all started when acclaimed New York-based modern dance maven Kate Weare came out to see the Jades on their “Shining Darkness” tour at Café du Nord in San Francisco. A stranger to the band at the time, they all noticed her right away because she was inspired to get up and dance, not to a fast-driving fiddle tune like most audiences, but to a mournful Roscoe Holcomb ballad called Moonshiner. Later she told the band that she was moved by the skill, edge and depth of their music and felt inspired as a choreographer. So that’s what sparked this unlikely collaboration. And it really came to feel like the perfect union as the band was in turn inspired to reframe compositions to join Crooked Jades’ hypnotic old-time music with Kate Weare’s boldly poetic modern dance.

Filed Under: news

The Crooked Jades will be performing a very special show backing up the legendary singer-songwriter alt-country guru Richard Buckner at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on Wednesday August 17th.

October 15, 2018 By wtwo0

This show supports Rick’s critically acclaimed new release “Our Blood” on Merge Records in stores August 2nd.

Richard Buckner has a significant history with The Crooked Jades, having co-produced and performed on two ground-breaking envelope-pushing albums, “The Unfortunate Rake Vol. 1 and 2”.

Jeff Kazor, Lisa Berman and Erik Pearson are looking forward to stretching outside of their string band element playing drums, keyboards, and electric guitars along with the usual suspects – banjo, slide/dobro and harmonium. David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights (The Clean) from New Zealand co-headline

Jeff Kazor will be continuing on with Richard Buckner for the rest of the US tour dates:

8.16.11 Los Angeles, CA – Bootleg Theater
8.17.11 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall (with Crooked Jades trio)
8.19.11 Portland, OR – Bunk Bar
8.20.11 Seattle, WA – The Triple Door
8.23.11 Atlanta, GA – Smith’s Olde Bar
8.24.11 Chapel Hill, NC – The Arts Center
8.25.11 Arlington VA – IOTA Club & Café
8.27.11 Brooklyn, NY – The Bell House
8.28.11 Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hal

Filed Under: news

Bright Land update

October 15, 2018 By wtwo0

Bright Land continues to be our main project and has been extraordinary. Collaborating with brilliant choreographer Kate Weare and her talented passionate modern dancers has been the most challenging and gratifying experience to date. Thanks to Warren Hellman’s interest and generous financial support, The Crooked Jades were able to go into the studio to record the intricately composed Bright Land soundtrack after the live shows at ODC and are now in the middle of post production with a projected winter completion for a spring 2012 release.

Also look for the Bright Land documentary by Charlie Steiner slated for release at the end of this year. Shot in New York last summer leading up to the premiere at New York’s Joyce Theatre, the film follows the dancers and musicians during rehearsals and right into opening night and really showcases the nitty-gritty process of this unique collaboration between modern dance and old-time music.

Filed Under: news

My Bloody Valentine redux

October 15, 2018 By wtwo0

Jeff Kazor has been producing a new record for Kenny Feinstein(of the Water Tower Bucket Boys) involving performances by several of The Crooked Jades including Lisa Berman singing harmonies and playing slide, Erik Pearson on dobro, guitars and flutes, and Charlie Rose on bass. This ambitious project is a totally acoustic reconstruction of My Bloody Valentine’s seminal “Loveless” album from 1991 with absolutely no digital processing. One of the big challenges in keeping true to the album’s essence has been inventing an acoustic process that creates the ethereal blanket of swirling distortion behind those beautiful vocals and poppy melodies. http://www.kennyfeinstein.com/

Filed Under: news

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Crooked Jades Albums Also available at:

  • CDbaby.com
  • iTunes
  • Bandcamp
  • Select Stores including: our friends at Amoeba (SF), Bird & Beckett Books & Records, Streetlight (SF and Santa Cruz), The Music Store (SF) and Down Home (El Cerrito).

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Praise for The Crooked Jades

“Grounded in tradition, old-time string band music and mountain blues but with open horizons that take them, subtly, to other parts of the planet, they have a haunting spookiness, an organic pulse, and most importantly a clear vision...Instrumentally they're truly inspiring, getting original textures out of conventional stringband instruments and mixing them with (in this context) oddities like bass ukulele, harmonium, mbira, cello and Vietnamese jaw harp and bau zither. Vocally, they have that lonesome white blues sound which has its ancestry in Dock Boggs and the Carters but again they take it somewhere else...a consistently startling and addictive album."

– Shining Darkness Reviewed by Ian Anderson in UK magazine fRoots

2018-10-15T04:02:15+00:00

– Shining Darkness Reviewed by Ian Anderson in UK magazine fRoots

“Grounded in tradition, old-time string band music and mountain blues but with open horizons that take them, subtly, to other parts of the planet, they have a haunting spookiness, an organic pulse, and most importantly a clear vision...Instrumentally they're truly inspiring, getting original textures out of conventional stringband instruments and mixing them with (in this context) oddities like bass ukulele, harmonium, mbira, cello and Vietnamese jaw harp and bau zither. Vocally, they have that lonesome white blues sound which has its ancestry in Dock Boggs and the Carters but again they take it somewhere else...a consistently startling and addictive album."
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/154/
"This San Francisco quintet keep true to their old-time string band heart, yet in subtle, weird ways, they exaggerate the slightly-crazed aura of the rural pre-radio era music. It makes for a haunting, sophisticated trip to Appalachia. Mixing originals and traditional songs flawlessly, this might be the finest band to come out of the string-band resurgence."

– Boston Herald

2018-10-15T04:04:22+00:00

– Boston Herald

"This San Francisco quintet keep true to their old-time string band heart, yet in subtle, weird ways, they exaggerate the slightly-crazed aura of the rural pre-radio era music. It makes for a haunting, sophisticated trip to Appalachia. Mixing originals and traditional songs flawlessly, this might be the finest band to come out of the string-band resurgence."
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/3/
"The Crooked Jades are embarrassingly addictive....they grab you by the throat, preach damnation, and move your hips all at once."

- SF Weekly

2018-10-15T04:05:05+00:00

- SF Weekly

"The Crooked Jades are embarrassingly addictive....they grab you by the throat, preach damnation, and move your hips all at once."
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/4/
"The two adjectives that keep coming to me during repeated listenings to the Crooked Jades are profound and transcendent. I have looked those words up wondering if that’s what I really mean. Profound means “deep” and “intense”. Transcendent means “awe-inspiring” and “moving”. Yes, that’s what I mean. This is visionary music, forged from the raw materials of old-time forms and instruments. I don’t want to get into a discussion of what’s old-time and what’s not; there’s enough ongoing conversation on that subject already. It’s easy to forget, though, that the first old-time music recorded was a mirror of the times...

–Old-Time Herald

2018-10-15T04:05:29+00:00

–Old-Time Herald

"The two adjectives that keep coming to me during repeated listenings to the Crooked Jades are profound and transcendent. I have looked those words up wondering if that’s what I really mean. Profound means “deep” and “intense”. Transcendent means “awe-inspiring” and “moving”. Yes, that’s what I mean. This is visionary music, forged from the raw materials of old-time forms and instruments. I don’t want to get into a discussion of what’s old-time and what’s not; there’s enough ongoing conversation on that subject already. It’s easy to forget, though, that the first old-time music recorded was a mirror of the times the musicians lived in. That was almost a hundred years ago. Here, in the beginning of the 21st century, people in appreciable numbers are feeling as though they’re teetering on the brink of apocalyptic times. Through the lens of tradition, the Crooked Jades are voicing this feeling convincingly and beautifully."
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/5/
 

-Uncut

4.0
2018-10-15T04:06:04+00:00

-Uncut

 
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/6/
"Depth of quality, performance & passion make this band a cross-generational, cross-genre charmer."

–popmatters.com

2018-10-15T04:12:57+00:00

–popmatters.com

"Depth of quality, performance & passion make this band a cross-generational, cross-genre charmer."
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/7/
"The Jades, in other words, aren’t playing your grandparents’ old-time music. Nor are they performing the stylized stringband music that our revivalist contemporaries adapted four or five decades ago and take to festival stages and recordings into the present moment. This is sepia tones, bent angles, unexpected accents, unanticipated sounds. It’s banjo ukuleles, minstrel banjos, plucked fiddles, bowed basses, Hawaiian slide guitars, harmoniums, Vietnamese jaw harps, pianos played clawhammer-style. It is the familiar embraced by the strange. It is the antique and the modern, in a distinctly idiosyncratic meaning of each. This is a music that feels at once fiercely...

-Sing Out

2018-10-15T04:13:53+00:00

-Sing Out

"The Jades, in other words, aren’t playing your grandparents’ old-time music. Nor are they performing the stylized stringband music that our revivalist contemporaries adapted four or five decades ago and take to festival stages and recordings into the present moment. This is sepia tones, bent angles, unexpected accents, unanticipated sounds. It’s banjo ukuleles, minstrel banjos, plucked fiddles, bowed basses, Hawaiian slide guitars, harmoniums, Vietnamese jaw harps, pianos played clawhammer-style. It is the familiar embraced by the strange. It is the antique and the modern, in a distinctly idiosyncratic meaning of each. This is a music that feels at once fiercely inside time yet also above and around it. And all of this is accomplished without a hint of rock, electronica, or the other flourishes to which less imaginative folk bands turn when they think they’ve exhausted the language of tradition. Tradition, the Jades insist, speaks in a host of tongues. If you know what you’re doing, you can speak in as many as you’d like, sometimes at once."
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/9/
"American Gothic for a new age."

-Americana UK

2018-10-15T04:14:16+00:00

-Americana UK

"American Gothic for a new age."
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/10/
"Wild, wooly, totally unpredictable but always tasteful, soulful. They’ve got chords in unexpected places, out of this world harmonies and some of the most powerfully arranged material I’ve ever encountered."

-Bluegrass Breakdown

2018-10-15T04:14:43+00:00

-Bluegrass Breakdown

"Wild, wooly, totally unpredictable but always tasteful, soulful. They’ve got chords in unexpected places, out of this world harmonies and some of the most powerfully arranged material I’ve ever encountered."
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/11/
"This young quintet rooted in old-time music toss African and Asian instruments into the usual sawing fiddle, gnarly banjo, guitar and mandolin stew. There are eerie folk songs, instrumentals and a maniacal Vietnamese Jews harp."

-Mojo

2018-10-15T04:15:14+00:00

-Mojo

"This young quintet rooted in old-time music toss African and Asian instruments into the usual sawing fiddle, gnarly banjo, guitar and mandolin stew. There are eerie folk songs, instrumentals and a maniacal Vietnamese Jews harp."
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/12/
The Crooked Jades ensemble, with its polished but vital roots sound, is no stranger to modern media. They’ve contributed to the soundtracks of the PBS documentary Seven Sisters: A Kentucky Portrait and the Oscar-nominated dramatic movie Into The Wild. Their sound can be as cinematic as it is tradition-grown. If you have it, you’ll be richly rewarded. Visualize the dancing in your mind’s eye while this lovely, lively and compelling music flows into your ears. The Crooked Jades’ soundtrack for the Kate Weare Company’s Bright Land is happy evidence that old-time music is not only a relevant contemporary art form,...

BLUEGRASS UNLIMITED

2018-11-12T02:15:49+00:00

BLUEGRASS UNLIMITED

The Crooked Jades ensemble, with its polished but vital roots sound, is no stranger to modern media. They’ve contributed to the soundtracks of the PBS documentary Seven Sisters: A Kentucky Portrait and the Oscar-nominated dramatic movie Into The Wild. Their sound can be as cinematic as it is tradition-grown. If you have it, you’ll be richly rewarded. Visualize the dancing in your mind’s eye while this lovely, lively and compelling music flows into your ears. The Crooked Jades’ soundtrack for the Kate Weare Company’s Bright Land is happy evidence that old-time music is not only a relevant contemporary art form, it will probably prove timeless.
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/55/
"I love The Crooked Jades. Weird, ecstatic music. How can anyone with a brain dislike it? What was the Aldous Huxley line? "Stronger wine, madder music."

Peter Stampfel, The Holy Modal Rounders

2018-11-12T02:16:23+00:00

Peter Stampfel, The Holy Modal Rounders

"I love The Crooked Jades. Weird, ecstatic music. How can anyone with a brain dislike it? What was the Aldous Huxley line? "Stronger wine, madder music."
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/56/
"The Jades are the perfect combination of fresh energy and raw antiquity, staying so true to the old stuff you feel like you’re hearing ghosts of the past. Yet their performance is vibrant enough that at one point I actually had an honest to goodness religious experience."

MerleFest

2018-11-12T02:16:47+00:00

MerleFest

"The Jades are the perfect combination of fresh energy and raw antiquity, staying so true to the old stuff you feel like you’re hearing ghosts of the past. Yet their performance is vibrant enough that at one point I actually had an honest to goodness religious experience."
https://crookedjades.com/testimonials/57/
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