Claustrophobia sets in. Your eyes crave color; a sharp sliver of green
promising
to push itself upward through the snow, the speck of a blood-red cardinal
sitting atop the highest of trees, a burst of brilliant blue swallowed by
thickening gray clouds. Your ears long for the unordinary; the rush of
waves,
the chattering of gulls, a choir of frogs and crickets singing a night
picture.
Just to smell the grass growing or the hay mowing or to feel the
tightness
of sunscorched skin seems impossible! Windows are thrown open. Mudcrusted
rugs shaken. Seed catalogs held sacred. Arms, legs, whole bodies are
stretched
toward the sun begging release from the dreaded CABIN FEVER!
"Piblokto Madness" is what they call it above the Artic
circle"
relates Cabin Fever bandmember, Tom Keen when asked how the band got its
name. "It was back in the winter of '82 and I was reading this book
by Morris Ferlingetti that described this sickness that would cause
people,
even animals, to go crazy and do stupid things like rip off their clothes
and go running over the ice, maybe jump in, maybe never come back. And I
thought , wow, maybe it could even make two guys play the same music for
years, over and over in 3/4 time. That must be what we call cabin fever.
And we had it real bad that year! It seemed a fittin' name for a Northern
Michigan two-man guitar army where everybody knew at least three
chords."
There's no time for cabin fever to set in these days. Things have gotten
brighter as the music's gotten tighter.This well-seasoned group of
bluegrass
musicianaries (a term invented by Paul Kirchner's wife, Jean) features
Tom
Keen on acoustic guitar and vocals, Tom Fordyce on harmonica and vocals,
Jack Sharry on fiddle and mandolin, Paul Kirchner on banjo and vocals and
Jim Curtis on electric bass and vocals.
Third Coast bandmember, Chris Skellenger, sums up the band's talent with
a sports analogy by saying, "When these guys decided they were going
to get back into music, they made a shameless raid on the free-agent
market
of pickers that were available and scared the &*@! out of the rest of
us!" Their first cassette, "Too Much Fun" features
everything
from Bill Staines' "Loggin' Song" to Jerry Lee Lewis'
"Great
Balls of Fire!" And those of us lucky enough to have seen this fine
band perform at any number of festivals have heard cover tunes by the
likes
of Grandpa Jones, Laurie Lewis, Seldom Scene and originals like Junkman
Jim.
Tom Fordyce, co-founder of the band adds, "After we learned a few
bluegrass
tunes and found out we could harmonize pretty well together, we booked a
bunch of gigs and actually started getting paid!" That was until our
banjo picker up and quit the night before a scheduled gig. Normally that
wouldn't be a problem but it just so happened that he also owned our
P.A.!"
That was when friend Jack Sharry called Paul and Jim and explained the
dilemma.
It just so happened that Jim not only played bass but owned a PA and had
worked as a sound engineer for the bluegrass band, Cabbage Crick, for
years.
Paul had played guitar since he was 10 and had fallen in love with the
banjo
after seeing a Flatts & Scruggs concert in Muskegon in 1966. His wife
bought him his first one in 1970, the year they were married. He taught
himself to play by slowing records down to 16 1/2 rpm, retuning the banjo
and playing along--practicing 10 hrs. a day while getting his Master's
Degree.
Jack had played classical violin as a kid, gave it up to work at General
Motors, and then relearned it some 30 years later upon retiring.
Over the last 5 years these musicians have developed a style and sense of
comraderie all their own. Folkies like Peter, Paul and Mary were big
influences,
as were Flatts and Scruggs, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams. Tom Fordyce
remembers
laying in the back window of his family's '55 Pontiac. looking up at the
stars and listening to his Dad sing along with the radio as they traveled
to and from military bases all over the south. Tom Keen grew up in
Cincinatti,
the "melting pot" of the Appalachians. Blues and bluegrass were
everywhere. His greatest influence was his father who was a darn good
honky-tonk
piano player. A typical family night out included a restaurant with an
empty
piano bench, which Pappy soon occupied, and the whole family jammin'
together
at the drop of a hat.
That same family influence is still evident today in the band's
willingness
to go out and seek new material, listening to everything from "Bach
to Buck Owens" and as Paul puts it, "just throwin' a bunch of
stuff in there and seein' what sticks!" Obvious friendships have
grown
out of the band's efforts and there is certainly no lack of fun once
they've
taken the stage. The entire band is quick to point out the "down
-home"
quality of their type of music. You have to see it live. That's what
makes
it more intimate, more exciting, more personal. It's also a great way to
influence younger people and get them involved in their own form of
musical
expression.
Always gathering new material, jammin' in basements (with corners full of
shattered dimes) and backyards, playing festivals and gigs all over
Michigan,
keeping it friendly, fresh and fun really reflects Cabin Fever's zest for
life. As Tom Fordyce puts it, "We've made life-long friends just
playing
our music."
And we all know cabin fever isn't as hard to handle when you've got a
friend
who's got it too!
Cabin Fever!