Album Review: Ken & Brad Kolodner, ‘Hand’s Cove’
We tend to forget that folk music was intended to be made by families. It was passed down that way, a legacy of music that each person shaped before handing it off to the next generation. With their fifth studio album, Hand’s Cove, father and son duo Ken & Brad Kolodner prove that they’re another link in this long chain of transmission. They’re pulling from the Appalachian old-time stringband tradition, a world both know well.
Brad, the son, plays wonderfully evocative mountain banjo and runs one of the best old-time festivals in the US, the Baltimore Old Time Music Festival, rapidly becoming a destination festival for those in the know. He’s also a daily host on Folk Alley!
Brad’s father Ken is a renowned hammered dulcimer player, also an excellent fiddler. Together, they move in the kind of synchronicity that’s usually described as something particular to family music. There’s an element of truth to it, but family bands are hard work. It can be uncomfortable navigating two very different worlds at once. One world is the informal music making in a family that the music comes out of. Brad grew up as a teen jamming with his dad in the living room, and there’s so much of that still in this album. But it can be hard in the other world to be established professionals in the competitive world of American folk music. I think family bands are the strongest when they stay close to their roots in the home, and that’s what I love about this album. It sounds like the kind of music the two could make together, just enjoying each other’s company. I play music in a band with my father, and those are the moments that mean the most to me. It’s fun to be onstage and to record and to tour, but really, even amidst all that, the most fun comes from just enjoying playing music together.
On Hand’s Cove, Ken and Brad pull from deep in the tradition, reaching back to old tunes like “Laughing Boy” (which features an unusual instrument, the hammered mbira) and the sprightly twin fiddle duet “Shuckin the Brush” (learned from ace old-time fiddler Earl White). But Brad also writes tunes, like the opening track “Otter Creek,” a hard rolling instrumental duet between banjo and hammered dulcimer, or the title track “Hand’s Cove” which is recorded so well that Brad’s banjo almost transforms under the weight of the sound and rhythm. Lovely songs too, from the bluegrass rootsiness of “Standing on the Mountain” to a very welcome cover of Martha Scanlan’s classic “Little Bird of Heaven”. I was especially happy to hear some great fiddlesticks on the aptly named “Fiddlesticks”. For those who don’t know, it’s an unusual tradition where a second person hammers out rhythms on the strings of a fiddler’s fiddle while they’re fiddling. It does my heart good to hear this father and son duo not just enjoying each other’s company musically, but actually expanding each other’s musical worlds. These are the precious moments of our lives and what a joy when we can share them together.
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Hand’s Cove is available HERE.
