Madelaine Pries | Contributor
Featured image: Andrew Collins Trio challenge what instrumental music can do with their latest folk album. | Courtesy of Andrew Collins Trio
It was a rainy autumn evening, but inside the den of Toronto’s Hugh’s Room, the Andrew Collins Trio brightened the night with the October 21 release of their newest album And It Was Good.
And good it most certainly was.
A medley of folk and jazz music ranging in style from rags to experimental newgrass, the trio’s latest album features songs based on what happened on each of the seven biblical days of creation. The theme of each day is captured in songs like “And It Was Good” through traditional lively fiddle tunes and “Stars, Sun & Moon” with the exploration of celestial airs.
“We are a small band, but we overcompensate for that by bringing way too many instruments,” says band co-founder Andrew Collins, gesturing to the stage packed with guitars, mandolins, mandolas, fiddles, a mandocello and a large string bass. Bandmates Mike Mezzatesta and James McEleney switch easily between instruments during songs to create the illusion of a much larger band.
“The album is a concept album,” says Collins. “It’s based on the seven days of creation story so each piece on the album, each movement, is representative of what happened in each day of the creation story.”
From a spiritual standpoint, the band tries to imagine the sounds and feelings that connect with concepts and things in the creation story, like the soundtrack to a movie.
The wide variety of unique instruments lends well to the band’s many stylistic approaches and experimentation with newgrass music on their latest album, which features an amalgamation of different genres and has been labelled as chambergrass.
“It’s about using the different instruments to diversify the album. It’s like a painter using different colours to have breadth in their body of work,” says Collins.
“It’s about trying to take advantage of these different textures of instruments like the mandocello [which] has a slow, guttural sound and the mandolin is a high, chirpy sort of sound but taking advantage of different combinations help the album evolve throughout.”
The influences for the band’s songs are equally unique. “Spider Cat” is dedicated to a cat with what Collins called a “serious affinity for screen doors,” while “The Chicken Fried Rag” is named after the chicken fried steak of western Texas that Collins found intriguing.
Collins also admits that all but one song on And It Was Good feature, in reality, seven musicians. The four additions come from the Phantasmagoria String Quartet, featuring John Showman, Trent Freeman, Ben Plotnick and Eric Wright. Showman made a guest appearance with the band on Friday night with his fiddle. The result was a string quartet of eloquent and masterful musicians playing off of one another as though in comfortable friendly banter.
And It Was Good was nominated for two Canadian Folk Music Awards, or CFMA, in Instrumental Group of the Year as well as Producer of the Year.
The winners will be announced at the CFMA gala on December 2 and 3 at Toronto’s Isabel Bader Theatre, where the Andrew Collins Trio will be joined by folk musicians from across the country to celebrate and reward Canada’s best folk artists.
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