Jordan Tice and Joseph Terrell

Jordan Tice and Joseph Terrell Live at Cafe Wha? | Friday, Dec 5th | 6PM Show, 5PM Doors

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Jordan Tice is a musical seeker of the most dedicated sort. Growing up in Annapolis Maryland, as a teenage rocker and student of jazz and music composition at Towson University, he has become among the most innovative acoustic guitarists of the modern age. Surrounded by a family of bluegrass musicians and opening for American music luminaries such as David Bromberg and Tony Rice at an early age, Tice found his musical center, one which he now channels into a refreshing approach to songcraft. Speaking to the components that fuel the progressivism intrinsic to some of his closest heroes, Jordan says, “Artists like John Hartford or Norman Blake chose to look beyond the idiomatic elements of the music and tap into where those things came from. They learned from literal examples, but they were working more off abstractions that they absorbed into their own work, creating something entirely new.”

Listening to the breadth of Jordan’s discography, which includes seven projects as a solo artist and four as a founding member of the preeminent string band, Hawktail (formerly Haas Kowert Tice), one will hear these sorts of abstractions at play in his own work. Equally virtuosic as a flatpicker and fingerstylist, and with a casual vocal style, Tice conjures ingredients from seemingly far-flung worlds with ease that have earned him glowing press from such outlets as NPR Music and American Songwriter and taken him to stages such as the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and the Ryman Auditorium (among many many others). His performances call upon the repertories of American and British Isles folk, bluegrass, blues and more pop-oriented songs, and though his earlier releases are instrumental in focus, he has been carefully honing his craft as a singer-songwriter in his most recent work. This includes his Motivational Speakeasy (produced by Kenneth Pattengale of the Milk Carton Kids) and Badlettsville, projects which make it easy to confuse his originals for timeworn chestnuts. Having occupied the roles of guitar ace, sideman, songwriter and student of American music for the better part of his life, Jordan’s songs are enriching for all manner of listeners, from guitar fanatics to more casual fans of Americana music; bending form and tradition through his singular approach, he delivers performances that are not weighted by any one area of his prowess, allowing listeners to join his world of candor, wit and ineffable facility with comfort.

Jordan’s compositions run the gamut from decadent, instrumental ragtime numbers (“Bachelorette Party”), poetic and homespun folk songs in the early-Dylan tradition (“Bad Little Idea”), and well-oiled ensemble pieces that showcase the raucous dance origins of vernacular music (Hawktail’s music). Marrying instrumental precision with the modesty of bedrock music, Hawktail is a convenient centerpiece for displaying the wide range of moods and sounds he can call upon with the help of his distinguished and longstanding collaborators, Brittany Haas and Paul Kowert. Over the last decade, this unit has found themselves across the United States many times, overseas, and in collaboration with acts such as Aoife O’Donovan and Swedish confidantes, Väsen. Though they may cast a wide net when viewed together, all these outlets suggest an impressively unified path of expression, one with a goalpost of integrity and congruence.

As a side musician, Jordan has worked with a great number of disparate artists, including Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse), Steve Martin, Aoife O’Donovan, David Rawlings, Tony Trischka, Väsen, and Yola. While unmistakably himself in these situations, Tice expertly sublimates his familiar touchstones, affording an approach to ensemble playing that is highly uncommon among solo artists, calling to mind such iconoclasts as David Bromberg and Clarence White. Like these figures of previous generations, Jordan can see pathways across genre markers, using the language of his musical upbringing in a way that only suggests the disposition of an earnest fan and lifelong student of music.

On his newest project, Badlettsville, Tice brings together an all-star ensemble of acoustic musicians to realize his take on several of his favorite covers and originals that, while staples of his live show, never made it on to a previous release. The EP begins with his acoustic treatment of Bob Dylan’s, “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven,” featuring impressionistic lyrics flowing over a trancelike backdrop of guitar, fiddle, bass and bongoes. The second track, “Mean Old World,” is an anthemic folk original reflecting on the inevitable change life brings, featuring lush harmonies from Aoife O’Donovan and Andrew Marlin. The collection ends with two duets featuring Hawktail bandmate, bassist Paul Kowert: the jaunty instrumental, “Badlettsville,” and a jazzy, whimsical romp through Randy Newman’s “Dayton, Ohio- 1903.” The seamless combination of covers and originals further cements Tice’s reputation as a bold and inventive voice in folk music with his eye on an earnest prize: generating a body of work that stands up to the test of time.

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Joseph grew up in a big Quaker family in the North Carolina Piedmont. He’s spent the last ten years writing and singing with folk band Mipso. 

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“To call a howl “good for nothing” is a compliment. all of the best howls are.

i got a howl stuck in my head a few years ago when i started noticing the trees. somehow they'd escaped my imagination since i was a kid in the woods. i welcomed them back. sycamores in particular captured my attention. their bark is a cousin to skin. i learned there are sixty-two types of oaks in north carolina. the water oak is my favorite. its waxy teardrops droop over creeks. i thought a good bit about hackberry and greenbriar, too, and when summer ended i fell in love with goldenrod. it felt good to pay attention. they had been there all along.

i was moving around a lot at the time. i crashed with barry and susan, spent a while in alex and caroline's basement.  i quit trying to write all together, quit playing for a while too. then at the beginning of spring i started dragging a chair under a tree in the yard. wherever i was i would try to spend the morning outside with a guitar. i found a lot of songs that way, like they were already there, waiting for me to sing them out loud. i hope that sounds as strange as it felt. 

i did my share of howling with chris in the studio in chapel hill. we had fun putting foam under the strings of old guitars and really working the channel strip. you can make a 1937 triple-o twenty eight sound like a kalimba. somebody cut down that rosewood tree in brazil 85 years ago and now it sounds new and strange, almost funny. i loved that. we rolled all the treble off of a '35 D-18, which is a weird thing to do to a bright guitar. i tuned a '42 LG-OO way up to a new open D (DADADF#) and Jerry asked me if i was crazy. to be fair it was his guitar getting torqued. we had a lot of fun, me and chris. jerry had fun, too.

chris wrote some beautiful string arrangements for libby, tati, and drew. matt and cameron came into the fold, and might be my favorite rhythm section in the history of rhythm. matt and evan added their smoothness to all the picking and plucking and i loved those sounds too. chessa and skylar and tift were the last to come, and their voices made the whole thing feel a little more human. this whole thing has been a process of asking friends for help.

i heard a howl float over the pasture in Randolph County where we erected a big sign for the album occasion. i grew up there. i liked the feeling of painting two hundred and sixteen square feet of plywood in a field on the backside of the farm, two miles from any road. we camped out afterward and ate persimmon pudding then burned the paper plates. the sign blew down in the big christmas storm. even better. it was good for nothing while it lasted.”

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