There’s a phrase of music on Anytime, No Name String Band’s new album, where the banjo is heard alone, in a worried ponder, as if wondering where the tune will go — and if it will get to come along. Old time music is filled with this kind of simple, emotional tension. What happens next is what No Name does so well. Guitar, fiddle and bass rush in and pick the old banjo up like a wounded soldier. The song commences to swoop and swell with clarity. In this way, the band blends the rustic ornamentation of North Carolina fiddle master Tommy Jarrell with the orchestral grandeur of Aaron Copland.
The song is called “Untitled #14” and it’s part of a super tasty collection of down-home originals mixed with newly interpreted standards. Most of the tracks are instrumentals, and all of them reveal a community of players in a full embrace of an art form — and each other.
“All seven of us get along much better than any band has any right to,” says banjoist Chris Ptasnik. The group treated the recording of Anytime as an opportunity to spend a day together doing something very special: record their songs live, sometimes in one take, onstage at the venerable Stoughton Opera House.
The approach works, and the result is also a testament to the mad location recording skills of Andrew LaValley, who oversaw the day’s work. There’s not a folk musician around who doesn’t pine to play that stage, let alone record there. The Opera House has some of the best acoustics around, and the environment seems to have met the band halfway. You can almost hear the creaking wood of the hardback seats co-mingling with the mahogany and pine of fiddle, guitar and string bass.
Then there’s the banjo. This is a showcase for the five-string clawhammer. On top of Ptasnik’s delightfully cockeyed playing, founding member Brian Zimmerman’s banjo hovers above the action like a crazed drone. Zimmerman’s banjo and Hannah Muehlbauer’s fiddle are in constant conversation.
The band plays “Farewell Trion” a hair too fast, yet they still manage to space out the dynamics neatly. Like most fiddle numbers, the song is deceptively complex. It has a rest smack in the middle of the A part. The rest must be neither too long nor too short. The listener’s heart is aching while it happens, so a lot is at stake. No Name nails it and then, in an interpretive stroke, ends the song by repeating that rest, leaving the resolution of the beautiful tune completely up to the listener.
There’s a lovely sequence in “Untitled #14” where the melody is clearly stated and everything is situated. Mid-flight, the band seems to take an opportunity to ask itself, “Is everyone okay?” A roll call happens. One by one, each instrument says “yes,” each in its own bashful way. The song proceeds.
There’s talk of Zimmerman moving on, away from the band, which would be a shame, since everyone is getting along so well.