Black Jake and the Carnies and Orpheum Bell

Black Jake & the Carnies sets fierce murder ballads and cautionary tales to the beat of an old-time string band. The Ypsilanti octet's unique blend American folk, bluegrass and punk (dubbed “crabgrass”) sets a raucous pace for original songs about loup-garous, banjo-pickin’ demoniacs and phrenologists on the skids.

Black Jake and the Carnies is the brainchild of Black Jake (singing/songwriting and banjo) who began writing and performing songs in 2003.  Jake put off the seemingly arduous task of organizing a band for a few years, but it turned out easier than he could have imagined.  Word simply passed from one neighbor to the next, and Jake found that he pretty much had an entire band, from fiddle to mandolin, living within a literal stone's throw of his home in Ypsilanti.  What resulted is a collection of friends and neighbors who quickly gained a reputations as one of the area's most entertaining live acts.  Their traditional instrumentation and high energy performances make the band equally at home, and well received, at punk clubs and farmers markets.

In 2008 the band recorded their first CD :Where the Heather Don't Grow" which was recorded in a single session in Jim Roll's living room (with percussion added later).  The album has received positive reviews in print and online media and garnered airtime on internet and local radio stations, including a live performance on WDET.



Equipped with an orchestral ensemble of banjo, accordion, trumpet, stringed harp, musical saw, cittern, guitar and dobro, double bass, various ukuleles and horned violins, Orpheum Bell performs an original "Country & Eastern" songbook of lullabies, stomps, dirt-road ballads, and gypsy waltzes.

The band came together in 2005 when former Chicago bandmates (Serge van der Voo, Aaron Klein) reconnected in an old Michigan house to trade tapes and listen. Combing through the ruins of originals ideas and melodic fragments, they began to develop a lyrical, percussive sound driven by Klein's "downtrodden rural poetry" and van der Voo's fluid, Hot Club-infused bass lines.

Over the course of the next two years, several multi-instrumentalists coalesced around the core, creating a stark, darkly ornamented sound heard on their 2007 debut release, "Pretty As You".

Relying on old, acoustic instruments, the band's sound moves from chiseled, plaintive song stories to articulate, richly-played instrumentals. The members come at the music from different angles - a classically trained harpsichordist, a rural folk polymath, a church choir girl, one from Holland, another from Ukraine.

Merrill Hodnefield's drifting, tin-cup vocals provide both contrast and complement to Klein's thistled singing and her musical saw and autoharp leaven the mix further.

Annie Crawford, a classically-trained violinist with E. European influence has a sound that is alternately plaintive, pastoral, and brooding. Using traditional and aluminum-horned violins (Stroviols), she threads through fine and coarse textures.

Laurel Premo - equally accomplished on violin, banjo, dobro, mandolin and cittern - plays with a raw, driving folk intensity on everything from the band's rolling clawhammer numbers to tightly woven 3-part vocal harmonies.

Multi-instrumentalist Michael Billmire contributes a range of sounds; delicate harp runs, open-air accordion swells, and silver-trumpet melodies.

Orpheum Bell will be featured in several regional concert series and festival events in '09 and are expanding their touring throughout the Midwest.  "Pearls", the band's follow-up recording to "Pretty As You", is being produced by Jim Roll and is due out for release in the later part of fall 2009.