Catch a Wave on Wild Rose Moon Radio Hour’s Best of 2024
George Schricker and audio producer Nate Butler compare this year’s “Best of” program with a family trip to a waterpark, and this year’s “Best of 2024” show begins fittingly with Mustard’s Retreat's loving rendition of “Gather the Family.” The song written by David Tamulevich and David Hough and collected in the notable “Sing Out” songbook is nicely rendered here by Libby Glover and David Tamulevich. The song’s welcoming attitude reflects the warm hearts of the Ann Arbor-based group and the fine work they have been doing to spread the gospel of folk music for the past four decades.
“Hoosiers, we have a problem,” announces songwriter and guitarist Andrew Morris, a native of Warsaw, Indiana, as he kicks off the group The Matchsellers performing his song, “Blue Grastronauts.” With dazzling razor-sharp breaks and incredibly tight musicianship, the song is driven by Morris’s Midwestern baritone drawl, delivering the wacky story. It is essentially a testament to some of the greats of Bluegrass—Earl Scruggs, Bill Monroe, Kenny Baker, and Jimmy Martin–while introducing the musical prowess of each of the members of the band, Julie Bates/Fiddle, Morris/Guitar, Brian McCarty/Mandolin and Brandon Day/Bass.
After shooshing down the water slide of bluegrass, the lively water play continues with folk legend John Gorka’s fantastic sing-along, “Branching Out.” John sings, “When I grow up, I want to be a tree, gonna make my home with the birds and the bees, and the squirrels they can count on me . . .” eventually culminating in the captivating chorus, “I’m going to reach, I’m going to reach, I’m going to reach, reach for the sky.” It’s great fun and showcases John’s great love of performing in front of live audiences – you can hear his smile inside every word.
You can almost feel the water falling from the pool fountain as Francis Luke Accord (Brian Powers and Nicholas Gunty) begins their incredible composition, “The Great Zero.” The song is full of questions that continue like a string of Zen Koans, like a murmuring brook—the questions are a chance to explore the beauty of being while remaining content to revere its mystery.
Suddenly, after lolling on our inner tubes on the beautiful lazy river of this dream-like music, we are thrust over the rollicking rapids by Mark Anella’s sparky guitar playing as he introduces his comical song, “Free Seeds.” With the aid of his Loose Associates bandmate Sophia Wilson on pocket banjo and accompanying vocals, his music tells the tale of birds stealing seeds from his garden and his quest to make peace with the situation.
Wild Rose Moon Radio Hour’s band leader, John Bahler, whooshes right down the sluiceway with his consummate cross-picking and singing in the next segment of the show, performing his classic country and bluegrass-driven piece, “Devil of a Man.” Accompanying John on bass, Nathan Waddill provides a brilliant and bubbling backdrop that rises as a fountain of marvelous play during the song’s break.
Sliding along with a rock’n’roll back beat, Mike Vial continues driving the fun with the song “Love Birds,” a number he wrote and then performed for his wife on their wedding day, Love Birds. Accompanied by Ozzie Andrews on stand-up bass and Stuart Tucker on drums and splashy cymbals, the Ann Arbor-based songwriter Vial sells the lyric, “We don’t need to be anything other than, we don’t need to be anything more, than two love birds, who love each other more than anyone . . . in . . . the . . . world.”
Following Mike is another great Michigan-based songwriter, Tom Fry, doing a comical song, a Delta-blues-inspired piece titled “My Baby Can’t Stay Put.” The song takes full advantage of his Resonator guitar, slip-sliding and splashing up and down the neck and inviting us into his fun-filled lyric: “My baby can’t stay put; she’s afraid of growing roots; she drives those air-o-planes; gonna drive me insane.”
Exhausted from all the frolic of the preceding songs, John Kennedy and his band, Kennedy’s Kitchen, arrive just in time for us to float along again on their beautiful rendition of “Yellow River.” Initially penned by host George Schricker as a simple folk ballad, the song has been deftly converted into a marvelous prayer consecrating the river and its seasons. With delicate mandolin picking by Chris O’Brien and whispering harmonies supplied by Chris, John, and Joel Cooper, the song has been rendered too beautiful for words. “Oh, the Yellow River, twinklin’ in the summertime, flowing like a nursery rhyme, my heart remembers best.” The way the band brings such intimate life to the song is remarkable. The dreamlike chorus emerges like a healing balm, embracing the listener in a virtual tunnel of musical love.
Exiting the trip on the Yellow River, Abbie Thomas and her band of Caitlin Faust on fiddle, Simon Kauffman Hurst on Keys, and Issac Fisher on bass take us into the open waters with their laid-back rhythm and blues rendition of Abby’s hit, “I’m Not Gonna Lie.” Abby delivers her silky smooth and impassioned vocals, “When it’s all too much, don’t run away; that’s the time to be stubborn, hold onto your lover, keep a promise, and stay.”
John Bahler’s Stampede String Band bubbles back in with “End of the Line,” a bluegrass-inspired piece written and sung by Aaron Nicely. The song is driven by strong harmonies between John and Aaron and John’s fretful & soul-filled mandolin. “And every time I tried, I start looking for a sign; I know I’ve reached the end of the line.”
At the “end of the line,” we break back into open waters with “Roann” by The Matchsellers. “Roann,” written for a town in Indiana, is a lovely and heartbreaking Country Western song. On the chorus, the harmonies between Bates and Morris are to die for–chocolaty and smooth–warming us down to our cowhides: “Roann, Roann, I’m so sorry this is the way it ends.” It is a song you might hear as the last dance at the sock hop.
Next, as we near the beach, the Visionary Guitarist Hiroya Tsukamoto builds a tribute song to the Bon Fire tradition in Japan. Hiroya layers his compositions using a looper, an electronic repeating machine. So what you hear is the birth of a composition, built anew each time it is played. The sonic experience of the guitar and vocal working together engages more than the ears; the music sways and builds and helps to focus our hearts and minds together. His work mirrors life itself, layering one experience upon another–each life creating a layered music all its own.
What’s this? Could there be rough seas ahead for the new year? Is a thunderstorm approaching the water park?
Of course, if there were no trouble, there might be no change, no evolution. And even though the waters ahead might seem choppy, we always have the fellowship of songs to help keep us afloat. And speaking of fellowship, Mallory Graham and Scott Tyler know how to bring that commodity when they share their unique brand of “Hill Country” Country Rock in their song, “Trouble.” Playing a circus-sounding accordion, Mallory drives the song ahead, appropriately, like a carnival barker–delivering her struggle with trouble both as a subject and object until she concludes with this ironic twist:
“Trouble’s showing up where I expect it least, Just minding my own business like I ought to be. But trouble’s coming up, and I can’t help but think--Is trouble blaming trouble on me?”
Yeah, there’ll be trouble.
Fortunately, we have some music for that.
-George Schricker