{"id":5276,"date":"2012-03-11T22:38:52","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T05:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=5276"},"modified":"2012-03-12T16:50:35","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T23:50:35","slug":"carolina-chocolate-drops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/03\/carolina-chocolate-drops\/","title":{"rendered":"CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Keeping string-band music history alive while pushing it into the future\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Last year had its ups and downs for Carolina Chocolate Drops. The North Carolina string band won a Grammy for 2010\u2019s Genuine Negro Jig<\/em> album, but experienced the loss of founding member Justin Robinson and the addition of multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins. The combination of heightened expectations and seismic changes in the band was a recipe for stress. \u201cWe had a brand-new ensemble,\u201d says guitarist and banjo player Dom Flemons. \u201cBut we were going into new territory, and at the same time we were\u00a0a lot freer to try different stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

That included the selection of\u00a0Americana veteran Buddy Miller to produce the group\u2019s new album, Leaving Eden<\/em>. The trio recorded in Miller\u2019s Nashville home studio with the intent of capturing the sound of the band\u2019s unrestrained live performances. \u201c[Negro Jig<\/em> producer] Joe Henry made a great record, but he had a very specific soundscape that he worked within,\u201d Flemons says. \u201cWe wanted to try to bring out more of the brightness\u00a0and fullness of the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller and the band succeeded in creating a freewheeling, genre-blending collection that bursts with the Chocolate Drops\u2019 irresistible energy, from the\u00a0rap- and soul-influenced \u201cCountry Girl\u201d to deft takes on South African guitarist\u00a0Hannes Coetzee\u2019s instrumental \u201cMahalla\u201d and the traditional song \u201cI Truly Understand That You Love Another Man.\u201d For Flemons it\u2019s the delicate title cut, sung by fellow founding member Rhiannon Giddens, that epitomizes the Chocolate Drops\u2019 post-Jig<\/em> journey. \u201cThat song displays a lot of the changes that the group\u2019s gone through while making our way to a broader musical audience,\u201d he says. \u201cWe haven\u2019t moved away from old-time at all, but there\u2019s a broader audience we\u2019ve been reaching that we haven\u2019t been\u00a0able to reach before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s \u201cold-time\u201d roots are in the Piedmont tradition of black string bands, a musical subgenre the Chocolate Drops are looking to not just preserve but expand upon. \u201cWe don\u2019t try to be too didactic about it by beating people over the head with a history lesson,\u201d says Flemons. \u201cBut we try to play good music, and when they ask, \u2018Where did you get that song?\u2019 then you can lay down some history that will hopefully put them on a journey\u2014whether it\u2019s to look up their own stuff or give them an interesting factoid they can share with somebody else. The musical history is important, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily need to get in\u00a0the way of entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Juli Thanki<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS Keeping string-band music history alive while pushing it into the future\u00a0 Last year had its ups and downs for Carolina Chocolate Drops. The North Carolina string band won a Grammy for 2010\u2019s Genuine Negro Jig album, but experienced the loss of founding member Justin Robinson and the addition of multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[3217,3185,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5276"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5357,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions\/5357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}