Months before Alison Krauss was holding court with Robert Plant in sessions that would yield Raising Sand, all-girl supergroup Uncle Earl were holed up with John Paul Jones in a Tennessee studio, recording their sophomore album, Waterloo, Tennessee, under his watchful eye.
Released on Rounder Records this past March, Waterloo contemplates loss, longing, and isolation with guest stars like Gillian Welch (on drums!), Tara Nevins, and Jones himself. Steeped in centuries of musical lore, the album employs shape-note singing, songs from the 1800s about Napoleon Bonaparte’s fall and exile, and reworkings of classics by Olla Belle Reed, A.P. Carter, and Bob Dylan. These songs fit comfortably with originals contributed by each Uncle Earl member, and the result is an album that seamlessly straddles old and new, expanding on the boundaries of the old-time genre in a compelling, contemporary way.
Prominent players in the old-time, acoustic music revival, Uncle Earl is comprised of Kristin Andreassen, Rayna Gellert, KC Groves, and Abigail Washburn, world-class musicians who all contribute material and provide vocals for Uncle Earl. Nowhere is Uncle Earl’s modern take on bluegrass more apparent than in the video for Waterloo track “Streak O’ Lean, Streak O’ Fat.” The g’Earls’ take on this traditional fiddle tune features Abigail doing shout-outs in Mandarin Chinese (she’s fluent), a dance-off in a Chinese restaurant, and a cameo by Jones on piano.
“We related to John on this very human level,” Andreassen said in an exclusive interview with Gibson. “We liked hearing stories of private planes and throwing things out the window at hotel parties, and we didn’t already know all those stories so it made it more fun for John to tell them.”
How did you guys hook up with John Paul Jones? Were you already a fan?
I started listening to Zeppelin in junior high when my first boyfriend ever made me a complete set of cassette tapes, each with the cover drawn by him as a representation of the real Zeppelin album cover.
The next I really thought about Zeppelin was when we met John at Rockygrass in ’04. We had a six-hour bar gig at Oskar Blues in Lyons, Colorado. Abby had left that morning because her grandfather was sick, and we’d only been a band about four months so the truth is, we didn’t have a banjo player and we barely had enough material to cover three hours of a gig. We saw [Nickel Creek’s] Chris Thile in the audience and begged him up on-stage and John came with him.
Ultimately, I think one of the reasons the relationship with John worked as well as it did is because while we had a lot of respect for him musically, we weren’t falling over ourselves with fandom. There was a moment this summer when I really understood the level of stardom John's at. At Bonnaroo there was a midnight superjam with John, Ben Harper, and ?uestlove from the Roots. Suddenly, this same man who had sat in with us just hours before playing sensitive mandolin breaks was surrounded by security. I was talking to John backstage, and the next thing you know I was whisked away behind some yellow caution tape. John entered the stage in a stately stroll and took a full 10 minutes to pick up his bass and play a note because the roar of the crowd was so deafening. I think if I had had to go into the studio with John the day after that performance, I would have been totally intimidated.
What direction did John steer the band in?
His initial input was that he thought we should be doing more originals so this was a good encouragement for us to finish up our new songs. He was a gentle presence in the studio. We probably recorded a few more things that were pretty and girly and poppy this time around, to be honest. There were songs that we kept trying different ways, trying to figure them out. It was definitely the kind of album where we recorded things we weren't already playing live. In a way, I wish we had had a little more of a break between the pre-production and the recording. The performances are fresh and full of heart, but the grooves are just not as comfortable as they are after a summer on the road.
How did you winnow down the song selection?
Because this band is crazy enough to all live in different cities, the process of rehearsing and planning for a new record has to be a pretty conscious thing. We had a rehearsal retreat in January ’06 at KC’s house in Colorado to start working on the record, and each of us was supposed to bring something traditional, something original, and something partly finished that we could work on as a co-write. So we started with that list and it was a pretty big one.
What guitar did you use on the album?
I asked Rayna to bring her J-45 to Nashville specifically to record with it. It’s just the perfect old-time rhythm guitar. It’s got this real mellow, fat bass sound that might drive a bluegrass picker crazy. But for old-time rhythm just pounding out the bass runs and the groove, the J-45 couldn't be more perfect. I think of the tone as sounding like the color of the top—this warm, orangey brown, with a smoky catch in its throat. I love it.
How did exile and Napoleon Bonaparte become a focal point of the album?
The exile thing was just a very personal experience I was having of feeling homeless. It has to do with being a touring musician and losing track of any concept of home because you’re just not there enough to feel like you have a community, then returning home only to feel like a stranger there. I told my friend Aoife [O’Donovan of Crooked Still and Sometymes Why] that I felt shut out of my own life like an exile and she mentioned the Bonaparte song. I was feeling Napoleon’s experience in this very human way when I started singing the song. The lonesomeness of having a life, leaving it, and not being able to return to it quite the way it was. That’s how I was thinking of Napoleon, not politically but personally.
Napoleon was a star in the modern sense of the word—a celebrity that the common people love to follow. Within months of his death, there were very popular folk songs about his life, his loves, his exile, and his death. The Bonaparte song really is the US Magazine article of the 1830s.