Search - TriBeCaStan :: Strange Cousin

Welcome to TriBeCaStan, a tiny province without borders located just south of Manhattan. And while it may not be real, their debut album Strange Cousin captures the ancient futuristic sound you might expect to encounter if you were able to visit such a place. In this imaginary land, Slovakian shepherds with six-foot-tall pipes, Swedish nykelharpas, and Pakistani taxi horns live together in peace, harmony, and mayhem.

Throughout the album and in their spirited live performances, John Kruth and Jeff Greene play over two dozen instruments between them. While Kruth is best known for his frenetic Banshee -style of mandolin playing with the Meat Puppets and the Violent Femmes, his TriBeCaStani grab bag of instruments includes mandocello, the Moldavian kaval, harmonica, banjo, royal benju, zurna, penny whistle, sheng, Uilleann chanter, bladder pipe, crumhorn, Kelhorn, gong, Indian oboe, and his voice. Also a fine mandolinist in his own right, Greene plays the Afghan rubab, yayli tambur, nyckleharpa, six-string ukulele, kanun, saz, hurdy gurdy, and the koncovka and fujara overtone flutes, as well as a myriad of percussion instruments including the steel drum, chromatic tambourine, guiro, tupan, khamok, and the Jew's harp.

TriBeCaStan's influences are as freewheeling and wide-ranging as their instrument menagerie, infusing original compositions and traditional tunes with exotic rhythms and scales. ''For 'Dancing Girls,' one of their traditional re-arrangements, We took a Tajik melody, made it our own, and then added a Bulgarian kaval, an Afghani rubab, and some Moroccan drums like the darbuka. And of course, there s a plucked mandocello doing a rock thing,'' laughs Greene. They even occasionally toss in a jazz melody by Don Cherry (''Mopti,'' a banjo-laced cover of the Cherry tune based on a Malian village song) or Yusef Lateef, (''Yusef s Motif,'' with the peculiar resonance of an African flute and the overtones of a Slovakian shepherd s pipe pay homage to his mentor).

They are joined on Strange Cousin by a stellar cast of musical luminaries. Ween's Dave Dreiwitz plays bass and pocket trumpet. Matt Darriau of The Klezmatics lends his Klezmer-style clarinet and wailing alto saxophone to the mix, along with the ethereal strains of Bulgarian kaval and Bulgarian gaida. The Moroccan percussionist Brahim Fribgane (most often seen with Hassan Hakmoun and Adam Rudolph s Go Organic Orchestra) performs intricate poly-rhythms on riq, darbuka, bender, dumbek, and frame drum. Alt-country star Jolie Holland s haunting voice weaves in and out of the Sonny Sharrock number ''Many Mansions,'' while her eerie box fiddle elevates the Celtic-inspired jig ''The Bottle Man.'' And the great jazz trombonist and seashellist Steve Turre (long-standing member of the Saturday Night Live Band and once-member of Rahsaan Roland Kirk's Vibration Society) offers up his truly unique voice.

With such a rich and eclectic fusion of musical sounds and styles, TriBeCaStan means to take you as close as possible to divine musical annihilation. Perhaps that is why they bestow this blessing and warning upon the listener: ''May all the gods smile upon you at once without your skull exploding.''