Live at the Cafe Carpe: Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, December 2008 & 2009

Audio Mixers: Peter Mulvey; Ric Probst.
Recording information: Cafe Carpe, Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin (12/2008); Cafe Carpe, Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin (12/2009).
The long tradition of singer/songwriters, dating back to Bob Dylan in the 1960s, has produced a large catalog of original songs, most of which are closely associated with the people who wrote them. That may help explain the spate of folk trios made up of individual singer/songwriters banding together to perform a lot of cover songs, groups like Cry Cry Cry and Red Horse. Redbird, the trio of Kris Delmhorst, Jeffrey Foucault, and Peter Mulvey is another such assemblage, and on this live album from the Café Carpe in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, they demonstrate both the virtues and the potential pitfalls of the approach. Redbird is not a trio in the Peter, Paul & Mary sense, focusing on creating a vocal harmony blend, so much as they are a group of soloists in which each song is sung as a lead by one alternating member, with the others supporting, generally on the choruses. They draw material from a wide range of sources including jazz, folk, rock, blues, and country, and they are to be commended for shining a light on compositions that generally get performed only when the people who wrote them feel like dragging them out, songs like Neil Young's "For the Turnstiles" and Rickie Lee Jones' "Stewart's Coat" (both sung by Delmhorst). Other songs are better known, such as Duke Ellington's perennial "I'm Beginning to See the Light" and Faces' "Ooh La La," which has gotten increased attention since Rod Stewart covered it as a solo number. In putting together a repertoire to play to live audiences, the trio sometimes risks coming off as a novelty act, however, as they get laughs for "What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)" and the group-written "Phonebooth of Love." Such numbers serve as light entertainment and changes of pace in a show, but don't work as well on repeated listenings of a disc. Still, the singers in Redbird have a workable concept for their group, and there are plenty of great songs out there waiting to be rediscovered and covered. ~ William Ruhlmann