Hey-Ho,
Let's Go- Uncle Monk
by
Peter Aaron
Woodstock
on a weekend night. On the stage of the Bearsville Theater’s
wood-lined lounge is a male-female acoustic duo, the leader
a dude on mandolin sporting faded jeans, a beard, and long
gray hair. They’re doing a fine job, too, singing and
picking out oldtime and bluegrass tunes; mostly originals
but there’s one or two classics in there by the Carter
Family and other greats. Big deal, you’re thinking,
sounds like just another pair of hippies that missed the last
bus home in 1969, locals that discovered this music the way
most of that generation did; through the Grateful Dead or
Jerry Garcia’s side projects. How wrong you are.
The
group is Uncle Monk, and that bearded mountain man up there
is none other than Tommy Ramone, the founder, producer, and
original drummer of the group Joe Strummer once called “the
granddaddy punk band of ‘em all”—yes, the
Ramones. Wait a minute, you say, the man whose bass drum-pedal
foot pretty much kicked off the entire mid-’70s punk
rock explosion, playing old-time country? Seems like an inconceivable
stretch.
“Well,
there actually are a lot of similarities between the two genres,”
says Tommy [aka Tom Erdelyi], who also plays banjo, dobro,
fiddle, and guitar in the band. “Punk and old-time music
are both very home-brewed styles, where the players are usually
self-taught; in both, you can just pick up an instrument and
learn some simple chord structures. They both have songs that
tell stories, and they’re both very emotionally intense
music. Plus, both have a kind of intangible hipness, something
that’s just inherently cool.”
Tommy’s
partner in Uncle Monk and in life is Claudia Tienan, who
sings and plays guitar and bass. So what’s it like being
in a band with a former Ramone?...
CONTINUE... |
