It's Young. It's Hip. It's Sexy. It's Old.

The Boston Globe recently published a great article by Scott Alarik about a music scene that is very much evident at the Narrows. Some call it old-timey; others call it roots.

No matter. It's young. It's hip. It's sexy. It's old.

Groups like Ollabelle (coming for their third appearance on Friday, March 18), the Duhks (who recently tore down the house at the Narrows) and the Mammals (who played the Narrows awhile back) are at the heart of the scene.

Here's a condensed version of the article, which you can read in its entirety at www.bostonglobe.com at least for a little while longer.


By Scott Alarik, Globe Correspondent February 6, 2005

CAMBRIDGE -- ''Everybody on the West Coast is calling old-time music the new punk," says Crooked Jades singer-guitarist Jeff Kazor...

...Old time is enjoying a tremendous national revival, partly due to smart young bands like the Crooked Jades, Ollabelle, the Duhks, the Reeltime Travelers, Uncle Earl, the Mammals, and Boston's own Crooked Still. But even more, it's hot because it has existed almost entirely underground for years, preserved as a fun-loving social music, with a fiercely anti-commercial, anti-star vibe that pop-weary young people are eating up with an oaken spoon...

...How popular is old time getting? There's no better barometer than banjo sales. Since 2000, Deering Banjos, the country's most respected banjo maker, has enjoyed a 30 percent sales increase -- every year. According to CEO Janet Deering, the floodgates burst open that year due to the old-timey soundtrack to ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

But that just tapped a wave that was already rising. In 1997, the company introduced its Goodtime model, an affordable, portable banjo designed especially for the bouncy clawhammer style of old-time music and marketed to amateur jammers. It immediately became Deering's best-selling model and now accounts for fully one-third of its product sales...

...Originally, old-time music was simply the term Southerners used to describe their traditional music, the songs and instrumental tunes passed down through generations. In its modern incarnation, it shares much with bluegrass, since both spring from the same soil. But old time generally has a more spacious, ''take-off-your-boots-and-set-a-spell" feel to it. If bluegrass stands on its toes, old time sits back on its heels.

A lot of the scene's young players literally grew up in the music, learning it at fiddle camps and festival parking-lot jams. Local fiddler Laura Cortese, who plays in a lighthearted old-time band called the Jolly Bankers, cut her teeth at Scottish fiddle camps, but was drawn to old time because it was so American, and so was she. She now displays a fluid mastery of both styles.

''Old time is very groove-focused and not so notey as some other traditional styles," she says. ''So if you can feel the music, even if your fingers can't move real fast, you can totally have something to offer in a jam. No matter what old-time session I've been at, it didn't matter how good you were; you were sitting in the same circle, all grooving together."

The Foghorn String Band is the pied piper of a burgeoning old-time revival in Portland, Ore. All but one member grew up in families where folk was played socially, and they wear the music like a second skin. And yes, they take their name from the Dixie-spouting cartoon rooster Foghorn Leghorn.

''I think old-time music is seen almost like a craft," says Foghorn mandolinist Caleb Klauder. ''You're not up there performing, being a rock star; it's something everybody's doing together, that's the huge beauty of it. It isn't anybody's music; it's everybody's."

That aesthetic is deeply ingrained in the modern culture of the music. After the '60s folk revival waned, old-time devotees determined to preserve it by rejecting the music business, focusing instead on creating a new folk culture for the old music.

Fiddler Jay Ungar is a perfect example. A veteran of the '60s rock band Cat Mother and the All-Night Newsboys, he moved to upstate New York in the early '70s, helped create ongoing folk dances, and looked for fun ways to get kids interested in the music. That led to the creation of the popular Fiddle and Dance camps at Ashokan, N.Y.

His daughter Ruth Ungar is now in the vanguard of the old-time revival, fiddling with the street-smart, folk-sweet band the Mammals.

''Old time was sort of a separatist movement, as was the folk-dance revival, identified with the back-to-the-land migrations of post-'60s culture," Jay Ungar says. ''We were out to create a community with its own culture, and to make this our folk music.

''We raised children in that community, and now they want to keep it going, which is wonderful beyond belief. Many of us joked at the time that our kids would probably grow up to be bankers and lawyers, because we sure rebelled against our parents' culture." ...

© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.

Put together by Steve the very humbe Emcee at the Narrows