Dehlia Low and Firefly Soda

When the weather turns cold and the leaves fall off the trees, it takes a little something extra to warm you up inside. Few things do the trick better than a well-hit Dobro lick. It will sort of explode in your chest and creep out to the ends of your phalanges, making them tingle with the spirit. If you don’t have a Dobro handy, you could always try some corn liquor, but ever since Popcorn passed, the warmth has been more reliably communicated by string bands like Dehlia Low. Warm, in fact, is an understatement for this hot quintet that has become a staple of the festival scene. Even over the melee of last year’s Brewgrass, Dehlia Low broadcast not only their individual talents, but also their collective synchronicity. 

So their newly minted live album (simply titled Live) carries with it high expectations for anyone who has seen them perform. Dehlia Low does not disappoint, displaying its own blend of traditional and new hillbilly styles in its natural environment. The music is so well captured that, from time to time, one can forget that it’s being played live. This might be a credit to some fantastic sound engineering, but it also means that listening to the record doesn’t give one the feeling of being at a show in the way Nanci Griffith’s One Fair Summer Evening does.

Not that we were talking about summer. With the wind howling outside the cabin door, high lonesome songs about going home are easy to relate to. Most of these songs, which sound like classic tunes, are originals written by the band. When they are really cranked up, Dehlia Low all seem to be taking solos at the same time, without stepping on one another.  Instead they form a locomotive with each instrument trading position as the drive wheel. If all this motion is not enough to heat you up, you’re going to have a long, cold winter.

The only hope left for breaking up the drudgery of Jack Frost’s reign is to find a way out of town.  In fact, once you get on the road, it’s tempting to just stay out there like a gypsy. Before you set off, it might do you good to hear the cautionary tale of George Fudge offered up by Firefly Soda. George Fudge and the Psychic Rat is a bildungsroman of young George’s sowing of wild oats and apprenticeship to a World Wrestling Federation superstar. Unlikely as it may seem, George’s initiation is not into folding chair manufacture but rather into making pies.

Pies become an instrument of both downfall and redemption as George encounters the eponymous Psychic Rat and a temping pie waitress. All of these elements get worked out by a narrator who bears more than a passing resemblance to the Central Scrutinizer from Frank Zappa’s rock opera Joe’s Garage. Like the songs on Zappa’s coming of age epic, the tunes on George Fudge and the Psychic Rat don’t always make sense. The tale of George Fudge is, however, made with kids in mind, and characters like a morbidly obese groundhog named Fat Bob don’t need to fit a logic model.

Fat Bob’s song is one of the handful on this record that can stand on its own, as is the siren song “No Worries.” Others might not work as well if they come up on shuffle mode, but serve solidly as part of the narrative. The rambling journey is also well served by the band’s gypsy influences. From the shuffling rhythms of the guitar and drums to the hew and cry of the viola, George’s ups and downs get sonic as well as lyric expression from the band. When Firefly Soda gets us to the end of the road, George has acquired a set of pie skills that should warm up any chilly night, or cool down any hot-headed pro wrestler.

— Read more about albums, Asheville and life at Saunk D’s website, www.sanukd.com.