“Sounds Like Old Times” Library Coffeehouse

“Sounds Like Old Times” Library Coffeehouse February 7

Dave Peloquin and Bob Webb will bring legendary music to the Camden Library Coffeehouse on Thursday evening, February 7, at 7:00 pm, as part of the town’s “America’s Music” celebration. “Sounds Like Old Times: Rural American Voices” draws from the legendary performers of radio and recording, including the “Blue Yodeller” Jimmie Rodgers, the Delmore Brothers, the Carter Family, Hank Williams, and various string bands that provided entertainment from the Southern Appalachians to the plains of Texas and Oklahoma. They feature songs by the “Dust Bowl Balladeer” Woody Guthrie, and the duo tip their caps to performers who influenced them when they began playing in the 1960s, among them the late Doc Watson, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, the New Lost City Ramblers, and bluesmen Brownie McGhee and Sam Chatmon.

The Coffeehouse begins at 7:00 pm on February 7 at the Camden Public Library; the admission is $7.

The two Maine-based musicians, Dave Peloquin and Bob Webb, have been mining for black gold; but it’s not oil. They have returned to the now-antique 78-rpm phonograph records from the period 1927-1953 to prepare a concert program about the commercial origins of country-western and folk music.

Dave’s clear tenor voice and Bob’s strong baritone are

accompanied with guitars, five-string banjo, mandola, and harmonica. “We’re singing folk songs, really,” Webb says. “After World War II, the country-western and folk genres became commercialized and standardized. Our music owes to the earlier decades, when singers and musicians tried everything from traditional ballads to orchestral music in order to sell the newfangled phonographs. During the 1920s and ’30s recordings were a popular new medium, much like electronic music today. They played all kinds of wonderful music then.” Dave and Bob’s CD is titled “Sounds Like Old Times.”

“America’s Music” is a collaboration of the Town of Camden, Bay Chamber Concerts, and the Camden Public Library and includes a film series as well as the Library Coffeehouse concert on February 7. The free film program features documentary film screenings and dynamic conversation exploring twentieth-century American popular music led by well-known local musician Glenn Jenks, on Sunday afternoons at the Camden library. The upcoming films film schedule features: Sunday, January 27, 3:00 pm – Swing Jazz; Sunday, February 3, 3:00 pm– Bluegrass and Country Music; Sunday, February 10, 3:00 pm – Rock; and Sunday, February 17, 3:00 pm – From Mambo to Hip Hop.