From the Detroit Free Press - 3/10/05
Band discovers its name on a toboggan hill
Every bluegrass band worth its banjo needs a mountain home. That's why the Balduck Mountain Ramblers are named after what their Web site calls "one of the few topographic features on the northeast side of Detroit."
"We're named after the toboggan hill at Balduck Park," says member John Denomme.
The four members of the group are alumni of the old Catholic boys prep school, Austin High. Performing together since 1984, they play bluegrass and Western swing, folk music, pub tunes, gospel and a capella selections.
Mike Sawicki of Harper Woods, who sings and plays bass fiddle, is a lawyer. Joel Stone of West Bloomfield, who sings and plays mandolin, is an illustrator and designer. Kevin Taylor of Grosse Pointe Woods, who sings and plays banjo, mandolin, guitar, dobro and steel guitar, is an insurance company executive. Denomme of Grosse Pointe Woods, who sings and plays guitar and bass fiddle, is a full-time professional musician. He also leads the John Denomme Jazz Trio.
The group will be playing Saturday at a fund-raiser for the Historic Players Playhouse. The event will run from 8 to 11 p.m. at the club, 3321 E. Jefferson. Tickets are $30 and include a light dinner and table snacks. For tickets or more information, call 586-792-4030, 8 a.m.-9 p.m. daily.
For more information on the band visit the band's Web site, www.balduckmtnramblers.com.
By Dana Jackson
Grosse Pointe Times – March 9, 2005
Old Friends Share the Good Times and the Stage
By Amy Powell
Their friendship has withstood the test of time – literally and musically speaking.
Through college life and uncharted careers, weddings and new babies and Irish ditties and sea shanties, the four men that make up acoustic string band the Balduck Mountain Ramblers have seen each other through countless milestones.
For more than 20 years, the group whose roots are embedded deep in Grosse Pointe, have combined talented vocals with guitars, fiddles and banjos, a handful of original tunes and an always comedic stage presence.
“That’s what makes people want to come see the band. Sometimes we wear the audience right out,” said John Denomme, 53, who described one incident in which an unsuspecting audience was asked to play kazoos to the group’s banjo-style rendition of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. “Those are the sort of surprises we like to pull.”
They even used a bit of humor in their name – an exaggerated dedication to the rather flat park they each spent days staring out at from their Austin Catholic High School classroom, wishing they were on the toboggan sled.
“If we hear some chuckles from the audience, it means they get the joke,” said Denomme, a guitarist, bassist and vocalist.
The group originated from informal, after-college “jam” sessions held by high school buddies Mike Sawicki, Joel Stone and Kevin Taylor, now 48. Stone, once manager of the former Village Records and Tapes, urged owner and Austin High alumnus Denomme to join the Tuesday evening practices.
“We’ve played at some really great places and some lousy places,” said Stone, who now calls West Bloomfield home. “But the fact that it’s all acoustic and we do all kinds of music, it never gets old,” said Stone, who plays mandolin and Irish drums.
Like the band’s shift from gigs in church basements to a crowd of over 4,000 at Meadowbrook, its once bluegrass-only music has also evolved over time.
“Through the years, we’ve developed a musical repertoire that’s wandered from its roots,” Denomme said about styles that cross bluegrass, old time country, Motown and Western Swing.
Once regulars at the Soup Kitchen Saloon and Woodbridge Tavern, Woods resident Denomme said the group gave up pub work about 10 years ago. Now, it’s private parties, community concert series and parks and recreation events.
“It gets us home a little earlier now that we have families.”
Taylor, also a Woods resident, adds his musical talents on banjo, mandolin, steel guitar, dobro and vocals. Sawicki, who lives in Harper Woods, plays bass fiddle and sings.
Denomme doesn’t attribute the group’s lasting ties to anything sentimental.
“There was no conscientious decision at any point. We never said we’ve got to do this or that to keep this going. We stayed on people’s radar, creating just enough buzz to keep us employed,” he said.
“Being friends, we can argue and not walk away from each other,” said Stone. “So many people don’t see their friends that way anymore. We can still get together just to play music.”
Even though everyone loves a classic, Denomme said he and the other Ramblers are eager to bring fresh new material to the stage. They’ve been learning new material over the last month, gearing up for this weekend’s performances at the Historic Player’s Playhouse benefit show and the annual St. Patrick’s Corktown Parade at Nemo’s Bar in Detroit.
And even though they’re still on a rollercoaster ride, they admit things are a little different these days.
“The biggest challenge is basically finding the time to do it,” said Stone. “Everyone’s got families and houses and professional lives.”
From the Ann Arbor Observer - 12/00
Balduck Mountain Ramblers
Freedom and Guinness
Most bands would be hard put to hold their own in the din of Conor O'Neill's on a Thursday night, but the Balduck Mountain Ramblers are up to the task. This four-piece Detroit-based band has spent a good portion of the last twenty years playing "the finest American stringband musics" in similar bars and at festivals, theaters, and more than a few gazebos so these musicians clearly have mastered the three rules of bar-band success: (1) Have fun. (2) Don't be bothered when the crowd appears to be paying no attention to you. (3) Be ready to play "Brown-Eyed Girl" at a moment's notice.
For their Conor O'Neill's gigs the next one is Thursday, December 14 the Ramblers stick to a mostly Irish format. If you didn't already know this (I didn't), let me tell you: there are lots of Irish drinking songs to accompany one's beverage consumption, and many of them are really funny and wonderful. I should know, because I sat directly in front of the speakers and heard every note, every word, every bellow, every clap of hand and stomp of foot.
The Balduck Mountain Ramblers take their name from a small hill near Lake St. Clair, whence these laddies hail. All four graduated from a now-defunct prep school in the area and spent too many hours staring out the window at this topographic anomaly, dreaming of freedom. The whimsy of their name matches the irreverent fun of their performing style. Backed by nimbly played guitar, bass fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and a host of other instruments, these guys sing with rich, four-part gusto, often applying a Gaelic sensibility to unexpected material. Case in point: the song I came in on, the Grateful Dead's "Friend of the Devil." Their a cappella rendition of Stan Rogers's "Barrett's Privateers" was an exercise in bitter bravado. I found myself singing along on "God damn them all," but the chattering, Guinness-swilling undergraduates to my left did not appear to share my enthusiasm for the line, so I stopped.
The Ramblers' penchant for satire was manifest in "The Wreck of the Two-Tone DeSoto," which mocked a certain Gordon Lightfoot memorial ship ballad. They did a little Dixieland, replete with percussion on "the bones." They tossed off a goofy, growly, half-assed rendition of the Irish Rovers favorite "The Unicorn" just to prove they could, and performed a rousing ditty about beer and tobacco that stuck in my head like glue, no matter how much decaf (black) I threw back over the course of the evening.
So if you were in the parking lot behind Conor O'Neill's one Thursday night in mid-November and witnessed two disgustingly sober people pretending to stagger to their car while singing "I am the fat man, the very fat man, who waters the workers' beer" well, that was us.
Kate Conner-Ruben
|
|