Laura Love and Rod Cook

Live Review
Laura Love Band
The Harvest Festival
Atlanta, Georgia
Sunday, October 10, 1999

Get a call from the Colonel asking if I was returning to the Festival. I said probably not since it's raining. But, if you want to go - I'll go. He says I was only going to go if you go...... so, let's do lunch....

When we finish lunch, he says it's stopped raining - let's go......er- OK.... Had to go home first change into waterproof boots, change to the old all-wheel drive car.......

It's not just the rain - which it did all the way down on the 1 hour drive - it's what's underfoot.

Met up with the Mosier boys (that's Rev Jeff and Johnny Mo of BlueGround UnderGrass) spent most of our time under the tent.

Half heard - "Amazing Grace" from the stage, eh...so what.... until it got jazzed up... interesting.

The band on stage sounded more and more interesting - very rhythmically involving with a jazzy tinge.

Chris Leighton

Took my cameras and went on the side of the stage - good fiddle playing, very strong - what was really impressive was the drumming - with what looked like improvised homemade drums out of old oil drums - the guy was producing some really intriguing sounds - like tablas.

The singing was great nice harmonies and counterpoints - then I noted the bass was pretty d*mned funky - heavy bottomed. The amplified acoustic guitar was also flying.

This was a pretty strong band and made a lot of interesting sounds for a 4 piece - every person was strong and contributed to the music.

A middle Eastern type tune - with basically chanting lyrics about booty - I found out later that the tune was called "Mahbootay" - I was sold. There was freewheeling quality and kind of freedom/uninhibited-ness about the band.

They were not anarchistic - just light-hearted and that comes through in the music.

Other numbers they did were all in this kind of freewheeling spirit and very rhythmic -

There were elements of bluegrass, Celtic, funk, jazz, blues, Afro, Cuban -hard to classify the music other than to say it was rootsy - deliberately unpolished, not due to any lack of skill - just rough cut and unrefined. They even did Leonard Cohen's "That's No Way to Say Goodbye" - the violin was outstanding with a moving solo. The vocals were super with really moving harmonies.

Laura and Barbara

They noticed a very good hula hooper - out in the mud and talked about being able to do it - so two hoops were handed up to the stage and sure enough we were treated to some hula-hooping accompanied by surf music from the guitar and drums......

Who are these guys? The Laura Love Band

Barbara Lamb

I was impressed enough to buy her CD "Shum Ticky" - where I found out more about them

Laura Love - vocals, bass
Barbara Lamb - violin, vocals
Rod Cook - guitar, vocals
Chris Leighton - drums/percussion

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