Biography

Bluegrass Fiddle Legend KENNY KOSEK Debuts New CD TWISTED SAGE
Featuring Banjo Master TONY TRISCHKA;


Long-Awaited Follow-up to 1997’s Angelwood Includes Special Guests
ANDY STATMAN, MARTY CUTLER and MARK COSGROVE


The fiddle-and-banjo duet is as foundational to American folk music as anything, going back nearly 200 years. But when fiddler Kenny Kosek started conceiving an album centered on pairings of him with Tony Trischka, one of the wizards of the banjo, his mind went back not quite that far, but to his own youth in the Bronx. And the many pilgrimages he made to the 5th floor walk-up apartment of Loy Beaver, one of the top collectors of fiddle-band 78 RPM records.

“Andy May and I used to go to his place in the East Bronx,” Kosek says, eyes sparkling at the memories. “I carried my father’s reel-to-reel Wollensak tape recorder and would hold the microphone up to one speaker while Loy would take out 78s from his collection. That was an incredibly great thing.”

That thrill of discovery is still palpable for him. He was barely in his teens and just starting out as a fiddler, and this experience opened worlds of possibilities that fueled his young spirit.

That is what Kosek recaptures in Twisted Sage in his magical duets with Trischka, the two of them having built a near-telepathic rapport over the 50-plus years they’ve been playing together. Mandolin maestro Andy Statman, another friend and regular collaborator, joins for several trios, while guitarist Mark Cosgrove appears for a live track, and banjoist Marty Cutler steps in for a few surprise-filled duets with Kosek.

That spirit courses through bristling performances of pieces he could have heard on those old 78s: “Streak O’ Lean Streak O’ Fat” (a song he learned from a 1931 Okeh Records release by A.A. Gray with 7-Foot Dilly and his Dill Pickles), “Maiden’s Prayer” (a mid-19th Century piano tune that would later become a Texas swing classic via Bob Wills), traditional old-timey favorites “Lady Hamilton” and “Deer Walk,” a fiddle tune rooted in the Shetland Islands, and the standard of standards, “Turkey in the Straw,” here pluralized as “Turkeys in the Straw,” with Kosek and Trischka joined by long-time pal Statman for a medley of three different takes on the tune.

And then there’s something you never would have found in Beaver’s collection: “Gojira County Breakdown,” with Kosek and Cutler doing an original tune framed by a march from the soundtrack of the 1955 Japanese monster movie we generally know as Godzilla.

All of this bristles with creative energies Kosek has nurtured ever since those days taping Loy Beaver’s collection. It’s there in everything he’s done since, woven into his talents and sensibilities. It’s in his stints with the David Bromberg Band (alongside Statman) and the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band. It’s there as he stood at the forefront of the so-called newgrass movement with such vibrant hybrid bands as Country Cooking and Breakfast Special, both with Trischka and Statman. It’s carried in the extensive session work he’s done as a first-call sideman for James Taylor, Willie Nelson, and Leonard Cohen, among others. It flows through his one prior solo album, 1997’s Angelwood.

Through all those years, traditional old-time music was largely a private passion, mostly pursued by playing casually with old friends. “We didn’t really perform,” he says. “We’d play living-room music.”

But over time, the idea that his storehouse of music and chops might evaporate gnawed at him.

“We had developed a large repertoire of obscure tunes,” he says. “I was worried I was going to start forgetting these tunes unless I start playing them seriously. One night, Tony and I were playing with Peter Rowan and he said, why don’t you guys do a fiddle and banjo number? We both knew this tune ‘Texas’ by Henry Reed and we did it. The crowd loved it.”

With Trischka as his primary partner, Kosek has one of the banjo’s premier creative forces, with a dynamic legacy in traditional forms and experimental ones alike.

But he also had a friend with whom he could trust his vision.

“I first met Tony at a bluegrass festival, maybe in 1970, in Virginia. Tony was from Syracuse and had long hair. And, you know, we bluegrass hippies had this certain camaraderie.”

Twisted Sage was co-produced by Kosek and Ed Haber, who is releasing it on his Shefa Records label on September 6th. But the new album stands apart with its focus on the fiddle-banjo traditions and the distinctive touches added by all the players. The chemistry is audible.

“Tony’s such a great guy to play with,” he says. “He’s such a quick study. And Andy’s great in the studio. He’ll do anything and as ideas occur to him, he’ll throw them out fearlessly. And there are few guitarists I’d rather play with than Mark Cosgrove.”

And with Cutler, Kosek got to indulge in their mutual affection for the big lizard.

“Marty Cutler and I were both big Gojira fans and finding that we could play some of that stuff as old-time fiddle-and-banjo duets was great.”

A love for the British Isles roots of much American folk music found a place on the album as well, with “Da New Rigged Ship,” which he learned from Shetland-born fiddler Aly Bain.

“And for ‘Lost River Medley’ I wrote tunes that echo Irish polka and the Irish influences on New England-style fiddle playing,” he says.

The twists and turns and the love of the traditions come together in the album’s title and artwork — woodcuts by his friend Roger Mason meant to evoke the covers of old records — it’s meant to underscore the mix:

“In yoga, one of the seated positions is called the Twisted Sage,” he says. “It’s on the floor, twisted all the way to one side and then to the other. I love wordplay and that term twisted sage just resonated in a bunch of different ways – the dried white sage that Native Americans burn in a purifying ceremony, a wreath of sage and, of course, a deranged savant.”

With these twists, Kenny completes the picture of who he is as an artist, how his music has evolved, how his passions flourished and how, through it all, he has always remained rooted in where he’s from, where he discovered this wonder, his own musical foundation.

“I was raised in the Bronx.” Kosek says. “So I can’t pretend to be from Galax, Virginia. But I’ve been able to have a long career in fiddle music that has opened me up to a lot of different influences and kinds of work, for which I am thankful.”