For nine years, Grand Rapids’ Nobody’s Darlin’ has kicked up its heels with acoustic charm and female harmonies. On Friday night, the quintet lights up SpeakEZ Lounge.
Friends First: From left, Janet Shelby, Natalie Beversluis, Sara Q and Barb Weatherhead of Nobody’s Darlin’ (Photo/Anna Sink)
By John Sinkevics
LocalSpins.com
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Don’t get the musicians in Nobody’s Darlin’ wrong.
They like men. They enjoy men. Guys even sit in with the group from time to time.
But the all-female string band also appreciates the special camaraderie they’ve experienced as women in exploring old-timey music, folk and bluegrass along with their own engaging songs over the past nine years.
Nobody’s Darlin’
“Really, what has been such a great benefit to the band is that we all enjoy each other as friends, we all like each other, we all hang out together, and having that kind of relationship first and the music second has really helped us go on for so long,” says mandolinist and singer Sara Q, one of the founding members of the band, which has its roots in traditional, old-timey folk.
“We learned that a lot of this music was actually passed down by the women. They carried this tradition forward and they often taught it to their sons who made it popular because, of course, women weren’t necessarily celebrated as musicians out there on the stage. But due to where we’re at in modern history, we have that privilege. We’re delighted to be able to share that.”
THE IMPACT OF CELTIC TRADITIONS, DISCO AND ‘O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?’
They’ve shared that since 2005, with original members Sara Q and banjo player Janet Shelby currently joined by fiddler Natalie Beversluis, bassist Barb Weatherhead and acoustic guitarist Becca Ling. Along the way, other notable West Michigan musicians, including co-founder Delilah DeWylde (who came up with the band name) and Karisa Wilson, also have been part of the Nobody’s Darlin’ lineup.
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And credit disparate musical triggers such as “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” disco, Celtic traditions and Jean Ritchie for inspiring members of this Grand Rapids quintet to plunge into what they describe as “a more modern Carter Family with three- and four-part female harmonies.”
For Shelby, the disco music that dominated the airwaves when she was in college drove her in the other direction.
Stepping Up: Nobody’s Darlin’ (Photo/Anna Sink)
“I wasn’t relating to that, and I went to a Jean Ritchie concert (an iconic folk singer and dulcimer player) and it blew me away,” she recalls. “That’s when I got into the folk music and started playing folk instruments and singing.”
For Beversluis, who also performs in the Irish-leaning Conklin Ceili Band, the Celtic side of her family led her toward the folk genre.
“They say you get a little bit of Celtic in you and it kind of takes over everything. That’s absolutely the truth,” she concedes. “Stepping into this was kind of a sideways step. A lot of the old-timey music actually came from Irish roots, from Scottish roots.”
WRAPPING UP WORK ON THEIR THIRD ALBUM WITH A FOCUS ON ORIGINAL TUNES
And Weatherhead, who also performs Americana-hued music with her husband, Pete, says her interest in folk and bluegrass was revived after listening to the soundtrack of the popular 2000 movie, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
That sort of “O Brother” vibe weaves through the band’s original music, too, with Sara Q providing “lots of material” for the group’s third studio album currently in process, the follow-up to 2007’s “This World is Not My Home” and 2010’s “Kitchen Girls.”
This week on Local Spins Live, four of the band members – Sara Q, Shelby, Weatherhead and Beversluis – delivered a special in-studio rendition of one of their new songs, “Satan’s Purse,” on News Talk 1340 AM (WJRW). Check out the podcast of the show here, with a video of that performance below.
“The old-timey genre is more where we kind of get our roots from,” Sara Q explains. “We have great respect for the history and the mythology and the parts of American roots (music) that are old-timey music.
UPBEAT, HAPPY MUSIC WITH ‘FANTASTICALLY TRAGIC LYRICS’
“We love the dichotomy of that upbeat, happy music and those fantastically tragic lyrics. We love things about people who are talking about losing their homes and they’re killing themselves and they’ve got a broken heart, and in the meantime, let’s dance.”
Nobody’s Darlin’ on Local Spins Live.
That’s why their original tunes tell a narrative to “really draw the listener in so that while they’re dancing, they can feel like they can be part of the story as well.”
Those sorts of classic tales – and upbeat acoustic instrumentation – tantalize a fast-growing young audience, too.
“We played for The Pyramid Scheme one time and there were kids out there with mohawks and stuff,” Shelby says. “I called my son and I said, ‘They loved us,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, banjos are coming back mom.’ How can you not love it? It’s the dancing … and it’s definitely the banjo.”
At 8:30 p.m. Friday, Nobody’s Darlin’ will kick up its old-timey heels at SpeakEZ Lounge in Grand Rapids. Admission is free, but the band has packed the venue during past performances so patrons are urged to arrive early.
For more information about Nobody’s Darlin’ and links to buying its music, visit the band’s official website. http://www.nobodysdarlin.com/Nobodys_Darlin/Welcome.html
Email John Sinkevics at jsinkevics@gmail.com.
Copyright 2014, Spins on Music
