If Stephanie Prausnitz'
fiddling career is a little accident of fate, as she claims, then her
membership in the Crooked Jades—a California-based string band
with an edgy, newfangled attitude—is nothing less than a miracle.
Founded ten years ago by Jeff Kazor, the Jades mix masterful musicianship
with a first-rate sense of stage presence, taking old-time music where
few thought it could go: to hardcore-rock venues, as well as more traditional
old-time music fests.
Prausnitz has been with
the band ever since she met Kazor and Co. at the Grass Valley Bluegrass
Festival in 1997, and her fiddling style and musical attitude have made
her a vital part of the up-and-coming ensemble (which also employs the
talents of fiddler Adam Tanner). A dedicated old-time fiddler, she found
early on that her ability to translate the licks and tricks of vintage
recordings was right in line with the Jades' tendency to take inspiration
from great old, largely forgotten records.
"I'm sitting here right
now working on a really great version of 'Sally Johnson,'" Prausnitz
says, after answering the phone at her Berkeley home, before breaking
off with a quick, "Hold on a second," as she runs to get the
CD she's been practicing with. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," she says
upon her return, "this is a Texas version of 'Sally Johnson,' by
the Lewis Brothers, and I know the reason Jeff picked it for the group.
It's crooked, like the Crooked Jades. It has extra beats in it, so it's
kind of squirrelly."
That whimsical, half-serious
adjective—defined by Webster's as "extremely odd," or
"crazy"—is an apt description of the Crooked Jades. Experimental,
energetic, and socially conscious, the Jades manage to treat the music
they love in a way that is at once stripped down and lushly rich and
powerful. As Prausnitz puts it, "We do weird stuff with the music.
We're the only old-time band I know that uses a harmonium in some its
tunes."
There are plenty of people
who enjoy the Jades' experimental approach. The band has released two
collections of new and classic tunes, The Unfortunate Rake, Volumes
1 and 2 (both on the Copper Creek label), and contributed to the
soundtrack of the documentary film Seven Sisters: A Kentucky Portrait.
But despite the group's
popularity, Prausnitz admits there are at least a few purists who "just
don't get it."
"Like I said, we do
some pretty weird stuff with this music," she explains. "For
me though, it's really fun to play this kind of music and to play it
this way."
Prausnitz started out as
a cellist, way back in fourth grade, when she took lessons as part of
her public elementary school music education. "I thought the cello
was the most beautiful instrument in the world," she recalls, "but
it turns out, as the seventh of eight cellos in the program, playing
from sheets of music, I really didn't do all that well playing classical.
I kept at it till ninth grade and then I quit."
At 29, Prausnitz moved to
Atlanta, and began attending contradances, where she heard live fiddle-and-banjo
music for the first time. She fell instantly in love.
"That," she says,
"is when my involvement with music was reborn."
Her unplanned return to
music took place when a friend offered her a fiddle—for free. The
timing was fateful, as she'd made up her mind to take up . . . the banjo.
"The fiddle had been
under my friend's sofa, in Arizona, for seven or eight years,"
Prausnitz says. "She never played it, she didn't want it, so she
gave it to me."
Transformed, the cellist-turned-slacker-turned-fiddler
spent the next few years playing for local dances. By the time she met
Kazor, Prausnitz was ready to push her amazing skill to the edge. "People
have said that we have a punk-rock attitude," she says, "but
I'm never sure what that means, honestly. I never listened to punk rock,
'cause it all sounds sort of loud, electric, and angry."
She has become accustomed
to the comparison, however, and has even come to see it as a compliment.
"When people say we're a lot like punk rockers," she laughs,
"they usually just mean we have a stripped-down sound, stripped
back to the basic, purest elements of the music. I can deal with that,
'cause that's a lot of what we do."
