Underground folk collective headlines Wayne-O-Rama
The beloved Nashville underground folk collective The Cherry Blossoms are one of those bands that, paradoxically, this writer wants the whole world to hear while at the same time keeping them a precious secret to be unsullied by wide fame.
The group, with a rotating membership, serves up rough-edged yet gentle-natured songs with a charmingly ramshackle momentum and campfire sing-along qualities that are hard to dislike.
Group founders John Allingham and Peggy Snow plus longtime member Allen Lowrey answered some questions for The Pulse in advance of their May 27 show at Wayne-O-Rama with eclectic folk singer/songwriter Josephine Foster, guzheng (21-string Chinese zither) virtuoso Wu Fei and gnome mythologist Red Okra King.
The performance will celebrate the vinyl reissue of the group’s album The Hank Tapes (previously self-released on CD-R) on the Violet Times label, and the bandmates recalled fond memories of the 1996 recording session, which included original Lambchop bassist and Chattanoogan Marc Trovillion, who passed away in 2013.
Hank Tilbury, who was a member of Lambchop, had downtime in the studio where he worked.
“We set up in a circle in the large room,” said Lowrey. “It was a Saturday night, and as I recall, Peggy had brought a large bottle of George Dickel that was passed around; over the course of the session it was pretty much empty by the end of the night.”
“I remember Hank Tilbury bringing forth an old old-timey microphone, bottle of whiskey, herb, youth on our side, the feeling of everything, everything party,” said vocalist and guitarist Peggy Snow. “It just came forth all at once—Marc Trovillion started it on banjo, then these zany doo-da-doos from John and Anna [Ring], and I just summoned up the lyrics about us music-makers. A lot of my favorite Cherry Blossoms songs have come all at once like that, in a forced moment, often on stage.”
“Marc was a really individual musician with his own voice,” said guitarist and singer John Allingham. “Marc’s banjo is really great on it—a combination of old ‘20s tenor banjo and Jerry Garcia.”
Percussionist/multi-instrumentalist and poet Allen Lowrey met Trovillion when they were both in Lambchop and played with him for over 10 years, and they were also members of the instrumental surf group The Gremmies and the “twisted, mostly acoustic” group Slumber Fish.
“His upbeat and sarcastic wit entertained everyone who knew him. Being part of the rhythm section with him over the years taught me a lot about playing soulful grooves,” said Lowrey. “When on tours with Lambchop, we spent a lot of the downtime together. We got lost roaming around whatever European city we were playing that night and were called ‘the rhythm section with no sense of direction.’”
The venue of the May 27 show, Wayne-O-Rama, reveals several relevant cultural intersections, since its designer, the Chattanooga-raised artist Wayne White, created album art for Lambchop and also worked on the television show Pee-wee’s Playhouse with Alison Mork (the voice of Chairy and Magic Screen), who collaborated with Allingham.
“Alison Mork was an important part of the Nashville music songwriter scene that I was part of in the late ‘70s and ‘80s,” said Allingham. “She and I wrote two songs together that we’re going to do at the Wayne-O-Rama show.”
One of the consistent members in The Cherry Blossoms is drummer Chris Davis, who met Allingham and Snow through music circles that converged on the outsider open-mic night called the Working Stiff Jamboree at the Springwater Supper Club, where Allingham and Snow originally met.
“We formed as a band in the early ‘90s when various communities were mingling in the same spaces—drum circle people at Centennial Park were drifting into Springwater where the Working Stiff Jamboree would be underway,” said Snow. “Peace activists, environmentalists, music-makers, circle-dancers, pontificators were all sort of one community—poets too.”
“The anti-war mentality that shaped the band’s beginning still has its prominent place, along with our love of nature,” said Snow. “We also have songs about the deterioration and tear-downs of beautiful old architecture.”
Allingham praised his bandmates’ “inventive playfulness” and “no-boundaries openness” which inspire creative experimentation, and he called Davis “a great drummer whose improvising can verge from freestyle tangents to soulful and jazzy beats.”
“Now it seems we are more floating along, more accepting of one another and what we’re capable of, still open,” said Snow, reflecting upon the band’s 25 plus year existence.
“I think one thing that has kept the Cherry Blossoms thing going this long is the basis of the songs, which I think have fairly strong bones,” said Allingham. “Then going wherever we want to.”
The Cherry Blossoms
with Josephine Foster, Wu Fei and Red Okra King
Saturday, May 27, 8 p.m.
Wayne-O-Rama
1800 Rossville Ave., #108
wayneorama.com