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| In eight years with the Hollywood Rodeo
Band. Man Clayton met his share of good musicians. But when Lionel
Young sat in with the band
last August. Clayton knew something strange and wonderful was happening.
How often had a classically trained violinist leapt on stage to play
country fiddle? The crowd was impressed, and so was Clayton Our fiddle player said he played too much. Clayton recalls, but I have a feeling he was jealous. Lionel is a hell of a musician. He can hear a hair dryer blowing and tell you it's in C, and be right. A month later, Clayton played his first gig with Young and a pick-up blues band. Ten months after that, he handed in his formal notice to the Hollywood Rodeo Band. In so doing, he gave up a secure future as a musician-and how many musicians do you know who have the remotest shot at that?-for a handful of ill-paying bar gigs considerably more unpaid hours of rehearsal with Young's band, the Last Fair Deal. in short, he leapt at a chance to pay his dues all over again. He couldn't care less, and rightly so. The Last Fair Deal is the first truly exciting blues band to hit town in years. "You like the name? You think it makes sense?" asks Young,"We could call the band the Car Problems. We all have them. It's a requirement to be in a band. That's all we had last winter. One time it was seventeen below and I had to unfreeze my car with a blow-dryer. We got to the gig, though," he laughs, as if the whole thing had been a lark. Was it? It's hard to say. Young's drawly, gentle voice always sounds either greatly amused or mildly stoned, though stoned he never is-at most, he enjoys the effects of a mild niacin overdose. " Niacin?" he asks. You want some? No? How about some lunch? Did you know ants only come out when the weather's going to be good? Look at all these ants, man. They are so cool. It's going to be a beautiful day." |
Laidback to the point of terminal mellowness,
Lionel Young walks around his Evergreen yard communing with ants. You
get the impression
he could spend whole weeks this way. But that's before you see him
at night, with his band. Then the niacin pays off. It's a suitably dark room, suitably crowded with women, most of them dressed in black. They could be upwardly mobile strippers or downwardly mobile socialites. Either way, they appear to be here for the sole purpose of staring at Lionel Young, who is here for the purpose of playing the blues violin, a feat he could never pull off without an ultratight band. Luckily, his rhythm section (Clayton on bass and Michael Ryan on drums) is tighter than the sheets on an army cot, and the perfect backdrop for a whole kit of virtuosity-not just Young's violin, but keyboards Joe Sellers and ex-Trembler Dave Moore on guitar, too. For the first time in years. Moore has dropped his cool stage demeanor and looks very interested in every note he plays. But there's no way he can steal the spotlight from Young, who sings blues standards as if he just finished writing them-and if he had, what a songwriter he would be. The Last Fair Deal's set list is a handy reference guide to the best blues songs ever written: "No Money Down," "Hooehie Coochie Man," "Back Door Man," "One Way Out" and, of course, "The Last Fair Deal." You won't catch this band playing dumb macho tunes like "I'm A Man" or "Got My Mojo Workin" that were made to be played ad nauseam at mediocre jams. When it comes to blues cover bands, the general rule is the less complicated, the better. The Last Fair Deal breaks even that rule gracefully, with long, intricate solos and complicated arrangements that would fail if one musician ever blew it-but one never does. Young throws in the kind of sudden stops and rhythm changes that flourished during the Summer of Love and died out after-for good reason-but when the Last Fair Deal resurrects them, they work. But the hook of hooks in this band is Young. His music is too smooth to be called fiddle-playing - though the band |
does a few genuine fiddle tunes-and he's got way too much soul ever to sound like a classical violinist. Then again, his playing is too complex to be basic blues. As a stylist, Young has no predecessors. His bowing is of the caliber that allows music critics to use the word 'pyrotechnic.' but half of the time he doesn't bow at all, playing his violin with a glass slide, as if it were a tiny National steel guitar. In the odd moments when he doesn't play, he strikes the familiar fiddle-holding pose used by concert violinists at recitals everywhere. He may be wearing Stevie Ray Vaughn's hat, but his stance is strictly Carnegie Hall. Who is this guy? "There were times when I wanted to be a baseball player." he says, "But when I was six, my mother saw an article in the paper that said there was a lady giving Suzuki lessons, and she liked the idea. I started my lessons then, and I never had the guts to quit," (Neither did Lionel's younger brother Owen, who started cello lessons that same year, and now plays with the Pittsburgh Symphony.) Young's years of Catholic schooling were rigorous; you can almost see why, at twenty-five, he's taken up less stressful activities, like studying ant behavior. He won the first music contest he entered and kept on winning, until a wealthy benefactor gave him the eighteenth-century violin he still plays. There was very little doubt what direction his life would take. After winning a music scholarship to the University of Indiana. Young studied with Josef Gingold and later moved to Southern California to audition for Jascha Heifetz, who quickly accepted him as a student. Three months later, however, Heifetz kicked him out of the class. Let's not talk about him. Okay?" Young says of Heifetz. "Everyone told me I wasn't ready to work with him, but he was my idol and had to go. And in some ways, it was just punishment. I learned to work hard-we didn't rest, we didn't sleep, we didn't look at any clocks. People got tendonitis. He was a very unhappy man, not that you should live for happiness, but miserable, frustrated at his own limits. Really, let's not talk about him." |
This brief Heifetz period changed
things for Young. He left the class, packed up his bags and headed
for the northern California country,
where he worked for a year at vaguely illegal agricultural pursuits.
That ended when he joined Colorado's National Repertory Orchestra and
began spending his summers in Colorado. During the winter, he played
with the Pittsburgh Opera Ballet Orchestra and several touring musicals,
one of which required he learn to play oldtime fiddle tunes. He brought
his new style back to Colorado and began sitting in with rock bands.
By last summer, he had fallen into the grip of the blues and gospel
music he listened to as a child. Not many musicians take this route to arrive at local venues like Ziggies and Off the Mall, but Young sees nothing odd in it. Even less does he see the desperation that all too often stalks local bands, especially blues bands, as they try to claw their way up and out of the local scene. Perhaps this is because he doesn't tolerate any lax musicianship in his band. "I usually hate to go to practice," says drummer Ryan, "but not now-we get a lot done, and it never feels like we're even working." "Everybody in this band loves to play," adds guitarist Moore, "We all look Forward to rehearsal. I want to travel with this band, maybe even leave the country." "By December I plan to be touring nationally," says Young. Next rear, we're going to Japan to record. You know how that goes. Sometimes it does, more often it doesn't. But meanwhile, Last Fair Deal audiences continue to edge forward in their chairs, responding almost conversationally to the sound of the band. It may seem improbable, but it could happen to you. You could be the man screaming himself hoarse at the bar, the woman pulling her black skirt up past her knees in some kind of Lionel Young-induced trance. Sure, you'll feel stupid the next day, but that's the kind of band this is. Maybe that's not fair, but no matter how you look at it, it's a deal. The Last Fair Deal. |
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