Frank Hurricane & Ralph White
An evening of truly adept musicianship meets hilarious and thought provoking storytelling from this unique pairing of two of America’s most authentic wandering troubadours.
Ralph White will open the evening with ever morphing compositions on banjo, guitar, accordion, kalimba, and fiddle. "Non-traditional traditional? Indo-African mountain songs? Rocking-chair string ephemera? What longtime Austinite and former Bad Liver Ralph White puts on albums and onstage is so mind-boggling and vast, it forces those of us in the description business down a treacherous path. His five-string fretless banjos and African kalimbas – resonating thumb pianos – mix with accordion and fiddle to create an Eastern Appalachian sound, but it's much more complicated than that. ... It's the culmination of years of experimentation and travel woven into a magic carpet, jetting off hither and fro, crossing continent boundaries and civil wars. ... White's melodies and lyrics scratch the surface of the Old World, leaving just a contemporary hint of now. Therein lies the magic." - Darcie Stevens - Austin Chronicle
Frank Hurricane will follow with his own singular style of Appalachian folk and primitive guitar playing mixed with outrageous and psychedelic storytelling that is unrivaled in our current times. While drawing on the finger picking styles of John Fahey and Jack Rose, Hurricane pairs these techniques with a voice that sounds weather worn from years of wandering the Appalachian trail and lyrics that promote love and appreciation for the natural world and the bizarre characters that inhabit it. Amongst these songs are a never ending cycle of deranged tales from the road; Frank Hurricane can turn a simple story about buying a slice of pizza into a Homerian saga that leaves the listener aching from laughter.
