Crescent and Frost

When one thinks of New York City, the thoughts of frenzied citizens, countless skyscrapers and a myriad of taxis come to mind. However, the city also has a thriving acoustic folk music scene in which band Crescent and Frost have found their niche. Fortunately, this well-kept secret from New York is about to be released in Kingston.

"We're definitely influenced by living in the city, it's hard not to be ... but at the same time, I feel like this group of people would have made the same music anywhere," says Dan Marcus, guitarist and composer for the New York City-based Crescent and Frost, which will be playing at The Grad Club tonight with songs from their sophomore album, Open Doors.

"We all gravitated [to New York City] because of ... all the great musicians and all that is going on there," Marcus said in an interview this week with the Journal. "We've built up a great audience, so the shows here are always great."

New York City is known for a very diverse music scene, and Kingston is about to get a taste of what the Lower East Side has known and loved for years.

In the world of music, homogenization inevitably comes with the success of many artists. While succumbing to this factor may improve a group's success, it often comes at the cost of their musical integrity. Crescent and Frost, however, have continued to thrive simply by being themselves and making music that comes from the heart. While the band combines elements of pop, folk and bluegrass, Marcus describes their sound more accurately as "Americana." The result of this eclectic combination is refreshingly unique, albeit somewhat difficult to pin a genre label to.

The group was started three years ago by Dan Marcus and Maryann Fennimore, who first met in Pittsburgh. Fennimore is the band's vocalist and lyricist, and delivers intimate lyrics that detail "love and all the problems that come along with it," according to Marcus. The quartet is completed by guitarist Rich Hinman and Canadian bassist Jason Mercer, all of whom met in separate ways but were ultimately drawn together by their passion for music. While creating a distinctly individual sound of their own, the band also draws a great deal of their inspiration from artists such as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Alison Krauss.

The primary reason Crescent and Frost will be in Kingston this weekend is for the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals 19th Annual Conference, taking place now until Sunday. In addition to the concert showcase they will be presenting to the Council of Folk Festivals on Saturday night at the Beaver Suite, they will also be making their second appearance at The Grad Club tonight with The Lady Racers, before continuing with their tour promoting Open Doors.

Despite hailing from the Big Apple, the band has an affinity for Canada and enjoys an occasional break from the city that never sleeps.

"I like Canada because I spent a lot of my summers there at camp. Every time we go to Canada, we're just really warmly received and our music seems to make sense there," Marcus said. "It's also nice to get away from the city, since we're not necessarily big city people at heart."

Marcus also admitted the band has come a long way since their debut album, Pennsylvania.

"When we made our first record, we had only been playing together for a few months. The second record, [Open Doors] was made after we had time to find an identity and develop as a group."

The success of that identity was demonstrated recently when folk and bluegrass legend Bill Keith agreed to work with them and contribute to Open Doors.

"It was incredible. He is one of a kind and such an incredible musician," Marcus said. "To just have a chance to be around him was a total privilege ... he is a genius and he's been doing it for so long."

Nevertheless, the band has maintained a consistency in their sound and avoided the need for a drummer.

"It's difficult to find a drummer that doesn't want to play loud," joked Marcus. "We're just a quiet band and we can get it done without [a drummer]."

Drummer or no drummer, Crescent and Frost is definitely worth checking out tonight.

New York's best kept roots secret no longer, Crescent and Frost (Saturday August 20 at 11 a.m., Nutshell Music stage) is a band on the move. The musical brainchild of guitarist Daniel Marcus and vocalist Maryanne Fennimore (whose songwriting rivals that of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings), Crescent and Frost has made quite an impression all across North America with its fresh, urban take on old time mountain music.

They are currently on the road along with six-string maverick Rich Hinman and bassist Jason Mercer behind a sophomore release, Open Doors, twang-tinged tunes of heartbreak and hope flecked with bluegrass, country, folk and pop.

"I know that sometimes people aren't quite sure what to call our music, but that's all right," says Marcus of the band's sweet, cosmopolitan sound. "We don't really feel any restraints, particularly with this new record. I think we grew considerably with respect to our songwriting this time around. We just wrote what we were feeling, and treated the songs how we saw fit."

They may play a strain of what's known as Americana, but Brooklyn alt-folk act Crescent and Frost has a surprising confession: they're Canucks at heart.

"Any show in Canada is the best. We love it and we want to be Canadians," declares singer Maryann Fennimore. "If it wasn't so cold, we would want to be there all the time."

And it isn't just our health care system that attracts Fennimore, 27, and guitarist Daniel Marcus, 30, the principal songwriters behind Crescent and Frost, which also includes musicians Jason Mercer (an actual Canadian who logged time in the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir before relocating to New York City) and Rich Hinman in its live lineup.

Marcus, who attended summer camp in Ontario while growing up, says he picked up many of his influences north of the border. "A lot of my development as a person is due to Canadians, so I love them to bits. And as far as music was concerned, I first started listening to Neil Young, and we both love Joni Mitchell," he notes. "So, in a way, our music is really Canadian music."

While Crescent and Frost's old-time-y sound - marked by Fennimore's sweet, twangy vocals and Marcus's strummy guitar - certainly owes a debt to the American folk and country music of yesteryear, their fresh approach to roots music puts them on par with such Canadians as Sarah Harmer, the Be Good Tanyas and Chris Brown and Kate Fenner (all of whom are friends).

Thanks to their acoustic bent and use of traditional instrumentation such as banjo and mandolin, Crescent and Frost (named after the Brooklyn streets Fennimore and Marcus used to live on) is often dubbed urban bluegrass, but the duo is having none of it.

"I really don't think you can call our music bluegrass," Marcus says. "Sure, there are elements of that music in what we do, but we don't like to be confined to a particular style or sound."

Sure enough, the band mixes elements of folk, country, jazz and pop on their new Open Doors album, recorded with co-producer/engineer Tom Durack (The B-52s) following their first release, Pennsylvania.

"Our first record was totally off the cuff, recorded in my friend's living room," Marcus explains. "Open Doors was planned out from beginning to end. We really took our time and tried to do everything the way we wanted it. So it was a totally different and challenging experience, but very rewarding. We're both very happy with it."

The wistful songs may sound rustic thanks to Marcus's melancholy melodies, but derive their appeal from a universal theme.

"Mainly heartbreak and sadness," laughs Fennimore. "I like to write songs about people who are absolutely crushed and then getting better. But they've all got a light at the end of the tunnel."

But what's Fennimore going to write about now that she's newly engaged?

"I might have to start hanging out with people in lousy relationships and grill them for material," she deadpans.

On stage, Fennimore's bubbly banter is just as entertaining as the music itself - you'd never know she was about to unleash a torrent of sweet sorrow. Her charming stage presence and the live quartet's stellar musicianship win over audiences not always used to the unplugged experience.

"We love it," Fennimore says of being an acoustic act. "It's sort of like the person at the crazy party who takes out a guitar, and everyone sort of winds up over by the guitar. It's magnetic and fiery in all its loveliness."

"Even though we're acoustic, we can rock," Marcus insists. "And we play with a lot of energy, so we keep the audience engaged during our live show."

Fennimore and Marcus schedule any touring around their day jobs. Luckily, both love what they do - Fennimore is a freelance illustrator and Marcus teaches music in the public school system. But come summertime, they're a popular draw on the festival circuit - including a sold-out gig at Hillside in Guelph this weekend (if you're not among the lucky ones with tickets, you can still check out the band at two other local dates), and the Ottawa Folk Festival in August.

After a harrowing stop in North Carolina recently (they'd driven eight hours to play an awful show, only to end up sleeping in a seemingly abandoned house strewn with garbage and getting stuck in traffic for hours on the way home), Fennimore and Marcus can't wait to get back to their true home and native land.

"If any Canadians want to adopt us, we're totally open to that," Fennimore says. "You have no idea how serious I am."

When people think of Brooklyn, they think of Spike Lee, the Beastie Boys and the Dodgers. Associating the famed borough with bluegrass music is as unlikely as a game at Ebbets Field, but if Crescent and Frost have their way, it might just become the next hotbed of Americana music.

Some serious questions need to be answered first Ð like what the hell is a young, hip duo doing playing bluegrass music in, of all places, Brooklyn?

"Well, I'm from Pittsburgh," Daniel Marcus offers coyly, as if that makes it all clear. "Maryann was born in Brooklyn but raised in Pittsburgh, and New York seemed like a good place to call home."

Maryann Fennimore is the lead singer-lyricist half of this dynamic duo, while Marcus picks away on the six-string and writes all the music. But I'm still looking for an answer to my first question.

"Well, Pittsburgh is a real classic rock town, so I was into Zeppelin and all that stuff growing up, which I still like. It was the folksy-acoustic Neil Young songs that got me into this type of music, although at the time I didn't listen to bluegrass, just rock guys playing in that style. I studied jazz in university and for a time thought that was the route I'd take, but after jamming with some people who were playing bluegrass, I was hooked."

After corralling Fennimore, a design school grad and freelance illustrator, the most unlikely of roots combos was born.

While they don't have the backwoods cred of players from, say, the Smoky Mountains, their city smarts have translated into one of the most sophisticated and contemporary bluegrass bands around. Fennimore has a keen sense of humour and writes about real life from the perspective of a real woman. So if you're looking for the traditional "my crops are dust, my hubby's drunk" banter, look elsewhere.

Maybe it's their affection for the singer/songwriter types like Joni Mitchell that makes it hard to pin them down as bluegrass artists. On their latest disc, Open Doors, there is a definite shift toward poppy, radio-friendly tunes that, with any luck, may find them eclipsing Alison Krauss and the Be Good Tanyas.

Yet when you realize that the album features legendary banjoist Bill "Brad" Keith, formerly in the trailblazing Bill Monroe group, it's clear Crescent and Frost are still years away from doing Dixie Chicks covers.

"I'm not one to worry about the genre thing, but there is a real need for people to categorize music, and I think we're called a bluegrass band for lack of a better word. For us, it's not a conscious decision to be bluegrass per se, it's just that it is what it is. You're a writer Ð how about coming up with a name for it?"

Granted, "Americana," "traditional," "roots" and "old-time" all sound like something you were forced to learn about from some blue-haired bespectacled music theory teacher. How about "cosmo-country"?

On Open Doors, Bill "Brad" Keith makes a guest appearance on banjo. He played with Bill Monroe, who's not called "the father of bluegrass" for nothing. Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs cut their teeth with Monroe, who wrote the classic Blue Moon Of Kentucky, which made some guy called Presley pretty famous.

Monroe pioneered what we today call bluegrass by breaking away from traditional chord changes and experimenting with open tunings, somehow making it still sound familiar. That, in a nutshell, is what Crescent and Frost are doing, too.

"Wow, I never even thought about it that way," says Marcus, sounding as if he truly wished he had. "It was a real honour having him play with us, and he was such a sweet man. I actually met him in California and was lucky enough to get to spend a weekend with him, and when I contacted him for this album, he was more than happy to join in.

"He made us all feel at ease, and best of all, he played for scale!"

New York acoustic project Crescent and Frost started out as perhaps more coffeehouse experiment than band - singer Maryann Fennimore and guitarist Daniel Marcus exploring their joint love of modern singer-songwriters and hills-old bluegrass. But since the release of full-length debut Pennsylvania, C&F has solidified itself as a band proper, with, like, electric guitars and everything. It's a transition that was apparent on PA, but which has arrived on Open Doors - a sophomore disc that's half truly inspired songwriting and arranging, half gambit for major triple-A radio success, and all heartbreak-tinged sweetness and light.

There's still the old nods and instrumental fervor: "Leaving Wins My Heart" is one of the best new bluegrass songs for ages, and given fewer chords, "Katie" could almost be "nouveau old-time." But there's also a new attraction to triple-A songwriterism, like on the title track's World Café bounce. The disc's guest list provides a clue to the multidirectional outlook Crescent and Frost has taken: Young Austin singer-songwriter Ana Egge, cultish Australian expat producer Kerryn Tolhurst and legendary Bill Monroe banjoist Bill "Brad" Keith all get hauled in.

But for the most part, Crescent and Frost stick to what they know best: Fennimore's picture-perfect voice, Marcus's softly intricate and articulate acoustic guitar playing, and the subtly complex lyrical and musical compositions of the two together. And that's where Open Doors comes up with its best songs, such as the melancholy "Carpenter's Boat" and "Somebody Somewhere," a beautiful and unique illustration of the flipside of the standard out-on-the-road- and-missing-you song (which we all know is really the I-just-shagged-a-groupie-and-feel-minor-league-guilt song). It's just the kind of anti-music-biz rant one would expect from C&F - poignant, elegant and buoyant even in its own defeat.

"She should just talk," said one audience member between fits of laughter at Maryann Fennimore of the group Crescent and Frost.

The four-piece combo -- Americana, as broad and idiosyncratic as the continent -- played a short but sweet set at Iota on Monday, its charming songs punctuated by Fennimore's stream-of-consciousness babble. Fennimore suggested a new terror-threat level: periwinkle. She gave a "shout-out" to the great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who died last week. She told of having an auto mechanic as a cat sitter. And she plugged the group's maiden CD, "Pennsylvania": "You can give presents to people early for the holidays. You might not even like them by Christmas."

Coming of age in a climate of angst-ridden alt-rock, my friends were more than a little disturbed by my love of country music. For me, no other sound in music is as affecting as pedal steel. I obsessively tried to attract converts by sneaking Ernest Tubb or Buck Owens in between Sonic Youth and PJ Harvey albums, with little success.

The guy who hooked me on country was Gram Parsons, and while nowadays he's incorrectly seen as some mythic hero who single-handedly invented country rock, even he was a hard sell at the time. Combining contemporary lyrics with traditional country structures, his take on rootsy music eschewed the redneck clichés. Parsons sought acceptance within both the traditional country and the then peace-and-love-fixated rock establishments.

Crescent and Frost sound nothing like Gram Parsons, but 30-odd years later, their story is similar. Though they play traditional bluegrass, they don't hail from Kentucky or Virginia, but reside in New York City.

As the C'est What crowd looked on, lead singer Maryann Fennimore introduced the band as "just another bluegrass band from Brooklyn," with obvious sarcasm. Bluegrass may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of hipster-friendly Brooklyn, but the five-piece are doing well in their hometown acoustic music scene, with good reason.

Their lyrics and the strength of their delivery set them apart from staunch traditionalists. Forget the typical "cheating heart/I'm drinking again" sentiments of old-schoolers like Bill Monroe or Lester Flatt. Fennimore's a modern girl, more concerned with tales of life in the big city than with dry, dusty crops.

Her voice is a powerful instrument, not unlike Joni Mitchell's, supported by upright bass and muted electric and acoustic guitars. Who needs drums anyway? Daniel Marcus, the other half of the creative team, picked away at his guitar with shy determination. The combination was at times breathtaking, especially on the cover of Stop! In The Name Of Love.

Sadly, C'est What will be gone by month's end, due to a greedy landlord who thinks tripling the rent is good business. Nevertheless, the mood was more celebratory than funereal. Parsons's vision of "cosmic American music" may never really have reached the masses, but his spirit is alive in a new generation of musicians who see bluegrass as cutting-edge, and who play it with more energy than most punk bands can muster.

I was at the Living Room, listening to an angel before me, and wondering whether she was Crescent or Frost. As I'd discover after the set, she was - rather, is - neither, as Crescent and Frost is actually named after the Brooklyn streets where singer/songwriter Maryann Fennimore and songwriting/guitarist collaborator Daniel Marcus live.

Maryann is not only lead vocalist in the band whose incarnation that night included Rich Hinman on guitar and Jason Mercer on bass, but she's also lead comedian. Her banter between songs, including tales from the hair salon where she works, had the audience falling off their chairs. In fact, with a face that appeared to carry a permanent smile, it was hard not to giggle even as she was singing. Actually, it was hard not to fall in love.

Drawing on old-as-the-hills bluegrass, with touches of country and folk, the music of Fennimore and Marcus is augmented by soulful lyrics that reflect an upbringing in Pennsylvania, and current day life in NYC. Indeed, "Pennsylvania" is the title track of their 2003 release, and it's one of several standout tracks on the offering. Others personal favorites being "Ghosts of Indiana" and "Union Square."

And there's more coming soon, as the duo are currently working on a follow up album, working with co-producer Tom Durack. Word is that the new (untitled) work includes several guest performers, including Dan Reiser on drums, Kerryn Tollhurst on dobro, Chris Brown on keyboards, plus bluegrass banjo legend Bill Keith. Catch Crescent and Frost at one of their regular Living Room gigs, or check them out online at www.crescentandfrost.com.

New York's bluegrass upstarts upstaged by a mechanical sex act

Brooklyn-based bluegrass upstarts Crescent and Frost thrive under pressure. Formed in late 2002 as the brainchild of duo Daniel Marcus and Maryanne Fennimore, the dexterous quartet - add bassist Jason Mercer and guitarist Chris Hinman - recently bowled over audiences on a U.S. tour with its wistful, cosmopolitan take on traditional mountain music.

But nothing could prepare the young band for its headliner earlier this year at the American Bluegrass Night of the Nashville New Music Conference.

"It was a pretty strange event in that we were upstaged by a mechanical bull," Marcus laughed over the phone from Pittsburgh, the gig still very fresh in his mind. "We started our first song, and all of a sudden some guy from another band, who had played at another venue in a punk band, went on the mechanical bull. Once that got started, we were all just onstage looking at it with our jaws open. And then a girl got on, and was doing this very provocative bull ride. Obviously, nobody could take their eyes off the bull."

There were few distractions when Crescent and Frost buckled down to record the follow-up to its sweet acoustic 2002 debut, Pennsylvania. "We knew exactly what we wanted to do this time around," says Marcus. "It's drastically different. I didn't want us to get pigeonholed in bluegrass, so we went into more stylistically different places."

You know I listen to a lot of CDs. It's my job to help you weed out the really bad ones and select only the cream of the crop.

Here's a new one for you, and a chance to see the performers live.

Crescent and Frost, a five-piece folk band with at least one foot firmly rooted in bluegrass, will open for The Woodticks Friday at The Blue Moose Cafe.

The band, which takes its name from the streets its principal songwriters live on in Brooklyn, is touring as a four-piece, with singer Maryann Fennimore, guitarist Daniel Marcus, Rich Hinman on electric guitar and Jason Mercer on upright bass. A debut CD "Pennsylvania" was released last year.

Fennimore and Marcus are the band's songwriters and if Marcus is the band's backbone, Fennimore is its heart.

She's got a warm, sweet voice that drips innocence and carries with it just a hint of street. It's a voice that can pull you in from across the room. For those of you in need of comparisons, try Gillian Welch meets Iris DeMent in Alison Krauss' basement rec room.

I said they were grounded in bluegrass, but this band doesn't stop there. Fennimore's voice and the songwriting steer them all over the map. There are elements of Broadway show tunes, jazz and Americana as well. I have a feeling these folks could pull off a military march if the need arose. The playing is beyond solid and the songwriting is stellar. Try "Liar Out of Me," a song that stands out for the playing and the voices, oh the voices. It's got an old-timey feel and features Fennimore on lead and Marcus on harmony. It's a love-gone-wrong song that'll rip your heart out. "I won't tell you I stopped loving you the day you set me free, but I don't need words, I don't need words to make a liar out of me."

It's a beautiful song -- well-played and oh-so-well sung -- that would feel equally at home in a honky tonk or a jazz club. It's a country torch song. It's great. "Beneath the cement carpet of the city up above, you feigned a friendly smile. I leaned on ha ndrails and heard the young snails crack beneath this floor of mine."

Good grief, why isn't this a hit somewhere?

Over recent months, Crescent and Frost-primarily the singing and songwriting collaboration of Daniel Marcus and Maryann Fennimore-has gone from little-known partnership to one of the leading lights of New York City's acoustic music circuit.

With the release of Pennsylvania, the first full-length disc by the group, Marcus and Fennimore cement themselves in an exportable way: Pennsylvania proves that life in the big city doesn't pre-empt one's ability to understand bluegrass and folk music; it simply forces the musician to expand on it a little bit differently.

Recorded at least partially in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's-well-PA-ness stems from a small-town, healthily American vibe that roots all of its songs-like the subtly disturbing "Ghosts of Indiana," a song haunted like an old wooden house, or the traumatic New York-as-small-town, post-9/11 song Union Square" (no relation to the Tom Waits song).

Crescent and Frost's old-as-the-hills bluegrass instrumentation and modern-day textural feel and lyrical wile combine to make Pennsylvania-and the group, Marcus and Fennimore augmented by mandolin, bass and dobro-an anachronistic acoustic-music joy.

"I left Pennsylvania," sings Maryann Fennimore on "Pennsylvania," "now it won't let me be." Hell no, it won't: Pennsylvania - not Pittsburgh or Philly, but the vast unexplored territory in between-is at the spiritual heart of Crescent and Frost, Fennimore's New York City-based collaboration with fellow singer and songwriter Daniel Marcus.

Fennimore and Marcus's songs are rooted in old-time and bluegrass music, but steeped in the slightly more modern-sounding country traditions: "Things That Ain't Mine," for example, has the makings of a George and Tammy split-up weeper. While Marcus calls the group a bluegrass band, he's referring to instrumentation rather than material: Crescent and Frost has the background of bluegrass, the instrumental prowess and soulful inflection, but Marcus and Fennimore's songs don't rely purely on the traditions that give bluegrass songwriting its strength.

Even in country mode, however, Fennimore and Marcus's songs are enthusiastically small-town sentimental in that "just a few miles north of the turnpike" kind of way. And in that way, it's appropriate that the group will make Pittsburgh host to one of its first performances outside New York. Besides Fennimore and Marcus, Crescent and Frost boasts mandolinist Jason Dilg and champion dobro player Todd Livingston, both of whom hail from the acoustic-music haven of Colorado, plus New York bassist Ben Landsberk. But it's Pittsburgh that will play meeting place, as Crescent and Frost gathers to play and to make its first full-band recording.

"It's been nearly a year since the Coen brothers' quirky epic, O Brother, Where Art Thou, staged a coup for roots music at last year's Grammy Awards, and while country and contemporary folk never did become the next big thing, thanks to hillbilly aesthetes like Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch the space between rural and urban is eroding every day.

Schooled in the tricky idioms of bluegrass and traditional music, the five-piece combo Crescent and Frost re-imagine mountain music as coffeehouse folk, making a case in point for why this music is now in vogue (of course, don't tell any of the thousands of people who attend the four-day Telluride Bluegrass Festival every summer that it ever went out of vogue).

Led by the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter duo of Maryann Fennimore and Pittsburgh native Daniel Marcus, the group also includes Blue Canyon Boys mandolinist Jason Dilg and Colorado dobro whiz Todd Livingston, making Crescent and Frost a kind of small-scale supergroup. But where a lot of bluegrass tends toward jazzy virtuosity, this project is by and large Marcus and Fennimore's show: Rich with heartrending imagery, their hushed, reflective songs can cast a spell if you let them. This venue should provide and ideal setting for their intimate sounds."