Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir
There’s a band from Canada playing Irish-influenced music in Ireland and Britain for the next month, and they owe something of their name to a preacher from Kansas City.
Judd Palmer is a vocalist who plays banjo, low slide guitar, and harmonica in the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir. And his great-grandfather ran a half-way house for the insane and drunks in Kansas City.
Grandpa Fields had his own religion:
He and his wife, Grandma Fields , were the only initiates and each Sunday they would hold church in the house for their own metaphysical purposes. Grandpa Fields would preach and Grandma Fields would be banging away on a piano, her enormous arms flapping as she did so, and all the insane and drunk boys in the house would sing along for their soup.
You can read more about Grandpa Fields, including how his large backside brought about his demise, in the story in the Galway Advertiser.
You’ll also get to see what Judd says about the music the AMGC play in Calgary, and how it’s influenced by the the history of music in North America:
The Irish and the Scots influence came through bluegrass, which was invented by the Celts and that fused with African instruments like the banjo in the odd melting pot the Americas was then. Back then people would sit down and make music and make gospel together before they became ‘civilised’ and had to hate each other.
Folk music extends from Texas to Alberta, along the lines of the cattle runs. I could be playing an Irish reel on the banjo and it would remind me of the blues and then much of the folk music has connections to Mariachi music. What flabbergasts me is how interconnected they all are.
You can listen, of course, to the Agnostics on MySpace.
They play in Dublin on July 31st, 2008. Hmmm.
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