Hi -

Sorry for the "commercial", but I figured
you folks would be interested...

I'm currently selling a brand new CD release
from "Double Standard String Band"

It's old-timey music (banjo, guitar, fiddle,
mandolin, string bass) recorded in 1966 (!)...
The master tapes we're recently discovered
and have never been available anywhere before.

The two songwriters are Les Daniels (banjo,
vocals) and Martin Mull (guitar, vocals).
Back then, Les was a student at Brown University
in Providence while Martin was studying next
door at the Rhode Island School of Design.
The two collaborated again on the 1974 Soop
record, but these recordings pre-date those
sessions by almost a decade and this gritty,
country-folk-grass picking is the real deal!

The "Double Standard String Band" was fully
restored and mastered for CD - there are
16 tracks in all, 12 of which feature Martin
Mull. It's all professionally packaged in
full-color (except for the B/W period photo
of Les and Martin performing live in 1966)
and features liner notes by Les himself.

This is a small, limited pressing that is
not available in stores - mail order only:

$14 money order payable to "J. Alexander"
PO Box 170, Barrington, RI 02806
($20 if outside the USA)
Please include your shipping address with payment.
Thanks!

----
"...Les also sings, plays banjo, and writes songs...a
combination of bluegrass, folk and country, with a heavy
emphasis on sophisticated Tom Lehrer-style parodies.

"...[five] of these tunes were written with comedian/actor
Martin Mull. [also two others written solely by Mull]
The first of the Mull-Daniels collaborations, "Cleveland,"
is a Stephen Fosterish paean for the joys of Ohio: "Oh me,
oh me-oh-my-o/I miss the life I loved down in Ohio."
"The Great Bellvue Murder Mystery" is another
rural-rube-in-the-city-missing-his-home-place parody, and
"Country Lass" switches between major and minor as the narrator
searches for a tongue-in-cheek "good ole country lass."

"The songs that Daniels has written himself are equally fun,
if not even more so. "First Base" compares love to baseball:
Now I'm just a little farm team boy,
and I'd like to fill your heart with joy,
But I'll have to get my uniform dyed blue,
The way I'm cryin' they'll have to call the game on account of rain,
'Cause I can't seem to get to first base with you.

"Cowboy Song" is a minor key ballad, with a jilted lover
imagining what it would be like to be a fearless cowboy.
It's droll and wistful, with a sweet, traditional-sounding
melody. The dryly humorous tone continues with "Beggars Can't
Be Choosers," in which the narrator has to be content with the
ugly girl who's just bailed him out of prison, and "I Just
Broke Jail" (does Daniels, like Hitchcock, have a prison phobia?),
which tongue-twistingly tells of a moonshiner and his travails
with the law. "Mr. Moonshine" looks at the illegal practice
from the point of view of a woman who sings plaintively,
"Lips that touch whiskey will never touch mine, Mr. Moonshine /
Hands that make whisky will never get frisky with me."
The gorgeous melody belies the ironic lyrics, and one could almost
believe this to be a turn-of-the-last-century prohibition ballad.

"Another more serious song is "Sentimental Value," in the same
antique vein as "Mr. Moonshine." My favorite, however, is
"The Coyote Kid," which begins with a rhythmic guitar line which
leads into a far more complex chord progression than many of the
other songs. The story the song tells is equally complex and
haunting."

-- Chet Williamson
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