Good To The Last Drop Carolina Chocolate Drops Revive Piedmont String Band Music By Jeff Eason When the acoustic trio known as The Carolina Chocolate Drops takes the stage, many audience members automatically assume that they play bluegrass because of the banjoes and fiddles involved with the music. The Carolina Chocolate Drops. Photo by Jeff Eason “That’s how they compartmentalize it,” said Rhiannon Giddens, a fiddler, banjo player and singer in the Chocolate Drops. “They’ll say, ‘Oh, you play bluegrass. Oh, I understand now.’ Even though they don’t really understand what it is that we do. They have that need to categorize it. ‘You don’t play pop or R&B or rap, you must play this kind of music.’ That’s as close as they can get because they’ve never heard of old time music.” To be quite specific, The Carolina Chocolate Drops play old time string music endemic to the Piedmont, that hill-strewn region of the Carolinas and Virginia that lies between the Appalachian Mountains and the Coastal Plain. Joining Giddens in the band is fiddler, banjo player and singer Justin Robinson and multi-instrumentalist Dom Flemons who plays, depending on the tune, everything from guitar to jug to harmonica to fife. All three members of the band live in the Research Triangle cities of Raleigh and Durham. The trio paid a visit to Boone last Friday where they performed for and spoke to instructor Mark Freed’s folklore class at Appalachian State University. Later that evening, The Carolina Chocolate Drops were the featured performers for the Square Dance at Legends in Boone. The square dance was sponsored by the Appalachian Heritage Council. In keeping with their music, the three members of the band wore clothes similar to those that might be seen on musicians fifty years ago and traded licks on traditional acoustic instruments. Even their name is a throwback to the string band era. “The name Carolina Chocolate Drops is a tribute—or homage, if you will—to a band from the 1920s called The Tennessee Chocolate Drops,” explained Giddens. “That was a well-known black string band with Howard Armstrong who was a fantastic fiddler and mandolin player. Since two of us are from North Carolina and we were concentrating mostly on Piedmont tunes we changed it to The Carolina Chocolate Drops.” Added Flemons, “Howard Armstrong was later known as Louie Bluie. The Tennessee Chocolate Drops was his original group with his brothers.” The trip to Boone was also something of a homecoming for The Carolina Chocolate Drops. The members of the band first met in Boone last year when all three were attending the Black Banjo Gathering on the ASU campus. In addition to playing some great string band tunes from the 1920s and 30s, the members of The Carolina Chocolate Drops also spend a good deal of time explaining to listeners about where the music comes from. In doing so, they have to knock down a few misconceptions and stereotypes along the way. The trio explained that the main difference between the Piedmont style of old time string music and that of the Appalachian Mountains is in the role that the banjo plays. In Appalachian style, the banjo is primarily a rhythm instrument while the fiddle handles all of the lead lines. In the Piedmont style, the banjo is as much a lead instrument as the fiddle as the players “swap” melody lines. “If you were to look for it in the music store, it’d be between the blues and the bluegrass sections,” said Flemons. “Or maybe they would put it into the folk section. It’s definitely folk music, but it’s not like Joan Baez-era folk music.” No, the Chocolate Drops play folk music in the traditional sense of folks getting together to make some music so other folks can dance. One of their biggest influences is Joe Thompson, considered by many to be the last surviving true Piedmont old time string player from that era. “I found out about Joe Thompson when I met him last year at the Black Banjo Conference at ASU,” said Robinson. “After we met Joe we started going down to his place on the weekends to play. Joe’s a traditional fiddler who is 86 years old. He learned from his father who learned from his father, so this is a traditional style that goes back a long time.” “I’m originally from Mebane, in the country near Chapel Hill,” said Giddens. “That’s traditionally an area of the state with a mixture of black and white people. In Alamance County square dancing was very big in the twenties and thirties and Joe Thompson’s family band was highly sought after for both black and white square dances.” The Carolina Chocolate Drops have forged several important relationships with other older regional musicians including Algia Mae Hinton, a guitarist and singer from Middlesex, North Carolina. “We just went out and visited with Algia Mae,” said Giddens. “She’s in that blurry area of the blues. She plays traditional Piedmont blues but she also dances and plays the comb.” Another North Carolina musician that the young group will visit soon is Morganton’s Etta Baker. “If we don’t get to see her before she performs at MerleFest, then we’ll try to spend some time with her at the festival,” said Giddens. Although The Carolina Chocolate Drops have only been together for a year, they have been tabbed to perform at a number of festivals this summer and have their eye on taking the stage at MerleFest 2007. “We tried to get into MerleFest this year,” said Dom. “We think maybe next year we’ll get in.” Despite not being on the festival’s roster, the band plans to attend MerleFest this April to offer support to their older musician friends Joe Thompson, Etta Baker and Algia Mae Hinton. They will also bring their instruments in case there is a chance for some impromptu playing of old time Piedmont string band music. Who knows, they might even get a barn dance started while they are there. “I can’t tell you how many times I have had young black people tell me, ‘Square dancing is a white thing,’” said Giddens. “They don’t know that it is part of their own heritage.” THE LEE BOYS>>