Ploughman’s Lunch is back for Get Hip’s Black Friday
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The new Get Hip Record Store on the North Side will celebrate Black Friday weekend with a photo exhibit and another chance tosee a reunion of Ploughman’s Lunch.
Get Hip will showcase the work of rock photographer Theresa Kereakes, whose shotsfeature such legends as Keith Richards, Tom Petty, Lou Reed and Stevie Nicks, as well as younger artists like The Reigning Sound and Dirtbombs. She will be on hand throughout the weekend to share stories from her days at Hollywood’s Whisky A-GoGo during the L.A. Punk explosion. Framed and unframed prints will be available to purchase.
Celticpunk band Ploughman’s Lunch, the late ‘80s/early ‘90s spinoff from Carsickness, reunited last for the closing of the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern, and now reunites again over theThanksgiving weekend that brings frontman Karl Mullen back to town from western Massachusetts.
“Never say never,” he says of the reunion. “The last gigs were so much fun we couldn’t resist playing again at Get Hip and are hoping for a Ploughman’s Lunch release next year.” Itis also Mr. Mullen’s birthday. Store hours will be noon to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. Sunday. Everythingwill be 20 percent off.
The music schedule is Frank Secich (Blue Ash, Stiv Bators) at 7 p.m. Friday, Ploughman’s Lunch at 7 p.m. Saturday and Slim Forsythe, Steve Sciulli and Zack Keim at 5 p.m.Sunday.
Folk singer-songwriter Emily Pinkerton and her classical composer husband Patrick Burke meet in the middle on “Rounder Songs,” a stunning new song cycle with a murderousring.
Ms. Pinkerton, a member of the Pittsburgh old-time trio The Early Mays and an ethnomusicologist immersed in Appalachianand Andean traditions, provides banjo and chilling soprano vocals to the songs, joined by chamber group the NOW Ensemble: flutist Alex Sopp, clarinetist Alicia Lee, guitarist Mark Dancigers, double bassist LoganCoale and pianist Michael Mizrahi.
The result is a unique blend of what they call “21st century post-minimalist classical musicand North American old-time.”
Ms.Pinkerton and Mr. Burke, a Duquesne University professor, recomposed these five pieces based on public domain songs and legends from Kentucky and West Virginia. “Marcum and the Yankee” tells of a mill worker striking a deal with the devil and trading his soul for a gun. “Pretty Polly” is a murder ballad in 6/8 meter that finds the killer walking away from a freshly dug grave. Banjo beauty “Three Forks of Hell” is anadaptation of a Civil War-era tune.
The couple had never done any formal work together — “aside from jamming around the house,” she says, and her performingat NOW Ensemble fundraisers.
“We did the first movement of this years ago and it sat around, and we thought this would be great to expand. Little by little over theyears we worked on it.”
At first, she says, “it was all four hands duking it out.” They decided it would be better to compose separately “to get the structures in place and then respond to each other,” like him sculpting passages and interludes around her vocals and banjo playing.
Thesongs, some from the Hammons Family of West Virginia, “have been in my head foryears,” she says.
The album was supported by grants from New Music USA, The Heinz Endowments and The Pittsburgh Foundation and recorded here with three-time Grammy Award-winning producer/recording engineer Jesse Lewis, who has collaborated with A Far Cry, Brooklyn Rider, the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel, and the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma, amongothers.
They will premiere the work live at National Sawdust in Brooklyn this winter and are hoping to schedule a Pittsburgh showcaseearly next year.