Local Music
You just missed it. On July 25th, Only a Mother played their final show at the Gypsy Café. For almost ten years, this odd, dynamic group consistently impressed their audiences with mind-expanding, fun shows. Magnetically opposed to self-seriousness, Only a Mother, through their recordings, will continue to reach a varied audience around the globe.
Bobbi Benson, Doug Gourlay , Marko Novachcoff, and Frank Pahl are the musicians who each bring their creativity and expertise to this unique, collaborative band. The instrumentation would constantly shift during their live shows. Novachcoff might put down his cello and play the bassoon, while Pahl could set down his ukelele and opt for an ocarina. Gourlay has an intricate percussion set-up he put together which goes beyond the standard trap set with added bells, blocks and more. Bobbi Benson might play the claves while singing a traditional love spell ("Mr. Hair"), but most often had her electric double bass in hand.
Only a Mother's music is a frenetic, unapologetic stepping along the path that some passersby mislabel "madness." But beware the prejudices of closed ears, this music is not haphazard, nor simply a result of chance! Think of how a current jazz group might play around a rhythm or only state fragments of a central melody. A wider net is strung around the smaller core of "central theme," or "meter," and then cast far out to shape a very different sound. Now take the influence of countless cultures, music, and different stylistic approaches, and place that as the central theme running throughout the song. Twist the warping effect knob . . . maybe fiddle with the speed the song plays at, and you begin to get the idea of what Only a Mother's music is like.
It all began in 1987 when a cassette entitled Only a Mother Could Love surfaced in music stores. It was a solo recording by Frank Pahl, and contained some songs like "Bricks are Naked," which were adopted by the band and given many incarnations. The first OAM gigs featured Pahl, Ken Stanley, and Benson. Percussionist Doug Gourlay was the next to join. Gourlay and Pahl knew one another since high school, a time when they "did nasty euphonium and marching snare versions of '20th-Century Schizoid Man' on the way to the football field," Pahl explained. Gourlay' s customized set-up evolved from those early days when pots and pans were involved and they "tore up a lot of kitchens during communal jams" at parties in the early '80s.
Benson then introduced Mary Richards, a vocalist and violinist, to the band. She joined OAM, even though the first time she came by, Frank had a microphone stuck down his euphonium, and running through an echoplex ("she was unimpressed, but curious enough to return"). Riding White Alligators (an Ip-only release) carne out in 1988 and sold quickly.
The band's lasting roster was now in place as Marko Novachcoff added his name. Pahl recalls that Novachcoff joined the band "under his condition that we let him play cello. We assumed he knew how to play it. For the first few years, he played around the cello, coming up with beautiful minimal parts that took advantage of the open strings." Also in the early days, OAM had a water-filled terrarium onstage in which they'd play submerged instruments.
Next came the album Naked Songs for Contortionists [t.e.c. tones]. From Feral Chickens on, the group consisted of Bobbi Benson, Doug Gourlay, Marko Novachcoff, and Frank Pahl, with Mary Richards still involved through the first half of recording (she is currently studying violin in Italy). They also have a new release, Damned Pretty Snout, finished just-in-time before Benson moves to NYC. "As a result of what each brought to the table, Only a Mother became the sum total of all four musicians - if anyone leaves, it becomes a completely different thing," Novachcoff said, explaining why the band is ending with one member's departure.
Over their years together, these musicians developed a rapport with one another that most musicians hope to find in a band, but usually never do. They arranged the music together, as everyone made up their own parts to the songs. Marko Novachcoff described how out of even a hint of an idea, they could start playing and make something out of it. He also wanted to make it known that, of all the various things he has done (in the early '80s, he took part in running a studio that recorded everyone from George Clinton and Sly Stone to Destroy All Monsters; he performed for Pres. Clinton with a mid-19th century music band; he played the tuba while atop a high-wheeled bicycle at a festival in Kentucky), Only a Mother has been the most meaningful, musically, in his life. In addition, people enjoyed their shows and recordings!
Only a Mother is finished, but some of its band members will still be incredibly musically active. Frank Pahl, who just graduated with a M.F.A. in Art & Design from U-M, will be performing at the C-Pop Gallery the 27th, then touring with other bands from the vaccination label that his solo recordings are on. In February, his automatons will back up a new dance choreographed by Peter Sparling. Marko Novachcoff is busy with his new business, Marko's Musical Curiosa (734-762-9610), a store that specializes in unusual instruments and violin family & double bass repairs (he restored and researched instruments for the Henry Ford Museum's music collection and the Stearns Collection in U-M's School of Music). He also has more time now for the two recording projects he shelved a while back.
Only a Mother reinforces my faith in music and confirms all of my suspicions that, yes, there is more to music, more for music, and more from music than what's heard through the most heavily-trafficked channels. Down, further in, lies the layer of existence shimmering...containing both old and new, emotion and action, all condensed into truth - and its only language is music. This group has toured Europe; their albums are now even distributed in Japan. We in Michigan are lucky that their home base is here. Make sure to pick up their brand new CD, Damned Pretty Snout and open your ears and enjoy!