Blood and Mood

We've changed the CDs in the car again, which means I'm gettting new doses of old albums from the library. One that I've particularly enjoyed rediscovering is the Bad Liver's 2000 swan song, Blood and Mood. Whenever I've seen Danny Barnes perform in the last five years, he's always been very self-deprecating about this album. For sure, Sugar Hill Records had no idea what they were getting into when they signed the Livers, and any bluegrass traditionalist who picked up this recording was likely to be either shocked or disgusted.

What makes this album so enjoyable to me is the cross-pollination of two vibrant musical scenes. The Bad Livers honed their trademark punk/bluegrass hybrid in the phenomenally diverse Austin music scene (indeed, the first time I ever saw the Livers live was when they opened for fellow Austinites the Butthole Surfers - and I enjoyed their opening act until the acid overpowered me in preparation for the freak show to follow). In the late 90s, Livers banjoist and songwriter Danny Barnes moved up to Seattle, and Blood and Mood bears the musical imprint of that city. The Livers' already off-kilter musical sense found itself augmented by post-grunge guitar work, jazz stylings (probably as a result of Barnes collaborations with Bill Frisell), and smatterings of electronica. The result, while certainly defying easy categorization, retains the punk-hillbilly essence of the Livers music. Moreover, the hybridized songs themselves don't seemed forced, and the overall feel of the album, despite the myriad of influences, is surprisingly unified.

Indeed, I always thought it was a shame that the Bad Livers disbanded after this album. Blood and Mood, and its predecessor, Industry and Thrift, were both impressive expansions of their sound, and, I thought, indicative of future worthwhile musical explorations. Barnes has since recorded with his new band and on his own, and has been active around Seattle, teaching courses on traditional American music at the University of Washington, collaborating with Bill Frisell, and sitting in with the Seattle Symphony, but his newer work just leaves me wishing that he and Mark Rubin would get back together to push back against the constraints imposed by musical genres in their own ass-kicking style.

Sigh.