Not your average Old Time Music, reveiwers chime in....
by Rubinchik
"This is truly a great CD - these skilled musicians have really captured the "sound" of the early recorded string band; the only drawback is now I have a real reason to regret having moved away from Austin."- noted illustrator Chis Ware, 2003
"I've been listening all week and I can't find a single thing about this music I don't like...brief liner notes actually worth reading, not a false note struck anywhere." -No Depression, issue #41
"Austin bassist Mark Rubin, and founding Bad Livers member, is a musical journeyman who manages to make hopping across genres look deceptively easy. The Bing Bang Boys deliver a hodgepodge of American tunes from the early and mid-20th century, I'm Feelin' Good lives up to its title by focusing on upbeat songs played with friendly, infectious enthusiasm. Joining Rubin are Jere Canote and WB Reid on banjos and Greg Canote on fiddle. Everyone in the quartet pitches in on vocals, and while the range of songs, rags, and stomps necessitates a certain level of didacticism, learning about these songs from the Bing Bang Boys doesn't hurt a bit. Their rendition of the Shelton Brothers' 1935 song "That's a Habit" is a good-natured rib at perennially troublesome behavior, while "Chevrolet Car/Jackson Stomp" is a knee-snapping, uptempo medley featuring Rubin on tuba. Even more uplifting is "Don't You Remember the Time," a fiddle-and-vocal duet originally heard by the Boys on a Thirties' recording by Freeny's Barn Dance Band out of Mississippi. This sweet, starry-eyed waltz hits you right in the heart with a blissfully contented resonance that could make even the most hardened cynic acknowledge the existence of eternal love if only for three minutes. " -Austin Chronicle
"In the early 1970s, as the revival of old-time music began to take shape, legions of young musicians began scouring the Appalachian hinterlands for old recordings, tunes and in some cases, the source musicians themselves who embodied the southern string band tradition. Others, like the Double Decker String Band, specialized in collecting and resurrecting the sheet-music songs, many of them novelty tunes, that were popular in the parlors, drawing rooms, saloons and music halls of the Gay Nineties and the early 20th Century, performing them with instruments like the banjo uke that were novelties of a sort themselves. The Bing Bang Boys, a quartet of veterans of the old-time music scene, revisit this off-beat and almost forgotten side of American music with I'm Feelin' Good, a collection of 16 vintage songs and tunes.
Brothers Jere and Greg Canote, along with W. B. Reid and Mark Rubin (previously of Bad Livers fame) romp through material drawn from sources like the Shelton Brothers, Mississippi Sheiks, Bob Wills, the Skillet Lickers, John Hurt and more: "Georgia Stomp," "I've Got the Wonder Where She Went Blues," "Chevrolet Car," "Creole Belle," "That's a Habit," to name just a few. The musicianship is excellent, the arrangements entertaining (Rubin still has his tuba), and it's all in good fun. So, loosen up the corset, crack open a sarsaparilla, light up a cheroot and have a good time." -SING OUT Magazine
