The Holy Modal Rounders


The Holy Modal Rounders was an American folk music group, originally a duo who formed in 1963 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Although they achieved only limited commercial and critical success in the 1960s and 1970s, they earned a dedicated cult following and have been retrospectively praised for their reworking of early 20th century folk music as well as their innovation in several genres, including freak folk and psychedelic folk. With a career spanning 40 years, the Holy Modal Rounders were influential both in the New York scene where they began and to subsequent generations of underground musicians.
As the Holy Modal Rounders, Stampfel and Weber began playing in and around the Greenwich Village scene, at the heart of the ongoing American folk music revival. Their sense of humor, irreverent attitude, and novel update of old-time music brought support from fellow musicians but was controversial amongst some folk traditionalists. In 1964, the Rounders released their self-titled debut, which included the first use of the word "psychedelic" in popular music. After their first two studio albums, the duo briefly joined the newly formed underground rock band the Fugs in 1965 and helped record the band's influential debut album.
Following their exit from the Fugs, the duo released two albums that experimented with psychedelic folk before they expanded their lineup to a full rock band by the end of 1968. The Holy Modal Rounders' expanded lineup included playwright Sam Shepard as a drummer and many short-lived members before it stabilized in 1971 with keyboardist Richard Tyler, multi-instrumentalist Robin Remaily, bassist Dave Reisch, drummer Roger North, and saxophonist Ted Deane. Beginning in 1975, this backing group would also play with Jeffrey Frederick as the Clamtones. In 1972, Weber and the band relocated to Portland, Oregon, while Stampfel stayed behind in New York. Although Stampfel would describe Weber as his "long lost brother", they often had a hostile relationship and the two would only reunite sporadically during the next twenty years. After Weber returned to the East Coast in the mid-1990s, the duo began a series of concert reunions starting in 1996 before breaking up for the last time in 2003.

Origin of the name

Stampfel explained the origin of the name in the webzine Perfect Sound Forever:

History

1963–1965: As a duo

Formation and initial influences

Fiddle and banjo player Peter Stampfel and country-blues guitarist Steve Weber were introduced to each other in May 1963 by Stampfel's girlfriend Antonia Duren, who was mononymously known as Antonia. Stampfel grew up in Wisconsin and moved to New York City in 1959, where he soon became heavily influenced by Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. Weber grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he met musicians Michael Hurley and Robin Remaily, both of whom would later collaborate with the Rounders. According to Stampfel, he and Weber began performing together in New York City not long after being introduced, eventually settling on the name the Holy Modal Rounders.
Although taking much inspiration from traditional folk music, in particular Anthology of American Folk Music, the duo quickly showed an inclination to "update old-time folk music with a contemporary spirit", per critic Richie Unterberger. According to Stampfel, "the purist attitude at the time was that this golden age was gone, and the right way to do was to try to recreate it down to the pop and scratch on the old 78 RPM record. I mean, that's certainly a valid viewpoint, but it wasn't mine." Unterberger wrote that they "twisted weathered folk standards with wobbly vocals, exuberantly strange arrangements, and interpretations that were liberal, to say the least."
Stampfel himself described the genesis of his approach to music at the time: "I got the idea in 1963: What if Charlie Poole, and Charley Patton, and Uncle Dave Macon and all those guys were magically transported from the late 1920s to 1963? And then they were exposed to contemporary rock 'n' roll. What they do?" This realization was partially inspired by Stampfel seeing an early Bob Dylan perform folk music with a rock and roll phrasing: "from that, I realized that folk music and early rock-and-roll, which I'd thought were some kind of enemies, and certainly two disparate things, were totally capable of being reconciled and blended." Dylan himself was fan of Stampfel, who had been a part of the New York folk scene since Dylan's arrival, and listed Stampfel as one of his favorite singers during a 1961 interview before the Rounders were created.
With these intentions to update traditional music in mind, Stampfel began to change the words and add new verses to the traditional songs they played, later reflecting: "when I started writing songs... I mostly did it the way Bob Dylan started writing songs in 1961, which is putting new words to old songs". The duo's lyrical changes often featured references to their frequent and open drug use. Fellow folk singer Dave Van Ronk recalled that "they were stoned out of their birds all the time. Everybody knew it, they made no bones about it, and they were having fun." Author Jesse Jarnow also recognized this influence, commenting the Holy Modal Rounders were "overtly inspired by both Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music and drugs."
From the beginning, the duo's unorthodox approach to covering old-time music was negatively received by some folk purists. A review of the duo's debut album in the famed folk music magazine Sing Out! dismissed their music as "parody of folk song and folk content... with a sort of fear written into it—fear of coming out into the open as serious performers." Ariel Swartley of The New York Times retrospectively remarked that they stood out in the New York folk scene, in which performers were usually reverential to the material they covered, for "shoe-horning one old-time melody into the middle of another, slipping updated references into archaic laments, making scatological asides or a casual segue to an unrelated fiddle tune and throwing in enough grunts, woofs, whistles and squeals to put both an aging steam engine and a seventh-grade classroom to shame." Despite their seemingly irreverent approach, however, Swartley noted the duo "pursued traditional American music with an archival passion to rival that of the New Lost City Ramblers." NPR echoed this and disagreed with Sing Out!'s analysis, arguing that the band "wasn't doing parodies of old folk songs. Its members knew the music inside and out."
While some in the folk scene disapproved of their approach, Stampfel and Weber attracted a small and devoted following. Terri Thal, Dave Van Ronk's first wife, thought the songs they wrote were "brilliant" and subsequently became the band's manager in late 1964. Peter Tork of the Monkees was an early fan, reminiscing the duo was "absolutely hilarious" and brought "a whole new level of authenticity" to the scene. Sterling Morrison of the Velvet Underground similarly praised the Rounders, saying that "the Fugs, the Holy Modal Rounders, and the Velvet Underground were the only authentic Lower East Side bands. We were real bands playing for real people in a real scene." The duo was also friendly with and occasionally performed with Karen Dalton and Luke Faust, who briefly played the jug with the duo, during this time. Concurrent with the Rounders' original incarnation, Stampfel wrote a regular column for the folk music magazine Broadside called "Holy Modal Blither".

Debut and sophomore albums

In 1963, the duo was signed to Prestige Records by Paul A. Rothchild for two albums. Recorded the day before John F. Kennedy's assassination, their first album The Holy Modal Rounders was released in 1964 and produced by Sam Charters. The album mainly featured covers of traditional songs with rewritten lyrics. Most notably, the album contained a rewriting of the lyrics of "Hesitation Blues", during which Stampfel sings the first recorded use of the term "psychedelic" in popular music. The duo's arrangement of the traditional song "Blues in the Bottle" opens the album and went on to be covered by Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band and the Lovin' Spoonful. "Euphoria", written by Robin Remaily, was also featured on their debut and was soon covered by the Youngbloods. Ariel Swartley later observed that the song "did for marijuana what Grace Slick's 'White Rabbit' did for LSD three years later."
Their second album, The Holy Modal Rounders 2, followed in 1965 and was also produced by Charters. Although neither of their first two albums received much attention upon release, the albums have garnered increased coverage retrospectively, with Michael Simmons of LA Weekly describing the debut as a "classic of demented archaic country with rhythmic hints of rock, Stampfel's helium vocals, and his skewed lyrics." In 1972, the two albums were combined by Fantasy Records on the double-LP Stampfel & Weber. In 1999, Fantasy reissued it as 1 & 2, with the addition of two unreleased songs, to positive reviews. Tom Hull, writing in 2004 for the fourth edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, gave the reissue a four and half star rating, saying "it may have sounded weird way back when, but it sounds fresher than ever today."

1965: The Fugs

In late 1964, Weber and Stampfel attended a practice performance of the newly formed band the Fugs, created by Beat poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg and drummer Ken Weaver. Inspired by their political views, humorous and explicit songwriting, and do-it-yourself attitude to music, Stampfel and Weber offered to join the Fugs, with Stampfel noting that band previously had only Weaver's hand drum to back up Kupferberg's and Sanders's lyrics. Richie Unterberger later reflected that the Rounders joining the Fugs "instantly multipl the group's instrumental skills many times over... A real, albeit ragged, band was beginning to take shape."
On February 24, 1965 at Sanders's bookstore Peace Eye, the Fugs performed their first gig, which was attended by Andy Warhol, George Plimpton, William Burroughs, and James Michener. Stampfel and Weber joined the Fugs in their performance. Continuing to play with the group for several months, Stampfel and Weber both participated in an April studio session, but only Weber participated in a subsequent September session. These two sessions resulted in the material featured on the Fugs' debut studio album The Village Fugs Sing Ballads of Contemporary Protest, Point of Views, and General Dissatisfaction. Produced by Harry Smith, the album was originally released on Folkways Records' subsidiary label Broadside in 1965 and was re-released soon after on ESP-Disk in 1966 as The Fugs First Album. The album included Weber's songwriting effort "Boobs a Lot". Outtakes from these sessions were released by ESP-Disk as the Fugs' third studio album Virgin Fugs in 1967. Additional outtakes from the two sessions were released on Fugs 4, Rounders Score in 1975, also on ESP-Disk.
In July 1965, Stampfel left the Fugs and quit the Holy Modal Rounders, later citing his frustration with Weber, who would not work on new songs and whose drug abuse was making him increasingly erratic and unreliable. Soon after, the Fugs were filmed and photographed at Andy Warhol's The Factory. Warhol was a noted fan of the Fugs and frequented their shows. Featuring Weber performing with the Fugs, the reel was listed in Warhol's filmography as The Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders. Weber continued performing with the group until he was fired by the end of 1965 for being unreliable.