PORT ANGELES — It’s short. Sharp. With some shock of the new in the traditional stew.
The first CD from Abby Mae & the Homeschool Boys, a young bluegrass band growing a reputation on the Olympic Peninsula, has its coming-out party at 9 tonight at Wine on the Waterfront, in The Landing mall at 115 E. Railroad Ave.
It’s an all-ages concert with a $6 cover charge that includes a copy of the CD, and “it should be a heck of a rockin’ show,” said David Rivers, guitarist with Abby Mae and the boys, who were in fact home-schooled.
He ticked off the tracks on the record, which is a four-song EP, as in extended play: more than a single, less than a full-length album.
First off is “Byker Hill,” an obscure Irish song; next comes “Angeline the Baker,” a traditional bluegrass tune recorded with loud-barroom effects. That leads to “Black Dog,” the Led Zeppelin romp, remade via the fiddles of 20-year-old Joey Gish and 23-year-old Mark Erb.
Homeschool Boys fans may recall live versions of “Black Dog,” but this EP version is completely different, with “a haunting vibe,” said Rivers.
Finishing the four is “I’ll Fly Away,” a traditional gospel song featuring some traditional gospel singers from Port Angeles. Their voices are layered in, Rivers said, so that as the song progresses, they slowly creep in, climaxing in the sound of “a humongous choir.”
The voices belong to members of the Peninsula Men’s Gospel Singers: Rivers’ father, Michael, the director, with Shawn Dawson, Dan Cobb and Greg Bondy.
Fronting them all is Latson, the 21-year-old singer who’s been stunning listeners, including David Jacobs-Strain, the acclaimed blues singer who performed last May at the Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts in Port Angeles.
“I was knocked out first by Abby’s voice,” Jacobs-Strain said after hearing her band’s rendition of “Black Dog.” He later invited Latson and the Homeschool Boys to open for him at Bar N9ne in Port Angeles and The Upstage in Port Townsend last August.
Singing before talking
Latson, a native of Port Angeles, learned to sing before she learned to talk. She grew up singing in the Independent Bible Church in Port Angeles, and then joined the choir in high school.
But more important, “I just sing all the time,” around the house, with the other Latson women: her mother, Kandi, sister, JoAnna and grandmother, Juanita.
When it comes time to go on stage at a nightclub, “I get kind of nervous. I can’t eat anything,” beforehand.
“But when I get there, I get this really great confidence; I get into the zone. . . . I get into the character of the song.
“I just want to give people the music. I want them to feel what I’m feeling,” and to step inside the story being told.
In “Landslide,” written by Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks, Latson becomes the woman who’s looking back on a love affair.
“She has to move on from it; she has to figure that out.”
Latson herself has figured out the Homeschool Boys are exactly the right band. Gish, Erb, Rivers and 18-year-old upright bassist Hayden Pomeroy are each “essential,” she said. “I couldn’t sing like myself without them.”
After the concert
Abby Mae & the Homeschool Boys’ debut record, simply titled EP One, will be on sale at Wine on the Waterfront during this evening’s concert and at Renaissance, the massage-coffee-tea shop at Front and Peabody streets, after tonight.
Rivers, 24, returned to his home town of Port Angeles after attending the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Like his bandmates, he has a day job, working at Wine on the Waterfront.
And now that the group is a year old and releasing its first EP, he’s already planning the next record. EP One is the first in a series, Rivers said; No. 2 will be produced in December and released by March. Music lovers can plan on more bluegrass, changed up and done in Abby Mae & the Homeschool Boys style.
“We’re a bunch of young kids,” he said, “doing a bunch of old, dusty songs,” with vigor and variation. At the same time, “there are a lot of messages in the songs that I hope carry through to people.”
As for tonight’s party, “it’s about community and celebration,” Rivers said. “It’s a barn dance-hoedown without the barn.”
