Hidden Track Staff

Last week we kicked off a two-part series of articles by Pete Mason detailing the rise of Strangefolk from the group’s start at the University of Vermont through their climb to prominence as a national touring act on a major label. The second part continues the story from Reid Genauer’s departure in 2000 through the present with a hint of what’s to come.

Reid Genauer left Strangefolk in the fall of 2000 following the band’s Garden of Eden Festival. His departure had both an immediate and long term impact on the band.

Jon Trafton: When Reid left, we didn’t know what to do. Should we keep going? [Strangefolk drummer] Luke [Smith], myself and Erik weren’t ready to stop and we were confused as to what to do. The immediate effect was finding a replacement in [current guitarist] Luke [Patchen] and adding in keyboards was a cool idea – something I’d always wanted to check out. Our first show as a reformed Strangefolk was on November 4, 2000 at the Mad Mountain Tavern in Waitsfield Vermont. Don [Scott] actually joined mid-tour because our first keyboardist, Scott Shdeed, just wasn’t working out, so Don had to learn as we went on the road. Don joined us in Eugene, Oregon and got immersed very fast.

Along with the shifts in personnel came changes to the band’s sound and personality. The new members brought new ideas and a fresh perspective to the band.

Trafton: Patchen is an awesome singer and great on guitar. At first we felt we had to honor the songlist and play the older songs – at least the ones that Reid, Erik and I had written together. Patchen never exactly wanted to try to fill Reid’s shoes because he’s got his own thing going, but he did a great job with the older songs.

At the start we were respectful to the fans and the past musically but then we eventually began to move on into newer songs and sounds. He’s like Velcro, remembers everything we learn, has a great personality and is a utility both on acoustic and electric and gives us great interplay. Don is a great guy and a good choice to join the band. He can help us get into spacey zones and takes the pressure off of Jon.

Patchen: I never really wanted to have a day job, it just didn’t seem fun to me. For two years I played the subways in New York City and it was a job in a way. I would get up and play from 6AM to 9AM and again from 4PM to 7PM being paid in change.

READ ON for the rest of The Strangefolk Story…

One of our first readers and commenters was Ted Rockwell, co-founder of Everyday Companion, an online Widespread Panic setlist and information source. Ted is helping put together a celebration of

Furthur @ Hampton Coliseum, April 1

Words: Mike Ross

Hampton Coliseum, known by many as “The Mothership,” is impressive from the outside, but looking around from our nosebleed seats on the outer edge of the bowl before the lights went down I couldn’t help but feel incredulous that this giant cavernous place doesn’t suck out the energy of anybody trying to emit anything from that stage. It’s almost self-defeating alienating in it’s sheer hugeness – alienation being precisely the thing that people are trying to escape in coming to a public event, perhaps especially a Grateful Dead-related one.

For the first set of Furthur’s April Fools’ Day performance, I was feeling like maybe I was right. The band seemed a little tired. Maggie’s Farm came up and I found myself wondering, Why do they bother with songs like this anymore? Is there any life left in these songs for this band? The Grateful Dead as a band was a finite entity with a beginning and an end, and doing songs like Maggie’s Farm in the first set was part of their natural progression. When Furthur convened 15 years later, they had the option of picking from the cream of the crop, starting fresh and interpreting the Grateful Dead ethos in a way that would be satisfying to them and their fans – so why play first-set filler? Why not fill both sets with awesome?

Of course, my wrongheaded thinking would be spun on its ass by the time the show was over. Furthur gave me the gentle reminder that, just like in the Grateful Dead before it, the magic either happens, or it doesn’t – and it doesn’t much matter where. It can come and go, and it can be prodded and some pretty good stuff can happen in the meantime – these are professionals, after all – but in the end you can’t really force it. This was proven in a second-set Black Peter – usually a bit of a snore-fest for me – that just ripped. It also showed another facet of the progenitors of this music: liftoff can come from any member or members of the band; in the case of this Black Peter it was the Pehrson-Sunshine-Chimenti show. Those thick organ swirls and those harmonies (“See here how everything / lead up to this day”) elevated the whole stage by about five feet, and before anyone knew what was happening, the Mothership was hovering in place somewhere above Hampton. READ ON for more on Friday night’s Furthur show…

Words: Pete Mason

In 1991, Jon Trafton and Reid Genauer met at the University of Vermont and began playing guitar together. They soon formed Strangefolk, a staple of the early 1990’s East Coast jamband scene and a band that would go on to tour the country, regularly performing at festivals and even founding a fest of their own.

[Strangefolk Family Photo, Circa 1996 – via Jon Trafton]

Their initial incarnation fractured in 2000 as Genauer left and the band continued without him. Now with the twentieth anniversary of the band upon us we look back at their career with reflections from the band members past and present.

Strangefolk started out in Burlington, Vt. in 1991 when Reid Genauer and Jon Trafton met as freshman while Jon was playing guitar on the school’s campus. Trafton was playing with the band Wide Whale and invited Reid to join them in some jam sessions. They quickly formed a musical bond and decided to form a band together. Their first practice as a duo was in the basement of Slade Hall at UVM in the fall of 1991.

Genauer: The first two songs Jon and I collaborated on were Two Boys and Things That Fly. I had written Two Boys and Jon spruced it up musically and Jon had written the music to Things That Fly and I added lyrics. I recall weeks later we performed those two songs at an open mic night and blew the doors off the place or at least we felt like we did. Whether it was actual or perceived is almost irrelevant, the point is that it was after that open mic, the performance of those two songs and the crowd response, that we knew we were on to something good. In my mind that was the start of Strangefolk that night – that moment.

Trafton: When I ended up with a double and no roommate, it became our first space to play together.

READ ON for more of The Strangefolk Story…