An early fall Saturday night in New Haven. If there was rain tapping on the roof of Edgerton Park’s mildewy carriage house, nobody seemed to notice. Inside, bluegrass group Della Mae finished “Shambles.” “Leave it to you / to make sense of the shambles / you made of yourself / while I carried on,” Celia Woodsmith sang out. Zoe Guigueno leaned into her bass like a trusty friend. Courtney Hartman stepped forward. Members of the audience, fanning themselves en masse by now, leaned in for the announcement of a next song.
“We’re into women who can fingerpick,” Hartman explained. “At an earlier show this summer, this girl approached me and said ‘I kind of know one of your songs.’ So I played it with her. And she knew the whole thing. Claire, we’d like to invite you up to play with us again.”
Claps and a cheers went up from the third row. A young Elm Citizen bounded to the front of the room, shielding her eyes a little from the harsh overhead light. She grabbed her banjo. The room, already humid after the damp and warm of the afternoon, shifted from 1000 degrees to 1001.
This was contemporary bluegrass — no amps, no mics, no frills, and all soul.
As the headliner at the 11-hour, boundlessly exploratory CT Folk Festival in Edgerton Park last Saturday, Della Mae — Woodsmith on lead vocals and guitar, Jenni Lyn Gardner on mandolin and vocals, Kimber Ludiker on fiddle, Hartman on lead guitar and vocals, and Guigueno on bass — delighted as inclement weather forced the festival’s final three acts inside, performers going full acoustic and getting very up close and personal with the audience. Following a candid performance by the indefatigable Roger Sprung and his Progressive Bluegrassers, the group embraced their unconventional setting, calling it one of the “most memorable shows we’ve ever played.”
It was one of the most memorable the audience had ever heard, too. About a hundred folk devotees crammed into the small room in the park’s carriage house as the rain began, turning the room into a sweat lodge. Those who stayed to shvitz it out were in for a treat: Sprung shared anecdotes about playing folk and bluegrass in 1960s New York and with Woody Guthrie, punctuating traditional ballads with slow-simmering jokes and historical tidbits.
And of course, stories that ushered him into his 85th year — which happened to be that evening.
Sprung is one of those presences that make you drop everything and open your ears wide, as if you and he are the only people in the room, and this dialogue is the most important one you will have for a very long time. John Gorka cooled the room down a little with his witty, tenderly self-conscious set.
Which set the stage for Della Mae to roll in like a blessed summer storm while a cool one brewed outside. Anchored by Woodsmith, whose deliciously deep, grit-kissed vocals carry the group but do not overwhelm it, the five women stunned the room, audience members clapping, stomping their feet, and swaying, confined in their chairs as they were, to infectious rhythm and whip-smart lyrics. Gardner wowed on the mandolin, and then turned around to stun with her whine-anointed, just-so melancholy vocals. Guigueno broke a bass string, played an unrehearsed three-stringed number, and then restrung her bass in under three minutes.
More than five women united by a love of and talent for bluegrass — Ludiker’s fiddle alone is enough to watch, spellbound, all night — they are five pioneers, drawing from a storied and rich tradition while finding their exact niche within it. That they manage to have fun while spreading a soulful, kickass, bluegrass-meets-feminist gospel adds an exuberant element to their work. Strings on a bass. Whiskey to the party. Lamplight to a dim, folksy room. Lyrics to the music.