It takes more than two hours for musician, author and performer Steven Wade to persuade audiences that the roots of American music are as much a part of our collective history as the written word. The Beautiful Music All Around Usis a one-man show based on Wade’s recent book of the same name. Researching and writing the book has consumed a good chunk of Wade’s professional life, and one guesses he could easily go on for another two hours once he’s onstage.
Staged in the intimate Stackner Cabaret, Beautiful Music proves to be as educational as it is entertaining. Wade is no stranger to the stage, as he previously was known for his traveling production of Banjo Dancing. Wade, a banjo player who grew up in nearby Chicago, traveled extensively to learn from musicians in the Mississippi delta and throughout the South. Now a much more established musician (and a Grammy Award nominee), Wade takes us through his slide show of early folk musicians and their instruments. He intersperses stories of largely unknown performers--most black and poor, growing up in the South--with snippets of tunes they created or were handed down to them by earlier generations.
Wade has lost none of his ability to recreate these tunes. With his sure, swiftly moving fingers, he takes the audience through reels and ballads, songs of riding the rails and the heartache of leaving loved ones behind, and songs of prisoners awaiting a chance at parole.
In many cases, Wade plays these tunes on the actual instruments that were originally used to record songs collected by the famed Library of Congress field recordings of the 1930s and 40s. Many of these instruments were gifts from the musicians’ families. Occasionally, Wade's visits to these families unleashed a musical legacy that the families never knew existed. But Wade, a tireless detective, traces the origins of songs more recently recorded by groups and performers such as Pete Seeger, The Kingston Trio and composer Aaron Copeland to the same songs played by their fathers and grandfathers. Wade, a lanky, tweedy sort of man who dresses and talks much like a college professor. shows no ebbing enthusiasm for his 500-page book project, even after its recent publication. When telling his stories, he misses some of the dramatic tension which might further pique the audience’s interest. With no back-up singers or dancers to add another dimension to the banjo playing, Wade’s routine of slides and songs does wear thin after awhile. As director of his own show, Wade might consider trimming his performance by 20 minutes or so. Those are minor slights in a performance that relies more on talent than showmanship. Some interesting lighting and sound effects help the production break up its stream of slides and songs. Also, Wade customizes his show to the area where he is performing it. Wisconsin, it turns out, has had a surprisingly important role in Wade’s work. Impressively, he displays a banjo that was made in Kenosha (near the state’s southern border) during the Civil War. The music Wade produces from it is as lively and crisp as one would imagine the day it was sold.
Wade also mentions Paramount Records, started in the 1910s in Grafton, Wis. (about 25 miles north of downtown Milwaukee). The company produced a wide range of recordings, but it was the “race records” (as recordings by African-Americans were called) that were of particular interest to Wade. Musicians such as Blind Lemon Jefferson and Ma Rainey recorded there before the company closed during the Depression. The company eventually reopened, but Broadway recordings proved more popular than the “race records” of earlier days. Overall, Wade does an excellent and job of tracing American music back to its early roots. Through his performance of these songs, we can imagine a host of cotton pickers, Civil War soldiers and rail-hopping drifters making the music that would endure far beyond the lifetimes of those who created it.
