Moors & McCumber – Fayetteville AR – photo Jim Jacob
Introduction
When you’re an Australian, planning a music month in the USA revolves around researching festival locations, festival line-ups, other live shows and logistics. Of course, basing decisions on these things revolves around performers with which you are familiar and others with a reputation that you would like to see first hand.
But there’s a further benefit to be gained. It’s simply accidentally stumbling onto new artists and seeing them for the first time, with no preconceived notions and no expectations. All you have to do in these cases is just……..listen and absorb.
So it turned out to be for me with Moors & McCumber.
I was soaking up the fayettevilleroots festival in Fayetteville Arkansas, my first visit there¹ (hopefully not my last). On the morning of the last day of the festival, I wanted to check out some information on a Highway 71 project that was being promoted at the local library. After taking care of that business, I meandered into an auditorium and an acoustic duo was playing. I was able to listen to four songs (I liked what I heard) before needing to hike back to the Town Centre.
My wife engaged the musical pair in a conversation later that day and I subsequently met them, heard the story about the duo, their music, and their involvement in tours of Ireland (for more on the latter, see below).
Since then I have returned home and had the opportunity to digest the duo’s latest CD Pandemonium and form the view that, everything that Moors & McCumber do, they do very well indeed.
About Moors & McCumber
James Moors (vocals, guitars, ukulele, mandolin and Irish bouzouki) is based in Superior, Wisconsin and Kort McCumber (vocals, keys, cello, guitars, Irish tenor banjo, Irish bouzouki, fiddle, mandolin, accordion, harmonica, upright and electric bass) hails from Gold Hill, Colorado. As you can see, the pair can play just about anything, and, such is their skill, switch instruments just about after every song, enabling plenty of diversity in their material, thereby keeping audience interest.
Although they live 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) apart, such is their chemistry that they manage to forge a combined career, through recording, performing and managing tours. There’s got to be some pretty good logistic and management skills going on between these two fine performers as well!
More than a decade into their musical existence, they continue to profess their love for music and bringing it to as many listeners in the United States and Ireland. With four full album releases (and a tribute single) to date, I suspect there’s plenty more to come.
” These guys should be playing every major Festival in the country. They bring it all to the stage and deliver it in a big way ” – Lloyd Maines. Grammy award-winning Producer and Multi-instumentalist.
Moors & McCumber
About Pandemonium
The duo’s latest offering (released January 1 2015) Pandemonium was produced by the great Gary Louris (the seminal band The Jayhawks) and recorded at Ed Ackerson’s Flowers Studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The collection features twelve original songs penned by Moors and McCumber and arranged with Louris. Extra players are Louris (electric guitar), Craig Akin (bass), Peter Anderson (drums), Jagoda (percussion), Jim Gilmour (hammond B3) and Ray Smith (lap steel), with backing vocals from Louris, Gilmour, Smith and Cari Minor.
The sharp songwriting, beautiful playing and abundant harmonies of Moors & McCumber are soaked in every track. Highlights for me are the harmonic flow of “Crack A Smile”, the gentle alt. country “Everything” with its rich voices in unison, the pin-point and catchy “No Way To Live” that will stay with you well after, and my favourite – “Pandemonium” with its heavenly harmonies soothing the noise and weariness of everyday life:
“Won’t you please turn off the light
I haven’t had a moment’s rest
I never have time to think
should I have another drink to quell this”
Here’s a live version of another of the tracks – “My Heart Is Open”
Pandemonium Track List
- Crack a Smile
- You Take Me Somewhere
- Everything
- No Way To Live
- Bend or Be Broken
- Take Me Away
- Buried In The Earth
- My Heart Is Open
- Best Of Intentions
- If Living Was Easy
- All Great Tragedy
- Pandemonium
I thank my lucky stars for stumbling onto Moors & McCumber.
About The Irish Tour
James Moors & Kort McCumber host tours to Ireland, with two programmed for 2016 (this year’s tours sold out).
In a small group, the tour includes visits to Counties Cork, Kerry, and Clare in the south and west parts of the country, home to some spectacular scenery.
By day, the group visits castles or abbey ruins, stone circles and archeological sites and, at night, you can listen to some of the finest live Irish traditional music.
For more information, go here
¹ you can check out my daily accounts of fayettevillerootsfestival here:
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