Jan Bell and The Maybelles at Barbes: Americana That Rings True

Jan Bell and The Maybelles / photo by Jelle Wagenaar / courtesy of Little Red Hen Agency

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Jan Bell, the driving force behind the annual Brooklyn Americana Music Festival, performed before an enthusiastic crowd at Barbès on February 28, accompanied by The Maybelles: Rima Fand on violin (aka fiddle) and Tina Lama on upright bass. It was the official release show for their new album, Goodbye to the River (see review below), with nearly half of the 15-song performance being devoted to tunes from that collection.

Highlights of the opening set included “Bird Song,” featuring a soaring fiddle solo by Fand; “Goodbye View,” the first of several tunes during which the trio demonstrated their gorgeous harmonies; “Bridge of Blue”; and “No Country.” The latter song’s perspective evolves from provincial, with the Yorkshire, England-born Bell singing “The country I was born in is far away,” to global, quoting Virginia Woolf: “My country is the whole wide world.”

Jan Bell and The Maybelles at Barbés / photo by Howard B. Leibowitz / courtesy of B.L.Howard Productions

Ramping up the Brooklyn/Americana factor, M Shanghai’s Philippa Thompson joined the trio for their cover of “The Miner’s Bride” (written by Bobtown’s Karen Dahlstom), wowing the crowd with her virtuosity on the musical saw. Thompson then teamed up with Fand for a violin duet that added to the poignancy of “When You’re Gone.”

The second set began with Bell’s Woody Guthrie-inspired “Carried by the Wind,” paired with a better-than-faithful cover of Lucinda Williams’ “I Envy the Wind.” Banjo player extraordinaire Hilary Hawke, who presides over the Slowjam every second Sunday of the month at Jalopy, joined in on “Right to Love” and “Sea of Heartbreak,” the latter also featuring Thompson on washboard. A more sparse arrangement – just piano (Fand) and bass — lent a poignant quality to “Not Long Ago,” a lament about the gentrification of Dumbo.

Following the group’s finale, “Beautiful City,” Jan Bell returned to the stage for a solo encore — the haunting feminist anthem, “Another Woman Gone,” which she dedicated to Planned Parenthood.

Album Review- Goodbye To The River– Jan Bell and The Maybelles

Goodbye To The River Cover Art / courtesy of Jelle Wagenaar

The latest release from Jan Bell and The Maybelles, Goodbye to the River, shows how Americana music, in its purest form, can be applied to urban longings. The album’s recurring theme is the gentrification of Bell’s beloved Dumbo neighborhood, specifically its waterfront, in songs such as “Goodbye View” “Tugboat Heart” and, most poignantly, “Not Long Ago” (“The pile driver follows the wrecking ball…”).

“When You’re Gone,” a song of lost love, is worthy of Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn, who are referenced in the lyrics (“They sing kind of sad but make you feel better”). Another highlight is “Jeff Song,” Bell’s ode to Jeff Buckley, about a dream she had about the late singer (“‘Hallelujah’ was the song I heard as the current pulled him down with her”).

The album concludes, fittingly, with “Bridge of Blue,” a love song to the Manhattan Bridge that ends with a chorus of “woo-oos” that conjure images of tugboats passing under the beautiful span.