Instant Middlin'

A typical Fair to Middlin' performance revs up high and lonesome standards until they redline into a zone the duo dubs "folk music on steroids." This Saturday's "Way Down Yonder" finds a more high-performance beast firing on at least five cylinders, as they juice up their sound with three guest musicians for the first time. For the night, inspiration for the husband-and-wife team of Curtis and Anne Darrah smells more of a freshly plucked row of tubers rather than exhaust fumes.

"There's something about a moment of performance where it can all come together in a way where you can't plan for something like that to happen," says Curtis Darrah of a previous performance with Michael Doucet that redefined the duo's sound via Doucet's added musicianship. "And it was sort of representative of what I thought music should be. Maybe a little rough around the edges, but I think that's where the heart and soul lies. Like Norman Blake always said, you gotta smell the dirt on the 'taters."

The evening serves up late holiday leftovers as three of the couple's friends, and occasional accomplices, head down to Cité des Arts for a good, ole-fashioned, one-mic high and lonesome standard soirée. Dave Trainer, a familiar face in the Hub City, joins them on fiddle as Wiggins, Miss., native Doug Anderson pulls double duty on banjo and mandolin and Fair to Middlin' introduces the bluegrass bass of Butch Cooksey, dubbed partly cloudy for this show, to Lafayette.

For those who have caught Fair to Middlin' on the back porch of the Blue Moon Saloon, the gazebo-like Parc Sans Souci stage while nibbling on a boxed Bach Lunch or any other local spot, this will be a whole new folkgrass.

"We have played with them enough so that we sort of feel musically compatible with them. ... It's the sort of situation where you're always waiting to see what is going to happen," says Curtis, pulling a bit of theory out of his mental archives, which could easily fill a book on the genre or music as a whole.

Anne, who serves up guitar and vocals, agrees, nodding, "It will (change the dynamic). We have played with all of these people and some of them have played with some of the others. ... What Curtis loves doing when playing - that's why he especially likes playing with Michael - is to play off each other."

It might seem a little off-kilter for their Hub City fans to see a stage loaded with five performers - plus special guests who's identity the couple won't divulge - but for those who follow the bluegrass circuit, the growth spurt can't be that peculiar. The road Fair to Middlin' travels has a habit of adding a couple hundred pounds of wayward musician weight, as they have a tendency to pull a newfound running buddy on stage to lend a pick or three. On that bluegrass festival circuit, a trail that leads via pie plates marked with arrows through the wilds of Iowa and Wisconsin, the band made fast friends and quickly immersed themselves in its tight-knit family atmosphere. It's not that difficult at the events where bands are likely to be booked for the next stop on the trail before finishing unloading their gear.

"It's like going back 50 years to this kinder, gentler place where everybody will end up leaving their thousand dollar banjos outside of their RV and go for a walk. Everyone will laugh at you if you lock your RV or worry about where you are putting your instruments. There is this real family feeling to it where no one would ever want to hurt anybody," beams Anne. Along with the safe harbor comes camaraderie - which is oftentimes, as Curtis puts it, "unpolished."

"On some of these shows you'll see some stuff and you'll go, 'Man that is ... It's like a bunch of people who got together in the parking lot, and they gave them a slot,'" says Curtis. "Some of it's pretty rough, but what you think is this music is owned by everybody who has an instrument."

In that spirit of the instant band - just add strangers - the ready-mix ensemble will not be together on stage until the sound check, thanks to geographic limitations. Once the curtain goes up, the five players will huddle around the stage's single mic, engaged in what Curtis calls a game of musical quarterback.

"We'll hand off the ball, the break will come up, nod over at Dave, 'Dave, here you go, let's see what you can do,'" he says.

In Anne's eyes, there is a special element to "Way Down Yonder," other than jamming with their friends, because she puts high regard on doing something for their faithful fans.

"I think they'll enjoy it, because we will be enjoying it."



If Anne Darrah had her original druthers, there would be no "Way Down Yonder," and Fair to Middlin' would not have made it across the threshold of their house.

About seven years ago, Curtis liquidated a stable of motorcycles and sought a new hobby when he discovered the dobro. Back in college, he had played electric bass and missed the fellowship of walking down a dorm hallway, jamming with the friends he met. Plus, coming off a motorcycle racing stint, it seemed a wise choice for someone his age.

"When you go motorcycle racing, you could fall off and really hurt yourself. The worst thing that's gonna happen at a bluegrass show is, even if you blow a break, you are going to go home in one piece," he laughs.

As Curtis developed his chops, he coaxed Anne - not only his better half but also his other half in their graphic design company - into taking up guitar. At first, she balked at the chance of dedicating her pastime to spending more time with her husband/coworker.

"It was a lot of togetherness - being married and working in the same room. I always felt like I wanted my hobbies out in the garden, but there was just such joy there," she relates gently. Her reluctance started melting away one night after Steve Schneider of the Clickin' Chickens - at the time Lafayette's only bluegrass band - came to jam with Curtis. "I had never been around music like that, made in home, and that's all that I had to have was to hear that energy. People often say, 'Oh it looks relaxing,' but it's not. It's energizing."

Even after her guitar studies got underway and the two were plunking away, she still had reservations about adding another title to their already round-the-clock relationship. Then, in 1997, Dr. Tommy Comeaux died, leaving a hole in the Clickin' Chickens lineup. Curtis, who always pined to play with the Chickens, figured fate was showing his way when he was invited to audition to fill the late, great doctor's slot with the band at Festival International de Louisiane. Although Curtis was tickled, Anne was ticked.

"Curtis didn't tell me, thank goodness, that he had always wanted to be a band, because it wasn't something necessarily that I wanted to do," she says. "But when he was going to join the Clickin' Chickens, at that point I had been playing maybe almost a year, and I was really sad that he was going to take that journey without me. That's when I realized, OK, maybe I do want to do this."

She stuck to it and, through a family member, the pair was asked to play a Festival International ArtWalk gig in front of a freshly painted Robert Dafford mural. Before their set could draw to a close, KRVS' Cecil Doyle sauntered by, gave a listen and liked what he heard. Within days, Fair to Middlin' was on his radio show playing a few of the 10 tunes they knew. Before the week was out, they were scheduled to play Festivals Acadiens.

"So we became a band with me kicking and screaming," laughs Anne, who consulted a local opera teacher to help preserve her voice. Ironically, the aficionado of opera, a musical styling which sees a slice mayhem rivaling any other genre short of hip-hop, was alarmed by the choice of her lyrical direction, often asking why she had to sing so many murder ballads. The end result is that Anne's voice - normally sweet and gentle enough to lull any teething baby to sleep - can hit the mountainous heights of the high and lonesome sound.

Who's to say what led to the band's instantly falling into good graces with the Lafayette gods of booking? Perhaps it was a void of all things bluegrass and the music community's hunger for it years before O Brother, Where Art Thou? made the form a household name once again. Locally, the reaction couldn't have been warmer, as audience members thanked them for singing the far away and almost far-gone songs their mothers had once sung. Among traditional crowds, however, there were some discrepancies as to the fiber of their music. Some more hardened and seasoned bluegrass fans challenged Fair to Middlin's presence at the festivals, calling them a folk band, even though most of their set list comes from a catalog of standards that defined bluegrass. The pair has not paid it much mind, instead focusing on what is important to them.

"Basically, to me, the music is this homegrown stuff that feeds something in your soul," philosophizes Curtis. "Yeah, you want to make some money with it because all this stuff costs money and travel costs money, but if we wanted to make money we'd sit in front of the computer and do advertising. This is one of those things that sort of scratches an itch."



nick.pittman@timesofacadiana.com.