Zubot and Dawson
Encyclopedia
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, BC.
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. The group is composed of Jesse Zubot
Jesse Zubot
Jesse Zubot is a Canadian musician primarily known for his unique violin playing. Zubot also works as a producer, engineer, and composer.-History:...
on fiddle and Steve Dawson on guitar who play "Strang", which is in short a blend of folk and jazz music.
History
Zubot and Dawson started their career in a pop oriented group the SpiritMerchants and later moved to a new style of music called “Strang”. An important part of the history of Zubot and Dawson is their fusion of many musical styles to create “Strang” or what they call “acoustic music that kicks ass”. They were also influenced by many musical styles such as: classicalClassical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
, country
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
, folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, funk, groove, rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, ethnic, Hawaiian, bluegrass
Bluegrass music
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...
, 2 or 3 kinds of jazz, swing, blues, electronica, experimental
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
and pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
. Artists such as Bela Fleck
Béla Fleck
Béla Anton Leoš Fleck is an American banjo player. Widely acknowledged as one of the world's most innovative and technically proficient banjo players, he is best known for his work with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.-Early life and career details:Fleck was born in...
, Tony Rice
Tony Rice
Tony Rice is an American acoustic guitarist and bluegrass musician. He is considered one of the most influential acoustic guitar players in bluegrass, progressive bluegrass, newgrass and acoustic jazz.Rice spans the range of acoustic music, from traditional bluegrass to jazz-influenced New...
, Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...
, Darol Anger
Darol Anger
-Career:Darol Anger entered popular music at the age of 21 as a founding member of The David Grisman Quintet. Anger played fiddle to David Grisman's mandolin in The David Grisman Quintet's 1977 debut. He co-founded the Turtle Island String Quartet with David Balakrishnan in 1985 and performed,...
and David “Dawg” Grisman
David Grisman
David Grisman is an American bluegrass/newgrass mandolinist and composer of acoustic music. In the early 1990s, he started the Acoustic Disc record label in an effort to preserve and spread acoustic or instrumental music.-Biography:Grisman grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey...
influenced them as well. Over their 5 years of playing together they developed a style where they could anticipate the other’s musical ideas, which lead to their unique chemistry. As Zubot and Dawson evolved in their career it is possible to see how their first CD Strang was more heavily based on an acoustic duo aesthetic and their later CD’s are a venue for more expansion on the ideas of “Strang”.
The group has received many grants from the Canadian government through the Sound Recording Development Program and performed on the stages of key European festivals of world music in 2003, in a promotional tour entitled Sonic Weave.
They have also been for nominated and won several awards. In 2001 they were nominated for Best Roots & Traditional Album for a Group for their album Tractor Parts: Further Adventures In Strang. In 2003 Zubot and Dawson won the Juno
Juno Award
The Juno Awards are presented annually to Canadian musical artists and bands to acknowledge their artistic and technical achievements in all aspects of music...
for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year for a Group for their album Chicken Scratch. They also won the Canadian Independent Music Award for Best Album of the Year in 2000 for their album Tractor Parts: Further Adventures In Strang.
In addition to their musical accomplishments Steve Dawson started a recording company Black Hen Music in 1995. This label has been responsible for the recordings of Zubot and Dawson and Steve has been Creative Director ever since.
Members
Jesse Zubot plays fiddleFiddle
The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
and mandolin
Mandolin
A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...
as well as electric mandolin
Electric mandolin
The electric mandolin is an instrument tuned and played as the mandolin and amplified in similar fashion to an electric guitar.As with electric guitars, electric mandolins take many forms:...
in Zubot and Dawson. Jesse's first album based on improvisation is entitled Dementia and was released in the fall of 2006. The CD plays with the concepts of solo-improvised violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
, micro-mandolin orchestras and minimal electronic-influenced sound design.
Steve Dawson plays acoustic
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, tremolo acoustic
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, National tricone
Resonator guitar
A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar whose sound is produced by one or more spun metal cones instead of the wooden sound board . Resonator guitars were originally designed to be louder than conventional acoustic guitars which were overwhelmed by horns and percussion...
and Weissenborn Hawaiian guitars
Weissenborn
Weissenborn or H. Weissenborn is a brand of lap slide guitar manufactured by Hermann Weissenborn in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s....
, the later, which is a hollow-necked lap steel instrument. Currently Steve Dawson is working on two albums Waiting For The Lights To Come Up and Telescope both of which are due out in 2008. Telescope is a fully instrumental CD, which centres on the pedal steel guitar
Pedal steel guitar
The pedal steel guitar is a type of electric guitar that uses a metal bar to "fret" or shorten the length of the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. Unlike other types of steel guitar, it also uses pedals and knee levers to affect the pitch, hence the name "pedal"...
. This project started as Steve received a grant from the Canada Council For The Arts to study the pedal steel guitar with Greg Leisz. Steve Dawson was nominated for a 2007 Juno for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year in the Solo category for We Belong To The Gold Coast.
While the group started as a duo other players were added over the years. Andrew Downing joined Zubot and Dawson as a double bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
player. Elliot Polsky joined the group as percussion player. The group also occasionally features musical friends such as Bob Brozman
Bob Brozman
Bob Brozman is an American guitarist and ethnomusicologist.He has performed in a number of styles such as Gypsy jazz, calypso, Blues, ragtime, Hawaiian and Caribbean music. Brozman has also collaborated with musicians from diverse cultural backgrounds such as India, Africa, Japan, Papua New Guinea...
and Kelly Joe Phelps
Kelly Joe Phelps
Kelly Joe Phelps is an American musician and songwriter. His music has been characterized as a mixture of delta blues and jazz.-Career:...
.
Both Steve Dawson and Jesse Zubot also participate in the project Great Uncles of the Revolution. The group’s music is hard to categorize, as it is a mix between jazz, roots, classical, and gypsy music . Great Uncles of the Revolution won the 2004 Juno for Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year for their album Blow the House Down.
Discography
1998: Strang (Black Hen Music)2000: Tractor Parts: Further Adventures in Strang (Black Hen Music)
2002: Chicken Scratch (True North)