Premiere: The Mallett Brothers Band relive wondrous, snowy tale of ‘The Falling of the Pine’
Americana band offer up a boisterous live version of the title song to their 2017 studio album.
Such written texts as Minstrelsy of Maine: Folk-songs and Ballads of the Woods and the Coast, a collection curated by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm and Mary Winslow Smyth, chronicle not only a rich cultural heritage but the music that thrives in and echos from humanity’s very bones. “The old songs were fast vanishing. With them would be lost all they represented of the mental horizon of the pioneer, the cultus of the logger and river-driver, the hunter and trapper, the sailor and hand-line fisherman,” Eckstorm and Smyth wrote in the original 1927 book, a monumental and rich snapshot of the logging industry and its many peoples. “The next generation, which can know nothing of these men except through the printed page, might have the traditions of their physical performance, but it must lack any authentic record of what they thought and felt and talked about.”
A troupe of Americana players called The Mallett Brothers Band ⏤ made up of Luke Mallett, Will Mallett, Nick Leen, Wally Wenzel, Andrew Martelle and Chris Dow ⏤ offer up their own interpretation of the olden days with their song, “The Falling of the Pine.” Now, armed with their first-ever live record, Live in Portland, Maine, out this Friday, the band gives the essential cut an exuberant reconfiguration and apt showcase for their free spirits and thunderous, soul-wrecking playing right from the stage. “We’ve wanted to release a live album for years, but it’s one of those things that would always get sent to the back burner,” Will tells B-Sides & Badlands, premiering the live sample today. “Psyched to finally share a live show with the world, and I think we picked a good show to record. It was a very fun night.”
The crowd is uproarious and unapologetic, tapping their feet to the song’s blustering energy and howling back in the right moments. “You lumbermen are wanted with courage bold, undaunted / Prepare to come to shanty before your youth’s decline / ‘Cause spectators will wonder, and they’ll gaze on you and ponder / ‘Cause the noise exceeds the thunder at the falling of the pine,” the group unpacks, the eves of evergreens seemingly creaking and nearly toppling over in their raucous finger-picking style. In digging their fingernails into the earth, the soil pulsing vitamin-heavy and vibrant, they then come closer to the meaning of life and the world ferociously nipping at their boot heels.
“We thought the lyrics had this sort of rollicking, life affirmation thing going on, so we tried to recreate that with the music,” adds Will. “A lot of the rest of the ‘Falling of the Pine’ album is pretty dark, but this one fits well in the live set. It’s a good party jam.”
The thematic framework in tack, often rolling in gusts up and over the audience, the live setting further elevates the almost poetically existential quality embedded within the music itself. “When winter has diminished, and our shanty works are finished / From the woods we have been banished, just for a little time / But at the approach of summer, we will collect our timber / We will collect our timber into handsome rafts of pine” rings out as a lonesome scream, as a frosty pine tree falls with no one around to catch neither its fall nor its sound, slicing into the ground upon impact. But so is also the way of the human existence, a fleeting feeling that looms just underneath and shutters with little notice.
“We try to let songs breathe and evolve from show to show, so the vibe can definitely change over time. With this one, that’s multiplied a thousand, because it’s something like a two-hundred year-old song that’s been played a lot of different ways already, and we just sort of did our own thing with it. But it’s cool to tap into that history and maybe play a very small part in helping the spirit of those romantic times live on,” concludes Will.
“The Falling of the Pine” bobs to and fro, and the historical significance tumbles like stardust across the atmosphere.
Listen below:
https://soundcloud.com/themallettbrothersband/06-falling-of-the-pine/s-OcqFl
Photo Credit: Ray MacGregor of MacGregor Photography
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