Artist: Freakwater
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #61 Jan-Feb 2006
Freakwater / Marah – The Dame (Lexington, KY)
Not so many years ago — or has it been? — great things were predicted for this Wednesday night’s co-headliners, both acts having once been favored by critics and Steve Earle (who ultimately did sign Marah to his label, and tried to enlist Freakwater). The audience — the big one everybody wants, that they seemed [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #59 Sept-Oct 2005
Freakwater – Thinking Of You…
As the one-sheet that describes the new Freakwater album attests, the group indeed employs a more dappled sonic palette — brass, pump organ, violins (instead of fiddles) — here than they have on previous records. Still, the burst of guitar feedback that opens the third song on the disc initially reminded me not of new [...]
Town and Country - Shorter Artist Feature from Issue #45 May-June 2003
Janet Bean: Not the weakest link
Maybe Janet Bean learned a lesson from Louisville homeboy Muhammad Ali — her first solo album floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. The element of sonic surprise draws the listener in, as arrangements benefit from the textures of jazz pianist Jim Baker, multi-instrumentalist Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello and cornet, Jon Spiegel on [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #23 Sept-Oct 1999
Freakwater – End Time
If there’s an act that is more emblematic of the contentious relationship between country and alt.country than Freakwater, it certainly doesn’t come to mind. The Chicago/Louisville duo of Janet Beveridge Bean and Catherine Ann Irwin (plus longtime bassist David Wayne Gay) is routinely described by writers as “Kentucky bluegrass,” evocative of country icons such as [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #13 Jan-Feb 1998
Freakwater – Spring forward, fall back
Before leaving on Freakwater’s last, ill-fated tour, singer Janet Beveridge Bean went to a new age healer, who promised Bean she would cleanse her aura. “She told me she would open my third eye,” Bean remembers. “I’ll tell you, from that day on, everything has just been a disaster.” The ensuing mini-tour became a nightmare [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #10 July-Aug 1997
Freakwater – Dancing Under Water
Perhaps no body of literature sustains as tragic a view of human existence as the Appalachian ballads of murder and ill-fated love collected by Francis Child during the 19th century. Freakwater, the Louisville string band fronted by Catherine Irwin and Janet Bean, drinks as deeply of that fount of tragedy as anybody making records today. [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #2 Winter 1995
Freakwater – Not your auntie’s skiffle band
When what you have studied leaves your mind entirely, and practice also disappears, then when you perform whatever art you are engaged in, you accomplish the techniques easily, without being concerned over what you have practiced. This is spontaneously conforming without being aware that you are doing so. – Yagyu Munenori, 17th-century Japanese zen swordsman, [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #3 Spring 1996
Freakwater – South of Cincinnati / Count Me Out
At this point if Janet Beveridge Bean and Catherine Erwin wanted to record “Happy Birthday” I’d probably run out and buy it. Something about the way their voices nestle together is an unapproachably beautiful as dew on a mountain meadow. Even so, this single, following release of their brilliant Old Paint, is probably as much [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #1 Fall 1995
Freakwater – Old Paint
Late to this party, having missed the preceding three long-players, I have only overheard conversations for background. The tenor of which seems to be that Freakwater are somehow less authentic an expression of country phrasing because Janet Beveridge Bean drums and sings with alt-rockers Eleventh Dream Day, and that their songwriting (by partner Catherine Irwin) [...]
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