Episode 045: Ida + Elizabeth Mitchell
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I first discovered the music of the band Ida in kind of a backward way. As a dad with crazy snobby tastes in kid's music, I had heard Dan Zanes had started making family music about seven years ago when my daughter was born. As a fan of his from The Del Fuegos, I got the chance to interview him for Well-Rounded Radio in 2004. When I asked him about other artists playing "good" family music, Elizabeth Mitchell's name rose to the top (as did Ella Jenkins, who has also become a favorite of my clan).
Not long after I saw Mitchell and her husband, Daniel Littleton, perform a terrific concert at FirstNight Boston in a cavernous convention room and picked up her first two CDs, You Are My Flower and You Are My Sunshine. Any band that plays Velvet Underground covers for kids is alright with me. I was hooked. Digging a bit, I discovered that Mitchell and Littleton actually got started out playing music in the slow core band Ida, so I picked up a bunch of their earlier CDs and was equally blown away. I'll attribute the fact that I was living on the west coast for the latter part of the 90s for why this Brooklyn-based band wasn't on my radar sooner, but Ida has an impressive catalogue.
I first heard 
The first time I heard Great Lake Swimmers was on a Starbucks' Hear Music compliation CD as I was cleaning the dishes after dinner one night. "Moving Pictures, Silent Films" closed out the CD, but it was so stark and beautiful and engaging, I listened, then went back, then listened again, then went back, then listened, again, then...you know, it was one of those moments. 
The Howard Fishman Quartet is not a jazz band, though sometimes they improvise as in that musical form. They aren't a blues or a folk band either, but you'll hear those influences at play, too. A little swing, a little soul, a little rock...the Howard Fishman Quartet will make you recall a wide variety of American music, but it's put together in such a natural, effortless way that it sounds like an entirely new form.
Dan Zanes was the front man for The Del Fuegos in Boston for the better part of the 1980s. After four albums, numerous tours, and much acclaim, the band went their separate ways in 1990, with Zanes resurfacing later in the decade with a new approach: performing traditional and original music for all ages.
Although they are now usually known as Ellen Christenson and Irene Saletan, back in 1956 the identical twins were best known in New York's folk scene as The Kossoy Sisters--where they released "Bowling Green," their first LP of traditional music, at the ripe age of 17. 
