Get on the (LaZoom) bus with Americana performer Baby Gramps June 10

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Members of Asheville’s The Mad Tea bring an interesting act to town: Blues/freak folk singer Baby Gramps plays Jack of the Wood on June 12, and makes a special appearance on the big purple bus on June 10.

The JotW show is 9 p.m. $5, openers The Mad Tea.

LaZoom bus shows are 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Saturday June 10, alcohol allowed for those 21 and up. Tickets are $15. Info here.

Baby Gramps is an amazing amalgamation of everything that anybody’s ever heard including Mississippi John Hurt, Uncle Dave Macon, Charlie Patton, Blind Blake, Captain Beefheart, the Tuvan Throat Singers and Popeye. Baby Gramps has created a highly developed and completely original musical concoction that is easily the most intriguing synthesis to come out of the roots revival of the late 20th Century. He plays beautifully “betwixt the cracks in the piano” a la Ornette Coleman, can scat the blues three notes at once, and has invented his own guitar technique he calls ‘scribbling.’ Gramps does amazing tricks with timing, timbre, tempo and pitch that no one can hope to imitate, and reinvents himself nightly, never performing a song the same way twice. – Glenn Howard, American Musical Heritage Foundation

Check out Baby Gramps on Letterman in a 2007 video below. Yes, that’s Asheville’s own ace musician Jason Krekel (of the Krektones, Mad Tea, etc) in the back: