Larry & Joe Bring Songs of Deliverance…
Written by John Job for The Austin Chronicle
4.14.23
Every day, the edges of America are crossed by thousands of desperate people from every corner of the Earth.
The reasons are almost immaterial. It’s enough that they’re compelled to begin the journey, and enough that they persist, whether or not they succeed. They come, and as a nation we do little more than scratch our heads, argue over walls, and turn the channel. Migrants are prayed over, and preyed upon.
But there are artists who make the journey, too. So the times have brought us Larry & Joe. And they sing together because they know there is another way to run the world.
Previewed by this writer at Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival last month, the musical duo heads to Austin, on April 30 at Stateside at the Paramount, to play Carrie Rodriguez’s ongoing Laboratorio series. Tickets are at austintheatre.org.
Larry Bellorín, from the oil-rich coastal state of Monagas in Venezuela, is a renowned Llanera musician, which is roughly comparable to a singing cowboy, but instead of cattle trail ballads and Texas swing, he’s versed in the distinctive Venezuelan national folk traditions called joropo. It’s kick-ass music played on Venezuelan harp, mandolin, guitar, fiddle … pretty much anything with strings. We know Bellorín because of El Sistema, the Venezuelan national talent development effort, much like the National Endowment for the Arts here or the old Soviet system that developed ballet in a world long passed.
El Sistema also produced Gustavo Dudamel, the ingenious conductor of the Paris Opera and the L.A. Philharmonic; as well as the newly appointed conductor of the Oak Ridge (TN) Symphony Orchestra, Régulo Stabilito, who just made quite an impression at Big Ears. With Stabilito and Dudamel, Bellorín is in very heady company. In his homeland, he is something of a national treasure. But in North Carolina, where he took refuge after becoming part of the mass exodus from Venezuela, Larry was just cheap labor laying cinder block, until music set him free.
You might know Joe Troop already. From Winston-Salem, N.C., he was the founder of Che Apalache in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a string band that attracted the interest of a certain banjo player named Bela Fleck, who produced Che Apalache’s Grammy-nominated album Rearrange My Heart in [2019]. Troop had lived more than a decade in South America, but when panic set in over COVID, he was chased back to Piedmont Country.
With Merle Watson’s flatpicking and Dr. Ralph Stanley’s high lonesome ringing in his ears, Troop introduced himself to Bellorín. And they’ve been on a roller coaster ever since. I caught them at St. John’s Cathedral in Knoxville, at the one-of-a-kind Big Ears Festival a few weeks ago, on the last day of March.
The hour with Larry & Joe was sort of like being in the eye of a hurricane. Beauty and order in the heart of chaos. There was considerable buzz about these guys, but I don’t think anyone anticipated their true impact, and the huge gathering at St. John’s had an explosive response.
It’s easy to assume that Larry & Joe might be a novelty act of some sort. Maybe it’s the Three Stooges echo in their name. Maybe it’s the corn pone expectation of a bluegrass mash-up of two countries’ country music. It didn’t matter, because Bellorín and Troop blew any low expectations out of the water the minute they picked up their [banjo] and harp. The effect was pure magic.
Drawing on their just-released record Nuevo South Train and Troop’s previous albums with Che Apalache, Larry & Joe wove original tunes and their own takes on classics by Venezuelan national heroes like Simón Díaz and Carolina national heroes like Doc Watson into a plea for sanity with breath-taking immediacy. The power of this team runs as high as Troop’s incredible Romano falsetto, and as deep as Bellorín’s sadness at having to escape from his homeland to save his family’s life.
The result of the mix isn’t a spot on Hee Haw. It ain’t Tarheel tortillas or Monagas moonshine. It’s a new way of looking at the familiar, so you see the darkness of a tune like Boxcar Willie’s “Roll[…] in my Sweet Baby’s Arms,” and a possible reference to a certain US President in Diaz’s “Caballo Viejo.”
You can experience Larry & Joe for yourself on Sunday, April 30, right on Congress Avenue. They’re the featured guests of Carrie Rodriguez for Episode #21 of her far-reaching cultural experiment Laboratorio.
Rodriguez is the ideal liaison between Austin and any artist visiting for the first time. In many ways, she reminds me of the irreplaceable Tina Marsh, who was like the Joan of Arc to Austin's jazz scene. She brought focus, inspiration, and attention to what many considered a secondary tributary to Austin's rock-pop-blues mainstream. Carrie's stature in Austin's music culture is equally impressive, equally expressive, and equally vital.
I left Texas exactly 22 years ago. If anyone asks me what I miss about Austin, two things come to mind: Rodriguez' voice, and migas at Las Manitas. Why Laboratorio isn't a staple on Univision is a mystery to me.
Don’t miss Laboratorio #21.
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