Today, Too Sad For The Public — the project helmed by StorySound Records founder Dick Connette, whose independent outfit has put out a GRAMMY-winning record by Loudon Wainwright III as well as acclaimed releases by Gabriel Kahane, Margaret Glaspy, Dan Tepfer, yMusic, and so many more — announce Vol. 2 - Yet and Still, out July 28 on StorySound Records. 

Featuring a wide range of collaborators — including yMusic’s Rob Moose (Paul Simon, Phoebe Bridgers), Chaim Tannenbaum (Loudon Wainwright III, Kate & Anna McGarrigle), Steve Elson (Gov’t Mule, David Bowie), Steven Bernstein (Levon Helm, Rufus Wainwright), Billy Martin (Medeski Martin & Wood) and heralded StorySound folk artist Ana Egge — Yet and Still finds Too Sad For The Public boldly recontextualizing an array of traditional American musics, drawing out unexpected elements and radically uprooting songs to isolate unique portions of their DNA. Moments of sublime serendipity abound. 

Lead single “Railroad Bill (pt2)” — which features vocals from Chaim Tannenbaum — originally came to life as a remix and reframing of another version of the American folksong that appears on this record, sung by Ana Egge, the album’s principal lead vocalist. 

Says Connette about the track: “While I was recording and mixing Ana Egge’s version of “Railroad Bill,” there were several parts I especially liked that I didn’t use - Ana’s rhythm guitar, Chaim Tannenbaum’s harmonica solos, and Bill Ruyle’s clackety sticks on the rim of a bass drum. Plus somehow I got the idea to create a harmonica choir and wrote and recorded 24 parts over the basic form, which I spread across the first half of the song. As it happened, “Railroad Bill” was also a particular favorite of Chaim’s, so I left it to him to spin the story different — that of a boastful, triumphant, unrepentant and unreconstructed bad man.” 

“Railroad Bill (pt2)” gives a modern and hypnotic spin on a train robber ballad. Its galloping rhythm and harmonica choirs bring to mind a rustic, folklorically-minded version of NEU! — more naturalistic and rough-hewn but equally entrancing. Watch the video for “Railroad Bill (pt2),” directed by LA-based collage artist Lewis Klahr, HERE. 

As a whole, Yet and Still explores authorial elasticity in the American traditional and popular music, reveling in the gradual content shifts that songs undergo as they pass from performer to performer, generation to generation, audience to audience. This has long been a fascination of Dick Connette’s, going back almost 40 years to when he shifted his focus from the developments in NYC’s downtown avant garde composition scene to researching and performing traditional American music. 

Through his research, he compiled his own personal Rosetta’s Stone: He calls it the Greatest Hits of Folk Music, and it comprises 35 cassettes, 15 CDs, and 7 mp3 playlists  of both commercial and field recordings that he personally finds most striking — lyrically, melodically, harmonically, and instrumentally. This compilation played roles in all sorts of projects Connette undertook, from his production of Geoff Muldaur’s Bix Beiderbecke tribute Private Astronomy,his work on Loudon Wainwright III’s GRAMMY-winning Charlie Poole projectHigh Wide & Handsome, and his own output with singer Sonya Cohen in the group Last Forever. When Sonya died in 2015, Connette carried on with Too Sad for the Public.

On Yet and Still, Connette takes his findings and draws out altogether new shapes. The project transforms through-composed bluegrass symphonies into elegiac string quartets (“Uncle Bunting,” originally built off of an old Uncle Bunt Stephens fiddle record recording from 1923); jazzily shifts the harmonic structures of Elizabeth Cotten’s “Shake Sugaree” to lend it a more ominous shadowing; and cannily casts traditional New Orleans music both in a more minimalist rhythmic rendering and all-out street band mayhem (respectively, “Hey Now (pt2)” and Hey Now (pt1)”). 

Throughout, Yet and Still is a celebration of the inventive permutations and idiosyncratic processes of American musics —as well as Connette’s own imaginative approach to interpretation. You can preorder Too Sad For The Public’s Vol. 2 - Yet and Still here. 

Vol. 2 - Yet and Still Tracklist:

1. Uncle Bunting (pt1)

Rob Moose - mandolin, violin, banjo, guitar, bass

2. Shake Sugaree

Ana Egge - vocal, guitar

Dick Connette - piano

Lorenzo Wolff - bass

Ethan Eubanks - drums

3. Hey Now (pt1)

Steven Bernstein - trumpet, vocal

Frank Greene - trumpet, vocal

Curtis Fowlkes - trombone, vocal

Jeffery Miller - trombone, vocal

Michael Blake - tenor saxophone, vocal

Erik Lawrence - baritone saxophone, vocal

Marcus Rojas - tuba, vocal

Billy Martin - drums/percussion, vocal

4. G. Burns in the Bottom (pt1)

Ana Egge - lead vocal, guitar

Lucy Wainwright Roche - backing vocal

Suzzy Roche - backing vocal

Dick Connette - harmonium

Dan Levine - euphonium

Lorenzo Wolff - baritone guitar, bass

Bill Ruyle - footsteps, cymbal pair, bass drum

5. Uncle Bunting (pt2)

Chaim Tannenbaum - lead vocal, harmonica

Ana Egge - backing vocal

Rayna Gellert - backing vocal, violin, viola

6. Old Forty

Ana Egge  - vocal, guitar

Dan Levine - trombone

Dick Connette - synth

Lorenzo Wolff - synth, bass

7. Railroad Bill (pt1)

Ana Egge - vocal, guitar

Dick Connette - piano, maracas

Lorenzo Wolff - baritone guitar, bass

Ethan Eubanks - shakers, drums

8. Uncle Bunting (pt3)

Steve Elson - piccolo, baritone sax, tenor sax

Curtis Fowlkes - trombone

Marcus Rojas - euphonium, tuba

Ethan Eubanks - orchestral bells, drums

9. Hey Now (pt2)

Ana Egge - lead vocal

Lucy Wainwright Roche - backing vocal

Suzzy Roche - backing vocal

Lorenzo Wolff - bass

Kory Grossman - percussion

Jeff Kraus - percussion

Paul Pizzuti - percussion

Ethan Eubanks - tambourine, drums

10. Railroad Bill (pt2)

Chaim Tannenbaum - vocal, harmonica

Ana Egge - rhythm guitar

Lorenzo Wolff - lead guitar, rhythm guitar, synth, bass

Dick Connette - cymbal crunch, synth

Ethan Eubanks - shakers

Bill Ruyle - bass drum rim clicks

11. Train Your Child

Rayna Gellert - vocal, violin

Kieran Kane - guitar

12. G. Burns in the Bottom (pt2)

Jacob Garchik - trombone, euphonium

Clark Gayton - trombone, euphonium

Dan Levine - trombone, euphonium

Marcus Rojas - tuba, euphonium

Jerome Jennings - tambourine, drums