About

The Todalo Shakers includes Eric Thompson on mandolin and guitar, W.B. Reid on banjo-guitar and fiddle, Suzy Thompson on fiddle and guitar, Frannie Leopold on guitar, and Steven Strauss on bowed bass. All five of the Todalo Shakers sing, making for a rich palette of vocal blends. The album was recorded in the Thompson's living room, making for a great feeling of camaraderie; the exuberance and fondness that the musicians feel for their material and for each other is unmistakable.

The liner notes to the Mother McCree's CD mention that Eric Thompson was (along with David Nelson) a member of another one of Jerry Garcia's pre-Grateful Dead bands, the Black Mountain Boys. For the past 25 years, he's been performing with his wife Suzy Thompson: award-winning Cajun dance music in the California Cajun Orchestra, and great traditional Bluegrass with the Bluegrass Intentions. But for fun, the Thompsons get together with friends to play other kinds of acoustic music. Now they've banded with 3 other longtime musical compatriots to record an album of vintage jug band blues and old time rags & stomps which sound like they are lifted right out of 1928 in Memphis, Tennessee or Dallas, Texas.

The other Todalo Shakers include Steven Strauss, playing bowed bass for the very first time on this recording. Strauss has played string bass with countless well-known Bay Area artists, including punk songstress Penelope Houston (during her folky phase), bluesman Charles Brown, and most recently the Hot Club of San Francisco. Mendocino's Frannie Leopold, who plays guitar, has toured and recorded with New Mexico's Jeanie McLerie as the Delta Sisters, and with Hank Bradley and Cathie Whitesides as the Balkan Kafe Orchestra. W.B. Reid, who makes his home in Seattle, Washington, spent some of his formative years during his early twenties hanging out in San Diego with bluesman Sam Chatmon, who was in the legendary string band the Mississippi Sheiks. He has toured and recorded with For Old Times Sake (a contra dance band), with oldtime fiddler Lee Stripling, and with the Bing Bang Boys (featuring the Canote Twins.)