The Chicken Chokers

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #133 (December 2007/January 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

The Chicken Chokers

Old-Time With a Twist

by Bill Chaisson

The Chicken Chokers broke up in 1989 when fiddler Chad Crumm finished up at the New England Conservatory and decided to move from Boston to New York City. Some remaining Chokers joined Primitive Characters, but ultimately went their separate ways. Over a decade later, Crumm, banjo and ukulele player Jim Reidy, and banjo player Stefan Senders found themselves living near Trumansburg, New York -- not, incidentally, an old-time music hotbed, but only coincidentally attracting the three of them.

Crumm, Reidy, and Senders were playing together in sessions, at parties, and otherwise informally in the greater Trumansburg, New York, area, while guitarist Chip Taylor Smith and bass player Paul Strother remained in Boston. Both Smith and Strother had gone on to play with numerous bands, very few of them old-time music, and 17 years passed since the parting of the Chokers. Smith said, "I found myself reflecting back on all the people I had played with and asking myself, 'Who did I have a lot of fun with? Who would I like to play with again?' "

Phone calls were made, and on Saturday, December 9, 2006, Smith and Strother arrived at Crumm's recording studio, the MusicTank, to prepare for a gig. "We played a few hours to get together a set list beforehand," recalled Reidy. "We didn't finish any of the tunes. We'd just get to a point and say, 'That'll work.' " That night they more or less blew the doors off the venue: The legal capacity of the Pourhouse is 50 people, but there were a few more people there that night. "We picked the low-hanging fruit for that show," said Senders. "We played all the tunes we used to play at gigs, but didn't put on the records."

[cover #133]