Hot music in the deep woods
Weekly Northland Ballroom jam is well worth the trip

WHAT: Acoustic open mic with Sloppy Joe
WHEN: 8 p.m. every Wednesday (Art Stevenson & Dale Reichert host on the 2nd Weds. of the month)
WHERE: Northland Ballroom on Highway 49 between Iola and Rosholt
COST: Free
INFO: 715-677-3491

By Jim Lundstrom

It’s a typical Wednesday night at the Northland Ballroom. Farmers, families and fans of homegrown music have come to hear Sloppy Joe and guests.

Surrounded by forests and fields somewhere on Highway 49 between Rosholt and Iola, the Northland has a homey log cabin lodge feel. Folks are seated all around the large horseshoe bar, and at booths and tables in an area to the right of the bar. Some of those people are eating from the ample menu. For two bucks you can finish with a slab of strawberry-rhubarb crisp, topped off with ice cream for an extra 50 cents.

Warm lighting illuminates a stage at the left end of the room, where Sloppy Joe is already in full swing with a style of music they call Slopgrass.

The immediate lineup is Jeff Sachs on guitar, Stef Lee on fiddle, Gavin Schaberg banjo and Jimers Soukop on a washtub bass he calls a “hillbilly subwoofer.” But that instrumental lineup can change at any time, and often does, with stringed instruments being swapped among members for nearly every song. At one point Stef even pulls out her musical saw and coaxes otherworldly sounds from it with a bow.

“We have instrumental ADD. No one can stay on one instrument too long,” says Soukop, who plays upright bass in addition to the washtub, and is the only member of the quartet who does not sing.

“Switching instruments keeps it interesting,” said Schaberg, who plays banjo, guitar and mandolin. “We just kind of evolved. One of us would pick up a banjo, learn a little something. Someone else would say, ‘Show me that.’ Everyone has a different style on every instrument.”

Sloppy Joe began as a trio, with Jeff Sachs (bass, fiddle, banjo, guitar, jug and mandolin) leading the charge.

“Jeff is the instigator of it all. He plays everything,” Schaberg said. “He taught us how to play and we all got introduced to this music together. I played guitar. Stef hadn’t played anything. No lessons. Nothing. She just got a guitar and within months we were playing live shows. Jeff was like, ‘Get up on stage. Let’s go!’ We just threw ourselves in the middle of it and that’s what we’ve been doing ever since.”

“We got started in bluegrass not really knowing a lot about it,” said Sachs, who adds that the trio’s interest in the music predates by two years the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou and it’s T-Bone Burnett-produced soundtrack that gave new life to old-time music.

“By the time we got her going, it was just good timing,” he said.

“The biggest thing to get over was just sucking,” Schaberg said. “You’d go out there and suck and do it a couple of times. Once you get over that, you might learn something and might even sound good. That’s how we’ve been doing it.”

The trio became a quartet in 2000 when they hooked up with Jimers Soukop and his washtub bass to win the 18th annual Minnesota Jug Band Competition.

“We did a jug band competition at the Cabooze Lounge in Minneapolis and won the coveted waffle iron,” Sachs said. “We thought, maybe we’re not bluegrass, we’re jug band, so for a couple of years we did the jug band thing and just kind of touched upon the bluegrassy thing. Eventually we got into the old-timey thing when Stef got on the banjo. She started learning old-time claw hammer tunes on the banjo and that gave us more of an old-time edge. When she learned the fiddle she learned the old-time style. So it gave us a lot of option for sound.”

Often the band is rounded out with a fifth member, Jamie the Washboard Scalliwag.

“Jamie is really a mainstay in Wisconsin music,” Sachs said. “He has played all over, with Burnt Toast & Jam. He played with Art Stevenson when they were doing the open mic, and I don’t know how many different bands.”

It’s as if the floodgates have opened once the name Art Stevenson and his band High Water are invoked.

“If you ever get a chance to see them, they’re fantastic,” Schaberg said. “If you talk to people who really play bluegrass, they probably wouldn’t call any of this bluegrass. But Art and his band, that’s the real deal.”

“Art and High Water are the flag wavers and really dug out that trench to make the Wednesday jam feasible,” Sachs said. “I can’t say how good these guys are. Boy are they good! They are huge, national level. It’s straight up bluegrass. They’re not breaking any rules. You just gotta go ‘Wow!’

“We’ve been pretty tight with Art. Sloppy Joe’s last two albums were produced by Art, so. We’ve got a lot of those guys filling in. You can hear Dale’s banjo kicking in and Art’s harmonica. Those guys are our mentors in the bluegrass world, for sure.”

Art and his wife, bassist/vocalist Stephanie, started the Wednesday night jams at the Northland in 1999. In November 2006 they turned the reins over to Sloppy Joe, who both collectively and individually had taken part in the weekly jam sessions. Recently Stevenson and High Water band member Dale Reichert returned to the scene to host the 2nd Wednesday of the month.

“Art on the harmonica and Dale on the banjo. Those two just together are fantastic. It will put chills up and down your spine,” said Andy Hoff, who inherited the Wednesday night music jams and annual August bluegrass festival when he bought the Northland Ballroom in December 2005.

But, he adds, every Wednesday night is special.

“Ohmigosh, Wednesday nights mean the world to this business,” Hoff said. “We get a great crowd in here. We get new artists in, which brings new people in. It really keeps it going. We get young adults that actually make the commute 23 miles from the university at Stevens Point. Amazing.”

“Weekly music sessions have taken place in the Iola/Rosholt area since as long as I remember,” Stevenson said. “I got involved with the local scene in 1988, when there was an informal picking and singing session on Wednesdays at the Lakeview in Iola. It was popular and well attended, and they gave out free food and drink to the musicians. On a good night there might be a dozen musicians sitting in and taking turns.”

In 1993 he and Stephanie started a Thursday open mic at Schmidt’s Corner Tavern in Iola.

“We stayed there three years, and the weekly show was very popular, with people parked out on the highway on a good night. Lots of musicians sat in with us. It was at that time we named our band Art Stevenson & High Water. At first, Stephanie and I worked with guitarist Tom Boyarski, or Biscuit, as everybody called him. Tom quit and Dale Reichert came in on banjo and dobro, and our sound became more like traditional bluegrass. We released our first CD, Art Stevenson & High Water, at that time.”
 
In 1996 the Stevensons moved to Madison and ran a successful open mic at the Green Room. They also released two more High Water CDs before moving to Junction City in 1999 and starting up the Northland Ballroom Wednesday night sessions.

“Our weekly show there lasted for seven years, and toward the end of our tenure we did a weekly radio show taping called the Northland Jamboree,” Stevenson said. “The Jamboree featured a different special guest every week and was broadcast on several Wisconsin radio stations. During our seven-year stay at the Northland Ballroom we had steady audiences, sometimes over 200 people on a Wednesday night. Musicians from around central Wisconsin sat in and were featured on a regular basis. Musicians from all over Wisconsin and the USA would stop by and play a song or two: Chris Aaron, The Chapmans, Tom Paley, Otis McClennan, L.J. Booth, Rob Lumbard, Nick Lloyd, Spencer Sorenson, Green Tea, The Malones, Sloppy Joe, Jerry Wicentowski, Frank Stanislawski, Colin O’Brien, Eddie Danger, Mike McAbee, Catfish Stephenson, Tom Pease, and many more.”

On this particular night, a newly clean-shaven Eddie Danger and his band Dangergrass take the stage for a set, with Sachs on bass.

“I produced their new album with Ed and I do play gigs with them, so I had to get up with them,” he explained.

In fact, Sachs never seems to leave the stage, filling in wherever needed whenever someone new takes the stage.

“That’s a good time for me, really,” he said. “I’m a music junkie. I try to play every day I can. That’s all there is to it. The other people who come, like Cindy (Evans) I’ve been trying to work with her on her songs and sound so when they hop up they have solid bass behind them. There are no drums, aside from the washboard and that’s not always there, so I guess that’s the main thing, having solid bass running all the time when people come up to play.”

For reading teacher Cindy Evans, the Wednesday night jams are a highlight of the summer.

“I live down the street, so I get to come out and instead of playing in my kitchen, I get to play with the band,” she said. “I’ve never been in a band, but I’ve been coming here ever since they started it. I play with the people in High Water as friends and we know a lot of songs together. I used to play with Art Stevenson in Iola. We’d just go out and play our guitars. No mics or anything. Just a fun night to play music.”