Late for the Goat Rodeo

Back at the beginning of this past September, NPR (National Public Radio) Music uploaded a video from its ongoing Tiny Desk series, retitled Tiny Desk (Home) to reflect that performances were taking place in the homes of the performers during shelter-in-place conditions. The program presented the first three tracks from the album Not Our First Goat Rodeo, the latest recording by the eclectically diverse quartet of Yo-Yo Ma on cello, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Edgar Meyer on bass, and Chris Thile on mandolin. The album had been released in March, about a week before those shelter-in-place restrictions had been imposed; and it topped two different Billboard charts, one for bluegrass and the other for classical music.

By way of personal background, I listened to the NPR video with familiarity of all members of the quartet except for Duncan. I was particularly aware of the capacity for upbeat jamming I had encountered from both Meyer and Thile at different concert occasions, just as I was aware of the many ways in which Ma chose to “think outside the box” in many of his recital and concert performances. As a result I was not that surprised to learn that all the tracks on the new album were jointly composed by all four of the musicians.

That said, I had anticipated that there would be more free-form jamming on the NPR video that came across during viewing. Granted, the fact that each of the musicians was performing from a different location (presumably their respective homes), coordination through microphones and headsets through Internet bandwidth probably impeded spontaneity. As a result, the listening experience would not have been that different from listening to the album; but observing the musicians at work still enhanced that experience, even when it involved little more than facial expressions revealing individual impressions.

Goat Rodeo performers (clockwise from upper left): Chris Thile, Aoife O’Donovan, Stuart Duncan, Yo-Yo Ma, and Edgar Meyer (screen shot from the video being discussed)

The first two tracks of the album, “Your Coffee is a Disaster” and “Waltz Whitman,” were followed by a vocal number, “The Trappings.” The quartet was joined by vocalist Aoife O’Donovan, who wrote the song. All three of the selections were pleasantly diverse, which is probably what Tiny Desk (Home) had in mind for the prevailing trying circumstances. Nevertheless, that aforementioned lack of spontaneity tended to undermine the potential fun behind this gathering of musicians; and clarity of diction in the performance of “The Trappings” left much to be desired. Sadly, the closest the viewer got to spontaneity came from Thile’s spoken observations between the numbers. Unfortunately, his attempts at wit tended to fall flat, most likely because his patter usually reflects direct contact with his audience.

Taken as a whole, the show was clearly the product of good intentions; and, under current conditions, one can definitely appreciate the effort.