Cucanandy
Feet, Flutes, and a Fiddle
by Bruce E. Baker

When Mike Casey and Malke Rosenfeld met at the Kent State Folk Festival in February 1995, the two flute players noticed that their styles were similar and that they shared some tunes in common. Casey, who was based in Chapel Hill, specialized in the flute music of east Galway, home to musicians like Jack Coen, Ned Coleman, Tony Molloy, Mike Rafferty, and others. Rosenfeld had started playing Irish music on the flute right after college in Olympia, Washington. "The music itself made me want to dance," she recalled. "All of a sudden I realized that that was the way I could really express myself – by taking the rhythm and being able to listen to the tunes and make something that made sense. And after a couple years I could really start

improvising and being part of the music with my feet." After a few months' instruction from Sandy Silva and studying Appalachian clogging with Eileen Carson at Augusta in 1994, Rosenfeld toured with Footworks for two years, adding a variety of other percussive dance styles to her repertoire.

Rosenfeld and Casey began playing together with another musician in Chapel Hill early in 1997, and the band, called "Cucanandy" after an Irish children's song and slip jig, began to make a place for itself in the local music scene. One of the central themes of Cucanandy's music is rhythm. "Rhythm of the feet, but also rhythm of the feet as translated into rhythm of the songs and rhythms of the words of songs, like mouth music," Casey explained. "And the more obvious rhythms within tunes, too, and particularly how all those elements connect."

Soon, Cucanandy began to search for a full-time singer, and they found Stephanie Johnston. Born in Memphis but raised in London and Nashville, Johnston started singing early. As a teenager in Nashville, Johnston and some friends formed a band playing and singing Celtic music. "We had a lot of gigs that you couldn't normally get living in Nashville," said Johnston. "They really did go for that just because we were kind of odd." Since then, Johnston has been singing professionally, and about six years ago she learned guitar. Like many musicians, Johnston learned by imitating masterful singers like Joni Mitchell, Maria Muldaur, and Maddy Prior. "It wasn't until I was in my early 20s that I started thinking about trying to take a song and make it my own."

In the fall of 1997, Johnston found herself in Asheville, North Carolina, looking for a band to sing with. She met Rosenfeld and Casey, and they formed a three-piece version of Cucanandy. In August 1998, the three band members took

the plunge, left their part-time jobs, and have been making music full-time since. A residency at Spirit Square in Charlotte, North Carolina, gave the band the opportunity to work with Jason Cade, a young Chapel Hill fiddler whose regular guest appearances are an important addition to the Cucanandy lineup. The four work well together. As Johnston said, "We're not a band of stellar solo performers who are coming together just to play together so we'll have a bigger sound. We're a group of people who like to try to create something bigger than the parts. We play as a band because we like the group process." Cucanandy's first CD, He Didn't Dance, was produced by Pete Sutherland and came out in August 1999.

This is an excerpt. Read the full article in Dirty Linen #87 (Apr/May '00).