THE BISCUIT BROTHERS “GET UP & GO”
The album starts out, it would have seemed, as the funniest stuff my girls have ever heard in all their lives. The Bear & Mouse were both bonkers as my jumbled up “Get Up & Go” iTunes playlist began, confusingly, with a rousing take on “The Little Red Caboose” and then the absurd, gibberish-y “Uki-Buki-Kuki-Duki-Fuki-Guki-Huki-Juki Island”; tracks 10 and 4 respectively. The latter, performed by the band’s puppet character named Tiny Scarecrow, is sung in a stuffy-nosed style that is Hannah Barbara-cartoonish and incredibly endearing…even after 10 spins a day.
It is probably good that I heard this down-home music before spying the band’s kitschy get-ups and pearly white toothy smiles. I understand it all, I do, the Biscuit Brothers have an established (2 time Emmy Award Winning) TV persona and that certainly shines though visually. Fortunately, their music here is pure, honest-to-goodness Americana folk with spirit and, obviously, boatloads or better said, covered wagons full of humor.
Speaking of the standard Biscuit Brother attire, it is decidedly farmhand but, based on much of the music included on “Get Up & Go”, could very easily be 3-piece suit and top hat. This is because the duo (and *sister* Buttermilk) has an undeniably cool vaudevillian undercurrent. Not on every song mind you, but they turn “Farmer in the Dell” into a speakeasy jive and faithfully recreate the theatrical soul of Spike Jones on “By The Beautiful Sea”, so they can swing it with the best of ’em.
A slick barbershop quartet “Old McDonald”, a vaudevillian “Farmer in the Dell”, a knee-slappingly hilarious backstory for everyone’s favorite long-named fella John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt (“J.J.J. Schmidt”), and a jazz-hands-friendly take on “Baby Bumblebee” (“Boogie Woogie Bumble Bee”) show that while the Biscuit Brothers pull from childhood classics, they are not interested in the same old song and dance perpetrated by middling kiddie musicians of decades past. Such tried and true tunes are reinvigorated and fresh here making for one hell of an album. In fact if I got to this quicker upon receiving it last year, “Get Up & Go” would have challenged for top 10 album consideration.
As someone who would have cared not if he ever again heard about old man McDonald’s farm or the cheese standing alone, it is nothing short of a miraculous feat that the Biscuit Brothers have crafted an album so engaging and wonderful. My girls are crazy for “Get Up & Go”, as I am. This CD is a winner on all counts.
Check out the trailer for season 5 of the Biscuit Brothers public television program:
*OWTK received a copy of “Get Up & Go” for review consideration. The opinions above are honest and unbiased.
