About
Keith Terry is a percussionist/rhythm-dancer/educator whose artistic vision has straddled the line between music and dance for more than four decades. As a soloist he has appeared in such settings as Lincoln Center, Bumbershoot, NPR’s All Things Considered, PRI's The World, the Vienna International Dance Festival, and the Paradiso van Slag World ...
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Dancing Songs, Grooving Tales: Rhythm Drives Evie Ladin and Keith Terry’s Fresh Takes on American Roots Music
On tour in the Midwest, South, and Northwest
Evie Ladin and Keith Terry dance their songs, sometimes in perfect lockstep, sometimes in lovely tension. Ladin’s voice, clawhammer banjo, and effortless footwork leap and sway between Terry’s quicksilver beats, shuffles, and snaps, the distinct language of body music. Both move to the rhythm with a gentle commitment that never overpowers Ladin’s tales, finding grooves both welcoming and unexpected.
The partners share a passion for audible dance: Ladin grew up playing banjo and performing Southern Appalachian clogging, gaining professional training on tour with the dance company Rhythm in Shoes. Terry shifted from drums to body percussion as he engaged with the tap revival scene in the 70s while playing drums with the late great dancers.
Ladin has performed and recorded widely as part of a variety of Americana groups, including the Stairwell Sisters, who’ve appeared everywhere from Prairie Home Companion to Lincoln Center. Terry’s pioneering work has taken him and Ladin, a frequent collaborator, around the globe from Brazil to Bali, and won him a Guggenheim Fellowship.
This February, March, and April bring them to the Midwest and Upper South for a series of performances and workshops.
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When Ladin and Terry joined households—they are partners in life as well as art—they discovered that among their two thousand-odd CDs, there were no duplicates. “We have very different musical backgrounds,” laughs Terry. Yet they found their passions intersected on the dance floor and in explorations of African-rooted traditions.
Tradition is a fluid thing for the duo, however: “I’m interested in opening the box of traditional music to contemporary sounds and other grooves,” reflects Ladin, “and Keith has such an inventive musical mind that once we start thinking of how to do things with our own stamp on it, many different ideas start flowing. We trust one another's taste for the most part, so if someone is opposed to an idea, it gets discarded fairly quickly. If we both like it, on we go.”
They go deep into old-time tunes and jazz-inflected rhythmic licks, into beautifully crystalized tales and subtly improvised claps, stomps, and snaps in songs like the feisty “Dime Store Glasses.” Some of their most dynamic and quirkiest moments spring from their differences. When, say, Ladin wants to go over the top with a madcap swing number, but Terry feels the call of a 7/8 cha cha. They let the disagreement stand, and “Out came a hysterical, nuanced performance of a couple in a dance competition, devolving into a slapstick fight,” chuckles Terry, describing the duo’s crowd-pleasing “Tea for Two.”
The duo will be exploring new material, originals Ladin penned in a marathon session last year and due to appear on an album in 2016. Ladin retreated to a cabin in the woods and wrote 21 songs in a handful of days, the best of which she and Terry developed into rousing, engaging tunes that harness their deep love of rhythm, American and Afro-diasporic traditions, and vivacious storytelling.