LOVELAND, OHIO - by David Miller
Sometimes the music is home-grown, and thankfully the musician stays home.
Loveland resident, Rick "Bam" Powell and Bucket kicked off the summer concert series in Nisbet Park on Sunday night. The band is so-named because of the five-gallon pickle bucket Powell sometimes uses as a bass drum. Powell has designed his own percussion set, also using tin cans and a saw blade. In the photo with Powell, and playing bass, is Bob Nyswonger. Not pictured is Lee Rolfes who plays the guitar and joins Powell and Nyswonger with vocals.
When there was a concert scheduled, I've rarely missed a chance to go to the park on warm summer Sunday nights, and this was possibly the best group to ever perform in the decade-old series of concerts on the stage at Nisbet Park's ampitheater. Each Bucket musician has a storied history of individual accomplishment in the greater Cincinnati music scene, and some national attention. All three bring an individual style that melts into some very haunting blues, rustic tales, and an every-once-in-a-while rock, country twang.
Powell's drumming is legendary, and the Nyswonger bass rang out into the summer night with a sweet voice that seemed to harmonize with itself. It's still probably echoing far down the lazy Little Miami. In most songs, he used a traditional bass guitar, but it was the sounds from his fretless electric upright bass that is still resonating around town.
Rolfes usually does solo work, and that probably explains why his guitar work has one constantly looking around for someone playing lead or rhythm, but they cannot be
found. His talent is to play both at once, and it gives the trio a much larger sound, yet keeps it all very intimate. It's just what is called for, when the instruments must evolve from the lyrics, and not be overpowering. The music of this group is centered around story-telling lyrics in a folk language of every man's hometown.
The music has roots. “Tommy's Grocery” is about a former store in Loveland that had an ice box on the front porch and the price of bologna “scribbled” on the window. Powell reminisces about a little boy named Tommy who sits in a radio flyer wagon, “Waving to the people, at the stop sign with his one-good hand, trying to get 'em inside.” “Big Bone Lick” is about the park in Kentucky, but more than that - about a woman who answers the preacher when he asks, “Do you take this man?” by smiling and saying, “I'm gonna take him for all he's got.”
“Those Buds Have Blood on Them” is on the Bucket CD titled, “This Here's Bucket.” It is a serious song about marijuana grown in Mexico under near slave conditions and smuggled into U.S. Cities; where suburbanites smugly smoke the weed, ignoring the consequence of its origin.
If you are currently real homesick for some place, or somebody, you don't want to even go near “Home.” However, watching Rick Powell's two young children playing in the park while their father sings about home; you can fully understand just how rooted this group is to americana and family, and how talented the trio is at bringing it to life.
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