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Sheet-Music Sets

Sheet-Music Sets

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 Daria Grace revives century-old pop
In the early 2000s, many Brooklyn bands explored offbeat styles. A Village Voice cover story in 2008 chronicled the borough's talented country scene and mentioned Kings County Queens, one of many music projects juggled by Daria Grace, who by 2013 had become a fixture in the Beacon music scene.
Another of Grace's bands, Daria Grace & The Pre-War Ponies, performed obscure pop tunes from the 1920s through the 1940s culled from her sheet-music collection. The group last appeared in Beacon a decade ago at Quinn's, but the drought ends Friday (Jan. 30) at Lucky Dog, a new venue located at Beacon Music Factory.
Grace doesn't read notes or play the piano, but arrangements from the period often included ukulele chords as Americans became enamored with Hawaiian sounds, so she learned to strum the four-stringed instrument and recorded the album Introducing The Pre-War Ponies in 2007. The band still plays in Brooklyn once a month.

Grace mines old ditties that are easy on the ears but never made it into The Great American Songbook. The Ponies retrieve lesser-known gems from hitmakers Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter, along with tunes by unsung writers who cranked them out on Tin Pan Alley.
During the years between the world wars, lyricists often disguised explicit blues references, but the title of "Pettin' in the Park," which appeared in the film Gold Diggers of 1933, states the obvious.
On the surface, "The Gentleman Just Wouldn't Say Goodnight" seems similar to the now-controversial song "Baby, It's Cold Outside," about a guy cajoling a woman to stick around and pitch some woo.
In the gentleman tune, however, written by Don Reid and Dave Terry, a couple wakes up at the crack of dawn and, it turns out, "the lady didn't want to say goodnight" either.
The band's recording of the song on their more elaborate second disc, Get Out Under the Moon (2015), features a languid trombone solo by Grace's chief collaborator, J. Walter Hawkes, who also sings and plays soprano ukulele.
The touch of brass enhances the vibe, since these songs date to the horn-dominated Big Band era. Also appearing at Lucky Dog will be Willie Martinez on drums and Andrew Hall on standup bass.
Grace, whose bread-and-butter instrument is the electric bass, has toured and recorded with many bands as a gun for hire. In the Ponies, "I'm the singer, so it is my baby, although Walter has been along for the ride from the beginning and is integral to the sound."
Delivering live shows with professional polish, she sings with pitch-perfect flow and phrasing. Because smaller ukuleles can't achieve much heft, Grace plays a baritone version, which resembles a guitar and adds depth to the sound.
In 2008, she and then-husband Jack Grace left Brooklyn for Woodstock and ended up in Beacon five years later when they moved into the backyard cottage of George Mansfield, then co-owner of Dogwood (now Cooper's).
As a member of The Wynottes, Grace's taste is impeccable: One favorite is the hipster pearl, "Give Me the Moon Over Brooklyn," written by Terry Shand and Jason Matthews. Guy Lombardo released a recording in 1946.
"While touring, I was always on the lookout for old sheet music in junk shops," she says. "But someone from Texas gave that to me."
Lucky Dog is located at 333 Fishkill Ave. in Beacon; the performance begins at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $20. See dub.sh/BMF–tickets
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