Full Cord Bluegrass 2020 Vision Was Hindsight
Photos By Beth Flick
When pickers meet at festivals, good things often happen. After jamming together at Michigan’s Charlotte Bluegrass Festival, Eric Langejans and Todd Kirchner formed the contemporary bluegrass outfit Full Cord in 2008. “We wanted to have fun playing something unique and interesting,” says Kirchner. “Eric came up with the name when he noticed the band had a full cord of wood on stage.” For the past 14 years, Full Cord has built a solid base of dedicated fans by blending bluegrass with jazz, western swing, and rock while keeping the traditional bluegrass feel alive and well.
Todd Kirchner grew up attending bluegrass festivals and picking with his father and brothers. As a young teen, he got his first upright bass as a Christmas gift. Kirchner now plays an instrument custom built to his specifications by the Upton Bass Co. in Mystic, Ct.
A self-professed “techie,” Kirchner builds or restores 3-D printers, teletype and pinball machines in his spare time. “I’d encourage every band to hire a pro engineer. Squeeze the budget. Make it work. It’s worth every penny.” Kirchner runs sound for Full Cord, and he’s developed an inexpensive way for the band to have its own on-stage mixing board and wireless in-ear monitors. “If we’re at the mercy of a sound guy, we can’t control our sound on stage. It’s not where we needed to be to perform our best. So we bring our own board and develop our own mix.”
Eric Langejans plays guitar, mandolin, and fiddle, although he now sticks mainly to guitar with Full Cord. “As a kid, I tolerated what my dad listened to… Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs. Through high school, I was a Deadhead, and a friend loaned me a CD of Old and in the Way. Within two months of hearing it, I bought a mandolin. Everyone was playing guitar so I took up mandolin and never looked back.” Affectionately called “Fast Eric” for his lightning licks, he’s played in several bands including Down Home (mandolin, fiddle) and Woodpile (mandolin). “He’s the wild card,” says Kirchner, “and I call him funny man.”
Full Cord’s original lineup also included Todd’s wife, Katie on fiddle, and Luke Gitchel on banjo. After a few years, Gitchel went to work at Dollywood, and Todd’s dad, Paul Kirchner, joined on banjo. Todd’s father had played bluegrass for decades, including a stint in the seventies with the Pine River Valley Boys, a group that recorded on Homestead Records. Full Cord put out their first album Ready to Burn in 2009. In 2018, they wanted to go into the studio again before Paul Kirchner retired from playing music, and Chop was released.
With six original songs, Full Cord’s Choreomania album was recorded live in 2019. Besides Todd and Eric, the band had evolved to include Brian Oberlin (mandolin) and Grant Flick (fiddle). A master mandolinist, Oberlin’s also a prolific songwriter who contributed three originals (“Boneyard Vamp,” “Cajun Mandolin,” “Leadfoot”) to that album. Flick penned “Road to Tavistock,” a snappy instrumental with plenty of old-time spirit. Langejans had a hand in writing “Gainesville Rain” and “Wallflower,” two songs with poignant lyrics that are delivered in a relaxed, convincing way. Choreomania continues to get rave reviews and won Michigan station WYCE’s 2019 Jammie Award for “Best New Album by a New Band.” For some gigs at that time, the band also included banjo player Matthew Davis, but he’s since gone off to seminary to become a Catholic priest.
Fiddler Grant Flick, from Bowling Green, Ohio, started playing violin in fifth grade orchestra but got involved in bluegrass with his dad who plays banjo, guitar, and Dobro. Within his first month of fiddling, he was learning tunes by ear and going to jams. Today, Flick plays violin, mandolin, tenor guitar, tenor banjo, and nyckelharpa. His primary interests are bluegrass, jazz, swing and new acoustic music. His fiddle, made by Gary Bartig in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is an Old No. 54 model, acoustic-electric that sounds great plugged in or in a hall.
A full-time musician, Flick also plays with Westbound Situation and performs in a couple duos, with bassist Jacob Warren or violinist Hannah O’Brien. Recipient of the 2013 Daniel Pearl Memorial Violin, Flick also gives lessons, presents workshops, competes in fiddle contests, and attends University of Michigan in pursuit of his master’s degree in jazz studies. “Remote recording projects have been fun during Covid times too,” says Flick. “I like having the variety as it keeps everything pretty fresh.” He somehow even found time to finish third at the 2019 World Crokinole Championship, a sport where players flick small discs into the center hole of the game board or into higher value fields.
Also a full-time musician, internationally acclaimed mandolinist and educator Brian Oberlin has performed and recorded swing, bluegrass, and Italian classical music. Released in 2016, his 20th album Troubadour features Oberlin singing and playing solo with his Collings mandolin. A few of his collaborations have included The Journeymen, Grasshopah, Ida Viper, GER Mandolin Orchestra (with Mike Marshall), and Twin Mandolin Slingers (with Evan J. Marshall). Oberlin founded the River of the West Mandolin Camp, Great Lakes Mandolin Camp, Oregon Mandolin Orchestra and Michigan Mandolin Orchestra. He’s performed and taught at various festivals and academies in the U.S., Italy and Germany. The indefatigable musician always has several projects in the works. “I’ve got an idea to start a western swing band in Michigan,” laughs Oberlin, “and someday, I’d like to do some solo and bluegrass shows in Japan.”
Full Cord’s newest member is Lloyd Douglas, from Alpena, Michigan, a railroad engineer who grew up performing with his father and brother. “I was born to roll,” states Douglas who has played banjo, guitar, fiddle and mandolin in several bluegrass, country rock, jazz, and blues bands. He was a member of the Michigan-based bluegrass band, Detour, and appears on their albums released between 2009 and 2014 on the BlueGrass Ahead and Mountain Fever labels. While with David Davis & the Warrior River Boys, he recorded on the famed Basement Tapes for WAMU deejay Ray Davis. As a member of Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys, Douglas performed at the Grand Ole Opry.
Filling in with Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, Douglas played his 1972 Gibson RB-250 on Cleveland’s Grammy-nominated album Fiddler’s Dream. “I got that banjo when I was ten. It’s still my main instrument and has a great tone” declares Douglas. He especially enjoys playing the originals that members of Full Cord have written. “Having such talented writers is a blessing. It’s special to be able to be a part of creating new original music. You’re making a statement.”
Making every performance memorable, Full Cord is now at the top of their game and gaining momentum fast. Hold on to your hats when these guys hit the stage. With axes in hand, these guys quickly ignite a crowd with combustible music and leave them in a cloud of sawdust, smoke, ash and embers by the end of a fiery show.
“We’ve had different musicians come and go,” states Kirchner. “To really get tight and nurture that camaraderie, you need guys to stick around, hang out, work and have fun. We’re all good friends, and some of us play disc golf or fish together. I think the band has solidified with this lineup.”
Brian, Eric and Todd get together every weekend to woodshed and work on new tunes. Grant and Lloyd join them once a month. Song arrangements become collaborative efforts. “The lyrics are usually written by Brian while Grant does much of the instrumentation,” says Kirchner. “Grant might say ‘Hey, watch this!’ and the other guys pick up on it. We believe we can do anything we want to do. If we have an idea, we just play it. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get it right. After all, we are human.”
Full Cord puts a lot of emphasis on creative, enjoyable music. “Our challenge is to keep the music interesting,” says Kirchner, “by always introducing new music and arrangements. After five or six shows, we tend to move on to new stuff.”
They proactively dealt with the 2020 pandemic. “Some bands shut down while others seemed to embrace it. We took the approach, ‘Let’s go out and play safely at outdoor shows.’ We played a lot of socially distanced outdoor private parties. People were clamoring for live music. We tried to stay relevant on-line. We didn’t have a public face but kept the social media and virtual concerts happening. We knew better times were a-comin,’ and we stayed away from politics. We want to appeal to as broad an audience as we can.”
“We have quite a few really loyal fans that come out to shows all the time,” observes Kirchner. “It’s been snowballing, and people have been flocking to our shows.”
Concentrating on enjoyable original material, Full Cord’s fourth studio album, Hindsight is a tongue-in-cheek reference to their focused efforts during 2020. Their hard-working manager, Katie Kirchner, also provides some vocals on the album that’s chocked full of exceptional musicianship, eclectic repertoire and inventive arrangements. With selections like “Downtown” and “Rogue River Valley,” it’s no surprise that Full Cord won the February ROMP Festival virtual band competition produced by the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Owensboro, Ky.
“‘Downtown’ is about a bluegrasser going downtown and about my time spent in Portland, Oregon (2005-2017),” states Oberlin, “I wanted a song that still had a bit of a bluegrass chord progression but had a ‘city slicker’ chord progression as well. ‘Rogue River Valley’ is a bluegrass duet I sing with Eric about the pandemic. The premise is that when live music and normalcy can return to society, let it first come to the Rogue River Valley which is in Rockford, Michigan, my hometown. Songs in the fields and from over the hill. Played on an old wooden stage. Heard through the pines a lonesome melody. That will only sweeten with age.”
As Full Cord’s primary songwriter and affable lead vocalist, Oberlin is equally as comfortable with rollicking numbers like “Silvertone Blues” as he is with a mellower “Daydream Dance” and 3/4-time “Abilene.” Oberlin’s self-penned western swing tongue-twister, “Mandoliner’s Dream” will surely make you smile. “With that tune, I was going for a John Hartford silly lyrics approach with a fiddle tune feel,” says Oberlin. Katie Kirchner adds high harmony in the three-part call-and-response on “Valentine,” another of Oberlin’s self-penned songs that conveys a driving, traditional bluegrass ethos.
For the album, Langejans wrote and sings lead on “Lincoln River.” “I lived along the Lincoln River on 48 acres,” recalls Eric. “My dad and I had a sawmill, and it’s basically a song about home and nature.”
Some other Hindsight highlights include “Right in Step” and “Hey Watch This,” songs that Flick had a hand in composing. On “Right in Step,” he plays a five-string octave tenor guitar built by Jim Schenk in Goshen, Indiana. “Right in Step” is a song about a love affair with music, and it was the first collaborative songwriting effort for Flick and Oberlin. Flick explains how he writes for members of the group. “Typically, I think of the people that will be playing the tune and write something that fits their musical voice while also offering some sort of vehicle for improvisation. I don’t want to impose a sound that isn’t there but rather use a composition as a question the musicians can answer. Often, giving this freedom leads to better results and more authentic material.”
While their 2020 vision was to produce Hindsight, Full Cord’s plans for the future show great foresight. “We really want the band to succeed and get the music out to everybody,” remarks Kirchner. “Our goal is to make really great music and have people enjoy it.” Oberlin says the band will play some fantastic festivals, glorious concert venues and share their music as far as it seems fit. Flick adds, “we’ll keep going on the current path. It’s been a fun trajectory to jump on to.”
Eric Langejans agrees. “I get to do what I love, and people love what I do. It’s a big reward for me. If it ever gets to not be fun, I don’t want to do it. This band has the perfect balance of people. You couldn’t ask for a better group of guys. I’m honored to play with them. They’re my brothers.”
Full Cord is an eclectic quintet with all the necessary chops, good chemistry and business acumen to take them far. They have varied musical tastes and the ability to present them all well. Their direction and discipline will make a real positive impact on the new acoustic and bluegrass music scene.
This summer, Full Cord will be very busy playing venues throughout Michigan. Enroute, you’ll also find them on many of the Wolverine State’s most challenging disc golf courses. “We love to disc golf,” says Oberlin, “and Full Cord challenges any band to a disc golf mini tournament.”
In September, Full Cord will play the 2021 ROMP Festival in Owensboro. Based on the venue or gig, Full Cord’s band members perform in various configurations from solo to quintet. In such cases, Bluegrass Unlimited is uncertain whether they’ll then be called a rick, face cord, half cord, woodpile or woodstack, but we certainly wish them every success.
