Accordion Americana

Singing lead and handling acoustic guitar and harmonica, Bruce fronts the eclectic 18-piece band, which includes horns, violins, banjo, sousaphone, and penny whistle, as well as some mean accordion and keyboard work, courtesy of New York squeezebox champion Charlie Giordano. A veteran session player and touring performer, Charlie claimed his spot in the Seeger Sessions Band through a series of happy coincidences.

“There was a band called the Gotham Playboys, and Soozie Tyrell, who was an E Street member, was playing with them at times,” says Charlie. “Bruce heard about this band she’d been gigging with, and he invited them to play at his birthday party, and subsequent parties at his house.” Though he was not at the first meeting between Bruce and the core group that would become the Seeger Sessions Band, Charlie was the substitute called in while the regular accordion player was on a gig in Japan. The job Charlie got pinged for? A recording with Bruce for a Pete Seeger tribute record. The result? A collaboration that would lead to touring the world and one of the most unique, uplifting albums we’ve ever heard.

Though that album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, features traditional American songs, the group has since expanded its repertoire to include drastic reworkings of Bruce’s originals as well. Seeger-ized versions of tunes like “Atlantic City” and “Blinded by the Light” are included on the group’s new audio and video release, Bruce Springsteen With The Sessions Band Live In Dublin.

We caught up with Charlie on several occasions to go deep into the keyboard’s role in the Seeger Sessions phenomenon.

What was the recording session dynamic like for We Shall Overcome?
Well, nothing was really worked out in music beforehand. We came in the morning and they set up the mics around us so there was no real separation. In the main room was the core of the band and in a separate room were the horns, and everybody was on headphones. Bruce would come in and sing a bit of a song for us and we’d work out the chords. He’d sing a line or just try something, and maybe first it would be a horn line, and then we’d try it on the strings. You can hear it on the record — often he just calls out a solo. We didn’t know who was going to be playing next. [Laughs.] Sometimes we weren’t even sure how the song was going to end, but it was a lot of fun. When I’m in a situation like that, it really makes me concentrate in a different way than knowing I’m going to be doing take after take in a recording studio.

Was it nerve-wracking to do so much on the fly, especially while working with such a big star?
A little bit, but I was comfortable with this kind of music, and [Bruce] has the ability to put you at ease. Right from the beginning of the session, he was friendly and fun, and you get a sense with him right away that he likes musicians. Not every artist that I’ve worked for gives that kind of feeling to you, but with him it really is there. The spirit was just, “We’re all going to have some fun and make some music here,” and I didn’t feel pressure in that situation.

What sorts of accordions do you play?
The little red accordion that I use a lot is a Hohner Student V. It’s probably about 25 years old. Generally, there’s two types of accordions — German and Italian — and the Hohner is German. The Italians tend to be warmer and richer-sounding and the German accordions are brighter and punchier. I find that, especially with a larger band, the smaller accordion is very effective. It sits in a nice frequency range and blends with other instruments, but doesn’t block them out. It’s a really good instrument. I also was using an Excelsior 120 bass, which has a real zydeco sound, and that would be an Italian accordion. I also have a bass accordion that I didn’t play [at the Concord show], but that’s a really good sound. It doesn’t have anything on the bass button side except for a handle. It’s an octave lower than a standard full size accordion and you can get down to the region of low E. The bass we used on a song called “My Father’s House.”

Did you use all three on the recording?
I didn’t use the bass. I used the Hohner. I did not use the Excelsior. I also used my Italian accordion, which is a Sonola 96 Bass musette accordion. If you listen to the solo on “We Shall Overcome” on the recording, that’s the Sonola. It’s a sweeter sound. If you listen to “Pay Me My Money Down,” that’s the Hohner.

Given the impromptu nature of the session, how did you decide which accordions to use on which tune?
That’s a good question. Some of it is trial and error. I’ll have one on my lap and start playing it and it will just strike me, since I’m so used to the sound of my instrument, that depending on what other people are playing, I might want a richer sound — for which I might use my Sonola — or if I want to have a little more bite, I could use my Hohner.

How would you describe the accordion styles you play for this project?
I’m incorporating a few different styles in what I’m doing in this band. One is the zydeco thing. Being a keyboard player, I spend a lot of time playing blues and R&B, and I do like to bring up the blues element in the accordion as well. So my style probably is more zydeco than Cajun, which is a little more country.
Generally, if I’m going for zydeco, I want to use what accordionists call the “master” sound, which is usually two clarinets and a bassoon reed. You want to have that low reed in there and you basically want the biggest sound you can get out of an accordion. I treat it almost as if I’m playing organ on my blues and R&B thing. Because zydeco really is very close to late ’40s and ’50s R&B music, except they’re using the accordion and the rubboard, but it’s very close to that. So that’s my approach — a bluesy R&B thing. When you play it on a full-size accordion with all the reeds, it sounds awesome.

What sort of voicings do you use?
I play a lot of the fifth and the flat-seventh, and you want to do a lot of octaves with the fifth in between those notes. It’s a full, bluesy sound. A lot of times we just leave the third out, since it sounds a little square. I like to use the root in voicing — the root, fifth, and flat-seventh, or one, five, and then the octave.

Can you offer any advice for capturing the feel or the rhythmic character?
Yeah, there is a lot of rhythmic stuff happening. When you’re playing grooves, you want to really get a chugging thing happening.

How much zydeco do you play with the Seeger Sessions Band, and what other styles are prevalent?
The zydeco element is something I do on a few songs, but it’s not the biggest element I’m using with Bruce. With the Hohner, I’m really using the Tex-Mex influence. That is something that I’m incorporating quite a bit in the Seeger Sessions band. Another reason why I like the small Hohner is it has the same reeds and very similar sound to the diatonic accordions they typically use for the Tex-Mex accordion style. A big influence on my playing is the great Flaco Jimenez, who has made many records on his own and also was in the group the Texas Tornados. With that, you incorporate more chromatic runs and a little more flash playing. On a smaller accordion, I find that you can be a little more expressive with single-note runs and solos, and use a little bit more technique.

What sort of chord scales or voicings would you primarily use in a Tex-Mex style?
With that, I’m using more sixths and thirds. And I’m using more four- and five-note chromatic runs up and down the scale, not full scales. They have a really good, fresh sound. Now I don’t consider myself an expert on zydeco or Tex-Mex — I don’t really sit down and transcribe this stuff, but I do listen and enjoy it, and then it finds its way into my playing.
Another element that comes to mind, which is very important and something that I really work hard on, is using the accordion in a supportive role, and trying to blend with the other instruments and give them the underpinning or glue for what they’re doing. That is also something that I think is very effective on the small Hohner — blending in with fills. I like to use as few notes as possible, so again with this kind of a thing, I try to generally use just thirds and sixths. Open voicings really work well. To the listener, it’s something that might not even be identifiable as an accordion, but it adds warmth and flavor to the sound of the whole band playing. It’s something I really enjoy doing.

How does accordion tuning affect into your playing?
One of the things that’s important to me is an accordion that has musette tuning. Not all accordions have them, and there are different kinds, but the kind of music that I like to play and the kind of music that I think works well with the Seeger Session band uses musette tuning. Now, what is that? Let’s say I’m playing at A = 440Hz. When the musette stop is in, you’re hearing one reed playing 440 and second reed playing slightly sharp of the 440 and you get a natural chorusing effect. You can also have a double musette, where you bring in a third reed that’s slightly flat of 440, and you get a real richness. You don’t want to be playing the same thick voicings with that because then it will sound out of tune. But if you play open voicings — sixths work really well and thirds work fine too — it sounds good. If you have just the right amount of notes, it sounds awesome and if you play too many notes, then musicians will start looking at you in a funny way. You can have the second set tuned slightly sharp or quite a bit sharp — that classic French café accordion style, which is the very fast or, as they call it, wet musette tuning — where the second reed is 20 cents sharp of the first reed.

Do you use musette tuning throughout the album?
Pretty much. There are a few tracks where I’m just using the single reed. But I’m using the single musette, which is the Hohner. A good example is “Pay Me My Money Down.” If you listen to the solo on “We Shall Overcome,” that is the double musette on the Sonola.

Which tunes would you say you were playing zydeco style on?
“O Mary Don’t You Weep,” where I’m playing zydeco style, but no one else is, since it’s not a zydeco tune. But in the live show we did a song “You Can Look but You Better Not Touch,” and the violin player was playing the rubboard and I was playing the big accordion. We really were doing the zydeco on that.

What about Tex-Mex?
That would be “Pay Me My Money Down.”

You also play organ on the album.
At the end of the day when all the songs were done, Bruce had some horn players and singers do overdubs. At the same time, I put down organ or piano. So even that was very spontaneous. I played organ on “Old Man Tucker” and piano on “Mrs. McGrath” and “O Mary Don’t You Weep.”

At the concert, it looked like you were playing an acoustic upright piano.
No, it’s not an acoustic piano. It’s a shell of an old upright piano. When your readers read this, I don’t want them to tell anybody. [Laughs.] We love the sound of upright pianos, especially the older ones. But we knew that we weren’t going to be able to get an acoustic loud enough on the tour, so there’s a Yamaha digital piano in the case of an upright piano.

When I think of this album, I think of old ’20s New Orleans-style jazz. Was that prevalent in your accordion playing as well as your piano playing?
I wouldn’t say I’m a jazz musician, but I’ve always listened to that music. Willie “The Lion” Smith and James P. Johnson were big influences. I played with a lot of the blues artists when they’d come to town on keyboards, so that’s really in my style. It just seemed to really fit well. With this project, my approach was to try not to force anything and just play what felt natural and right for me. And it just seemed to fit a stride thing, which is something that I always enjoyed playing. Live, we used a little bit of a chorus on the piano to give it a little bit of an out of tune sound. When you’re playing with a piano and incorporating that out-of-tune element, it’s the same kind of thing as musette tuning. You don’t want to have too big of a voicing. The more open and less notes you have, the more it’s going to come together.

What sort of typical voicings would you be going for when you’re playing stride?
Sometimes I’ll play just octaves and then add like the third below the high octave —obviously you have to keep shifting it as you play. I like to use octaves and I like to add maybe one other voice in there.

Thanks for sharing so much about all the styles that influence your work with the Seeger Sessions Band.
I think it’s great to talk about them. Especially with the accordion, there’s not a lot out there in terms of books or videos for people to pick up what is going on, how to approach the instrument, and what voicings to use. Over the years, hearing other players and listening, I’ve accumulated stuff that I love to pass on.