The True & Trembling String Band
The True & Trembling String Band was formed in 1973 after a single, promising jam session during a party hosted by Don McCarty at his home in Venice, California. Organized by Bob Webb, the group performed regionally around Southern California from sometime in that year until late 1976. Afterwards, fiddler Dick Owings and banjo-player Webb continued as a duet, performing all along the West Coast as far north as Prince Rupert, British Columbia before disbanding at the beginning of 1978.
The original band included Dick Owings, fiddle; Bob Webb, banjo; Allen Hart, banjo; Don McCarty, hammer dulcimer and mandolin; and Chris Cooper, guitar. Webb served as principal vocalist, as well as business organizer and promoter for the band. Owings increasingly added his singing to the group, and identified “new” old-time music to add to the band’s repertoire.
Don McCarty was one of the first hammer dulcimer players on the West Coast to adapt that instrument to Southern Appalachian old-time music. Curt Bouterse of San Diego was likely first to do so, but it’s equally probable that McCarty was the second. Dick Owings and Al Hart, with the assistance of old-time record collector and musician Dave Leddel discovered many little-known old time songs and bands that had been recorded on 78 rpm recordings during the 1920s and ’30s. The True & Trembling was the first group to recreate the sounds of a then-obscure pre-Texas-swing band, the East Texas Serenaders.
In 1974, Hart left the band to enter the U.S. Army, where, after basic training, he was assigned to duty in Alaska. The second iteration of the group included the remaining personnel: Owings, Webb, McCarty and Cooper. Late in 1975 or early in 1976 The True & Trembling was augmented by the addition of Dan Levitt on double-bass, and Bob McLeod on guitar. McLeod also brought his strong country-crooning voice to the group, which by that time was trending away from mountain string-band music toward the more modern stylings of Texas swing and early recorded “hillbilly” or country music.
The True & Trembling appeared on, and recorded for Howard and Roz Larman’s radio show “Folk Scene,” on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles during 1974-6. Until the release of Defiantly Joyous, the only commercial recording that included the group was an anthology, 15th Annual Topanga Banjo & Fiddle Contest: 1975, produced by Old Topanga Music.