When a couple celebrates their 50th anniversary, they inevitably get asked that all-important question: “What’s your secret? How have you two managed to stay together after all these years?” And while the couple’s answer might involve a whole host of things—finding compromise when disagreements arise, always maintaining a sense of humor, etc.—Guy Van Duser and Billy Novick, a guitar-and-clarinet duo celebrating their own golden anniversary this year, have a simpler solution. “We just don’t see each other,” Van Duser explains. “And that’s why we haven’t had a single fight in 50 years!”
According to Van Duser, the two Massachusetts-based musicians pretty much only hang out on the day of a gig. While you might think a band who rarely meets in person would get rusty, the time they spend apart gives the duo an opportunity to come to each performance with a fresh perspective and renewed sense of vitality.
That vitality was on full display last Friday, when Van Duser and Novick played a more-than-two-hour set of their signature old-timey jazz at the Me&Thee Coffeehouse on Friday. It’s the kind of music you’d normally hear accompanied by the scratches and pops of old recordings, so hearing it live at a venue like the Me&Thee is like stepping into a time machine: you can hear the full, rich sound of early jazz as it was heard by audiences at the time — as a new and exciting form of music, not a historic time capsule.
Winding their way through originals as well as standards like “Caravan” by Duke Ellington and “Stardust” by Hoagy Carmichael, Novick’s playful clarinet dovetailed perfectly with Van Duser’s guitar, which kept a steady rhythm as he took inventive leaps up and down the fretboard.
“Caravan” was a particular highlight of the evening, with its sinewy, Middle Eastern scales on clarinet and its driving guitar rhythm meant to evoke the march of camels across the Arabian Desert. Van Duser explained that he first heard the song on a Chet Atkins record when he was a teenager. To learn how to play it himself, he would methodically listen to a few notes of the record, lift the needle, figure out those notes on his guitar, then bring the needle down again and repeat the process until he had memorized the entire song. What he didn’t realize was that Atkins used an echo effect on his guitar that doubled each note he played, so Van Duser was actually playing twice the amount of notes that guitar virtuoso Chet Atkins was — quite an accomplishment for a teen! He still plays the double-note version today, and at their concert on Friday, the effect was mesmerizing.
The show received a Marblehead touch when Van Duser and Novick invited their long-time friend Jeanie Stahl onto the stage, a local legend who once scored a regional hit with “Marblehead Morning” alongside her musical partner Mason Daring. Van Duser, Novick and Stahl have known each other and played together since the days of the 1970s Cambridge folk scene, and the chemistry they’ve forged over the years was evident on Friday when they performed tender, evocative versions of the jazz standards “Am I Blue?” and “Cheek to Cheek.” Bringing the jazz of the 1920s from the 1970s folk scene up to the present day, Guy Van Duser and Billy Novick prove that great music is something that truly transcends time.
