The Piedmonter    Friday September 8, 2000

Fire Captain Goes From Smoke to Folk

By Chrisitina Engelbrecht Staff Writer

Dave Swan comes up with a new motto for his folk singing trio, Oak, Ash and Thorn.

'I think it takes a certain amount of guts to do what we do - get up there without a script and sing and banter. It's a cappefla without a net,' Swan says, turning to fellow OAT member Doug Olsen, who nods in agreement.

By day, Swan is the captain of the Piedmont Fire Department. But by night and weekend, he calls himself the "newest" member of the 26-year-old singing group with fellow Oakland residents Olsen and Tom Wagner - Swan's only been in OAT for 20 years.

The group has cultivated a loyal Bay Area following among fans of old British drinking songs, sea chanteys and love songs. "I think for songs written after about 1850, our interest drops off,' Swan says.

OAT surmises that their secret recipe for success is .one part chorus you cast get out of your head, add two parts irreverent humor, combine three parts rich traditional harmony." But in all honesty, they're not sure why they have a legion of fans who pack every show, bring their friends and indoctrinate their children. They were 'blown away" when they had a sold-out performance at Berkeley's Freight and Salvage Coffee House in their return to the concert circuit in 1999. That was after a five-year hiatus to regroup after original Oak, Ash and Thom quintet members Dale Hill and Mitchell Sandler decided to move on.

'It was completely heartwarming to see people respond to us," Olsen said. "What we have to offer people is a good time. It's not just the performance, it's the enjoyability of the evening.'

Because they are best of buddies on and off stage, rehearsals for Olsen, Swan and Wagner commonly combine equal parts story-swapping and beer swilling with actual singing. Their invented harmonies and increasingly complex repertoire are 'a function 6f 20 years of coming up with something that interests the other guys," says Swan.

"We can't resist playing with each other, and there's especially something about being with one another on stage," Swan says, explaining how the fun off stage gets translated and magnified when the three get before an audience.

"My guests always think I'm dragging them along to some folksy reunion," says OAT fan A.J. Benham of Oakland. "The fun of it for me is to watch friends get sucked in by the group's spontaneous, and sometimes bawdy, humor, the wide variety of beautifully crafted songs and lyrics, and the fact that, unlike most of the digitally enhanced 'guy groups' out there, these guys really know how to sing. But don't ask them to dance!' Benham shares.

In a rare serious moment, Olsen tells how the foundation of OAT's style comes from the age-old oral tradition of passing songs along and re- peating them from generation to generation. "The point is, I learned it from my grandfather and my grandchildren will learn it from me," Olsen explains. "The tradition is 'Let's sing around the kitchen table, let's sit around the pub and sing songs we all know,'" Swan adds.

It was an honor and privilege this past July for OAT to share a bill at Freight and Salvage with the Copper Family of England, who have been performing traditional English music for seven generations and from whom OAT has borrowed many tunes. "We don't have a family connection to this material, but we have almost a spiritual connection to it,' Olsen says.

None of the members of OAT grew up with the music they sing, but they do see the oral tradition alive and well at their concerts, during which the audience sings almost as much as OAT does.

The group was founded at the Renaissance Faire and although they no longer perform there, Olsen has chuckled when he has returned as a visitor and hears song arrangements he knows OAT introduced to the fair. "Young people, kids are singing these songs and they don't even know where they come from," Olsen says.
OAT members have also been amused to see new groups popping up locally who "borrow" OAT songs.
"We did publish a song book, which is currently out of print, and people would pass them around from  hand to  hand,' Olsen says.

Along with reveling in the old, OAT manager Pamela Swan has been putting a lot of energy into finding new venues for the boys. It doesn't get much bigger than the Network Associates Coliseum in Oakland, where OAT sang the National Anthem in July, fulfilling a long-time ambition.

For years, OAT has been singing "Anacreontic's Society Song," the tune to which Francis Scott Key set his patriotic lyrics. In fact, Olsen has been declaring "play ball" following OAT performances of the English drinking song for years - but they did have to be careful they sang the right words on game day.

"It was just a huge thrill. Like a kid, you walk out onto the infield and it's just as, green as you think it should be,' Swan recalls.  But once they started singing, it took every iota of their musicianship to hold their own as three voices in an immense reverberate space.  'In the photos, we're just in laser eyelock with each other because we're all we've got," Swan says. 'And we now know why there's always this big pause after 'O'er the land of the free.'  It's because you get up there and hold that out and then hear it come back at you and you stop and say, 'Wow, that's us.' "