The California Files

My Work Here Is Done.

“Arrgh! It’s my first lesson of the new year, and I’m already ready to kill my student!”

Yes, that would be my banjo instructor John David today.

Hey, all I did was ask a question! Or two. Or maybe three.

And maybe I did respond to his answers by saying, “Yeah, but….”

And he went nuts! Go figure.

Actually, it was kind of satisfying, in a “My work here is done” kind of way.

The good thing is, I’ll get him another crack at him next week, when he’s recovered from this week’s trauma. So maybe my work here isn’t quite done yet.

But it's good to know that I haven't lost my touch.

-JFT

"Give Me the Banjo!"

Give me the Banjo! That's part of a quote from Mark Twain, and it's kind of been my unofficial credo, my musical call to action, since I was a high school student and bought my first instrument, a marvelous old S.S. Stewart, seen here on the right.

Several months ago, a program called “Give Me the Banjo” was shown on public television.

I set our DVR up to record it.

But I had never watched the program because it got mixed reviews, to say the least, from my banjo-playing associates. I thought, ‘Eh, why bother?”

But I finally sat down and watched it last night.

Brilliant. That’s what it is, brilliant.

Narrated by Steve Martin, a seriously talented musician in his own right, this film traces the history of this wonderful instrument from its arrival here with slaves right up to – well, now.

My picker friends bitched that it failed to concentrate on bluegrass. But that was one of the things I liked about. It presented a nice balance, starting with the very earliest iterations of the instrument. It told us about the earliest players, including minstrel star Joel Walker Sweeney, about who I wrote a paper when I was a college student.

It included audio and film clips of some of the early players of the last century, brought us through Earl Scruggs, Pete Seeger and the Kingston Trio right up to the present, through Bela Fleck and beyond.

Like I said, brilliant – even if it did leave out some well-known players such as Stringbean and Grandpa Jones, and their contributions to old-time music. That doesn’t matter, so much, I think. I’m absolutely thrilled that the instrument I so admire got such an intelligent treatment.

I’ve kept this one on the DVR, rather than delete it. It’s worth seeing again.

But first, I need to make the time to watch “Freedom Songs,” a film about the music of the Civil Rights movement. I recorded that last night and will settle in and watch when I can savor it.

I’m thinking that at least some of the music it will bring us could be concurrent with the music of the folk era of the 1950s and ’60s. We shall see.

In the meantime, I just wish my old friend Hal, with whom I shared so much of this music, was here to watch this stuff with me. He left for me his favorite banjo, a Bart Reiter Grand Concert - again, seen here on the right. It hangs here on my studio wall, right next to that old  1880s vintage S.S. Stewart that I still own and still cherish. The two of them make a good pair.

-JFT

Hot and Cold Bluegrass at the Ford

Laura and I went to a bluegrass concert last night. And not just any bluegrass concert, either. This was the annual Bluegrass at the Ford event, put on at the John Anson Ford Amphitheater by the Bluegrass Club of Southern California.

Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper were the headliners, and a band called Loafer’s Glory was the opening act.

We’d not been to the Ford previously and were very pleased with this very small but very stylish and intimate venue. It’s one of those places where it’s safe to say that there’s not a bad seat in the house.

The shame was that the place was far from filled. I mean, So Cal has something like 22 million people in it. Surely some of them appreciate bluegrass. Or maybe not. It didn’t look to me like there were more than 500 people in the place. Made me wonder how the bluegrass club could afford a high-profile band like Flamekeeper.

The performances themselves were a bit odd. Instead of the opening act doing an opener, and then the main act coming on after an intermission, each act did a set before intermission, then did another set after intermission.

Flamekeeper was just terrific, filled with energy and enthusiasm. Cleveland, of course, was wonderful, at the top of his form, and was more of the band’s front man than he was when I saw him at Supergrass – what, five years ago? Surprisingly, there was a light moment on stage about his sightlessness, of all things.

“Man, it’s dangerous up here tonight,” he joked in response.

Banjoist Glenn Gibson did a good job on that instrument and also did a credible job of doubling on dobro. Charlie Lawson delivered the bulk of the vocals and a young man named Ashby Frank just set the place aflame on the mandolin. This guy, I predict, is going to make a name for himself with a serious career.

The highlight, I thought, was an unaccompanied duet with Frank and Cleveland doing an extended version of “Jerusalem Ridge.” Both combined inventiveness and virtuosity with timing, tone and taste to render this a memorable moment.

Loafer’s Glory were far less memorable. This is a local band composed of Herb Pedersen on guitar, Bill Bryson on bass, Tom Sauber on fiddle and Patrick Sauber, Tom’s son, on banjo and mando.

Patrick Sauber was the highlight of this band, I though. He showed flashes of brilliance and has the potential of enjoying a nice notoriety in bluegrass, if not a nice career.

That can’t be said for the rest of this band, though. These guys just seem to have phoned this one in, with very little energy or enthusiasm in their playing. The first set was all we needed from this band. Seemed like they forgot they need to please the audience. Maybe they've just been in the business too long.

So it was a mixed evening of bluegrass for us, hot and cold. It wasn’t helped at all by the pair of drunks in the front row – we were in the third row – who insisted on loudly clapping time to every number. Even the musicians showed subtle signs of being distracted, and we certainly were distracted. Finally one of their seatmates asked them to kindly shut the hell up, which they mostly did.

So, bottom line? A mixed bag. The Ford is a terrific venue, but just half full. We arrived an hour early to find – well, almost no one there. We parked in the front row of the parking lot, something that’s very unusual in stacked parking. And we walked in and easily selected what we thought were the best seats in the house. You have to wonder if the club didn’t drop the promotional ball, and thus lose its shirt on this event.

Ah, well. Can only hope for better next time. On all counts.

-JFT

Can't Stop Them Changes

One of the bulletin boards I look at frequently is one that deals with banjos. I found a post there this morning decrying a performance on the recent Country Music Awards that was, apparently, not sufficiently country and way too much like rock.

One of the folks responding said something like, “Yikes, I hope that never happens to bluegrass.”

And that got me to thinking.

What, exactly, is bluegrass music? You might think it would be easy to define. But it isn't, because it has many branches to its family tree.

We might do well to recognize, I think, that music, as a cultural reflection, morphs. All art tends to reflect the culture into which it is born; and like it or not, all art morphs.

Consider, for example, the ways in which classical music has changed over time, from Gregorian chants through the so-called “early music” like pre-baroque through baroque, classical, romantic, modern and so on. I’m talking about Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Shostakovich to the modernists like John Cage and beyond.

Can't argue that Rembrandt is the same as Caravaggio is the same as Pablo Picasso is the same as Paul Klee is the same as Jackson Pollock.

Likewise literature. I’ve taken a break from my usual refuge of modern fiction. Trying to catch up on some of the things I wasn’t exposed to during my high school years (and grr, I’ll touch more on this in a later post), I've been reading Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad and Carl Sandberg. Wonderful, all of it, but way, way different than the stuff that's being produced today.

Which brings us back to bluegrass, the form of music in which I’m so invested. You might argue that bluegrass has done/is doing the same thing, from old-time string-band music through Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Bobby Thompson, Alan Munde and on through newgrass and truly wacky bands like Leftover Salmon.

I think that probably this kind of development is inevitable, and has less to do with promoters seeking younger, hipper crowds, as someone on the banjo bulletin board suggested, than it does with new, virtuostic players putting their own stamp and style on the music they love. Can't blame them, I think - as much as I adore bluegrass, I'd not survive on an endless diet of just Bill Monroe, who for me gets old pretty quick.

One place bluegrass benefits, I think, is that it doesn't have the publicity machine behind it that country music does. And that's probably good - unless you're trying to make a living playing bluegrass.

I just wish it was more visible. One of my stops every weekend is the entertainment sections of the L.A. Times and the N.Y. Times. Neither paper ever mentions Americana, unfortunately, the category into which bluegrass falls. Some modern country, lots of hip-hop - which, by the way, also has morphed. Come to think of it, all this could make an interesting doctoral study, no?

-JFT

 

Shuckin' the Corn

Shuckin’ the Corn is of course an Earl Scruggs bluegrass banjo showpiece. He plays it at about a million miles an hour – so fast that it seems impossible to work out just what he’s doing.

Ah, but slow it down, and consult the tablature for the tune (tablature, or “tab,” is a notation system for folks who don’t read traditional musical scores for a particular instrument and is widely used in the world of acoustic instruments and traditional music) and you see that the tune isn’t complicated. It’s just blindingly fast.

So it is that several weeks ago my instructor assigned me this tune to learn. It’s right there in the Earl Scruggs songbook. So, OK, I slowed it way down, studied it a bit, and got to where I can play it through from memory. So far, so good.

Ah, but an alternate version of the tune appeared in the ‘60s played by a virtuoso named Marshall Brickman. It appeared on a now-collectable record called “New Dimensions in Banjo and Bluegrass,” and remains available on a CD masquerading as the soundtrack from the movie “Deliverance.” I’ve been in awe of Brickman’s version, and especially his solo break, which he played in the melodic style, for a very long time. But I was horrified to learn a few weeks ago that the break was my instructor’s next assignment for me.

It’s not long at all, just 24 bars. But it’s melodic, a style I’ve never even attempted to play and a style that is very different from the traditional Scruggs-style of bluegrass playing.

I find today that working a few bars at a time, I’ve finally got all 24 bars memorized and can play it, but slowly, all the way through. This pleases me greatly. And the speed is coming, which pleases me even more.

What occurs to me is that if I’d worked as hard in school as I work on the banjo, I’d have been a far better student. But I wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun with my studies as I’m having with my banjo. Ah, well….

-JFT

“Hm? What Did You Say?”

That’s what she’s hearing me say with increasing frequency, Laura tells me. “Go get a hearing test,” she said.

To which I replied, “Hm? What did you say?” She poked me.

Supposedly, when you become a bit older, the memory is the first thing to go. I’ve forgotten what the second thing is. Maybe it’s one’s hearing. In any case, my hearing has been knackered for a long time. Since boarding school, actually.

It happened like this. There was a decomposed granite quarry in the hillside above Newbury Park Academy, to which I was sentenced, for my juvenile sins, to four brutal years of work-release. Work and school most of the year, spend a few short days at home with one’s parents and family during infrequent release-for-semi-adequate-behavior periods. Then more work and school. At least they permitted banjos there, in which I was very interested even then.

Me, Mike and Music

Here in my office/studio I’ve got a poster that says, “Presenting… Mike and Jon, exciting new folk duo! Ethnic entertainment at its best!” The gig was probably just about the first time we played together publically, back in about 1963, in Lancaster, California.

“Ethnic entertainment” was what we called folk music back in the early ‘60s, when my pal Mike Kicenski and I started picking guitar and banjo together. And that’s what makes the events of this past week so interesting to me.

I’ve known Mike since we were little kids, attending the same church out in a woebegone desert town that we’re both glad we’re out of. We’re very different to one another. One big difference is that music of any kind comes easy to Mike, while I have to work at it. Still, we enjoy  each another’s company and generally have a great time when we’re together – which lately isn’t often enough.

Essential and Comforting Routine

Time to change strings on my Vega longneck. Swapping strings is something I’ve done to a variety of instruments for – well, many decades, now. But while I was at work performing this task tonight, I was struck by the comfortable and very familiar nature of the routine.

It’s comfortable and routine, I suppose, because I’ve done it so many thousands of times. And because it does two other things: Fresh strings provide much improved sound and much reduced chances of string breakage.

Strings degrade. Oil and dirt from one’s fingers and hands help them corrode. When they corrode, their vibrations, transmitted to the instrument, aren’t as pure as they should be. Hence degraded sound. As for breakage, well, that’s self-evident. Stings, by their nature, vibrate. This leads to weaknesses and failure.

Me and my Banjo

So I’ve been working pretty hard on my banjo skills for the last few months.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve played banjo for a very long time. But I’ve never really learned the specific language used in bluegrass, and for me, that’s the essence of banjo.

So I found myself a great teacher – he’s right here in town, of all things – and have been wailin’ away.

Progress? Yeah, sure. Some. Pretty good amount, actually, and after some initial reservations, I’m reasonably pleased with things. Using my trusty old Stelling Staghorn, which you see in the photo on the right, I’ve worked on tunes as played by Douglas Dillard and Alan Munde, two banjo heroes, and lately have been working on a tune from Earl Scruggs – “Lonesome Road Blues.”

Now, the material from those other two pickers is wonderful fun; inventive, creative, difficult to play but rewarding once I get it decoded (for that’s what’s involved here – I find myself working through the “code” of what’s called tablature, which is like standard musical notation but different).

But what I find really striking is that the deeper I get into the Scruggs material, the more impressed I am with the man as a musician and an innovator.

Dillard, Munde and the rest, for all their blinding speed and eye-popping skill, stand on the shoulders of ol’ Earl. He basically invented modern bluegrass banjo, coming up with the rolls played by the right hand and the up-the-neck tricks accomplished by the left hand. It’s quite incredible. Syncopation, slurs, slides, 32^nd notes, 64^th (!) notes – it’s all there.

Earl now is in his 80s and no longer plays with the fire his music used to contain. That’s OK – he’s blazed the trail. He then paved it. All the rest of us follow that path.

I still love Dillard’s pickin’ best of all. Fast, bright, flashy, incredible right-hand dexterity, thrilling musicality. I should be so lucky.

But upon reflection, I realize that I am lucky. I found a teacher I can deal with and he’s taking me down Earl’s five-string road. My only challenge is taking the time to – uh, like, actually practice. Hated it as a child as a violin student, pretty much hate it now. But the progress makes it worthwhile.

Earl Scruggs, Doug Dillard, Alan Munde and all the rest seem to be able to play this wacky instrument by instinct. I can’t. But I’m having fun with what I can do, and that suits me just fine.

-JFT

"The Crow," and Other Music

OK, now look, these are difficult and troubling times, so like almost everyone else, I'm not spending a nickel unless I absolutely have to. You know, gas. Food. Books, every now and again. Stuff like that. Oh, and dinner tonight with my youngest son, Matt, at the local Mexican joint. But I bent a little last week and ordered Steve Martin's new record, "The Crow."

It's playing now. I'm instructed to make a copy for Laura.

Critique? Highly recommended. Mostly original tunes written by this noted comedian, with help from others - and some really fine playing, both in Scruggs three-finger style and old-timey frailing style. Opening tune, "Daddy played the banjo," is a frailed one, sung by Tim O'Brian - can't do better than that. Just great stuff. Not your typical bluegrass music, just as Martin is not a typical musician.

The other record I bought, and the reason I was shopping on Amazon to begin with, is a double album by a long-defunct band called Country Gazette. The thing is, this band's picker was banjo-monster Alan Munde, long a favorite. My old friend Hal's all-time favorite picker, at that, and our mentor when it comes to banjo selection - he's always played a Stelling, and so did Hal, and so do I.

But here's the deal - I took a lesson last week. The tune this teacher wants me to learn is one called "Deputy Dalton." I heard my friend Ernie play it and thought, "Hey, I need to know that one."

Well, it's a lot tougher than I thought, especially when all I have is the tabulature - kind of a non-musician's version of notation of the tune, one which shows the player when and where to put one's fangers. Sort of.

Anyway, this is a double record titled, "Traitor In Our Midst/Don't Give Up Your Day Job," and it comprises this band's first two records, made back in the early '70s. I actually had 'em on vinyl. It's available only as an import, for some reason, but if you care about this style of music at all, it's worth owning.

So I've spent a good part of today on "Deputy Dalton," and I've figured out that I am not Alan Munde. But the tune is coming. By next lesson, I think I'll have the first half figured out, at least somewhat. Some trouble spots, but I'll get them figured out. Maybe. I've got some time on my hands, so I. Will. Learn. To. Play. Banjo. Better! Dammit!

-JFT