Roots. Music. Singing the Blues

I've been thinking a lot lately about roots music, my roots, my music, etc.

I spent the better part of my first two years of life hanging out in or around my dad's drum set. He kept a pillow in his bass drum to muffle /improve the sound, and I often took naps on the pillow in the drum. Twenty-four years later, my dad reunited with his band from the 70's and played that same drum set at my wedding reception. (By then I was too big to crawl in the bass drum to grab a few minutes of shut-eye, but believe me, by the end of the day, I wanted to!)

Tonight we're heading back to MerleFest, but this year my dad won't be there. The line-up has just gotten too impure for him, I believe. He's incredulous that musicians like Elvis Costello will be there this year, and that happens to be the act I'm most excited about hearing. MerleFest is celebrating its 20th year this year, which means the first one was held in 1987, when I was 15. My mom and dad went to the very first MerleFest, a celebration of American acoustic musicians created to honor Doc Watson's talented son, Merle, who died in a freak accident in 1985. My brother, sister and I were invited to go with our parents to the first MerleFest (which my mom fondly remembered was so small and "grass-roots" that people sat on hay bails in front of the "main stage" that was the back of a tractor trailer. Now, more than 80,000 people attend). I declined, however, probably due to the backlash I still felt over missing Cheap Trick not long before.

Cheap Trick came to Boone in the 1980's, the same evening that Bela Fleck was performing at ASU's Farthing Auditorium. Bela Fleck is a world-renowned virtuoso banjo player who was just getting started in the early '80's. My dad was friends with people who were friends with him (and, in fact, Bela Fleck spent time in our living room back in the day), and thought it was more important to expose his children to the culture of Fleck's music than the electric sounds of Cheap Trick. I wasn't happy about being forced to go to another bluegrass music thing (especially at the expense of missing Cheap Trick!), but I was used to it. It had happened all my life. I can't tell you how many fiddlers' conventions, Appalachian Folk festivals, and barn dances I went to growing up. Those kinds of things were as much a part of my childhood as hearing the names of the musicians on whom my dad is writing the definitive pieces: Merle Travis, Lulu Belle and Scotty Wiseman and Etta Baker. Those names to me were like names of family members--distant aunts and uncles whose names I heard a lot and knew were somehow linked to my dad (and some of whom I'd even met before, again in my living room) but who I didn't know well.

Now, I'm beginning to "know" these musicians deeper and when people who know my dad ask what he's working on these days, I can say with confidence and knowledge, "He's still writing about Merle Travis and Lula Belle and Scotty, but he's also working on a piece on Etta Baker, the 93-year old African American NC guitarist who died last September."

Last Sunday, my dad and I had a long phone conversation about the research he's doing on Etta Baker and how Paul Clayton was involved in "discovering" Etta--and Clayton's influence (and crush) on Bob Dylan and the personal ties my dad has to the people who were involved with the origin of Dylan's "Tambourine Man," and Peggy Guggenheim's cousin Diane's role in the Folk Revival movement--and on and on. I was drawn to everything my dad was saying, and it was 2 parts interesting because it just was, but it was 3 parts interesting because of his connection and interest in all of this and my respect for my dad's life's work. My dad considers his best written work yet to be the critical essay he published in 2003, The Three Doc(k)s: White Blues in Appalachia, where he juxtaposes African-American blues with Appalachian white blues using definitions of the primary blues aesthetic and the basic elements of a folkloric event: text, texture, and context. To read the beginning of this highly informed piece, click here.

I respect my dad's commitment and scholarship to the pure forms and definitions of folk music
yet I reject the rigidity and limitations those definitions impose. My dad won't give Gillian Welch and David Rawlings a fair listen because he'd rather hear that type of music sung by authentic women of Appalachia rather than GenXers from LA. His loss. And my musician cousins in Tallahassee, FL, who turned me onto traditional Irish music and bought me my first penny whistle (I now own 5!) have made their position clear that "learning directly by ear from an authentic traditional Irish musician is the best way to learn the subtleties of style in the true aural tradition that the printed page cannot depict." I'm sure that's true but I don't live in Ireland, and it hasn't stopped me from playing jigs, reels, and hornpipes with Bob and Cindy (and Matt and Kim). I was over at Bob and Cindy's house two nights ago playing my penny whistle and flute with them and even singing. And you know what? We sounded good. And we had fun.

I learned how to read music when I was six and started taking piano lessons and that skill has served me well providing enjoyment to me and others. My mom used to give me a dime everytime I played "The Rose" or "Run for the Roses" on the piano, and my grandmother loved it when I played "The Entertainer." She loved it so much that of her eight grandchildren, she willed her baby grand piano to me. My dad makes me play Bach's "Prelude in C" every chance he gets, and I think I'm going to start charging him to listen. (But my rates have gone up). Piano at age 6, violin at 9, flute at 12, guitar at 22 and pennywhistle a year later. I think I'll take up the mandolin next. I know I'm not great at any of it, but I'm good enough, and good enough is good enough for me.

I can't deny my dad's musical influence on what I like and what I play. (How could I? Classical, jazz, blues, bluegrass, gospel, rock-n-roll--it's pervasive. In fact, my dad said over 20 years ago that the only other profession he would rather do than being a college professor is to be a full-time drummer for ZZ-Top). But you know what? I had this funny feeling yesterday as I was looking at this year's MerleFest schedule. Yes, I'm excited about Elvis Costello and Sam Bush and Alison Krauss and Tony Rice and so many more. But I also had this funny reminiscent feeling of "No, don't make me go to the African-American Stringband Tradition tent." And I had this fantasy that if my dad was going to be there this year and by some chance of fate so was Cheap Trick? I'd say, "Daddy, can you watch Grace and Johnny for awhile? I'll be back in an hour."