Interviews D-F
|
Interviews D-F
|
|
This is a reprint of an article published by Blues Revue in December 2000. "Off the Record" by Guy Davis Often touted as a member of the new generation of country blues artists, Guy Davis is well-versed in the music's traditions. His Red House albums Stomp Down Rider (1995), Call Down the Thunder (1996), You Don't Know My Mind (1998) and Butt Naked Free (2000) gained him recognition for his playing style and lyrical sensibilities. Davis has taken his love of the blues to the stage in productions of Mulebone and Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil, and he won further acclaim with his one-man show In Bed With the Blues: The Adventures of Fishy Waters. Here Davis tackles a subject that still rankles some fans and performers: What has race got to do with playing the blues? No matter how you look at it, the issue isn't simply black and white.
"Blues Is a Hard Song To Sing
One evening at a folk music conference in D.C. a few years ago, Dave Van Ronk told me that he and Roy Book Binder had a conversation to the effect that one day, the two of them would be old men sitting on a porch somewhere and some black kids were going to come up to them to learn how to play the blues. I chuckled, but inside I was chagrined. "The blues is not the white man's music to pass along! Not to black kids", I thought. "This music is my birthright! My heritage! My legacy! It's a treasure that belongs to my people!" But wait ... am I the judge? Ninety-nine percent of my audiences are white. Are there even black musicians who play the blues? Am I the authority? The only cotton I ever picked was my BVDs up off the floor. What gives me the right to play the blues? One day I had my grandma listen to a recording of Taj Mahal singing the 'Track Lining Song.' When it was over, she sang back to me verses that I'd never heard. Apparently, my grandfather was once the head man of a lining gang. He and his brothers used to play guitars, banjos, fiddles and harmonicas. They never recorded. I never got to hear any of their music, yet to this day, when I take a new song to my grandmother, she'll sometimes tell me it sounds just like my grandpa and granduncles. Where did the blues come from? Africa? No, otherwise it would be sung in a West African tongue. The blues is sung in English. It is American. I say the blues began in the belly of a slave ship during the Middle Passage. Hundreds of bodies lying side by side, stacked together, inhaling the smell of their own vomit, lying in their own faeces and urine with scarcely enough air to breathe. Picture a pregnant woman lying prone one night when the sea is calm, moaning, wondering aloud what will become of her unborn child. Picture a man crying, puzzling over what has happened to his wife, his child, his parents. To give utterance to such thoughts must surely have been the first seeds, the very soul of the blues. Now, of course, blues songs range into every conceivable topic; funny, sad and everything in between. Just like spirituals and work songs, they're sung in English. In the first years of the 20th century, they acquired 12-bar, eight-bar and various other forms. Ethnomusicologists might describe the early blues as a form of folk music peculiar to Southern North American Negroes. Picture an old black bluesman, touching his guitar strings with rough fingers shaped by hard repetitive labor. Cigarette in mouth, drink in hand or nearby. Watch as he drinks more than he should. Listen as he speaks in poor English with an accent that makes some words unrecognisable. Laugh as he finds some colourful, inventive way to get his point across. There might be a girlfriend nearby, an ex-wife and kids all over the map. Now, picture a white college boy touching his guitar strings with rough fingers shaped by endless guitar lessons. Cigarette in mouth, drink in hand or nearby. Watch as he drinks more than he should. Listen as he mimics poor Southern English. Laugh as he conveys his impression of a bluesman. When my 102-year-old grandmother, who has only a fifth-grade education, managed along with my grandfather to raise four sons and one daughter to become prominent professionals in their chosen fields, I deeply love and respect her and her thick Southern speech. Wait a minute. This isn't fair, talking about generic college boys. Haven't I learned from watching Scott Ainslie? What about John Hammond, who plays five notes for every three of mine? What about Rory Block? How about friends like Woody Mann, Paul Geremia and Kelly Joe Phelps and on and on? What's the real issue here? The issue is racism. White folks can never really know what it means, what it feels like, to be a nigger. Racism isn't always violent. It can be subtle. One of the worst kinds of racism is the kind that can be imposed on a once proud people who eventually get in the habit of hating themselves and each other. Look at the hair industry and the millions of dollars spent on products used to straighten black people's hair. What's the beef? It's just another hairstyle. Or is it? William Faulkner, the great writer of Southern fiction and close-up observer of black and white Southern culture, once said something to the effect of "Ask a black man a question and you will never get a truthful, clear, direct answer." And what is this unspoken truth that a black man could never tell a white man, even though he's smiling a pretty smile? What this means is that black people have to have a dual consciousness to make themselves comfortable in a world designed centuries ago to deprive them of self-respect. What we say when whites are in the room is sometimes different from what we say when they're not there. Racism is useful to justify the inhuman treatment of millions of people to accomplish the purpose of slavery. Black folks were treated by law as property. The law said that the master could sell his "property" just as he would sell a horse or mule. He could sell husbands away from their wives, babies away from their mothers. This to me is the origin of the broken black families that exist today. Back then, if a master wanted to jam the head of a female slave between the pickets of a fence, lift up her skirt and invite his friends to gang rape her, there was no law saying he couldn't do it to "property." Slaves were not allowed to read or be educated. Any slave caught teaching other slaves to read could have fingers amputated. Back then, outside of the black church, a slave didn't have any recourse against such injustice or access to psychological counselling during the aftermath. Is it any wonder that alcoholism, drug abuse and broken families have followed the generations of slave descendants down to this very day? When you disrespect a man and take away his power to oppose you, you make him invisible. You make him a nigger. The people who work the poorest jobs are invisible. The economy created niggers. Slavery was a socio-economic system designed to extract free labor from a whole race of people. This system was justified by racism. Racism makes invisible all the hurt, all the hate, all the rage that have no place else to go, and like alcoholism, they can be passed down from generation to generation by genes, by stories, by the blues. Black people resent deeply ever having been treated as niggers. Don't expect us to just get over it. The hurt burns deep to the bone and runs down the generations. It affects everything we do. The lynchings, the injustice. Is it different today? You'd better believe that my mother told me when I was a little boy to be wary of police and their guns and their statistically brutal treatment of black males. This is the legacy of racism. Today you can hear in rap music the same anger, the same hurt reflected, though more aggressively. It was Pete Seeger who taught me Bill Broonzy's "White, Brown and Black Blues":
If you're white, you're all right If you're brown, stick around But if you're black, oh brother, you'd better Get back, get back, get back!
This is the new millennium. The blues is known throughout the world. Whoever loves it and wants to should play it and teach it. If it's so important to me that black kids learn their heritage, I guess I'd better tune up my guitar and get my ass out on that porch. But the world, in some ways, still has not changed. The people for whom this music was created seem to be those least benefiting from it. I go to auditions for commercials that use blues music and have yet to see one black session musician, recording engineer, spot producer or product representative. The
men and women who've lived and died with the blues, I believe, did so praying
that the world would change into a place where their children and their
children's children wouldn't have to live the life that brought about I
enjoy listening to blues performers of all races and watching them The Blue Front email interview with US acoustic artist Mike Dowling BFBR: What were your early musical influences? Recordings that my parents had. I remember one in particular called '50 stars of country music' or something like that featuring people like Merle Travis and Chet Atkins. They also had some Les Paul records. And the Ventures. BFBR: How and when did you get into this type of music? In about 1968 when I was in college, I had already been playing for awhile, and I met some people who had nice record collections of blues; Chicago blues, country blues, etc. I learned some of the classic repertoire but I didn't get really serious about it until years later. By the time I began to tour as a solo artist in 1995, blues was a natural part of my repertoire. BFBR: What were your early blues influences? Yazoo #1016. Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Blake, B.B. King, Freddie King. BFBR: How (and why) did you start playing in public? Can you remember you first gig? At
first people had to talk me into playing in public. But I was playing out with
bands while I was still in high school and I was O.K. with that, as long as
there was someone else on stage with me. I enjoyed it. I can remember feeling
that although I wasn't an accomplished player like those who had influenced me;
I was still doing something that people seemed to enjoy. My first "professional" gig was at a bar in central Wisconsin. I was underage and I remember that my amp smelled like beer the next day. I made $18. It was the first time I ever played a break. I didn't know I was going to play a solo until the singer said "Take it, Mike" and I took it. We were playing Johnny B. Good and after that I wasn't apprehensive about "taking it' anymore. BFBR: What made you decide perform professionally? How did you get started? The idea that I could make a little money doing something that I loved to do occurred to me right from the start. Also, the players I looked up to as musicians were professionals and I wanted to be like them. They could read and write music, play their instruments, lead a band, which was very motivational for me. I wanted to do it all. BFBR: What are your preferred instruments at present? I play a variety of styles so I usually have at least three guitars on stage with me. I love old guitars and I have several vintage Nationals I use for open tunings and slide. My 1936 National wood-bodied El Trovador is my all- time favorite guitar, it's very versatile and I use it for all the styles I play. I use a variety of guitars when I record but on stage I generally have a couple of old Nationals and a Gibson flattop for swing. Lately I've been playing some on my 1962 Fender Jazzmaster. That's great for swing as well. BFBR: What are your views on the best types of instruments for your style of music? Take swing jazz for an example. I look for a guitar that can "cut" and have a fat distinctive sound. It doesn't have to be an archtop. What you play is more critical than the instrument you play it on. BFBR: If you could have any instruments you wanted (past or present) what would they be? Ten years ago I would have said a George Barnes Acoustic-Electric Alto Guitar, Oscar Aleman's Tri-cone, Gene Autry's Martin D-45, or Eddie Lang's L-5, but now I think I've got what I want. My focus has changed from "what guitar do I need", to what techniques do I need to acquire or refine to make the best music possible. BFBR: Why do you think you are drawn to performing blues and blues-based material? Blues is a foundation for jazz, gospel, western swing and even bluegrass. It would be hard to consider yourself a roots guitarist, as I do, and not owe a huge debt to the blues. And of course, it's just plain fun to play blues. BFBR: Pundits often express strong views on the merits or value of contemporary artists performing 'covers' or 'interpretations' of pre-war or Chicago blues originals ("yet another Robert Johnson" etc) and or the artist’s own original material - blues-based or not. What are your current views on this on-going debate? I guess I'm a little out of
the loop regarding any real debate here. Lots of players can do a pretty good
Freddie King or Jimmie Hendrix, but I think people sometimes give too much
credit to the artist who can cover tunes exactly like the original,
overestimating the technical chops and sheer memorization that are needed to
turn out a good copy. I have both original and "cover" material in my
repertoire and my approach when I'm doing someone else's tune is to try to do
something new with it, arrange it to suit my style, put my stamp on it so I'm
not just copying the original. Why do something exactly the way it's already been done? Many top rated painters can do pretty good copies of Chagall or Monet, but that wouldn't impress the art critic. It's the same with music. For me, music is very personal so copying somebody else wouldn't do it for me. On the other hand, if you take Eric Clapton and his homage to Muddy or Freddy King or Robert Johnson he has, all in all, done a good thing in getting people "hip" to these great artists. BFBR: What do you think is your inner inspiration for writing and performing your own material or for conveying the emotional content of someone else's song? I think it's in the nature of people to want to connect with other people. In doing so, everyone uses his or her best "language", be it painting, poetry, architecture, or spoken word. I have a knack for playing guitar, so for me I can communicate and connect through music. BFBR: How do your new songs/material come about? Slowly is the short answer. I take my material seriously and I need to satisfy several criteria for myself before a song makes it into my concert performance or onto a CD. Whether it's a guitar riff or a lyric, it has to feel completely comfortable. For that reason you won't hear me sing hardcore blues or present myself as a "bluesman". I don't have the blues, haven't lived the blues, and I can't pretend that I did. Writing my own guitar music allows me to express my own ideas in a way that is most familiar to me. And finding a Delmore Bros tune that has a story and maybe a little humour, that I can arrange and that allows me to sing in my own voice can be just as satisfying. BFBR: How do you feel your playing style has developed since you began performing and more recently? It's
looser, and at the same time "tighter". My playing is more
rhythm-based and I think more expressive as well. When I was writing the liner
notes for my new CD I wrote that when I was young I wanted to play fast, but now
I just play what satisfies me musically and in recent years I find myself
gravitating to slower, more evocative tunes. I would just add to my
previous comment having to do with why I don't consider myself a
"bluesman". A tune like Leroy Carr's "Midnight Hour Blues",
which I just recorded, is a tune I can relate to and it doesn't matter whether
it was done by a black "blues" artist or not. It makes no difference
to me because the song is colourless and speaks to a mood that everyone can
relate to. Believability is important
when you're trying to make a connection with an audience and there's no denying
I'm a white guy with a great life. In fact, I feel downright fortunate to be
able to make a living doing what I love. I just don't have the blues. I could
learn all the licks but it would feel and, more important, probably sound,
dishonest. I think that's why I've always liked country blues and the Piedmont
style of playing, which is more melodic and story-telling than the hard-driving
Delta styles. Mississippi John Hurt and Robert Johnson were both born in the
Delta, but I can relate more to Mississippi John. As far as licensing, I pay
royalties on any tunes I cover and I expect to be paid by others who record my
songs. Fair is fair. BFBR: How do you find playing in the UK?I enjoy playing for appreciative, enthusiastic audiences wherever they are and I'm happy to say I've found them in the U.K. on all my tours. It's easier of course when there are no language barriers although I remember teaching a guitar workshop at a festival in Japan a few years ago entirely through an interpreter. I'm going to be in England twice in 2005. I have a spring tour coming up in a few weeks and then I'll be back in August to teach at a European Blues Association workshop in Northampton. My touring in England has led to an association with Big Jim Sullivan that is such a pleasure. He's a great player and a wonderful friend. We're playing at The Hawth in Crawley West Sussex on March 30, and I believe we have another gig together when I return in August. BFBR: How do you see the future for acoustic blues? From my vantage point as a teacher, as well as a performer, I can tell you that there are an awful lot of blues guitar enthusiasts who are interested in learning the technical skills needed to play in the style of country blues, or ragtime, or Piedmont or Delta. This indicates a sustaining interest in the idiom. I suppose in a small way inasmuch as I can help a student understand and execute some of the guitar skills needed to play the blues, I'm playing a part in perpetuating the music. BFBR: What advice would you pass on to players and to 'amateur' and semi-pro performers? I would hope they're able to appreciate their accomplishments and enjoy the musical journey because they'll never get to their destination! None of us do. It's all about the journey. Horizons expand along the way and lead to new challenges and we never stop learning. I've never known a musician to say, "O.K., that's it. That's all I need to play." BFBR: What music are you currently listening into? I listen to jazz and blues and some Latin, from Oscar Aleman to Ernesto Leucona to Wes Montgomery and Lonnie Johnson. BFBR: Where are you headed musically at present? The idea is that my best stuff
is yet to come, so I push myself along with new projects and stay open to new
challenges. I'm heading in the same
direction (with maybe a little side trip to Latin rhythms), but with more of an
emphasis on composition. Career-wise, I seem to be doing as much teaching these
days as performing. I'm teaching at seven camps this year, including my own
Greater Yellowstone Music Camp, and there are lots of workshops and private
students in between. What are current musical and career developments? I have a new solo CD coming
out in April. It's called Blue Fandango and unfortunately I won't
have it in time for my April tour but I'll have some with me when I return in
August. I also played on two very
interesting, and very different, projects last year for friends of mine that
will be released soon. One is a hillbilly-jazz type album recorded in Nashville
with Buddy Spicher and Calvin Vollrath, two of the finest fiddle players I've
ever had the pleasure of working with. That's an instrumental album called
"Airmail Special". The other is called "Tall Boots" and it's being produced by a friend of mine who's a descendent of one of the Sons of the Pioneers. It's western swing and music written in that era that was never recorded by Roy Rogers or the Sons of the Pioneers. I'm proud to have been a sideman on both of those projects. I was also one of a dozen guitarists who were asked to contribute solo guitar arrangements of Henry Mancini tunes for a compilation CD that just won a Grammy. "Pink Guitar" won for "Best Pop Instrumental Album of 2004 so I guess I can call myself a "Grammy-winning Guitarist" now. Thank you for giving us these insights into you and your music. You're welcome. The Blue Front email interview with British acoustic artist Emily Druce BFBR:
What were your early musical influences? I grew up in a musical household, so I heard a lot of music from an early age. I have a lasting memory of my mother playing Elvis in the kitchen and being blown away aged about four. BFBR:
How and when did you get into blues? Again it was down to my Mum who had a couple of Big Bill Broonzy records from the late fifties. I remember picking up on these when I was just starting to play the guitar at about the age of twelve. BFBR:
What were your early blues influences? I moved on from Big Bill to listening to Bessie Smith, then onto a whole lot of pre-war blues like Robert Johnson, Skip James and Memphis Minnie. Also Bob Dylan's first album with songs like "In my time of dyin'" and "Baby let me follow you down" did something to me! BFBR: How (and why) did you start playing in public? Can you remember you first gig? Coming from a family of musicians it felt like a natural thing to perform. I remember standing on a freezing cold stage at some kind of benefit gig in Halifax aged about sixteen, but it didn't put me off... BFBR:
What made you decide perform professionally? How did you get started? I always wanted to do it, but in many ways I'm glad it took me a few years to get round to making it a profession - it's felt like the right time. Recording my first album "The Guilt Trip" in 2000 was really the start of deciding to make it a full time thing. BFBR:
What are your preferred instruments at present? A Martin 018 (1957) that I've had for about fifteen years now, and a Jones-Kendall resophonic that I had made in 2001 BFBR:
What are your views on the best types of instruments for your style of
music? I think it's a personal thing - I like what I get out of my guitars because they have very different qualities which are good for fingerstyle and slide playing. They both sound fabulous acoustically which is something I try to capture live. BFBR: If you could have any instruments you wanted (past or present) what would they be? I'm pretty contented at the moment, but as I'm now playing in a duo with Steve Jones (the Jones in Jones-Kendall) I'm sure plenty of fine guitars will come my way for me to fall for! BFBR:
Why do you think you are drawn to performing blues? This is always a hard question to answer - something in the spirit of blues music touched me at an early age and never went away. BFBR: Pundits often express strong views on the merits or value of contemporary artists performing 'covers' or 'interpretations' of pre-war originals or the artist's own original material (blues-based or not). What are your current views on this on-going debate? I think it's great to do both - it's good to hear what songs make an artist tick, how they interpret it and where it's taken them in terms of their own writing. I love writing and performing new songs, but it can also be great to see an old Memphis Minnie song really getting to an English audience in 2003! I think if you feel it you should play it! BFBR: What do you think is your inner inspiration for writing and performing your own material or for conveying the emotional content of someone else's song? Sometimes the content of my own songs draws on personal experience, but after a while it becomes like performing a cover where the song has its own emotional charge, which hopefully in a good performance you plug in to. BFBR:
How do your new songs/material come about? For song writing it's most often from a musical idea - a few notes or shapes I like on the guitar, which then develop into something. I’ve been doing some co-writing with Steve as well this year. It's been great bouncing ideas off each other. BFBR: How do you feel your playing style has developed since you began performing and more recently? I hope it changes a bit all the time. After having my resophonic guitar built I found I played a lot of slide guitar, which is reflected in my second album "New Day". It just sounded so sweet on that instrument and was very expressive. I've been enjoying doing a bit more flat-picking lately than I used to do. BFBR:
What are you views on playing in UK
- the current scene & gigs? I've enjoyed the British blues festivals for the last few years, though it'd be good to see the acoustic side of things given more prominence - it seems to have been sidelined at some festivals. My favourite gigs tend to be clubs run out of enthusiasm, where there's just a good vibe - The String Jam Club in the Scottish Borders, The Queen's Head in Belper and of course BFBR! BFBR:
How do you see the future for acoustic blues? I hope that there will always be new people being inspired by acoustic blues and bringing it into their music. I think it's important not to bag things up to neatly into categories - it'd be good to see a more vibrant scene in acoustic music generally, with more younger people coming in . BFBR:
What advice would you pass on to players and to 'amateur' and semi-pro
performers? Keep your lamp trimmed and burning BFBR:
What music are you currently listening into? I've just come back to Sleepy John Estes...Staple Singers, Gillian Welch, Bonnie Prince Billie, and Cowboy Junkies.... never forgetting Elvis (Sun sessions), Ry Cooder and Bob Dylan. BFBR: Where are you headed musically at present? I'm just about to release my first joint album with Steve Jones - Druce and Jones Songs from the Silver Band Room (Dusty 001)- It's been a great project. We recorded it ourselves in a silver band room close to where I live in West Yorkshire and that whole process has been quite an ear opener. It going was launched in Holmfirth at The Picturedrome on 7th February 2004. We were lucky to have some great musicians joining us on the album - amongst them New York pianist, Charlie Giordano, who we met last year when he was accompanying Odetta on her UK tour, and Chris Smyth playing some great country style Dobro. So we're looking forward to touring with the new album and are already onto the next batch of new songs... |