I’m back home after a month-long tour of the East Coast and thereabouts. As usual, I hung out with many nice folks and took in the sights. My tours are very much reconnaissance missions and this trip I racked up a few more ‘gotta go back there; gotta hang out with them again’ places.
The tour started with the Deep Roots Festival in Nova Scotia up near the Bay of Fundy…. in the Annapolis Valley and the town of Wolfville. I had no idea how beautiful this area would be. Wolfville is situated on a part of the Bay that has the largest tides in the world – 40 or so feet. In early times the Acadians that lived in those parts built levees that protected high tide areas that they then converted to farmland; very rich farmland…. lush, with apple orchards, fields of corn and other vegetables. Unfortunately, when the Acadians migrated to Louisiana, they plied their skills to tame the mighty Mississippi.
My hosts for the festival, Gerald and Mildred West drove me around the area and we never seemed to escape the picturesque beauty of the countryside. I noticed that some of the mailboxes in the valley had names in common with those on Martha Vineyard. This is evidently no coincidence, as these early families made their living fishing and farming up and down the coast from the Maritimes to southern New England.
Anyway, the festival was a blast. Jay Unger and Molly Mason, Old-timey picker and fiddler Jeff Davis, Sweeney’s Men founder Johnny Moynihan, local Canadian songwriter Bob Snider (very different), Truro Nova Scotia blues duo The McCready Brothers, Toronto-based trio The Marigolds and Halifax-born percussionist Cathy Porter were among the many artists that got to this boy. I really enjoyed myself. I rarely spend so much time just listening.
Next I went through Vermont for a few gigs and spent a couple of days in Woodstock where I was interviewed on camera for an upcoming film on the history of jug bands. I think this movie is going to be terrific. The producer, Todd Kwait, has gathered up historical footage and will combine it with interviews of active musicians …. John Sebastian, Jim Kweskin, Maria Muldaur, Fritz Richmond, Bob Weir, Bill Keith et al.
In the process of discussing this film, Todd and I realized that the Jim Kweskin Jug Band was much more a cultural influence than a musical one. Back in the sixties – because of the success of the Kweskin Band - it was predicted in Time, Life, Look, the NY Times and other rags that there would be a jug band “craze” but it never developed. We think the reason is simple: no one could play the jug… except, of course, Fritz Richmond from our band. Perhaps you didn’t know this, but Fritz actually played the “Flight of the Bumblebee” on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion radio show. Anyway, the guy is spooky good.
What The Kweskin Band did bring to the music world, however, was attitude. The idea of just having fun on stage, no uniforms, no planned shtick… this was all new at the time (remember those striped-shirt folk uniforms?)… this is why one of Jerry Garcia’s first bands was a jug band. Fritz’s little sunglasses were picked up on by the Birds and Spoonful, Maria’s look became a current fashion…. and it goes on.
The shooting of the film will probably end up with the Jug Band Festival in Yokohama – “Jug-Fes”. Yes… there is a jug band festival every April in Yokohama. These guys can play!! The singing, as you might imagine, is from Mars. I’m sweet on Yokohama anyway because my great grandfather, Alonzo, is buried there.
From Vermont I headed west through Saratoga, where Sebastian sat in with me at Lena’s Café; then through Middletown, NY for a nice gig at The Mansion, a beautiful venue where one plays in a room with a large Tiffany stained glass window; and then I drove on to Detroit. I didn’t actually have a gig in Detroit but I had a good place to chill for a few days in Birmingham. Did a little bird hunting (pheasant and Hungarian partridge), got a few massages, ate a few steaks… gosh the road’s gonna kill me!!
My next gigs were in Lansing… the first at The Creole Gallery, one of those ‘perfect’ venues… welcoming presenters, great warm up room and food, and a very hip audience… quite a few college teachers I would think…. only two students though (I asked). This is a problem in the US. Unlike the sixties and seventies, the college students of today are generally disconnected from the past… and not particularly interested in operating with historical perspective. Fortunately, this is not as much the case in Europe and Japan. In the USA, when I occasionally run into bright, interested young folks I usually fawn over them and bore them silly!
The next day I gave a guitar workshop at Elderly Instruments, a Mecca for stringed instrument enthusiasts in the US and around the world. Guitar workshops are getting to be something I enjoy. The Martin Guitar Company is presently prototyping a Geoff Muldaur Custom Model that should be available at the beginning of next year. This is quite an honor… but it’s also nudged me in the direction of doing a little teaching… perhaps this is good.
On to Rockford, IL where I met up with Ray and Muriel Voss and other members of the Bix Beiderbecke Society. They had come all the way from Davenport, Iowa. What a treat to see them again. Other folks came in from Chicago and as far as Cedar Rapids. It warms the heart.
After Rockford I headed up to Two Rivers, Wisconsin ,,, you know, near Manitowoc! The gig took place in the Woodland Dunes Nature Center. I was right at home playing amidst stuffed owls and ducks. Fritz and Mary Schuler were terrific hosts and knew their business. They had had….
(I love the ‘had had’ convention. Ever heard how to combine four ‘hads’? Say there had been an English test at a school. Discussing some of the answers her students had given the teacher might have said, “Where John had had “had”, Mary had had “had had”.)
….Peggy Seeger up there as well as Tom Paley from the New Lost City Ramblers. Very hip. I hope to return there someday in the middle of May. I have a published bird count from that area for that time period… 200 species!
Then to Pittsburgh where I visited the Carnegie Museum of Art and played a gig at Casa Batista. The gig was warm and fuzzy. There were some real musical experts in the audience so I had to crank it up pretty good.
I’m a fan of mid-west art museums - Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Chicago, etc - but the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh was a bit disappointing. It turns out that a lot of Pittsburgh’s art left that town for New York and Washington with Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Mellon. There were a few nice surprises, but I guess the next time I get to that town I’ll listen to what everyone was telling me beforehand and I’ll visit the Warhol Museum… as much as I can’t stand the little prick.
After Pittsburgh I headed over the mountains towards Washington, DC. It was a beautiful day, so I decided to take a little detour to Falling Waters to see the famous Frank Lloyd Wright house. This place beats all. For some reason I started thinking about my Japanese friends … how they would appreciate such creative elegance. I wouldn’t want to pay the maintenance bills on one of his buildings though (remember, it was he who said that if the roof didn’t leek he hadn’t done his job), but practicality aside – Wright rocks!!
I spent a few days in DC after Pittsburgh and then headed into the south for a few gigs. Good folks did it again; those I stayed with, and those who came to my gigs. They made this part of the trip worthwhile, because my ‘butts in chairs’ quotient is pretty low in the south. When I get down there, I basically play for displaced northerners who seek me out; people who may have heard me in ‘the old days’. For this, I will gladly return. It’s my job. But I’m getting more and more uncomfortable down there these days, especially now that the cracker-ass mentality has, for the time being, become the dominant vibe in our country. In the past, hipsters from the north have always tolerated the confederacy because of its funky music and home cookin’. But now that there is very little of either … well, you get the picture.
Time to head back up through New England… first through flood waters (remnants a hurricane) to New Paltz, NY and The Unison Arts Center. I don’t know how the audience got to that gig, but they did. It was almost full…. Bravo! We had a great time.
The next night I was in Natick, MA at the Amazing Things Arts Center and it couldn’t have been nicer; a full house and a great sound system. Michael Moran - formerly of the Natick Center for the Arts - has put this place together and he seems to have the knack for making things go right. He’s also got a real nice bunch of volunteers working with him. They spoiled me for sure.
One gig to go…down to Woods Hole on Cape Cod… where the ferryboat connects the mainland to my old stomping grounds on Martha’s Vineyard. I play for the Woods Hole Folklore Society every two years and it’s always packed with crazy folkies… my people. A few dear friends (and my one and only sister!) came over from the Vineyard to catch the show. This year it was an act of bravery because it was blowing a gale for the crossing. The return boat left about half way into my second set, so these guys had to bolt early. Anyway, all went well. Tour over. Stick a fork in me. Time to fly home.
I’ll be heading to Texas in a couple of weeks for a few gigs. I’ll be playing Austin with Vince Bell and my old pal Bob Neuwirth. I’m also playing Houston and Dallas… but, more importantly, Crockett, TX. I’ll tell you more about that place when I come home. I hope that I will be able to tell you that I heard that ‘wild ox moan’.
Take care,
Geoff