Banjo Tales Transcript

Banjo Tales Transcript

Narrator Mike Seeger

- In 2009, I accompanied the great old time musician, Mike Seeger and his wife Alexia, on recording trips through the southeastern United States.

- This is Mike Seeger. I spoke with you a couple months ago about coming here to do some documentary filming of banjo players. You suggested that I meet you at the gate. Okay. Then

- Tireless collector, performer and advocate of old time music. Mike was on a mission to record a survey of contemporary traditional style southern banjo players. Hey

- Brien, it's good to see you. Yes

- Sir. I called me here this week and everything. Adam Burke's got a couple of his banjos and steel stringed banjos made like guess this is one of his first ones. Play it there, so that you...

- I didn't... he's not still making these, is he?

- He said something like he was

- Because I'd seen some of these and I was tempted to buy them when they cost about the same, which I thought was a deal.

- The only problem I got with this is on is the frets

- I like that myself.

- Those bicycle spokes.

- Bicycle spokes. Yes sir.

- Shortly after these recordings were made, Mike fell very ill and then died peacefully at home in Virginia. This documentary is a chronicle of his last musical journeys and a testament to his lifelong passion for traditional music.

- He called that Fiddler Dram, that's what it's called. Give the Fiddler a Dram If you want something of that kind. I think that's an ingenious design and I don't think he's making them anymore. Oh, I love that.

- You sound a lot better.

- Sweet and sunny. I like to hear you sliding those strings like that.

- That was wonderful. That was, that was... I love it when you go down into the bass like that, How old were you when you, when you started playing the banjo?

- 15. 15. Yeah, that's when my daddy died. I was playing the guitar and chopping cords out on my mandolin before then, I was raised up the old fashioned way. I mean, when I first started fishing, I went to the side of the creek and cutting old cane pole and started fishing, tie some line to it and stuff and used to go to shooting matches and stuff like you know, when I was a kid shooting matches like you had a hundred years ago and stuff. Just see who the best shot was and when you won, you won a little bit of money and meat and stuff. And a lot of times when you go to a shooting match, people would be sitting around playing music and especially up at , bottom shooting match and stuff. And I remember they used to have dog trading days, first Saturday every month at Vesta Supply. It was a kind of a feed store and hardware place at Vesta and they'd have music up there, Arnold Spangler and Dudley Williams and people like that be up there playing old time music. And my family join in with 'em and playing. And when I started getting old enough to play, I'd sit there and play with them and all. And when I wasn't trading dogs, swapping guns and pocket knives was playing music and I miss things like that. I really miss 'em.

- I guess I'm kinda like you, but from a different point of view of course. Just wondering what the future is for not only the music but a lot of what goes goes with it. Yeah,

- Some of the older people that still lived up there still hold on to those real traditional ways of doing things, but it don't seem like a young people's interested in it no more. I mean, you can tell people something, you know younger kids about how things was then and it, I see a few every now and then it will really listen to you and talk, you know, talking. I was born and raised in the tradition, but if it hadn't have been for you and like a New Lost City Ramblers, this, I wouldn't have had this tradition. My daddy, them would've probably forgot about it. But it was enough people from the cities up north coming into the mountains wanting to hear it, that it kept it going.

- Peter, I wonder if you could tell me what brought you to this area and then what you found when you came here as far as, you know, the, especially specializing on the music.

- Right. Well, I guess I have to start back in college days when there were some fellows there at Cornell starting to learn the five string banjo inspired of course by Pete Seeger in the concerts that he gave there. And I got real interested myself. And so I built several five string necks and sold 'em in New York City, in Israel Young's Folklore Center and realized that I could probably live anywhere out in the country, out in the mountains and do a mail order business. So we formed the idea of moving to the southern mountains where we believed all the good music came from and it does, and building banjos. And of course it's a matter of course we would build a log cabin because that's just part of the picture. So we came down in March of '61 and just started driving around. We didn't have a map. We camped in farmers' fields at night and drove around for two months and met a lot of people and sort of crisscrossed this whole area between Virginia and the Smokies, you know, along the mountain range several times. And finally one day in April when the apple trees were blooming and the grass was green, we drove over the mountain and looked down into Shelton Laurel and said, this is it. It was the banjo that did it. People accepted us right away. I mean even the roughest guys around here they'd come up to the shack where we lived and ask me to pick a tune and I'd get up and play for 'em.

- To me that sounds like some of the, those spring streams up at Peter Gott's. Yeah, it just Has that pretty flowing sound to it

- Yeah, Peter was kind of the igniter that got me interested.

- Why do you think?

- 'cause he seemed to value the culture that I hadn't even noticed before, you know, and it's like, whoa, wait a minute here, there's something to this. You know? And plus it was fun. You know when you start playing music you get all kinds of friends and you meet all kinds of people and it's a lot of fun.

- I think that's really interesting that it's in you so much that you just needed an ignition kinda.

- Yeah.

- Do you perform at venues for,

- For people? Well, we used to a lot, you know, but we haven't been, but I can see us starting again 'cause that's what we're working on the studio about is when Sammy and Jackson get up and Big Sam, we're all gonna do it as a family.

- Great. So when you, when you were rearing Sam, for instance, what kind of music was in the house? Where, what place did it play in your family, community life?

- Well, Sam's mother is a great pianist, so there was always piano music and the banjo was sometimes and sometimes not.

- I didn't really play anything at all until I was a junior in high school. We played a whole lot together there when I was a junior. And from then on, it's been almost a daily thing in my life. Music I play, if I don't play it, I listen to it. We play a lot of different genres. The young people at church, you know, I'm a pastor and the young people are beginning to move forward into kind of a contemporary style. So we've learned some of that. But still, yet, it's hard to get rid of the, the, the bluegrass old time sound, you know, when we play.

- I'd always liked the sound of it when I was littler 'cause I guess I was always around it a lot. I like the sound of it a whole lot Come all you good, fine people, while I've got money to spend. Tomorrow might be Monday, and I'll need to have a dollar for rent.

- When I, have plenty of money, good people, all my good-time friends gather 'round. As soon as my pocketbook is empty not a friend on this earth can be found.

- How did you start to learn? Can you remember what that was like, how what you did first, how you,

- It was the most awkward thing in the world. You know, you, you sit and you watch somebody in their hand. It, it just like, it looks like it's just so smooth and, and then so natural and you, you try to break it down and you realize you're hitting, you know, some strings with your fingernails, some strings you're, you're pulling up with your thumb and it takes a long time with, with just doing this hand, this hand didn't do anything for like a month, you know, sitting in and working on the drop thumb and working on the rhythm and just really slow over and over and building up speed. And it just seemed like the most unnatural thing you could possibly do. But then once you got it, it's just like you do it in your sleep. You're going down the road and you're playing claw hammer on your knee, you know, along to the radio.

- When you started, was it not

- Cool? No, it wasn't really cool. Okay. It, it wasn't the cool thing to do. It really didn't help my, my popularity at all. You know, the kids in school thought it was, you know, kind of weird or you know, that hillbilly music or something like that. And they just didn't, nobody really understood. And even even the people that liked bluegrass still kind of looked at at old time, clawhammer style as kind of, if you're gonna learn to play the banjo, just learn to pick, you know, why, why waste your time doing that old time stuff? And that's, that's what I liked, you know, that that's what I, I I grew up with. That's what I heard. And that was really the style that I was drawn to.

- Yeah. I,

- You know. That's right. That's right.

- Did you have any, is there a particular person you first learned from?

- I took a few lessons from Didi Price, she's banjo player from Up in White Top. And also I learned a lot from Rhoda Kemp who played with Orchard Grass. Just that, you know, just kind of that really mad in your face, you know, driving old time style, you know, it's just, it just kind of kicks it to you. You, if you sit in front of her when she's playing, it's like your, your hair and your face will, will blow back. She's got so much drive in, in her playing. I love that too.

SONG

Oh I'm riding through the night in that high cold wind on the trail of the old lonesome pine

Oh I'm thinking of you and feeling so blue wonder why you left me behind?

Get down boys, go back home back to the girl you love.

Treat her right, never wrong, how mountain girls can love.

SONG

I'm going 'cross the ocean baby mine.

I'm going 'cross the ocean baby mine.

I'm going 'cross the ocean baby mine

I'm going 'cross the ocean if I don't change my notion I'm going 'round this world, baby mine

I'm going 'round this world, baby mine

I'm going 'round this world, baby mine

I'm going 'round this world,

I'm a banjo picking girl I'm going 'round this world, baby mine.

- That was great. Oh, you did wonderful.

- I haven't grown potatoes in a long time because it, it was always so much cheaper and easier to go to the store and buy that little bag, you know, because we used to raise potatoes all the time when I was a kid and I just remember all the backbreaking work that went into it. So, so I, I just said, well, I'm gonna plant potatoes this year. So I planted a lot of garlic this year too. Oh, I planted And where's that? Well, it's all, it's all sort of, I've harvested most of it. Oh, okay. Some of it's still in there. I've just been digging it up and, and there's oniony looking things. Yep, yep. And down there are some onions, there's some, some Vidalia onions. And, and what I've got here is, is just a, it's a, well that's just a tray, but this is a compost sifter really. I make the compost up, you know, you've always got your sticks and, and, and bits of, of you know what, whatever that didn't break down over the course of your compost. So I sift it out 'cause I like the compost to be fluffy and I sift out and it breaks things up too. It's, it's just some, some non flattened expanded metal on the bottom inside of Steel Frame. How did

- You, how'd you get the frame built?

- Well, I was a welder and blacksmith for 18 years. That's what I did for a living. And, and there was always scrap stuff laying around and my boss didn't, didn't mind me using it up. He'd rather see it used than be thrown away. So

- I think we're gonna be all right, but I'd like just to hear a little bit.

- Okay.

SONG

Well Polly, pretty Polly come go along with me Polly,

Pretty Polly, come go along with me before we get married, some pleasure you'll see.

- That's wonderful. Thank you. If a murder ballad can be lovely... That Round Peak style is almost a relaxed way of playing, isn't it? It's

- You get the normal frailing or normal clawhammer you get a lot of, you get a lot more of the of the actual brush going on. And, and in, in Round Peak banjo is sort of like, it sounds sort of like this, There's been this school of thought through the revivalists somehow that if you're not doing it exactly the way it is on that recording, that you're not doing it right. Well, they were learning how to do things from their contemporaries. And you say, you say everything falls into this Round Peak style, but if you think about each one of the recording or each one of the, the players that we have recordings of have examples of their playing. None of them play alike, but they all use the same bag of tricks. The way they all use the same, the same techniques, they just don't come out the same way.

- That just goes to show there's another part to old time music that you can do as many things, all kinds of things with it to put in the little licks here and there to make it your own, you know? Yeah. Each time it's different really.

- Well, you know, it, so much of our, of our Southern Appalachian music is put together of, of several different styles of music. Like, like the, the Native American influence, the African influence and the European influence. And so much, so many of the tunes come from Ireland and Scotland and Northern Ireland in, in the Ulster region. And certainly there are lots of triplets and, and frills in the, in the way that they played a lot of their tunes. And if you, if you can hear some of the old field recordings of, of old players, they were still doing those triplets and they were still doing lots of those triplets and things. So it makes sense that if you can fit it into a tune sometimes without overdoing it, I mean I'm certainly not changing the style. I'm just adding a technique from another style and trying to make it tasteful.

- Never heard it any prettier. Oh that is just wonderful. Thank you. Oh, it's unusual to play the three finger style with old time music to play the tune actually on the banjo. A lot of people will kind of keep a roll going.

- I had learned to play some of the Pool stuff and it was just kind of chords, you know, chords and runs, bass runs. And then after I learned to play bluegrass banjo, I always just put three picks on and it just kind of playing the melody of the tune is just kind of comes natural instead of just rolls. So it was when I would play a slow song or he would get his G fiddle and I'd have this banjo tuned this way. That's just kind of how it, how it come out. I started when I was nine, so that was 18 years ago. So,

- So what's, how you would say that you've been playing with the Slate Mountain Ramblers

- For 18 years? That's a long time. I have been.

- Wow.

- If I'm home on a Saturday night, it just doesn't seem right. So if we're not playing, I go to a dance. If I'm not playing on a Friday or Saturday night, I will go where there's a dance at. To dance? To dance, yeah. And if there's, if I don't want to go dance, then I'll find somewhere to go play.

- I grew up in Gastonia, North Carolina, which is sort of in the western part of the state. So I started, grew up hearing the sounds of, you know, banjos and, you know, and so when I went to school, when I left home, went to school and went to the University of Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, which is only about 180 miles from where I grew up. But it was so different from where I, I mean I was, I was again sort of by myself. I was, the culture's very different. That

- Was your college?

- College? I was 18, 19, something like that. And I guess, I guess just, I got nostalgic for being at home 'cause I used to play classical violin too. And I started playing again a little bit then classical stuff. And so I guess I was just musically nostalgic, if that makes sense.

- I think I'd love to hear a piece that was one of your early things that pieces that really means a lot to you.

- Ol'Rattler is the reason I learned how to play the banjo. My grandmother's favorite performer, like ever across the board was Grandpa Jones. I didn't know that at the time. I mean, I did, I guess I did know that on some level, but I didn't know that until afterward. And I just, I just loved the song and I started playing this and it always makes me think about her when I play it. So...

SONG

Well if I had a needle and thread, fine as I could sew

I'd sew my true love to my cuff and down the road I'd go.

Whoa, here Rattler, here here , here Rattler,

Here call ol' Rattler from the mine here, Rattler, here.

Oh, here Rattler, here here, here Rattler,

Here call ol' Rattler from the mine here Rattler here Oh, here Rattler, here here, here Rattler

Here, call Ol' Rattler from the mine, here Rattler here.

- How do you all get started playing music?

- We'd play every year at the, at the White Top festivals. Thornton and Emily Spencer was teaching and Albert Hash was teaching and they would have the Maple Festival and the Ramp Festival. And

- we played for the White Top Squared Dancers and

- The White Top Square Dancers

- Every, every Friday night. So that's how we basically learned to, to play is we went every Friday night. Mom and dad would haul us around and make us carry our instruments in at 12 o'clock at night and we'd whine and except Brian had the little fiddle and I had the big heavy banjo. Yeah.

- Having a great old time. Why do you think you picked up the banjo? I just love the sound. I actually even took bluegrass banjo for a couple of months and was able to, to play bluegrass banjo. But I went straight back to old time. I just, the, the melodic sounds and the beat of it. 'cause you can do a rhythm or a strum or just different, you know, different tunings with the banjo.

- You

- Also do pottery, is that correct? Yes. How did you pick up your love

- For that? Well, the music was in entwined in that also, I went to a mom and pop shop in North Carolina and when, when I was small, we actually performed for the New River and to save the New River. And I saw all these potters that was there and it just amazed me. So I started taking lessons. I traded bet out some banjo lessons for pottery lessons. So I, I try to keep the music and the pottery together if at all possible.

- Banjo was embedded in culture as part of the dance. Banjo was also used to tell stories. You didn't have radio, you didn't have television, someone came along with a new tune, it was nice to have him in and sit around the fire and take their time and play a tune or two and sing. It was easier to sing with the banjo than the fiddle. Tell him George is sleeping out of doors. If I had listened to what my mother said, I wouldn't have been here today I wouldn't have been in this old jailhouse Rotting my whole life away.

- That's

- From your dad, right? His thumb just continually did a dance and he brushed with his finger a lot. But his thumb was continually doing that. Nobody taught anybody to play in these mountains. Rarely happened. It happen once in a while. Most people just casually observed and tried to recreate the sounds, which is the reason you get different styles, that sound sort of alike because they're doing the same things with the left hand. Most people left this country, the culture crashed right after World War II. A lot of soldiers didn't return. There were no jobs. People were leaving before World War II. And by the 50s, half the houses up and down these hollows would've been empty. By the 60s there were more, the dances ceased, the music pretty much stopped. The boys wanted to play the banjo after World War II and they heard Earl Scruggs on the radio. That did it. So you kept playing? Old time? Yeah, I think there's enough young people playing it that it'll be around for quite a while.

- I didn't start playing music till I was probably about 11 or 12. I wanted to get away from, you know, what I considered to be maybe a hillbilly upbringing because there's like this, this fear and it's going on today. And I, I sense it a lot today in eastern Kentucky. This fear of being pinned this kind of ignorant hillbilly. And then there's so much culture associated with making you, making people feel... And the banjo would be, you know, one of 'em, you know, I certainly didn't wanna pick a banjo 'cause then I'd be, you know, a hillbilly like everybody else. And I like to draw and people told me that if I were to move away, move from eastern Kentucky and go live in a city someplace or whatever, that I could have a better shot. I was making pretty good money living up around Louisville. I was growing real frustrated with, you know, the urban life. 'cause I was used to a totally different life. I thought, oh, I'll be great in the city and I'll get along fine. But kind of wasn't that way. I realized how much of a country boy I really was. I think picking up the banjo and learning how to play old time music was just a part of trying to get back home, I guess. Kinda getting, you know, on going down one road and sort of realizing finally that, you know, the the culture that I was overlooking at home was I understood the importance of that culture and then, you know, just kind of embraced it and wanted to learn everything about it. It is, it is, it's just wild how you feel like you missed it somehow growing up. And it took getting older and going and standing back, kind of looking back at it to saying, oh well you know, this, this reminds, you know, this, this guy singing reminds me of, you know, Papaw sitting on the front porch or you know, it reminds me of so much stuff that I heard when I was young. I just didn't know to take it. 'cause I thought it was old fashioned and it just felt like the right thing to do. You know, this was the right thing to do, to be back here to help preserve the culture rather than see it get sort of swept away.

- Are you ready to go on this, Yasha? We're rolling. Okay.

- Alright. Whitesburg.

- Is that an old tune?

- It's hard to tell. It was probably one of the first tune I ever learned from dad Dad's fiddle playing. I started off playing fretless banjo with him just when I was right outta high school. I kind of started playing banjo and he had an old fretless banjo and we'd go and play some shows and just the two of us, banjo and fiddle. Did he play the banjo himself? Very, very little. He plays banjo a lot more today, but he, he knew the basic lick and went from there, tried to play melodies around that, or as little bit of the melody and more of the chords. But throughout my whole college career, I kept drifting farther and farther away from jazz and classical music and being close to dad and close to home. I got really interested in the old time fiddle and banjo music. I played a lot of different styles of music and the people who play this style of music are what attracted me to it. Just like today, sitting on the porch casually playing tunes. It's, you don't need a stage for it. You don't need a powerful P.A., you don't need, you don't need any of that extra stuff to, to get the point across, I think. And it's, and it's more of a music that's for yourself too, I think. And your family, What's the title of that one? Cutting at the Point, John always said, it might be cutting at the pint.

- Once I started hearing Kentucky Fiddle Tunes and Kentucky banjo music, I thought I'd really discovered something. But the main thing was that it spoke to me. It was really powerful. It resonated from within. And the stories and the sound that it made was as natural as walking through the, the, the hills of Van Leer. It captured the essence of my whole upbringing better than anything. And I related to it better than anything I had ever done or heard or seen. And so I, I knew that at that point it was kind of like falling in love. I knew that that was it and, and that I had to find as much of it and get as much of it as possible and that it was something that I could carry with me through, through my life. The most important advice that, that I, I got as a musician was Jamie looked at me, he, and he said, he said, you've got a nice voice and, and you play, you know, well enough, but you're quiet if you're gonna be from the region, you've got to just shout out to the top of your lungs. You know, that's what you do when you're a hillbilly, is you shout and holler and swore and carry on. But the advice that he gave me, he looked at me, he's just like, give it hell. And so since then I've been giving it hell. But it, it's true. I mean, in a sense, I, I, I stopped being afraid to project and stopped being afraid of, of, you know, well, wondering if people like me or not, or whether they like my music or, or what I'm doing. Just stop being so self-conscious about it and whether they liked it or not. It, it made me realize that the most important thing is to put yourself into it. To put your heart into the music and, and, and don't hold back.

SONG

- Young men never place your eyes on me for beauty is a thing that will soon decay,

Like a fair flower that blooms in the garden soon it will wilter and fade away.

I'm going where the chilly winds never blow

I'm going where the chilly winds never blow

I'm going where the chilly winds never blow

And I ain't going be treated this a way

I'm going down the road feeling bad,

I'm going down the road feeling bad

I,m going down the road feeling bad,

oh lord and I ain't gonnna be treated this a way.

I'm going down the road feeling bad

I'm going down the road feeling bad

I'm going down the road feeling bad,

lord, lord, And I ain't gonna be treated this a way.

- I got it under there sometimes I'd miss it.

- You threw in a bunch of different, different ones out there. Well, I keep thinking of stuff, you know, When I saw Uncle Dave on the old Grand Ole Opry movie, do that, I thought that was amazing. And, and I was about 12 years old, I guess. I saw Leroy Troy up at Uncle Dave Macon Days. He was just sitting around back, you know, out in the crowd somewhere, had a crowd drilled up, you know, and he was sitting around doing that stuff and I said, well, you know, I didn't, I thought you had to been dead 50 years to know how to do something like that. I didn't know there's anybody that still could do that. You know,

SONG

- Darling, you can't love four no,

darling you can't love four no

you can't love four and love me anymore

no darling, you can't love four

- Darling,

- You can't love five .

no darling, you can't love five

no, you can't love five and take honey from my hive,

no darling, you can't love five.

I'm bound on that New River train

I'm bound on that New River train

same old train that brought me here,

is gonna carry me away again. Hey, alright.

- And so I'd kinda, when I started learning, you know, I said, well, I might could figure out how to do that too, you know, and so I just worked at it. It's easier to do that than it is to pick the banjo. I know that much. It's harder to learn to play than has to learn to do all that stuff if anybody out there is wanting to learn. Why did you take up the banjo then? Well, I always liked the banjo. I just, I don't know why I waited so long to learn how to play any of 'em. I was about, I was in fifth grade when I started taking them lessons. I started playing with some people that I went to school with, you know, probably when I was in high school. Like I said, I never learned much off a record. By the time I started trying to play I'd, everything that I wanted to listen to, pretty much I knew it note for note in my head, you know, I could, I could sit around and, and those records play and, and it'd be just like if you was listening to 'em. So I knew what they supposed to sound like. So all it was just learning how to make them notes. It is a, it is a happy sounding instrument. Of course. You hear people say that all the time, but it is a joyful type instrument. You know, it's hard to, it's hard to be sad listening to a banjo, it's a uplifting instrument.

SONG

Georgie Buck is dead, last words he said,

Don't put no shortenin' in my bread

Georgie Buck is dead, last words he said,

Don't you put no shortenin' in my bread

Georgie Buck is dead, last words he said,

Don't you let your woman have her way

If she has her way, she will go and stay all day

Don't let your woman have her way.

- It was the banjo first for me when I first got exposed to old time music. It was, there was something about it, just the pluckiness of it. I mean, the only banjo that I've been exposed to is bluegrass banjo. And it's, so, I was just fascinated with the difference of clawhammer banjo, you know, old time banjo. Do

- You sense that there are people who are going to continue with it? Or that it maybe is just,

- It seems to be, there's an overall change in the wind in terms of what is of value, you know, in our culture, it seems like that that's starting to change the idea of homemade music, the idea of music that's historically has a connection to, you know, our history. I mean, it, it's, it's, it's not, it just doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not something we got from somewhere else. It's our history. Not just black people, not just white people, not just natives, but everybody. You know. And it's what, what I'm hoping is that when people tap into it, it's not, it's like I'm just gonna play, you know, old time for a while and move on to something else. No, it's like I'm gonna play old time and then see what happens after that. You know, rather than using it as a stepping stone to somewhere else. Where can we take old time? If we're living in it, then we're changing it, you know, rather than just sort of using what some fiddler 50 years ago, how he played it and playing it exactly like that for the next 40 years. Yeah. People are gonna move on, but if we can take it and then live in it and see what happens. I mean, I'm hoping that that is what happens this time, you know? And that we can all be playing homemade music for a long time. If I was on some foggy mountain top I'd sail away to the west I'd sail all around this whole wide world To the one I love the best.

- Oh, it's a pleasure to be singing with you all, a good old time. Wow. Yes. Hmm.