Bear Branch

The significance of music in our culture has changed on a lot of fronts. The folk music now, they kind of think it’s one thing in particular—the Americana kind of stuff. Folk music-sounding folk music.

The real serious folk music is hip hop, gangster rap, all that. It comes from people who are making it up out of their heads. You didn’t attend any class for it. It’s a totally different approach, and really relevant to everybody’s life where these guys live.

Songs that Woody Guthrie wrote: it’s the same intensity; it’s with the same passion and intent. It’s like the folk musicians in Turkey. One guy gets ahold of an oud and starts playing stuff on there, and he gets really, really good. He doesn’t study any of the classical stuff: he just plays it like a folk instrument. He gets really good, so he develops this one style. Somebody over in Iran does the same thing with a tar, which is like a Persian banjo. Down the road a little bit in Azerbaijan they play a completely different style and you ask them how and they say, “Well, we just got together. We play this stuff now and it becomes a regional style.”

You had this happening all over the U.S. at one time. We’d borrow from Buzzy down the road, but then we’d hear about this great fiddle player from Kentucky. We’d have to look him up. Everybody knows where he is: “Just go to the post office in Bear Branch and ask where Nate is.” Two fiddle players would go along on the trip and they’d come back and they’d start playing like this guy.



Sit on a Stool

I went to see Charles Mingus at The Dragonwyk Club in Pasa-dena, and it was just world-changing. At one point I was thinking, “I want to do that.” It was his overall presence, and the stuff he played that seemed to be impossible, and the sound he got. He was kind of an animal. I wanted to do what Mingus did, the upright bass.

When I was a little kid, they wanted someone to play the upright bass in the school orchestra and they asked me to step up and try it. I was kinda of small, but I was really strong, so I could play it. The first time I got my hands on it, I said, “I know what this is, I can play this.” They answered, “Well, you’re too small for this. You have to be a little bigger.” I said, “Well, I can sit on a stool.” I started playing it like a jazz player. I was about 10 or 12 years old.

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