Entry #9

Tim O'Brien
Sep 30, 2024
September 30st, 2024

As I write this, I’m glad to report that family and many friends in Western North Carolina have been in contact and are safe, but I haven’t heard from everyone. So many have suffered from the effects of Hurricane Helene and I wish them well, but know they have a long road to recovery ahead of them.

Jan and I have been celebrating weddings and birthdays lately. We attended Mark Schatz and Lisa Berman’s wedding on September 7th, helped celebrate Washboard Chaz’s 75th birthday on the 21st, and wished Jan’s granddaughter Ella Grace a happy 8th birthday AND on Friday we attended Grandparents Breakfast and Bingo day at her school. Yesterday, we surprised the other 8 year old granddaughter, Lakelyn, by showing up to her Saddle Club and watched her win the obstacle course on her horse Remi. We’ll stay in Kansas for granddaughter Natasha’s wedding to Johnny this coming Saturday. I visited Nugget Mandolins World Headquarters earlier this month and had a wonderful visit with Mike Kemnitzer at his home in Central Lake, Michigan. Mike did some restoration on my original Nugget A model, and I brought it home and used it on a session with Steve Martin, Alison Brown, Stuart Duncan, Bryan Sutton and Todd Phillips. It’s sounding great!

Jan and I look forward to a band show in Knoxville on Oct 9th, and duo shows in Boise and Salt Lake City on October 17th and 19th. Check www.timobrien.net for details. I hope to finish production on a recording of both Jan and my songs by the end of next month.

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This month’s entry is about practice. I think next month’s will be about teachers.

Lately I’ve been practicing the modes on the guitar. I’m burrowing into them the way I did long ago on the mandolin and fiddle, but never in this way on the guitar, which is the instrument that really got me started in music. It’s a systematic study of the basic building blocks of melody and harmony. It’s about different arrangements of whole steps and half steps. As Woody Guthrie almost said, it’s all about the Do Re Me’s. But it’s also about connecting what the ear hears with what the hands do on the instrument, about muscle memory matching the trained ear. My most intimate relationship with a musical instrument has been with the mandolin, but my relations with the violin and guitar have always helped inform it. The banjo is a kind of funny friend I like to visit from time to time, but it’s provided another informative relationship.

I’ve also been working on a songbook, having transcribed 25 of the 40 I’ve chosen to include. It’s been an interesting exercise, a kind of review of my entire career. I’ve found it revealing to catalog the melodies, harmonies and rhythms, and yet the mystery of composition remains unsolved. In a way, that’s reassuring and confirms the infinite pull that music has on people like me. Like all the arts and sciences, once you reach the top of one mountain of knowledge, there’s always another one to climb.

Warning: much of this essay is music nerd territory. It might help some readers fall asleep.

The Ionian or major mode is hyper normal, the basis for everything. You gotta start somewhere. And in Ionian, when you start on Do, you kinda know you’re going back to where you started. Ionian is the basic major scale, the first one a beginning music student encounters, the one the Maria teaches the Von Trapp children in Rogers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music”. When you sing Do Re Me Fah Sol Lah Te Do, you’re singing the Ionian mode. It lines up with the white keys on a piano keyboard. Start at C and ascend seven more notes to the next C and you have played the Ionian mode. Look as you ascend the scale for where there are black keys between adjacent white keys. The distance in pitch between those two notes is called a whole step, which equals two frets distance on a guitar or other fretted instrument. Notice that between the third note, E, and the fourth note F, there’s no black key. The pitch distance between those two notes is a half step, or one fret. You can see another half step between B and C. All the modes are what’s called “diatonic”, ie, made of two types of intervals: whole steps and half steps.

Getting sleepy yet?

For convenience I’ll redefine Ionian starting at A. Play an A note, then go up one whole step (2 frets) to B, then up another whole step to C#, then go up one half step (one fret) to D. You’ve just played Do Re Me Fah. Now follow the D note with three more upward whole steps (E, F#, G#), finally ending with a half step up to A (Sol Lah Te Do).

This is the basic building block of the six other diatonic modes. If you play the same pitches of that A major scale from the second note (re or B), and go up to the next B, you are playing Dorian mode (B Dorian). Start from the third note and you’re playing C# Phrygian. Start from the fourth note to play D Lydian, from the fifth note to play E Myxolydian, from the sixth note to play F# Aeolian, and from the seventh note to play G# Locrian.

The modes as we know them today were defined by the Medieval Catholic Church, using names taken from the texts of Ancient Greek music theorists Pythagoras and Ptolemy. From what I can tell the modes are generally named after places in greater Ancient Greece. Ionia, Doria, Phrygia, Lydia, Aeolia, and Locria.

For a wonderfully colorful, if limited, description of Pythagorean musical theory watch this YouTube video of bluegrass legends Carlton Haney and Jimmy Martin -

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Simple chords are made up of groups of three notes played together. Take a note on a scale or mode, and then add a note two steps above it, and then add another note two steps above that. In C Ionian, play C along with E and G, and you make a happy sounding major chord. Do the same thing with other modes and you make either a major or a minor chord, until you start with the seventh note (Te), at which point you’ll spell out a diminished chord.

Basic folk melodies in Ionian mode abound. It’s the old standby, but each other mode has its own unique quality and mood. I’ll got through them one by one.

I think of the Dorian mode as the “Little Sadie” mode. Lots of Irish and Appalachian melodies use it. In the film “This is Spinal Tap”, Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnell says D minor is the saddest key. I think he must mean Dm/ Dorian. Works for me. You go up a third from the root minor chord to a major chord, or down a step to a major chord. Somehow with this major sounds close by, the home chord, the root chord, which is minor, is more melancholy. (Sure natural minor is sad, but its adjacent relations are a kind of sad too, so it’s not as starkly sad!)

The Phrygian mode is curious. It’s handy when you want to sound Spanish. Tap your boot heels and play the E Phrygian scale against E and F major chords. Presto! Instant fake Flamenco flavor.

Then there’s Lydian. It’s got a major 3rd and a major 7th, but it’s got a crazy bitter tasting raised 4th. It’s highly unstable, but great for a short visit.

Mixolydian is the blues mode. It’s a mixture of the happy major third, and the kinda tough-times sadness of the flatted seventh. This mode helped Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, and Blind Willy Johnson put the blues together for us. It’s also a restless mode. It most often manifests as the last chord played before the final home chord underneath a melody – the 5 chord leading to I. If a song is in C, it usually hits the 5 chord, G, toward the end, before resolving to the 1 chord, C. The restless nature of the mode and the chord associated with it makes it so useful for songs like “Sweet Georgia Brown” that move from a 5 chord sound to a 1 chord sound, then turn that 1 chord into a 5 chord to leads to another 1 chord.

Aeolian is what’s called natural minor. If a song is in a minor key, its melody is most likely made up of notes in the Aeolian mode.

Lastly, there’s the extra sneaky and clever Locrian mode. It’s the only mode that lacks the perfect fifth, and it’s flatted (diminished) fifth helps us express the crazily symmetric but dissonant diminished chord - the root, followed by a minor third, which is then followed by get another minor third. Locrian has the same span of one octave as all the other modes, but its flatted fifth makes it look and sound shorter, shrunken, like the runt of the family.

When God created these modes, he might have meant to give musicians the tools to express any emotion without the need for words. And I think he or she or they might have started with Ionian, then found its flip side in the Aeolian, before going on to the Myxolydian, and the Dorian. He might have found the Phrygian a bit terrifying but got a good laugh when ended with the Locrian.

There are other scales that don’t agree with the classic Do Re Mi Fah Sol Lah Te Do intervals. Harmonic minor is a sort of Byzantine thing. Melodic minor is up one way, back down another way. Augmented and Diminished are used on special occasions, notably during moments of suspense and uncertainly in movie soundtracks. But you can spend most of your enjoyable musical life in the seven natural modes. Viva las modas!

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All of you guitarists that have fallen asleep, you can wake up. I’ll get a little more practical now.

If you start with your index on one string, you can ascend any mode without changing positions and reach the repeating note one octave higher two strings over from where you started. So my practice routine starts with playing through each mode starting in the lowest string, the 6th or E string. I do this using all closed positions, ie, no open strings. I’ll start with my index finger on the first fret, and play F Ionian. I follow that with my index on the third fret and play G Dorian, then on the fifth fret for A Phyrigian, and then from the sixth fret for Bb Lydian. I keep going higher up the fingerboard until I reach F with my index finger again. Then I start again on the 5th string, starting with my index on Bb, and repeat the exercise. Both groups of three strings I’ve use so far are tuned in 4ths, so the positions I used on the 6th, 5th and 4th strings repeat when I switch to the 5th, 4th and 3rd strings.

The sequence of positions stops repeating when you play the modes on remaining two groups of three strings – when you start on the D or 4th string, or when you start on the G or 3rd string. That’s because you now need to use the B or 2nd string which is tuned one third above the string below instead of one fourth above. These positions have been a gap in my muscle memory, and I spend extra time on them. I have to say that repeating this drill daily really helps my improvising and my confidence when playing up the fingerboard.

I know these modes a lot better on the mandolin and fiddle, which are conveniently tuned symmetrically in 5ths. You can play a mode using closed positions on any two adjacent strings starting with the index finger and ending with the little finger. (On the banjo, which is tuned any number of ways, I don’t have a clue how to play the modes. I have to learn each melody by trial and error every time.)

When I play through each of the modes, I try to notice where the fifth note is. I thank my teacher Dale Bruning for this good advice. That fifth note is the start of the second half of the scale, and it also defines the far end of whatever chord that particular mode makes when you harmonize it starting from the first note. A perfect fifth is exactly three and one half steps distance. That distance looks the same every time on the mandolin or fiddle. On the guitar however, it looks one way four pairs of adjacent strings, but it looks a little different when you look at it on the the 3rd and 2nd strings, because of the 2nd string’s different tuning.

This kind of practice also helps the left and right hand adjust to the different areas of the fingerboard, both in upward and downward directions, as well as horizontally as you move from the low strings to the higher strings. Each string responds differently to the left and right hand, and the response changes as well as you move up and down the fingerboard. For instance, as you fret a string higher on the fingerboard, you actually shorten the vibrating part of the string, which makes for tighter tension for the right hand when you pluck the string. You really get to know the ins and outs, the feel of the instrument and how it responds. After a while there are fewer surprises, which can be helpful. You learn how to play more in tune and stay more in tune for one thing.

There’s one song I play through most every day: All the Things You Are by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein. Hammerstein’s lyric is wonderful, but it’s the harmony and the chord progression in Kern’s music that keeps me working at it. My sister Mollie and I used to play the song on stage, but I continue to learn the ins and outs of the chord sequence and how to improvise melodies over top of it. It starts with a fairly normal jazz sequence – 3 minor seventh to 6 minor seventh, to 2 dominant seventh, to 5 dominant seventh, to 1 Major seventh. These changes all move the root of the chord up one 4th. But then it changes key, with the root of the next chord ascending a crazy flatted (diminished) 5th. I keep working on different ways to express that change with both arpeggios and melodic phrases. The song changes keys another time later in the form, with a similar jump of a diminished 5th in the harmony.

In regard to tuning, you’re always reaching closer to an imagined perfection, but never really getting there. With the violin and other fretless instruments (wind instruments, talking drums, the human voice) you can compensate for all this to a greater and lesser degree. But fretted instruments are inherently compromised. While frets make things easier in general, they can’t really be perfectly placed for every key. “In tune” is an aspiration more than a reachable goal. (Mark O’Conner may disagree.) With tuning, as with perfection in any of the art forms, or in scientific research, or religion, you’re always trying your best to get closer to the ideal, but never really getting there. Your best hope is occasionally glimpse it, to sense what it might be like. They are the moments of grace, the eureka moments that inspire you, push you forward one more degree.

With rhythm, and tempo, the nuances are just as exacting. As I have transcribed my vocal versions of various melodies for my songbook, I’ve noticed how much I’ve varied not only the basic melodies, but also the rhythms. I realize that in order to vary these things, I had to first know the more basic versions. I’m now thinking I need to revisit the transcriptions and put a simpler version on the page. After all, those simpler versions are still closer to what’s in my mind as I sing them 20 and 30 years later.

As a songwriter, words in rhythm and rhyme are part of the process, as is storyline, character, metaphor, alliteration. And the more I study and pursue songwriting, the more I realize that poetry and storytelling manifest in much the same way melody does - each time a piece reaches definition, as a lyric is completed, it can imply at least as much and often a great deal more than it concretely and overtly reveals. You often stumble into good things, realizing when placing phrases together that they suggest things that hadn’t occurred to you before. It can seem like cheating, so you ask first if the result is clear, before looking for other ideas hidden within.

Tuesday October 15, 2024

Yesterday, on a predawn on-the-road listen to NPR news, Jan and I heard how spent lithium from old batteries could provide immense amounts of much needed nonpolluting energy. Before we started driving, I had read that NASA is also launching a new mission this afternoon, a trip to one of Jupiter’s moons, where many of the ingredients for life forms apparently are present. Yay science!

We were on an early morning drive home from Benton TN where we played a lovely event Sunday afternoon on the bank of the Hiawassee River. Road construction on the interstate near Chattanooga caused us to take a scenic route to Benton that was heretofore unknown to us, through the Sequatchie valley. So we elected to take the same route home.

I read later that a registered Republican with fake press passes and passports along with illegally purchased firearms, was stopped while driving a car with fake license plates outside a Trump rally in Coachella CA. He was released by the police but is under investigation as a potential assassin. Among other things I imagine. Inside the rally, the former President preached his increasing fascistic sermon on the dangers of evil immigrants in 100-degree heat.

We just passed some young Hispanic looking children standing beside the road, waiting for the school bus. Are their parents violent, drug addicted rapists from the “shit hole” countries that Trump and Stephen Miller are warning us about?

I can say with certainty that this is a very beautiful part of what former president Trump calls our “failing nation.”

There are a lot of Trump signs, but there are also enough Harris signs to make me wonder. Our Harris sign was stolen last week, so we put up three more homemade signs. We anticipated potential sabotage when we put up the sign since it had happened in the past with an Obama sign. I can imagine a lot of silent Harris supporters linger here and elsewhere. And some of those might be better termed Harris tolerators. They might be silent for the simple reason that a lot of folks just plain don’t talk about politics. It doesn’t seem to help.

I had read some Joseph Campbell late Sunday night on Christianity and Buddhism, and it helped me remember that everything is linked and all the seemingly contrary moving parts of the world are part of the same thing. Or as native Americans (by way of our friend Ray Bonneville) say - “left wing, right wing, same bird”. I guess the Buddhist approach to life is to act with empathy and attempt to hold the turmoil in mind without letting it get to you.

We were feeling hungry and I looked for a breakfast spot on my phone but the closest one shown was 30 miles ahead. But Jan spied Medley’s Diner from the driver’s seat, ahead on the left. Score! Country ham, biscuits and gravy, popular prices. Next time we’re in Morrison TN we know where to eat.

My US Congressman Andy Ogles emailed saying illegal aliens will be voting in large numbers if we don’t require proof of citizenship at the polls. He also says the Chinese Communist Party controls the World Health Organization. He says Xi Jinping is lying about his yearly income. I didn’t doubt that last assertion from Ogles, who had his phone confiscated by the FBI last summer over concerns about his own cloudy financial records. I also made a note to self that convicted felon Trump, who enjoys new immunity from prosecution thanks to the Supreme Court, is still half a billion dollars in debt, that his classified document case has been dropped as he meets with world leaders at Mar-a-lago and regularly speaks with Putin by phone, and that his best escape route from creditors and indictments is still re-election.

Then they played Trampled by Turtles on the Outlaw channel.

Now it’s Tuesday and I read about Trump urging his rally attendees to vote on January 5th before stopping his question and answer to listen to music for 35 minutes. In Rutherfordton County NC a man with firearms was arrested for threatening FEMA workers.

I will drink my coffee and get ready for a recording session.

Oct 25, 2024

Happy 72nd birthday to my sister Mollie O’Brien Moore!

The recording session mentioned above turned out to be mandolin and vocal overdubs on an Oliver Anthony project produced by David Ferguson and Dan Auerbach. Anthony’s breakout hit “Rich Folks North of Richmond” stirred a fair amount of controversy last year. One song on the new project, a real-life blues about opioid addiction co-written with Chris Davisson, is a real standout. Other recording work over the past few weeks has included a session for Country Music Hall of Fame member Charlie McCoy, an Edgar Meyer overdub on Jan and my upcoming record, and a vocal overdub for the wonderful bluegrass singer Greg Blake. I hope to wrap up the production on Jan and my project by the end of next week. A couple new songs are begging to be included so we’ll take a crack at those on Sunday afternoon. I’ll also be producing a recording with my old friend Chris Moore early next month. A fun seasonal track, a song cowritten with Ben Winship: ”Santa Ate a Gummy”, is in process. An animated video should be released late next month.

A wonderful track and video of a song I cowrote with David Ferguson and Bonnie Prince Billy, “My Home” came out this week. I shared lead vocals and played the mandolin. It’s the first single from an upcoming Bonnie Prince Billy project called “The Purple Bird” that Ferg produced. Check it out.

Our Home
Bonnie Prince Billy, Tim O'Brien
https://music.apple.com/us/album/our-home-feat-tim-obrien/1770808133?i=1...

Jan and I played to nice crowds in Boise and Salt Lake City on the 17th and 19th, and we’re looking forward to a show at a mini bluegrass festival at the Country Music Hall of Fame here in Nashville on Saturday, November 9th.

We voted yesterday at the Green Hills public library. We had tried the day before at 11am, but the lines were long and parking was scarce, so we went back the next day at 9am. Looks like the voter turnout is large this time which makes sense. If you have yet to vote there’s still time. As the song goes: “ You can vote early but you can’t vote late, and your rules will vary from state to state.“

When we speak of the status of today’s economy versus the economy during the Trump administration, does anyone but me remember that Obama inherited the 2008 economic downturn from G.W. Bush and then did significant bipartisan work to turn it back around, and that Trump’s time in office benefited from that work as the effects were starting to show? Shouldn’t we remember that a worldwide pandemic caused immense stress to the world’s economy during Trump’s administration, that the US was far from immune to it, and that Biden administration inherited most of the effects of that stress? Economists across the board say the US economy is now in great shape.

And when we speak of the tragic current situation in the middle east, mightn’t we remember when Trump’s administration pushed through the Abraham Accords which threw Palestinians under the bus in favor of an opening of relations between the Saudi’s and Israel? Didn’t that agreement along with Trump’s relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem enrage and embolden Iran and its proxies on Israel’s borders, resulting in the October 7th attacks and a reciprocal devastation of first Gaza and now southern Lebanon? We might want to notice that relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel have since refrozen.

And when JD Vance defends his election denialism with social media’s censorship of Giuliani’s conspiracy theory about Hunter Biden’s laptop, does anyone but me remember that that like all of Giuliani’s “legal work” for Trump, that story was based on nothing but the empty calories of cotton-candy media headlines.

Teachers

I love a particular story about Paul McCartney and John Lennon from the days when they were just starting to play music together. Supposedly, between the two of them, they knew three chords on the guitar. Then they heard a rumor that someone in Liverpool knew a fourth chord. So they got the guy’s name and address and one day they took several buses across town to the other side of Liverpool to find the guy and learn that chord! I can easily imagine doing the very same thing as a teenager.

It seems like I learned a little something, and at times quite a lot, from a great many people over the past 50 years. I’ll try to give a mention to as many of my teachers as I can here. My apologies to those unmentioned here, as I’m sure to leave some gaps.

The second band I was ever in included Trenny Blum on guitar and lead vocals, bassist Dave Shaffer, and drummer Mark MacElwain. I was the lead guitar guy. I think I was finishing 8th grade when I joined them, and the other members were one year ahead of me in school. We all compared notes, literally and figuratively, and learned from each other. I was less informed about pop music than they were at that point, and like now, I had learned more intuitively on own than I did from instruction or from copying others. Guitarist Andy Manness joined with us after a year or so, and he was two years ahead of me in school. He played a semi-hollow-bodied electric – a Silvertone or a Harmony I’m pretty sure – that he played through a decent sized Heathkit amplifier. Heathkit gear was more affordable than name brands like Fender partly because it required some assembly, and Andy was the kind of guy who knew his way around a soldering gun. He knew more guitar licks and had more records and had maybe formed more opinions than we had yet. He liked Frank Zappa and so did the rest of us. We were all probably just following the pop music trends, and as the hippies started getting into blues, we did too. I was sitting in Moxie’s bar after school one day with Andy. Moxies was three blocks from my house and about six blocks from his. It was known as a place that would serve beer to minors, knowledge that at that point I filed away, not pretending they’d serve me yet. But we’d meet there after school and drink cokes and listen to the jukebox. I remember one time when a B.B. King record came on. Andy looked across the table at me and said, “Did you hear that chord he just played?” I nodded yes. He said it was a really cool chord, and continued – “You know what that is? It’s a 9th chord”. I’m pretty sure he described how to play it to me right there in the booth at Moxies. Our guitars were at home but he showed me the shape you made with your fingers to make E9 using the top five strings of the guitar, the index finger on the 6th fret of the D string, the middle finger on the 7th fret of the A string, and the ring finger barring the G, B and E strings at the 7th fret. Thanks Andy!

Another guitar friend in high school was Jeff Ring. I met him at Oglebay Park ski area and discovered he played guitar and after that we’d get together and talk music and play. He had a black topped Gibson Les Paul and a red Gibson SG. He learned Allman Brothers twin guitar parts as soon as the records came out, and he played in bar bands when he was 14 and 15 years old.

There was a guy that Mollie and I saw at a folk music contest in Wheeling, a student at the local Jesuit college who was from New York, named Dennis Alvino. He played finger style guitar on a song, made the audience laugh with some talking in the middle of what I would come to know later as country blues – ala Mississippi John Hurt or Reverand Gary Davis. I think later Mollie and I ran into him at the Pizza Inn, which was across Washington Avenue from Moxies. It was another place to go after school, drink cokes, and listen to the juke box, and in this case eat pizza. (I liked the ones with hot jalapeños.) Somewhere along the line, Dennis showed me the basis of Travis style finger picking, variations of which I’d unknowingly already learned from guitar tablature in a Peter, Paul and Mary songbook. He mentioned a few names like John Hurt and Gary Davis and Merle Travis, and when I saw a used Martin guitar that he’d recently purchased, I noticed it was the same brand as what Doc Watson played. I remembered those names and bought some of their records and later I bought my own Martin guitar. One of Dennis’s fellow students at Wheeling College, Rube Fellicelli, didn’t play music himself but was a knowledgeable sorta super fan, who turned me and my sister on to a lot of different sounds. I still keep up with Rube, who now lives in Telluride, Colorado.

The value of singing from an early age - in church, in school, even as a family riding in the car, is hard to underestimate. Repetition trained my receptive ear and led my physical body into early recreations of musical content I’d heard from my very beginnings. There was nothing precious about singing along with a group, and it always seemed easy and enjoyable to me. I liked learning to read from the musical staff in grade school. It provided a tangible way of looking at the intangible thing that is music. Occasional unrestricted access to piano’s provided another tangible entry into this mysterious thing called music. You touch the keys of this amazing machine and tones come out, and there are 88 different choices! By the third grade I already had an idea what a chord was. When friends of mine purchased guitars I imitated what they were doing with their hands and it didn’t seem so hard. A guitar was obviously just another tool for making musical sounds. Singing harmony to melodies in church or along with the radio seemed like a no brainer. I was just finding my place in what I was hearing. Nobody was worried about what I was doing, no one was there to squash my intuitive searching. Getting my own guitar and a little instruction book was all I needed to keep going. Soon, Roger Miller and Peter, Paul, and Mary song books with lyrics and chords were pushing my learning along at a faster speed. I was lucky to have my own room to make those tentative early sounds in private, and just as lucky to have an older sister named Mollie who liked to sing as much as I liked to play.

I think I’ve already mentioned Posey Hazelett and Harvey Marshall, who taught me songs and finger picking patterns at 12 and 13 years of age. My brother Trip (Frank O’Brien III), ten years older than me, was an early role model in sports and Boy Scouts and then with music. Albums he brought home from college, and then left behind when he went into the military were early pathways into folk, jazz and pop music appreciation. The Beatles, The Animals and other British invasion bands offered something a little more raw, and their popularity reinforced my efforts at playing that music. When a new young priest, Charles Braun, arrived at Saint Michael’s parish and promoted the folk mass, I found myself with an early gig, one with very little stress. Once again, I was just doing it along with other kids in a group. But now suddenly, I had something to offer, something to work toward, and low stake experiences playing a musical instrument in a group. Folk music in general was very attractive. For one thing, you could play it alone, with another person, or in a group. Being acoustic, you could play it under a tree, in your room, or on a stage. After all, John Lennon and Roger Miller played acoustic guitars, and I knew they were cool.

One day I found a program on the new public TV channel 13 from Pittsburgh. It was live footage of a folk music festival in Berkeley, California. A guy with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica in a rack on his neck stood while a stagehand placed a few microphones around him. They introduced Doc Watson and what I saw and heard in the next few minutes astounded me. I’ve written much about Doc’s influence and suffice to say that he has taught me as much as anyone ever did. I studied his and James Taylor’s fingerstyle playing closely in those early years. Doc’s flat picking made me learn to use a straight pick and opened the doorway into the world of fiddle tunes. That whole side of traditional music led me next into the bluegrass and old-time music genres. Soon enough I was able to connect Folk versions of “Man of Constant Sorrow” and “I Had a Dog and His Name Was Blue” to artists like Ralph Stanley and the New Lost City Ramblers. Flatt and Scruggs music had long been easy on my ears, but now I started developing a taste for the more strident sounds of Bill Monroe and Roscoe Holcomb.

My appreciation of songwriting was fed by my appetite for both the clever wordplay of Roger Miller, and the musically inventive sounds of the Beatles. But I should also credit English literature with expanding my interest in writing original material. One high school English teacher really helped me connect to and learn about the world through reading. His name was Max Laborde and I studied with him in my junior year of high school. A few books in particular – “How Green Was My Valley” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” – really opened the way. Laborde also taught me how to read and respect poetry. He showed his students how poetic phrases could be “pregnant with meaning”. I gained an appetite for storytelling, metaphor, and theme, and became something of a voracious reader. I could learn about different subjects, history, religion, human nature, all while being entertained. The on-the -road life of a traveling musician is particularly conducive to reading. Many musicians I met along the way kept a paperback handy for the long limbo of down time hours.

Another high school teacher, Douglas Haigwood, was very influential. He was the band teacher, but I didn’t play in band. It was his “Glee Club”, an elective class period at Linsley Military Institute, that I really looked forward to. This all-male chorus worked on material ranging from barbershop quartet harmony (“Lida Rose”) and Black Spirituals (“Set Down Servant”) to challenging modern classical pieces (Randall Thompson’s “A Testament of Freedom”). Haigwood also produced an the annual Linsley Minstrels show, and I participated in those programs three out of the four years I attended the school. Linsley’s show was a large form version of the old black-face minstrel show, but by the time I was involved, the comedic black-faced “end men” had been reborn as hoboes, costumed in ragged, patched clothing, with “dirt” makeup in place of black face paint. Linsley was a boys school, but the participants in the Minstrel chorus could invite a female date to participate. Rehearsals were on Saturdays. The chorus members sang old show tunes and wore white gloves which shown in the lights – another vestige of the black face era – as they made choregraphed rhythmic moves with their hands along to the music. The Glee Club and the Linsley Minstrels, like the folk mass, were opportunities to learn and perform musically. My sister Mollie and I performed at least once as a folky duet on the minstrel show, which was held at the Capitol Theater, the same venue for concerts by the Wheeling Symphony, and for the WWVA Jamboree, a weekly live country radio broadcast. The audience for the Linsley Minstrels was mostly made up of relatives of Linsley students and alumnae but it seemed like a big deal.

Toward the end of high school, I developed a musical friendship with Peter Bachman, who had spent his post high school years traveling and playing music. He showed me more of the flatpicking tunes I’d started learning from Doc Watson records . We’d spend Saturday and Sunday afternoons watching football games on tv with the sound turned off while we played “Salt Creek” and “Old Joe Clark”. One summer weekend we went to a fiddler’s convention in Elizabeth WV. I remember that I kept hearing a certain tune being played over and over. It seemed like it alternated every other time with other tunes, both on stage and in jam sessions. At the end of the weekend, I knew its name: “Soldier’s Joy”.

Following high school, at Colby College in Waterville Maine, I met up with Jeff McKeen and his roommate David Smith. We often played music in the stairwell of Dana Hall, favoring its reverb. Their dorm room, which often had a towel pushed against the bottom of the door frame, became known as the “Ozone Music Center”. We played a lot of music in that room, both on records and with our guitars. Jeff had a banjo and a mandolin in addition to his 12-string guitar, and on one long weekend when he and David were gone, I learned a few tunes on the mandolin from tablature in one of his Sing Out magazines. Those two tunes opened the door to my learning to play the fiddle, which shares the same left-hand positions with the mandolin. I keep in touch with Jeff, known these days as Smokey. He’s still in Maine, farming oysters in Dameriscotta and playing music with his group Old Grey Goose. He also officiated at Jan and my wedding in July of 2021.

Other Colby students and hangers on I learned from include guitarist Dick English, and Greg Boardman, Chris Prickett and David Livingston who let me play guitar in their bluegrass group the Northern Valley Boys. I learned as much music as anything else during my year at Colby, and I should thank my roommate John for putting up with my many hours learning various songs and tunes.

As recounted in an earlier post, I withdrew from Colby in my sophomore year, after two weeks in the fall of 1973. Back home in Wheeling, I started playing in a bluegrass group with Peter Bachman, Ed Mahonen, Laura Cramblet, and Vick Marshall. I spent the following winter in Jackson Hole playing solo and with Bluegrass After the Shootout, but probably learned the most from sitting in with the Stagecoach Band on Sunday nights at the Stagecoach bar in Wilson.

My next stop, and it became a long 22-year stop, was Boulder Colorado. The scene there and in Denver were vibrant in the mid 1970’s and I learned about recording and songwriting and performing through experiences with folks like Ritchie Mintz, Kelly McNish, Ray Bonneville, Steve “Dusty Drapes” Swenson, Keely Bruner, Dan Sadowsky, Duane Webster, Linda Joseph, Washboard Chaz Leary, Charlie Davies, Pat Donohue, Mary Flower, and Mike Scap. Harry Tuft and his Denver Folklore Center get special credit for supporting the scene and providing a meeting place for so many of us musicians. I spent a much of 1977 in Minneapolis, and learned a lot from Bill Hinkley, Peter Ostroushko, Adam Granger, Bob Douglas, and Tim Sparks. I moved back to Colorado in early 1978 and began what I often call my musical graduate school with my Hot Rize cohorts Pete Wernick, Charles Sawtelle, and Nick Forster.

I would include my ongoing friendship with J.D. Huchison in that graduate program. He would eventually become an important mentor and sounding board. Meeting the various members of the New Grass Revival and David Grisman Quintet – Darol Anger in particular - was important. These amazing players treated me as one of their peers and inspired me to learn and improve. Sam Bush is impressive on so many musical fronts, and I’ve long been his understudy. Robin and Linda Williams were another important connection, as were connections to Jerry Douglas, Kevin Burke, Maura O’Connell, and Stuart Duncan. In Nashville, there are so many folks to learn from and I am lucky to have worked closely with folks like Jeff White, Bryan Sutton, David Grier, Mike Bub, Dennis Crouch, Charlie Cushman, and Shad Cobb.

I should also mention Nashville producers Alan Reynolds, Jim Rooney, Garth Fundis, Gary Paczosa, and David Ferguson. Engineer Sean Sullivan gets and honorable mention. I learned a lot about songwriting from interactions with Pat Alger, Gary Nicholson, Darrell Scott, Guy Clark, David Olney, John Hadley, and Steve Earl. Other songwriting teachers include Greg Brown, Chris Luedecke, Mark Graham, Mark Knopfler, and over the past year, Tom Paxton.

Dirk Powell deserves special mention as an inspiring collaborator. He and the late Kenny Malone taught me so much about reaching the core and touching the heart of music. The late choreographer Eileen Carson also provided a template of how to be an artist. Mark Schatz and Scott Nygaard helped a lot too.

In Ireland and the United Kingdom, I’ve been enriched by connections with people like John McCusker, Kate Rusby, John Doyle, Mike McGoldrick, Donald Shaw, Aly Bane, Steve Cooney, and the great Arty McGlynn.

My sister Mollie was there with me from the very beginning. She cast me in little plays she organized, she was my fellow Beatles fan club member, and she opened the door into the music of people like Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan. Her taste was always spot on, and I was lucky to learn my singing and instrumental techniques alongside her from middle through high school, and then again in my Colorado years. We performed across the US and around the globe, made some wonderful music, and laughed allot.

The remaining name on my list is Dale Bruning and I could have started and ended this essay trying to cover his influence. In my early years in the musical crucible of the Colorado Front Range, Dale held great renown as both performer and teacher. The best guitar players I knew had studied with Dale and I soon became a fixture at his weekly shows with the Spike Robinson Quartet. I started saving some of my gig money to take lessons with Dale. I was playing with Ophelia Swing band and wanted to learn how to play rhythm guitar like Freddie Green in the Count Basie Orchestra, but Dale showed me so much more. He used a repeating four lesson cycle. The first lesson covered technique, the next one rhythm studies, followed by chords and scales, and finally, repertoire. He wrote custom notes to each lesson by hand in a composition book which I still have. I learned positions up and down the guitar fingerboard, and transferred whatever I learned to the mandolin and fiddle which I had started playing more in the mid 1970’s. I took lessons off and on for a few years and returned later to focus more on harmony. I’m still studying much of what he taught me, and learned how better to teach others from him as well. I covered some of his lessons on the modes in last month’s entry. Dale was always supportive and I can still count on him as a sounding board. I try to keep in touch as the years go by. Jan and I attended one of Dale’s performances in Denver last February.

One of Dale’s more well-known students is Bill Frisell. When I first met Bill at a show in Nashville, he gave me a big hug. I think it was because he knew we’d both studied with Dale. Thanks to Nick Forster, the three of us got to record together several years ago. The result, called “Life Lessons”, has never been formally released, but I hope to offer it for sale via timobrien.net in the coming month.

Born in Carbondale Pennsylvania, November 9th, 1924, Dale became a jazz fan through his father who played drums. He recalls the thrill of attending matinee performances featuring the Duke Ellington Orchestra with his father at movie houses in New York City. He went on to work as guitarist, bassist and arranger in New York and New Jersey, and later earned a degree in Psychology from Temple University while simultaneously studying music with guitarist Dennis Sandole. At the time, Temple didn’t consider guitar a real instrument, so he couldn’t major in music there. He says what he learned at Temple came in handy, but the real learning happened with Sandole, who’s other students included John Coltrane. Dale’s lesson cycle came directly from Sandole. Dale played with big bands including Fred Waring’s, and in the US Navy. He later became music director for the Del Shields Show on Philadelphia television station WRCV. With support from guitarist Johnny Smith, Dale moved to Colorado with his growing family in 1964. He often played bass with folk and blues legend Josh White, and started collecting students.

As Dale’s 90th birthday nears, he continues to teach and perform occasionally. I asked him how it looks from his age, and he responded, “It looks OLD. I have 2 speeds: slow and stop?!”

Thanks to Dale and all the rest for helping me on my way.

Fifty Years Entry #8

August 23, 2024

In July or August of 1974, my bluegrass buddy Peter Bachman asked if I wanted to go to the Tin Pan Alley, a little nightclub in downtown Wheeling, to see the Hutchison Brothers play. They had a reputation in the local bluegrass community, but I’d never met them. Onstage that night, John (JD) on guitar and Robert (Zeke) Hutchison on banjo, with brother-in-law Tim (Rock) Sparkman on upright bass, played two sets of fiery traditional bluegrass. I heard Bill Monroe and Stanley Brothers songs, trio and brother duet harmonies, and uptempo instrumentals. They were charmingly animated, sang on the same vocal mic, and stamped the music with their own personalities. Here were some Hip-billies from Belmont County Ohio, not much older than me, who really updated Bluegrass without losing a drop of its essence. Peter had brought his mandolin and I had my fiddle, and we were invited to sit in. I’d woodshedded with the fiddle for the past nine months and was able to keep up with them on a few tunes – I’m pretty sure we played “Turkey in the Straw” and “Sailors Hornpipe”. A week or so later, our mutual friends Tom White and Russ Shelton hosted a jam at a place they’d rented by the banks for Big Wheeling Creek. I brought my fiddle and guitar and when asked to sing a song, I sang the Jimmie Rodgers song “Peach Pickin’ Time In Georgia”, which I’d learned from Merle Haggard’s tribute to Rodgers “Same Train, a Different Time”. I got to know JD and Zeke a little more over the next few weeks and a lifelong friendship was born.

Before I left for Colorado in early September, I visited with JD at his parents’ house in Barnesville, Ohio several times. I met his mother Emma Jane, and his fiddling father JW, who JD and Zeke called “the Seed”. JD encouraged me to stay with the music, and we talked a lot about Clarence White, Django Reinhardt, and prewar guitars. I told JD that I was getting ready to relocate to Boulder, and he told me I needed to look up his friend Nugget who would be moving there soon as well. He said he was “a little gem” who was making mandolins. The Hutchisons and Sparkman had just returned from a short residency in San Francisco’s East Bay. JD, who the year before had convinced Michael Kemnizter that he should make mandolins and given him the nickname Nugget, invited him along on their California adventure.

At the time, Nugget lived with Zeke near Athens OH, and had signed on as an apprentice to luthier Bob White. (There are some great live recordings of the brothers with Bob on mandolin and tenor vocal.) A guy from Wheeling, Richard “Dancing Dean” Jarbo accompanied them. Jarbo was, in Nugget’s words, “smitten with the Hutchison aura”. He had some money and had “aspirations of making it in the music business”. Jarbo even rented a house for them all in Lafayette CA. Meant to be a base of operations for the band, Nugget set up his own shop there as best he could and finished one of the first of his many fine copies of the classic period Gibson F-5. Before Nugget had even applied lacquer to the instrument, JD showed it around to some of his bluegrass friends and found a buyer in Ed Neff. Howey Tarnower saw it too and soon got in line to buy a Nugget mandolin. Meanwhile John and Zeke played Paul’s Saloon and other bay area bars with Sandy Rothman on mandolin. Though they made a significant impression on the California Bluegrass scene, after three or four months, the Hutchisons headed back to Ohio with their tails between their legs, which is when I met them. Meanwhile Nugget had secured a job working for Ome Banjos in Boulder, and after he rebuilt the engine in his VW wagon, he packed up his wife and young son along with his tools and drove to Boulder in November of 1974.

In early September, when I arrived in Boulder to begin working in Ned and Laurel Alderman’s Folk Arts music store, I saw a bass and a banjo in their living room that the Hutchisons had sold to them on their way home to Ohio. Ned and Laurel and their friend Richie Mintz, who did instrument repair work for the store, had met JD, Zeke and Nugget when they stopped in Boulder on their way to California. I imagine that they went to Boulder specifically to meet the folks at Ome Banjos. Years before, Zeke’s dad JW, who knew about acoustic instruments, had purchased a high quality Ome banjo for him. Nugget had a partially completed mandolin with him and gained the respect of Ed Woodward at Ome, so when the California experiment went south, Nugget reached out and secured a job there. A mutual friend named Grady Poe informed me when Nugget arrived in Boulder, and within a week or two we met for lunch at Don’s Cheese and Sausage. Another lifelong friendship was born.

Ned Alderman and Richie Mintz had lured me to Boulder not only to work at the music store, but also to play guitar and fiddle in their bluegrass group, the Town and Country Review. The lead singer in the group was Keely Bruner, a mechanical engineer who knew about singing close harmony. One place we played fairly often was called The Colorado Coal Company. The owner, Dave Marquart, booked acoustic acts there and we may have had a weekly night there. Another guy I’d met the previous winter on my epic hitchhiking trip, Kelly McNish, worked behind the counter. He had a weekly gig at the Coal Company, performing folk and country blues as the Bluebirds along with Ray Bonneville on harmonica and Eric Johnson on bass. One day Kelly wrote out the words of “Eight More Miles to Louisville” for me on a sheet of paper. I had rented a basement apartment on the 400 block of West Pearl Street, and soon Kelly moved into an apartment on the second floor. The owner, Gewn Stevens was a friend to musicians and gave us friendly rates. I had hoped to get a gig as fiddler for the local Western Swing group Dusty Drapes and the Dusters, but when I arrived that September, they had just hired a fine player named Teddy Karr. I was giving lessons and also working behind the counter at Folk Arts. I’d practice scales on the guitar in idle hours. One day a tall skinny guy came in and tried out a guitar. He played some wonderful fingerstyle ragtime licks and got my attention. His name was Dan Sadowsky and he’d worked for a while at the same store before I got to town. We became friends and played two guitars for fun whenever we could. He had just formed a group he called the Ophelia Swing Band with bassist Duane Webster, fiddler Linda Joseph, and a vibraphone player Jane Reed. Soon I was playing lead guitar and second fiddle in the band, and we got our own residency at the Colorado Coal Company.

My favorite breakfast place in Boulder was Palmers on West Pearl Street. They had great buckwheat cakes. Another place was Fred’s, where sometimes Fred, the owner, sang and played standards on a big archtop guitar on a tiny little stage by the cash register. Sometimes Dan Sadowsky and Duane Webster and I would join in. One fixture at Fred’s was Mr. Lawry, who came in for lunch every day. He was a very small old man who lived a block away in the Boulderado Hotel. Rooms at the Boulderado were inexpensive in those days before it was renovated and gentrified. Fred’s original restaurant had been in the hotel, and he would see Mr. Lowry in the lobby reading the paper every day. He got to know him and learned he was a veteran of the Spanish American War, who lived frugally on his military pension. Fred offered Mr. Lawry perpetual free lunch at his new place on Pearl, and every morning about 11:45 you’d see Mr. Lawry making his way very slowly toward the restaurant. It took him four or five minutes to get from the door to his table, and sometimes he’d doze off before he finished his soup. Years after Pearl Street became pedestrian mall, the city named the alley behind Fred’s “Lawry Lane”.

Tim O’Brien 50 years Journal

Fifty Years
Entry # 5
TIM O'BRIEN
May 31, 2024

I’ve been a musician for 50 years. What has changed, and what has remained the same? What are the things I’ve learned, and what are the things I’ll never learn?

Touring:

Sleep and rest are more important now! On the run through the Midwest with the band in April, we had the choice: either play in a tiny venue for the door on a Friday night or take a night off and just drive toward the next show. The next show in this case was the Solar Strings festival in French Village MO, and we drove to an Airbnb close to the festival, slept in, and were able to hear Junior Sisk and Ramblers Choice play a set on Saturday afternoon at the same festival. In 1974, I know I would have voted to play the small venue. I tour more often these days in a duo setting with my wife Jan Fabricius, and we mostly fly somewhere on Southwest, then drive a rental car to two of three shows. For some band dates we can either drive a couple vehicles or fly and then rent a car and a minivan. Since Charlie Chadwick invented the folding upright bass, we sometimes stuff five of us in one minivan if the drives aren’t too long between shows.

In the mid 1970’s, Ophelia Swing Band played mostly in Colorado, with occasional forays to Wyoming, and once or twice to South Dakota. Bassist Duane Webster’s International truck – “crew cab” with four doors, a bench back seat, and a topper over the bed - was our vehicle, but mostly we used our own cars to get to shows along Colorado’s front range. In the summer of 1977, we scored a Chautauqua tour sponsored by the State Department of Humanities. We drove in a station wagon leased by the state, and played tent shows in small towns, performing two or three nights in each location along with other features: a modern dance company, a Shakespeare play, a comedian, and a stage band that played little bits throughout each evening.

Hot Rize started in 1978 with the original intention to promote solo records that Pete Wernick and I had made. Pete had a national reputation in the bluegrass world as did our guitarist Charles Sawtelle. While our means were modest, there seemed to be some good potential. Charles was the one who suggested we wear suits onstage like the old school bluegrass acts. He was always in favor of doing things in a professional way, and if that required an investment, he knew it would pay off in the long run. He owned a ’57 Cadillac, and he urged us to buy used 1969 Sedan De ‘Ville as a touring vehicle. Ours was black with a white vinyl top. We traveled around Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Kansas in that vehicle, but also drove it to the east coast a time or two.

We could fit the banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and electric bass, and garment bags in the trunk. Later when we traveled with a sound system, we added a trailer hitch and rented a 4’ by 6’ U-Haul trailer. After a year or so we bought a used trailer and Nick and I painted it with black spray paint, leaving the top silver, so it sorta matched the Caddy.

Someone at a festival had told Charles Sawtelle, “You guys need to get a hound”, meaning an old Greyhound bus. The Bluegrass Cardinals and the Del McCoury Band had GMC 4104’s and that’s what we eventually bought. It had already been customized for a touring band. There was a sign above the windshield that said “Lo-Rance Trio”. We removed that sign, so now the old Greyhound route destination sign was visible. There were two spools just inside that destination window, around which was a roll of fabric with various city names on it. Whatever had fastened the spools to show a particular destination no longer functioned, so you’d never know where it said we were heading. On one of the first trips with that bus, we were opening for John Hartford in Winona MN. When we greeted John that day, he said, “Oh, is that your bus? I was wondering who “Chattanooga” was.” Nick Forster had been the long-haul, late-night driver in the Cadillac, and now he and Frank Edmonson were the main drivers, with Charles filling in. Charles and Nick remodeled the inside to include five bunks. We kept most of the front lounge area the same – green shag carpet on the walls and ceiling, a butcher block table, chair and couch, and a refrigerator that came with the coach.

Having our own bus meant we could sleep in the bus. Nick and Frank would drive four or more hours, then pull into a truck stop. In the morning we’d use the trucker’s showers, eat breakfast in the café, then be our way. If we had a free night before playing a festival, we arrived the night before and just sleep on the bus. We might park in a motel lot, rent one motel room and take turns using the shower. At many venues, the bus served as our dressing room. In those days we were sowing as many seeds as we could, giving LPs to musician friends and DJ’s. Having a bus meant we were serious about our band. Sometimes we took friends like Nugget mandolin maker Michael Kemnnitzer or musicians like Jody Stecher or Fred Weiss along on tours.

After a few years and a few record releases, we started getting better fees, and could afford to fly somewhere from Denver on a Thursday, rent vehicles and play three or four dates and then fly home on a Monday. We invested in flight cases for our instruments and gear. We had cases for t-shirts and records, and three rolling cases for amplifiers (for the bass, for Wendell Mercantile’s guitar and for Waldo Otto’s steel). Later we had a custom case made to check wardrobe items including Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers’ cowboy hats. It’s hard to imagine doing today what we did then. Denver was a United airlines hub, and Hot Rize road manager Frank Edmonson cultivated a relationship with a United Skycap named Chuck Davis. He was our best friend! We’d show up with over 20 pieces of luggage and give Chuck a 20-dollar bill and he’d somehow get them all on the plane. Chuck worked that gig longer than most, and there’s a plaque with his name on it by the United curbside check in now.

T-shirts brought in as much money as did record sales and Nick Forster was merch manager. We’d often meet mid-week before leaving home to pack LP’s and t-shirts for whatever run were about to do. After four or five years, we were using the bus less and less, so we sold it to a new group called the Subdudes. They quickly learned like we did that old buses can break down when you least expect it, and you seem to paying the bus more than you pay yourselves. By this time, we would occasionally hire a modern tour bus with a professional driver for short runs east of the Mississippi.

After leaving Hot Rize in 1990, my touring fees shrunk some, but by now airfares had been deregulated, and I could afford to fly myself and up to three others somewhere, then rent vehicles to get to shows. That same gameplan still works for me today. If the show is less than eight hours drive away, you might as well drive. If it’s farther away than that, fly to the closest airport, rent the vehicles you need and go from there. Sometime after I moved to Nashville in 1996, Southwest became the airline of choice. There are lots of nonstop flights from Nashville, you can check two bags free, and there’s no charge if you change your itinerary. Southwest isn’t as cheap as it used to be, but the other advantages remain. It’s bluegrass musicians’ favorite airline.

Live sound:

Ophelia Swing Band bought a used PA system about a year after we started. It had large speaker cabinets for mains and smaller ones for monitors, and we controlled the mix from the stage.

Charles Sawtelle had a sound company in the mid 1970’s, and he still owned much of the gear when Hot Rize started, and we eventually bought part of the system from him. It was a good sounding rig with a Macintosh power amp, Malachi mixer, and Klipsch speakers. Charles also mixed the sound from the stage, but hiring a full-time soundman Frank Edmonson was another stretch that really paid off. After we bought our bus, we added to the PA that we carried underneath in the service bays. Once we started flying to more shows, the PA would lay idle and we eventually sold it, but we still flew with a rack in a flight case that included outboard equalizers and compressors to interface with house sound systems, and we carried our own higher end microphones.

Hot Rize generally resisted using pickups on our acoustic instruments, but when I started on my own in 1990, I caved to the modern trend, but with a difference. Following the example of the members of Newgrass Revival, I set up each of my instruments with both a pickup and a miniature condenser mic, and bought a special preamp made by Newgrass’s soundman Richard Battaglia. Both signals came out of one stereo output jack on the instrument, which gave the house sound and the monitor sound more flexibility. Playing on bigger festival stages or in loud clubs, you could send the better sounding microphone signal to the audience, and use the pickup side for monitor sound with much less feedback problems. A great many current day bluegrass acts now use in-ear monitors (earphones) instead of monitor speakers, which makes for even more flexibility, and the ability to reach higher sound pressure levels without causing feedback. I’ve used in ear monitors when playing with Mark Knopfler and it’s really the only way to go when you’re mixing solid body guitars played through big amplifiers with acoustic mandolins and guitars. However, I’ve resisted using in ear monitors for my own shows, and in recent years, I’ve gone back to playing into a good old microphone.

Making records:

Ophelia Swing Band recorded for a folk label called Biscuit City that owned the studio, which was in a funny triangle shaped building near the intersection of Park and 17th Avenue in Denver. The main floor was occupied by a business that advertised itself as “Colorado’s only Venetian Blind Laundry”. The studio and the record company offices were up a steep staircase. Several of the local folk acts that could draw a crowd at the Denver Folklore Center – people like songwriter Randy Handley or dulcimer player Bonnie Carol - made records for Biscuit City. There were more professional studios in Denver where more commercial music was made, but the label didn’t have a budget to use those places where a band like Firefall would record.

Ophelia was quite ambitious with its music, and we had our arrangements down, but we were very green in the studio. We recorded our record, really the first project any of us had done, on an 8-channel multitrack machine. It was January of 1977. We sometimes used a single track for more than one part. For instance, if I recorded a harmony vocal on track 5, that meant that there were silent spaces in between the choruses. If all the other tracks were already full, and I wanted to add a second fiddle part that didn’t happen during the chorus, I could record that in the spaces between the harmony vocals. But maybe the two parts on the same track were very different in volume, and meanwhile if you placed the harmony vocal slightly to the left in the stereo spectrum, then the fiddle ended up there too even if you didn’t want it that way. Our engineer, Ty Atherholt, was willing to experiment with us. We were all low down on the learning curve.

Some folks get self-conscious in recording sessions when others are listening. Others thrive on distraction. Our lead singer, Dan Sadowsky had a hard time recording his vocal part one evening, and after a bit he asked if he could try it with the lights off in the room where he was singing. We did that and we all listened from the control room as he sang. It seemed to really help because he nailed it this time. We turned on the lights and saw that he was now completely naked. Washboard Chaz sang lead on one song and unfortunately, we didn’t get a good vocal sound because we recorded his washboard and vocal along with the band live. We learned at mix stage that you couldn’t turn up the vocal without getting more washboard.

It was all analogue, with no automation. To mix the sound, several of us would reach around each other from different sides of the console to move faders up and down as we recorded the mix output onto a different 1/4 stereo tape recorder. If you messed up one little move, that meant you had to do the whole thing again. That Ophelia Swing Band recording, “Swing Tunes of the 30’s & 40’s” came out the following summer. I think the track that Dan sang naked is “Knocking Myself Out”. It’s long out of print but you can hear it on Apple Music:

https://music.apple.com/us/album/swing-tunes-of-the-30s-40s/327731663

I quit the band a few months later and moved to Minnesota to be where my girlfriend Kit was going to school, but I came back to Colorado for the Chautauqua tour that summer. Biscuit City records asked me to make a fiddle record and I recorded in on days off from the tour with members of Ophelia Swing Band as well as with Pete Wernick and Charles Sawtelle. Pete also made a solo record that summer, and asked me to sing and play on it. He recorded at a new studio in Boulder called Mountain Ears. Andy Statman and Russ Barenburg came from the east coast to participate, with Duane Webster, Charles Sawtelle and I joining in. This was much more pro studio compared to Biscuit City, but everyone including the engineer was still on the learning curve. At one point Pete asked to hear more mandolin in the mix, and the engineer said, “Sure, which one is the mandolin?” We recorded on a 16-track machine with 2-inch tape.

With more experience, you (and the engineers) learned how to do things more efficiently. By the time Hot Rize was ready to record, we hooked up with a new studio called Colorado Sound, with Andy Smith engineering. It was also a 16-track, 2-inch tape rig, and we had the choice of recording at 15 or 30 ips (inches per second). You used more tape at 30 ips, but the sound is better, so we went that way. I can’t remember the price of a reel of 2-inch tape – maybe $75 – but again Charles urged us to spend a little more money to get better sound quality. At 30 ips you could record 15 minutes per reel. You’d get a pretty good take and then try for a better one. We tried to limit the number of takes we had to three. After you decided on the best take, you could record over the rejects to save money. We had our arrangements ready and had made some demo tapes at another pro studio with John Macey as engineer, so we were learning how to do it. That studio evolved and eventually moved to a bigger and better place, and a guy I’d worked with at Biscuit City, Kevin Clock, engineered several more Hot Rize recordings there. I made various solo records there with Kevin, as well as three recordings with my sister Mollie. It’s still there on West 71’st Avenue in Denver.

Promotion:

Ophelia essentially broke up before we had recordings to sell and we were too inept to make promo t-shirts to sell. But in the early days of Hot Rize we at least had t-shirts to sell. Pete Wernick and I sold our solo records too. Merch really helped fill the tank, first in the 1969 Cadillac, then in the GMC 4104 bus. The bus had lots of storage so we added more sound gear and stuffed the storage bays with cartons of LP’s, boxes of t-shirts, hats, bumper stickers, and even fly swatters! We could also carry gear that Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers needed – amps, other instruments, and stage outfits they used. With our own trusty soundman, Frank Edmonson, we were ready for most anything.

In those days, publicizing shows was in the promoter’s court. They, and later the record label publicist, might line up print and radio interviews and maybe even purchase some advertising. They took advantage of folk and bluegrass organization newsletters, and made sure their concerts appeared in local newspapers’ free listings. One of the first artists I knew to use a personal computer was John McCutcheon. He was ahead of the curve, using computer generated mailing labels for his own newsletters. The internet and social media have eclipsed physical mailings these days, and promoters rely more and more on the artists themselves to advertise shows. Along with that, there are more artists so competition is much greater. Social media is crucial these days, and I’m lucky to have such an internet savvy partner in my wife Jan, who handles those chores.

Record releases are a different game now as well. It’s common for artists to release three or four singles before the entire project is made available. In fact, the Tim O’Brien Band has a single out now, called “You Took Me In”, part of an upcoming release of Tom Paxton songs performed by bluegrass artists, that you can find on your streaming service.

When you bought an LP in my early days, you were making a real commitment and you rarely heard any of the music beforehand. It was harder to hear folk and bluegrass on the radio then. Now we have the internet and streaming. It’s easier to find a recording now, but it’s also easier to turn it off! Maybe the phone rings and you stop that new Sierra Ferrell song to answer. That said, YouTube is my favorite radio station these days, particularly for older recordings. When I want to hear Patrick Sky, Buzz Busby, or Washington Phillips, I look there first.