music and hearing I

I'm feeling a strong need to tell my tale - how I had a music career, limited as it was, and how I lost my hearing, to the point that a weblog like this is somewhat pointless unless I find something to do with it. So this post is about the music career, and also about the weblog, by the way, which isn't going anywhere because it has all my music and movies on it. No way will I just delete it because I myself can't appreciate it anymore.

I grew up in a musical family - my parents weren't musicians, but my grandparents on my dad's side were, and cousins. on my mom's side too. Music was encouraged and my mother gave me piano lessons and set me going on the cello.

I was no Pablo Casals but did enjoy it, until I went traveling, and had no real source of music until I was given a banjo years later. It was an old mountain banjo - long and without an echo attachment, and I played it for years.

I noticed several things about the banjo. First, it was rich and full in sound, so I was capable of filling a space, good or bad, with its fullness and variety of notes. Second, it competed directly with the voice which made singing to it harder. Third, guitar players didn't quite know how to deal with it - rather than slowing down, which would allow me to fill in the space around them, they would speed up, hoping to keep up with me but instead making too much noise for the listener to process. our informal jams were uncomfortable and not especially pleasant unless i found a relaxed bass-type player who could just play an easy tune and sing to it. Fiddles worked too, same principle. A fiddler could play at any speed and, because it didn't compete directly with the banjo, we could work out together how we wanted to fit in to each other.

Finally though, I was a frailer, and coudn't seem to pick up other methods, like clawhammer and finger-picking. It's almost like having been taught frailing, that was the only way I could relate to it. I got to a certain point - had one or two good songs - and coudn't seem to go any further. Part of it was that I wasn't getting out and hearing and playing a variety of music. At home alone, or perhaps in the coffee shop, only a couple of songs came out of me. I wasn't making progress.

Switching to the fiddle wasn't all that hard. My experience on the cello meant that I wasn't intimidated by having to find the right spot to put my finger, all by myself, without the help of frets. Though I had grown up in bass clef, I could transfer all of the basic relations between notes over to my new range which though it was high, and competed at the voice octaves, was still something within my reach. After a year or two I became an adequate fidder.

This was in Carbondale where I found a folk singer who needed a fiddler. As it turns out there's a general shortage of fiddlers so from the moment I was adequate there was always pretty high demand for that adequacy. I still had things to learn that I couuldn't seem to learn from others, like how to lead. People are looking to you to go 1, 2, 3 (play) and where was I? I hadn't even thought of it. I should, when starting, make sure everyone knows which key, which song, when we're starting, etc. - how do you learn this? When you're the only fiddler you don't. One friend of mine stepped on my toe, aggrieved because I had a hard time hearing "turns" and when it was mine, and when it was not. I made some unnecessary noise it seems.

I played with the folk singer and our band created one CD, Life Goes On (Parsley Sagebrush Band) which I still keep right in front me here at my seat, in spite of being unable to enjoy it. Ironically she needed one more song and included my banjo song in there, along with a really good bass player friend of ours, so that's the only song of mine ever actually produced. It's a train song Long Way to Centralia if you ever look it up; I plan to make a train movie with it but unfortunately my difficult hearing situation is getting in the way.

The folksinger was aggrieved that I picked up and moved to Texas in 2012 but it was actually good for my fiddling. I found a bunch of good-old bluegrass pickers who wanted nothing more than to play Dixie songs fast once a week, and that's what we did for a few years. Their banjo picker was the best I'd ever heard, still is, but didn't want to. perform (been there, done that) and we'd just play killer bluegrass at every opportunity. At first I thought they wanted to run me out of there, with those fast Dixie songs (they knew I was a Yankee the minute I opened my mouth) but they didn't, it's just that that's what they really wanted to do, as much as possible, and pretty soon I was fast enough, and knew the Dixie songs (at least my own version of them, which I sometimes had to make up) - I was having blast. I was at the peak of my skill.

One night we were playing in an insurance office. At this point I'd play with them on Tuesday nights until about ten, and then drive the six hours out to New Mexico until the middle of midnight, with the bluegrass still rolling in my ears. I was sawing away but we were just playing the usual stuff, Dixie songs and bluegrass, real fast. Some old guy came up to me and said, in front of everyone, to me more or less, that he was well over ninety, had been listening to this stuff all his life, and had never heard better.

That was the peak of my career. I had other peaks, playing Bob Wills' fiddle, playing on certain stages after Charlie Daniels, playing with this person or that, but nothing topped what that old guy said. He was sincere. He knew what he was talking about. He said it more or less to me. We were hot that night.

But alas, it was true: I'd moved to New Mexico. I was not long for their band, and we all knew it. The banjo picker had actually lived out there, on the border of Texas and New Mexico, in the plains, on a farm, but nothing. lasts forever, and that particular combination, what we had, went by the wayside. In New Mexico I lost my hearing, see part II. All that fine music is now just a memory.

In some ways I just want to write a book about it (especially the Texas years) but in others I can hardly bear to think about it. I want to write a biography of Bela Fleck. Keep my mind sharp and still be part of the music world. But it's slipping away, partly because it's just too hard to think about it.

Here's one for the. Fourth

Here's a story - I can no longer give you a song. I lost my hearing a few years back, though I have devices, so that explains why this site has been fading a little into the woodwork. I can write about music, but how can I feel what it's like without getting sad about losing it? I can't but I can still tell a good story.

This happened one fourth down in southern Illinois which as you may know is quite steamy. We were invited out to a party in the country, on somebody's front yard that faced a road and beyond that, a kind of woods. Everybody was drunk. I was vaguely aware that the fireworks weren't going off as intended. Perhaps someobdy told the guy not to fire them in the woods, but there was no other place, and they kept coming disturbingly close to us people,

As a fiddler, I was just coming into my wings; I could now play what I wanted although I often failed when I was trying to get fancy or go too fast. The question was whether I could really haul out and doo something great but to tell you the truth I still coonsidered myself somewhat of a beginner, even after a few years. But on this particular evening I at least had my fiddle. I was prepared.

Any musician can tell you that The Star-Spangled Banner is a difficult song. It spans a couple of octaves and demands precision. But I learned something else that evening (the sun was just going down, I think, and fireworks were still just kind of randomly and vaguely threatening us). I learned that you'd better not mess with it. The same is true of Willie Nelson soongs in Texas. If you want to play around, be experimental, take a chance - find another soong, don't use one of Willie's.

I found this out very quickly into The Star-Spangled Banner. I didn't intend to be fully experimental or even a little experimental. But in doing something that sounded like I messed with it or at least intended to, I got some dirty looks from some drunken guys and I decided to rein it in quickly, play by the book, just hit the real notes.

At this party I'd met someone who actually kind of inspired me. He had a two-foo-long beard and an equally impressive pony tail, as if he hadn't cut either for over twenty years. And that was very possible. In any case he'd been tellling me how the Fourth was his absolute favorite holiday. At first I couldn't relate, since I was never a big fan of fireworks. But it wasn't about fireworks for him. I'm not sure what it was about, but I think it related partly to the fact that he was a veteran. It was like "this is the day that I remember all that stuff we went and did that for."

So anyway, I get a little ways into The Star-Spanglled Banner, and I start getting into it. I make it louder, clearer, stronger, as now I have most of the party listening to me. I'm playing straight by the book, having been warned against flourishes or experimentall runs. But Hendrix's version came to mind, and I couldn't resist leaning into it a little. I couldn't make bombs with my fiddle, or do what Hendrix did, obviously, but there were things I coould do that would be clearly not messing with it but allso clarly emotion-invoking, inpiring. And I did them. I played probably the best version I've ever played. And definitely unique.

That's one good thing about the song - you play it, or sing it, and almost by definition you've put your mark on it, you've made a unique version that will last in people's minds. It's a powerful song, whether you buy into the symbollism or violence or whatever. Just as a song, it is its own battlefield victory.
When I was doone I made a little bow to everyone and put the fiddle away, eager to fade back into the party and keep my eyes open for bad fireworks again. I had taken a chance there, for a few minutes, hoping. that one didn't just come and land on my fiddle or something, but it hadn't; perhaps those who were setting them off knew better than to try us that way. Perhaps they'd just set them down for the duration of the song, just so everyone could hear it and appreciate it. It sure felt like that's what happened anyway, so I was grateful for that.

We stumbled home late. I remembered the song, forever.

Kinky Friedman

 

Here's a memorial to Kinky Friedman, who died in late June. There are several things I liked about him:

He turned his parents' ranch into a no-kill shelter for animals, the first in that part of Texas, and this made all his shows benefits, as he would be paid by the shelter out of the proceeds. He didn't need the money that much. He wasn't a fantastic musician but it didn't matter because he was funny as a performer and everyone knew and loved him.

He included all his friends and acquaintances in his books; this took a lot of moxie I thought but it's one way of memorializing all those friends as well as the general feeling of those friends in Austin in his era. The people who knew him thought it was a riot though they were somewhat traumatized by the possibility of his misrepresenting them.

When he ran for governor and other offices, he was entirely an independent. He didn't just take the liberal view. he often used humor so you weren't always sure he was serious. So for example on gay marriage, he said they have as much right to be miserable as any of us.

His band name and his songs made fun of racism. The Texas Jewboys? I was curious about that from the first time I saw the name. But parody was the currency he dealt in. Lots of times people didn't get it. Didn't matter. It's a crazy twisted world and he was just having fun.

He once said that when you get to the afterlife every pet you ever had will be there to greet you. This won't be good for everyone I think. But it will be great for him; he saved a lot of lives. RIP Kinky.

The Way to Go

Linder, B. (2024, Jan. 21). Grammy winning country music star ‘died on stage after a successful encore’. Penn Live, online.

Jo-El Sonnier joins the list of musicians I admire who died on stage performing, or immediately after. I was a fiddler in Carbondale, Illinois, when an older fiddler who I didn't really know well passed away while performing Ashokan Farewell. Those that knew him were grief-stricken and set back, but, because I didn't know him, my main reaction was that that was a great way to go. I later found out that Miriam Makeba and a number of others died on stage as well. If you're still up there performing when your time has come, you have succeeded in a very special way.

I doubt this will happen for me, though you never know. I am due to get a cochlear implant pretty soon here, but even that will not restore the ability to hear well enough to actually perform. I sometimes fantasize that if I could get someone to tune the banjo for me, I could still attack it with the vigor stored up over the six or seven years now that I've been unable to hear well. If this were possible, maybe I could join this club and die on stage somewhere.

As it is, I've more or less let this site go defunct, and will probably die in silence. It's fifteen below, and I'm not even watching television. I am, however, trying to write about my musical experiences. I may be able to put more of that on this weblog. Cheers!

My autobiography & more

http://tlevspress.blogspot.com/2021/09/just-passing-through.html

Here's an interesting story. Those who follow this page know that I have a dream, or possibly a plan, or maybe just a pipe dream, to write a biography of Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn. I feel they have made an important contribution to our understanding of the banjo and to the world of music, and I want to document it.

But I did a practice run. Biography is not easy, and it involves getting inside someone's head and sometimes making assumptions about their feelings. I wrote a biography of my first cousin three times removed - Frank Leverett (1859-1943)(see post above). He was a famous geologist but also a family hero. He was worth paying tribute to because in short, whatever we know about the family we know because of him.

The biography wasn't easy and made me question whether I want to stay in the biography business. It didn't sell a whole bunch right off the bat either, though that may be typical for biography. There are good things about biography and bad, obviously, but I am limited in a couple obvious ways too.

First, it would have helped with Frank, if I went to Denver or East Lansing, to just look at all the papers. It seems like an obvious thing, but I said right from the start, I'm not going to do this. I just can't leave home. I've got four teenagers and a delicate balance relies on me.

Second, most authors invest in their project. Like I'm talking, buy a few dozen books, haul in the facts. In the case of Mr. Fleck and Ms. Washburn a minimum investment would be a trip to someplace where his tour lands, and an interview, probably a motel room and a dozen meals on the road. I figured I could do this, or set up a zoom interview, but I'm not even sure about that. I so far have not invested big money into any of my books. I'm not sure if I'm willing, much less able, to do that here. Willing, yes, I'd love to meet him. But you look at a tenuous household budget with teenagers, going to college, and it may not stay that way.

Anyway, thought I'd let you know how the mulling is going. I love music - I'm still not hearing it well - and want to stay involved in it some way or another. When I get computers in my ears it will be a whole new ball game. For now, it's trying to stay on my feet, not get dizzy, keep a good perspective.

tall corn state - now on ACX

That's right. It's narrated by Donald Davenport.
HERE
Thanks for considering it!