Saturday, December 29, 2007

Jug band music, anyone?

Spread the word: I'm looking for a couple of acoustic musicians interested in playing old-timey music and country blues on jug band/string band instruments.

I play guitar, harmonica, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, etc., but I can't play them all at the same time! If someone you know plays an acoustic instrument (portable and not requiring electricity) and is interested in roots/old-time/pre-WII/traditional/hokum/ragtime blues styles, urge them to get in touch with me at smokinbill@aol.com.

I'd like to start practicing in January and be ready to start playing gigs by summer.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

 

Now that Liam's in kindergarten, he says he's ready to start writing his own blog. He's not techinically a writer yet, but he's a heck of a storyteller. Check out his tales by clicking the link below:

From Liam's Mouth

Monday, September 10, 2007

Farewell to summer

Here's a little video for you. It's my way of letting summer go out with a bang ... er, a splash.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Duncan

Friday, September 7, 2007

Pete Seeger

Readers of The Leader-Herald may have noticed yesterday's editorial that backhandedly "congratulated" Pete Seeger for adjusting his position on Communism in a new song.

You can read it here: Seeger's Song Long Overdue

All I can say about this is that Leader-Herald editorials on subjects that are not specifcally local are usually ones provided by the newspaper's corporate headquarters in Wheeling, West Virginia -- they are not written by local editors. 

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Cape Cod trip

We had a blast on the cape this past week.

 

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Two great shows: Roy Book Binder and Bruce Molsky

We caught two great live shows in the area this month: Roy Book Binder in Canajoharie and Bruce Molsky in Amsterdam. Both shows were free, acoustic and al fresco: it doesn't get any better. Below I have pasted a video clip of Bruce and a still shot of Roy.

Bruce Molsky playing "Wandering Boy"

Roy Book Binder cracking joke after joke (and occasionally playing some sweet blues guitar).

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Friday, May 18, 2007

A Sweet Fiddle Tune

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Next project

With the master's thesis behind me, I'm moving on to the next project: Moving. We closed on the new house Friday and will be making the big haul across town tomorrow. 

Here are a few shots of the upstairs as it looked earlier this year: First February and then March and early April. That's my brother-in-law Chris in the gas mask. Our contractors, John Duesler (walls and trim) and Steve Maxson (electrical) and Jeff Shaver (floors), did great and fast work. Stay tuned for current photos of the new, improved 7 Prindle Ave.  

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Mission accomplished

After about a year (on and off, mostly on) of intense intellectual and creative labor, I submitted my master's thesis on Monday. Three days later, it still hasn't sunk in that I'm done. Maybe that's because I'm still working full-time as a newspaper editor as well as teaching journalism two nights a week ... perhaps I need a full weekend to unwind.

One of the first things I did after turning in the manuscript (88 pages, but who's counting?) was to go to the library and return a crate full of books I had been using for my research and inspiration. Of course I couldn't leave the library empty-handed, so I grabbed a small stack of new books. It's great to be able to read purely for pleasure again. I suspect, however, that my idea of "pleasure reading" has evolved a bit over the last three years. I picked up books of essays by Andrei Codrescu, poems by Gerald Stern, illustrated fiction by Charles Bukowski with R. Crumb, and a novel by Johnathan Lethem. I selected them based on how little they resembled the material I was reading for the thesis ...

Folks are always asking what my thesis was about, and I'm tired of trying to explain it in 50 words or fewer, so here is an excerpt from the abstract that sums it up as briefly as possible:

In her essay "On Place in Fiction," the Southern writer and photographer Eudora Welty wrote, "It is both natural and sensible that the place where we have our roots should become the setting, the first and primary proving ground, of our fiction. Location, however, is not simply to be used by the writer – it is to be discovered … Discovery does not imply that the place is new, only that we are."

 

Knowing Home: Short Fiction from Fulton County, N.Y. is a collection of five short stories set in the writer's home region, which straddles the Mohawk Valley and Adirondack Foothills of New York State. The collection isintroduced with a critical essay that combines personal narrative and scholarship about the ways location interacts with culture, economics and identity, and how these interactions apply to the writer's own fiction and modern American realistic fiction in general.

The essay also briefly investigates how these interactions are eminent in "Mohawk," the first published novel by Richard Russo. The novel's setting is a nominally fictionalized town resembling Gloversville, N.Y., which was Russo's "first and primary proving ground" and is immediately adjacent to this writer's hometown, Johnstown.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

So Long, Mr. Vonnegut

How's this for a strange coincidence: Tonight I returned to the Johnstown Public Library an audio collection of short fiction by Kurt Vonnegut. Some of the stories were classics that I had read before, inlcuding "Harrison Bergeron" and "Welcome to the Monkey House." But many of the others were new to me, such as "A Deer in the Works," and I enjoyed them immensely as I listened to them in the car over the course of the last two weeks. When I got home from the library, I surfed the news sites on the Web to learn that Vonnegut died today. Hmmm ...

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=580066

Monday, April 2, 2007

Grand opening

I will be playing informally and quite unplugged for the grand opening of my brother-in-law's new business. Here are the details: 

Touch Therapies of Saratoga, 8 Butler Place, will host a grand opening reception to introduce its staff and services to the community.

 

The public is welcome to attend the grand opening, which will take place from 4:30 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 12. Free chair massages will be offered, and the event will feature live acoustic music, refreshments and information about the aromatherapy products available from Victoria's Essentials.

 

Touch Therapies' practitioners offer techniques ranging from Swedish-style relaxation massage to Shiatsu and Reiki as well as hot-stone massage. Custom massage therapy is available for clients who prefer a personalized approach.

For more information about Touch Therapies of Saratoga, call (518) 580-8501 or visit www.ttofsaratoga.com.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Thoughts on "Folk" Music

I received this dispatch from my friend Roland Vinyard today. I keep telling him that he should start blogging, but he prefers to send his commentaries around via e-mail. He makes some useful observations here on the way we label various kinds of American "roots" music: 
 
 
Shifting  Definitions, a Rambling Discourse

With an educational background in history, I have often been amused* by how the definitions of words change over time. I first considered words like “conservative”, “liberal”, “radical” and “moderate”. When I was in college in the roaring '60s, the views of someone we called moderate back then would be called liberal today. And a person who calls himself an arch-conservative today would have been branded “radical” back then had he espoused the same ideas. Remember: the word “radical” does not really have either  a left or a right connotation; it means far out. Rightly call an ultraconservative a radical today and watch the shock and disbelief cross his face.

 
And there have been changes in the music community as well. A product of the Hootenanny era, I called myself a “folksinger” back then. I still do, but am hesitant to use the word anymore as so many people today think “folk music” is the stuff that singer-songwriters do. But, it isn’t. Folk music, as traditionally defined, has 2 important characteristics: the authorship is unknown, and it has been learned by oral transmission. Over the centuries, it was a given that both the melody and words of songs were in a slow but constant state of flux, depending upon just who it was that was singing them. It was a little like the old game of Postman, Telephone, or whatever it was called, where someone whispers a phrase into his neighbor’s ear, who does the same thing in turn to his neighbor, and by the time the circle is completed, it has taken on meanings never originally intended. But still, that usage worked pretty well for centuries. Many songs originated as popular ones, printed on what were termed “broadsides”, but since so few common folks could read or afford to buy them, they unintentionally inflicted subtle changes upon them. Many broadsides did not have the author’s name on them, even when It might have been known at the time. Every traditional song we sing today was made up by someone at some time, then slowly altered as others began to sing it. This still happens, though I think to a lesser degree.

Then radio and recordings were invented and things began to change at a faster pace. People began to learn their music by listening to exactly the same version that everyone else did. Can this still be called learning orally? The case could be made either way. At any rate, things seem to have become standardized in the process. Don’t believe this? Try singing the original words to “Tom Dooley” and listen to the crowd ignore you and sing the Kingston Trio version. Ever have someone stop you when singing something that “wasn’t right”? If it was a  truly traditional song,, who’s to say?  Here is another example, the beloved hymnal, Rise Up Singing.  We all  know that in many cases extra verses have been added, some traditional ones deleted here and there and a whole lot of politically correct laundering was exercised. But will our children know this? And their children?  Check out the book sometime as see just how many of its songs are actually traditional ones. It is a surprisingly small proportion that are. But there is no one “right” way to sing traditional music. There can be, however, wrong ways, ways not in keeping with our own musical traditions.

So what do  singer-songwriters do if it is not folk music? Good question. You can answer it, not me. Pop music? Acoustic music? Acoustic pop? Traditional sounding? (what a mouthful - that’ll never catch on) Give me a better name. Confusing the issue and blurring the boundaries are the times when someone, not you, knows the author or on the other side are times when you have learned it from a recording of an original source, meaning a traditional singer who got  it orally  from his family or friends.

Let’s take another musical word - “old-timey”. That is actually a fairly new word, and its closest precursor is “hillbilly”, which we rarely hear used today. But the two are not the same - otherwise there would have been no need to coin “old-timey”. Hillbilly music was generally recorded, early country music, that frequently drew upon its folk roots for inspiration and even for its material. Old timey shares that, and is a mixture of old time fiddle tunes, parlor songs, humorous things, ballads (from what were then current on to extremely old ones form previous centuries) and so on. It was mostly vocal music, but frequently relied heavily upon instrumental breaks for variety and occasionally  a completely instrumental piece (fiddle tune, ragtime, “piece”, march...) was worked in the mix. The New Lost City Ramblers come to my mind as a quintessential old-timey group. Today, people argue with me about what old-timey is. They mean just fiddle tunes, which is just one part of the original form. As practiced today, old timey means lots of fiddlers (if possible- you never get too many),  who have the melody  all the time, every time, and they will saw away on it for 5, 10, 15 minutes before going to the next tune, which will be in the same key, just about  always in duple meter. They never get bored with this, which I fail to understand. But once in a while, they will break the pattern and permit something slower to be played or a verse to be sung. Incidentally, many of our traditional fiddle tunes actually do have verses, though they are largely forgotten today. I have watched some fiddlers refuse to play on these aberrant pieces and have seen them sit resignedly quiet until it is finally over and they can get back to business as usual. This has limited appeal to me, but, hey, different strokes....

Here’s a third word - “blues”, and it is not a very old term either, being coined roughly about the time the recording industry was founded. If you think about it much, you will come to the realization that most blues pieces are not really folk music, at least not by the traditional definition (hey, didn’t I have pun with that one!). The majority of these songs have readily identifiable composers and we usually learn them from recordings. The old blues singers, such as Robert Johnson, Charley Patton. Son House,  the various Blinds  (Blake, Lemon, Fuller, Willie McTell...) were really singer-songwriters who wrote in the blues idiom, and not always in 12 bars either, though they might frequent that many in a good night (I just snuck another one in!). These guys were trying to earn a living and would sing whatever brought in the bucks. It is known that Johnson and Blake, for instance, did cakewalks, ragtime, dance music, “pieces”, whatever the crowd wanted. The recording executives of the old race records figured that blues was what sold, so that’s what they had them record - the rest has been lost. Blues were certainly what made their music distinctive  and struck straight to the soul of the listener. The singers were in no position to argue with the guy paying them - they want to hear blues, we like to sing blues too, so we’ll do it for them, no problema. The bluesmen were under some pressure to find new material and record execs were well aware of copyright law. It was a mixture that produced several generations of the black acoustic singer-songwriters that we call bluesmen and it continues forward today as the electrified Rhythm & Blues.

The tree of folk music, your definition or mine, has deep roots and has developed many intertwined branches, all of which need nurturing. There is no one “correct” way to perform and while I may not like to hear someone (me?) butcher a well-loved piece by going off the deep end on it, I will certainly defend their right to do so, as I hope they will defend mine when it comes my turn to make a bad choice. If folks don’t like the way it sounds, they will not try to remember or imitate it, and that version will die its own deserved death. Hopefully a better arranged interpretation will survive.
 
-- By Roland Vinyard


* Note:  “amused” does not necessarily mean “pleased”

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Fun at Slow Jed's

My first performance at Slow Jed's in Averill Park was more fun than a barrel of drunken monkeys. I'll be back there on April 27, so mark your calendars. It's a great little coffeehouse and worth the trip.
 

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Old-Time Guitar Workshop March 24

 

Old-Time Guitar Workshop

With Bill Ackerbauer

 

An introduction to old-time country flatpicking guitar

for beginning acoustic guitarists and more experienced players

who are new to the old-time genre.

 

,    The infamous “boom-chick” lick

,    Carter-style backup and solos

,    Flatpicking fiddle tunes

,    Put some roots in your repertoire!

 

When:  Noon, Saturday, March 24th

Where:  Arthur’s Market, 35 N. Ferry St., Schenectady

Cost:  $10

Open Old-Time Jam to Follow at 2 p.m.

For more information or to RSVP, e-mail:  smokinbill@aol.com

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Upcoming music events



A few music-related things are on the calendar for March:

Saturday, March 10: "Fulton's Finest" at the Glove Theatre in Gloversville, N.Y. I'll be one of the performers in a variety show fund-raiser for a Fulton County Regional Chamber of Commerce Performing Arts Scholarship. For more info, see
www.glovetheatre.org.

Thursday, March 15: Solo acoustic gig at Slow Jed's Mudhouse, a hip coffee joint in Averill Park (outside Troy). For directions, etc.:
www.slowjeds.com.

Saturday, March 24: Old-time flatpicking guitar workshop at Arthur's Market in Schenectady. I'll be teaching some Carter-style roots guitar stuff. The workshop starts at noon and will be followed by a jam for all old-timey instrumentalists at 2 p.m. I'll post more information here and
at my MySpace site when the details become available.

Stay in touch! Feel free to drop me a line at smokinbill@aol.com.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Live Audio from Arthur's

 

Tuesday's show in Schenectady turned out to be an intimate affair, which is a nice way of saying very few people showed up ... but on the plus side, Roland and I had fun and managed to record a few numbers for posterity. Check them out here (files are in .mp3 format):

Hesitation Blues

The Roving Gambler

Handsome Molly

The painting above is a product of today's "Arts n' Crafts" time with my boys. I guess I'll call it "The Frailer." We're still working on our Piranha Pinata.

Friday, February 16, 2007

See you in the Stockade

Don't forget to catch my show Tuesday night at Arthur's Market & World Village Cafe, 35 N. Ferry St., Schenectady. The music starts at 7 p.m. The cafe serves coffee, tea, desserts and vegetarian dishes. They also are rumored to have supply of the excellent Barrett's Pineapple Ginger Brew.

I will be joined for a set by my friend Roland (aka The Bard Rocks!) on guitar, banjo and whatever else he brings along. There's no cover, but I'll have my medicant tip jar in full effect.

If you need help finding Arthur's, click here for a MAP.

Sunday, February 4, 2007

A Jamaica Tale

The Albany-based e-zine MyStoryLives has published one of my pieces of non-fiction, a short memoir about a bus trip in Jamaica. 
 
You can read it at the following link:
 
 
Hope you like it!
 

Feeling surreal today

We had family arts n' crafts time quite early this morning (before breakfast, in fact), which might explain why I painted this ...

What should I title it? If you have suggestions, leave a comment by clicking the link below.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Upcoming Gig at Arthur's Market

I'll be performing on Tuesday, Feb. 20, at Arthur's Market in Schenectady's Stockade neighborhood. This will be my first show at this venue, which has recently been reopened under the management of Richard Genest, proprietor of the Moon & River Cafe. I'll play two or three sets, starting at 7 p.m.

Bring your friends! Tell your neighbors!

On a related subject, I've noticed that there are some old-time music jams planned at Arthur's Market for 2-4 p.m. on several Saturdays: Jan. 27, Feb. 3, Feb. 10 and Feb. 24. I'm going to try to show up for a couple of these so I can saw out a few fiddle tunes.

Tuesday, January 2, 2007

The Year of the Bookworm

Happy New Year, faithful readers!

My friend Roland Vinyard sent me a message today mentioning all of the great books (and some of the disappointing ones) he's read in the past year. It got me thinking about my own reading habits and what I read in 2006.

 I won't bore you with the complete list (mostly literary theory, criticism and writing technique), but among the worthwhile books I've read this year are:
 
 
Where I'm Calling From, short stories by Raymond Carver.
 
Thirteen Moons, historical novel by Charles Frazier (who wrote Cold Mountain). Excellent - I got it for Christmas and consumed it in a few days. A great fictionalized memoir of a white man who was adopted by a clan of Cherokees in the years prior to the civil war.
 
The Whore's Child and Other Stories, shorts by Richard Russo. The title story is excellent.
 
The Lottery and Other Stories, by Shirley Jackson. Strangely, I had never previously read the famous "The Lottery," which is on everybody's list of great American shorts.
 
Pig Earth and Once in Europa, by John Berger. Strong, atmospheric stories, essays and poems based on his experience living in a French peasant village.
 
Piles and piles of books full of "agri/cultural" essays and poems by Wendell Berry. I haven't read much of his fiction (yet), though people tell me it isn't as strong as the other works.
 
Piles and piles of books of essays by the Hudson Valley naturalist John Burroughs, and several biographies of him and critical essays about his work. I recommend two recent anthologies: The Art of Seeing Things and Sharp Eyes, both edited by Charlotte Zoe Walker, a professor at SUNY Oneonta.
 
Music Through the Floor, short stories by Eric Puchner. A nice variety of themes and points of view; funny, disturbing, touching.
 
Responsible Men, first novel by my thesis advisor, Edward Schwarzchild. A well-written tale about family life, organized crime, Boy Scouts and textiles sales.  Oh, and bowling.
 
Dry and Magical Thinking, a memoir and a collection of autobiographical essays by Augusten Burroughs. Very well-written. Hilarious and troubling stuff about a gay "metrosexual" advertising copywriter with a seriously screwed up childhood and his struggles with alchoholism.
 
Ironweed, by William Kennedy. I bought an autographed copy at a used book sale on campus. It cost me a dollar!
 
Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner. I'm glad to have read it (studied it, to be precise), but it's not exactly a pleasurable book. It's a tangled-up narrative and quite challenging.
 
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Truly worth reading (or re-reading as an adult if you read it as a youth). Interesting to see the extent to which Franklin's reputation still survives just the way he intended.  
 
Most of Thoreau's most highly regarded works, and many of Emerson's.
 
A little Walt Whitman, a little Emily Dickinson.
 
Melville's short story "Bartleby the Scrivener," which is vexing and highly nuanced ... not exactly enjoyable, but certainly thought-provoking.
 
Piles and piles of anthologies of great short stories: James Joyce, John Updike, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, many others.