Thanks
for granting me this interview! First of all, I would like to ask you about the
beginning of your path as a musician. How and when did you start singing and
making music? What instrument(s) did you first pick up?
Hello Maurizio. Thank you for this opportunity.
I remember when I found you on Last.fm over a decade ago. We had a lot of fun
on there. There were a lot of independent musicians on there.
I started learning piano as a kid. I always sang
because my mother always sang and came from a very musical family. I used to
cringe when she would sing loudly in the grocery store, but now I am so glad
she did it. We also camped a lot in the 60s and 70s with family friends and she
and her friends played guitar and sang around the campfire, so did all the
kids. They sang a lot of folk back then, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, etc. My mother’s
mother, my grandmother was a great musician, a pianist. She went to Indiana
University at age 16. Her father actually had died in the pandemic in 1918 being
a doctor in WW1. He died in France while caring for others. Her mother took in
boarders in Bloomington. They lived across the street from Hoagy Carmichael and
they were family friends. My grandma was a few grades behind him. You know, he
wrote some great songs. Well, it was the Depression and my grandma could not
afford the rehearsal fees for music school. So she went into English and
French. Later she taught French and English. She did sit in for some bands
during her time there. It has always been a great music school.
Before all that, when I was a teen, I was in a
lot of musical theater plays. It was a group called the Southern Arizona Light
Opera Company. I was a late grower and often played people’s kid sisters
and such. I was learning a lot of dance then and took voice lessons from a
great teacher, Rosemary Henderson. She taught me operatic singing but also jazz
and blues. She really wanted me to go into music. I almost did go to Indiana
university for music, but ended up at UCLA for theater. Then a very tragic
event happened while I was there in Los Angeles. I won’t go into it but I
dropped out a while and lived in Venice Beach there. There I was in a band,
Cheshire Moon. The main musician was Kevin Maxwell but he had been changing his
name so many times that I am not sure what his name is now. He was a gifted
songwriter and he would help write out songs I had in my head. This was when I
was 19 or so.
Then I went back to school in Arizona in
Creative Writing. Around then was when my friend gave me the guitar. I started
to write some songs.
Later on in my 20s, early 90s, I joined Barely
Bipedal. It was a good time for independent musicians putting out cassette
tapes. They would get around. I still could not play guitar very well. I just
liked to put songs together. But also there were many songwriters in Barely
Bipedal and we sang in multiple harmonies. I heavily relied on other musicians
to fill out my own songs, in Barely Bipedal, and later Project Bluebird. People
were kind about it. I was primarily a vocalist but had these songs in my head. I
also used to be in a drum group. We used to play in the park and at street
fairs. For a time I also helped someone make ceramic drums. They have a very
nice sound.
Could
you tell us a bit about Barely Bipedal? Who were the members and how did you fall
in with them?
Barely Bipedal was originally Jon Mount and
James Jordan. They both had come out of punk bands and then were playing folk,
country and gospel with an experimental edge. Then I ran into Jon. I had been
away awhile. He and I knew each other back in grade school. He asked me to come
sing with them. Then others joined, Eric Baldoni, Eric Royer, Kira Geddes, and
a guy named Pig Boy. We did a lot of recordings on cassette tapes which were
distributed through Toxic Ranch Records. We played in laundry mats, soup
kitchens, fundraisers, peace fairs and a lot of backyard punk shows. There is a
recent recording now on Bandcamp with James and Jon, the original Barely
Bipedal actually [https://compactdiscrecords.bandcamp.com/album/all-summer-been-lightnin].
The name Project Bluebird came out of a series
of synchronicities. Also bluebirds are beautiful. But I like Earth Folk too
because all the writers are from all over the earth. And it is sort of folk
music and we are all folks.
I loved
your drum piece dedicated to Leonard Peltier I found on YouTube, simple and yet
so evocative! How does music connect with activism in your view?
I know
you think some music really has a ‘healing quality’. Does that apply to most
music as a general concept or do you think some kind of music might be
particularly helpful in the most difficult times?
As for activism, Barely Bipedal was very
intertwined with activism. James wrote a song during the second Gulf War that
got around, “I’m Iraq in my mind (I just can’t Kuwait).
In the second generation Bush years many of us
in Project Bluebird had been writing in response. A lot of those songs I would
record very quickly and poorly and post them right away. A lot of them needed
to be re-recorded.
Now mostly what is left online are the better
recordings. And even then, some of my solo ones need some work. But I am just
leaving them there before I lose them all.
Yes about healing music. I do really benefit
from healers doing music. It can be all kinds of music and it can be protest at
the same time, and there many facets to healing, sometimes outrage, catharsis,
sometimes relaxing the limbic system so one can respond instead of reacting in
a way that is not helpful. Right now I am appreciating Esperanza Spalding, “12
Little Spells” you can hear most of this album on YouTube. Some try to compare
her to Bjork but really she is in her own category. There is a lot of jazz and
soul, poetry, and art that heals in her work, just beautiful. My words don’t do
her justice. She is a bass player. Also, well, Joy Harjo, our Poet Laureate
here, she was my professor in college and is still an inspiration. Her poetry
is wise guidance and she also puts poems to music and sings and plays
saxophone. She is a real healer. I think Poet laureates are more important than
politicians right now really. All the poets, musicians, artists...healers. Oh,
you know, I really like that healing tone music too, like singing bowls etc., there
is so much grief right now, we need the healing.
Well, thanks
again! Is there anything else you want to add?
I want to thank my friend Daniel Brudno for helping me with this music project. None of
this could have been accomplished without him. He is also a musician and has
studied flamenco. I was sick a lot and he helped me with everything, sort of as
my manager and helped with getting everything together. I am forever grateful
to Dan.
I don't know what I am by Earth Folk:
