I've been missing Buckeye since I attended for 3 years (1996-98) and then sat it out for another 3. This year i was determined to go again.
Getting into the hotel shuttle at the airport I was immediately greeted by name, by people I recognized but didn't really know. This experience was repeated many times over the course of the festival. I had come a day early (Wednesday) so as to settle in from travel and so as not to miss anything.
Finding my room, near the far end of one of the two "forks" of the hotel, I looked down to the end where there was a gathering that turned out to be Buzz Krantz, Joe Filisko, Richard Sleigh, Jimmy Gordon, George Brooks, Wailin' Wood and maybe one or two other folks. I stashed my stuff in the room and joined them in a stroll across the street for dinner. I hadn't been there for more than half an hour, and already I was surrounded by good friends and fascinating people!
A large number of people had turned up a day early, so things were already in full swing, with or without scheduled activities, concerts or seminars! Returning from dinner, I ran into Douglas Tate, Bobbie Giordano, Jack Ely, Marv Monroe, fjm, Beth Kohnen, Bob Meehan, Neil Graham from Australia, an amazing Irish player from Chicago named Jim Conway, his friend John Costa, Connie Capp (formerly Hassler) who used to run the Buckeye festival and Jim Scancarelli, who draws the Gasoline Alley comic strip with frequent harmonica references, and many others I'm not recalling. Others who arrived over the course of the event included Richard Smith and his amazing vintage harmonica collection, AHN publisher Al Eichler, John Hall and his Harp Depot travelling harmonica-store-in-a-trailer, singer-guitarist-concert promoter and peerless interviewer of harmonica players Cathi Norton, JR Ross (sans Snuffy), Rosco Selley, Allen and Alison Radcliffe-Holmes, Kirk "Jelly Roll" Johnson, Phil Caltabellotta, Frank Warner, Bud Boblink, Sandy German, Hohner harp tech and goodwill ambassador Johnny Bishop, Ben natahanson, Steve Webb, Steve Pruitt, SlideMeisters A.J. Fedor and Ingo Anderson, and overblow harp inventor Hank Bahnson and his partner in harmonica research and inventing, Jim "Turbodog" Antaki (do a Google search on "Bahnson HT" or "Antaki JF" and you'll see what heavy hitters these guys are in the world of medical research).
Frankly, these things get blurry, and others may well notice mistakes I've made in chronology, people, who ate what, the weather, what state we were in, etc.
Early on, I decided that the reason I was there was people, and that this would take precedence over concerts and seminars. I count as close friends many people whom I never see outside midwest harmonica conventions (I live on the west coast), and most of them I hadn't seen in three years!
Let's see if I can recollect some high points. If I had the program in front of me, it might stimulate my memory, but I don't.
A couple of personal moments for me involved, again, people as much as music. I'd been talking with Cathi Norton and Richard Sleigh about putting together a set of Canadian traditional tunes and songs for a concert at Buckeye or SPAH. We got together and went through a couple of them. Cathi was a little nervous about all those fast-tempo reels, and Richard had simply never played this variety of music even though it has a lot in common with the Irish music he's into nowadays. But the tunes came off nicely enough that they both feel like this is worth pursuing - they started to come up with enhancements to my arranging ideas, alway a good sign. Jim Conway sat in, and we did some Irish tunes, then listened to some some of the old Quebecois records I brought - a fascinating new experience for them. I was hoping to get with Cathi and play some of her tunes - she's a really fine writer, and I love accompanying her singing, but alas this never came to pass.
My onetime student Beth Kohnen was in attendance, and at a certain point she dragged me into a stairwell to demonstrate her progress in the two or three years since she'd come for a lesson. She played some solid Walter Horton-style harp, then started singing - Walter's Hard Hearted Woman, with the lyrics turned around (I'm a . . .). She sounded confident and expressive, and I figured she'd been doing this for awhile at open mics. Turned out this was a first-time ever cracking open of the closet door. I tried to get her to play and/or sing at the blues jam, but she was having none of it - not feeling ready. Too bad, the girl's got it going on. I hope she decides to brave it soon.
Seminars
The first of Ruth Friscoe's two beginning jazz seminars, with jazz jam following. I only caught a piece of the first seminar, but I really liked the way Ruth brought things down to earth and into manageable, non-intimidating bits of practical advice. I only caught the tail end of the jazz jam, which featured William Galison playing three tunes, getting better and better as he went, with CarolBeth True's trio responding in kind. Niice!
Joe Filisko's daily teach-in. This ran for two hours every afternoon, in a large-ish dining room. Each round table had an anchor person who would answer questions and teach whoever came up and asked a question. I noticed that some teachers, including Allen Holmes (pardon me, Radcliffe-Holmes) and Jim Conway, seemed to be giving pre-planned mini-seminars while others were responding to whatever was asked, which sometimes developed into a mini-seminar if enough people had the same interests. I ended up teaching a bass harmonica player how to play more bass line and less melody, his chromatic-playing partner a few things about the structure and placement of runs in an arrangment, a bit about blues chromatic, some about modes, learning to play the same melody in different octaves on diatonic, and a lot about the basics of breathing, tone, vibrato and bending, including an elderly guy with a cheap harp who I didn't think would get it but was bending notes in a few minutes - aiigght! Sometimes, looking at some of the gatherings, it was hard to tell who was the teacher and who was the student, so fluid was the interchange of knowledge and ideas. Joe himself didn't teach, instead gliding from table to table pouring water and making sure that people were matched up, and generally making things run smoothly.
Johnny Bishop's repair seminar. This was a good overview of the basics. Funny thing, though, most of the people in attendance were custom builders who knew everything Johnny was going to say and could have amplified on his remarks. It's a shame that more of the general type of player didn;t come - they could have picked up some vauable knowledge. I asked my bonehead question about riveting new reeds in place and learned some really helpful things.
Concerts.
I have to confess to missing pretty much all of the harmonica-group sets in favor of kibitzing. I heard later from people about the creative arranging that was exhibited (not to mention the playing - Phil Caltabellotta's speed and precision are a real marvel, while Al Smith and Judy Simpson's wonderfully creative staging and props can easily mask their sterling musicianship), and I'm sorry to have missed so much. After the fact, was intriguerd to hear about how Phil's group managed to sound much bigger than a trio through clever arranging, and I noticed that Al and Judy were stepping outside the standard repertoire with things like movie themes from Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. This last I found pleasing. Harmonica groups seem largely stuck in the repertoire and arrangements made famous by previous harmonica groups - pop tunes ranging from about 1915-1950 and light classics such as Ritual Fire Dance, Galloping Comedians, etc. Al and Judy are among the people freshening up the repertoire and breathing life into a medium that has spent far too long repeating faded glories of the distant past.
Wailin' Wood, backed by a lone acoustic guitar (sorry, the name is escaping me) delivered a set of amazing energy applied to southern traditional tunes. This is a guy who can barely contain himself and spends a good part of his time onstage running in place in tiny, percussive steps while whipping off blazing, fluid runs. I expected this to be a bit much for some of the senior members, but the next morning, they were the ones offering him effusive praise as we hung around in the hallway listening to Buzz trade one-upmanship lines with a little guy wearing a cap emblazoned with the motto "JOE'S GOURDS" who was slow of speech but devastatingly quick of mind. At the end of his set, Wailin' had the room standing and cheering at his pyrotechnics, but I found the most enjoyable part to be when he just settled into a groove and played rhythm chords.
Douglas Tate gave a fine concert of classical harmonica, accompanied by the amazingly versatile CarolBeth True on electric piano, in a program including part of an unaccompanied (with piano accompaniment!) Bach flute sonata, some Saint-Saens and a really nice piece by James Moody (who composed extensively for Tommy Reilly) that was written as the test piece for the 1967 world harmonica championship. It was in that 1960's style of polytonal classical writing that I'd forgotten about but was pleased to hear again. And it was the first time in the set when I no longer heard the instruments or the too-hot microphone on the harmonica and instead just heard pure music - nice!
Sandy German did a nice set with CarolBeth's trio. He included some of the harmonica-band chestnuts that, I'm sorry to say, made me wonder, why bother for the 9,999th time? But he also did some really fine things, including a cloud-nine rendition of Summertime, and a movement from Jacques Loussier's suite for flute and jazz trio. Loussier, like his compatrriot Michel Legrand, has a talent for pouring the jazz idiom into classical forms, resulting in a very French form of chamber jazz that I find appealing. Sandy has performed the complete suite before, but this time limited himself to one movement. Playing flute music on the harmonica can be very chancy - the timbres of the two instruments are so different, to say nothing of ornaments and other important minutae. But Sandy made it sound as if it had been written for the harmonica - no mean feat!
Madcat showed up wearing one of those multicolored brimless hats that suggest Africa, India - somewhere exotic. He and his whole quartet were garbed in this fashion. Three were alumni of the Dave Brubeck Quintet circa 1970 - Madcat, clarinetist Perry Robinson and drummer/accordionist/raconteur Muruga Bookvich, together with Richard Smith #2 (?) on bass. They played a wonderfully eclectic set which just happened to include some harmonica (Madcat played guitar part of the time) and again, I had to wonder how some of the more conservative members would receive this, but again it was greeted with enormous enthusiasm by all. Muruga disarmed everyone with his accordion playing that punctuated tales of growing up American in a traditional Serbian community (or was that growing up Serbian in America?) in Chicago. Later in the evening, he kept a small gathering rapt with his tale of inventing the drum he was holding, a combination doumbek and talking drum, and his travails in patenting it and getting LP percussion to market it. Still later, I came out of the mens' room to find Madcat chatting up my Bunch O'Guys arrangements to his bandmates, and these guys enthusing over it. Brubeck veterans, heavy hitters all, but open enough and with a sufficiently intact sense of wonder to be fascinated hearing about the activities of some harmonica fanatic they just met! But then, these are Madcat's guys. Anyone he plays with is not going to be one of those stuffy I'm-real-and-you're-not types.
William Galison's show was the closer, and the icing. Man, he just gets better and better. He's long been a fluent jazz soloist with a fine command of the harmonica, but the depth of his musicianship and the freedom and expressiveness of his flights just get better and better. At one point he sang a tune (But Beautiful, I think), claiming he'd never done that in public before. At first he was a little tentative, but he soon wamed up and inhabited the tune very effectively, in a sort of Chet Baker-ish, wispy sort of way. Then he called up Perry Robinson and Murugu to play with him. He and Perry did some dual solo duets that were really fine, two improvisers listening closely, two freedoms interwining and intensifying one another. William also brought Frank Warner and Buddy Boblink up to do some harmonica trio stuff on "over the Rainbow"). It went off well enough, but there was a little confusion about the harmonic progression. If they'd perhaps had more opportunity to work out the arrangement, it could have been really nice - Joe Martin's turns with these same guys have amply shown how good a harmonica trio can sound delivering jazz arrangments of standards.
One of the charms of Buckeye is its collection of off-program semi-official, unofficial and even clandestine traditions.
Groups of people coalesce and do crazy things, sometimes in hotel rooms and sometimes out in the open. They generally start spontaneously, but sometimes they bear repeating, and a tradition is born.
One of the strongest of these is the nightly blues jam. This started out with maybe 15 players sitting it a circle with one or two guitarists, anchored by Buzz, with everyone taking turns.
This year, it never materialized until the final night. Thursday, a trad/Celtic/bluegrass jam was supposed to happen, and did, but really only attracted those with enough confidence in that area to make a showing - Bob Meehan, Jim Conway, Richard Sleigh, Wailin' Wood and a few others.
One of the nights, a jam started but somehow morphed into Muruga's epic tale of the drum patent. Friday, the Ruth Friscoe's structured jazz-jam-with-trio (sort of part 3 of her seminar) morphed temporarily into a blues jam.
Finally, on Saturday night, post-banquet and concert, the real blues jam got under way. Only instead of a small group sitting in a circle, there was a battery of guitarists (Jimmy Gordon, Richard Sleigh, and someone whose face does present itself to memory) and a bass player (Richard Smith #2 from Madcat's band, a fierce jazz cat who had no qualms about gettin' down and grooving with the simple blues) sitting opposite a bank of harps players about 3 deep, and behind that an audience of all ages and hair tints. There were two video cameras trained on the whole proceedings. This was in a large dining room seemingly designed to muddle all sound into a mushy low-level din. Even though I had to get up early to fly home, I came and played a couple of solos, trying hard to telegraph large, simple gestures in a loud voice across the raging noise of the room. After awhile, I decided I needed to go pack, and so I started making my way around the room shaking hands and hugging. Half an hour later, I was still working through my goodbyes and the blues jam had broken up.
Winslow
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