Any casual string player this side of El
Paso knows of Dr. Banjo. In a era of entertainment that is known more
for its loud guitars and drum machines rather than musical substance,
Pete Wernick and his bluegrass associates have kept their music honest
and traditional - proving along the way that there are still musicians
who let their fingers do the talking.
On the behalf of XMFan, it is our pleasure and great honor to present to
you an interview with "Dr. Banjo" Pete Wernick.
XMFan: What is your first
significant memory of music in your life? Dr. B: I started listening to the
radio when I was about nine years old. There was a piano tune on there
that was actually a number one hit in 1955 called
The Crazy Otto by Johnny Maddox.
I thought it was the most incredibly happy, cool-sounding music I could
imagine - just a ragtime piano piece basically - that got displaced with
the Davy Crockett song as the number one hit. (Laughs)
I was really into Elvis, Fats Domino, and Webb Pierce the country singer
- I just loved listening to those three guys on the radio.
XMFan: At what age did you
realize music would be such a big part of your life? Dr. B: It continued to grow, but
at about the age of fourteen I started to actually play music. I grew up
in The Bronx, and quite a few of my friends were getting into folk music
at the time. Several of them had their own guitars and banjos, and I
happened to have a banjo in the house. One day someone showed me
something on it, and within a month or so I was playing music with my
friends at an easy level for folk music. I saw Earl Scruggs shortly
thereafter and really wanted to learn what he was doing.
I may have been a bit on the obsessive side when it came to trying to
figure things out - there was no written instruction to be found, and it
was definitely far from the video instruction days! Tape recorders were
just coming out as a consumer item. You'd mostly have to listen to
records over and over and then try to play along with them.
At this point music became my principal hobby, over things like sports
or any other things I may have been doing. In my senior year of high
school I got in to a folk band that gave me a chance to play, and
allowed music to become a real focus in my life.
When I lived in a college dorm there really wasn't the opportunity to
practice the banjo because of the noise, so I developed an interest in
learning to finger pick the guitar. It's something I still do, but just
below the professional level.
XMFan: Name a few artists past or
present you consider influences. Dr. B: My biggest influence by
far is Earl Scruggs because his style of banjo is such a complete style
of what bluegrass banjo should be. If you just learn what he did years
ago - which is no small trick - it really leads you in to what it takes
to play the bluegrass style. Others like J.D. Crowe and Bill Keith had
variations on the Scruggs sound that I found interesting. I played in a
band with Tony Trischka for a good while and was under his influence you
might say.
Two other people who were good mentors to me while I was still growing
up in New York City were David Grisman and Jody Stecher. I had a radio
show on my college station that was heard throughout the metro area, and
these guys would set me straight on anything I needed to get filled-in
on. I played music with them and still do sometimes. I've learned a lot
from each of them.
XMFan: You were active in the
local music scene during your college years at Columbia U (B.A.
and PhD in Sociology). At that time did you have an idea which
path you would choose career-wise? Dr. B: I had a very clear idea.
Around my third year of college I was getting interested in Sociology
and made it my major, deciding it would be my career. It took me a while
to find the kind of career you can even have as a Sociologist, because
they didn't teach you anything on that level - so I started a Sociology
Club just so we could invite in Sociologists just to see what the heck
it was they actually did. There are a lot of things that need
researching using sociological methods and techniques, which was the
career I was headed for.
At about the age of 28 I jumped to being a full-time bluegrass musician.
During the Vietnam War years there was every incentive to continue my
education because I didn't really want to be fighting over there, and my
Doctoral Program gave me five years of deferment. I then worked at
Cornell for a few years, and during that time had launched the bluegrass
band Country Cooking that was
able to make records. This helped us to get on the national radar -
luckily a new record company, Rounder
Records, started up right where we lived. We were the third album
they ever released. The record did surprisingly well and even became a
Book of the Month Club selection.
XMFan:
How and when did you meet your wife Joan? Dr. B: We met in Boulder in 1969
during a block of time between finishing my classroom studies and
passing my oral exams at Columbia. I traveled around the country and
visited friends. Even though she was very appealing to me I continued on
to California, where I became involved in things there - much of it
being musical. I had been keeping in touch with her, so in the middle of
the summer I decided to go back and pick her up. (Laughs)
When I drove from California back to Colorado was when we basically
started our life together.
XMFan: Would you tell us how
Hot Rize came together in 1978?
Dr. B: My wife and I decided it
would be nicer to live in Colorado and moved there in 1976. Within a
couple of years I had made a solo album and started Hot Rize, which
became my main focus for the next twelve years. I had known Tim O'Brien
for a good while and was impressed with him as a singer, though he was
playing fiddle or mandolin in a swing band at the time. Both of us had
used guitarist Charles Sawtelle on other individual albums. The three of
us decided to get together and play some gigs, and a few months later
joined with Nick Forster. The four of us would stay together for twelve
years and is the lineup everyone remembers as Hot Rize.
We just started locally, and knew this was a band that was good enough
to go places if we had an aggressive agent. I became that aggressive
agent - made a lot of phone calls, established ourselves locally, and
established contacts to get gigs back east. We really had a ball during
these early years and got quite a musical education in the process.
Though we weren't making a great deal of money we were enjoying the
ride, eventually having the opportunity to travel to 47 states and 11
countries.
XMFan: As a leading author of
countless music-related instructional books, CDs and videos, would you
tell us about your materials and whether you are still actively involved
in the teaching of music? Dr. B: On the heels of finishing
my Doctoral Dissertation I wrote my first bluegrass banjo instructional
book. It was a great break for me. A lot of people were wanting to learn
banjo in the early 70s thanks to
Dueling Banjos from the movie
Deliverance, and The Nitty
Gritty Dirt Band record Will The
Circle Be Unbroken. My book did very well because it really got
in to the basics of how to get started in the style - it gave a lot of
detail in breaking down the mystery of the three-finger banjo style.
It's not the easiest thing in the world to figure out on your own.
One of my larger pursuits right now is teaching what I call "Bluegrass
Jam Camps." I get so-called closet pickers together, people who are
intimidated or nervous about jamming - or have never done it at all -
and put them together. They have been wanting to play with other people
but feel like they wouldn't know what to do. I show them what do, and
get them jamming together almost immediately on easy slow-tempo stuff. I
help them realize it's easy enough to play music by just knowing a few
chords with your left hand, and your right hand technique doesn't need
to be anything special - just enough keep time together - and if you
change chords at the right time you are playing music. It's a great way
to start in with a foundation of playing music with others.
Many teachers have young musicians start by learning much harder stuff,
such as how to take a solo. Playing rhythm is really much more important
when you are playing with other people. I'm on a lifelong campaign to
change the way bluegrass music is being taught - you need to just learn
to play along, and when your abilities take hold you can begin to move
up from there.
XMFan: What's the scoop on your
current band The Live Five? Dr. B: You can find a complete
schedule on my website at
www.drbanjo.com. What I'm most excited about will happen later this
summer, when we return to the Walnut
Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. We've played there before
and will be featured there. We are still heavily based on the bluegrass
sound, even with a vibraphone and clarinet.
The very next week we'll be in Ireland and open for Earl Scruggs at the
Johnny Keenan Banjo Festival.
This is exciting for me because exposing new audiences to this band's
unique sound, and combination of instruments we have put together, is
groundbreaking.
XMFan: You were featured on XM a
few weeks ago as a performer at
Merlefest. Any thoughts on the Merlefest experience? Dr. B: You have a chance to
interact with people from other musical genres - they do have rock
bands, Celtic bands, individual blues musicians, a whole tent dedicated
to old-time mountain music. I have performed with just about any of
these people in one context or another. At Merlefest they love throwing
you together with people you haven't played with - half the performance
is playing with the band you came with, while the other half is being
grouped with different individuals from different bands.
It's amazing trying to fit everything there in to four days. When you're
done you realize everything you've done the past four days would have
fit well in to two weeks. (Laughs)
I have enjoyed performing every year at Merlefest since1988.
XMFan: Do you have any current
studio projects in the works? Dr. B: Joan and I are towards the
end of making our second album. We started playing music together 35
years ago and I'm really proud of the way we have grown together
musically. I'm especially proud of the material we do and the way Joan
sings it - she is a really outstanding singer. It's also challenging for
me because I have to take all the instrumental solos and do the
instrumental backup. XMFan: How did you come to play a
gig with Phish? Dr. B: Tim brought Mike Gordon to
one of our Hot Rize reunion gigs. I was surprised to know that Mike also
plays banjo, and we sat down a couple of times and traded a few licks. I
got invited to play with them at their show in Denver several years ago.
It's funny - you work so hard doing the things in your small musical
world, but every once in a while you'll get pointed to someone who's in
a much larger loop. When Phish invited me to play with them onstage I
was up in front of 19,000 people. The reception was unreal to me - I'll
just say if banjo players could get a reception like that on a regular
basis we'd be the rock stars. (Laughs)
It was very generous of them to bring me onstage.
XMFan: What are a few of your
favorite pastimes outside of music? Dr. B: I live on a beautiful
piece of property in Colorado and this is the time of year when it is
most beautiful. If I mow all the weeds on the same day the place looks
like an estate, comparable to a golf course. (Laughs)
It's a delight to take care of the land. I've been a father for the past
twenty-one years - I wouldn't exactly call it a pastime - but it has
been a very rich and rewarding part of my life. I'm a family man with a
son of whom I am very proud. Often when Joan and I are on the road we
will build some extra time in to our schedule, just to drive around and
see the beautiful scenery and get to know people. It's a great pastime
to have when you are a traveling musician.
XMFan: Which kinds of information
might fans find on your website,
www.drbanjo.com? Dr. B: I have loaded the website
with a lot of instructional material to include basic theories on what
to do, as well as what not to do. There's a whole page that references
information aimed at beginners, especially banjo players. How to find
other musicians to play with, the "ins and outs" of jamming, and other
topics of interest are available there for free. Anyone interested
should feel free to print the info right from the site. My webmaster
thought it would also be cool to include lots of photos and old articles
written about me, so there's a ton of that. We also have a schedule of
upcoming shows as well as recent news, such as our music being played on
Mars. (Laughs)
Anyone interested may also buy associated learning materials right from
the site. We even have a t-shirt that says, "Let's pick!" and shows
bluegrass instruments being played. If a person goes around wearing a
shirt such as this they may find themselves running into people who
pick, even some they may have known for a while, and didn't realize each
other played bluegrass. That's what happens with closet players. A
simple shirt like this can lead to lots of things that may otherwise not
happen.
XMFan: As a renowned teacher,
entertainer and friend, what bit of advice might you give to an aspiring
musician regarding today's music scene? Dr. B: Just last night I mentored
a young band of college-aged kids who are entering a band contest. I
showed them how to tighten up their singing and how to arrange their
songs a bit better. These particular kids were fairly well trained but
didn't yet have a sense of pouring their personal selves in to the music
- here were the words and they were singing them. They needed to get in
to what the words were about, then sing them with the feelings a person
would have if they were really living those words in their lives. Many
of these themes cannot just be recited, but need to be sung with feeling
while being in the moment.
I encourage both musicians and music fans alike to get in to music that
feels real. There's way too much unreality in this society. Bluegrass
music is honest music with its feet on the ground. I really like when
the music isn't about the costumes and gyrations. I think music should
sound great and mean something.
Luckily, XM Radio gives people lots of choices. Bluegrass music used to
be hard to find, but thanks to XM, the internet, better record
distribution, and the many bluegrass festivals held around the country
each year, everyone can connect. Just because it's not on TV that often
doesn't mean the music isn't great. The rich folks who run the media
such as TV do not run the bluegrass scene - the musicians and people who
fully understand the music run it. It's much more pure, sensible,
natural and hands-on than the plastic TV world, and all these violent
and vulgar movies. I can't recommend enough for anyone who reads this
interview to go to festival, and maybe even take that old guitar out of
the closet. See what it's got for you.
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