Previous Interview with Stephen Wade
April 25, 2013
____________________________________New July 14, 2020 Interview
An
Interview with Stephen Wade
Conducted
by Joe Viglione
In a world where DVD and CD sales have fallen off and a new generation embraces
the Internet and free music, musician/author Stephen Wade has put together a
one-disc, information-packed description of the banjo with music and word that
is absolutely essential. Lou Reed wanted to develop a “film for the ear”
with his Berlin album, Wade has created an audio documentary chock full of
intricate performance and authentic perspective with its release on the
Patuxent Music label.
JV:
Stephen, you and I were first in touch when you interviewed Bobby Hebb for your
wonderful book The Beautiful Music All
Around Us: Field Recordings and the American Experience (University of
Illinois Press, 2012). The new album’s 44-page booklet is astounding and
gives some of these answers, but tell our readers, what was the inspiration for
the CD, A Storyteller's Story?
SW: Thank
you, Joe. The album marks the 40th anniversary of Banjo Dancing, a solo theater show that
I wrote and performed. The show centered on spoken word pieces set to the
five-string banjo, and accompanied by clog dancing and singing. Back in May
1979 Banjo Dancing opened in a small
Chicago theater for what was initially scheduled a four-week run. But good
fortune arose and that became a 57-week run, twice moving into successively
larger theaters. After that, I performed it in other cities, among them
Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage. That booking, likewise planned for three weeks
in full, turned into a ten-year engagement there, and Banjo Dancing became one of the five, longest-running, off-Broadway
shows in the United States. Then, after finishing in Washington, I continued touring
the show. In all, Banjo Dancing ran
pretty much non-stop for nearly twenty years. Of course, it stays with me still,
and its pieces have continued to appear in my concerts since those years. But
they also figured in my work long before the show began.
This album, A Storyteller’s Story, whose subtitle is Sources of Banjo Dancing, focuses on precedents that led to
that show. A couple of the tracks on A
Storyteller’s Story appeared in Banjo
Dancing, or else in its sequel, On
the Way Home. But their role here, like the rest of the album’s contents,
point towards persons and influences that set the show in motion. Behind it flows
currents long present in American theater, music, oratory, and literature.
JV:
What was "The Demo that Got the Deal" with Patuxent Records and how
did you get the green light to put together such an in-depth project?
SW.
Joe, I passed along your question to Tom Mindte, president of Patuxent Music.
Here’s his reply:
TM:
In 2014, I, along with co-producers Mark Delaney and Randy Barrett, produced The Patuxent Banjo Project, a
compilation release on Patuxent. The album featured forty-one banjo players,
all from the greater Washington / Baltimore area, each performing one piece.
They were accompanied on the recording by several well renowned old-time and
bluegrass musicians. Co-producer Mark Delany suggested Stephen Wade is a
participant and I immediately agreed. That recording was the occasion of my
first meeting with Stephen.
About three years later, Stephen
approached me with a recording of a performance at the Library of Congress
featuring himself and then recently deceased fiddler and folklorist Alan
Jabbour. After listening to the concert, I agreed that is should be released.
It came out in late 2017 on Patuxent, with the blessing, of course, of
Jabbour’s widow Karen. So “the demo that got the deal,” was actually the
previous release, Americana Concert: Alan
Jabbour and Stephen Wade at the Library of Congress.
JV: How long
have you been playing music - when did you start and what was your first
instrument?
SW: I began
playing this kind of music as a boy. I started out with a cherry red, single-pickup
electric guitar to play the blues in as stinging a way as I could muster. At
age eleven I became fortunate to have Jim Schwall of the newly established Siegel-Schwall
Blues Band become my teacher. The band was just starting out, still several
years shy of making their first album. Back then they were opening for a number
of the great blues performers who had migrated to Chicago from the Delta. So I
followed them around, as best I could.
I just loved watching the senior
musicians play. I’d stand outside, listening near the doorway or watching
through the front window of those taverns that I couldn’t enter due to my age. Those
players included Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, and Hubert Sumlin. I certainly
didn’t catch all the cultural references embedded in their lyrics and
intonations, but the audience knew.
You could see this recognition, this joyful if sometimes sly communication passing
back and forth between those great performers and their listeners.
Similarly, that mutuality, that sense of
community understanding, arose in churches too, such as when Mahalia Jackson
sang and the whole congregation swayed with her majestic presence. Again, I
surely didn’t understand it all, but I found the experience so stirring. Moreover,
this took place during the Civil Rights era. So much came together, this great
art and the moral imperative of that period.
I think back, for instance, of the
Staples Singers, and I remember that shimmering, tremolo guitar that Pop
Staples played, its call coupled with the chiming response of his family
singing back to him in refrain. They brought together sacred and secular realms
so effectively.
My impressions from those years also include
the great AM radio offerings; the sounds of that era’s popular music, from surf
guitar to Motown to the British invasion, let alone the folk music revival in
both its acoustic and electric dimensions. Of course, that era includes your
dear friend, Bobby Hebb.
Every Saturday, after my guitar lesson
with Jim Schwall, I’d hit the nearby downtown music stores. Sometimes the older
kids tested out a guitar. They would plug in and play a riff from a hit song, I
just thought that capacity as nothing short of Promethean. I wanted to do that
too; to grab this music snatched from the airwaves, and translate it right then
and there onto the guitar. I still feel
that way.
JV: The sound
quality on the disc is superb, how did you go about rounding up the tapes?
SW: Nearly all
the album consists of newly made recordings. Its three “archival” pieces
consist of a duet of Tom Paley and myself; another of Doc Hopkins and me
playing for a Voice of America broadcast; and finally, for the album’s closing
track, of my performing at Orchestra Hall, telling a story about growing up in
Chicago. As for gathering these older tracks, well, they all were enjoying a quiet retirement, preserved on magnetic tape and
shelved in a closet here at home, just slowly gathering dust.
I actually had forgotten about that VOA
broadcast with Doc Hopkins, but once I put it on, I realized right away that
I’d reached critical mass for this album. That formed the final part in the
whole.
*****************************
JV: Did
you record additional material specifically for the CD and, if so, where?
SW: It worked like this: I recorded most of the
album by myself, playing live in a studio located in Springfield, Virginia,
just outside Washington. I was fortunate in subjecting my performances to the
evaluations that veteran producer Mike Melford provided from his home in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, just as I benefitted from the on-site impressions of
engineer Mike Monseur who recorded me take after take.
Then, for those pieces where I planned
to have accompaniment, Mike Monseur sent the final tracks on to Tom Mindte at
his Patuxent Music studio in Rockville, Maryland.
There the other musicians contributed
their parts, playing along via headphones to what I had done. I had certain
accompaniments in mind, and talked about those combinations in advance with the
players, visiting with them if possible, and playing through those settings. As
it all unfolded, I kept conscious of both the particular songs, as well as
imagining the album as a single entity; tallying it up as a unified listening
experience
JV: Bear
Family Records in Germany specializes in 1950s, early 60s, Doo-wop, and
specialty genres. They’ve built up an audience of record buyers tuned-in to
those styles of music that the label is known for representing. Does Patuxent
have a similar marketing strategy?
SW: Again, Joe,
your question here is best answered by Tom Mindte. Here’s his response:
TM:
At Patuxent, we specialize in American roots genres. Bluegrass, old time, country
blues, jazz, and recently, some rockabilly artists, are on our roster. We
promote many aspiring young artists on the rise, as well as veteran musicians
who still have something to say. As of this writing we have released 343
albums, most recorded at our studio in Rockville, Maryland.
The marketing strategy for all music is
changing. As traditional sales tactics for music, such as sales of compact
discs are drying up, new revenue streams are opening. There will always be
those who are unwilling to pay for music. Since the advent of the tape
recorder, folks have recorded radio broadcasts and concerts. Ironically, a
large body of music that would have otherwise been lost has been thus
preserved. The unauthorized use of intellectual property can’t be stopped, so
we have to rely on honest music fans to keep us afloat. One new revenue stream
that has been a great help to labels and artists alike is subscription radio,
such as Sirius/Xm. A portion of the subscription fees paid by their customers
is passed on to artists and labels. Income from that source has, in the case of
Patuxent, been more lucrative than traditional hard-copy album sales.
JV: Are there
libraries and museums that cater to Americana that help spread the gospel of
the banjo...and do you perform at some of them?
SW: There are
any number of institutions that embrace traditional music, be it the Bluegrass
and Old Time Music Program at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City,
or the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago to name but two. Interest in
this music surfaces throughout the country. I don’t really think of myself a
banjo evangelist, but there’s no denying its signal role here.
Most recently, that is, shortly before
early March when everything shut down due to the pathogen, I did an album
release concert here in Washington at the Institute of Musical Traditions. It
was a wonderful night. I played two ninety-minute sets anchored in this
community’s history and just built out from there. I put together a slide show
that I coupled with narration, which in turn, framed songs, stories, and tunes
related to A Storyteller’s Story.
Here’s a description of another such
show I’ll do, pathogen permitting, next April. Originally, it would have
happened this past spring. Again, I’ll center the program in historical
circumstances unique to that locale and proceed from that point outwards:
JV: Where do
you find the most responsive audiences to the music that you love?
SW: That’s
always a surprise, and ever shall it remain so. I don’t ever know ahead of time
who may be most responsive, and I welcome that unpredictability. My job lies in finding the audience wherever
they might reside. As my late friend, singer-songwriter Steve Goodman, once
told me, “It’s not their fault they came.” So in that wry insight so
characteristic of him, Steve taught me something both important and
unforgettable.
I often localize my concerts, drawing,
if only glancingly, on histories specific to a given place, and in that sense,
bringing topicality to the material. But the larger need to somehow find a
route from the stage to those seated in the house marks the performer’s
principal obligation: to invite interest, and if to instruct, then as Alexander
Pope enjoined, then also to delight.
All those years of Banjo Dancing demonstrated, at least to me, that it centered not
just on the content of the work, but its communication. As my late director,
Milton Kramer, repeatedly told me, “Entertaining is an honorable profession.”
JV: As we
revere some of the great musicians that have played and recorded, what do you
think people 200 years from now will think of this package? Historical, new and
exciting, or both?
SW: Joe, you’ve
asked a question that I cannot answer beyond addressing my own work within the
album, of knowing what went into it. I can’t speak of the album’s reception now,
let alone 200 years from now. That lies for others to judge, but I can take
responsibility for its contents and crafting.
I see this album as a whole, as
something that unites its audible parts with its written dimensions. As you
know, there’s a variety of sounds present here, stemming from the songs,
singing, arrangements, and monologues. It also includes some older pieces
recorded in years past. Taken together, it’s my hope that the album notes, both
the opening essay and the song annotations that follow it, set these
performances in context, identifying their larger frameworks.
JV: How was the
1979 day at the White House and what transpired?
SW: Soon after Banjo Dancing opened in spring 1979, the
American Theatre Critics Association held their annual meeting that year in
Chicago. That this gathering even took place came entirely as a surprise to me
and was certainly unanticipated. One upshot was that the lead reviewer in Time magazine attended the show and
wrote it up. That life-changing review in what was then America’s biggest
magazine made its way to the White House. One of the pieces the critic
mentioned was my performance of the second chapter of Tom Sawyer, when Tom cons his friends into whitewashing the fence.
In that fabled scene, Tom finds a way to transform the drudgery of work into
the liberation of play. It also includes a passage where his friend Ben
pretends to be a steamboat.
For the Carter White House, soon to
voyage on the Delta Queen, and looking ahead to a Labor Day event to be held on
the South Lawn with a thousand of the nation’s labor leaders and their
families, that Time review of Banjo Dancing apparently combined themes
already present. As I understand it, Rosalynn Carter read the piece and that
set it everything that followed in motion.
The White House got in touch with my
office and then sent Gretchen Poston, who served as the Social Secretary of the
First Lady, along with two other staffers, out to Chicago to see me play.
Essentially I think they wanted to confirm what the Time review had claimed on my behalf. At that point, literally
right after the show they attended, the plan sealed. I would fly out to
Washington after my Sunday night curtain on Labor Day weekend in order to play
the next day at the White House. By then Hurricane David hovered near
Washington, but fortunately it never made its way there.
That night, September 3, 1979, President
Carter addressed the crowd and then introduced me. I played several pieces,
including the White House’s request that I do that Tom Sawyer whitewashed fence
excerpt about work and play. It fit the Labor Day theme as well as implicitly
recalling the steamboat trip the First Family had recently taken. After that, I
played another set of tunes, and so the evening ended.
The President then called for me to meet
him and the First Lady. He told me how they’d been reading Huckleberry Finn to Amy, their daughter, at bedtime. They were most
warm and friendly.
The whole experience remains
unforgettable. My dressing room had previously been used by President Roosevelt
during wartime, and I remember its furniture included Thomas Jefferson’s ink
pot and writing set, and a highboy that had once belonged to Benjamin Franklin.
All kinds of tiny dramas as well as
delights arose. These included my main banjo’s head having broken overnight
while flying in, requiring me to play my back-up instrument for the
performance. That really was not an
ideal time for something like that to happen.
Yet even more I remember after a
mid-morning sound check, just wandering on the White House’s South Lawn.
Members of the National Park Service were putting up picnic tables, and they
said I could walk around. I looked at the Washington Monument from an angle I
knew I’d never see again, and just for those moments, that beautiful view and
that feeling I had roving those hallowed grounds—this stays with me.
JV: Your work
is so in-depth that I am totally impressed with the detail. What do you
have planned next?
SW: Well, I’m
writing another book. Apart from that, I continue learning new songs and work
on my playing and singing. In fact I’ve got a singing class today. I just hope my
teacher won’t squelch the volume during our Zoom session. I’ve got two hours of
brand new old songs to play for her.
Thank you for
your time, Stephen
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