Homegrown Music... and Musical Instruments! Down-Home... On Records!

Image Gallery Marc Bristol and other Washington State grassroots musicians wail away on a gutbucket, washboard, and jug ( the axe is a gag). For Marc's original homegrown music column ? which featured gutbucket, washboard, jug, kazoo, musical saw, and spoons ""makin' and playin'"" instructions ? see MOTHER NO. 50. Inset shows gutbucket ""notch and bevel"" details.

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

by MARC BRISTOL:

Even homesteaders need to relax and enjoy themselves from time to time, right! And almost everybody these days wants to cut his or her cost of living. So how about a little do-it-yourself entertainment?

And that's what this column is all about. Down-home music that you can make . . . and the instruments (which, in some cases, you can also make!) to play that music on.

We may also publish some songs, discuss music as a potential home business, run discographies, bibliographies, and/or include whatever other do-it-yourself music topics you'd like to see.

The important thing is that this is a new column. If you like it, write to me and let me know. If you have some ideas for this feature, let me know that. I'm open to any suggestions or information you care to contribute. I'll even try to answer your questions about down-home music . . . but — both for the benefit of all MOTHER's readers and to ease my correspondence load — I'll deal with those questions, whenever possible, here in this column . . . rather than in personal letters.

Address your correspondence — for this column and this column only — to Marc Bristol, 31722 N.E. 180th Place, Duvall, Wash. 98019.

The television and radio pickings are awfully slim for down-home music aficionados these days. Both mediums have become so dominated by a mad search for high ratings in the major population centers ... that even the "country music" currently being broadcast is aimed at country people who now mostly lead citified lives.

Thank heavens, then, for record players and record albums. And a special thanks to the Great Spirit for the handful of small record companies which still release recorded collections of songs that any homegrown musician can enjoy getting his or her ears into! This column is devoted to a few of those small companies, starting with:

ARHOOLIE RECORDS, Dept. TMEN, 10341 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito, California 94530. The blues — both country and city — make up a large portion of Arhoolie's whopper of a catalog and the company is probably the recording mainline to this type of music. But Arhoolie also offers Cajun, Chicano, old-time country, contemporary folk, gospel, and a little jazz too.

Arhoolie's current hot artist is Clifton Chenier, who plays blues/rock (his style is called "Zydeco") on the accordian while his brother, Cleveland, backs him up on the rubboard (a homemade instrument that's basically the same as a washboard). Clifton has a very interesting sound . . . especially when he sings the blues in French.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print