HOMEGROWN MUSIC . . . AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENT!

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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 doit-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.

The important thing is that this is your 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, 18520 312th Ave. N.E., Duvall, Wash. 98019.

Although this column is usually devoted to topics that relate to "make it and play it yourself" music, I occasionally like to pass on information of interest to the hummers and toetappers in MOM's family who enjoy just listening to homegrown music. Generally, such columns take the form of record reviews, and focus on the releases of one or more small companies offering recorded bluegrass, folk, blues, or ethnic tunes. My hope, in presenting such roundups, is that after folks clamp their ears onto some actual good-time, down-home music, they'll feel the rhythm building up inside until they have to let it out themselves. And a whole new crop of homegrown musicians will be "sprouted"!

This time around, I'd like to tell you about Kicking Mule Records . . . a California enterprise that was started—almost a decade ago—by Stefan Grossman and Ed Denson. Stefan (a former student of Rev. Gary Davis, the legendary ragtime bluesman) had already published a couple of books on guitar fingerpicking styles at that time, and was planning to start a publishing firm that would produce music books with accompanying records. Ed, on the other hand, had experience in the business end of the music scene, through his work with groups like Country Joe and the Fish. After the pair began to work together, Stefan's original idea more or less reversed itself . . . and now he and Ed run a record enterprise that produces disks with accompanying instruction books!

Through its unusual record-and-book combination packages, Kicking Mule manages to satisfy both the "I'm just an audience" types and the "how do you play that?" enthusiasts. And while the KMR label originally emphasized guitar music and instruction, the list of offerings has since expanded to include both vocal and instrumental recordings backed by banjo and piano . . . as well as a whole series of dulcimer albums.

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