John McCutcheon
Phone Interview
1998

I'm going to say "Hi John."
Hi.
I think we described you as a folk singer and you were talking about how many other things that you've done and the envelope in which you are included as a folk singer. Want to talk about what you're doing and what you've done?
Well, what I've been doing is tromping around the world going on 30 years now playing music of all sorts...I started off primarily doing traditional music back in the very early 1970s. I was living in the Appalachian South learning the banjo and fiddle, different kinds of instruments and musical styles from...in the field directly from the sources, that was what excited me. What made it especially exciting for me was the idea that this wasn't out of context, there was music going on in people's communities, and how music fit into community was the most interesting thing to me. When I started writing my own stuff in the late 1970s it still maintained that kind of rootedness that is the hallmark of traditional music. With an ear for a good story and the notion that this isn't just art for arts sake but rather it actually deals with real people and real things that are happening in real life. And from there, you know, a kind of ecumenical view of ballads and political music and instrumental stuff, stuff for all ages and all purposes. It gave me a lot of avenues, especially when I started recording in the 19..in the mid 1970s, I'm at the point where now 25 albums later I've done a bunch of albums that are traditional music. In the last 15 years or so I've mostly done original stuff, stuff that, you know, now in the 1990s is called singer-songwriter stuff and just completes a Four Seasons cycle, just yesterday as a matter of fact, that has been briskly successful, been up for 3 consecutive grammy awards.
That's the childrens...
I forge a line between adult music and childrens music that is something that people haven't really done before, so it's been fun. Being involved in the business for about 30 years and seen all the changes that's gone through, and still feeling that I'm in the middle of my creative stride.
I have...I think the first ones that I have are like Wry Straw.
You're one of dozens of people.
Dozens?
That have that album. I don't even think I have that album anymore.
Wow, I guess it's a collectors item. And I have a couple more...How Can I Keep From Singing?
Oh yeh, that's my first album. 1974.
It's beautiful.
Thanks! Those albums were on a small label out of eastern Kentucky that miraculously is still going. It was started by a bunch od us who were interested in keeping music that was being created in the Appalachian area still controlled by people in the area rather than what they have typcially done, say, in Nashville, is take the music off and change it to make it more palatable to a quote mainstream audience. We were primarily interested in marketing directly in the region. And we're lucky enough to have people in other parts of the country really interested in the fact that this was real stuff going on. So you have some of the early relics...albums that I don't even own anymore.
Wow...have they come out on CD?
No, not those, no. The earliest album that I have out on the now defunct Front Hall label. In fact it just came out. Rounder, whom I've been with for the last 15 years, recently put out an album that came out in about 1980. So everything prior to that is in LP and cassette form.
Do you still play dulcimer, do you go....
Oh yeh.
Have you branched out into more instruments?
Well, the dulcimer is the last instrument I learned to play.
Really?
And that was 20 years ago. No I've...prior to that and still today I play piano, fiddle, banjo, autoharp, and guitar, and of course the hammer dulcimer; that's the arsenal that I bring with me when I go on the road.
You seem to have got your...you were talking about Grammies and being nominated for Grammies and that's in Childrens Music, right?
Those were...yeh, the Four Seasons were in that category, right.
I think we just got an autumn one in.
Yeh, that's the most recent of the Four Seasons, and spring's songs are the last of the Four Seasons. We just put out...the studio mastering yesterday.
What's the difference between...I think when I hear your children's music it seems like its music for adults as well. What's the difference between your childrens music and adult music?
Well, I think it's actually more difficult to write kid stuff that is designed to be intergenerational. When I did my first family album, back in 1983, I was a new father, and I just figured I'm going to make this album for my son. And when I sat down to do it, I listened to what else was out there in the field of childrens music and I was pretty apalled by it...If it wasn't something that was made by cartoon characters it was unmusical and unusally condescending which doesn't exclude the stuff that was made by cartoon characters. OK, so the stuff I would like to make for my son doesn't exist so I have to figure out how to do that. And I decided I was gonna use the same budget and the same musicians and the same approach to the music, which I felt was characterized by playing your best music you possibly can and having a lot of respect for both the music and the listener. And I also wanted to make it something I could stand to listen to. So I made an album Howdja Do? Which ironically was my first album for Rounder, washed my hands and said "OK, I've done my childrens album." And much to my amazement it turned out to be the best selling childrens folk music album of all time.
Really?
It took me about 5 years to getting around to doing another one, and then there was another 5 years hiatus and then I did that, and the idea of this Four Seasons cycle came up when my friend Si Kahn and I decided we wanted to invent an excuse to hang out together and said "Well, let's write together." And it turned out to be fun and prolific and successful. So ...my approach though is not much different than doing non-children's albums, I mean it's, uh, when you write you want to give a...you're intentionally writing so that lots of different people can have a point of entry into a given song, so you want it to be accessible to someone as young as 5....and yet palatable and enjoyable to someone who's 55. And the balance that I found works is, you just get the best musicians you possibly can and turn them loose. And you don't talk down to the kids, and you make it fun and you make it inventive and that's been the most enjoyable thing about doing those albums because kids and parents come up to me and say "Yeh, when we're on a family trip, your albums are the ones that settle the argument about what we're going to listen to together...and that was my goal.
OK! So I think I had read an interview or something where you were backstage at the Grammy awards. What's that like?
Oh, well, the grammy's are a combination fashion show and convention and an exhibit of all the successes of music, too. Plus it's a free party if you're a nominee. I've always felt when I've gone that I'm a bit of an interloper, that someone's going to tap me on the shoulder and say "Excuse me John McCutcheon, but we know you don't really belong here." It's especially interesting being in the independent record industry. But it's a terrific honor to have your peers honor you in the form of giving you a nomination as one...at least from the list they're presented...one of the 5 best albums of this particular genre. But it's a great deal of fun. You get to go to New York or Los Angeles and hang out and being as I live in a small town in Virginia its fun to go to those places, and luckily there has been an upswing in the representation of independent artists in grammy representation, so you know, you get to hang out with your friends. You get to see Pete Seeger and Bela Fleck, and Allison Krauss, Ani Di Franco, the people you get to see piecemeal on the road. But they're all together at the Grammies, so...
Do you think this kind of music is becoming more popular nowadays?
Well, I think the more opportunity people have to hear it, the more that they like it. And that is really the job of people like you, really. I mean the people who, through the public airwaves are able to bring all kinds of music into people's lives rather than the typical 12 songs 5 times a day that most radio stations end up playing...and it's the glory of alternative radio that you really do have an alternative. And I've always maintained if you put all the music that there was side by side as people realized that there was more than 12 songs out there at any one time, and that there are many great songs that are old songs...I'm not talking a hundred years old, I'm talking 5 to 10 years old that are still worth hearing and worth singing and worth taking into your life in profound and dynamic ways, that all music would benefit from the kind of eclecticism. So whether it's getting more popular, you know, who's to say. If you buy into the success paradigm that history has given us...how many records does it sell, how many times is it in rotation, how many grammies has it won, how many tickets are people buying to see these people, probably not. But if by that you mean, are there more people out there playing music now, inspired by hearing other people playing this, are there people sitting at their kitchen tables writing their own songs, are there people who are going to dances, are there people who are demanding that music like this be on the radio, supporting community radio stations, yes, I think it is more popular because it is...folk music belongs to people. It hasnt been purchased by people. It's something that they already own. In that regard I think it is getting more popular.
Now I think that the last album that we have here aside from the childrens album was Sprout Wings and Fly.
Oh yeh.
And I saw ads for it that says "John McCutcheon goes back to his roots!"
Ha ha.
How did you decide to do that album?
Well, the ad, which I haven't actually seen, is not far from wrong. In the last 10-15 years I've primarily been doing original music of my own. Sprout Wings and Fly is not without some of my own original things. But I had been primarily working with a bunch of guys who are great contemporary musicians and these albums prior to Sprout Wings and Fly had been a real potpurri of different styles, so in some respects Sprout Wings and Fly was a statement I felt I really needed to make to the people who tend to view artists lives in a linear fashion. "OK, well, he's plugged in, he's got the big sound going in his music now, much more contemporary, much more acceptable, that's where John McCutcheon's music is right now," in fact, I don't care to look at my work and my career in a linear fashion at all. Because I like Jimi Hendrix doesn't mean I can't like Roscoe Holcomb. Because I like George Jones doesn't mean I can't like Ani diFranco. In fact I like it all. In fact I have benefit of my job being able to travel all over the world, when I come back with all kinds of ideas and playing traditional-based music is one of the all-time great passports into getting to playing the heart and soul of another country. When I go to Australia people take me out to see Aboriginal musicians. When I was in the Soviet Union in 1991 I was going into communities and they would take me off to see old shaman drummers and people who played and people who played harrow blades, you know, and played drums on the bottom of plastic bottles....and things like that. It was people making music in the most elemental ways possible, And so when I came home, all these ideas sort of floating around in my head, it gave me a big palate from which to work. And Sprout Wings and Fly is an example of the result of that, you know, digeridoos playing with banjos and mountain dulcimers and talking drums...world music at its most elemental is the way I like to think about it.
OK, well, we certainly appreciate you talking to us.

write: gennett at gorge dot net

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