A Conversation with Danny Barnes (continued)

PM: Do you agree, then, that you're kind of equally well-versed and equally interested in both of those approaches to the banjo?

DB: I'm not very good at assessing what I'm doing, as far as a qualitative assessment of what I'm doing, but I do know that I'm very interested in both those styles and try to work in those worlds, because a lot of my knowledge and approach has come through necessity, for making records. When you get tired of making a record you may play banjo on somebody else's record, and they say, "What else can you do? That's not really working." You've got to kind of come up with something.

PM: Wow.

DB: So, to make the kind of records that I end up making, when I get hired to play in a recording session, I have to have a few bags of different things I can play in, and be able to mix and match whatever I do to fit the piece. Because sometimes the producer will say, "That's just a little too busy, can you play something more rhythmic?" Or then maybe they'll say, "Can you play half of that?"

PM: Right, the famous request.

DB: Yeah. Or, "is there any way you can kind of propel this a little more" or--

PM: Or a little less.

DB:--"that tuning is--can we play in a different capo, different tuning?" So you just have to be able to think on your feet.

PM: Have you noticed--it's just come to me when you said, "Can you play half of that"--there's a lot of recordings across many genres that include a banjo, but frequently it's not someone that plays the banjo.

DB: Right.

PM: And they're just kind of playing at it.

DB: I know. That's really odd. I've noticed that, too.

PM: They're playing at it just to make the banjo sound, but they can't play enough to get in the way, they just pick something really, really simple for the sound.

DB: A lot of stuff on TV is like that. They'll have basically a rock type song, and they'll have a banjo in there just off to the side, just to remind you that it's on the country station or something.

PM: Yeah, even in Nashville, Tennessee--

DB: That's what I'm saying, that's what I'm referring to, yeah. But there are some great banjo players here in Nashville, unbelievable. That guy Mike Snider, that guy is amazing. He plays on the Opry.

He's an awesome banjo player. Eddie Adcock lives in Lebanon, but he's in the area, man. These guys are--Charlie Cushman, and--I could sit here and name twenty guys who are just unbelievable banjo players that live here.

[laughter]

PM: Is this the greatest concentration of good banjo players in the States or--

DB: It's the greatest concentration of banjo players that work, that can tour and record and are well-versed in also the commercial aspect of playing. I mean, there are a lot of musicians all over the place, but they may not understand how to do a session, or maybe not how to get your banjo to San Francisco to play a gig, or be business-minded.

PM: Real world banjo players, yeah, right.

DB: For instance, it's a trick to get your banjo to London in one piece.

PM: Rock-it Cargo.

DB: Right, you got to know how get it there.

PM: So on the new record, on a tune like the title tune "Get Myself Together," it sounds like a tenor banjo. [The four string strumming kind called to mind in general by tunes like "Sweet Georgia Brown."]

DB: That is a tenor banjo.

PM: And you're playing it with a plectrum. [A flatpick.]

DB: Yeah. I'm very interested in those guys that play tenor banjo. I'm really interested in that stuff, like the guy Harry Reser, and the guys that can really play.

PM: Right. One of the greatest rhythm instruments ever, a tenor banjo.

DB: Yeah. And that instrument also is in some of the George Gershwin stuff.

PM: Right.

DB: And I believe it was in some Kurt Weil music. And I believe Paul Whiteman actually thought that the tenor banjo was like "the modern instrument."

PM: [laughs] Oh, God. Well that didn't quite pan out, did it?

[laughter]

DB: No.

PM: [laughs] "The modern instrument." Well, one time mandolin orchestras were all the rage, too.

DB: Exactly.

PM: Yeah, I mean, we won't live to see it, but someday they'll say that about guitars--"Remember when everybody played the guitar?"--

DB: Yeah.

PM: "How ridiculous." So I haven't even looked at my questions since we sat down.

DB: You got any good ones in there?

PM: Now, how would you contrast the joy involved with doing your own band or being in an ensemble as a sideman, as it were?

DB: Well, somebody once asked Yasha Heifetz, "What's the hardest thing that you can play?" And he said, "It's all hard." It's all challenging. I'm really lucky that I never get bored with my job. I'm always doing different things. I make these really weird records, and then I work some on really commercial records. And I work on various strange things, and stuff kind of right down the middle. The way they're similar is you just want to be great, you just want to--from my perspective, I just try to do a great job, whether I'm playing a solo gig or making a solo record, or being in somebody else's band. But one thing I like about playing with other people--especially with the people that I've been fortunate enough to be associated with, is it's such a learning thing. And for me, the musicians that I really respected, they just kept getting better and better.

PM: That's for sure.

DB: Some guys, they develop something, then when they're about forty they just keep doing the same thing. But that's one of the things I really respected about John Hartford, like with his violin playing, he just got better and better and better, and he kept practicing and working. Like you'd call him on the phone, and you'd hear the metronome clicking. And he's sitting there at the table.

PM: Really?

DB: Yeah. He's sixty years old, and he's practicing.

PM: Really? Sixty years old with a metronome on.

DB: Yeah, yeah, at the table, playing something over and over and over. You'd go over to his house, and he's got his little thing at the table, a metronome, and sheet music, and he's learning.

PM: And he was learning longhair stuff, or what? What would he learn?

DB: Everything, everything, yeah. He learned to write music and got really into writing, and was really good at scripting. He got into transcribing things. But it's guys like that who just keep getting better and better. And that's the way Bill is, too. I mean, Bill is constantly working on his music. He could just kind of sit back on his laurels or whatever, and he doesn't. He keeps working on music.

PM: He's all over the map--

DB: Yeah.

PM:--and the map of the entire universe, not just the world.

DB: One time I had a conversation with him, and we're both middle-aged guys, and we were saying, "Is there enough life left to do all this?" Because I mean, we talked about, "Oh, man, wouldn't it be really cool to work on a Scirabin piano thing, and do it as a duet with guitar playing the low side and the banjo playing the high side?"

PM: [laughs]

DB: "Oh, man, that'd be really cool. We should work on that." And different things like that. And then we're thinking, "Man, is there enough life left to do this?"--and you just can't think like that. You just have to keep moving.

PM: Yeah, take a stab at it.

DB: Yeah, you just keep moving.

PM: Do you know that record he did with the Intercontinentals?

DB: Yeah. That's a cool record.

PM: Incredible.

DB: We played some of that music on the last tour in July of--I was out with him for a month, and we played a lot of that music.

PM: I got to go back to that. That's just amazing. Oh, this is an old quote of yours, but I was really struck by it, you said: "The reason why it's soul crushing is simple, the supply and demand curve is totally fucked up."

DB: [laughs]

PM: "There's way more supply than demand. You can't blame people for capitalizing on it, because that's the nature of the beast. But there are way too many people doing it, there are too many clubs, there are too many bands, and not enough people that are interested in it, period."

DB: Yeah. I mean, do you think that's fair?

PM: I think it's unbelievable.

DB: Yeah.

PM: I mean, to me it put 1,000 conversations that I've heard on the subject to bed in a few sentences.

DB: Yeah.

PM: I think I'll just carry that around in my wallet. "Hey let's crystallize this conversation, just read that. Okay? That's the whole thing right there."

DB: [laughs] Well, you just have to grasp supply versus demand, I think that was in Economics 101.

PM: Yeah, right, the music economics that we all should have taken.

DB: I think it's true with pitching, too. Like I think there are too many baseball teams. Pitchers used to better, I think. I don't know. But I think there are too many baseball teams.

PM: They're not as special as they used to be.

DB: Yeah. And they don't play as often as they used to, either, in the games. I mean, Walter Johnson used to play all nine innings.

PM: Right. It's rare to see a person go the distance anymore.

DB: Yeah. Even five or six innings is a long time. And they specialize in closing, or middle relief, or whatever.

PM: Right.

DB: I think there are too many baseball teams, and that sort of dilutes the whole thing--that's what actually got me thinking that about music--John Hartford told me one time that in the '70s there were 1,000 bands traveling around the country, making records and touring. And now, there are 1,000 bands in every state doing that, or trying to do that, or whatever. And the market is smaller.

PM: And the market is smaller.

DB: And the distribution is smaller, the channel of distribution is much smaller, too.

PM: So it's not a smart way to go, but if you have to do it, you have to do it.

DB: Yeah, if you got to do it.

continue

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