A Conversation with Abigail Washburn (continued)

PM: And so the label spawned the idea, the friends were already in place. Where did the two producers come into the picture?

AW: Well, my friend Reid [Scelza] was the person who basically said, "You should be doing a demo. I have gear at my house, you can just come over." He was a person I met within the first week of moving to Nashville. And he said, "I've got gear at my house. I'd love to record you doing some of your stuff. You might as well get your music out there." He's constantly wanting to find people he believes in and record them and help them.

PM: I don't know Reid. Is he a player also?

AW: No. He went to Belmont, and just decided he wanted to be an engineer.

PM: So he's a young cat?

AW: He's young, yeah. He's in his twenties. He's much more influenced by rock and indie rock and alt-country stuff. Acoustic instruments is a very new thing for him, other than maybe embellishing some alt-country ballad or something.

PM: So he probably had to go get some microphones that were really good for acoustic instruments.

AW: He didn't, actually. We just used all the gear he had. It was a humble setup, but a good one. He did a really good job of preparing for it. We had tried out all his gear on the EP, so he knew what sounds we liked and what we didn't. So everything was on the plate. I knew these musicians. Reid said, "You've got to do this." And Nettwerk said, "We'd love to hear your stuff." And so just throughout all that, I said, "Well, I guess these are pretty clear signs and the pathway is open."

PM: Yeah. So how did Bela Fleck come into the picture?

AW: Well, he was sort of starting to dabble in the community of young musicians who are around. And we became friends. Then he was listening to everybody's music in this group of people. And like I said, I'm hanging with Casey Driessen, and a band, Blue Merle, and people like that. And we're just all here in Nashville and listening to each other and becoming friends. And he loved the music. He just really, really loved the music. I don't know if you recall that he did a bunch of work with Maura O'Connell.

PM: Sure.

AW: She's a great singer. And I think he was attracted to it in a similar way. He actually wasn't involved in the very beginning. It wasn't planned for him to be a producer. In fact, he wasn't really included in the process much, but it just became very apparent that he had a whole lot to offer and was really interested in being part of it, and so we said, "All right! Come on in."

PM: Right.

AW: So before the end we said, "You want to be a producer?" We split up our points a little bit more and gave him one.

PM: I see you're being booked by the infamous Bobby Cudd of Monterey Peninsula Artists.

AW: Infamous, yes.

PM: He's a fantastic ally to any artist.

AW: Yeah. I got interested in him through Old Crow Medicine Show. Those are some of the guys I also met when I first moved to Nashville.

PM: Oh, yeah. We've interviewed them as well. They're a really incredible bunch of guys.

AW: Ketch [Secor] and I are good friends at this point.

PM: Yeah, it was Ketch I spoke with--he's quite a character.

AW: Yeah.

PM: Before we get off into things Chinese, tell us, too, about your other band, Uncle Earl.

AW: It's an exciting band. It's all women, which I think is really great, and brings that kind of energy to the music. It's very much based in tradition, more so than--have you heard the album, Frank?

PM: The Uncle Earl album? No, I've not had the pleasure, but I hope to soon.

AW: Yeah, it's on Rounder, and it came out two days ago.

PM: And it's a Dirk Powell production, right?

AW: Yes. I was definitely starting to fall in love with traditional music before any of this happened, partly because I had gone to China and came back wondering about American culture, and Doc Watson popped up, and I thought that was great. So anyway, that got me turned on to it. I started really falling for the traditions, and felt a lot of inspiration in it for writing songs. I would end up going to these fiddlers' conventions on the weekends after work in West Virginia and North Carolina.

Before long, Uncle Earl became much more of a traditional band. As soon as Rayna Gellert became a part of the band--she's an incredible Appalachian fiddler--as soon as she became a part of the band it became a real priority for us to play old fiddle tunes and old ballads. We were doing a bit of that before she was part of the band, but she really brought an element of deep knowledge of that stuff. And all of us already had a love for it. So Uncle Earl is really very much about holding to the tradition.

But then we do write originals, and it seems like there's an evolution happening where all of our influences are in play. Because of the way we are, we play the music a certain way, and we're starting to create fiddle tunes with words that never existed, or to use sounds that we heard in other things put together in a new way. It's a really exciting band. There's a real string band revival going on right now.

PM: No doubt about it. And Nettwerk certainly has its share of that energy going on.

AW: It's very true.

PM: There are a number of bands on that label that come right out of the old-timey tradition in their various ways. And if traditions like old-time string band music are to continue with any vitality, the people have to take those forms and write new songs.

AW: Yep. That's the truth. That's sort of what's happening for us.

PM: Aside from Rayna, who are the other ladies in Uncle Earl?

AW: A woman named Sharon Gilchrist who plays mostly bass, but also some mandolin.

PM: Oh, I've seen her play. She's great.

AW: She is great. She's the mandolinist for Peter Rowan and Tony Rice Quartet.

PM: Ah, I wondered where she went. Okay. That's right. Yeah, because I saw her playing around town years ago with various people and wondered what became of her. That's great.

AW: She's wonderful. She did sort of hide out. She escaped to New Mexico for a while, and now she's sort of back on the scene with us, along with Peter and Tony.

Then there's Kristin Andreasson. She is living in Brooklyn, New York. She spent, oh, like seven or eight years dancing with Footworks Percussive Ensemble, going around the world and the country doing large dance groups, dance lectures and whatnot. She's a wonderful dancer. And she plays guitar and she sings. And she plays the fiddle. Very multi-talented.

And then there's KC Groves, and she actually founded the band, the first member along with one other woman. And she's based in Colorado, and she's a really great songwriter. She plays mandolin in the band, although she's a very, very good guitarist as well. And we all sing.

PM: That sounds like a pretty sharp outfit.

AW: It's very fun. We get up there and it's very high energy. There's a lot of dancing, sort of as a group, around the microphone. It's exciting. It's a very different sound than what I'm doing for my solo stuff. It's more traditional, a group of five women, very much equal, and we all have an equal share in what happens creatively and everything. And my project, of course, is sort of my brainchild, and it has a lot more modern elements, and of course, the Chinese. continue

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