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A Conversation with Abigail Washburn (continued)
AW: Well, it was an interesting way that that came together, too. I knew I was going to go back to China, and I called my friend Jon Campbell who's a really great freelance writer, and he's been promoting shows. He's involved in the School of Music of in Beijing. And I called him, and I said, "Yeah, I'm coming back over, and I have all these friends I want to see. I should probably play a couple shows, since I'm getting good enough to do that." And he thought that was a great idea, so he started putting together ideas for a tour. Before you know it, he was playing basketball with one of the assistants to the General Consul of the Beijing Embassy. And they said, "Oh, my gosh, Abby--if she's coming over, we'll definitely pay for her to do some touring out west, and universities." And so before you know it, I had a three-week tour.
PM: Holy jeez.
AW: I know. And I was very nervous about doing it all by myself musically, like having hour-long gigs, or even club nights where I had to play two hours of music.
PM: Solo on the banjo.
AW: Solo on the banjo.
PM: Oh, my God, what a nightmare.
AW: It sounded like a nightmare to me. So I quickly was like, "Well, how much money am I going to make?" I decided that it was worth it to lose the money to bring somebody along. So I asked Casey if he'd come. So Casey became my band mate. And I said, "Between Casey and I, we'll do okay. This'll be good." And I know some other musicians in China who sat in with us from time to time, and I thought for certain we'd pick some people up.
But then my friend, Amanda, again, who was the bass player on the album, who I met that first night, she said, "I've always wanted to go to China." She'd saved up a bunch of money. She said, "Can I just come, and every once in a while I'll play bass if it makes sense?" And I was like, "Heck yeah!"
PM: Wow, and she just paid her own way.
AW: She paid her own way and she was great.
PM: Unbelievable.
AW: And then her boyfriend at the time, Tyler, who's a really great guitar player here in town, he said, "Well, I'm not staying back here. I'm going to come too." He had saved a bunch of money playing a really great gig, and he came too. And so they paid their way, and we had a four-person band. It was great. It was really great.
PM: I've seen the both of them play with Adrienne Young before. They're really good.
AW: Yep, they're great.
PM: And both seem like super nice people.
AW: Oh, they're wonderful. It was such a fun group to travel around with. And it's very difficult traveling. I mean, the touring was the most intense I've ever had. All of them said it was absolutely the most intense touring ever.
PM: So your time in China so far, some of it's been gigging, but how much has been schooling?
AW: Okay, let me see--probably nine months has been schooling, and three months at Fudan University in Shanghai. You probably know that place.
PM: Yeah.
AW: And then the technical university in Chengdu in western China and Sichuan. I spent six months there studying Chinese.
PM: And you really worked the hell out of your Chinese, right?
AW: I worked hard. There are students who do and students who don't. And it was really, really important to me. And I spent two summers at Middlebury College in Vermont--
PM: Another great language school.
AW: Oh! It was great. I spent two summers doing a nine-week intensive program where you're not allowed to speak English.
PM: Wow!.
AW: And I did that on my summers off from being a political lobbyist at the state capitol.
PM: [laughs]
AW: The legislature met a third of the year, so I actually had summers off, so it worked out really nicely. One summer I went back to China, two summers I spent at Middlebury. And then I even took a six-month stint in between two sessions to go live in China and work for a consulting firm.
PM: Wow. What city were you living in?
AW: Beijing at the time. I really was like an ex-pat in Beijing, and I was loving it. But I ended up coming back. And it was shortly after coming back--I did one more lobbying session, one more session, and while I was back I was studying hard for the Chinese exams, which I had to go up to Montreal to take every couple of months. And that's when I did that road trip, the American Culture road trip, and I ended up staying in Nashville.
PM: The road trip that made you a musician.
[Here we talked a while about a Chinese instrument called a san xian (san shen), something I'd seen in a folk/classical production that reminded me of a gut string banjo.]
AW: Though I've not seen that particular instrument yet, those kinds of instruments are definitely going to be included on future albums. I think the direction this will probably all go is that Ben and I will start being more and more creative together about the banjo cello duet, and that will probably lead to a lot of material for albums. But also I would love to collaborate with some Chinese musicians on albums, too.
PM: Well, good. I hope that my brother and his producer and some of our friends will be some help to you.
AW: I would absolutely love that, yeah. I would love any opportunity to see where things can go in China for what I'm doing, and then also just generally what's happening in the music industry there, because I'm fascinated by it. continue
