A Conversation with Minton Sparks (continued)

PM: Now, on this record, along with your staple of Nashville geniuses--

MS: [laughs]

PM:--there were a couple of new ones, right? Abigail Washburn, for instance.

MS: Yeah!

PM: How did she appear in the mix?

MS: Well, Gary Paczosa produced the record.

PM: Oh, right.

MS: So that was another lucky thing--I'm just really unbelievably lucky.

PM: Yeah, Paczosa's another celebrity in his own right.

MS: Celebrity ringers! [laughs] I love that.

PM: [laughs]

MS: We originally did that piece with John Jackson. And Gary said it had a little too much "Eleanor Rigby" on it.

PM: [laughs] That's funny.

MS: [laughs] I'm so un-savvy in those situations--like getting whatever paperwork or release you need to use someone else's music. When we tried do it, we couldn't. And Gary was saying he loved Abigail, and then I met her and she's just so cool personally that we decided to try it.

PM: Yeah. I just interviewed her, as you know, and she's going to be in the same issue as you.

MS: Isn't she lovely?

PM: Yeah. And smart as a whip. Not every banjo player you meet is fluent in Chinese these days.

MS: That's true. That probably was extra interesting to you, having been there.

PM: It was, indeed, yeah.

MS: Did you learn some Chinese?

PM: Well, it wasn't long before I could say, [phonetic]  "Waw shi wan nee. Ching nee hu ee bay how ma."

MS: Oh, my gosh!

PM: Which was, "I like you. Can I buy you a drink?"

[laughter]

PM: So aside from Abigail, were there other new players in the mix this record?

MS: Yeah, Chris Thile was on the record.

PM: I thought he did the scariest thing in the whole record.

MS: He blew my mind!

PM: That cat is frickin' amazing.

MS: It was unbelievable. And again, that's all because of Gary. Chris had been working at his studio, and Chris had come out to a couple shows and said, "I want to be on the next record."

PM: Was he just sitting there improvising along with what you were doing?

MS: Yeah.

PM: Because that's what it sounded like. You'd turn a phrase, and he'd turn that corner musically, and God, I just got chills up my spine.

MS: Yeah. He said, "Just read it over and over." And he'd just listen. And then he totally--you know, he said, "Let's go."

PM: He's really something. I saw him one day practicing for an Earl Scruggs show, one of those extravaganzas.

MS: Yeah.

PM: And Bruce Hornsby hit the stage. And Chris Thile just pounced on him with his mandolin, and they just jumped into, like, "Hey, how you doing? You know this tune? How about this one? How about this one?" And they went through twelve or fifteen tunes and they were like two kids. It was very enlightening.

MS: I'm trying to remember everyone who played on this record. It was Steve and Chris and Abby and John and--

PM: John [Jackson] sounds really amazing, as usual, on this. On one cut, he'll be playing Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer," and then he'll pull out Blind Arthur Blake's "West Coast Blues." I mean, he pulls from a really wide range of sources, and then he'll make up a lot of stuff.

MS: Yeah. He kind of starts with a base thing, and then kind of goes all over.

PM: He's a magical guy. And he's your main accompanist, right?

MS: Right now he and I are out on the road, yeah.

PM: But, on this CD, there are some very important pieces on the piano. How will you gig? You'll just have to exclude the piano most of the time?

MS: John has come up with something else for those.

PM: Ah.

MS: We have sort of the traveling music, and then we had those other pieces on the piano because I love what Steve played.

PM: Yeah. And I mean, you've got such a rapport with Steve Conn.

MS: He's a good buddy.

PM: And he plays brilliantly with you. You get the full body Steve Conn--I think he's best when there's no bass player and no drummer, and he gets to be the whole sound. Because he can really do it from the appetizer right through dessert.

MS: Yeah. He kills me! On this record, he played what he was thinking about, and I would just start sobbing. It was like, "Oh, my God." It's so beautiful.

PM: Yeah, he's such an emotionally plugged-in musician.

MS: He really is.

PM: There are a lot of hot players in town who aren't what you call "emotionally available" pickers.

MS: Yeah.

PM:  I'll get called all kinds of names for saying that.

[laughter]

continue

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