The following article appears in the March - May '98 issue of FolkNotes.

Best of the Common Threads Interviews: Something to Talk About

By Hamilton Cornell

The primary focus of the Common Threads radio show is music — an eclectic blend of folk and acoustic music. But this weekly show (2 to 5 pm, Sunday, WAER-FM, 88.3) also features a guests who visit with host Larry Hoyt to chat about their music and to offer views on the complexities and excitment of the musician’s life. Here are some excerpts from recent interviews:

MINDY JOSTYN

Q: You have an impressive resume of people you’ve played with, including Billy Joel and John Mellencamp. How did you get these phenomenal gigs with these national artists?

A: Totally by accident, not anything that was planned. I was living in New York City, fronting my own band in clubs in the Tri-State area. I was hired to be the harmonica player in a skit with Dolly Parton, who was hosting Saturday Night Live. It was the show’s bandleader, G.E. Smith, who hooked me up with Billy Joel, who needed a fiddle player for his gig on Saturday Night Live and for his tour. . . .

Q: Do you remember if you came to Syracuse as part of that tour?

A: Oh yes, absolutely, the Carrier Dome! I remember that gig because it was so huge! We always played to very big audiences, but that one in particular was to 40 or 50 thousand people. It was so big, it was abstract! I had gone straight from playing in bars, to a couple of hundred people, to suddenly stepping out onstage, the first time at the Centrum in Worcester, Mass., to a crowd of 20,000 roaring people, and it was freightening. Not in the performance, but just the power of that many people, and that much noise from a mass of people. When I first walked out onstage, I felt like I was going to faint. But, we would do this night after night, and I quickly got used to it. And as exciting as it is to perform that way, there’s really nothing quite like playing to a small crowd, because that way you’re making contact with individuals and you can feel more personal rapport.

BOB HALLIGAN (of Ceili Rain)

Q: How would you describe the music of Ceili Rain?

A: The music of Ceili Rain is, if you got the Beatles and the Chieftains in a room together, and John and Paul were in charge, and they said to Paddy Maloney: ‘Well we really like what you’re doing, but can you slow down it a bit?" And they beat him up until they slowed down the melodies so the average pop listener can perceive them. The conception, the basis for all this, is my wife’s fault. Linda Halligan had this idea; she said: ‘Bobby why don’t you combine your rock & roll and your pop stuff with your new love of Irish and Scottish traditional music.’ I said ‘Honey, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.’ And then I tried it a few months later to humor her and myself, because I think it was insinuating itself into my pores. I tried it and I’ve never been the same.

ROD MacDONALD

Q: As you travel around the country, do you find that radio shows like Common Threads are important for your music?

A: Not only is it important to me for my music, but I think it is also important to any community. There’s a certain philosophical thing about public-supported radio that’s very important to me as an artist. The vast majority of the music you hear on the commercial airwaves is what I would call "prepaid," top-down, somewhat on the level of advertizing. It’s marketed almost like soap. But on public radio, you hear what I call the "bubbling up music," the stuff that is not just the extended finger of some marketing company. [Public radio offers] well-thought-out programming from a different point of view.

CLIFF EBERHARDT

Q: The word "folk" seems to be used to describe so much acoustic music these days. Are there fans of traditional folk music who don’t accept acoustic singer/songwriters as being part of folk music?

A: Yes. We call ‘em "folk-nazis." . . . I did an interview last year on NPR, and I said that what I did was "American music," because I use all forms of music that are indigenous to this country—folk and blues and jazz and R&B and rock and pop, and I mix them all together. I think it’s sad when people can only listen to one type of music; it’s sad for them.

Q: If people want to buy your CD’s, in what section of a record store would they find them?

A: They’re all in the "folk" section for some reason. But I think all record stores should just be alphebetical. There are so many gray areas of what’s jazz and what’s blues and what’s folk and what’s rock and what’s traditional and what’s country. It’s ridiculous. When I was on the Windham Hill record label, they had me in the "new age" section in a lot of places!

SUSAN WERNER

Q: How long have you been playing professionally?

A: It depends what kind of music you’re talking about. I did a little stint in the world of opera, and just found I was in the minor leagues, but was not going to make the major leagues. I started doing the wedding band, society ball, Bar Mitzpah band kind of circuit, doing "Hot, Hot, Hot" and other things I deeply regret. It was about four years ago that this career began to take off and allow me not to have to sing "Come Fly With Me."

Q: Had you been writing your own songs when you were studying opera?

A: I had, but I didn’t take them seriously. (Susan continued in a stuffy accent): Because of course opera is the "great music, the serious music," and songwriting is a lesser art, in some people’s opinion. And temporarily in my opinion, but then I went to see a Nanci Griffith show, and she really changed my mind, because she was writting songs about Texas, and me being from Iowa, this great plains kind of epic song that really resonated with me. And I thought this is legit, this counts as much as "Aida." That’s art, sure, but this is art too, this counts, this works.

This page maintained by Dana Cooke. E-mail me at djcooke@aiusa.com.