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Spring 1999(Fifth Anniversary Issue!)ARTICLES
COLUMNS
TUNES
ARTICLE EXCERPTSKilBride: Brothers In HarmonyBy Michael SimmonsAlthough Welsh fiddling dates back to the 17th century, it is still an undiscovered style. Even in Wales, Welsh fiddling is overshadowed by the more ancient vocal and harp traditions. But thanks to the efforts of musicians like the KilBride brothers, the secret music of Wales is becoming more widely known. The KilBride Brothers are a trio based in Cardiff in South Wales. Daniel, the eldest, plays guitar, and his younger brothers Bernard and Gerard both play fiddle. Their first CD, entitled KilBride, was released in 1997 on the Welsh label Flach Tradd. In November 1998, I visited the KilBride brothers in Cardiff. After a delicious lunch at Gerard's house we headed to a local pub to talk about their music over a pint or three of local ale. The KilBride brothers grew up in a musical family. "Our folks had a band and they played local folk clubs," explains Bernard. "They were part of the folk revival of the '60s and in South Wales they were the big movers and shakers. They would go around England collecting all sorts of weird tunes. A lot of the material that is now considered native to South Wales came from them." When they were growing up their house was full of guitars, mandolins, concertinas, hammer dulcimers and penny whistles. Even more, their house was full of musicians. The brothers described it as a "drop-in center for all of the local folkies, hippies and assorted weirdos. There were all night sessions and just music playing constantly." With musicians to inspire them and lots of instruments to practice on, the boys were soon having a go at the assorted pianos and ocarinas. One day their father brought home the instrument that two of his sons were later to play. Gerard begins the tale. "The story is that one day our father went out to do the shopping and he came back with a fiddle instead. There must have been a lot of shopping to do in those days. Our mother was not very impressed and he drove us kids to distraction trying to learn how to play the thing." Bernard continues, "We were living in a caravan at the time. The living room had a fold-down double bed and we slept in the back in bunk beds. When it was time for him to practice we were sent to the back, Mum was sent to the kitchen, and he would sit on the bed and go screech, screech, screech for hours at a time." Before long the brothers were appearing on stage. "I was made to be a Morris man when I was a kid," says Daniel. "Our father is half Irish and half Scottish but he lived in Sussex and grew up as an Englishman. There was Morris dancing in the village he grew up in and he always said, 'My eldest boy is going to grow up and do the Morris.' So I did the Morris." Bernard and Gerard soon followed their brother into the world of Morris dancing. Gerard says, "He taught all of us to dance. Most other kids would have soccer uniforms. We had Morris bells and sticks with rattling bottle tops and Fairport Convention badges. We were like a folk circus." But as the brothers reached adolescence they started to rebel. In the mid '70s when he was fifteen, Daniel started a punk band and before too long Bernard had joined as well. "We had a rather unsuccessful punk career. We used to play Ramones, Sex Pistols and the B-52s. But we did have great names. At one point we were called Amber Diarrhea. Another name we played under was the Raffia Mafia." After failing as punks, their father offered them places in his ceilidh band. It wasn't the music that made them change styles, though. "We did it for the money," says Daniel. "When I was in school the richest kid got fifty pounds a month pocket money from his parents, which was a huge amount of money at that age. I would go out and play every Friday and Saturday and come back with thirty pounds every week. Our mates were quite jealous." There were other benefits besides the money, Daniel says. "We also got to go to France for four weeks. Our parents hooked up with a French dance group and we toured France playing festivals. We were eating in the refectory during a break at one festival and the Chieftains were at the next table. Derek Bell and Matt Malloy were having an argument over who were the real Chieftains. At the next table beyond them there was a choir of sixty Cornishmen. And the Battlefield Band were there as well, eating horse meat and drinking the free wine." It was around this time that the brothers started playing in their own groups with their friends. They performed a mixture of traditional tunes picked from their father's ceilidh band as well as a few songs from their punk days. At one of the pubs they were playing, Bernard heard a fiddler play the song "Nine by Nine" and decided to have a go at it. In a surprisingly short time he learned to play it. He stopped playing the guitar and started concentrating on the fiddle. As well as playing with their father's band, they would play with friends at pubs and weddings and in the street. Bernard remembers the pay was not as good for busking as at some of the other gigs. "We used to go into the bank with piles of pennies and ask to have them changed into notes. They would say no." Gerard was also learning the fiddle along with another traditional instrument. "I was playing around on Northumbrian small pipes. I had a very bad set of pipes so I spent three years thinking I was the worst player in the world." When Gerard went away to school to study violin making, Daniel and Bernard continued to play in their ceilidh band. Daniel started playing bass in a band that did New Orleans trad jazz as well as Neville Brothers and Dr. John covers. It opened up a new musical world to him. "I wound up playing odd jazz things for fifteen years. I started playing in keys like F and B flat. I also learned how to get seven or eight people to work together, all of whom knew very little. But we learned how to make some good sounds. At the same time Bernard and I were still playing in the ceilidh band. There were always people getting married or whatever and wanting us to play, so we would put a band together for the occasion. I was playing the jazz stuff but I was playing the traditional music as well." Although the brothers played in pick-up ceilidh bands for weddings and still played at various sessions and jams, they didn't really consider themselves a band. They did have a one year residency at a pub pretending to be an Irish band, but it wasn't until they were asked to make a CD for Flach Tradd that they began to think of themselves as a group. The CD has been well received and they have been getting invitations to play at festivals all across the United Kingdom and Europe. They are looking forward to traveling. As Gerard explains, "Musicians were always the most traveled members of society. It was the same three hundred years ago as it is today. If they were any good they would go from one village to the next playing a wedding or whatever." And one of the advantages of travel is the opportunity to expand your repertoire. "If you meet another musician and his tunes are any good, you can steal them. Of course that's been going on forever. A good tune is like a virus. It's going to spread itself around." Bernard continues, "We pick up most of our tunes in sessions so we don't always have the proper titles for them." And Daniel finishes, "We can never remember them correctly, so as a matter of course we always play our own versions of them." But there has been some grumbling amongst the purists. "The further north you go the less likely we are to be accepted as Welsh," says Gerard. "But we just play the music we want to and try not to be bothered by it. Some people say we can't play Welsh music because we don't speak Welsh. We just say tell people like that, 'Well, we can play it better than you.'" Daniel elaborates on the difference between North and South Wales: "Of course we grew up in South Wales which is primarily English-speaking. And we live in Cardiff which is a port town. There are are also Chinese, Ethiopian and Yemenite communities here. Sailors from all over the world have been coming here for years. You have to be open to dealing with strangers or you really can't survive here. The towns up north are more isolated and they don't trust strangers very much." And as for the accusation of sounding Irish? "Since before the Roman times the Irish have been coming here. As raiders in the early days and traders in the last few hundred years. Of course there is going to be a strong Irish influence in Cardiff." Daniel continues, "It's funny, but a lot of the non-harp tunes in the current revival were reintroduced into the tradition by our parents. Our Mum used to go to the library and sneak out an old Welsh music book under her coat it's the only copy in the world and Xerox a page or two a day. She helped to expand the repertoire by the most clandestine methods. But we don't see ourselves as musical missionaries. We are not trying to preserve a tradition. We are just playing the music we like. It's the music we grew up with." [For more information on the KilBrides, visit their website (which includes sound samples, their tour schedule, and many links) at http://members.aol.com/BJKilBride/index.htm. Their CD KilBride can be ordered from Fflach Tradd, Llys-y-Coed, Heol Dinbych-y-Pysgod, Aberteifi, Ceredigion, SA43 3AH, Wales, U.K.; Phone: 44 (0) 1239 614691, or in the U.S. from Tayberry Music, (803) 366-9739 and Fiddlers Crossing, (626) 792-6323.] [Michael Simmons plays guitar, is Fiddler Magazine's Review Editor, and also writes for Acoustic Guitar magazine.]
Ralph Blizard: Rambling with a Southern RamblerBy Peter AnickGrowing up in the Tennessee-Virginia border region in the 1930s, Ralph Blizard never had to go far to find old-time music. His own house was the scene of frequent "jam sessioning," giving the young musician a chance to listen and play along with some of the best fiddlers, banjo players, and singers in the area. He was still a schoolboy when he hit the radio airwaves along with the Southern Ramblers, launching a musical career that spanned two decades. Although he gave it up when he settled down to raise a family in the 1950s, he got the urge to take up the bow once again after his retirement. Since 1982, he has been performing with the New Southern Ramblers (Phil Jamison: guitar; Gordy Hinners: banjo; John Herrmann: bass; formerly John Lilly on bass). Their repertoire draws heavily from the tunes he played half a century ago, but the tunes are kept fresh by Ralph's constant experimentation with melodies and bowings. Gordy Hinners laughingly confided that once Ralph gets started on a tune, the band never knows where he's going to go with it! It was a pleasure to run across Ralph at Jay Ungar and Molly Mason's Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp in the summer of 1997. One of the many high points of the week was a spontaneous jam session in which Jay and Ralph goaded each other further and further into uncharted musical waters. Wherever they went, Ralph unflappingly tamed the waves with his bluesy longbow style that has become his trademark sound. I managed to squeeze this interview into one of those rare moments when Ralph wasn't coaching a string band, playing for a dance, leading a jam session, or entertaining with the New Southern Ramblers. Rumor has it that you go back a long time. I wouldn't guess that! Over thirty-nine years. Gordy says, "Twice thirty-nine." He's been saying that for years, but he's right now. It caught up with you... What was going on musically when you were growing up? I was born and raised in Kingsport, Tennessee. From the time I was a kid, I guess a lot of the kids in my area, they were into music of all types, anything they could get to make a noise with little horns of any type, French harps mouth harps some people called them, jew's harp. And then of course we graduated to whatever we could get our hands on guitar or mandolin, or a banjo. I never did fool with banjo very much. But I guess before I got into fiddle, I started playing mandolin. I played all the instruments up till I got to fiddle. When I got into playing mandolin, I knew the noting coming in for the fiddle. So it wasn't all that much of a problem. The bowing and so forth was the main thing. Were you playing for dances then? I think I was fourteen when I had a band. And we were going pretty good. We just started playing for picnics and things like that around, you know, such gatherings as that. And then more people would call on us to do a little bit of a program. And where I ended up working, what was Tennessee Eastman-Kodak at that time, I played for some of the picnics that they had and sometimes there were engagements at the rec hall. Of course, we were starting to get paid at that time. And then we graduated from that, you know, and goin' in to play on the radio station, WOPI, in Bristol. After a little while, WOPI put a studio in the Homestead Hotel in Kingsport and we started playing there while I was in school. We'd go down there early in the morning. I believe it was about 6 o'clock we were on the air, and we would go in and do a program there before school. ... What kind of music were you playing at that point in the band? It was traditional. People called it old-time. I didn't keep any set lists, but recently I been thinking I know we played "Cindy." And a hymn, usually, on the program. Maybe two hymns sometimes. I remember we used to do one "Give me the Roses While I Live." I remember that one. And I know we did "Devil's Dream," 'cause I remember one time I was working at the Eastman at that time, that's after World War II I stayed in it a little while after World War II, and we were doin' this show down there and the announcer, you know, he usually dedicated the numbers to the people. And most of the time we didn't know which number he dedicated. So this friend of mine at the Eastman, he asked me to dedicate his mother-in-law a tune. And lo and behold, the announcer dedicated her the "Devil's Dream." Let's hope she wasn't listening! Oh, she was listening! I like to never heard the last of that! That's one I remember. That announcer, he got it, too. He heard about it, too. Were you learning from records at that point, or radio, or other musicians? You learn from all sources. See, my dad was a musician. He taught singing school, too, about the shape notes. And then he traveled some, playing fiddle. I found out during some of my engagements here in the last three years that my dad did travel more than I thought he did. I found people that knew him. I was doing the Augusta festival about three years ago. They wanted Wilson Douglas and I to do a workshop together. Wilson Douglas, he was about my age, maybe not hardly as old as I am. First thing you know, he started talkin' about my dad. My dad evidently had been in West Virginia, Virginia, maybe even Ohio, Kentucky. I'd heard my dad talk about Ed Haley but I don't remember meeting him. Of course, my mother and dad liked the music. My dad, being a fiddler, the famous old-time fiddlers visited in our home, lots of times. Charlie Bowman especially. I played music sittin' in, you know, just playing guitar. You know, how the young people sit in and play music. ... I could play fiddle before my dad knew I could play fiddle. 'Cause he wouldn't let me play his fiddle. He was afraid I would tear it up. My mother slipped his fiddle to me. I'd played the mandolin, and I could play the fiddle pretty fast, before he realized it. How it come to him to find out about it, we was sittin' playing music one day and somebody asked for a certain number. My dad didn't know it, so don't she say, "Well, give your fiddle to Ralph. Let him play it." So my dad promoted me on the fiddle from that time. [When he's not on the road teaching or performing, Ralph runs a Friday night jam session in Blountville, Tennessee. For bookings or other information, contact Ralph Blizard at 1084 State Route 37, Blountville, TN 37617, (423) 323-8324, or Phil Jamison at 734 Town Mountain Road, Asheville, NC 28804, (704) 258-8473, email: pajamison@unca.edu] [Peter Anick plays fiddle, guitar, and sings with the Massachusetts-based bluegrass band WayStation.] For full versions of these articles, please visit Fiddler Magazine store to order back issues. |
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