Clawhammer Rules Interview Series-DAVID HOLT First of all, introduce yourself. What would you like us to know about you? David Holt here. I have lived in Asheville, NC since 1973. I moved here just to learn old time banjo…after first coming to Western North Carolina in 1969. I have been playing old time music professionally for 45 years or so. I was very lucky to have learned from some great mentors born in the late 1800s like Doc Watson, Tommy Jarrell, Fred Cockerham, Roy Acuff and Grandpa Jones. There were also less famous but equally talented musicians known in their local communities like Byard Ray, Roscoe Holcombe, Etta Baker, and Dellie Norton. Over the years I have spent a great deal of time learning fingerstyle and slide guitar, but it has always been clawhammer banjo that has been the foundation of mountain music for me. I was born in Gatesville,Texas 1946. My ancestors moved from North Carolina to Texas in 1850s. The Holts had been in Texas for about five generations when I was born. Most of my extended family still resides in Texas. I didn’t grow up in a musical family but we did have several pairs of rhythm bones that had been passed down in the family for five generations. Those rhythm bones made me aware at a young age that there were other types of music in this world besides what was on the radio . The Sputnik satellite was launched in 1957. My dad was an electronics engineer and an inventor and wanted to start a company of his own. We moved to California where the aerospace industry was really starting to boom. He figured that was the place to be. So from Junior high school through college I lived in California. While in college at UC Santa Barbara (I was studying Biology and Art) I fell in love with the sound of the banjo, particularly the clawhammer style. I traveled to the Southern Mountains, fell in love with the people, the culture and especially the music and my life was changed. 1. What is your favorite thing about the banjo? What drew you toward Clawhammer banjo? The tone of the banjo is relentlessly positive. I always feel better after playing it. I think we all have sounds that attract us…for me that sound was the banjo. The banjo has a magical quality. Almost everyone loves to hear a banjo…not for great spans of time but well played banjo is always welcome. As I mentioned I first came to the Southern Mountains in the late 1960s. A friend of mine at UC Santa Barbara, Steve Keith, played a very rhythmic clawhammer style. Ralph Stanley came to the University for a concert and played some great clawhammer tunes he learned from his Mother. We talked to Ralph after the concert and asked him were we could learn more about the style. There were no books, DVDs or teaching recordings in those days. Ralph said we should head for the Southern Mountains. He said there were still lots of clawhammer players there. We left California and traveled all through the Appalachian Mountains in the summer of ’69. At the end of that summer I returned to college and tried to remember what I had seen and heard in the mountains. There was (and still is) a fine clawhammer player in Santa Barbara named Peter Feldman. He helped me clean up my playing so that when I returned to North Carolina in 1972 I was primed to be able to learn tunes quickly. After college I decided to move to Asheville, NC because there was so much traditional music here. 2. Who inspired and/or taught you clawhammer banjo? Tell us about your first banjo experience. How did you learn to play: lessons, a book (which one), a friend, online? When I was young there were no instruction materials. I learned by watching old timers on my first trip to the Southern Mountains in 1969, then again on the return trip in 1972. As I mentioned, my first inspirations were from Steve Keith and Peter Feldman. On those summer trips to the mountains I made many cassette recordings of traditional players and spent hours listening and learning from them. 3. What are your favorite banjos, and why? How do you modify your banjo to get the sound you want? Of course, we have to ask what kind of strings you use, and whether or not you use fake nails. I never met a banjo I didn’t like…but my favorite of all time is my Deering Custom David Holt model. I have never played a banjo that matched it. I designed it to have a 4 inch deep pot with a wooden tone ring. It has a very warm wooden sound and works beautifully with a microphone. I generally use GHS medium gauge strings. Sometimes light gauge. It depends on the banjo. You have to judge what each instrument needs. Sometimes I’ll add a heavier 4th string just to get a deeper tone. The head makes a tremendous difference. Again, you have to see what works best on which banjo. Medium gauge strings stay in tune better than light gauge. I see many old time banjos today (especially those with a 12 inch head) with un-dampened strings between the bridge and the tailpiece. Drag your finger across those strings behind the bridge and notice how discordant it sounds. If you don’t dampen the strings behind the bridge those overtones ring out in your playing….they are not very musical. So, I take a strip of leather and weave it between the strings anywhere in back of the bridge….just enough to keep them from ringing. My nails are pretty darn strong and I prefer the sound of natural nails but I also use my fingernails for playing fingerstyle guitar and slide guitar so to keep them from wearing out I have started to have acrylic nails applied. A product called “powdered gel” seems to work best for me and I think your finger would break off before the nail would break! 4. What is your favorite or most effective practice habit? What’s your process for learning new tunes/songs? What keeps the passion for the banjo in your heart? I always have banjos out of their cases and in stands in the living room and in my music room so I can pick one up and play at any time. You have to learn to love practicing or at least love playing. I look at it like a meditation. (Which it is).Part of the fun for me is always learning something new. It is also very important to really listen to your timing and to your tone when you play. Don’t fool yourself. Really notice when you are playing sloppy. Break down any difficult part and work on that segment until you get it right. Then insert it back into the piece you are learning. The key thing is to never practice your mistakes. Let me repeat “NEVER PRACTICE YOUR MISTAKES!” When I am learning a new song or tune I listen to it over and over. I’ll often have a recording I am listening to in my iphone memo recorder. Once I have it in my ear I then start to put it on the banjo. I have never lost passion for the banjo…it has never even waned in all these years. I still love the tone and tunes and always will. 5. Tell us about your favorite tunings, scales, back-up techniques: go ahead and get technical on us. What were the techniques that you have used in the past that resulted in the sound that you now have? The banjo is a drum with strings. I try and add as many notes of the tune as possible without sacrificing driving rhythm. I love to play back up with combination of melody notes and harmony notes weaving in out of the fiddle tune to give drive. Most of the time I play in G, A, Double C or D, G modal or F Tuning (fDGBD) but I love to fool around with old odd tuning….especially the Last Chance and Ramblin Hobo Tuning: f CFCD. I have added a few extra questions for David about his work with Doc Watson: We know that you worked quite extensively with Doc Watson. Would you mind describing to us how that relationship developed? I first met Doc Watson in 1972 and at festival in Reidsville, NC. When I moved to Asheville, NC in 1973 I occasionally was invited to on stage to play with Doc and Merle and there was something about our rhythm together that really clicked. From 1984-1988 I hosted a traditional music cable show for TNN called “Fire On The Mountain.” Some of my first guests on the TV show were Doc and Merle. I played banjo with them on a few numbers and once again we really enjoyed the feel of the music. The next year we started on a recording together called “Reel and Rock.” Merle was killed in a tractor accident shortly after we finished the album. It was his last project. Doc did another CD with me in 1989: “Grandfather’s Greatest Hits.” Then in 1998 North Carolina PBS (UNC TV) asked Doc and me to do a TV concert together. It was such a hit that sponsors started calling Doc’s agent and asking us to do concerts together. It kept us on the road for the next 14 years...and was one of my greatest musical experiences. I think the show was a big success because we were very natural on stage, the music was strong and folks enjoyed my asking Doc questions and getting him to tell the stories of his life. In every concert I tried to ask something new. Something I didn’t know the answer to. It kept things fresh and interesting for Doc, me and the audience. How did Doc’s Clawhammer banjo playing differ from your own? Doc didn’t drop thumb. He did all the extra notes with pull offs and hammer ons. Can you describe to us how Doc influenced your clawhammer banjo playing, and whether or not you think there were instances where you influenced his playing? When you play with someone as much as I played with Doc you are bound to influence each others playing: the tunes you both like, the rhythm you choose for the song, the licks you do. I guess we both influenced each other in those areas. Of course, Doc had been influencing me through his recordings for years. Because Doc was blind he wasn’t distracted when he played or performed. He could really feel every note he played. I have tried to add that to my playing and singing, but Doc was an absolute master of inhabiting every note. When Doc invited me to start playing with him full time he knew my interest was in the old time music. Of course, that is the music he grew up with and I think he was longing to get back to it. When we weren’t on stage we often discussed the history of mountain music…we both loved that. You are such a driving force in the world of traditional music, and especially clawhammer banjo, I can’t imagine you resting on your laurels for long. What are you doing now? I have always had a solo performing career. For the last 14 years Doc and I played about two weekends a month and the rest of the time I had my own performances. I still love to play solo. There is an intimacy that can’t be found in any other performing situation. It’s just you and the crowd. But I love performing with my band, “David Holt and the Lightning Bolts.” They are Josh Goforth, Laura Boosinger, Jeff Hersk and Byron Hedgepeth. What a great group! Hope you get to see us one of these days. We play mostly around North Carolina (and you can hear us on CD) I have a very successful duo with Josh Goforth. Josh is a fantastic young musician on many instruments. Interestingly he is related to all the old folks in Madison County, NC I learned from when I was young, so it feels like a full circle. We have a great time and a pretty amazing show for two people. The great thing with a duo is that you can fly anywhere in the country and it is still affordable. Josh and I are in the middle of making a new CD called “Carolina Heroes.” We have selected some unusual old time songs and tunes from our Carolina mentors. Sutton, Holt and Coleman (Bryan Sutton, David Holt and T. Michael Coleman) is a group we put together to honor Doc Watson and keep his great repertoire before the public. We try and do at least one tour each year. January 29, 2014 is the premiere of my new PBS show “David Holt’s State of Music.” It is an hour long special with Balsam Range, Bryan Sutton, Rhiannon Giddens, Josh Goforth and black gospel group, the Branchettes. The show is beautifully shot and music is really fine. If you don’t get it on your local PBS station Google it and see if it is streaming yet. We have a really complete website for it: Davidholttv.org. I have lots of photos of my mentors and information at my website: Davidholt. I hope to see you out on the trail. 6. Please share a few youtubes of yourself playing clawhammer. Start with the one you want everyone in the world to hear, and follow with tunes or songs that are a little unusual for you. Here is one with Doc…. https://youtube/watch?v=4EJyvWjfePY You can see I always try and keep the rhythm very strong and driving and then add as many notes of the actually melody with sacrificing the rhythm. When Doc is playing lead I try to stay out of his way and use chords or notes from the chords that he is not playing the in the melody. Here is another with Tommy Jarrell recorded in 1984 for a TV show I hosted called Fire On the Mountain. I love the drive of this one: https://youtube/watch?v=AuoVaqK4fPM Here is a vocal with Doc singing “Way Downtown”. My job is to support him with the drive of the banjo but stay out of his way on the melody: https://youtube/watch?v=xpj8aTaISFs&index=1&list=PL8F09E6EBEA98301C Pretty Polly is a great old ballad: in gDGCD tuning: https://youtube/watch?v=TIA2D0jfF6Q One more with Doc Watson, Shady Grove: https://youtube/watch?v=-7MwW3JuEOY&list=RDTIA2D0jfF6Q&index=2 I love it when he plays harmony with the banjo on the last time through. Grandpa Jones was a great friend of mine. Just thought you’d like to see this little interview. https://youtube/watch?v=ldgN82xu8f0 Thank you for sharing so much of your history and your rich musical journey with us David. You followed your dreams and built a life out of traditional music, which you now pass on to others. Yours is an inspiring story! Martha Stone Clawhammer Rules Banjo School 509-699-0842
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 20:03:56 +0000
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