Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows; 201; Rick Good interview, part 2 of 2

Q:

RICK: Almost right away when I learned to play my first guitar chords I started making up my own songs. And that went on through high school and I can't say I made up anything very memorable, but I was trying, you know, I was very sincere. And uh, when I got with the Hot Mud Family, I kinda had a framework, you know, we played a certain style of music. Uh... uh, I remember my first success was like with an old time bluesy kind of a number that The Hot Mud Family learned. Um, and then uh, I would write, maybe a... a... a... a song in the style of an old bluegrass gospel song. So 1 started that kind of work shopping as a song writer, writing styles of music, you know, and a song in this genre or ga—that genre... a bluegrass song or a blues song or a... a swing song, a ragtime song um, also every once in a while, there'd just be a... a song that was not anything in particular, you know... a folk song or... or a... or what they call singer/songwriter songs now. Um, after the Hot Mud Family broke up uh, I spent a few years with a theater company um, as uh-uh, I played... I played music and I wrote some songs for theater pieces and I—I found that really interesting, because you are... yo—you're definitely given a framework. I mean, you might be writing a song for a certain character or a certain scene, so it's very, very specific. But I found that... that those limitations were not the—they didn't really translate as limitations at all. They were kind of freeing in a way, because they gave me some... somewhere to go and I found that I was... I was good at that. So uh, when Rhythm and Shoes came along, that really started taking off because I was writing music for dances. Sometimes just tunes for uh, percussive dance pieces, clog pieces, tap pieces. But sometimes they were uh, c—concept pieces too, they were more like dance theater and the songs had words. Sometimes it would be an idea I would get and I would make a tape of the song and give it to Sharon and... and she would make it dance. Other times, she would have an idea for a dance and tell me what kind of song she needed. Other times, it- they would kind of happen together in the studio as we were rehearsing. So, all—all the possible ways that a... that a piece of music could be written it happened along the way. Um, then we started getting these ideas for shows like, not just a dance piece but, but uh... an idea for a... an evening... an evening's length work, it would be an entire show. And uh, I remember the... the... I wrote this song called Nova Town, which was kind of a in the... in a bluesy style and Sharon created a tap piece for it and it turned into this... this beautiful... we... we... we expanded the musical arrangement. I mean, it was a very simple song, you know, like a twelve bar blues, but we expanded the music and created this kind of, I don't know, six or seven minute long beautiful, slow but very intense tap piece, and it was like nothing I'd ever seen choreographed on stage before. And the idea of Nova Town was uh... was uh... Nova being a star that burns itself out and im—and implodes in it—in the gravity of its own fire um, because this metaphor for a person burning out, you know, especially like a... I mean, my generation had no... my generation, there was no lack of, of, of people who had burned out like, you know, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison, and... and even before that, Hank Williams. I mean, you knew those—with these bright stars that burned really, really hot for a while but then... but then destructed in their own gravity and that, to me, was a very powerful metaphor. And that was kind of the basis for this... this place Nova Town where the burned out stars went and the has beens lived and... and uh, a—and it became this uh, a kind of alternate universe in my mind. Um, I mean, I'd always had uh, a real interest in that kind of music, blues and... and swing and ragtime, but for some reason I was always really interested in... in ugh, the sky, the night sky and... and uh, astrophysics, I mean, in a very layman's kind of way, but... but there were astrophysicists'... physis - there were... there was astrophysicists who were writing books for laymen, you know, trying to explain things in understandable terms and I was drawn to those. I enjoyed reading that kind of stuff, so I got this idea that... that somehow it would be possible to make a show to create a piece of work where the music was all based in blues, in—in early jazz and ragtime that had a script uh, that was set in this place, Nova Town, that was kind of like a, um... uh... downtown Cincinnati gone to seed was... was how I pictured it and full of has beens and wanna- be's. But that.. .the metaphor somehow would be astrophysics and how what goes on in the heavens is mirrored in human relationships. So, it was all very nebulas in my mind at the time and, and one of the other aspects of it that I was determined to make work was that it wasn't gonna be like a traditional musical. Performer's weren't gonna break into song and dance. Dancers were gonna dance, musicians were gonna play the music and actors would play the parts. And somehow, this would work. And, I literally thought about this for fifteen years on and off. And, during those fifteen years, more songs were written and more single pieces of choreography were made. Somewhere along the line I had a... I had a CD's worth of material that I recorded the music for and there was this collection of songs called Nova Town. And, some ideas for characters um, there was a cop, there was a... there was a woman who ran a bar who was kind of down on her luck who had a past with the cop. Um, and there was a blind private eye named Galileo. And Galileo kinda became the... the narrator. And his... his... his dialogue or monologues were mostly written in verse with music behind them. Kind of in a... uh, in a... in a... in a jazzy kinds way, you know, beatnik kinda way. So this was starting to come together. I'd written some of... some of Galileo's monologues and... and I had some ideas for characters and... and uh, we finally decided in 2000 that that was the year that was gonna be our annual show, was Nova Town, so I had to click into gear and, and write the script for this. Um, some of the songs from the CD weren't right for the piece, so I had to write some songs specifically for a stage piece. But, after fifteen years of kind of incubating it and finally getting around to do it... doing it um, not only did it have the creative time to... to become something, we had had the opportunity to develop relationships with the finest actors in the area. And we could pretty much, you know, I could say, oh, I know who I want to play this part. Or, I'm writing this part for this person, you know. So, we got five really good actors and we had the dancers, of course, and we had the band, so we started work shopping this piece and... and it... miraculously it came together. But, like all of our pieces, you know, I mean it—like I say, this was, for me, it was fifteen years in the works. We performed it four times at the Victoria Theater so that's, you know, four thousand people maybe. And then the next year we did it two more times down in Cincinnati at the Jarson Kaplan Theater for maybe, total of another seven hundred people, you know. So tops, five s-thousand people saw this show. But I still think it's probably one of the best things Fve ever had anything to do with, you know. And, in an—in a perfect world... somebody with money would say, wow, I want to produce this and... and take it, you know, I don't know, some little off... off Broadway Theater or somewhere the west end of London and... and produce it where it would run for six or nine months, you know. That would be a beautiful thing. But uh I think it's good enough that it could do that... but... but in what world does that actually happen, especially nowadays, so... so it is what it is. And, if that never happens, I still know that what... what I conceived it of up here actually happened and brought it to fruition and it was good.

Q:

RICK: Oh boy... what is success? Um, it's... I mean, everybody wants a good review. Uh, everybody wants to be recognized as having created good work. Um, everybody wants their work seen and heard. I can't say I've ever... I've ever been drawn to create what is popular. Um, popular music is what... is served to people to listen to and that's what most people get. Um, and... and the vast majority of the music that's out there is created for consumption. It's... it's... it's a commercial endeavor. Not that there aren't good artists who are involved in that genre but.,. but basically, what they're doing is... is creating a commodity... it's... it's to be sold. And, the artists who are still just creating art because they're inspired or because they're drawn to... to create this or that in spite of whose gonna see it or... or how much money it's gonna make them uh, is a very, very small percentage of the mus—music that's out there. And... and you have to look for it. I mean, you have to be interested in it. It requires something of the consumer to track that down and invest themselves in it. It takes more of investment. It... it uh... you have to hear it more than once, you know, it doesn't have that hook, you know, that commercial hook that... that is... is designed, it's... it's... it's kind of like junk food, you know, the... the... the salt, sugar, fat combination that is the bliss point that they're trying to grab you with, you know. So, what's successful on that level? Is—is it... is it... is it enough for me to write a song and say to myself, that's good. And... and to come up with a... a couplet that just I like so much that it just tickles me for an entire day, you know. I mean, that's worth something right there. Um, then I might get a chance to play the song for somebody and they'll say, wow, that's another great song, you know, and... and, and that's rewarding. Um, might put it on a CD, you know, I don't make a lot of CD's but every once in a while I make one and... and I try to put an original s—you know, some original music on it. And uh, people might here it that way, so more people will hear it. Or uh, course, you can perform it live and pe—and people will hear that. But, in—in terms of a lot of people hearing the song, that's... that's a real crap shoot, you know. Um, with YouTube a—and the internet, there are... there are way of rolling the dice, you know, where... where something can happen. Like, not too long ago I wrote a song uh, it just kinda came out of nowhere um, and it was kind of a genre song, it was very much in the style of Uncle Dave Macon with a.. .a.. .a raucous banjo and it was kinda his style of song, but it was about uh, I think it was during the first Obama election. And I was... I was getting increasingly upset uh, with uh, the state of... of money and campaign financing, money in politics. And I wrote this song about uh, the White House is not for sale. And uh, and Sharon shot a little video of it... of me singing it and uh, our grandkids have drawn pictures of it, you know. They listen to the song and they got ideas and they drew a bunch of pictures. So, I'm sitting on the back porch playing a banjo and singing this so—"it's not for sale... not the white house... this house is not for sale"... and the kids are kinda coming across the camera with their pictures and holdin' 'em there and then moving off and... and so we put this song up on... on YouTube and uh, friends of ours started sharing it on Facebook and it started to get around. And uh, we were on the road and... and uh, I remember s—I was in a... woke up one Sunday morning in a motel and I was checking my email and I got this email from out of the blue uh, somebody saying, "loved your song... great article in the New York Times this morning." What? And so, I got online right away and I checked the New York Times and sure enough there was an editorial in the New York Times, the Sunday New York Times that day. Uh, the editorial was essentially about uh, modern protest songs. And it... it was uh, it was the hundredth anniversary of Woody Guthrie, so it was... he was writing about Woody Guthrie and how, is anybody out there writing... writing music that is about our political times nowadays like Woody Guthrie used to? And uh, he-he was kind of focusing on... on Ry Cooder who had just recorded a... a CD of uh, of songs that he had written about the... about the election cycle, basically political songs. And um, and the editorialist mentioned the YouTube video of This House Is Not For Sale. Somehow he got on to that. I think it was probably through a friend of mine who knew Ry Cooder who told him about it and he told this guy, so... so that's... that's a... kind of a... six degrees of separation type thing, but... but that's the crap shoot. It ended up in this guy's column. So, people started checking it out. You know, they read about it in the New York Times, they say, oh I want to see what this is, so they went to the YouTube and they saw it. And that whole day I'd never had a... an experience like this watching... looking at YouTube and just seeing the counter go up and up and up, you know. Like it started the day with, you know, two hundred views, mostly my friends. And by the end of the day it had five thousand views. It was like... it was like sitting at a... at a slot machine in Las Vegas tha—uh, that you... that you kept seeing the money come out of, you know. And that's only five thousand. I mean, there are people who get hits of a million on YouTube. But, for me, five thousand was... the—that was a big deal. That many people heard my song and I mean, how many... how many bars or... or coffee houses would I have to play for five thousand people to hear a song? And yet, that is something that happened once. So, that's... that's success on some level. But, somehow, you know, when I look back and—and see the places I've played and the work that I've created and collaborated on creating and the people that I've worked with and, and people who have wanted to work with me uh, I can't feel anything but successful, you know. It—it certainly doesn't... it isn't reflected in my bank account. But... I've a feeling that people with giant bank accounts are... are dealing with things that I probably wouldn't like that much, sometimes.

Q:

RICK: I was basically self taught... musically... and that is pretty much the way the music I learned is taught. Um, it's handed down from people who play um, usually it's absorbed and there isn't a whole lot of instruction that goes on. So I never really had teachers myself, which I think translates into not being uh... a... a traditional style teacher myself. So, um, when uh, The Hot Mud Family... er—early on we did a TV show called Passport to Music that was hosted by George Zimmerman who was the direct of music for the Dayton Public School system. Wonderful guy... very memorable. Um... an—an old German gentleman that wore a bowtie and had a handlebar moustache and he played the piano and sang the songs of the eighteen nineties. But, he would have us on as guests on his show, which showed uh, early Sunday mornings and late Friday nights after The Tonight Show, after the late movie. So um, a lot of people saw his show. And so a lot of people saw the Hot Mud Family when they were o—on his show, the three or four times that we were on it. But he got us involved. He- he thought because, in the Dayton Public School system there- there were an awful lot of children who were of Appalachian heritage and this was kind of at a time it wa- it was just starting to happen that... that there was a new... a new wave of pride in Appalachian culture. Um, prior to that, the people who moved up from West Virginia and Kentucky, and Virginia um, that was something that they left behind and this was a new life, this was city life... this was not in the coal mines, this was in the factories and... and life was gonna be better for them. But, this Appalachian pride things was just starting to take off and.. .and George Zimmerman wanted us to go into the Dayton Public School system and play this music for the kids. And... and... and hopefully, they would have a recognition factor, you know, there would be... there would be instances where... where they would say, wait, my grandfather plays a banjo or, or my grandmother played a banjo or there... there's a fiddle down... down in Kentucky when we go... when we go back home I've seen a fiddle um, those kinda connections he wanted to provide for that. So, we went into the schools uh... th—we chose fifteen schools that had the highest Appalachian percentage of students and... and we spent a week in each one. So that's fifteen straight weeks working five days a week, following the music teachers' schedule. And sometimes they had five, six, seven classes a day. So, this was the early days of The Hot Mud Family and that right there, I mean, talk about an incubator, that—that really turned us into a band. And it also was very we—rewarding, very rewarding. It was a very rewarding experience in terms of connecting with these children and sometimes meeting their parents and sometimes meeting relatives who played music and sang songs. And it led to another project of George Zimmerman's which was the Living Art Center, which was on Linden Avenue and it was a kind of after school, Dayton Public Schools place to go learn the arts. And, The Hot Mud Family hosted a Tuesday night jam session and it brought musicians out of the woodwork. I mean, from Farmersville, from Gratis, from Germantown, from Xenia, from... from all over the area, just all summer long, every Tuesday night there would be jam sessions in the parking lot and in rooms in the Living Art Center um, factory workers, retired factor workers, people singing the old songs and... and... and then on Wednesday nights, we hosted a radio show. And, we would put the best of these performers on stage. And we would play several songs and, and of course we have a lot of friends that played in bands that were coming to the... through... through town and they played on the songs. They, I mean... they played on the... on the show and it was broadcast live over at WYSO. And, and all of this created a.. .a real... a—re—kind of a renaissance of... of old time music in Ap—Appalachian music and bluegrass music um, that... that had always been uh... an undercurrent in Dayton. And, this was all through the Dayton Public School system, this... the schools that we taught at and, and the Living Arts Center and, I mean, it's one thing being in a classroom and teaching students, but it's also another thing being um, just sitting around playing with musicians and people who are trying to learn how to play and, in seeing how playing together is a way to learn. You know, you're not saying, put your finger here or... or... these are the notes you play. You're saying, listen to this tune... play along as well as you can and come back next week and do it again. And so, so that was very much being involved in education in a very organic way. And when 1 went with the theater company uh, at the time, it was called The Little Miami Theater Works, now it's called Mad River Theater Works, but it's still a working company. Um, that theater was largely done in grade schools too throughout the state, so that was all educational work. Um, and, and sometimes, it was just going into perform plays about um, old time Ohio um, based on stories. And sometimes it was going into a school to... to collect stories from the kids and make plays out of those and then have the kids work. And this... a lot of this work was through the Ohio Arts Council... artists and residents. But, we did a lot of that with the theater company. And so, when Rhythm and Shoes came along, of course, there was a... there was a huge edu—educational aspect of that. We... we taught in schools, we taught at dance schools, we taught at university dance departments, and we also uh, worked with the Ohio Arts Council and, and the whole company would go into a school for a week or two and just take over the school and teach kids how to tap dance and... and clog dance and... and um, sing songs. It wa—it was uh, I think it's a way... it's a way that a lot of performing artists augment what they do is by teaching, whether it's, you know, one on one with students, or whether it's going into schools um, and... one of the best... one of the... I think one of the best ways to educate students, for us, and... and we had the opportunity to do this sometimes, was to have students brought to a theater. And that... that, I thought, was the most important work that we did, because that was developing an audience. That was... that was getting kids excited about coming into a theater, a building that... that was erected to present art on stage. They would come in and sit in their seats, the lights would go down, stage lights would come up, all the production values were there, it sounded great, it looked great, the company was in full costume and they would see a live performance. And to develop an audience that would—that would b—that will become and that I—that I assume now, I mean, this was years ago, so these people, these are the adults that are going to live shows nowadays who... who might not... I mean, there aren't a lot of people who go to live performances. I mean, young people go to concerts and things like that, but... but it's a struggle to get people to come out and here live music. So, developing the audience for that young, I think... I think bringing them to a theater and... and doing a full out show is very, very valuable. Unfortunately, that was the... that's the most expensive thing and it was the rarest thing, and it wasn't... just wasn't the same going into their gym and doing their performance. Um, I mean, sometimes you would be performing for them and sitting next to them would be a teacher grading papers. And it's like, what are you doing? What are you showing these students? You can't be sitting there grading papers when they're supposed to be learning how to be an... an active audience member, you know? What's that mean? It's not just sitting there watching TV. If you're in the audience at a live show, you're... something is required of you. You need to invest in it. You need to meet that performance halfway, and if you do that, it will be a better performance, because the performer gets that. Performer needs that from the audience. It's a... it's a dynamic thing and... it's... it's really important for kids to learn that early on.

Q:

RICK: Um, well... at the outset I was asked what my name is and... and... and how I would describe myself like, wha—uh—what am I? What's my job description? And I said, I'm a banjo player. And it reminds me of uh, the late Gregory Hines who was very, very talented performer and... and movie actor and his answer to that was, I'm a tap dancer, because that's... that's what was... that's who he was in his heart. Um, and in my heart I'm a banjo player. Um, I've been an actor. I play the guitar uh, I've performed on stage in... in countless bands, groups. Um, I've written a lot of songs, I've... I've made shows, I've collaborated with people um, a- and, of course, uh, I want to... you know, I want my work to be remembered somehow. I mean, I'm still... I still haven't given up on getting my songs out there. But as far as, as a 1—a legacy... I've been ... I've been a working artist largely as a banjo player all my life. It's... it's really all I've ever done. And, in the process I created a lot of good work and I haven't even mentioned yet the fact that... that uh, I helped raise a family. And, that m—mm... I wouldn't call my children an accomplishment, but my children are all extremely good people who I respect and who I love to be with and who I think are good citizens of this planet and I see them raising their own children to be the same. So, while just barely earning a living, but definitely making a life, I have done what... what I loved.,. what I still love and... and it's all been driven by um, a creative spirit and the love of music. Um, these songs and, and these shows are one thing um, but I'll go back to the very beginning where early on from the very beginning uh, I was drawn towards the source of... of all this music. Where did it come from? Who are the original masters? Where did it come from before that? You know, how did American music become American music, because America's pretty s—pretty young country. Uh, and, and the influences came from elsewhere. You know, the banjo came from Africa. Uh, the... the fiddle repertoire largely came from the British Isles, Ireland and Scotland um, and... and those two cultures uh, the marriage of those two cultures, really the collision of those two cultures in the south uh, created what became American Country music and old time music. Um, there is... there is a deep groove to that music. Um, Mike Seeger called it music from the true vine, which uh, I think is a biblical reference. Music from the true vine, it's like going to the source for that music. And, I have gotten to the point where... where I've been playing the banjo long enough that I can sit down with a fiddler and... and I know the best fiddler's in the country, they're friends of mine and I get to play with them. And I can sit down with them and we can play a tune and we'll play that tune over and over and over again for several minutes and, in the course of an evening, we will eventually break through to the true vine. And that's... that's my jazz... that's... that's where it happens. And I... and I think that music on that level... when that groove is cut that deep, music on that level is a healing force. It... it heals me, it heals the people around us, and i—i—in the same way that uh, Tibetan monks meditating in a monastery somewhere for world peace, believe that—that they're raising the vibrations of the world. I believe that music on that level is a healing force and with the banjo in the... in the right session with certain musicians 1 can have that experience. And that is, I think, personally that's my main—major accomplishment for me... to be able to go there.

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