The biggest gift that I ever got from my dad as a musician
was not about flash, was not about speed or virtuosity,
it's about tone.
He would say, "Now Bill, just remember play every note as if it's the last note
you're ever going to play and the idea being that you know you should put
meaning and feeling into every note you do.
And tone ultimately is the definition of any master musician. It's not about
how fast you can play but how you are able to channel your own human
experience through the instrument of your choosing.
His touch on the banjo is very different from other banjo players. It's almost
orchestral in a way.
I think my dad thinks about the banjo as a little orchestra.
Plockton Aire was a tune that came to me when we visited Plockton, a little village
in Scotland. It's an old-fashioned place. It's my kind of place. I'm kind of out of
date and out of style and I like Plockton and a friend of ours, a Scottish musician
he said is the Scots, when it comes to fiddle music, the sadder the better so I
thought I'd write a tune to remember Plockton by.
I decided I wanted to learn the fiddle when I was just a child. My sister played
the violin. I was the little hillbilly in the family
and I would sneak her fiddle out to the barn and chicken coop and scratch around
on her fiddle and she'd get upset and tell on me. I'd get in trouble
but when I was 8, 9, 10 years old, I was trying to figure that thing out.
It's a complicated piece of business but I stayed after it and finally learned to
play a little bit on one.
He composes through the fiddle and the banjo. Those are his instruments but at
the end of the day, he's a composer and he writes music that taps into just a
wide, wide spread of musical and historical contexts.
He's fascinated by parlor music and lullabies
and the gentler side of the banjo, if you will.
Parlor banjo was very popular back in the late 1800s on up to the turn of the
century. A lot of ladies played the banjo. It was a proper instrument and
they played a beautiful music on the banjos, classical music quite often.
My grandmother played the banjo and she could play lullabies and beautiful things
on the banjo so when I was a child, I'd say granny get your banjo when it's time for
me to go bed. I wanted a banjo tune. I didn't want a bedtime story so she'd
play the banjo for me.
She was a wonderful person. She'd like to get in the canoe and paddle up the
Tennessee River with me in it. I was a little tot and we just had a
grand time. She was a great grandmother.