FolkNews from the Humboldt Folklife Society
The Dirk Powell interview - by Bob Doran
When I was told that Dirk Powell was "busy in the studio" on Monday and might be hard to reach, it did not occur to me why. It turns out his studio, Cypress House, is near Lafayette, Louisiana, in the path of Hurricane Katrina, and he was nailing up plywood preparing for a deluge.
"We were really lucky. We didn't get any damage at all," he told me on Tuesday morning. "If it hadn't made that last turn to the northeast we would have been right in the line of it. It’s a gamble every hurricane season here. You wait it out and hope you'll be all right. I always think it might be better to be somewhere else, but then there’s other things, tornadoes or earthquakes."
Bob: Where are you from originally? The Appalachians?
Dirk: I'm from Ohio, but my family on both sides are from Kentucky; my roots are in Kentucky, way back.
Bob: And that’s the music you're bringing on this tour coming up, music of the Appalachians. I guess you have a few choices.
Dirk: Yeah, I have choices. That’s really my first language musically. One of my favorite things to do is play the music of my grandfather and a lot of the older musicians I learned from.
Bob: Could you tell me a bit about your grandfather?
Dirk: His name was J.C. Hay and he played wonderful fiddle, banjo and guitar. He grew up with that music in the mountains; it was a time when they made their own entertainment and they had an outlet for their expression.
Bob: Was he a professional musician?
Dirk: He was a borderline professional: He played on the radio and played for square dances that he got paid for, but not professional in the sense that that was his only line of work. He gave it up when he was in his mid-20s. For a lot of people in his generation, and even today, the music goes along with the lifestyle -- he felt he had to give it up when he started raising a family. But it was really his first love all along, so when I came around when I was 11 or 12 and started spending a lot of time with him, it was a way for him to make the music live on. And for me -- it gave me a positive direction for my life. We met in this positive place and shared the music.
Bob: I'm assuming this was old time mountain music that had been passed down through the generations.
Dirk: Many, many generations -- on that side of my family I can trace it back to people who came from Ireland in the early 1700s, who all played -- the music goes that far back. And of course the banjo, which has African roots, has been in the mountains for a long, long time. My grandfather’s grandfather was born in 1830. He played the banjo back there. They all made their own at that point, all fretless banjos, a lot closer to the African roots of it -- no frets, a skin head -- a different sound. People who are used to the bright sound of bluegrass banjo don't always realize that the original sound was a lot softer and a lot more percussive.
Bob: You got interested and learned this music from your grandfather; did you also research it, study the history and so forth when you got older.
Dirk: I studied it somewhat. I found myself wondering if I should study it or just go live it, and how much of each of those things would be right. I ended up spending a lot of time in the mountains going to visit older musicians and feeling like the best way for me to learn was to experience their lives and have it passed on directly, to absorb the meaning of it from them. You can study the notes, but when you really feel people’s lives and feel how much it means to them, then it carries that weight into your life. And that’s what I wanted it to be for me. I realized how much it meant to them.
Bob: What does it mean?
Dirk: Well, it’s a means with which to express your innermost feelings with the world. I think a lot of people have that in traditional cultures, but as traditional cultures have been replaced by more modern, mass cultural settings, a lot of the entertainment goes a different way. You know if you sit and watch TV, it’s coming out of the TV at you, but you're not putting anything back into it. But when you play music, especially within a known framework, then, not only are you being entertained and passing the time, you are also saying some of the deepest things you have to say. I think that’s a problem in America today, a lot of the avenues for expression that people had naturally have been closed up or replaced with things that only go one way.
For me it’s also a way for your ancestors to live through you, or even just people that you love, whether they were related to you or not. That’s another thing that’s happened in this country, we've become so accustomed to severing ties to the past. Everyone wants the newest thing, the most disposable thing. Again, in traditional cultures, most people realize that the respect you have for where you came from is vital. If you actually want to be happy and be in the moment, it’s best to know who you are and where you come from. It’s like this, if you know the past and can sort of see the future, you can be in the present without being limited.
That’s what it means to me, it’s both a way to say what I have to say, and to bring back people I love and feel like I'm communing with them, and share that with new people. Hopefully the music will convey those messages to them.
Bob: But you are also taking this music from the past and putting your own spin on it, with messages for today.
Dirk: That’s the key. The essence of it is making it your own for today. Sometimes people think of old time music as an archaic thing; they think it’s just a recreation of old sounds, but that’s not it at all. The point is, it was always alive. Every generation made it their own; every generation changed it. If you go back and look at how the music changed over the years, it’s always adapted to its current situation. And that’s fine. If you think about it analytically and how you're going to change it, the result sometimes will not be deep in terms of the feeling. If you just play what you feel, the listeners are going to feel it too. For me, those kinds of changes are what makes the music what it is.
Bob: In the last few years I've seen a lot of younger people getting into old time music, kids who came from a rock or punk background, who pick up a mandolin or a banjo and use it in a new way. They don't always connect with the history the way you did. It’s just something that feels right to them.
Dirk: I think that there was a stigma about rural music in this country. It used to be that we were a very rural country with everybody farming, but as we moved into urban areas, those rural roots were stigmatized. People saw this music as backwards and ignorant. It’s only been recently that the very last of those associations have faded away.
People are realizing that this is something to be proud of, something to look at as a valid musical choice. Young people have the chance top look at all of the music available in the world and find something that resonates with them. Not that long ago they might have looked at the banjo, seen those negative stereotypes and dismissed it. But today those stigmas seem to be gone and I think that’s a really good thing.
Bob: I know you have a few things to do today other than talk with me, so I'll let you go. Be assured there are a lot of people out here looking forward to hearing you in Blue Lake. I'm sure the place will be packed.
Dirk: I hope so. I know there’s a lot of fans of the style in general out there so it should be good. See you there.
[This interview originally appeared in a different form in The Hum, Bob’s column for the North Coast Journal.]
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