Planetary Gig Talk

Zach had a lot of music around his house growing up, as his mother is a musician and music teacher. He focused on sports when young, but then his parents got him an acoustic guitar when he graduated from high school. It was in college in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado, he says, when he “really started writing from my heart and my soul.” It helped him get some peace and tranquility in his life and he committed to music in a way that was real and deep. Zach says, music allowed him to find himself; “It allowed me to step past my own confines and barriers because there was something bigger than me on the other side of it. … Just letting go … and honoring this craft is my conduit. … It’s transformed my perspective.” He also says, “I will tell everyone and their mother that they would be good at some musical instrument or singing.”  “What I think we are doing as musicians, as artists, is finding a way to double down on who we are, believing that if we’re ourselves, if we invest in that, if we really live that fully, people feel that, they see that, and a lot of people need that, and I needed it for a long time, I was inspired by a lot of musicians and artists.” His current band is Lunar Eclectic in Austin, Texas.

Tara Linhardt is a musician, educator, photographer, event coordinator, and movie maker. She didn’t have a lot of music in her house growing up, but started playing guitar at seven just because it was fun! She then played music with friends in high school and began playing the mandolin. She got serious about music when she spent time in college in Nepal and Thailand, even using music as meditation as a way to get into and stay in the moment. She says, “music can be for everyone” and that “helping people meet other people is great.” She spends a lot of time putting people together, whether bluegrass music jams or by conducting music tours. She says so many people just sit around passively and she likes to help set up jam sessions where people can play together and learn how to play together to create a sense of community. She and some friends several years decided to make a film in Nepal and ended up with a movie titled the Mountain Music Project. The film highlights the gandarba musicians in Nepal and also the similarities with Appalachian bluegrass players in Virginia, who surprisingly have some songs in common! Tara also has tours to Nepal, where travelers can meet musicians, artists, woodworkers, and work with orphanages and schools. Please visit www.TaraLinhardt.com for more information on the tours and movie. 

Elijah Wald is a American folk blues guitarist and music historian, and 2002 Grammy Award winner. He says there was always music around when he was young. He started playing when he was seven and, after seeing Pete Seeger when he was eight or nine, he decided he wanted to be a musician. He also was influenced by Woody Guthrie's book Bound for Glory and, after studying with Dave Van Ronk in New York, spent 15 years playing guitar and traveling the world. He has published more than a thousand articles, mostly about folk, roots and international music for various magazines and newspapers, including over ten years as "world music" writer for the Boston Globe. Elijah says that music can connect people and that it is important to go out and find other types of cultures and music.

Elena Mannes had music in her life "from the womb" and many musicians in her family, so it is no surprise that she is an award-winning author of a book and director of a documentary movie on music. The book is titled The Power of Music and the movie is The Music Instinct: Science and Song. The book includes great information about music and along with the movie are both listed on the Planetary Gigs Society website. The movie features musical luminaries Dan Levitin and Bobby McFerrin and provides a ground-breaking exploration into how and why the human organism and the whole ebb and flow of the cosmos is moved by the undeniable effect of music. Elena says, "The new science is showing how we are really wired for music in so many ways; we're wired to respond to certain harmonies, even infants."

 She also has a new book out called Soul Dog, about the spiritual lives of animals. Elena says, "We're all the same stuff."

Tracy Silverman remembers listening to music with his father as young as 2 or 3 years old and by 5, he had been totally smitten by the violin and started taking lessons. He practiced incessantly and eventually attended The Juilliard School. After that, he started playing in rock bands and began making electric 6 string violins. “I wanted to play violin so it sounded like an electric guitar because that is the voice of my generation.” “Music is a language,” Tracy says, “and I didn’t want to be singing in an old-fashioned language.” He says he had a “desire to touch people, to connect people … in a language they understood.”  Tracy says music is “powerful enough that plenty of crazy orthodox religions ban it because it moves people.” Rhythmic music makes people respond with their bodies, so something is going on there, he says, and when added with the human voice or instruments that mimic the voice, it is a “pretty potent substance there that can target your emotional brain.” He believes musicians have an incredible responsibility when they are able to touch people deeply to open up something in them and that music can be a “real instrument for social good.”

Dave Welsch says, “I don’t remember a time when there wasn’t music in my life.” His mother played piano, his father played trumpet and had weekend gigs, and Dave’s first performance in front of an audience was when he was nine years old; he was gigging with his father at about fourteen. He learned music mainly by ear and playing along with records. He met Victor Wooten in 1994 and helped create Vic’s first website. Dave has played with Vic, served as his assistant and tour manager, and was with Vic when his first music camp was held in 1999. Dave says, “Vic is an idea person,” and had wanted to start a music and nature camp; the camps are now in their 20th year. Of the camps, Dave says, “I think we’ve really been somehow successful in making the connection between music and life.” He says that so many students have grown personally from music, with many life-changing experiences, and so many fine musicians are wonderful people.” Dave says that Vic’s book, The Music Lesson, is rooted in the idea that music is a language. The audiobook is really special, he says, because it was all produced in Vic’s studio with the people who inspired the characters. “The more you think about music as a language, the better you are going to learn it.” He also says a key facet of music is “to look at music as a living entity.” Dave says, “It’s amazing to me always to watch people enjoy music … music affects them in some way that they don’t care [how they are dancing]!” He says, “One of my goals in life is to make people smile,” and that certainly happens through music.  When people go to concerts, they don’t care about who the other people are, what color, what religion, they are just enjoying the music. And, he says, if we can do that for two hours at a concert, we have to be able to do that in the world. The feeling of community through music is so important, he says, “you feel empathy and compassion, and love for the people around you.”

Both Bob and Ira have been smitten by bluegrass music most of their lives. Bob's band Big Hillbilly Bluegrass played a regular gig at Madam's Organ in DC for about 20 years, and through that made a connection that led to invites from State Department public affairs offices at various foreign missions. They eventually brought their bluegrass music to over 30 countries in Africa and Asia. Bob says, "You can make friends with music, that's the bottom line." They made deep emotional connections through music on every day of their tours. They played their music at numerous events in myriad venues and usually, local groups also played, and they often shared songs, finding common ground. The response to American Bluegrass music was uniformly positive. "There is almost a human genetic response to Foggy Mountain Breakdown," Bob says. Ira wasn't on all the tours but said he remembers playing with some amazing musicians in the Republic of Congo, and he also played for pygmies in the Central African Republic. Bob's favorite country was the Republic of Georgia, where he says the people "gather spontaneously and sing songs in hugely resonant voices that are one thousand years old." Bob also says, "We saw demonstrations of commonality almost incessantly" during the tour, and that "We were far more effective at creating good will among people than any platoon of military men."

Roddy Barnes grew up on a farm but knew he wanted to play the piano when he was only three years old. He ended up taking lessons a few years later and got his college degree in classical performance on piano. But he always loved Black church music and called it "that good music," and now plays blues, jazz, and gospel. He says, music is a "thing that we need," and healing the psyche is what we are here for. "It feels like we have gotten away from [music, but] people need it for their health," Roddy says. He has some good advice: "When I need inspiration, when I am writing, I go to the garden. I say listen to nature a lot. But even better, find good music, sit down with a glass of wine if you like, have no distractions, no phones, no anything, and listen, get inside the music, close your eyes and just go inside and listen to all that's happening and let it affect you, really absorb it."

Richard Lewellen fell in love with music as a toddler, watching movies such as Aladdin, Fantasia, and the Jungle Book, and the amazing music in those films. His mother was a classically trained pianist and his father loved jazz. Richard was a Beatles fan in middle school and played guitar, but was introduced to Barbershop harmony singing at age 14 and it has been a huge part of his life since then. He met his wife, Christina Lewellen, through Barbershop singing (she was interviewed in Planetary Gig Talk #73). Richard says Barbershop harmony singing was his way of being like a Beatle; he says it is very accessible and allows one to be in a community of various voices. It is not well known, but Barbershop harmony really was started about the same time as jazz by African American singers and was not accepted more broadly until whites began to sing Barbershop. Barbershop singing combines interesting rhythms, creative search for harmonies, improvisation, and percussion. Barbershop singers must be fully present in the music in a way that overcomes technical flaws; Richard says you can hear the heartbeat of music in the moment of singing. Richard also has become a professional music therapist. He says music therapists undergo a rigorous regimen of study and must be Board Certified to practice. Music therapists serve the entire population, cradle to grave, including helping to soothe children in neonatal units, assisting children in schools, those with autism, at-risk teens, veterans with PTSD, rehabilitation from medical events like stroke and gunshot victims (including Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was aided in regaining her speech by music therapists), pain management, dementia/Alzheimer’s patients, and in many other situations. He says music and rhythm can help balance out many issues in the body or psychologically. Richard says, “Entrainment through music is really powerful; it’s a human superpower we don’t tap into enough.” He also says we don’t apply the intention of using music as broadly as we should. Music is a big part of many societies and it is how they connect with something larger than themselves.

Will Ackerman plays guitar beautifully and has inspired many people with the heart in his music, including his many records and the artists he produced as founder of Windham Hill Records. He listened to music all the time as a youngster, and used to call in to Jim Lange’s show on KGO radio to request songs. He was even interviewed by Lange when he was young and saw the record business. He also knew the members of the Kingston Trio while at Stanford, and learned that, “Music is made by people; it’s not a distant thing. … From a very young age, music was very important to me.” He experienced many amazing coincidences in his life related to music, as he explains in the podcast. A neighbor, Michael Kilmartin, first put a guitar in his hands, and then ended up promoting Will’s first record nationally to radio stations. “There was almost nothing that was intentional,” he says. He found something in open tunings that really resonated with him when playing guitar; they allowed him to remove the intellectual aspects from the process and the only thing he had to work with was emotion and feeling. “It was just pure heart,” he says. Doors flew open for him, and that was also the story with the founding of Windham Hill and the many, many fantastic artists on its records. “I found refuge in listening to music, and I think probably that informed my approach as to how I approached music in myself. … The process for me was utterly subjective. I wasn’t trying to change the world. I wasn’t trying to give the world a gift. I was only trying to be true to the emotion, and some very painful memories or new occurrences. I was somebody who needed deeply, emotionally, to express something that I think words were not capable of doing for me.” He also has felt great solace through nature in his life, which is also sensed in his amazing music. Please enjoy a fascinating Planetary Gig Talk podcast interview with Will. You can find out more at www.williamackerman.com and contact him at [email protected].