Re: Why play Mandolin?
Because it was there. Seriously. One day it was just there, and I loved music, and I was making up songs, so I needed some way to interface these inside ideas with the outside world.
My mom had discerned an interest in music a couple years earlier and bought me a guitar for my 13th birthday, a cheap Sears $20 special, but I couldn't make sense of it - six strings versus four fingers, irregular intervals - then the neck began to warp until the strings were an inch from the neck at the join. Strangled it with its own strings and tossed the remains into the attic. Then one day my mom came up with a mandolin, an old Gibson pumpkin oval hole A model (much like what I play now; another story), in an OHSC (very convenient for hitchhiking, as I would discover later) with purple felt lining (very cool), and though I didn't know what it was, it made sense to me - four sets of strings, regular intervals - and it sounded pretty, all by itself - I mean, it just rang and jangled and shimmered, and sounded so exotic - which kept me interested in it long enough to figure it out. Plus, I kind of liked its underdog status, as well as being different from what everyone else was playing. So at jams, rather than being yet another guy with a guitar, I was a mandolinist, adding a different sound to the mix. This differentiation has stood me well to this day - if someone wants a mandolin they have to call me. (Yeah, kind of a big "if" sometimes, but still ... )
Finally, it is worth pointing out that i spent years listening to music and learning about it before I got to playing an instrument, and this was in New England, not a bluegrass-rich environment, so it was years after starting to play mandolin that I learned about bluegrass and what people expected to be played on the instrument. After "Love In Vain" by The Rolling Stones and "Fat Man" by Jethro Tull and "Goin' To Brownsville" by Ry Cooder and "Gasoline Alley" and "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart - this last one being the song that catapulted mandolin into familiarity for those outside the bluegrass community, and suddenly I was in demand - well, kind of. So I arrived at the mandolin from a rock background, and have been playing it that way ever since - expressing the music I love with it, rather than what other people expect from it. But I've always taken the road less travelled, and when there was a fork in the road, I took it. So I ended up here .... Eh, it's not so bad!
But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. - Dennis Miller
Furthering Mandolin Consciousness
Finders Keepers, my duo with the astoundingly talented and versatile Patti Rothberg. Our EP is finally done, and available! PM me, while they last!
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