A Mountain Music Master
History major Wayne Erbsen has carved out a niche promoting vintage American music and folklore.
By Niki Denison
Every year in January, Wayne Erbsen MA'68 celebrates his birthday by inviting one hundred of his closest friends to his home in Asheville, North Carolina, for a potluck and jam session. At the height of this year's party, six different groups are playing old-time tunes, and a stream of people comes and goes all evening, despite frigid temperatures and a crippling snowstorm the day before. The living room, the bedrooms, the office, and the dining room are pulsating with the sounds of the fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, and bass. Coats and instrument cases are piled high near the front door, on top of the washer and dryer, or anywhere that's convenient.
Women are clogging in the kitchen, young children are chasing each other around, and Erbsen's son and daughter have invited their high school and college friends, one of whom is expertly picking a guitar. Erbsen's group in the living room is playing "Bury Me Beneath the Willow" and "There's a Rabbit in the Log and I Ain't Got No Dog." Friends in the kitchen are playing "Richmond Blues," and from every room comes the driving sound of the banjo or the sprightly fiddles, which only become discordant when the group in the nearest vicinity stops and all the others become evident. The sprawling house, which is reminiscent of a log cabin with fireplaces, quilts, log beds, butter churns, and other Americana, is the perfect setting for the rustic sound.
By Niki Denison
Every year in January, Wayne Erbsen MA'68 celebrates his birthday by inviting one hundred of his closest friends to his home in Asheville, North Carolina, for a potluck and jam session. At the height of this year's party, six different groups are playing old-time tunes, and a stream of people comes and goes all evening, despite frigid temperatures and a crippling snowstorm the day before. The living room, the bedrooms, the office, and the dining room are pulsating with the sounds of the fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, and bass. Coats and instrument cases are piled high near the front door, on top of the washer and dryer, or anywhere that's convenient.
Women are clogging in the kitchen, young children are chasing each other around, and Erbsen's son and daughter have invited their high school and college friends, one of whom is expertly picking a guitar. Erbsen's group in the living room is playing "Bury Me Beneath the Willow" and "There's a Rabbit in the Log and I Ain't Got No Dog." Friends in the kitchen are playing "Richmond Blues," and from every room comes the driving sound of the banjo or the sprightly fiddles, which only become discordant when the group in the nearest vicinity stops and all the others become evident. The sprawling house, which is reminiscent of a log cabin with fireplaces, quilts, log beds, butter churns, and other Americana, is the perfect setting for the rustic sound.
The scene is a metaphor for Erbsen's life and career, which have been geared toward preserving rural, traditional music and the culture that spawned it. For the past thirty years, his company, Native Ground Music, has produced and sold music and books highlighting American history and rural culture to fans, museums, specialty shops, and other outlets. Party guests attest to Erbsen's influence on the cultural life of Asheville and beyond. In addition to hosting a radio show called Country Roots and selling instruction books, he's taught tens of thousands of people to play various string instruments over the years.
It all started when Erbsen walked into Professor William O'Neill's history class in Bascom Hall back in 1967. O'Neill, who soon learned that Erbsen played folk music, suggested that the graduate student bring in his guitar and play labor songs for the class in lieu of writing a paper on labor history.
Erbsen jumped at the chance. He sang and strummed tunes such as "Solidarity Forever," "Union Maid," and "Pie in the Sky" to the delight of instructor and class, and a light bulb went on. For the first time, Erbsen realized that he could combine his passion for music with his interest in American history, and the revelation ultimately led the history major to what he does today.
It all started when Erbsen walked into Professor William O'Neill's history class in Bascom Hall back in 1967. O'Neill, who soon learned that Erbsen played folk music, suggested that the graduate student bring in his guitar and play labor songs for the class in lieu of writing a paper on labor history.
Erbsen jumped at the chance. He sang and strummed tunes such as "Solidarity Forever," "Union Maid," and "Pie in the Sky" to the delight of instructor and class, and a light bulb went on. For the first time, Erbsen realized that he could combine his passion for music with his interest in American history, and the revelation ultimately led the history major to what he does today.
But Erbsen says that it was a long and crooked road to his eventual business venture. His master's thesis was titled "The Seekers: The Beat Generation and Psychedelic Drugs." He was the last student to be advised by the respected historian Merle Curti, who was in his seventies at the time. "I'm sure this was one of the stranger theses that he had ever supervised," says Erbsen. "For a conservative history department to support something like that was pretty outlandish. So I have to give them credit that they allowed me to do my own thing."
Erbsen completed his master's degree in just one year and then returned home to California. He taught American history at a community college and knocked around in various bands for a while, including one called Colonel Sanders and the Southern Fried Chickens. But he eventually decided to move to the southeast to nurture his love for traditional music.
Erbsen completed his master's degree in just one year and then returned home to California. He taught American history at a community college and knocked around in various bands for a while, including one called Colonel Sanders and the Southern Fried Chickens. But he eventually decided to move to the southeast to nurture his love for traditional music.
By the time he landed in Charlotte, North Carolina, he had nothing but $100 in his pocket, his instruments, and a few clothes. He was living out of his car and had to borrow a decent pair of shoes so that he could attend a job interview at Central Piedmont Community College. But, as it turned out, just the mention of Merle Curti's name was an excellent calling card. On the spot, the college hired Erbsen to teach history and Appalachian music. During this stint, he had a second revelation that took him a step closer to his eventual career. He decided to put his banjo lessons in book form for his students, and the result was an informal manual that he called How to Play the 5-String Banjo for the Complete Ignoramus. He figured that he might as well try to sell the extra copies to local music stores.
The movie Deliverance had just come out, and it seemed that everybody and his brother wanted to learn to play "Dueling Banjos." When Erbsen went to buy an invoice book, the sales clerk saw the manual and asked if he could buy one. Erbsen knew he was onto something. He eventually found a publisher, went on to write other instruction books, and then decided to publish them himself so that he could have more control over the marketing.
The movie Deliverance had just come out, and it seemed that everybody and his brother wanted to learn to play "Dueling Banjos." When Erbsen went to buy an invoice book, the sales clerk saw the manual and asked if he could buy one. Erbsen knew he was onto something. He eventually found a publisher, went on to write other instruction books, and then decided to publish them himself so that he could have more control over the marketing.
Since then, he's released twenty titles, branching out into almanac-style volumes that focus on themes such as cowboy songs, railroad music, rural America, and the Civil War. They include a mix of rustic stories, jokes, songs, and sayings ("Nostalgia ain't what it used to be," and "Ugly is to the bone; beauty lasts only a day; ugly holds its own"). Erbsen enjoys using the research skills he honed in college to ferret out archival photos, stories, and songs for his books and CDs. He's produced nearly two dozen recordings featuring old-time tunes played by himself and others.
A Touch of the Past
What exactly is old-time music? It's the kind of question that people often refer to Bill Malone. Malone teaches courses for the UW Extension on the history of country music and is perhaps the nation's foremost expert on the topic. An emeritus professor of history from Tulane University and the author of Country Music U.S.A., he moved to Madison seven years ago.
Malone defines old-time music as an acoustic genre that "preceded but at the same time anticipated bluegrass and other old styles." There wasn't any music available to people outside their home communities until the 1920s, when radio and recording came along, he says. Old-time is "an attempt to revive or recreate the sound of that earliest music that was recorded back in the twenties and thirties." Malone says that Mike Seeger, the brother of folk singer Pete Seeger and an old-time music guru, would probably define it as "pre-World War II rural stringband music."
Malone defines old-time music as an acoustic genre that "preceded but at the same time anticipated bluegrass and other old styles." There wasn't any music available to people outside their home communities until the 1920s, when radio and recording came along, he says. Old-time is "an attempt to revive or recreate the sound of that earliest music that was recorded back in the twenties and thirties." Malone says that Mike Seeger, the brother of folk singer Pete Seeger and an old-time music guru, would probably define it as "pre-World War II rural stringband music."
Between 1944 and 1946, Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass, "took the old sound and converted it into something high-powered and dynamic. He created a really supercharged, high-pitched sound" — the high lonesome sound — that was built on an old-time framework, but became something new. This was eventually superseded by commercial country music, which has now become so mainstream that the New York Times dubbed it "the new pop."
Malone says that when musicians play pre-1920s music, such as that found on Erbsen's Civil War CDs, "you have to make a bold leap, because there were no recordings back then. You just make an educated guess. But we can assume that what we hear from those old 78-rpm records from the 1920s is probably what it would have sounded like earlier, too."
Malone says that when musicians play pre-1920s music, such as that found on Erbsen's Civil War CDs, "you have to make a bold leap, because there were no recordings back then. You just make an educated guess. But we can assume that what we hear from those old 78-rpm records from the 1920s is probably what it would have sounded like earlier, too."
The Place Where He Was Born and Raised
Erbsen grew up in southern California, about as far as you can get from the hills of Appalachia. The son of first-generation immigrants from Poland and Austria, he went to Berkeley for his undergraduate degree. The campus had a thriving traditional music scene at the time, and he sharpened his skills playing with some high-caliber musicians. During his high school days, and whenever he went home to West LA for college breaks, he "practically lived" at a legendary club called The Ash Grove, which was a lightning rod for the folk revival of the early sixties. Performers included Doc Watson, Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bill Monroe, the New Lost City Ramblers, Mother Maybelle Carter, and just about every name that now looms large in the pantheon of traditional music. The Ash Grove was a big influence on musicians who were just getting their start in the sixties, says Erbsen.
"For instance, one of my friends was Ry Cooder, and Linda Ronstadt was right around there at that time, as well as members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. A lot of us were just kind of soaking this all in," he says. "We were just spoiled out of our minds with an incredibly high level of musicianship. The performers not only exposed us to the tunes, but they gave us a wonderful insight into the rural mountain life that produced this music."
"For instance, one of my friends was Ry Cooder, and Linda Ronstadt was right around there at that time, as well as members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. A lot of us were just kind of soaking this all in," he says. "We were just spoiled out of our minds with an incredibly high level of musicianship. The performers not only exposed us to the tunes, but they gave us a wonderful insight into the rural mountain life that produced this music."
Erbsen maintains that there is a strong interest in this type of music worldwide. And "there's something about this Southern, rural music that has a tremendous interest to Americans. It's kind of a contagious music, whether they see it performed or go to a square dance or contra dance and become a part of it. A lot of people, even if they're from New York or wherever, get a taste of it and really like it."
It naturally appeals to people who grew up in the South and stayed there, he says, as well as to Southerners who moved north looking for work in the factories of Michigan and Ohio. "But there's another group of people like myself who grew up far from the mountains of North Carolina, who had a hunger for something real, something that has roots, that is really American, and that goes beyond the flash and glitter of Hollywood near where I grew up." It was something, he says, "that you could trace back to our earliest settlers, and the songs were about real things — whether it was murder or lonesome mountain life or horses — something that had substance."
Did Erbsen have any problem being accepted as an outsider coming in to teach? Before he even made the move to North Carolina, he says, he discovered that "music is really good at breaking down the barriers. I went to a Bill Monroe bluegrass festival in Bean Blossom, Indiana. Here I was, fresh off the boat from California, and I was playing nose-to-nose, knuckle-to-knuckle, knee-to-knee with these really hard-core, working class, incredible musicians."
It naturally appeals to people who grew up in the South and stayed there, he says, as well as to Southerners who moved north looking for work in the factories of Michigan and Ohio. "But there's another group of people like myself who grew up far from the mountains of North Carolina, who had a hunger for something real, something that has roots, that is really American, and that goes beyond the flash and glitter of Hollywood near where I grew up." It was something, he says, "that you could trace back to our earliest settlers, and the songs were about real things — whether it was murder or lonesome mountain life or horses — something that had substance."
Did Erbsen have any problem being accepted as an outsider coming in to teach? Before he even made the move to North Carolina, he says, he discovered that "music is really good at breaking down the barriers. I went to a Bill Monroe bluegrass festival in Bean Blossom, Indiana. Here I was, fresh off the boat from California, and I was playing nose-to-nose, knuckle-to-knuckle, knee-to-knee with these really hard-core, working class, incredible musicians."
Erbsen has a friendly, open, and adaptable nature that probably helped him to fit in. And of course, it doesn't hurt that, after thirty years in North Carolina, he has picked up a Southern drawl. When he prefaces his answers to questions with a thoughtful "Well … ," it is definitely the two-syllable pronunciation of the word.
"One of my students is an old local mountain guy who is a plumber, and he's just as country as corn bread, and he said, 'Wayne, you're a good ol' boy,' " Erbsen says. "Yesterday, someone from Missouri called me and said that I was a good old country boy. And that was a compliment from them, because it meant that I was someone they approved of and accepted as if I was from their own culture. That means a lot."
"One of my students is an old local mountain guy who is a plumber, and he's just as country as corn bread, and he said, 'Wayne, you're a good ol' boy,' " Erbsen says. "Yesterday, someone from Missouri called me and said that I was a good old country boy. And that was a compliment from them, because it meant that I was someone they approved of and accepted as if I was from their own culture. That means a lot."
Pickin' and Grinnin'
Gordy (Ralph) Hinners MA'95 is another old-time musician with UW roots. He's known Erbsen for twenty years through a community of people in the Asheville area who play traditional music. "Wayne is one of the few people who's been able to make a living either playing or producing old-time music," he says.
Hinners should know. He dropped out of the UW in the late seventies and spent seven years dancing with the Green Grass Cloggers and playing banjo professionally. But he eventually decided that he'd like to have a family, and that required financial stability. So he finished his bachelor's degree, taught high school for several years, and then returned to Madison to get a master's degree in Spanish. He now teaches Spanish at Mars Hill College, north of Asheville. But he still plays banjo professionally on a part-time basis along with master fiddler Ralph Blizard.
Hinners credits Erbsen with introducing a much wider audience to traditional music and culture. Because Native Ground's sales outlets range from train depots to the homes of six U.S. presidents, rather than just specialty stores for music or dance, he notes, "someone who might not be looking for this might run across it. Wayne's got a really broad view of what this music is."
Hinners should know. He dropped out of the UW in the late seventies and spent seven years dancing with the Green Grass Cloggers and playing banjo professionally. But he eventually decided that he'd like to have a family, and that required financial stability. So he finished his bachelor's degree, taught high school for several years, and then returned to Madison to get a master's degree in Spanish. He now teaches Spanish at Mars Hill College, north of Asheville. But he still plays banjo professionally on a part-time basis along with master fiddler Ralph Blizard.
Hinners credits Erbsen with introducing a much wider audience to traditional music and culture. Because Native Ground's sales outlets range from train depots to the homes of six U.S. presidents, rather than just specialty stores for music or dance, he notes, "someone who might not be looking for this might run across it. Wayne's got a really broad view of what this music is."
The music appeals to Hinners for some of the same reasons that it does to Erbsen. "It's fun," he says, "and it speaks to my soul in some way or another. In the seventies, there was a movement of people, predominantly young people, who felt drawn to a simpler way of life, and that included music and dance, and in many cases, doing things for yourself. I think a lot of people got into playing this kind of music partly as a way to entertain themselves. People were looking to participate in something that seemed much more community based."
Hinners thinks the same sort of thing might be happening now. The popularity of the 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, with its roots music soundtrack, has contributed to a new awareness and popularity of American homegrown music. "It's hard to say whether it's coming out of the same feelings that people felt in the seventies, or whether it's just today's latest fad," says Hinners. But "here's a way that we can really connect on a more soulful level than sitting around the water cooler and discussing the latest Friends episode. This has the potential to connect in a more visceral way."
While Erbsen says that the popularity of O Brother hasn't had much impact on his CD sales, he has noticed an effect on his students. He recently taught a class of twenty beginning guitar students "who are normally interested in rock 'n' roll and reggae and rap and this kind of stuff, and when I asked about their interest in O Brother, eighteen out of the twenty people said they were sitting there to learn guitar because of that movie. So I know it's making a big impact, and I think that the impact has yet to be felt all over."
Hinners thinks the same sort of thing might be happening now. The popularity of the 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, with its roots music soundtrack, has contributed to a new awareness and popularity of American homegrown music. "It's hard to say whether it's coming out of the same feelings that people felt in the seventies, or whether it's just today's latest fad," says Hinners. But "here's a way that we can really connect on a more soulful level than sitting around the water cooler and discussing the latest Friends episode. This has the potential to connect in a more visceral way."
While Erbsen says that the popularity of O Brother hasn't had much impact on his CD sales, he has noticed an effect on his students. He recently taught a class of twenty beginning guitar students "who are normally interested in rock 'n' roll and reggae and rap and this kind of stuff, and when I asked about their interest in O Brother, eighteen out of the twenty people said they were sitting there to learn guitar because of that movie. So I know it's making a big impact, and I think that the impact has yet to be felt all over."
Erbsen is one of those folks who claims that if he won the lottery, he'd still be doing the same thing. The sixties, he says, was a really idealistic generation. "Some people went into politics; other people dropped out and moved to a commune," he says. "And I guess I've tried to make a difference in my own way by helping to preserve and perpetuate this music. I've taught people to play banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin and to sing the old songs, and I'm honored and proud to help make their dreams come true."
