Transcription of an Interview with Kate Brett by Susan A. Eacker and Geoff Eacker August 9, 1997

Transcription

1 Transcription of an Interview with Kate Brett by Susan A. Eacker and Geoff Eacker August 9, 1997 Susan A. Eacker and Geoff Eacker Collection Accession 666 Special Collections Marshall University Libraries Huntington, West Virginia

2 Released Form signed by Kate Brett August 9, 1997 Transcriber not identified PDF prepared by Lisle G Brown Marshall University 2009 All Rights Reserved

3 Interview Date: August 9, 1997 Interview Place: Augusta Festival, Davis & Elkins College, Elkins, West Virginia Interviewer: Susan Eacker Technician: Geoff Eacker SE: Today s date is August 9, 1997, and we re here at the annual celebration at Augusta Heritage Festival in Elkins, West Virginia. The first question I d like to ask you Kate, is a little bit about your family background: Where you were raised, what were your earliest musical influence? KB: I was born in Illinois. Where my mother s family is They re actually from Wisconsin and her grandfather played fiddle, and was a great fiddle player, and his son played fiddle, and was a great fiddle player, and I never knew them, and my grandmother I didn t care much for her father s fiddling because it was fiddling, and she took classical lessons, and she therefore disregarded her father completely, so I don t have that sense of family connection other than I have his fiddle. SE: Your grandmother, though, took classical lessons in what? KB: In violin. So, she knew how to hold the bow, and the violin right, and her father I did it all wrong. SE: Do you remember your grandmother playing the violin? KB: She put it down, no. When I was in my early twenties I went out to her and played a little fiddle, because I was learning fiddle as well as banjo at the time and it reminded her of her father, I mean, she said that sounded like what he did, but she herself she was in her 70 s and 80 s by the time I was cognizant of music, so she wasn t playing. SE: Any other musically inclined people in your family? KB: My mother played piano a lot. Although, because she was a preschool teacher, she did a lot of kid s music and that was how it came out, but she played a lot of piano, and she played some guitar. She was very influenced by the folk tradition. She really thought Pete Seeger was one of her idols. We had lots of records and tapes of that kind of music, and that stuff going on in the house so I was influenced by her playing that kind of music, as well as what the records... SE: So you grew up listening to the Weavers, and... KB: And Burl Ives, and all that. In fact I got a lot of those recordings later because she no longer wanted them. So I said I d be more than happy to take those things. SE: So when did you start playing an instrument and what was the first one you started playing? 3

4 KB: My first instrument, I believe, was recorder which I picked up my mother was very she wanted me to play music, she wanted her family to be musically inclined, so she took me to very young, I guess I was in kindergarten or first grade and she took me to a kind of appreciation of music classes by a woman who also taught modern dance. So, it was as much music as it was moving around, I mean it was a kid s class, and then I moved on to recorder,and played that for a while in second and third grade. I remember she had a guitar and somehow it seems like it might have been in a kid s magazine that I had, and there was some guitar chords so I started teaching myself guitar. SE: Teaching yourself? KB: Probably, when I was in third grade I d say. I played G and A you know, the real basic chords that I could play, and they had the words and I knew the tunes that they were... SE: What were the words? KB: I don t remember. You know the simple children s stuff. My mother played something about picking a bale of cotton jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton. It was one of her favorites, so I learned it because if she could do it I could do it. SE: A little rivalry going on there? KB: Oh maybe; I don t know. I look back at that and that guitar was junk. It s really nothing to be talked about, but it was my mother s and I really wanted to play it, so I did. Then later I played a lot of other instruments, in fact I started out on piano and then I played trumpet and French horn and then I decided I wanted to be a band director, so I took up oboe, saxophone, and clarinet, and I just wanted to learn them all, and every band director I had kept talking me out of doing that. They said there s no career in music and I shouldn t do that and go into a different field and it took me a long time to get over the desire for that, but in the meantime I took a lot of instruments including when I was in high school I took a banjo took a tenor banjo first, actually because there was a class in the adult education program... SE: Where was this now, in Illinois? KB: No, we were in New Jersey. There was a tenor banjo class in the high school so I took it but it was all 20 s and 30 s music and I couldn t appreciate it at all. I just couldn t. Bicycle Built for Two was old people s music [laughs] when I was fifteen or sixteen, but I did learn the banjo that way. Then I rented a banjo for the summer and was musically trained enough to know that there was something wrong with the banjo because when I fretted the strings, they sounded wrong to me. They were out of tune and it bothered me to no end and I didn t know that all it was was that the bridge was in the wrong place. At the time I just thought the banjo was fretted wrong. So I learned a little 4

5 from the Pete Seeger book because that was my banjo idol at the time. SE: How to Play the Five-String Banjo? KB: That s right, How to Play the Five-String Banjo, and I played it as much as I could given that it the banjo itself drove me crazy. SE: Why do you think though the banjo drove you crazy, you knew there was something wrong with it, [you] learned on music you didn t like, what was it that made you come back [to the banjo]? KB: When I was renting, I was renting the five string so I had played the four string and I knew I didn t want that, I go on to the five string and I played that I suppose because I like the sound. SE: Did you like the sound that you heard on recordings? KB: I like the sound of the banjo itself. SE: Were you listening to any banjo recordings? KB: Probably not other than Pete Seeger. He was definitely the one banjo player and when I was young in elementary school, my mother in her work in the church was doing some social--- she was raising money for something having to do with a kid s program in the urban area where we lived and she got Pete Seeger to do a concert and so Pete Seeger came to our house and had dinner and that was--- to this day it was so exciting that Pete Seeger was in our house. GE: That would be incredible. KB: It was and I was only ten years old. GE: Most ten-year olds wouldn t appreciate Pete Seeger being in their home. KB: It was a real high point, unfortunately, he had a cold at the time and didn t sing very well that night but I got to ask him to sing the Bullfrog Song and he sang it and that was as much as I could ask for. SE: Do you remember what the first song was that you learned to play on the banjo? KB: No, I can t say that early on from the book...see what happened was I put it down and I was still thinking I was going to be a band director and I went to school I was at [school?] and my piano teacher failed me it was a bad situation. I didn t get along. I had musical tastes that didn t jive with what the teachers thought I should be having so they said I played bad. I didn t know any better. I 5

6 knew that I didn t appreciate being told that I couldn t play well so I quit and actually to this day, I can t play piano any more because after that it was too much. At the time I was good friends with a person who actually came here and played a banjo. SE: So when was this? KB: This was in the early seventies. I was eighteen and it sounded great and I thought... and his banjo sounded right so all the sudden I was getting exposed to a banjo that wasn t fretted wrong and I knew that I had as much experience with music or more than this man did and I thought if Chuck can do this I can certainly do this. GE: Kind of like with your mom. KB: That s right, this was certainly competition. It took me a little while I went for another year and then got a tax return and it was like $120 and I went to the local music store and I said I have this much money and I want to buy a banjo, and they negotiated with me and they gave me some very cheap Korean banjo which I could buy for that much money and that s how I got my first banjo. I have no idea what it was and I bought a book and it had a record in it so I could listen and I had a few other things -I had a John Hartford record at that point and I had some other records that I could listen to and I started listening to music and I started listening to banjo and kind of doing it all on my own. I really didn t have any people around me that were playing music at the time. I was in Chicago again in college at the University of Chicago and I was playing all those traditional western country and the things everyone learns as a beginner because that s what s in the books. SE: But there wasn t anybody at the University of Chicago that was playing the banjo? KB: Well there wasn t anybody that I was connected to at the time. What happened was after a year.... for one, there was a clogging class and I signed up. I thought this is sort of related and they were playing other records that I could relate.... where I could listen to the banjo on and then I was playing outside one day and a woman came up to me and she kind of listened to me for a while and she said, Do you want me to show some more things on the banjo? As it turned out she had been playing for ten years. Her name was Laura and I don t remember her last name and she had been playing with the Chicago Barn Dance Company and so she said, I ll teach you a little more on the banjo if you ll play banjo because I m trying to learn the fiddle. So she kind of took me under her arm for about I don t know not very long, maybe four or five months and we played music in her apartment and she would teach me a tune, but she was wanting to learn on the fiddle and then I d play the banjo. SE: Now she played on the barn dance? KB: Not the original barn dance but the one that s still going on today. 6

7 GE: Like clawhammer style? KB: Oh yes, she played clawhammer. She was the main banjo player with Mark Gunther who was the main fiddler at the time and I learned a lot just because I was able finally to interact with someone who was playing music. SE: That s interesting that it was a woman, too. KB: At the time it was very important to me because I really wanted some women role models. As it turns out that was the last woman role model for quite a while. She....even though she was interested in the fiddle and traditional music and had been playing a long time, she was also, for reasons I don t understand, she was starting to get into ballroom dancing and was going off on her thing. She kept me going for about six months and then said, This is as much as I can do with you. She was moving out of town I believe or something and I was moving to a different part of Chicago and she said, Go find the Chicago Barn Dance Company and you can learn more with them. I did. It took me a little while because I had to look them up in the newspaper and find out where they re playing and get my courage up enough to go and say, I play banjo too, at a public square dance which a t the time I look back at it now and I was gutsy. I took a banjo who was playing at the time was Mark Ritchie and I said, Can I play your banjo? I took his banjo and I was playing it and Mark Gunther who was the fiddle player at the time he recalls back to that at the time he could hear someone playing the banjo and they really could play but he didn t know who it was so he had to turn and look and there I was and we formed a longtime musical relationship from that first time. So that s kind of where I started. SE: You mentioned you had a friend that came to Augusta in 1977 and then so when did you first come here? KB: In 81. SE: And what was the first class you took? KB: I took also the banjo building class. At the time there was a five-week course on instrument construction and you made a hammered dulcimer and a banjo in those five weeks. It was the most intense workshop I ve ever taken because I also have never used wood working equipment at all. We were going from square one. GE: Yeah, that s pretty intense immersion. KB: It was very intense and the whole idea of making your rim and laminating things and carving things and pearl inlay engraving--we did it all. 7

8 SE: Really, and everyone made their own banjo and hammered dulcimer and you still have both of those? KB: I sold the hammered dulcimer because I was not really interested in it. I kept it around for a while because I thought this is my hammered dulcimer and then I thought why do I want it in my closet let s sell it. I still do have the banjo. I don t play it very much because it s not a very good banjo. At the time I had actually a very decent but cheap banjo and so I thought I wanted something different so I made a White Laydie. Well the White Laydie has a much different sound and it s not a sound that I really care for. If I had known, I wouldn t have done that, but at the time I thought, Let s do something different. SE: So by the time you came to Augusta you were taking the banjo construction class---who were you listening to what kind of style? KB: Well at that point the records....wade Ward was my absolute favorite hero of banjo players. I was listening to all the records that were available like the Fuzzy Mountain and the Highwoods and some of the older -- Tommy Jarell had some records out and then I was also at that point-- let s see in 1980 I graduated from college and by the summer of 81 I was already playing for kind of private square dances that the barn dance company was being hired for and by the time I got back from Augusta I was doing their weekly square dance. I learned quick. GE: Was that on the air? KB: No, they have a Monday night square dance. I had started out playing dances where they had open bands where anyone can play and they had two or three mikes and everybody else just hung out back. Then I was asked to join the official band. GE: The inner circle. KB: Yes SE: Tell me when you started listening to female banjo players and who were they and which ones do you like the best. KB: The next summer, 1982, was when I came back to West Virginia and I basically spent -- it seems like all summer, I have no idea how long, we went and just visited musicians around the state, me and Chuck, the person that I had originally gotten interested in playing music with. I had a dual mission, I was also looking for a place to live. I came here and actually Gerry Milnes directed us out to different musicians and that s when I first met Sylvia O Brien. I got to visit her at her house. We went and saw Sherman Hammons and he talked about Maggie but I didn t get to meet her that time. Even the year before at Augusta I was meeting women who were playing music young women 8

9 who were playing music. In the Chicago scene, there were no women and I was very aware of the fact that it was men and me in the inner circle and the girlfriends were out on the outer circle. It drove me crazy and I hated that feeling. I was not a girlfriend to anybody and I knew I never wanted to be in that role of being out there and not being as good as the men. Sylvia was an influence of mine as far as being a strong woman who just lived her life. For the most part of her life she wasn t married and her house inspired me. She could just go on and do her thing and she had the banjo that her brother made her and she showed me how it was tuned. There was one tuning and should be able to play everything in this tuning which of course I kind of knew that wasn t the way I was going to play. That was really neat. I also visited Sara Singleton. She plays fiddle and she also was nice to see-- OK there are these older women... SE: She s mentioned and I have her name but I didn t know what she played, so she plays the fiddle not the banjo. I know where Phoebe Parsons lives and Sylvia lives in Clay County right? KB: Yeah in Otter Creek. SE: So tell me a little bit more about her. KB: What I remember of her is...she was frail at the time and she was not at her strongest but she had great stories to tell about living in the mountains and about the panthers that would come to back door and how she got out the shotgun to scare them away. [She s] very opinionated too. My impression of her was that she knew how to live and this was the way it was. I don t believe she was driving a car so I m not sure how she got supplies but she lives straight up a hill. It was a dirt road from the other main dirt road up to her little cabin. [It] was decorated with decopage, you know it was pretty much a cabin. She was still using a well for water. SE: Did she welcome visitors then? KB: Oh yeah, she really did. Although, what I learned over the summer was that you really need to go to visit some of these people through invitation of someone else who knows them. At the time chance enabled me to met David Morris and David was the one who took me to see Sylvia. SE: Geoff knows him very well. He and his wife were at Miami. Do you know where he is now? KB: He s around. He still plays all the West Virginia festivals. He and his brother both. GE: They re playing together? KB: They do play together. They don t get along always but they rehired always as the Morris Brothers so they always play together. I didn t spend as much time as I wish because in the end I moved to Morgantown and she was all the way down in Clay County and it was almost too far to 9

10 visit on a regular basis. SE: Why did you move to Morgantown? KB: Well on this trip I was doing where I was visiting all these people, I really wanted a music community and I wanted to play with other women. There were at least three women fiddle players in Morgantown, all of whom I got along with and they were all excited about me potentially moving there. That was Blanch Sterrit[?], Renna] Rubin, and Annie Williams. That s what really pushed me over the edge. I was sort of leaning toward Chapel Hill and I thought no--there was a good community there but I didn t feel pulled in as much as I did in this other place. Once I decided to move there, Blanch took me aside and said, Are you sure you want to move here? They wanted me to know that life wasn t going to be easy. There wasn t a lot of jobs and all that but, I said, Yeah I think so. Once I decided that Renna decided that she wanted to put together a band so we put together a women s string band. It didn t last very long. We had personality conflicts but Blanch, me, Justine Davis, and Renna were all in various shapes and forms of bands. SE: What were some of the names? KB: We started out with the Harmony Grits but because Justine was the only true Southerner she hated to be called a grit and she didn t want that name. Then we were playing a benefit for the War Resisters League and we said war resisters and came up with Worry Sisters so we called ourselves the Worry Sisters and that name stuck. SE: I like that. KB: But we really didn t worry that much so it didn t fit very well. SE: Was this in conjunction I ve been in the peace movement in the Reagan era for Central American anti...was that in conjunction with that? KB: I think it was about that time yeah. It was early to mid 80's. SE: Did you play any kind of topical music? KB: No. We were still doing string band music but in Morgantown there was real strong tradition of coffee houses benefitting one group or another. There was one place that always had these coffee houses and we d just sign up for whatever coffee house that was going to go on. We didn t get any money for it and we just played our music and had a great time. SE: Did you know any women banjoists in Morgantown? Were you the only one that you know of? 10

11 KB: I suppose I was. SE: Really? KB: I m trying to think. Blanche played a little banjo, not much. There really was a dearth of banjo players in Morgantown at the time and a lot of fiddle players. I felt very welcomed in because they were needing banjo players. Previous to that Renna was in a band that kept losing the banjo players and they would move out for various reasons. SE: Well you were welcomed in the group but you mentioned earlier that you were the only woman in the band, how was your group received being an all female group did you have any problems being an all female group especially you being the banjo player? KB: No I don t think so. In fact I think that many people thought of us as a novelty. We ended up playing a lot of local dances around West Virginia. We did homecomings and things like that. They remembered us because we were all women. They liked our name and they asked for us back. GE: You were still going on as the Worry Sisters? KB: The Worry Sisters, yeah. I think because of the fact that we were all women, we got a lot of attention. SE: What about other musicians did they take you seriously? KB: Oh yeah, because we were decent musicians. If we had not been good musicians and used the fact that we were women to get jobs I think it would have been very different. When we weren t being hired we were playing with all these other people. Annie I didn t play with as much foi money but I played with Annie and her husband a lot and Paul Yaten[?] and there was a whole bunch of music going on there in the 80 s. We just happened to be a band when hired that played in that formation but otherwise we were playing for whatever the situation called for. SE: Well tell me a little about how you got to where you are today playing with such legends as Melvin Wine and other people. KB: Part of it is when I was learning, and I was really was conscious of the fact that I was a woman and there weren t any women--- I wanted to be a good musician. That was what I wanted to be seen as; a good musician. I didn t want to be seen as a woman who played banjo. It was real important for me. I think in the case of Melvin, the fact that I was a woman had a strong influence and I feel sorry for that. I truly believe that sometimes he would play with me over a man because he loves to have women surrounding him. It took me a while to realize that and I felt really bad about it. In fact for a while I put a lot of distance between me and him because I didn t like that. In fact I was causing 11

12 some marital difficulties in his own marriage. His first wife really didn t like me. I didn t even understand why until I put it together that he was having more interest in me besides banjo playing. I really just wanted to be a good musician. I put myself out on the line a lot and I went to contests and I won prizes and I kind of got animosity from people especially in West Virginia because I wasn t local. I didn t grow up here. It wasn t good foi me as a woman who didn t grow up here to be winning prizes. SE: What prizes did you win? KB: I guess the first prize that I won here in the state was fourth or third place at the Vandalia Festival. It was only supposed to be West Virginia residents who get to play in that. SE: But you were a resident. KB: I was a resident, but I hadn t been born here. It didn t matter that I lived here. It took a long time for people to warm up. I won a couple years at Vandalia and I won pretty consistently at the Glenville Folk Festival. That one didn t have any money so I could win that one, it was almost OK. SE: Was it because you were taking money from pure West Virginians? KB: Yeah and there was a real strong sense in the early to mid 80 s and even today it continues somewhat, that people who were from the Northeast and anybody that wasn t from WV was from the Northeast, people who came to the state and moved in or came to the festivals and played music, well they had more money, they came from wealthy families and they could sit around and play music all day and get so good. Whereas the West Virginians had to work very hard and it wasn t fair. Actually, Jerry Milnes and I talked about that because he s from the Northeast and moved here and it fits all those stereotypes but somehow at one point along the way a bunch of these people who will remain nameless were circulating this and actually writing articles in newspapers and being rather vindictive. They took him aside and said, You don t count. You re a West Virginian now. So you kind of had to gain access and I never did gain access. SE: Isn t that interesting. If you re in Appalachian Studies you are naturally studying stereotypes of Appalachian people, but I m just realizing and this is true for everybody, it s human nature, but mountain people have their own stereotypes of outsiders. KB: I couldn t do anything about that. I couldn t make anyone like or dislike me. I could just be there and do my best. It was very difficult. There were times when I was very frustrated at the fact that for instance when they made the Banjo Legacy recording, that there would be people that could look at me and say there are no women banjo players in WV, because I wasn t from WV. SE: So henceforth you didn t get on the cover. Which do you think it was, the fact that you weren t 12

13 born in WV or that you were a woman? KB: I think it was both. I do think at the time I was the only serious banjo player who was a woman in the state. The only one that was winning prizes anyway. I think there was both this animosity foi me being from out of state and Gerry Milnes was from out of state too but he was a man and he had done the manly thing of working the fields and homesteading and that s not my lifestyle. I didn t ingratiate myself into the community very well. I just kind of said, Here I am, accept me. The answer was no we don t accept you. I would have stayed in WV longer but I realized I needed a career and I was just sort of doing whatever jobs I could get and I decided I wanted to get into epidemiology[?] and I took a class at WVU and my teacher said, You have to go to school in North Carolina because that s the best school. So I went. SE: At Duke? KB: No, at the University of North Carolina. So I went to Chapel Hill, yeah, in the end I went to Chapel Hill too. I thought I d end up back here because NIASH[?] is in Morgantown and I could ve gotten a job there. I was very torn when I had to decide whether to move back to WV or to move to DC. I decided I didn t want that experience again of not feeling like I was welcome musically. Career wise they were welcoming me with open arms because they needed anybody who would move to WV. Musically I was feeling much more drawn to some other place and it turned out to be DC. SE: Really, tell me about the music scene there and what you re involved in now. KB: There s a strong musical community in DC. There s a big dance community which is separated in a way that I m not used to. The dancers are very separated from the musicians. Bruce Mosky s[?] there and the Double Decker String Band is there and our band the Hoover Uprights are there. There s just some really strong musicians as well as beginners, but there s this really strong community there. When I came to DC, I actually stayed with Bruce and Audry Mosky. They were just so welcoming and I thought, Here s this man everyone thinks of as an idol and he s saying come live here. We d love for you to be here. That to me was a real selling point. SE: Tell me about your band the Hoover Uprights, who s in it and I assume you play the banjo... KB: Yeah I play the banjo. It s Bill Schmidt who is a former double Decker and is now our fiddle player and John Schwab on guitar and Kevin Enoch my husband who fills in. He does mostly banjo uke and bass and whatever else. We mostly do non-singing stuff. We keep trying to work up singing stuff so we can do actual sets, but we do as much music for fun as anything else. That s our main purpose. John Schwab was the one who got us together. He got to know both Kevin and me and he knew Bill. Bill lives in Baltimore, so it s really difficult negotiating how to get everybody together but we got together one winter weekend and just had a ball and I ve had 13

14 a ball since. We play at least once a month. SE: How long have you been together now? KB: I ve been in DC for six years, so I think five years. SE: And uh...any recordings? KB: We have one cut on the Clifftop recording and one cut on the Young Fogies II recording. SE: How about playing us a favorite new or old tune. KB: Why don t you turn that off while I tune. SE: OK [turns off tape] [Resumes in mid conversation] KB: This is my engagement ring. Most people get real rings, I get a banjo. s much more practical. [laughs] SE: Kate is playing a banjo made by Kevin her husband, which we ll take a picture of. KB: I ll play the tune..i t was my very first banjo contest tune it s called Rachel. [starts playing] SE: That was wonderful. Where did you learn to play that? KB: I learned a basic version of that in Chicago but I was trying to remember where I learned this version and I saw Bobby Taylor and he plays a very similar version so I must have learned this variation here but I can t remember. SE: And who s tune is that? KB: If s just a traditional tune. I don t know who wrote it. That s the tune I placed first at Galax with. SE: First at Galax? KB: In 1990 I got best old-time banjo and best all-round performer. That was quite exciting. I haven t actually gone back since. [laughter] I don t think I d like to go back and place last. 14

15 SE: [to Geoff] Do you have any technical questions? GE: Well I do. Without putting this into a category, is that Galax style? KB: No it s not in a Galax style. I play much more notey than the round peak style and I think I learned that both--the Chicago, MO, Ill, IO, sound is much more Irish sounding than the Southeast music. That s where I learned so I think I probably picked up--- I wasn t learning from banjo players, I was learning from fiddle players and mandolin players so I was playing theii music note for note. Then here in WV [the music] is very notey. Many of the people like David O Dell and Tim Bing[?] and John wizard(?) all play very notey. I know that Sylvia O Brien doesn t and I know that Pheobe Parsons does not play in that style but the younger generation... [tape runs out.] SE: OK, we re still with Kate Brett and she? s going to play us one more tune of her choice. KB: I think I ll play Play Around My Pretty Little Miss. [starts playing] SE: Where did you learn that tune? KB: Again, I don t know that I learned it from any one source I kind of picked it up --that was a tune that I probably learned I know I didn t play it in Chicago, I probably learned it with the Worry Sisters. It wasn t until recently that I began to learn from older recordings or people older. I was learning from my contemporaries. SE: So who are you listening to now? KB: A lot of everything. I m just learning-- now that there is so much of that music being released I m just listening to everything. I ve spent a lot of time listening to John Sayler s[?] tape which is Western Kentucky and I m finding a lot of similarities with WV. Like there s a Lost Boy that s in both WV and Western KY and nothing in between. I don t know how that got to be although the Ohio River kind of goes that way. SE: Have you heard the Library of Congress recording of mountain music of Kentucky? KB: Yeah, that s great. SE: Well Kate, is there anything you d like to add to this interview or anything you d like us to know that we should ve asked you but didn t-- a sort of prologue to this? KB: Not that I can think of. If I think of anything I ll let you know later. SE: OK, well thanks so much for sharing this music and your life story with us. 15

16 END OF INTERVIEW 16