Tone Poems and Time Travel

Before I get on with my tale of time travel, here’s a brief history of my timeline...

I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s in Northern California, the oldest of eight kids, living mostly around the San Francisco Bay area. On my 18^th birthday, I moved to a home just south of Salt Lake City with my family. One of my three memories of my 18^th birthday is getting a Will Clark Starting Lineup action figure. (It doesn’t seem quite right to call it a figurine. This is Will “The Thrill,” the “Natural,” my favorite guy to ever wear a Giants Jersey… It’s an action figure!) I still have Will standing on my bookshelf, over 25 years later.

The second thing I remember is getting stuck in an icy gas station parking lot (this was January in Utah, after all), and learning that if we piled enough siblings on the hood of the Honda Civic I was driving, the weight would get us the traction we needed to get back on the road and out of the snowy sludge. The third thing I remember is pulling into the Salt Lake Valley around 11 pm, and even in the dead dark of a winter night, seeing enough of the Uintah range to be blown away by the ‘purple mountains’ majesty.’ I distinctly recall saying to myself, ‘this is what that line in that America song is all about.’

A year later I moved to England as a fresh faced, curly-headed Mormon missionary, where I lived for two years. I came home to Utah, got married to Darcie 7 months later, and we’ve spent the last 23 years raising four kids all over Utah, Idaho, California, Oregon, and Washington for one job or another.

When our oldest son, Ethan was just a little guy, maybe almost a year old, we traveled from Portland back to the Bay Area for brother number four’s wedding. It was great to see so much family, as it had been awhile. It was especially fun to see extended family—aunts, uncles, grandparents, even my great grandmother, who got to hold her first great-great-grandkid, Ethan. The photo opportunities were abundant!

In the previous few years, I had expanded my musical tastes, experiencing just about everything I could get my ears on. Those who know me best know I love talking about, reading about, writing about, dreaming about, and playing music of nearly any type. I can see beauty and appeal in just about any piece of music that is truly made with love—you can kind of sniff out that realness (or fakeness). And when someone puts their guts and heart and blood and soul and tears into a piece of music, I respect it, whether it’s old school hip-hop, heavy metal, early punk, jazz, rock, alternative, whatever… even a lot of pop stuff. But in particular the rootsy, Americana stuff—traditional folk, blues, early country and western—really started speaking to me.

Especially bluegrass. Bluegrass connected me with my parents and grandparents, and I think subconsciously I longed to live near them again, to listen to them pick and harmonize together some of the old standards I’d heard them play since I was a baby. I picked up some records and CD’s of artists that I recognized from Dad’s collection—Skaggs and Rice’s album, Doc Watson’s Memories, some Bluegrass Cardinals, a little Ricky Skaggs, and a classic, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken, vol.1. That record (or double LP to be exact) is a history lesson—amazing stuff from artists from every generation who had ever played traditional folk, country, and bluegrass! Listening to it took me back to my own childhood, hearing Dad play and sing with his family and friends. I’d easily heard him play and sing 10 or 12 of those songs.

In the early 90’s I was just waking up to how great that music was; I had been way too cool to slow down and listen to it when I was growing up. And the newer stuff—man was it good! My favorite artist soon became Tony Rice, a blazing guitarist with a strong singing voice and incredible material. He recorded in a dozen iterations; he’s got records as a solo act, in duos, with his family, and a bunch of great bands. Through the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, he was the face of bluegrass guitar, a monster talent.

Shortly before Ryan’s wedding, I had picked up an album Rice did with David Grisman, an equally talented mandolinist. The album, creatively driven by Grisman and released on his own label, is called Tone Poems. It comes with a beautifully illustrated, well written booklet that details each of its 17 tracks. Each song represents a different era, going back to the early 1900’s (hence the title of track number one, Turn of the Century). The songs were either written during a specific time period, or written later and inspired by that era. The tracks were all instrumental, just an acoustic guitar and a mandolin, and were also played by instruments from those eras. 17 songs, 17 guitars, 17 mandolins, 17 eras of modern music and instrument building. It provides a unique listening experience, with great photographs and written commentary by the artists on the songs and the instruments they played for each.

After Ryan’s wedding, and as the festivities were quieting, Dad, Grandpa, and I passed the guitars around and sang a few songs for each other and with each other; one I remember in particular—Darcie’s favorite, “The Banks of the Ohio.” (Incidentally, Grandpa’s wonderful harmony singing somehow kept Darcie from noticing this is really a gruesome murder ballad; she didn’t catch on to that until years later). That same song appears on Tone Poems, played on vintage instruments from 1937.

After the picking wound down, I got the CD out, figuring Grandpa and Dad would like it. As Dad put the CD in the stereo and pressed ‘play,’ the three of us listened to 20 notes or so of a simple melody played on a 1905 Gibson mandolin, then joined by a Martin guitar built in 1891. The song unfolded, pure acoustic tone, played perfectly by two musical geniuses—never overplaying, never dumbing down. There are no overdubs or studio effects. It is authentic. It is perfect.

I watched my grandpa’s face just melt into pure joy, tears welling in his eyes. His father, my great-grandfather Daddy Eric, had given him a Martin guitar over 50 years previously, the same one Daddy Eric had played, while his own brother accompanied him on mandolin. I am guessing he hadn’t heard tone and playing like this in 40 or 50 years, and this took him right back to those days before internet, TV, and mass-market commercial recordings; back to when music was experienced mostly in person and not over wires or on plastic. We listened to a handful of those tracks, the three of us getting teary-eyed as we took this time-traveling trip together. Grandpa knew the words to many of those old songs, and got us all choked up as he sang softly along with the playing. I bet he heard his dad and uncles singing along with him. It is a moment I will remember for eternity.

Grandpa passed away a few years after that memorable picking and listening party. Daddy Eric’s Martin now sits next to a bunch of other instruments in my music room, including my grandma’s old autoharp and banjo (I think it just turned 100!), my dad’s Dobro, and of course some guitars and mandolins I have picked up over the past 20 years or so. But nothing brings me more joy than playing the old Martin. I cried when my dad gave it to me about 4 or 5 years ago—there is so much Anderson family history in that guitar. You can see it in the scratched mahogany, smell it when you open the case, and hear it when you play a chord. I’ve since made a few repairs to it, and it plays and sounds wonderfully—perfect for blues and old-time tunes.

I like picking blues on this guitar—its small size and all mahogany body give it a sweet, gentle, almost pleading tone, not like the cannon roar that my newer, bigger rosewood-and-spruce Martin dreadnought thunderously hollers. In the moments that I play a little bluesy song on the old guitar, or pick out an old time fiddle tune, I hear—no, feel—Grandpa there, smiling and singing along. And once again, music bends time, space, and heaven as we sing together.

What music transports you through time?