Lowly Writer’s Note: Usually I’m not one to promote a performer if he/she is not within a 1,000 mile radius, but Baby Gramps is quite the exception. I had the pleasure of interviewing him when he came through Asheville to perform a solo show at the Swannanoa Player’s House on June 9. This bearded wonder is a national treasure and has delighted people of all ages around the country. I was disarmed by his giving nature and made me wish all performers had his outlook. Waynesville and points west would be great stops for Baby Gramps.

The voice on the answering machine sounded like warm apple butter - “Hello, this is Baby Gramps here on the West Coast ... I’ll try to get back with you when you’re done [chuckle] saving the world.”

As a joke, I had left a voice message about rescuing the Earth. I ego-petted a little, proud that a musical icon like Baby Gramps had gotten a kick out of my fabrication. His vocal pleasantries disarmed me and I craved a talk session.

Subsequent calls for interview requests were vacuumed into an answering machine. A publicist told me to leave questions at the beep. My heart plummeted. The canned queries I put on the distant machine left me desolate. I wanted impulsiveness, dammit, an improv Q and A. The wait was in vain, and I was left with a rainbow colored question mark. The deadline came and went and I had surrendered to making a soulless summary.

I was on my eighth mainline of coffee when the phone rang.

“Hello!?!” I grumbled through a caffeine haze.

“Hunter, it’s Baby Gramps. Do we still have time to talk?”

Usually, I would blast back with missed deadlines and no chance. But that voice melted my Jack Frost tendencies. “Sure,” I embellished. “I have plenty of time.”

No one should blame Baby Gramps for lack of time. His popularity has expanded since the debut “Same Ol’Timeously” was released a couple of years ago. The pinnacle came in late May when he celebrated 30 years of performing in front of 200,000 people at the Seattle Folk Life Festival.

He is a unique specimen, a little bearded fellow who emancipates the joy gene on a daily basis. The stern-natured melt, children see a soul mate, and the adult crowd transforms into the squealers of their youth.

“I want to turn the adults into 7-year-olds, make them forget about their problems for awhile,” he said from a cell phone. “I also want them to think. I got messages laid inside my riddles. If you’re really interested (it’s not for everybody) I got a message in what I’m saying.”

He plunders the music of the early 20th century - blues, jazz, hokum (novelty songs), ragtime and vaudeville - and twists it into something new. He plays a 1935 National steel guitar that belonged to his father, and he tunes the instrument with a pair of pliers. A forest of beard belies the beacon in his eyes and once the performance begins, his whole body becomes a tilt-a-whirl—- every appendage, digit and extremity is put to work. He warps the mind with palindromes and anagrams, induces the crowd into devious sing-a-longs, and backs it up with a vast knowledge of music in general. The extensions, double-time (ala 1920s), and stop-time indicate a veteran jazz musician. The off notes (to mortal ears) and unique time signatures reveal a man who’s creating his own sound that Velcros every listener.

Gramp’s voice undergoes a stage transformation reminiscent of confessed spinach monopolizer, Popeye. He’s been doing this voice for almost three decades and he manicures his voice with a special vinegar he carries at all times.

“I used to be a clown and I used to hang out with a lot of barkers,” he said. “It’s sort of a bark I use on stage, it’s not really singing. It’s like newspaper criers on the street, which I did as a kid. It’s whole lifetime of things - the theater, the absurd, German Surrealism (Dada), sound poetry, German expressionism. These things talked to me and I metamorphosized them. It goes on and on.”

His supporting cast is a bag of unusual goodies (due in part to years of collecting antiques, certain dolls, old cars and records) that document the world of the one-man show. Children are magnetized to it.

“I bring all kinds of props. I even have a couple of robots, but I can’t fly with a lot of that stuff.
They’re mostly visual props for the songs, poems or stories. It’s a shoehorn; it brings people into it more. The antiques, the stuff I collect is so I can breathe a little more with some of my personal things.”
He’s shared (or opened) the bill with (among a legion), Robert Hunter, John Hartford, Phish, Joan Baez and J.J. Cale; He has had numerous interviews on NPR, alternated with author Tom Robbins on John Hockenberry’s nationally syndicated radio show, “Heat,” and gave Jeff Bridges a few guitar lessons on the set of “American Heart.” Bob Dylan even had the treat of having Gramps perform backstage.

“It was quite an honor. I remember Dylan’s eyes just smiling at me. I couldn’t get my friends into the dressing room, but they could hear my foot stomping outside. It was before a show and he took a lot of time with me, he was like an angel.”

Dylan was so moved by the performance that he (conveniently) forgot he had his own show to do.
“I could hear people outside (in the Paramount Theatre) stomping and chanting his name. I said, ‘Bob, you should probably go play.’ He said [Gramps in his best Dylan voice], ‘Play me some more ... Ahh ... Charlie Patton tunes.”

The West Coast will testify. Baby Gramps is perhaps the most famous musician in Seattle (and chunky sections of the West Coast). He’s still somewhat of an enigma in the East, but ascending claims of “a must see” (one being “Rolling Stone”) have crept over to the Atlantic. Performances in New York have garnered him legend status in the papers. Critic James Marshall (The East Village Eye) called him, “the living embodiment of everything wonderful in the last hundred years of music.”

He was raised on his father’s infinite understanding of music. The elder had a string band, as well as a gospel group that donned a banjo, fiddle, two harmonicas and the National Guitar that Gramps still has by his side.

“My old man had an old National guitar I used to find while I was prowling around. I had to go up in this old attic that hurt my feet. I asked him if I could bring it down, because he would bring it out for parties every couple of years. That was the original germ, the thing that infected me.”

Other parts of his upbringing came from 78’s recordings of blues, hokum, jazz and ragtime.

“When I started buying records and music, I couldn’t afford the 45’s because they were a buck,” said Gramps. “But, I noticed that the 78’s were only a nickel in the dustbins. I started playing those old 78’s and they had that same sound my father used to do. As I got more interested, I fell in love with those blues and jazz standards that had the National on them”

Gramps was also lucky enough to be exposed to the newborn live music that’s now an institution in this country.

“I actually learned from watching the last generation of blues and jazz singers. I was fortunate to see Rev. Gary Davis with a small group of people and I’d watch him from the front row. I used to shave him and get him ready for shows because he was terrified of an electric razor. He would shout [in his best Davis interpretation] ‘Hallelujah!’ as I was cleaning him up before shows. I saw the greats like Son House, a real young John Lee Hooker and I performed a couple of times with Elizabeth Cotton before she died.”

His chops came from being self-trained. Gramps’ belief system rests around the individual staking a music claim for his/her own.

“If you’re around those people for very long, it wears off on you. I didn’t cheat my ears. My take on it is if you take lessons, you’re cheating your ears, you can’t learn anything by yourself. Once you can train your ears on your own, then you can learn anything.”

A technology pariah, Gramps has resisted most forms of “improvement,” relying instead on the countless performances ranging from benefits and festivals to medicine shows and street corners. He once claimed that he would hold out for a music label that would issue his tunes on shellac 78 RPM discs while recording direct to an Edison. I thought it might be a joke, to throw reporters off the scent.

“I actually recorded my very first records on 78’s. Just recently I had the honor of being invited to the Edison museum on the East Coast, and I recorded on an 1898 cylinder machine. I had to play into a long and narrow horn. I had to sing right into it. For my solos, I stood up in my chair and played the guitar right into it. I was a jack-n-the-box, going up and down.”

The debut CD, “Same Ol’ Timeously” (Grampophone) was a bit of a compromise, but the inside sleeve oozes with mystique. The liner notes are scarce, and credits and lyric sheets are nonexistent. The album seems to be live, but there’s no indication of where or when. Why an album, now, after 30 years?

“I wanted to reach more people, and I’m getting old. [“Same Ol’ Timeously”] has really changed my life. Robert Christgau (writer for the Village Voice) declared my album as one of the top albums of the 90’s. It’s also made me extremely busy, but I’m grateful for it all. I’ve got 40 or 50 more albums in my head and they’re busting to get out.”

“Same Ol’ Timeously” is a nice extension of music history in eccentric flesh. Track one dishes out the humor - “This is a little song called ‘Nuthin’ But a Nuthin,’” Baby Gramps tells the crowd. “It’s about cartoons and if you can see cartoons in the sky, you’re well off.” The frog voice soon follows.
The steel klinks, frog whistles (complete with a ten second coaching) and hearty chuckles characterize the tune. The first track sets up the listener, giving them a warm feeling before the second track, “Medley of Heartwarming Worm Songs,” begins. The song is geared for children, but the comedy is enough to arouse the adult intellect - “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll eat some worms ... nobody knows how happy we can live on worms three times a day!”

His fathomless understanding of the guitar is given a workout on the ragtime doused, “Shake It N’Break It.” History lessons are abundant on Richard Brown’s 1920’s classic “James Alley,” and Gramps resurfaces “St James Infirmary Blues, a 200-year-old Irish tune that was popularized by southern black jazz musician. His most requested song is “Palindromes,” an aneurysm ditty that uses the art of words that spell something front or back (he wrote the palindrome title for Bela Fleck’s album, “UFO TOFU”). “Palindromes” aren’t the only formulas he uses to enlighten.

“I do songs on Anagrams (like Baby Gramps becomes Grabby Spam), and Spoonerisms.”
Spoone - what?

“It’s drunken talk, like Teeny Martoonis. It used to be a racehorse team.”

The wordplay Gramps uses changes personalities each show. This is an invention all his own.

“I call it literary jazz. They change constantly as I perform ‘em - the tunes, the keys, the chords in it. The anagrams, palindromes, whatever they are, they’re never the same.”

Locating this disc is a tad cumbersome. You can purchase one at a Baby Gramps show or go to Leftover Salmon’s website (www.leftoversalmon.com) for mail order purchases.

The walking carnival opened his gates on June 9 for an intimate gathering at the Swannanoa Playhouse. The best part of the performance was the realization that the hairy little fellow was having as much fun as the audience.

“[Playing live] is very therapeutic. I get so high from playing. My doctor said I shouldn’t drive for two hours afterwards, ‘cause I’ll get speeding tickets [laughs]. It’s like, ‘Well Occifer, it was 78RPM’s, my favorite speed.”

 

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