Roger McGuinn Bringing Byrds, Folk Favorites To Ridgefield Playhouse
Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, solo artist and Byrds front man and primary songwriter Roger McGuinn has reached a point in his nearly 60 year musical journey where he has arrived back where he started. And the celebrated musician has found himself not only enjoying, but delving deep into the music of his youth - American folk.
McGuinn, born James Joseph and later adopting the alternate handle Roger, was growing up in Chicago in the 1950s when he like millions of other kids around the globe, became hooked on the energized rock-a-billy of early Elvis Presley.
That led him to begin exploring rudimentary guitar licks picking along to the stylings of artists from Johnny Cash to Carl Perkins, while also digging the tight harmonies and catchy lyrics of The Everly Brothers.
By 1957, McGuinn had picked up a five string banjo and was headed off to the Old Town School of Music where he began developing a talent for both banjo and guitar and an affinity for the work of folk pioneer Bob Gibson.
Soon after graduation, McGuinn was off and running toward the west coast where he got his first professional gigs playing on the Limeliters album Tonight: In Person, and on the Chad Mitchell Trio’s album Mighty Day on Campus. From there he hit the road with Bobby Darin and ended up getting recruited to New York where he went to work as a songwriter for Darin’s publishing house, TM Music.
At TM, McGuinn first heard The Beatles, and he began integrating rock and roll elements into the country and folk material he was weaving, showcasing that hybrid sound in the coffee houses of Greenwich Village on nights and weekends
Following another move back to Los Angeles, McGuinn was approached one night after a set at the famed Troubador by Gene Clark who was interested in forming a new band. A short time later, David Crosby drifted into the mix and the Byrds foundation blocks were in place.
By 1965, the Byrds, now with Michael Clarke and Chris Hillman rounding out the ensemble, had their first hit with “Mr Tambourine Man.” Nearly three years later, Gram Parsons joined the band, the Byrds headed for Nashville and tracked one of their most acclaimed albums, Sweethearts of the Rodeo.
By this time audiences across the globe knew McGuinn as much for the songs he wrote and sang for the Byrds, as they knew him by the sound of his jangling electric 12-string Rickenbacker guitar. He drove so many guitarists to that unique sounding instrument that the company eventually designed and named a specially designed 12-string model in McGuinn’s name.
After the Byrds split, there was a brief reunion of McGuinn, Clarke and Hillman in the late ‘70s, and by 1981, McGuinn was back on his own once again feeling the rootsy beckoning of the folk music that was his artistic bedrock.
In 1991, McGuinn had another brief return to widespread commercial exposure thanks to a collaboration with Tom Petty that yeilded a solo album, Back From Rio, and a hit song on the radio, “King of the Hill” which also featured old pals Hillman and Crosby.
Four years later, McGuinn decided he would start using the Internet to begin curating vast selections of folk tunes which still endures today at .folkden.com
During a candid and exclusive interview with The Newtown Bee ahead of his planned June 12 solo appearance at the Ridgefield Playhouse, McGuinn chatted about the various flavors of folk he enjoys exploring, from traditional cowboy songs, to sea shanties, to music from the deep south and Appalachia. He also discussed his “King of the Hill” single, and revealed how his endearing Byrds hit, “Chestnut Mare” originally came to life as part of a failed country western musical called Gene Tryp.
Newtown Bee: I understand that during last year’s European Tour you were invited to do some lecturing on the Queen Mary 2. Was this a theme cruise with a room full of musicians, or were you speaking to a general audience?
Roger McGuinn: I’d been doing it for about five years on different ships, and at colleges and high schools – kind of a motivational speech about how to be prepared when opportunities come up. It’s basically just my autobiography. I talk about getting into music, how I was inspired by Elvis Presley and how I got into folk. I practiced a lot, so when I was hired by the Limelighters, I was ready for that opportunity. It’s just my story with audio-visual presentations in Keynote. I have pictures of the people I’ve worked with over the years, Bobby Darin, Eartha Kitt, Paul Simon – it’s really a lot of fun. I enjoy doing it. It wasn’t a music cruise, it was for general audiences. I’m identified as a ‘celebrity lecturer’ (laughing).
Newtown Bee: So how does one achieve the title of celebrity lecturer?
Roger McGuinn: The way we got this is – we’ve been friends with people at the Kennedy Space Center for about 20 years now. We were asked to come over and we got to hang out with a band comprised of active astronauts. If they didn’t fly, they couldn’t be in the band. And while we were there, my wife was talking to Jeffrey Hoffman’s wife. Jeffrey is an astronomy professor and the astronaut who fixed the Hubble telescope. So his wife was telling Camilla (McGuinn) that they just came back from a lovely holiday – and that they took the Queen Mary 2 and Jeffrey did celebrity lectures. So Camilla got the name of their agent, and we got connected. We said we wanted to go to Europe to but we didn’t want to fly with our instruments. So we got booked and we’ve been doing it ever since – that was since 2010.
Newtown Bee: The ‘Space Coast’ area of Florida is kind of a cool place that has escaped a lot of the gross commercialization of other parts of Florida.
Roger McGuinn: It’s like the American Dream personified. We really did all that. I mean, I got to meet John Glenn and we get invited to the Astronaut Hall of Fame inductions whenever I’m not working. We’ve been there about 10 times – they treat us like astronauts. Back when the shuttle was flying, they let us go up to aunch platform 39 – climbing up the gantry tower. We had technicians asking, ‘who are these guys?’ and Camilla would say, ‘don’t you recognize us, we’re astronauts.’
Newtown Bee: Growing up in Connecticut meant frequent day trips to Mystic Seaport where I was introduced to whaling and seafaring music. So I was thrilled to learn you recently curated a couple dozen sea songs for one of your folk den projects.
Roger McGuinn: We know Mystic very well – a few of the pictures I used on my Stories, Songs & Friends project came from Mystic.
Newtown Bee: During your research and selection process, can you tell me about a couple tunes whose history was particularly fascinating to you?
Roger McGuinn: “Randy Dandy O” is one that is really interesting. It’s about a ship sailing around Cape Horn and putting in Vallipo Bay, Chile – that was before the Panama Canal. That was the place where they would re-stock before going up to San Francisco to supply the miners in the 1840s. It has a wonderful history. The town was populated by a variety of people from Europe. It had cable cars, and the sailors called it the Jewel of the Pacific. (Starts singing) ‘Now we are ready to head for the Horn, Way, ay, roll an’ go, Our boots an’ our oil skins are all in the pawn’ – that was kind of a joke because when they pulled into port, they would pawn their gear, but they never had enough money to get it back out before they would sail again.
Newtown Bee: Did you record any whaling songs?
Roger McGuinn: Sure, there are a couple of whaling songs on there. Another one of my favorites is a whaling song, it’s “Going Down to Old Maui” – these guys would go up to Russia and whale for six months in the freezing cold, and then they would head back to base in Maui. I mean, what a contrasting lifestyle.
Newtown Bee: A lot of the lyrics to those songs are so evocative - do you find yourself getting entranced when you are singing some of those stories?
Roger McGuinn: I’m don’t know how the mechanics of it works, but I do get into them. I guess it’s about being able to relate to them, and loving being at sea so much might have something to do with it. Maybe it’s genetics, I’m not sure. I think some of my ancestors might have been sailors, so I may have it in my blood. That’s why I wanted to do this tribute so much.
Newtown Bee: The only category of Folk Den tunes that outnumbers the sea songs are tunes from the mountains and southern United States. How far back were you able to go and still have relative faith in the historical authenticity and accuracy of the material you were looking to memorialize?
Roger McGuinn: Most of the songs are from the 1800s – that was the golden age of sail. So that was just about 150 years ago. We didn’t go to the Smithsonian and look up written historical documents, we used the Internet, so we’re pretty certain of the accuracy.
Newtown Bee: Was there a particular period of southern history that seems to have yielded the richest trove of material for you?
Roger McGuinn: The 1800s again – there’s a line in the “New World Symphony” that is identical to a tune kicking around Kentucky in the 1870s. (humming melody line) It’s the same as the folk song “Willie Moore.” It was interesting – I was watching a video of Leonard Bernstein deconstructing the symphony, and he didn’t know about that folk song. He thought that was based on the tune “Going Home” from Gone With The Wind, but that was written much later, in the 1940s. So he didn’t know there was a Kentucky folk song that was the basis of the second movement of the “New World Symphony.”
Newtown Bee: What is it about American folk music that resonates with you so much as a 21st Century artist?
Roger McGuinn: I’d heard the Weavers on the radio – “On Top of Old Smoky” and “Good Night Irene,” and I’d heard a lot of Burl Ives. My parents had a friend who played guitar and he would sing "The Old Chisholm Trail," and other cowboy songs. Then I started getting into it whole hog when I discovered Bob Gibson, who quit his job as a salesman to go to work helping build Pete Seeger’s house – If I had a Hammer, you know. And he bought himself a banjo – he was a really good banjo player and singer. He came to my high school for a set, and I went crazy. I went to my music teacher and she told me about a new music school opening in Chicogo. So I went over and enrolled. Pete Seeger is a real role model for what I do know. I carry a long-neck five string banjo like his, a 12-string guitar, a (six) string acoustic and my 12-string Rickenbacker, which I’m associated with because of the Byrds. So I do some folk songs, some Byrds songs and some material from my solo CDs. I don’t do a whole set of folk music – it’s not what everybody wants.
Newtown Bee: Has all this musical curating of traditional songs affected the way you approach your own songwriting process?
Roger McGuinn: I think so. The most recent song my wife and I put together was based on an old Henry Fonda movie The Grapes of Wrath. If you just heard it, you would think it was an old folk song. I perform that one live now. My new writing is very old sounding. I remember when I wrote “Jolly Roger” for Jacques Levy and I played it for Bob Dylan, and he looked at me and said, ‘That’s a good old one.’
Newtown Bee: Do you have a lot of recollection of when you backed Bobby Darin?
Roger McGuinn: I just played folk songs with him. I was his folk accompanist and backup singer. He’d do “Splish Splash” and his rock hits, then he’d bring me out and we’d do about 15 minutes of folk songs, then he’d send me off and he’d go into “Beyond the Sea,” and “Mack the Knife.”
Newtown Bee: Was there a big culture shift or culture shock going from the folk clubs of Chicago to Vegas, Reno and the Coconut Grove?
Roger McGuinn: We were doing traditional songs. When I worked with the Chad Mitchell trio when I was younger, one of our first gigs was at the Riviera. So I got used to playing places in Vegas and Tahoe.
Newtown Bee: I knew a lot a Byrds songs as I was growing up, but I really didn’t get hooked on you until your solo hit “King of the Hill.” That was one of those rare songs I could see as well as hear - did a lot of those rich descriptive moments in King of the Hill actually happen?
Roger McGuinn: There are a lot of visuals in it. It’s from the Book Papa John. Tom (Petty) and I were touring with Bob Dylan in 1987. Tom read the book – which was about a kind of drug addled, decadent scene. And he was appalled by the whole story, and I said it might make good material for a song. And that was it.
Newtown Bee: When I saw you the first time solo and live, you did a jaw dropping take on “Chestnut Mare” - were you inspired completely by the deer hunting story that it morphed into for your country western musical project Gene Tryp, or were you already developing the music or lyrics for a different project?
Roger McGuinn: It was one of the 26 songs Jacques Levy and I wrote for the Gene Tryp musical. Jacques was coming up with the lyrical part, and I was kind of supplying the music. I wasn’t much for writing a song about someone who jumps off a cliff on a reindeer, so we changed it to a chestnut mare. Jacques was the one who picked Peer Gynt as a subject for a country western musical.
Newtown Bee: That breakout passage in the middle is quite affecting and beautiful - I understand you wrote that section years earlier. Did you resurrect it for “Chestnut Mare” as a means to momentarily take the listener away from the evolving narration of the story?
Roger McGuinn: It was designed to make the listener go into slow motion – to take the listener off the cliff in slomo. I wrote that part in Santo Domingo when I was touring with the Chad Mitchell Trio. That’s where it came to me and I kept it in the back of my mind for years.
Newtown Bee: Isn’t it curious that the edited single did so well in the UK after the record company kind of gutted a verse and that lovely break out of it?
Roger McGuinn: I wasn’t really familiar with that version, but I was glad to get a hit out of it.
Newtown Bee: What will our Connecticut audience be seeing and hearing from you when they come to your Ridgefield show?
Roger McGuinn: I’ll be tellin’ stories and singin’ songs – about a two-hour show with a little break. Just like what Pete (Seeger) used to do. I’ll do a couple of songs on banjo, and mix up a bunch of folk and Byrds material.
For information and tickets to see Roger McGuinn, visit the Ridgefield Playhouse website.
Check out McGuinn solo playing “King of the Hill” from a 2009 show in Berlin, Germany.
McGuinn sings “Turn, Turn, Turn” in this 2006 show from England.