There’s a crackle of electricity in the air at Otter Creek central. We’ve got a great new workspace now that we’ve finished our studio and are rehearsing nightly on new material for Otter Creek 3.0. The songs are written, the arranging has begun, and we’ll be rolling out some of the new tunes at our performances over the next few months! And yes... we're going to use ALL of these instruments on the album!

The album is scheduled for release in June of 2015, just in time for our summer touring season but we’ll be beginning presales this Saturday at our yard concert hosted by Michael Stone (owner of MacNichol Guitars and Mandolins) where we will debut three of the new tunes slated for inclusion on the album. Come join us if you can!

Where: Michael's Backyard - 5580 South Neighbor Lane in Holladay
When: Saturday, June 7, at 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Details: Cost is $10 per person. Potluck at 6 pm, Music at 7 pm. House concert. Please call 1-800-849-3305 or check out the event page on facebook for more information or to RSVP.

I was chatting with a folk musician friend of mine about the difficulty of finding a tagline to describe our genera of music. I said “people don’t always conjure up the image I want no matter what term I use.” She said she had
recently begun saying she sings “old and new songs about all of us” Which struck me as a very nice way of putting it.

Here at Otter Creek, we work hard in two main directions, mining the traditional music of our country, (and hence a great number of other countries from whence many of this nation’s inhabitants hail) and the creation of new songs. You could call us folk musicians, but when we bust out with something Celtic, old-timey, bluegrassy, klezmerish, or singer-songwritery (or just confusingly genre-bending such as the “chamber influenced acoustic tweeny punkpop” song we just wrote, or the “apocalyptic heavy metal death folk” setting we came up with for a favorite Robert Frost poem) we don’t want anyone to feel betrayed or confused. We’ve tried calling ourselves “Rocky Mountain roots music,” and that’s about as close a description as we’ve been able to find.

I kept my friend’s description of her music in mind and one evening found myself saying that we play “music of the people, by the people, and for the people…” and I realized that was about as true as it gets. We’re dedicated to keeping alive many of the great songs that rose up from the common folk of our nation, and we’re dedicated to writing terrific new songs about our surroundings and the journey we share through life with all of you.

So I’ve found a new way to describe what we’re doing. I hereby declare that Otter Creek is first and foremost dedicated to the proposition that music of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. We’ll do our part to keep people humming and tapping their toes to “Shady Grove” and “Sally Goodin'.” We’ll keep on playing old songs that draw a tear or leave us with a sigh, like “Fare Thee Well, or Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times” We’ll rollick with an old Scottish tune turned into “Jefferson and Liberty” (Thomas Jefferson’s presidential campaign song) or cavort with “Farewell to Ireland” (while inserting a little American funk) and we’ll keep on writing songs about the people we meet on our own journey.

That, for me, is what folk music is about. It resonates deep in our souls, and hopefully, if we’re doing our job right. It will move you as well.

“Stop fiddling with that or you’ll break it!”
“I fiddled around with it enough that I finally got it to work”
        -Kate MacLeod, quoting her father


“Stop fiddling around!” I spent most of my school years in a fog of missed deadlines. I never knew about schedule changes, when my homework was due, or sometimes even what class I was in… I still vividly remember looking up from reading a book and discovering that the kids sitting around me weren’t the ones I had been sitting next to when class started. I must have totally missed a class change! It wasn’t that I didn’t pay attention, it was just that my attention was always drawn to the wrong thing, like a really good book, where I was going hiking after school, or how to construct a robot of myself so life like no one could ever tell if it was me or my robot sitting in that school desk.
 
I was one of those kids whose pockets, if turned out, could have probably filled a small rucksack. I was terrified of being caught with nothing to do (which was pretty much my view of “appropriate” school behavior) and so had enough materials with me, on the sly, to keep my attention occupied precisely where it shouldn’t have been. I still remember the day I realized that all the desks and tables height was adjusted with Alan screws. Most kids my age didn’t even know what an Alan screw was back then, but my dad was quite the tinkerer and I knew just where I could find the tool I wanted. I spent plenty of time working on a look of decided innocence and mild disinterest when puzzled teachers had to reseat classmates whose desks were now to small or too tall, or call the custodian when a table collapsed because the screw on one leg had suddenly given way. I didn’t view myself as a troublemaker, just a very curious student of the world around me. I couldn’t understand why my teachers valued repetition and sitting still more than imagination and movement.

 My interest in music started at the age of four when I saw a performance of a violin concerto on the television at home. My parents traded and bartered to afford the cost of classical training with a family friend who played in the Utah Symphony. There is a VERY specific way to play the violin that has been carefully honed, honored, and cherished over the past 500 years. My instructor initiated me into the world of etudes, exercises, and note reading (with somewhat sporadic success) and I made reasonable if not stellar progress. I was expected to practice a lot. (Often two hours a day or more). As I advanced into more difficult music my teacher prescribed an abacus which I was to use to carefully count the number of times I played a difficult passage
  correctly (often 50 or 100 times were ordered). I found the structure stifling and the repetition mind numbing. My sight reading skills negligible, my attention span crumbling, I often turned to the instrument and simply fiddled around, following my dancing thoughts up and down the fingerboard, growling with anger, or laughing with delight. Luckily I was blessed to have one of those rare teachers who could honor imagination and passion as well as rote learning. She always told me that to play music you had to be like a tiger, you had to take a risk and leap at the prey or you stood no chance at getting what you wanted.
 
I switched to Viola when I was 11. This more introspective instrument was a better fit.  As the “poet-philosopher” of the string family its deeper tone and more dreamy nature spoke to me. Still, I found myself wasting my practice time “fiddling around,” making up tunes, trying out tones. I carried my passion for Viola into college, pursuing a double major of Music Composition and Viola Performance, but, as usual, I got involved in too many things and my graduation languished on the periphery of unfinished projects and an overbooked schedule. My composition teacher eventually forced me to make a choice. He advised me to drop one side of my double major and progress on toward graduation. Agonizing on which side of myself to favor, performance or composition, I finally went with the latter, feeling  it offered more room for my “fiddling around.”
 
From the start it should have been clear I was more of a fiddler than a violinist. Naturally curious, I spent hours exploring the sounds the instrument could make. The fiddle is a remarkable canvas for the imagination. An embodiment of paradox, it can both break and heal the soul. Perhaps that’s why so many folks have been frightened or dismissive of the fiddle, it represents something other than business as usual. It refuses to sit silent, or still. A tool of dreamers and prophets it can both create and destroy. It can set the feet of the righteous dancing down the path to hell, stich up a broken heart, or leave one grasping on the edge of epiphany. It caters to those whose attention wanders the roads less traveled and whose feet march to the rhythm of a music only they can hear. As a musical explorer, the fiddle keeps me on the sharp edge of discovery; exploring new sounds and techniques, diving into the deep waters of tradition, or gathering the strands of a new song out of the immense shimmering firmament of notes. The fiddle can stand the strain due not to its rigidity, but because of its flexibility.  For a long time fiddling was a secret side affair for me, something I did when I should have been doing something else. Now I realize that everything else was just getting in the way of fiddling.

I love rocks. As I child visiting Yellowstone national park, I had difficulty understanding why I couldn’t take a few of the more unusual rocks I had picked up home with me. My father encouraged me to ask a park ranger who explained it to me this way. “It really wouldn’t make any difference if you took a few rocks,” he said, “but we have over two million visitors a year. What do you think would happen to our park if each of them took a few rocks? How many years would it take before there were none left?” Since then I have often reflected on that question. “What would happen if everyone does this?” In fact, in many ways I’ve made it my moral compass. I try to behave based not only on what good will come of my individual actions which are often quite insignificant, but to imagine what the outcome might be if “everyone did what I am doing.”

This weekend we’ll be performing our new song Bidder 70 at a benefit concert to raise funds for Peaceful Uprising’s new complilation CD Folk Songs for Climate Justice. The song tells the story of Tim DeChristopher who was sent to prison for disrupting an auction of Oil and Gas leases near Utah’s National Parks that had been rushed through without proper review at the tail end of the Bush administration.

Listen to “Bidder 70” or read the lyrics.

Both Mary and I have been fans of Tim since his act of civil disobedience however I have found that rational people certainly disagree on whether his actions were warranted or admirable. I did a lot of soul searching while writing the song. I read, re-read, and read again Tim’s statement at his sentencing. His story, and what he was trying to tell the world is in many ways too large and too complex a subject for a simple song of three verses. In the end, I settled on a phrase he uttered at his sentencing: “I’m not saying any of this to ask you for mercy, but to ask you to join me.”

The power I find in Tim’s story is not defiance, it is his love. What if everyone loved the planet so much they were willing to go to prison to defend its future? Whether or not I agree with his actions, his story inspires me to ask myself that question. That is the cause our song and Tim’s story is inviting you to join. It is not always in our nature to ask ourselves this kind of question and add to our workload, or tolerate the discomfort of knowing we are contributing to a potential disaster. Our nature has primed us to seek comfort and it is easy to trade an uncertain amount of disaster in the future for the satisfaction of happiness in the present, but our nature has also gifted us with foresight in the ability to want a safe and secure life for our children and our grandchildren, and that safety and security can only come from examining the long term impacts of our daily actions.

For me, this means I ride my bike when I can instead of driving. I make sure we use most of the plastic bags that come through our home at least twice before they are discarded. Sometimes I take a little extra time to separate out recycling from trash. I use my own coffee mug instead of disposable cups when possible. None of these small actions is particularly significant on its own. I’m well aware of that. Yet when I am tempted to do differently, that question is always lurking, “what if everyone does what I am about to do?”

I do things too that I’m not proud of. I sit with the discomfort of knowing that I’m mowing my lawn with a very dirty gas mower instead of trying to use a people powered option. For that matter, I probably have more lawn at my place, and use more water keeping it green that is wise. I’m not overly fond of riding public transportation and don’t always use it when I could. I’ve found that allowing that discomfort, over time, moves me to take small actions I might not have considered in the past.

I’m not asking anyone to do anything they disagree with. I know reasonable people can completely disagree on what action is needed, possible, and useful. I know people have vastly different ways of expressing their love for the planet. I’m simply asking you to join with me in this one question, “What if everyone does what I’m about to do?” I wrote Bidder 70 not to suggest we all do what Tim did, but to suggest we love our planet, and our progeny the way he has demonstrated, with a passion, intensity and devotion great enough to risk prison. His closing words were “this is what love looks like, and it will only grow.” I’m “asking you to join” in growing that love, wherever, and whatever it looks like for you.

You can start by coming to hear 14 different visions of that love at the benefit concert as some of our favorite local and national songwriters including Ann Kelly, Cambriah Heaton, Chris Orrock, Dana Hubbard, Jen Hajj, John Paul Spehler, Kristin Erickson, Marv Hamilton, Otter Creek, Raven Spirit, Shaney McCoy, Steve Bassett, The Hollands!, and Utah Slim play their songs that will be included on the album.

Let us know what your love looks like by posting about it below!

I got up the other morning to discover that our 60 year old apricot tree had seen its last season, the weight of an early snow had overwhelmed the ailing trunk and the whole tree had tumbled unceremoniously to the ground during the night. Since pretty much anything that can break has been staging a coordinated descent into disrepair at our house, it wasn’t really a huge surprise. I grew up in a home where not everything worked, so I tend to have a lot of patience with bathtubs that take 4 days to drain, hinges that go bad, dishwashers that won’t wash, leaks in the ceiling, and well… just anything broken in general (I might note, oddly enough, that Mary does not seem to greatly appreciate my patience).

The day before was our Salt Lake CD release concert for our new album Shiver Into Spark at Holladay United Church of Christ (HUCC).  Normally, on the day of a big concert I have a bit of a routine I like to follow: a quiet morning with a cup of coffee, and a newspaper, then a bit of woodshedding on some of the tough instrumentals, followed by a brief vocal warm up. Later in the day, I’ll go through the whole program with Mary, and show up for the performance in tip top shape. What we hadn’t expected was that our cars were in collusion with everything else that has broken.  That morning we discovered our van wouldn’t start. Our other car was immobile due to an electrical problem I was exercising a little too much patience on. However, it was clear that if we wanted to show up to this performance at all, I’d need to be a bit less patient. Mary, who has even less patience than me for this sort of thing had already called a neighbor who is a mechanic and he said he could fix it sometime that weekend.  I called my brother, who told me I was welcome to Dad’s old truck but that I’d need to put the spare on it as one of the tires was flat. Sounded fine to me… besides, I had an old broken trailer full of discarded bike parts, odd bits of wire, and some bent stove piping, and a wasp nest I’d been meaning to get rid of once I ran out of patience. A truck sounded like just the thing.

A brother in law gave me a lift out to my brother’s place and we set to work on the tire. Since the truck didn’t appear to come with a jack, we borrowed a high lift jack from his neighbor, and thought things should be a cinch with my brother’s set of pneumatic power tools… However, over the next few hours my usual patience gradually gave way to a mantra of whispered and sometimes grunted words that I think decorum indicates I should not repeat here.  The lug nuts had obviously been tightened by some overzealous person armed with a bucket of superglue and the spare tire looked as if it had been entombed with an Egyptian mummy. We called a used tire shop to see if we could buy a couple of tires cheap and were told they had just what we needed and that the bay was empty. We got there 15 minutes later to discover that  “empty bay” apparently translated to “there’s only twenty people in front of you.” Following a very patient 2 hour wait, we were surprised when he only charged me $30 dollars instead of the $80 I expected. “What luck!” I thought.

 “Only one tire… not so good tire.” He said apologetically in his heavily accented English. Sure enough, it was as bald as Patrick Stewart. Still, it was inflated and meant I was on my way, with a full 30 minutes to spare! I got home, changed and dashed out to load our gear. The universe somehow picked that moment to stage a blizzard. Luckily I had run across a large tarp left over from our tent (which I had recently run out of patience with and discarded due to a large rip, catastrophically failed zipper and a long mosquito filled night) when I was cleaning out the garage a few days before. It was just big enough that all our gear could be wrapped tightly in the bed of the truck and we set off.

We made it to the sound check, out of breath but relatively on time. We had the good luck to be backing up Kristin Erickson (one of our favorite songwriters) for the first half of the show, and were playing tunes from our CD Shiver Into Spark on the second half. Having had no chance to warm up made the whole thing that much more exciting. Hugs all around helped center and calm us down and Kristin loaned me her spare guitar so I wouldn’t have to retune between songs. We had a great sound guy (Bill Green) and the church's music director had hot soup for us in the green room. The concert was warm, intimate and beautiful in a way that only happens when the weather outside is frightful.

When it was over we took our time getting back out into the cold. It had snowed another four inches and was still coming down heavy. I began to worry about getting home in a rear wheel drive pickup with no significant weight in the back and bald tires as well as regret the patience that had left my car (the best one we have for snow) out of commission. Our friend Sterling must have had similar thoughts, as unbeknownst to me he followed us out of the parking lot and down the street, a fact I only discovered when I gave up trying to drive up the .05% grade that lead home. I backed up and turned around, following the path of least resistance towards (and sometimes away from home).  The roads were bad enough that the truck wouldn’t go uphill at all, and much to my dismay, I discovered that the windshield wipers had long since lost their rubber blades, and that the fan for the heat and defrost was not working often leaving me unable to see well enough to read the street signs. Adding to my stress was a crowded cab with two muses in the small seats behind the bench, and one muse sitting up front between Mary and I who began loudly worrying about needing to use the bathroom, a worry which continued to increase for all of us as the drive (normally 15 minutes or less) stretched into an hour and a half or more. My usually inexhaustible patience wearing thin, I switched back and forth between irritably explaining that if we pulled into a gas station for a bathroom we weren’t likely to be able to pull out and demanding Mary figure out where in the hell we were since I couldn’t spare attention for anything but the road in front of me. When we finally arrived at home (without any accidents inside or outside the truck) I was pleased to find all our instruments still snug and dry in the bed. All in all, it counts as the most exciting drive I’ve ever taken (even including the time my hood blew off on the freeway!)

Sterling pulled over to talk before he left. “I know you grew up here and know how to drive in this stuff,” he said (mostly I know enough to leave a rear wheel drive pickup with bald tires home when it’s snowing!), “but I wanted to make sure you got home ok. You’ve had a run of bad luck recently."

The phrase “run of bad luck” stuck with me that night as I ran through my mind the list of all the things that had gone wrong recently. It was indeed quite a long list. His words were still running through my mind the next morning when I looked out the back window to discover my beloved apricot tree was gone. It hadn’t crushed the fence though, and hadn’t damaged the outbuilding under it. I had a year’s supply of jam from that tree in the basement, family and friends who help me out in a pinch, a truck to drive, a neighbor who would fix my van, a guardian angel named Sterling, a smart, gorgeous, talented life partner, three beautiful muses, a warm place to sleep, a fantastic gig, a shower that ran, even if it didn’t drain, and people who would come out in a snow storm to listen to my music.

“If that’s a run of bad luck,” I thought, “Bring it on!”

All my life I’ve harbored the not so secret aspiration of being a hobo. It goes right along with my love of the outdoors and trains and travel. I don’t know where I first picked up the desire, but in order to keep my wife, Mary, from pointing her finger at me I’ve given it considerable thought.  I initially assigned blame to the movie “The Journey of Natty Gann” which I saw when I was 12 or 13 (I mean, what’s cooler than riding the rails with a wolf at your side) but more often than not over the years I’ve blamed the banjo. I also blame the banjo for my love of boxcars, beans cooked in a can over a fire under a bridge, and the wild crazy idea I have of running all across the country to play music. There’s something about all those things that just seems to fit with the banjo. 

My introduction to the banjo came before I was born. My father was a folksinger, and although his professional performing days were mostly over before I came along, he often sang for family and friends (or more often just to please himself). Most of his songs he accompanied with the guitar, but when it came to homeless tramping or trains he generally pulled out the banjo. There were just a few of these songs but they seemed so perfectly suited for me. The plucky tone of the banjo, along with my father’s rich baritone spoke to me of letting go of attachments and fear, of letting the wind and the rain and the rails carry me far from home. They taught me of the wistful longing of lost innocence and the sweet lullaby of a long journey, and the wonder of belonging to the wide, wild, flabbergasting world we live in.  

Click to listen to a recording of my father singing “Hobo’s Lullaby”

That was a long time ago. I’ve had plenty of times in my life where I’ve done the opposite, where I tried to hide from my wild wandering self, times of fear and loneliness, denial, and clinging. I’ve fought change till my knuckles were bloody and I was exhausted.  But somehow, when the time came, I’ve always heard the sound of the banjo and the train as a summons to let go and move on.  I started playing the banjo at a time like that, a time where I was hanging on for dear life and at the same time afraid of where that life might take me.

My father wasn’t performing much anymore so he loaned me his banjo for a while when I said I wanted to learn. When I came back playing tunes he’d never heard before, he generously told me that since I could play it better than he could, maybe I better keep it. Doc Watson once told an interviewer that his first real instrument was a banjo his father made for him. Doc said “one day he brought it to me and put it in my hands and said, son, I want you to learn to play this thing real well… it might help you get through the world.” In a very real way, my dad did the same for me.

Over the years, I’ve generally kept the Banjo to myself more than my other instruments, I get it out when I’m feeling the wistful pull of the road, or when I’m feeling a little stuck, or need to connect with the wild untamed being I am inside. Recently I began teaching a beginning banjo class for the University of Utah. Although I’ve taught before, I was really struck while preparing lessons just how deep down the banjo was in my soul. I teased the members of the class that they should enter the novice division of the State Banjo Championship, and they in turn challenged me to enter the open division. It was something I’d never really considered too deeply before. I finally decided to give it a go. Knowing that my old-timey clawhammer pieces might not be quite what the judges were looking for I didn’t expect to win, but Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson had just died, and in some way, this was my way of letting them go. They are both on that last train over the River Jordan, and I guess, in that way all of us are just hobos passing through.

We’ve been working on arranging songs for our second album, and have been repeatedly drawn to the key of A (pretty low in my voice), viola, long neck banjo, and astonishingly low tunings on the guitar. It occurred to me that perhaps we were birthing a new sound… a “low lonesome sound.” I’ve made my share of lonesome sounds in my life. Many of them have been in the “High Lonesome” bluegrass style, singing and playing songs that sprang out of the soil long ago, but this seemed like something new.

At the Celtic Festival in Evanston last month I was reminded of the lonesome sound that happened the first time I played the Scottish Bagpipes. Several years back my in-laws came home from a trip abroad with a set, and presented them with great expectation to Mary and her five brothers. We were instructed that they were for sharing but that whoever showed the most promise could have a go at learning them first. There was no shortage of enthusiasm, and three of Mary’s brother’s rushed off to the other room to assemble the pipes. Moments later they came marching into the room accompanied by a sound I can only describe as a flock of geese dying of pneumonia while attempting to escape from a butcher.

With my musical training I felt certain I could do a little better. So after an excruciating half hour during which everyone tried to offer advice (which of necessity was done very loudly as at least one or two of the brothers at a time were always having a go at the pipes), I finally suggested maybe I should have a try. After all, I’m not bad with a penny whistle and how different could it be? Besides, with my hearing loss I had always imagined I would take up the pipes when I could no longer hear well enough to sing.

So I set to it. It seemed clear to me that one of the problem they were having was that they weren’t getting the chanter going and that perhaps the drone pipes were a bit out of tune. After 15 minutes or so of adjustments I felt I was ready to give it a go. I filled the bladder with air, squeezed, and…

Well, let’s just say it was a lonesome sound. Not one that anyone stayed around to listen to, although everyone was laughing hard enough it was difficult for them to leave. Later in the day an acquaintance who played pipes came by the house and we had him look at what we felt was clearly a defective instrument that my in-laws had been bilked into buying by some unscrupulous Scotsman.  He picked the pipes up, made a couple of adjustments and burst into a glorious refrain of “Scotland the Brave”. All of us clamored for an explanation of why it hadn’t worked for us. He just winked and said “Maybe you just aren’t Scotch enough”.  He left us with his card in case we wanted some lessons.

Several bottles of Scotch later we still hadn’t solved the mystery. The Pipes didn’t sound too bad after he had adjusted them, but none of us had the strength to blow, squeeze and play at the same time. Finally we decided he was right, none of us had enough Scottish blood. However, we reasoned that as all of us had some Scottish ancestry, maybe if we all tried at once we’d be equal to the task. Jobs were assigned and I managed to get the job of fingering the chanter as I was the only one with experience playing a tube with holes. One of us was in charge of blowing, another in charge of squeezing, and the last person just stood by shouting out helpful advice and encouragement. Finally we were able to launch into a halting but reasonably passable rendition of “Scotland the Brave”. Marching proved complicated however, with three of us attached to the pipes at various heights and with varying levels of force. We were finally forced to stop when the breathing tube was jammed up a nostril and we all tripped over each other landing in a heap. That was a “low lonesome sound” indeed.

Other low lonesome sounds in my repertoire include the rumblings of gastrointestinal distress (sure to clear a room in a jiffy) and the sound of me attempting Tuvan throat singing (also a crowd repellent).  One lonesome sound I’ve left behind is snoring (this is such a lonesome sound that had me banned to the living room at times). Apparently losing a little weight was enough to clear that one up and I’ve been less lonely since.

There’s no need to fear, the only lonesome sounds you’ll hear at our upcoming concerts are the folk and blues inspired low lonesome songs of people far from their homes and safety. We’ll steer clear of the rest. Hope to see you in the audience. Be sure to say hello! We may play a lonesome song now and then but we love the company of music lovers!


-Peter is a very poor piper, and pecks of pepper make him sneeze, but has done himself proud in the pickin' and singing world. Come see Otter Creek do their thing April 21 at the 9th and 9th concert series in Salt Lake. Full details available on the calendar tab.