Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Seth Shumate interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 114

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Seth Shumate joins me on episode 114.

Seth is an Old Timey and pre-war harmonica player originally from Arkansas, now living in Tennessee. Seth has deeply researched the early history of the harmonica and has written an Old Time Harmonica Handbook which contains lots of great information, as well as techniques on how to play authentic Old Timey harmonica using various tongue blocking techniques to add percussive rhythm and to provide self-accompaniment while also playing the melody of the tune. Seth likes to play acoustically, making use of an Edison phonograph cylinder for amplification, and accompanying himself using bones and other instruments, and he’s recently acquired the Masterharp USA tuning table company.

Seth plays with The Ozark Highballers band and releases regular videos to his YouTube channel of his playing.

Links:

Contact Seth:
seth.shumate@googlemail.com

Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/seth-shumate

Facebook group:
Harmonica Country, Bluegrass, Rock & Celtic

Videos:
YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrSFmT4zFksy1YRKGVJSfhg

Seth playing Turkey In The Straw with Edison Horn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s9obWRYkEI

Tupelo Blues played with bones:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrSFmT4zFksy1YRKGVJSfhg

Dave Rice Old Timey album:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9g13kPvKhaMrGaHI8RdBYWvmWOHzeV75

Seth YouTube Interview and playing:
https://youtu.be/1As3CbgL9ug


Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
--------------------------------
Blue Moon Harmonicas: https://bluemoonharmonicas.com


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SPEAKER_01:

Seth Shumate joins me on episode 114. Seth is an old-timey and pre-war harmonica player originally from Arkansas, now living in Tennessee. Seth has deeply researched the early history of the harmonica and has written an old-time harmonica handbook which contains lots of great information as well as techniques on how to play authentic old-timey harmonica using various tongue-blocking techniques to add percussive rhythm and to provide self-accomplishment while also playing the melody of the tune. Seth likes to play acoustic making use of an Edison phonograph cylinder for amplification and accompanying himself using bones and other instruments, and he's recently acquired the Master Harp USA tuning table company. Seth plays with the Ozark Highballers band and releases regular updates to his YouTube channel of his playing. This podcast is sponsored by Seidel Harmonicas. Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Seidel Harmonicas. Hello, Seth Shoemate, and welcome to the podcast. Hi, Neil. How's it going? It's great, thanks. Great to have you on. So you're talking to us from Chicago, but you're originally from Arkansas, is that right?

SPEAKER_02:

Actually, I've moved to Middle Tennessee. Now I live in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. So what's the music scene like in Tennessee? Well, for the old-time fiddle music that I play, it's pretty much perfect. I could play several times a week with people that play similar music.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's brilliant because I was going to make that point. Obviously, you were living in Chicago where obviously, you know, blues was the home of the blues. So as you don't play blues harmonica as such, then yeah, Tennessee is a much better place for you. That's right. So you're largely an old-timey harmonica player, yes, playing old-timey style music?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely, yeah. This will be like fiddle, traditional fiddle music. But then I also dabble in the pre-war blues types of harmonica solo pieces.

SPEAKER_01:

So there's maybe some similarities between those two styles, would you say? Maybe originated around the same time, the pre-war and the old-timey, would you say? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. These are precursors to sort of microphoned band ensembles that would have a good sound on stage, but if you were to make them acoustic, maybe certain instrumentation wouldn't be possible. So jug band music, pre-blues, early blues, and fiddle music, some proto-jazz type things. These are the types of things I like to play that sort of lend themselves to acoustic playing.

SPEAKER_01:

sure so when you got started did you start playing old-timey music to begin with you know and did that mean that your influences are maybe a little bit different than you know you didn't listen to all the classic blues players say from the sort of 1950s onwards did you not

SPEAKER_02:

well i think at the beginning i was pretty open uh my first harmonica was when i was in seventh grade and the first tune i learned on there was that melody simple gifts you may have heard it in some ken burns documentaries and i think it was like the the theme song to the Quakers or something like that. But then, you know, after I kind of got a basic understanding of the harmonica at that time, I put it down and didn't return to it until I was in sort of a folk boogie rock band in college called the Damn Bullets. I've, you know, I found that the harmonica was pretty good with that music. It had a megaphone on stage, so I wouldn't play it through a microphone. I would just play it through a megaphone, and these were kind of like bar gigs where the crowd would really respond to that quite well. But I would also be playing the keyboard

SPEAKER_01:

okay so you were kind of playing more bluesy poppy rock stuff to begin with were you with this band

SPEAKER_02:

yeah and then and then i went to grad school so i left central arkansas and went up to fayetteville for grad school and and i was sitting in my room a lot studying and and procrastinating as one would do that's where i came across adam gusso's stuff and then i had a friend jonathan trewick that lived in the area we had been going to school together since third grade and and he introduced me to sort of a bluegrass jam. And then one day I was walking by a pizza shop, and they had an outdoor concert, and it was old-time music, and I thought that that sounded really refreshing compared to those more modern styles of music. So then I started to put some effort into learning that style. Plus, it's a lot easier to play than bluegrass.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so in playing this more traditional music, The type of music on the diatonic has become pretty popular over the last number of years. People like to play Irish fiddle tunes, old-timey, say some bluegrass. How well do you think the harmonica fits into that setting?

SPEAKER_02:

yeah for old time music it's perfect I mean pretty much every tune the harmonica can be used for it with ease you know I avoid the three hole draw bend and I'll just shoot up an octave to keep up with the melody in those cases and if I run out of notes at the top end I'll just go back down an octave because I'm doing tongue blocking the whole time I can switch the sides of my mouth that emphasize the melody notes And so, you know, old time music, maybe there's some where I need two harmonicas for it, but pretty much every tune is just a one harmonica tune. Mostly straight harp, but some cross harp, quote unquote, modal tunes as well. Very little in the way of improvisation is needed. So you learn the melody and you've got it, you know, pretty much for the rest of your life and Whenever it comes up again, you're ready to play. And it's kind of communal playing where everyone plays the melody all at the same time, just like the string bands of the 1920s and 30s would have been doing.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, I play some old-timey music myself because it happens to be that Some of the sessions where I live, you know, they play old-timey music. So I think that helps, right? Like you said, you saw somebody playing it and you went and played along, you know, joined in. So that, you know, will draw people in, right? But in the UK, we've got a sort of organization called the Friends of American Old-Time Music and Dance, FALTMAT. So they have a festival over here. And so, yes, there is quite a scene, would you believe it, here in the UK of old-timey music as well. Are you aware of the popularity of old-timey music in other countries?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the things I like about it, too, because I travel around quite a bit. So I've been to Berlin. You know, there are people that play old time music there. London, Paris. I lived in Lebanon for two years. There wasn't a group there that played, but I got a lot of practice time in there.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so it's definitely out there. And I think in many ways, you know, old timey comes from, you know, European songs or English, Irish, Scottish songs and other areas as well as a sort of, and then it was kind of Americanized, right, and turned into a sort of Americanized. form of folk music. Is that how you'd describe, is that an accurate description of old-timey music?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and I think, well, a lot of it kind of mixed with African-American music and ragtime and sort of jazz and maybe a little, there's a little bit of swing to some of the music. It's not overly swung, but certainly different fiddle players might swing the music a little bit more than others. In Missouri, where I have friends that play a lot in Arkansas, they have more of a straight straight ahead kind of in time melody that's driven more by the rhythm sections and it's more melody focused than raggy or fiddle rags or things like that.

SPEAKER_01:

yeah so quite a lot of variety to it so we'll get into some of the great techniques that can be used on harmonica for it shortly but just before that so when you started learning it you joined in a jam so how did you start learning the music take it you didn't have too many harmonica players to listen to so were you picking up from fiddle players or elsewhere

SPEAKER_02:

well the people that I had heard play I got in touch with them and got their CDs and one of them had some kind of hand issues. He used to be a mandolin player, so he kind of got into the harmonica a little bit before he got better. And he had come across Mark Graham, who's a Pacific Northwest old-time harmonica player, and also Dave Rice. So he had given me some of their recorded material, and I sought out the rest of it as well. So I did get to hear some styles of harmonica. I think Dave Rice and Mark Graham have really well-contrasted styles, where Mark Graham, certainly he does tongue blocking, but he emphasizes single notes and maybe more invention on the melody. And then Dave Rice's is really a kind of a classical string band harmonica player, with the rhythms being the more interesting part of the playing.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, as you said, two great harmonica players to learn some techniques from. So were you learning all by ear or did you use some written scores to learn the tunes? It's largely an oral tradition.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it was all by ear. So I would just sit down with their CDs and learn the songs. And at first it was kind of hard to learn fiddle tunes because you kind of run out of breath. So maybe the first time I learned a fiddle tune from a fiddle player named Pete Howard was a tune called Sally Went a-Huntin'. I could only play it maybe once, once and a half times through. before i would run out of breath but then then i you know kind of naturally started to learn how to breathe out of my nose at the same time and i haven't run out of breath since

SPEAKER_01:

well i think that's a good point about playing tunes isn't it as opposed to blues where there are you know you can definitely take more natural stops and rests whereas with tunes you know quite often they're pretty relentless right and you don't often get much of a break so you've got to find the places to take the gap so uh you know so how did you approach that is it as you say a case of learning to control the breathing through the through the nose and and that's of thing

SPEAKER_02:

yeah with with straight harp it's more uh out breath but then there there's always like a g chord or something or an f chord where you're gonna have to breathe in sometimes and so then you could take take extra breath in there by opening up the nose and and doing it that way and likewise if you do the pre-war blues type stuff a lot of that's some pretty draw heavy pieces like d ford bailey's john henry is really draw heavy

SPEAKER_04:

and

SPEAKER_02:

so there's really only a couple spots where you can relieve the pressure and breathe out through the nose at very certain particular spots

SPEAKER_01:

yeah so as you mentioned there all time he tends to be in first position most of the time yeah

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, certainly there are a couple of examples of cross-harp playing, like Pete Seeger got Sonny Terry to do a couple of Creek things, and he would do cross-harp. Then there was Stovepipe No. 1, I think, that would do cross-harp and some different positions when he played. And D4 Bailey, when he played things that were more like fiddle tunes, it would be straight harp, or Ain't Gonna Rain No More, pop tunes type things, it would be straight harp. Herman Crick was pretty much straight harp, and then when he would play something like a hymn, like Swing Low, Sweet Chariot or something, he would play that cross harp because it would give a little bit more emotion to it. And then Dr. Humphrey Bate, I think all of his recordings were straight harp.

SPEAKER_01:

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SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, she was still around and kicking when I was a kid, and she would play them. And then she also had harmonicas, and she played the harmonicas to kind of church hymn songs, but straight harp style. Her quills were a set of two. I think I've counted maybe six people total. One of them is debatable whether it was quills or not that were recorded playing the quills. And her great uncle, who was born maybe in the 1860s or so, played them. I don't know where he got them from, you know, because... The historical record points to the African-American community as a place where the quills was really used, sort of like at Saturday night dances and things, there would be a quills player. And so the WPA back in the 1930s went around and interviewed former enslaved people. And one of the things they would talk on is like, what did you do for recreation? And several of them talked about the quills. And one of them in particular said that he could blow the quills harder than anybody. that the fiddle player would put his fiddle down when he blew the quills for the dances, and that all the ladies in the crowd would just pay attention to him when he was playing the quills. So it was kind of a funny story. So it used to be a lot more popular, but then I think in the 1870s or so, German manufacturing became a little bit more streamlined, and the harmonica took over around that time.

SPEAKER_01:

Was the quill, was it a plant, or was it something man-made, like a reed instrument man-made, or...?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so it's just like you go to a cane break near a river. It's something that looks like bamboo. You take one of the knuckles, and you cut it off right below that, and then you cut off the top end so that it's open and it's hollow inside. You'll just put it on your bottom lip and kind of blow in a downward direction. It'll make a sound, and you can put a little water in there to tighten it up a little bit to make it louder. And so my great-grandma would play. She had two quills and her uncle as well just played with two quills and then they would holler the notes in between the quills notes because the quills like a harmonica but even more so is kind of a limited instrument where you only have a certain number of notes that you can access. So if you want to make it more interesting, you would hoop and holler between that, which could be a precursor to those Foxchase type of harmonica tunes.

SPEAKER_01:

Definitely, yeah, there's the big similarity there, isn't there? But it's only on the blow, I take it, these... That's right. Yeah, and did they have what sort of different length ones to get different notes, so they were actually tuned to musical notes? Yeah, uh-huh, that's right. So what about where your pre-war harmonica playing came in? Did you do that before you started playing old-timey stuff, you know, together? How did that come in?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, so right before I got into old-time stuff, I had done a little bit of, you know, dabbled into playing bluegrass-type melodies, which bluegrass came from old-time music directly. And then also, like I said, looking at videos on the Internet and buying CD compilations. And so I was familiar with the cross-harp position. Really what happened was I was at a Hastings music store, and this is one of these places where they sell those flashy discs that you used to put in cars and listen to music. And I found the Harmonica Masters CD, and that just blew my mind. So that had pre-war blues type things from D. Ford Bailey and also Gwen Foster's otherworldly harmonica playing and other string band type music and really early jazz type music as well. But all harmonica focused.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, that sort of turned you on. You started learning some of that pre-war stuff off there. Any particular piece grab you off that album?

SPEAKER_02:

The one I've been working on a little bit lately is Freeman Stower's Medley of Blues. So this is kind of three blues melodies that he had tied together. He's a pretty interesting character. He was sponsored by Purina. His stage name was Checkerboard Sam. You know, after he had recorded these pieces in the 20s. Purina would have him go around and do barnyard imitations, and I think he had a 78 that had barnyard imitations called Sunrise on the Farm or something like that. He moved up to the St. Louis area and would play on Purina's radio station doing animal imitations vocally, but he was also an amazing harmonica player, so that medley of the blues is probably one of my favorite things to play right now from the cross-harp styles.

SPEAKER_01:

With your interest in old-timey and pre-war, you've written a mini-booklet, would you call it, called an old-timey handbook. It talks about the history of old-timey music and then talks through some of the players and some of the techniques. So is this available, this handbook, for people to read? It's definitely an interesting reading and a great insight out to play some of the techniques in old-time music. Yeah, I'll just send it to anyone

SPEAKER_02:

that is interested. I actually originally made it because Joe Felisco had me out to do his teach-in at the SPA conference, and so I thought I would take it seriously and put something together and put my thoughts together about what is old-time harmonica.

SPEAKER_01:

yeah no it's really interesting and we'll run through some of the content of that briefly and then people obviously can contact you directly by your website and they can get hold of you yeah so you talk about the history of old time music we've touched on that a little bit but it's interesting as how the harmonica became a kind of accepted instrument in old time you know you'd usually have the sort of fiddle banjo guitar and then the harmonica was that it was quite a you know common to see harmonica players in old timey bands then was it in the 1930s

SPEAKER_02:

yeah absolutely You know, take a look at R. Crumb's drawings of these early string bands. You know, quite a few of them either had harmonicas in those drawings or they had harmonicas on some of their recordings. You know, anybody from the Scale Lickers to Dr. Humphrey Bate and his Possum Hunters. You know, really the stars of early country music. 1924 was kind of a breakout year for the guitar slash harmonica in Iraq. Singer-songwriter types like Vernon Dalhart... Ernest Thompson, Ernest Stoneman, and Henry Witter. Those are some of the earliest kind of country music examples. You know, kind of always had a harmonica with them. And then on the Grand Ole Opry on day one, they had four harmonica players, two of which were Herman Crook and his brother Matthew.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so some great history there, and you picked out some of the interesting firsts in harmonica recordings. So the first commercial harmonica recording by an African-American is the somewhat unfortunately named Dat Mouth Organ Coon by Pete Hampton.

UNKNOWN:

.

SPEAKER_01:

fascinating to hear that and i think that's a uh first position one isn't it

SPEAKER_02:

uh yeah but he does he does bend some notes in there so a lot of people would say that henry widder was the first person to bend a note but i think uh it's pretty clear that pete hampton was bending notes in there too but he was also playing you know a fiddle tune a fox chase kind of a train kind of sounding song and all of these things definitely existed you know my first reference to a that I found for kind of a fox chase, and it was actually kind of a prisoner escape chase. It was from 1880 in Memphis. Some guy that was in the jail there was playing it for people, and a journalist passed by and kind of wrote about it.

SPEAKER_01:

Great, but I think I read in this handbook of yours that Henry Whitter did record the first fox chase, at least, you know, to be recorded. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it was, you know, sort of a dedicated solo piece that was a fox chase.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so there's this great history in here. And back then in these early songs, certainly the old time, it's mainly diatonic harmonica being used, yeah, sometimes a little tremolo, but it's mainly diatonic in first position, as we mentioned earlier.

SPEAKER_02:

yeah for you know for the first 1920s and 30s i guess it was you know there were those uh harmonica bands they would use the more extravagant harmonicas like chromatics and whatnot but really for the more simple kind of old-time music i think pretty much ernest thompson was the one that used the the tremolo along with his guitar playing and singing. Most of the other ones, almost all of them were diatonic harmonicas, Richter tuned.

SPEAKER_01:

Great. So as well as the, you know, the history of old time, you know, lots of the players and you mentioned some of the more modern players like Mark Graham and Dave Rice. You go into how you get this, you know, kind of combination of playing rhythm and playing melody notes together by doing octaves and double stops and, you So you've got sort of diagrams of how to do that, which is great because that's a really unique approach to this style of harmonica playing, isn't it? That you get this kind of rhythmical accompaniment while you're playing a melody. So, you know, you go in. So tell us about some of those approaches to play that style.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so, you know, when I'm playing, I'm playing with a banjo player, a guitar player, and then sort of I'm in the register of the fiddle player. But the fiddle is like a 90 decibel instrument and the harmonica is around 80. So if I were just playing the melody note It would be hard to distinguish from what the fiddle player is doing, unless I were playing non-melody notes, if I were trying to accompany it in a different way, which sometimes I'll do. But if I really want to kind of drive this fiddle breakdown, what I'll do is have like 16th note rhythms. It's similar to sawing on the fiddle, but the harmonica is kind of a nasty sounding device, you know, with overtones and whatnot. And it's kind of a percussive instrument in that way as well. And then when you breathe in, you're not even playing the the right chord it's it's a you know a minor chord oftentimes or if you breathe in on the six and seven draw that's the the tones of the of the amber alert when a kid goes missing in in the u.s if you would just breathe in on those two go bop bop bop then you'll figure out where they got those tones from if you're kind of doing that in a rhythmic pattern and i call this the out in out out pattern then you can behind the melody of the fiddle you can create a bass layer in tech of a really machine gun kind of rhythm that you can do for the entire fiddle tune. Obviously, fiddle tunes, they have melodies for a reason, and those melodies have certain characteristics, so sometimes it's good to back off of it. But if you want to really kind of create a texture along with the fiddle, which is a louder instrument, then these are some of the patterns that I like to use. And then there's a great rhythmic harmonica player from the early 1930s, Kyle Wooten, who has some more kind of advanced ideas where you won't start on the melody note. You'll breathe in and then do this out, out, out, out, kind of 16th note machine gun rhythm. And that kind of syncopates the melody around whatever the fiddle player would be doing. So there are different ways to dance around the melody.

SPEAKER_01:

It was interesting. I was checking out on your videos where you're playing with a fiddle player.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_04:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

You're able to play behind the fiddle player, you're putting bits of melody in, but it works really effectively with just the harmonica and the fiddle, I think, like that. And that's an approach you're trying to get, yeah, so you're kind of accompanying the fiddle player.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and it's hard to hear sometimes, but most of the time I'm playing even all the melody notes as well. Yeah. But since the fiddle player's playing the melody notes and it's louder in general, the texture is what comes out more than anything. And a good example of this from history is the Red Fox Chasers, Mississippi Sawyer. which is a really simple tune but he he does do that machine gun type rhythm and that that harmonica player's name was bob cranford

SPEAKER_01:

Another really interesting thing to pick out from this old-timey handbook is you talk about how people would play a drone on the harmonica using their nose. So they would be playing two harmonicas, and one of them they'd be playing just a single note, a drone note with their nose right, and then playing sort of melodically with their mouth. Is that something you've ever attempted yourself?

UNKNOWN:

No.

SPEAKER_01:

Actually, I

SPEAKER_02:

did do that, and then later I found out that Noah Lewis would play through his nose and mouth. And actually, Pete Hampton, the guy that recorded in 1903, at the very end of the thing, he plays the harmonica through his nose and whistles at the same time. So the nose can be a very useful little thing. But if you play cross-harp, you can drone away on the 2-3 combination while you're playing Amazing Grace or something. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

but certainly something visually interesting for the audience to play. play your harmonica through your nose at the same time so yeah I've never I've seen it done but I've never actually tried it yes and maybe

SPEAKER_02:

yeah there's definitely some shock factor there and yeah you know I tell them I have a dedicated nose harmonica but I don't think they believe me

SPEAKER_01:

yeah as well as the the old timey handbook you've written an article called one in every pocket and this is where you look in to the history of the harmonica and some notable players and again some of the some of the early stuff but really going back to sort of like the mid 1800s and you know really looking at the early days of harmonicas of players of many of which you know we've probably never heard of right yeah

SPEAKER_02:

definitely never heard of and never heard even no recordings yeah yeah I really dug around in the harmonica archives I guess newspapers.com have digitized hundreds of millions of pages of newspapers so you can really select by category by state by date and so I went through decade by decade just seeing what was going on in the world of harmonica going through thousands and thousands and thousands of these these early articles and

SPEAKER_01:

This is in the US, right? So when did the harmonica first come to the US and when did you start seeing players playing it?

SPEAKER_02:

The first reference to a concert that I saw in America was in 1828. So this is just a few years after its supposed invention. And it was a pair of harmonica players that gave a concert in New York City, I think. And they were from Munich.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And like you say, obviously we've got no recordings of these guys. So that's probably why we don't know these people, right? Because we tend to hear the first recordings, I'm not aware of those, but these people who played it for quite a long time before we were getting recordings. I mean, when was the first recording? We're talking the early 1920s a lot of the time on recordings, aren't we?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, there are probably examples of amateur players that do those home wax cylinder recordings from the late 1800s. These aren't like showpiece type of recordings. So the best recording was that first Pete Hampton thing, so far as I know.

SPEAKER_01:

And then another really interesting fact in this paper is that the first harmonica appeared in the moving pictures, as they call it, in the passing show in 1894. And this was being played by African-Americans. And so I think there's three African-Americans dancing and one of them is playing the harmonica. So the first time we saw an African-American on screen, they were playing the harmonica, right? Yeah, I think that's historically accurate. Done some amazing research. And again, people can get all of these articles via you and the contact you obviously via your website right so let's get on to talking about some of the recordings that you've done on the band so I understand you joined your first band after you saw a duo playing and you went away learned some of their music and then you said you were ready to join them is that right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah and since he had played the harmonica I think he was more open to the idea of having a harmonica player join and these people are pretty well versed in the history of old time music so they knew that Unlike, you know, bluegrass music that explicitly does not include harmonica, they let me play with them.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so this is your first old-timey band. Yeah, obviously you've been in the band you mentioned earlier on in it. Yeah, and that was called Shout

SPEAKER_02:

Lulu. That was the band name with Paul McGowan, Sky McGowan and Pete Howard on the fiddle.

SPEAKER_01:

Are you still in the band called the Ozark Highballers? Oh yeah, for sure. Where are you based? Are you obviously in Tennessee now? Are you spread out?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they all live in Northwest Arkansas still. Roy and Aviva have had a couple of kids and Clark still lives in Fayetteville and teaches banjo. And so we'll just take a select couple of gigs a year and we also meet up and play music for fun.

SPEAKER_01:

But yeah, you've got a couple of albums out, haven't you, with those guys?

SPEAKER_04:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

there's a song called Gastonia Gallop, which is a very sort of jug band style, pre-war style harmonica playing.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, this was originally by a guy named Dave McCarn. It's kind of in the Piedmont area. He knew Wyn Foster, and they both were around these kind of ragtime-type chordal change tunes, and then ragtime and harmonica go quite well together. They would come up with their... Like a fiddle player would come up with a rag, the harmonica players would also have their rags that they would play.

SPEAKER_01:

And then there's a song called Fort River Deer, and I think you're playing... unison with a fiddle on this one. So is that an approach you'll take quite a lot with a band, that you're playing unison with a fiddle?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, mostly. Until someone starts singing, then I might play more single note... Sweet things, because a lot of the music from this time period were sentimental numbers.

SPEAKER_01:

So these are all time tunes, so you're playing mostly the melody, yeah? Yes. You're not soloing, but you're doing maybe fills of the melody as well?

SPEAKER_02:

You know, you don't have to play this way, but the way Gwen Foster played, this more ragtime, kind of syncopated backup, more single-note driven with a lot of amazing techniques, tongue trills and raspberry blowing and bending all at the same time.

UNKNOWN:

piano plays

SPEAKER_02:

I think that's a really effective way to play. He played with a fiddle player in the Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers, and that all seemed to work out pretty well. So there's more than one way to skin a cat, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

The characteristics of this sort of style is that quite often they were playing solo or they were just playing in a small ensemble, maybe like in a duo. But often solo, right? So they were having to put in more effects and rhythm and tricks. So it's very much a different style than maybe the blues diatonic harmonica we're used to. Yeah, that's right. And you do quite a few solo recordings yourself. You've got, you know, there's a song, Crippled Creek, for example. Crippled Creek. So when you're playing a solo song like that, how are you approaching that?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so there I might not have such a machine gun type rhythm going on all the time. I will have rhythm going on all the time, but I may not emphasize that rhythm as much as the melody so that the melody can stick out a little bit more. And then I'll also dance around the melody. It all comes out as kind of a seamless thing. It may be hard for people to follow along if they're trying to learn the melody of Cripple Creek, kind of like trying to learn the melody of a fiddle tune from a banjo player who's playing... you know, 15 different notes at the same time. It is its own thing, maybe more like the banjo in that way than the fiddle.

SPEAKER_01:

So when you're putting a solo song together like that, say on an old-timey melody, are you working that out beforehand? Is it coming out quite off the cuff?

SPEAKER_02:

These things take some time to develop. You know, I'll add timing and articulation and different rhythmic ideas. And, you know, as I'll revisit a tune that I... learned a long time ago I'll start to incorporate these and sort of take the basic skeleton of the melody and build up a real sculpture around it so that it's own standalone kind of piece.

SPEAKER_01:

So do you tend to play these songs the same every time or is it quite well it's not improvised right but is the technique you're applying kind of improvised? No, there

SPEAKER_02:

will be things that I've probably worked out before. I probably won't play it the same exact way twice, but then I'll have this little bag of tricks that I'll reach into and bring out just to vary it up a little bit, because playing the exact same thing over and over again is a little boring. I think if you look at the good fiddle players like Ed Haley, there was a lot of variation in there. Even though it all kind of sounds like a fiddle tune, he did make it more interesting by adding some variation. And Mark Graham is really good at that on the harmonica.

SPEAKER_01:

And then there's a recording of you playing Barlow Knife with a uke banjo, so you're playing harmonica on a rack when you're playing this, right? So is that something you do quite a bit where you are playing a second instrument with harmonica on a rack?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, definitely. And I've recently taken up the bones too, so now I can play sort of left hand piano, the bones in the right hand as the percussion, and then the harmonica in the That took a little bit of time to piece together, but it kind of feels natural now.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that definitely is multitasking. So great, so you're still playing quite a bit of piano, are you? Yeah, I've got one downstairs. I'll play it every day. Great, and is that mainly for chords, for backing, or are you playing more piano without a harmonica?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, sometimes I'll play a full fiddle tune and just put the harmonica down and play the melody and the chords with the right and left hand. But when I'm playing the harmonica, I'll just basically do oom-pah kind of style, back up with some transitions between the chords.

UNKNOWN:

so

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

and there's a video you mentioned earlier on about playing when you're in your first band through a megaphone. I imagine you weren't getting the greatest amplified tone from that, but there's videos of you playing with one of these kind of resonator devices, like a kind of horn thing. Yeah, is that something you're still using?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, whenever I play acoustic, I like to use that, unless I want to use my hands for a wah-wah kind of effect. Although I do have a small sink plunger that I can use with that horn to create a wah-wah. But yeah, that was an Edison cylinder phonograph horn replica that I chopped down. crimped and chamfered to uh so the harmonica just slides into it and has enough tension to hold it in place quite well and then good impedance matching to it almost doubles the volume of the harmonica in the direction so it's really great for playing on the street or in a in a square dance where there's no no amplification which is what i prefer anyway

SPEAKER_01:

yeah great so is this it's something you still use regularly is it

SPEAKER_02:

yeah i just developed it in the harmonica megaphone. I don't know who has that now. Maybe a Country Music Hall of Fame or something.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, no, it's a great idea. I've sort of seen these type of things before with harmonicas, but I don't think they're widely used either. But it's a good idea, as you say, to play it unamplified and get some more volume. It's surprising that we don't maybe see more of them.

SPEAKER_02:

When I first tried it, I didn't know really how well it would work. I thought maybe I'd get 20% boost or something, but it really is almost double the intensity and the duration of play so it's it's quite effective

SPEAKER_01:

yeah it's interesting yeah we may be interesting to I don't know if you've made any videos about that about what you've done with it but it might be interesting for people who want to try something similar

SPEAKER_02:

yeah I'm thinking about doing a whole batch of them and just handing them out to my friends maybe selling some of them since Pete Farmer and Seidel came up with these these nice gecko racks Yeah. You can still play with this megaphone and the magnet's strong enough to hold the harmonica still.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, yeah, that's a good idea. And does it change the tone of the harmonica much? Yeah, I think it does. I think it makes it sound older. Yeah, so a little bit like Roley Platt's Hot War, but obviously that's more for a war effect, right, and a kind of trumpet mute type effect, where this is about amplifying the sound, yeah, so you're not really doing it to do hand effects with it now.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's right, which for film music is mostly what I'd be worried about.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, what's happening, y'all? Jason Ritchie from Blue Moon Harmonicas, and I'm here to tell you that Blue Moon Harmonicas are the way. You can customize them yourself, or you can get Tom to do them. The website is a rabbit hole. We're talking about custom combs, custom cover plates, throwbacks, refurbished pre-wars, double reed plates, anything you can imagine, aluminum, ABS, plastic, phenolic resin, wood, any kind of comb you want, any A question I ask

SPEAKER_01:

each time, Seth, is the 10-minute question. If you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend that 10 minutes doing? So maybe answer this for people who are interested in getting started playing all-time style. What would you say they should focus on to begin with?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so I went to the John C. Campbell Folk School and taught a harmonica class to complete beginners. So what we did was we started with just single note playing. So making this huge pucker with your lips and jutting your jaw out forward to get a good tone, then switch to tongue blocking. You know, these things probably take about 10 solid hours of practice to kind of get somewhat comfortable with. So that's what I'd work on first. But if someone's already got those basics down, then sort of taken some apps to slow down fiddle music and learn the melodies and then figure out how to get rhythms and start to dance around those melodies. And then, like you said, there seems to have been an uptick in interest in this type of harmonica playing where Dave Rice and Mark Graham were, and Bob Bovey were kind of the people out there doing this kind of fiddle music for a long time, for a couple of decades. There's a good Facebook group, Bluegrass Old Time and country harmonica Facebook group that Glenn Weiser put together, and he's done a lot of good books that have source material for the melodies and talk about techniques as well. But that group, when I first joined, I think I had 600 people. Now it's up to 3,000.

SPEAKER_01:

Again, that upsurge in popularity of playing tunes on the harmonica, I think because it just fits so well on the harmonica, it does work so well. For me, this is like,

SPEAKER_02:

if

SPEAKER_01:

you're

SPEAKER_02:

lazy, naturally, this is the style of harmonica you should be playing, because it's set up that way set up to play simple melodies and with rhythm back up and occasionally bend a note but try not to bend too many it's an easy road it's an easy life

SPEAKER_01:

what about tunings playing old timey music are you playing standard Richter or do you use different tunings

SPEAKER_02:

yeah I just play a standard Richter and then I'll avoid the three hole draw bend some people don't and they do quite well like Calvin Woodrink he's really good at holding those notes strongly I try to avoid them and then I'll go up to the top octave and If I run out of notes up there, I'll just switch back down to the left side of my mouth and you can't tell that's all happening. It's pretty seamless and cohesive.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, and that's partly to do with the way that you're sort of switching and playing rhythmical stuff. You're able to jump up and it not really standing out as being, you know, jumping up an octave.

SPEAKER_02:

That's right. I haven't tried a Paddy Richter or Major Cross tuning, but certainly all of those can be effective. And if you're playing a single note at a time, I think the melody can be louder and get closer to approximating the fiddles volume, but it won't get all the way there, I guess.

SPEAKER_01:

And personally, when I'm playing tunes, I play a Paddy Richter tune, because you get that sixth note, which is pretty commonly used in these melodies. It's very useful to have that... three blow um tuned up a tone so that you've got that sixth of the scale in there so yeah the paddy richter definitely works for me but i know obviously people use other tunings as well for them so but yeah interesting you use um the standard richter tuning yeah and um you don't play any chromatic harmonica for this type of music

SPEAKER_02:

no i don't but there's there's an example of a guy named john lozier that was recorded in field recordings by folklorists he played a chromatic harmonica and he played fiddle tunes and actually played fiddle tunes when he was younger with the famous blind fiddler Ed Haley they would play together and he would be he said he could keep up with him note for note so I think it's definitely something that can be done

SPEAKER_01:

so you mentioned spy earlier on so you do teaching um But you certainly have taught at SPA doing some old timey. Is that something you've done a few times?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. Even did some of those virtual things during the pandemic. But I went there for the first time before the pandemic and, you know, met a lot of good people there. And since I did live in Chicago, I had already known Joe and went and visited him at his house and at the folk school there in Chicago where he teaches. And so we had had, you know, good correspondence because we're both interested in the harmonica history. So he's an invaluable resource. to the community for that stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

Definitely, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And he's one of three people, James Conway, Andrew Larson, and Joe Felisco, that can play that Gwyn Foster tongue trill where he pulses his tongue back and forth extremely fast, like 17 notes per second. Those are the handful of people I know that can do that quite well.

SPEAKER_01:

So another interesting thing that you told me about is that you've just bought the Master Harp USA tuning table company and assets. So tell us about that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so we bought that from John Ingham who had developed it after buying it maybe a decade earlier from Dick Schoberg out of Sweden. And so basically it's a box with resonator cavities and and valves that you can open up. You put your reed plate on there onto a gasket and fix the reed plate down to give it some pressure. And then it's a really easy way to quickly tune a harmonica, especially in just intonation, which is what I like to have to have sweet sounding chords. And then it's got just a tube that you draw your breath from, and it keeps the reeds dry so they don't change pitch when they get wet like they would if they were on the comb. And so, yeah, I wanted one of these tuning tables, and me and my friend Andrew Larson bought the company and assets, and now we're mulling over what kind of form we wanted to take to be something that's both affordable but effective. I think John had sold several hundred of them to some famous people. I think even John Popper may have bought one.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's something that this tuning table that people would buy themselves so that they're able to more easily and accurately tune their own harmonicas is it?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah I find it I find it way easier because if I'm tuning by hand I have to put it back on the comb and put the cover plates back on and kind of get my embouchure right and make sure my breath isn't too wet you know that sort of thing. So I find it's to get a good first pass tuning and even second pass that it saves me a lot of time.

SPEAKER_01:

So you're thinking about making these, sort of manufacturing these and making these commercially available, are you?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think it'd be a valuable resource for the community to have, you know, and you can also kind of diagnose the reeds and see which ones are too loud or too quiet, and there are other things you can do, and I think Decarp says he uses his to replace reeds.

SPEAKER_01:

So you're not thinking about doing this as a customization business, this is to sort of sell these tuning tables?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it really depends on, we still have to look into the economics of manufacturing and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you have a rough idea at this stage how much these tuning tables might cost

SPEAKER_02:

I think when John sold the last one it was around 400 bucks but he did a lot of the machining himself because he's a high quality machinist and had a lot of these CNC type tools in his lab now if I had to outsource all the pieces then it would be$400 easily just for all the pieces without assembly or fine tuning or what not so we have to give it We have to get it along, I think.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so it's early days, yeah. Early days, but yeah. Does it take different sorts of replays? So, you know, diatonics and chromatics and, you know, other things such as tremolos, which obviously have double reads and are a bit more tricky to tune accurately.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so so far it takes diatonic. If we wanted to do chromatics, which a lot of people seem interested in, then we'd have to create new gaskets and really expand the form factor and add more slots. probably

SPEAKER_01:

yeah but for now it's diatonic yeah

SPEAKER_02:

that's right

SPEAKER_01:

so we'll move on to the last section now I'm just talking through gear and what sort of harmonicas do you like to play

SPEAKER_02:

right now I've got the the rocket amps I think they're they're pretty responsive really tight tolerances they have that good open back which goes straight into my little brass megaphone you know sort of maximized volume the only thing I would change is I would get the amp cover plate but when you buy the amp then you're going to have that neon green comb which a lot of people like according to Tom Holchek on your podcast but I just couldn't see myself playing neon green combs in old time music it would go against my aesthetic but yeah my most recent is amps not the amps but the rockets

SPEAKER_01:

so what about positions you talked about you know largely old time is played in first position and some second position do you play a lot of other positions you know some maybe minor ones and

SPEAKER_02:

No. Some of the fiddle tunes will have sort of minor sections in them, but you can use straight harp, and I think you'd still consider that first position playing to achieve those. You know, if I'm at a folk jam somewhere and someone plays Summertime, of course I'm going to do a third position or Shady Grove or things like that. So that comes up sometimes, but not too often. I try to surround myself with like-minded people that just want to play easy easy first position type music. And why not?

SPEAKER_01:

What about any overblows?

SPEAKER_02:

No, I never use them. I can get them on the six holes, which I think is the most basic hole to get them on, but I never use them.

SPEAKER_01:

And what about tongue blocking so obviously we've talked about you playing using tongue blocking for rhythm you know doing uh octaves and sort of double stops and switches and so is tongue blocking the mainly what you're using

SPEAKER_02:

yeah even if i'm playing one note i'm almost always in a tongue blocking position

SPEAKER_01:

yeah and that suits the old timey style with this kind of rhythm comping that you approach yeah definitely So when you're amplifying, do you do anything with amplifying? You said you like to mainly play acoustic. You're amplifying yourself with this kind of resonator thing, right? What about when you are amplifying yourself? What do you use?

SPEAKER_02:

I'll usually just have whatever vocal mic the venue has, and I just tell them I'll get close to it, but I've got to be able to use my hands when I need them. So I never really choke up on the microphone and keep it as acoustic as possible. It's probably been 15 years since I went to a blues jam. I used to own a Green Bullet. I don't know where it is. And I had a Fender Blues Junior amp one time, and the cops got called on me too much, so I had to sell it.

SPEAKER_01:

Because you were too noisy?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's like a little terrorist device.

SPEAKER_01:

Great. Okay, yeah, so you're mainly acoustic, but you use an acoustic mic into a PA, largely. Any effects at all, even a touch of reverb or delay?

SPEAKER_02:

No, if you can't get an echo or reverb just playing the harmonica by itself, then you gotta practice more.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and you're using, obviously, as you said, using hand effects to get a nice wah sort of reverb, yeah?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. Yeah, I've got so much rhythm going on, it would really just muddy it up if there were reverb. So whenever that happens, I just got to tell

SPEAKER_01:

the

SPEAKER_02:

sound guy, turn

SPEAKER_01:

all that off. And what about when you're recording? Do you sort of multitrack things, or do you always like to just play it clean as you do and add those different polyphonic rhythms and things yourself?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, a lot of these fiddle tunes, they're simple chord structures so you can kind of do a fox chase type rhythm behind them. And so I've got my friend Andrew Larson, and we'll play a simple fiddle tune, kind of like shortening bread, and he'll be playing the cross harp thing with a fox chase style thing, and Joe Felisco's really good at this too. And that'll be the harmonica duet thing. I could do this and overdub myself, but I like how he plays it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so two harmonicas together to do that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, two harmonicas together in this old style can be really nice.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think I saw, you've got some YouTube videos of that, haven't you?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, one of them, Shortening Bread, worked out really well. I think it's got the Edison horns in both of them too, so.

SPEAKER_01:

Great stuff then. So just final question, what about your future plans? What have you got in the pipeline besides a harmonica tuning table business?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well, I've been listening to a lot I have Gwen Foster lately, and I'm still trying to work on getting my speed up and volume on some of those techniques. But I think that would be a 10-year goal.

SPEAKER_01:

So you're working on your stuff. I mean, so obviously you put up quite a lot of solo pieces on your YouTube channel. Yeah. No, we're

SPEAKER_02:

not going to record any albums in the near future. I think we're happy just to take a couple of gigs and hang out with people and jam and do square dances and whatnot when they come up.

SPEAKER_01:

But your YouTube channel's a good place for you to put out some of the solo stuff you're working on, yeah?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and no one has CD players anymore, so...

SPEAKER_01:

That's right, yeah. And what about, you know, you're teaching, you're traveling around, doing any more teaching coming up, or any more festivals?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I'll be teaching the workshop at John C. Campbell in 2025. I don't think I'll go to Spa this year, but I'll probably go the next year. You know, if anyone ever wants to reach out on Facebook, I usually give these old-time harmonica lessons for free just to kind of download a basic guide of here's how I'd approach it and take an hour or two to go through it. And if they want to come back later and do it some more, then I'm kind of just happy to grow the community in that way to terrorize the fiddle players.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's a great opportunity. And then you see that people really want to learn that sort of music. They'll come back and carry on working with you. Yeah, so yeah. Yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, but I don't teach blues, so don't reach out to me if you want to

SPEAKER_01:

learn any

SPEAKER_02:

blues.

SPEAKER_01:

So thanks so much for joining me today, Seth Shoemake. Thank you, and keep on harping. Once again, thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast. Be sure to check out their great range of harmonicas and products at www.zydle1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zydle Harmonicas. Thanks to Seth for joining me today. He's done some great research into early harmonica styles and players. I definitely recommend getting hold of his old-time harmonica booklet and his article, One in Every Pocket. And you could take up the generous offer of a free old-time harmonica lesson with Seth. Seth's contact details are on the podcast notes. Thanks all again for listening, and thanks to Rob Sawyer and Warren Smith for subscribing to support the show. I'll sign off now with Seth playing some rack harmonica, along with his uke banjo. This is on the tune, Barlow Nigh.