Randal Bays: An Authenticity of Spirit
By Larry Hill
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You read music, but you learn by ear?
I pick up things pretty immediately by ear. I think in Irish traditional music that it's important to learn the music that way and not rely on written sources. I use written sources but mainly as reminders. Joel Bernstein and I both keep these little books that we note down tunes in. They're like little reminders, lest you forget what you used to play.
You take musical dictation?
Yeah. I used to go to sessions, and I'd sit in the background with a little notebook and write down tunes as they went by. It's better than taping because you actually get it into your head while you are writing it down. It is not anything like an inborn skill. It's just a matter of ear training and practice, hearing intervals and relationships. I'm confident that anybody who is a pretty good musician can train their ear to do that.
I think ear training is really important. I've had some students who were trained musicians, classical musicians, who wanted to learn everything from printed sources. I used to write tunes out for them, but I got out of doing that because I'd find that they wouldn't actually remember the music. They'd go to sessions, and they couldn't play. Whereas, if I'd teach them the tune by rote ญญ get this phrase, get that phrase ญญ they'd have it in their mind, and build up a session repertoire, and take part in the world of Irish music, which is what they really wanted.
So you were about twenty-six, you heard the Irish fiddle, and you made a big change.
I had already quit the classical guitar. Basically, it just wasn't a big enough voice for me. It expresses a kind of gentleness, but there was also this more powerful voice I wanted to have. I didn't realize so much in those terms what I was looking for, then I got talked into going to hear a concert. Kevin Burke and Michael O'Domhnaill were working as a duo, and the music they played absolutely, totally got me. It was absolute magic. I was awake all night talking about it. So I got into the fiddle then. I was lucky because those guys ended up moving to Portland. Kevin was my neighbor. I never took formal lessons from him, but he was so generous with his time, and he guided me to a lot of great players who were a lot different from him. In particular, to P.J. Hayes and Paddy Canny. So I got on to them right in the beginning, and I'd been listening to them for years by the time I met Martin Hayes. It's part of the reason Martin and I clicked so readily. I already had his family repertoire in my brain.
You are a traditional musician, and you write new tunes in the tradition. Is there a conflict?
The Irish tradition is a living tradition, unlike some of those that died out and got revived. Irish music never died out. It continued to be a rural peoples' music right up into the present. I mean we're seeing the end of it now, unfortunately. So it has always been a living music, which means it has always been added to. What I've tried to do is to make tunes that sound as though they have the right sense about them. And you can't get too fat a head about it because if you're successful you'll have to come up with tunes that are original and yet have a lot of elements of other things in them that have already gone down. It just seems unnatural not to be making new tunes into a tradition.
You are a professional musician, but do you have a larger purpose?
When I quit the classical guitar, part of it was turning against that whole world of professionalism. I came to not like that paradigm of the performer being separate. You spend all your time: practice, practice, practice. You go up on stage at a huge distance from the audience ญญ put the music out. It's like spectator sports. I'm much more into sandlot softball. Well, I do go to Mariners games.
Everywhere I go, I find a great group of people who are really interested in traditional music on a grass roots level. I play for those people. I find it's the same in Ireland. You have the really big gigs and the fame, but there is this kind of kitchen and small gig oriented thing of people who really appreciate the art of the music.
And there's more to it. It's making a connection with people. I travel around this country, and every community harbors people who will come to a house concert. You look out, and the room is full of people who play themselves. So there is generally some element of tune swapping and chatting. Often you're invited to a session with local people when you finish playing. You stay in people's houses. It seems sustainable.
Tell me about Foxglove Records.
It's a very low key thing. I made an album. It wasn't accepted by either of the two big East coast labels, so I decided I'd just make up a label. Then Dale Russ made an album, and we put it on the label. Same with the Suffering Gaels. Then Joel Bernstein and I as the Rashers. Then Jody's Heaven. It never was intended to turn into anything like a big business. I don't have the time or energy. I'm too busy making music and I don't want that to change. I don't want to be a business man sitting around selling albums. So, it's possible other people will get involved and turn it into a business, or it could stay a very minor thing.
What this has done for those of us in the Northwest ญญ we've all been playing for a long time, and the quality of what we do is right up there with anybody else ญญ this has given us a chance to have a little credibility, visibility. Maybe it will mean that some of the people on the label will be able to move on to a higher level of recognition. But I don't expect Foxglove to ever become any kind of corporate entity.
By way of closure, can you reflect a bit?
When I got into this I had no attraction on an ethnic interest level. The music itself is what attracted me. I see so many people who are so passionate about it, so I ask myself, why is it? I find over the years, the dynamics of how this music works ญญ the music itself, the performance settings, the scene ญญ it has a lot in common with blues or jazz. It is a social music, an intense music, and it's a music that respects and honors wildness. That's really important. It's not necessarily always a nice music. In fact, that's another place where us Yanks get into trouble with it. We want everything to be democratic and nice. This music isn't that way. Sometimes it's wild and intense and fiery.
I'd like to say here: we need to take this music seriously. Somewhere else put: we really shouldn't take this music too seriously. Both are true. I go into these sessions and see people staring intensely at the floor, I want to say, "Lighten up. Joke with the person next to you. Have some fun." On the other hand ญญ take it seriously because it's a precious heritage, whether you're Irish or not.
When you play music, regardless of your technical level, the music that comes out is who you are. So, as you go into this stuff, years go by, you're refining your musical expression, but it's becoming more and more who you are. It is kind of like your character, your personality, gets into it and becomes part of the process. It's important to keep that in mind from the beginning. No matter how much of a beginner you are, what you are playing is expressing who you are to the world. You can't hope it's going to be anything other than that. It's just the way it is. Anyway, it's fun.
[Larry Hill writes from Seattle. He has played Irish music on fiddle, flute, and whistle for twenty years.]
[For the rest of this article, plus the tunes "The Homer Spit" (from Randal's Out of the Woods album) and "Tim Moloney's Reel" (from the Pigtown Fling album by Randal Bays and Joel Bernstein), see the Winter 1998/99 issue of Fiddler Magazine. Back issues available!]
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