An Interview with Michael Springer 9.21.09 by HolleyHall, 21 Sep 2009 07:58 AM

Michael Springer

EZfolk Artist Page: http://c1.ezfolk.com/Michael_Springer/

     Radio Stations:
Pat 'n' Mike's Irish & Celtic Hour
Michael's Old Time Fiddle & Banjo Hour

I would like to present to you multi-talented Michael Springer. Mostly known for his amazing fiddle playing but he also plays banjo and guitar! I have always admired his fiddle playing and have often wished I could play as well as he does. At one time I recall he had posted some playing tips on an artist forum and I hope to encourage him to post more helpful info for our inspiring EZfolk fiddlers, banjo and guitarists!!

Thank you Michael for the privilege and the honor this interview and sharing your musical history with us.

HOLLEY: Tell us about your music background? When and how did you first become interested in music? How long have you been playing music? What instruments do you play?

MICHAEL: It's hard to say exactly when I first became interested in music. Visits with Grandma were special, and Grandma sang and played piano. Mom always sang little ditties like "Mairzy Doats" to us. Christmas carols were special, especially the year we got a "Sing Along With Mitch" (Mitch Miller) Christmas album, and I sang along with the record and memorized all the words.  Church music affected me deeply, both the hymns in the main service, and spirituals in Sunday School and vacation Bible school.  We also had a music program in school, and that impacted me.  And I took up clarinet for school band at age 10, which is where I learned to read music.

When I was about 13, my dad bought a really awful nylon string guitar with 11 green stamp savings books. It gathered dust for a long time, and then when I was about 14, my friend Murph came over, and played the "Man From U.N.C.L.E." theme on the two low strings of the guitar. Well, in 1966, that was so cool, and I couldn't let Murph be cooler than I was, so I picked it up and played the same thing. And I thought to myself, "I just played the guitar- that wasn't half hard- I could really play this thing!" So I dug out the  E-Z Guitar Method that came with it, learned the chords, learned how to read music with the guitar, and I was off and running. A business associate of my dad's invited us to a backyard barbecue, I took the green stamp guitar, and I sang "Red River Valley" and "You Are My Sunshine" as a medley.  And the associate said to my dad afterwards "Hey, the kid's good, get him a decent guitar!"  So we traded in my clarinet on a better guitar, a Goya. During high school I was all over the place style-wise- I continued playing folk songs, but also got an electric and started playing in a very bad rock band- we were all just learning and our voices were changing. Then I heard Julian Bream play lute on TV, and I fell in love with classical guitar and lute music.

About that time we moved out to California, and I continued the classical guitar for several years there, got serious lessons and got pretty good. Then several things triggered an interest in a more traditional direction- I was invited to a Judy Collins concert at the end of high school, and for an encore, she called out two friends who played clawhammer banjo and fiddle, and they performed "The Battle of New Orleans" string band style, and I loved it.
Then I found a five-string open back Vega banjo at the music store I was teaching guitar at and I started taking bluegrass lessons.(This was just after Foggy Mountain Breakdown was a hit) I hadn't gotten very far into them when I took the banjo to a jam on the lawn at the college I was attending. I was too much of a novice to play it, but a guitarist asked to see it, retuned it, played "Soldier's Joy" clawhammer style, and I was hooked.  I got the Pete Seeger banjo book, and after about 3 months got the "frailing" strum (now called "bump-ditty clawhammer") down, and was able to do chord accompaniments on the banjo, then I learned to pick out melodies.

Then I saw an ad for a Hootenanny (open mic) in the L.A. Free Press. I drove down, and met this fiddler there! I started going down to his house to jams, and there was this other clawhammer player named Al Hart (now a clawhammer player and banjo maker of note in Washington State).  Al had found a junked fiddle and reassembled it.  I asked him if he was trying to play it at the time, and when he said no, I asked if I could borrow it, and he let me borrow it for a few months, and I got my start that way. The first tune I played was "Old Dan Tucker". The landlady had a cheap mandolin which I borrowed and I would pick out the melody on that (the tuning is basically the same) and that shortened my learning time. After a couple of years I joined first a string band that did mostly Skillet Lickers and Charlie Poole tunes, and then another that did traditional Appalachian tunes with one instrumentation (2 fiddles, dulcimer, guitar) and Irish tunes with another (1 fiddle, tin-whistle, concertina, guitar).

Then I moved to Northern California's "Gold Country" in 1976. About that time many of us in the Old Time and Irish music scenes in L.A. were thinking about the same thing- our music was an expression of a desire for a mellower way of life, and L.A. was getting to be a worse and worse rat race. Many, like Al Hart, moved to the Pacific Northwest, many others, like Mark Simos, moved back east. But Northern California was far enough for me.

I was living in a small Northern California town, and while there, I had a profound religious experience, and started going to church and playing church music. I got a job in a convalescent hospital, and while I didn't last too long because I'm not very good at housekeeping chores, I did learn that both fiddle tunes and old hymns accompanied with guitar were super morale boosters for the elderly in hospitals. Anyway, I continued playing fiddle for a long time, even though I had no one to jam with.

Then I moved to another Northern California small town, and found a jamming partner who I actually had known from the L.A. jam scene. We jammed for a while, but then he died too young, and I would get bummed out when I picked up the fiddle thinking about him. I ended up trading it off for a guitar, and I was fiddle-less for 15 years! About 1990, we moved down to San Diego, and I got into computers. I thought maybe I could make a career of it, but it never worked out. Eventually my wife got homesick for Northern California, and moved back without me! I followed reluctantly after a while (it was nice to be steadily employed for a while- I'm a poor fit for the job market in small Northern California towns!) After we got back, I heard B.B. King on a T.V. commercial, and fell in love with his singing and playing. I had already bought an electric guitar amp thinking it was an acoustic amp because it was brown like the Fender acoustic amps! (It was an early Yamaha, and actually didn't do too badly for acoustic guitar- good clean sound) So once I realized it was really an electric guitar amp, I got an awful $80 plywood stratoclone, and I got into the electric guitar and blues.  Then after a few years, I was nearly having a G.A.S attack
(Guitar Acquisition Syndrome) and while I was trying yet another guitar, I saw a fiddle on the wall, thought "I used to play that", and decided to take it into a practice room and see if I could still play at all.  It didn't sound as bad as I'd feared, so I traded in an electric and an overdrive pedal or two, and I had a fiddle again.

Then I upgraded to my present fiddle after a year, and almost immediately after that, started recording and posting tunes on ezfolk. (I had heard about it from someone on an electric guitar yahoogroup!) I had already gotten into volunteering in convalescent hospitals, and when I got a fiddle, then a year later a Hohner Travel banjo, I started incorporating them right away, and they were both big hits with the residents.  So now I start my performances with fiddle, play for up to 40 minutes with a focus on familiar tunes like Turkey in the Straw, Pop Goes the Weasel, Redwing and Tennessee Waltz, then do a few on the banjo, especially Oh Susanna, then switch to guitar and sing for about a half an hour, doing stuff like "Hard Times Come Again No More", and move on up through the history of country music, a Carter Family Tune, a Jimmy Rodgers Tune, a Hank Williams tune, an Ernest Tubb tune, an Eddie Arnold tune, a Johnny Cash tune, a Roger Miller tune, a Buck Owens tune, a Kenny Rogers tune, and of course, Red River Valley and You Are My Sunshine. I usually also do a couple of real cowboy songs (Whoopee Ti Yi Yo and Streets of Laredo) and a couple of movie cowboy songs (Deep in the Heart of Texas and Happy Trails as a closer). One of the hospitals has a resident from Quebec and I'll play some Quebecois fiddle tunes for her and some French folk songs I learned in high school. There is often at least one homesick Texan, and if so, I'll do a Bob Wills tune or other Texas themed song, if there's a Hispanic resident I'll do "Rancho Grande" in Spanish, so I try to customize the performance to the audience that shows up that day. They've been very enthusiastic, and it's starting to work into payingperformances. I also do patriotic songs for national holidays and occasionally get in a Tin Pan Alley mood and do some of those.

I'm not going to get rich doing it, but it's a very satisfying way to earn money. You can really bring a smile to the faces of people that don't have much to smile about- it's like musical time travel- you're taking them back in their memories to a time when they were younger and happier. I also do some performances that are all hymns and gospel songs.

HOLLEY: What artist(s) do you feel you can compare your sound too? How did they influence your music?

MICHAEL: That's hard to say, since I've drawn from pretty diverse sources on all three instruments (fiddle, banjo, and guitar) that I play regularly. Fiddle is a paradox, because in the bowing I'm really influence by hoedown fiddlers like Tommy Jarrell, but in the left hand I'm more of a "hornpipey" fiddler with a taste in tunes a lot like Franklin George. Even though I didn't hear him until recently, the resulting sound probably resembles Art Stamper's fiddling as much as anybody's. Since I'm performing with solo fiddle, I have been moving towards a smoother sound with the bow, it just goes over better with more people.

 My banjo style is drop-thumb clawhammer, with a lot of Round Peak influence in that the rhythmic drop thumb is used to create a pulse, not melodic drop thumb where it's used to get more melody notes. But I don't feel restricted by the Round Peak repertoire at all, I just play any tune that sounds good with that approach.  With guitar I do a lot of conventional country guitar backup, sometimes with a swingy palm muting thing on certain tunes, and occasionally throw in a lead lick at the end as a nod to all that electric guitar practice.

When singing, I'm a bit of a chameleon- I have a country sound (Blue Sky Boys or Johnny Cash) a Tin Pan Alley crooner sound, and maybe a little Tennessee Ernie Ford on hymns!!! I also have a sound on spirituals where I'm probably hearkening back to Otis Redding- I loved his stuff! My goal is to recreate performances of the music that people loved when younger, but I still bring my own style to it, I don't try to do perfect imitations of the original performance, just capture the essence or the mood of it.

HOLLEY: Can you tell us about any special playing techniques you implement in your music? your preferences and how do they differ from other techniques you have tried?

MICHAEL: On fiddle, I use a lot of different shuffles. I got tired of Nashville Shuffle years back, so I seldom use it. Instead I use Sawshuffle and a couple other licks that are presented in Brad Leftwich's DVD method as Tommy's Lick and Melvin's Lick (this one is actually 2 different related shuffles) I didn't actually learn them from him, just picked them up from various fiddlers along the way, but they're the same patterns. On guitar, my playing is pretty conventional, but it's very rhythmic.It occurred to me that what I do essentially is to play the songs that my parents' generation loves, but with a very 60's rhythmic sensibility- I like a crisp, snappy rhythm, I don't like an ambling legato feel. This is strong enough that the hospital staff seem to enjoy my music (unless they have an aversion to country or folk!) and do little dance steps! And most of the visitors visiting their parents also enjoy my music, since we are both post-Beatles in our rhythmic sensibility. When playing electric about five years back I switched to holding a conventional Fender-style heavy pick sideways, so I'm picking with one of the rounded corners. It took a couple weeks to make the switch, but I can play cleaner, faster, and with less pick noise that way.

Oh yeah- I have both a nylon string, a loud one, and a steel string acoustic. I use the steel string if it's going to be mostly country and cowboy songs, the nylon string if it'll include hymns, spirituals or tin pan alley tunes. The nylon string is more versatile, but I use a flat pick with it (a la Willie Nelson) and the sideways grip is a key to that since it gives me almost no pick noise. My clawhammer technique is pretty conventional except that I try to play with the rhythm and get it sounding just a tad more African, bring out the syncopation.

HOLLEY: Do you write your own songs or do you prefer to play traditional music? (If song writing Discuss the songwriting process in detail.) What are your songs about? (What specific themes do they cover?) What inspires you to write music? How do you go about composing songs?

MICHAEL: I mostly do traditional numbers, since in most of my performances I'm trying to trigger memories, so it's going to be older, more familiar stuff. I do sad parting songs, lost love songs, sad and lonely songs, really any song that I can connect with the emotion is fair game. I don't do murder ballads.I have written a few songs, but I'm not much of a poet, even though I really appreciate other people's poetry- go figure!

HOLLEY: Do you have any particular songs that you play (cover or original music) you consider your favorites?

MICHAEL: Whatever song or tune is right for my mood when playing alone, or is the right one for connecting with an audienceis my favorite tune. Actually most of the songs I do are my favorites, but it's hard to pick just one.  Well, "Hard Times Come Again No More" might be close to the top favorite.

HOLLEY: In what ways does the place where you live (or places where you have lived), affect the music you create, or your taste in music?

MICHAEL: Here in California, especially in the Central Valley where I live, there are lots of people descended from Dust Bowl refugees, and many of them are represented in the convalescent hospitals. It seems my taste in fiddling and singing is custom-made for them.

HOLLEY: Do you prefer to play music as a profession or a hobby?

MICHAEL: I think I'm moving toward it as a profession. I've been told I have a gift of connecting with audiences, at least elderly ones!

HOLLEY: What live performance experience have you had?

MICHAEL: I had one volunteer performance where the residents were so totally into it, it was phenomenal! They were singing along, clapping, they were having a PARTY!!! But the big thing was this sense of connectedness with the audience- I don't think I've ever had it to that degree before or since- it was magical!

HOLLEY: Where do you have your music posted on-line?

MICHAEL: Here on ezfolk, and also some solo fiddling on my page at the Fiddle Hangout (username: fiddlepogo)

HOLLEY: Name a band or musician, past or present, who you flat-out LOVE and think more people should be listening to. What's one of your all-time favorite recordings by this band/musician?

MICHAEL: As a kid I LOVED the Byrd's sound- I still get a thrill when I hear the Byrd's "Turn, Turn, Turn!".
I really enjoy Bruce Molsky's videos on YouTube.  Oh yeah- Quebe Sisters Band are GREAT!!! 3 part harmony Texas Swing fiddling + Andrews Sisters harmony singing. BETTER than Bob Wills!!!

HOLLEY: Lately what musical periods or styles do you find yourself most drawn to as a listener? (Old or new music? Music like yours or different from yours?)

MICHAEL: I've always loved OLD music- medieval, renaissance, Christmas carols, old hymns, traditional folk, old country music, Old Time fiddle, bagpipe music, Irish and Scottish trad, Stephen Foster tunes, Carter Family. For me, it's got to sound OLD!!!! I sometimes listen to Irish and Celtic music, but don't attempt to play it much. I collected my favorites on an ezfolk station.

The most modern stuff I listen to much is probably Western Swing (Quebe Sisters) or some Bluegrass (Contintental Divide) or blues (B.B. King).  But what with practice time I don't have that much time to listen.

HOLLEY: Describe your show, visual and musically.

MICHAEL: Musical Time Travel through American History. Intense. I try to put everything I've got into a performance. So far, I don't use my electric guitar- that's for accompanying singer/guitarists.

HOLLEY: What have you found to be your biggest obstacle. How did you work through it?

MICHAEL:One obstacle is promoting myself. During a performance, I'm an extrovert, but then I return to my normal mild-mannered, introverted, nerdy self, and I don't sell myself well. The daughter of a resident said one day...."you need a flyer" and she asked me for stuff she turned into a flyer, and then I customized the layout and graphics for my taste.

Another obstacle is amplification, and the logistics of it. I don't have a good back, so it has to be small. I sing and play fiddle, sometimes both at the same time, so the mic has to work well with both. The conventional Shure SM58s and SM57s or clones just don't cut it for me since their pickup pattern is too small.

Currently I'm using a Heil PR-35 which is supposed to have a ribbon mic kind of EQ to it, and it works well for both my voice and fiddle. It has a larger pattern, and  a low frequency cut switch that helps cut boominess. Oddly, I'm currently using my electric guitar amp, a Fender Pro Junior, with a converter for the mic, occasionally a tube mic preamp. It probably works because I don't need a lot of volume boost, so it's not cranked high enough to distort. But that gives me an amp, a guitar, a fiddle, a banjo, a mic stand, a music stand, and the mic and cords... and a water bottle.I have a little foldable cart ("Magnacart") I keep in the car, and it's worth it's weight in GOLD!!!.

The third obstacle is, I need a CD, but recording makes me nervous-my stuff here on ezfolk is pretty casual, not CD quality-
it's hard to play recording engineer and then shift into performance mode and give my best performance. So I'm still working on that one!

CC forums: http://ezfolk.com/forums/forum36/7737.html