Interview with Hugh Blumenfeld 4/9/00

Paul called Hugh and interviewed him from his home in Connecticut. Paul has met Hugh twice in the past, both times at Falcon Ridge. Last year he stayed at Camp Hon til the sun rose on Sunday morning sharing songs, jokes and observations with us.

Paul: You have a doctorate in poetics. Excuse my ignorance, but is that different than a doctorate in poety?

Hugh: It’s a special program at NYU. I don’t think anyone gets a doctorate in poetry anyway. This program is supposed to be a new approach to studying poetry: figuring out what it is about poetry that moves us, and how to communicate this aspect of poetry to larger audiences. Trying to make poetry once again a viable art form in the culture.

Paul: I often get this question from people: what is the difference between a poem and a song lyric?

Hugh: A song lyric you sing.

Paul: And that’s the only difference?

Hugh: Yeah, at 11;30 this morning, that’s my final answer.

<Paul laughs>

Hugh: No, a lot of poetry you can’t sing. But poetry originally was always sung. You know Boewolf was sung and the Torah is still sung every week. They don’t read the Bible they sing it.

Paul: So, even today you can take a poem and turn it into a song.

Hugh: That’s what I do. That’s a lot of what my workshops are about.
I do it not only with poems but also with journals, stories, letters. The neatest workshop that I did lately is where we did letter writing for the first half. And I give certain writing cues that elicit pretty cool letters. And then in the second half we sing them.

Paul: Interesting.

Hugh: What is interesting is that music just structures language in a set way. So even if you didn’t write in in meter or as a poem, you can frame it in music.

Paul: That reminds me, there’s always a discussion of what comes first- lyrics or melody. How does it work for you?

Hugh: I think for most of the songwriters I know, it’s different for every song. When I’m lucky the music and words come together for a stretch.

Paul: They arrive at the same time.

Hugh: Yeah, but not a whole song necessarily, but a stretch, a phrase. And then it becomes a sort of crystal. And if you’ve been mulling enough stuff in your mind for a time, then that one musical phrase crystalizes everything else around it. One musical phrase will suggest another one in terms of melody. And then two musical phrases suggest two more. And one metaphor suggests another one, one image will suggest another. And you build from there.

Paul: Do you have any daily writing exercises or habits?
Do you try to wirter everyday or just when the muse hits you?

Hugh: I write something everyday but not always creative writing. Most of my freelance work is writing. I write articles, reviews, letters.
But I wish I were more disciplined.
The best writing for me is in the car.

Paul: Really? I guess you have a tape recorder with you?

Hugh: No, not usually. With my process, if you can’t remember it, then it wasn’t worth it in the first place. Or when you’re in the car you keep repeating the song to remember it. And it’s sort of like writing a draft, since every time you go through it you change a syllable or a word.

Paul: And you do it all in your head, you don't even scribble a note?

Hugh: Yeah.

Paul: I guess that time in the car is sort of a forced alone time, because in America most people are driving alone.

Hugh: Yeah.

Paul: And when you’re alone you get time to think.

Hugh: But you have to resist the temptation to turn on the radio.

Paul: Right, that’s my problem. I’m always turning on the radio or a tape. I surround myself with music from the moment I wake up in the morning.

Hugh: Well, we all do. It’s so hard to get any quiet time anywhere. So the car can be a nice little isolation tank.

<Paul laughs>

Hugh: And there’s something about moving that even infants know is soothing.

Paul: That’s true, infants will fall asleep in a car. And I think a lot of great tunes are ones that sound good when you’re riding around in a car. There’s groove to the road.

Hugh: I wrote "Brothers" in the car, I wrote "Shoot the Moon" in the car. I wrote the "Long Haired Radical Jew" in the car.

Paul: What has been the reaction to "Long Haired Radical Jew"? I know you sang that song at the Falcon Ridge showcase last year and it elicited a great response from people. Do you always get that kind of response to that song?

Hugh: I usually do. It’s a cheating song. It’s not the best thing I ever wrote but it gets a great response. It’s just a hard song to ignore. The only problem I ever had with it was at the Greater Chicago Jewish Folk Arts Festival. They asked me not to play it. I thought that was one place that it would be great to play it. I was really looking forward to it.
And you know in Jerusalem, you can’t say the "J" word on the radio. That was unexpected. But it made sense. I played that song all over Israel and never had a problem. I find with political songs fewer people get offended than you think will get offended. It’s rare that people actually have a problem.

Paul: On some of your songs I sensed a religious background. Could you comment on where you’re coming from?

Hugh: Well I think every poet has a religious background. I’ve got to remember I’m being taped here.<Hugh hesitates to get the right wording> I grew up in a reform temple, that tradition.

Paul: Is religion something you don’t want to talk about?

Hugh: No, it’s just hard to formulate exactly what I’m trying to say. I guess mostly I’ve been working antogonistically toward my religious background. I mean there’s always the gadfly. And I grew up in the tradition, and had been taught a lot about it. And ever since then you try to create your own story out of it.

Paul: You try to follow your own road, find your own path.

Hugh: Yeah.

Paul: I thnk we all do that.

Hugh: Most of my songs draw on the tradition in some way. I mean I don’t go to temple or belong to a congregation. I use songwrting for that.

Paul: When you went to Israel recently, how was your music accepted?

Hugh: I had a great time. The first thing is that it was a self-selected audience. The people who came out to the folk concerts, they call them Anglo-Saxons. Anybody in Israel who is from an English speaking country are considered Anglo-Saxons. And it’s a different crowd than those with Hebrew as their first language. Which I think at this point is the majority of the country. The folk music crowd is a small group. But I had a great time, they liked the songs a lot. I was surprised by the reaction to "This Mountain".

Paul: I love that song. The first time I met you I was working on learning to cover that song. It’s a cool song that I really relate to and it’s positive message and energy.

Hugh: Thanks. I was surprised in Israel that song didn’t go over so well.

Paul: Were your expectations too high?

Hugh: No, For someone who is not Israeli to be singing semi-political songs about the condition they live in every day and face the reality of every day, it’s just a little too awkward. Like, "who are you to discuss our politics". When I played in Europe I usually played the Germany-Austria-Switzerland tour. And because my last name is German sounding the first paragraph of any article always had to say that I was from the United States. Otherwise people wouldn’t come to hear me. They come becuase you’re American. And because they want to hear you sing about American stuff. So, they didn’t come to hear me talk about Israeli stuff. And I have a song called "All the Wood of Lebanon" about the Americans who got killed in Lebanon in 1983. It talks about a boy who goes off to war and comes home in a box. It was just too painful for people to hear. Here it was a political statement. There everyone has a son or daughter who is there or gone. But is was an interesting experience.

Paul: But you seem to temper your deeper, more serious songs with a lot of humorous songs. What prompts you to come up with these types of songs? Were you the class clown?

Hugh: Exactly the opposite. My brother was the class clown. I was the very studious teacher’s pet. These humorous songs are a recent development. My natural inclination is to write songs like "Brothers". Write about twenty of them in row is what I used to do. But when I started performing I realized that I needed something else in the show. So I covered other people’s stuff like "Cezanne" by the Five Chinese Brothers. I found quirky, funny songs to cover becaus you need that variety in a show. I guess after a while I learned how to do it and find a funny place inside myself.

Paul: Your song "John Wayne was a Thespian" is still echoing in my mind from last year.

High: From that night at Camp Hon?

Paul: Yeah,

Hugh: It’s sort of like a nasty imp inside that finally got out.

Paul: You’re scheduled to do a songwriting and singing workshop for us next month on May 13. What would you tell folk to expect or look forward to?

Hugh: Hopefully they’ll get to try things they never tried before. And that my approach is a little unusual.

Paul: Unusual?

Hugh: Well, I’ve never been interested in teaching with formulas on how to write a song. What they can expect is to concentrate on process, on creative things they can do.

Paul: We’re into process.
I love the title of your singing workshop: "Using the Vocie that God Gave You", because very few of us have operatic, or clear-cut voices. Otherwise we’d all have million dollar record deals. Just with a great voice you can be working with that and leave the songwriting to someone else.

Hugh: But what struck me, ever since listening to Dylan and the Alan Lomax recordings is that anyone, even with most horrible voice can have a powerful effect. And I’m always amazed by how many people try to sing in a way that their voice wasn’t designed for. And that’s the only thing that doesn’t work. You can sing as terribly as Leonard Cohen. He sings in way that matches the problems in his voice.

Paul: And gets across his point.

Hugh: Not only that but it fits the song in such a way that you can’t imagine hearing the song in any other way. You hear him do "Suazanne" and then you hear Judy Collins do it again and you say "Wow, I’d rather hear Leonard Cohen do it". And take Johnny Cash also.

Paul: I think there’s a certain honesty in the singer’s voice, when you get it that way.

Hugh: For me the idea is to figure out what kind of voice you have and what it does well and what you can use it for. And to play with it. I think a lot of people don’t play enough with their voice.

Paul: Find what natural talent or range you have and work with it.

Hugh: Right. Sort of like judo, turning this into a science.

Paul: Well you know I just heard this piece on Billie Holiday and they were talking about how she didn’t really have a great vocal range. She just used what she had, worked phrasing and played with her voice.

Hugh: It’s always fascinated me that with a strong personality you can have a strong commitment to a song.
I love hearing people with bad voices sing a song in such an emotional way that it touches you. After all there are many people with fantastic voices that sing schlock. And that’s the other problem, some people with great voices get away with murder. There’s a danger in having a great voice-people think you’re great no matter what.

Paul: I saw on your bio that you were part of the folk scene in Greenwich Village in the early 80’s. How do you think things have changed in the last 20 years? From the time you arrived to today’s singer-songwriters.

Hugh: So many things have changed. I don’t think there’s much of a scene left in New York City.

Paul: Now they’re all anti-folk.

Hugh: Well anti-folk started in the early 80’s. It was the punk folk people that called themselves that.
For a while in the early 80’s when all the singer-songwriters were stuck in New York City and there was no place to play really. Everyone stayed in the city and there was a real community. And then once people started making their living doing it, there was a resurgance of folk music and a circuit started to develop. And suddenly everyone was on the road, and the community just kind of fell apart.
And it used to be a real project to make an album, And Fast Folk was a unique thing. For most of us that was our only experience going into the studio. And now it seems that anyone who has twelve songs can put out a CD. And does. It used to be that no one had their own albums. I put out one in ‘87 and Fast Folk started in ‘82. So for five years, most of the recordings were done communally. And that was part of it too, we needed each other more back then.

Paul: I guess the whole scene across the nation has changed too because of what you said, it’s so easy to produce a CD, and there’s a huge glut.

Hugh: Also I think the motivation has changed. Back then we were a bunch of people who pursued songwriting, there was no market, we were more like a bunch of poets than anything else.

Paul: Writing songs for the sake of writing songs.

Hugh: Yeah, Jack Hardy was a big influence. It’s hard to overstate his influence on the folk scene there.
Once a folk circuit started to develop, a lot of musicians came and they would tell you " I was playing the bar scene, but then there’s this circuit of listening rooms and I really wanted to play that and I realized I had to write some songs" So they wrote some songs. It’s not a terrible thing but it’s a different motivation. It came from a different place and it has changed what people listen to on the folk circuit. It’s not really about the song anymore, it’s about personality.
There are some great songwriters who stand out like gems like Richard Shindell. But it[the song] doesn’t seem to be the focus of the scene anymore.

Paul: You are the official state troubadour of Connecticut. What responsibilites and duties go with that title?

Hugh: There are none.<laughing>

Paul: How did you get that title?

Hugh: The commission on the arts appointed me. It’s an honorary position. There’s nothing attached to it except unbelievable amounts of glory.<laughing>
No, it has helped me get some work here in Connecticut.

Paul: And it looks good on your resume.

Hugh: Yeah. But it was nice to get recognized. And it has led to more work in schools. People call me up who would have never called me up before. And there’s some festivals and events that have decided to use the state troubadour. Getting to play the Kennedy Center was helped by the fact that I am the state troubadour.

Paul: I’ll have to find out if Maryland has a state troubadour.
As one of my closing quesitons I like to ask if there anything you wish interviewers would ask you?

Hugh: That’s a good way to cover your butt.<laughing> No, that’s a good question.

Paul: Thanks, I made it up myself.

Hugh: No, I’ll have to think about that one.
I’m doing a lot of improv in my shows and that’s what one of the workshops is going to be on. That’s what I’m most interested in these days.

Paul: Do you mean writing a song on the spot or improvising/changing a song?

Hugh: I’m talking about creating a song on the spot.

Paul: Have you ever seen Moxy Fruvous?

High: Yeah.

Paul: That’s something I’ve seen them do.

Hugh: It’s always a lot of fun and puts everyone in the moment. There are some tricks to doing it and I think it’s fertile ground. Rap music comes out of that originally. So were blues. After a while you get some things that crystallize. But you can tell that they’re built for that. And it winds up being a lot more natural than anyone expects. Like when you see gymnastics on tv and they do that layout "L" and everyone cheers and it’s one of the easiest positions. Improv is very impressive, but it’s also very natural too.

Paul: Here’s my standard closing question: Do you have any advice to our songwriters?

Hugh: Come to the workshop.

<Paul laughs>

Hugh Blumenfeld writes a regularly updated folk music guide at: Folkmusic.about.com