By Ted Silverman

See also Ted's Frank Wakefield Concert Report

THIS ARTICLE IS actually more of a friendly chat with Frank Wakefield than a formal sit-down interview. It is a verbatim transcript, including Frank's famous idosynchratic "backing talkwards." Access to Frank was made possible via the invaluable help of Jim Moss. Jim managed to entice Frank out to the West Coast for a string of shows and an intensive mandolin workshop with a number of young students. When I caught up with Frank he had just concluded his third day of lessons. We chatted just a few hours before Frank took the stage of the Freight and Salvage Coffee House in Berkeley, CA, along with David Nelson (guitar), Jim Moss (fiddle), Graham Murphy (banjo) and Steve Swan (bass).

A review of the show is available.

Ted: It's a pleasure to speak with you Frank.
F: It's a pleasure to speak with me too!

T: That's the kind of good stuff I look for in an interview!
F: We was just talkin' bout you here a minute ago; these students up here. They said, "Dog-gone, why didn't Silverman come up?" and I said, "I bet he's probably better than me now?"

T: Yeah, I bet?!! I mostly play in the swing style but I'm a big fan of yours. I wrote a review of your last performance at the Freight and Salvage... NWBN Jan 1998
F: Is that right?

T: I'm not sure if Jim (Moss) ever showed you that but it was my pleasure to see you. Not just your playing but your personality and your humor. The whole package...
F: Old Jim never showed me nothing like that. His mind is almost as bad as mind. I'm about 40 years older than him.

T: That's no big deal. You're young at heart I can tell. Maybe I'll send a little package to you so you can see what I wrote. In the interest of letting you know whom I represent. I have written for Bluegrass by the Bay and the North West Bluegrass News out of England and a couple of other online bluegrass magazines. I do this purely for fun and my love of the music. I'm a Mandolin player so I have a great interest in what you do.
F: That's great. That's too bad there aren't more people like your own self. Cause people think you're rich if you work for a newspaper or something?

T: What really gets you going these days? You're back into the performance scene but when you aren't performing are you still writing tunes?
F: Oh yeah. I write them all the time. I got a new record coming out which should be out by the summer. Mostly all the stuff on it is stuff that I wrote. I think we're gonna call it something about "Midnight on the Mandolin", cause I wrote a tune like that. In fact I think we're gonna do that tonight.

T: I'll be there to see that!
F: Oh are you gonna come?

T: I'll definitely be there and will come by and say hello again.
F: If you don't come I'll trade you in. I'll get a new enemy...

T: Well in terms of that writing process, does this stuff come out of thin air? Or is their music or thoughts or influences that effect what you write? Do you listen to other music?
F: No. I think it's in my blue jeans. You know what that is, right?

T: Yeah, I get what you mean!
F: Yeah, Yeah. 'Cause I figure all my relations on my Mama's side are musicians. The only musicians I listen to, they're worse than me. No actually, I got to start listening to more music 'cause Grisman sent me some stuff of Dave Appallon's. I didn't realize. I never heard of him till David turned me onto it. He was a super mandolin player.

T: Well Grisman is the prime educator around here. I mean you don't have to sit down for a lesson with the guy. He just takes you on a world tour, so to speak...
F: Really yeah? You probably know more about him than I do?

T: Well I've been a follower of both of you guys but you take the fans in different directions. And you seem to have stayed true to the roots, which I appreciate very much,especially the hard-driving style. Your right hand is pretty quick acting stuff there?
F: That's the thing I did in Baltimore. The stuff I wrote in Baltimore was mostly sort of outta thin air you know I said what could I do that sounds different that I didn't already do? Then you sort of take it from there. And it usually works.

T: Do you construct these things based on riffs, or melodic ideas, or rhythms?
F: Actually, all of that. Yeah, you about have to do that.

T: It kind of comes from all over the map?
F: It really does. That's why I get to do…the record company… you know I can't even think of the name of it? In Baltimore…. They want me to do at the end of the summer, they want me to do an all classical record. They're going get a symphony orchestra to back me up with stuff that I wrote in F sharp minor and stuff. And that would be so nice to be able to do stuff that I wrote that's really classical that people don't really know I do. That I wrote. It's really going to be nice. And I'm really looking forward to it. The guy that runs the record company… the reason he's doing that is 'cause he's a mandolin player.

T: I really think that's an interesting twist because I think very few members of the public have any idea that you compose in that style.
F: Uh huh.

T: I could sense there is a little bit of a classical melodic strain in your writing but not a purely classical state of mind in the way you approach the music. It seems more rooted in the Appalachian bluegrass style.
F: Right. Yeah I'm also doing an album with Jim Moss where I get down to earth and play some real hard-core fiddle stuff. The classical stuff I wrote is hard to do without the other instruments, you know those cellos and stuff. I remember when I played that time with Leonard Bernstein in New York...

Photos © Ted Silverman 2000. (continued July 2000....)

Ted Silverman is a freelance writer and mandolinist in the Bay Area bands The Chazz Cats (swing) and Belle Monroe and Her Brewglass Boys (Bluegrass)

23rd April 2000