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by Peter Berryman

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August 2002

They tell you that a good way to write a memoir is to think of a type of object, like pizza or wallet or elevator, or a type of event, like nap or traffic jam or finger injury, and let your mind stumble back over all occurrences of whatever you have chosen: your first pizza, your tuna pizza that rainy night in Cleveland, the Pizza Christmas of '86, etc. They say this works a lot better than trying to piece things together chronologically. I've tried it and it works, at least with my sequence-impaired memory.

Recently I found myself following the thread about all the instruments I've played, some normal, some strange. I had the usual three months of piano lessons, and a few weeks of snare drum, and took trombone for about fifteen minutes. And then there was the yo-yo string attached to the doorknob instrument, and the blowing of a bicycle handlebar like a bugle instrument.

In some previous Whither Zither I think I mentioned that my first stringed instrument was a baritone ukelele. I learned the rudiments of finger-picking on that little birdhouse.

Before the uke I played the flutophone, which is like a cheap plastic recorder. Mine was white with transparent red flourishes; I imagine it cost about a dollar. My brother Jeff (a very good guitarist) and I worked up a pretty fair rendition of Baby Elephant Walk, with me tooting and Jeff picking. And you thought I wasn't cool?

My musical partner Lou and I had a few bands back in the mid sixties; I played the jug sometimes, and the washboard sometimes. We also invented something we called the Blues Tube. It was an old cardboard carpet roll core, maybe ten feet long and with a diameter of five inches. It was played like a jug, and didn't sound quite as good, but the visual was, uh, interesting.

One day we found an old upright bass that the high school was throwing out. It only had one working tuning machine and one string, so we brought it into the band and used it that way, all taking turns on it. For some reason, we called it the Toggle Bass.

I'm ashamed to say I've even worked at making a regular instrument strange. I bought a barely playable three dollar guitar back in the seventies, painted it, squirted caulk all over it, put stickers on it and tape and whatever. The head had been broken in half sometime and was screwed back together with big flat head wood screws, which fit in just fine. Also only five of the tuning machines worked so for ten years I played that guitar without ever changing one of the strings. This was all in keeping with my questionable theory that it isn't the best idea to write songs using a great-sounding instrument, which might fool you into thinking a song sounds good when it's just the instrument that sounds good. Which is why Beethoven composed on a flutophone.

Anyway, this entire trip down memory lane was inspired by our seeing the great Illinois folk singer Art Thieme yesterday (July 22) at the Woodstock Folk Festival in Woodstock, Ill, where he was presented with a well deserved, to put it mildly, lifetime achievement award.

But more to the point, what triggered the theme (Thieme?) of this column was that a month or so ago I received notice that Art's own musical instrument invention, the Bedpan Banjo (or Panjo), had won top awards on the amazing web site, Julie's Tacky Treasures.

As explained on Julie's site, "A tacky treasure is, first of all, tacky. However, to be a treasure, it must possess an additional quality, which could be any one of these: an naive yet ultimately flawed effort to be sophisticated or stylish; a complete lack of shame in exploiting poor taste; or a deliberate flaunting of poor taste as a rebellion against established norms." Art's work of art obviously was the hands down winner according to all these guidelines. My blues tube and toggle bass stand in awe of Art's bedpanjo. I mean, a lifetime achievement award is all well and good, but a top Tacky Treasures honor is something to remember forever!

But seriously folks. As most everyone in the folk music community is already aware, Art is not able to play his Bedpan Banjo any more due to multiple sclerosis, but I can attest that his mind is as sharp as ever, hearing him zing puns out into the one hundred degree heat of the Woodstock Folk Festival yesterday afternoon. This whole Whither Zither is my roundabout way of paying tribute to this man, whose singing I would rather listen to than ninety nine percent of all the vocalists down through history. As can be heard on his many recordings, his guitar and banjo work is spare, steady, and thoroughly creative, but it is Art's singing that always grabs me. He sings in a conversational volume, and with a crystal clear but conversational phrasing style that defies analysis, at least by me. He can sing an awkwardly written line from an old folk song -- even one with a terribly strained rhyme -- and somehow make it sound absolutely natural. This has the effect of keeping overly maudlin writing, with which old ballads are often liberally sprinkled, down on a human level instead of bubbling up into the smarmosphere. I would give anything to be able to write lyrics like Art can sing lyrics. If you haven't heard Art, his recordings can be ordered online from a number of places including those mentioned at the end of this column.

Though he doesn't tour any more, he continues to maintain a supportive and inspirationally thoughtful presence within the folk community via the web and email. I think he should write a memoir about his life, and I've suggested it to him a few times. Just start thinking about that breakfast pizza, I tell him, and the Velveeta-ketchup pizza of desperation, and the way the frozen pizza fit right on the Weber Grill the day the power went out...

Recordings:
www.waterbug.com/thieme.html
or in Madison at:
Spruce Tree Music, 851 E. Johnson St.

Art's wise and well written comments show up fairly regularly at:
www.mudcat.org/threads.cfm

Don't forget Julie's Tacky Treasures :
www.tackytreasures.com/