Elwood to discuss “song building” at April Meet the Artist program

John Elwood of Elberton said he sometimes gets lost in hand crafted instruments or the history of folk music. He plans a departure from these topics at his Meet the Artist session next Thursday, April 7, at 7 p.m. at the library in Colfax.

Elwood will talk about “song building.”

He said song writing can be self absorbing to the point of being mundane or trite. People just aren’t interested in songs about the household “dishwashing liquid,” he commented. There has to be something of real interest in the song and the final product will likely be a “stripped down version” of the original inspiration.

Now in its fifth year, the Meet the Artist series is sponsored by Colfax Arts Council and Whitman County Library with programs on the first Thursday of the month. The programs are free to the public.

Elwood said his formal training in music consisted of learning to play the clarinet in the fifth grade and being taught piano by his father. While he did not excel at the piano, Elwood did learn to read music and “plays by dots.”

His childhood in Albion was always filled with music from KWSC (now KWSU) radio. He particularly remembers avidly listening to a weekly radio program by a graduate student who sang his own compositions.

“I would lay there at night and listen to him sing ‘Mountain Meadows Massacre’ as a kid and be terrified,” he said. He loved it, of course.

The Fairbanks family in Albion went to Scotland and returned with some kilts and two LPs of Scottish music. John listened to the music and was instantly hooked. He decided it must be genetic because his ancestors migrated to Minnesota from Scotland.

Like all kinds of music, Scottish music has its syrupy “junk,” he said. The quality is the “real Scottish music.”

What Elwood wanted to do was sing and play the guitar. He and his sister shared the cost of their first folk guitar in high school.

“I listened to recordings and counted the fingers on my left hand and the strings on the guitar and realized I was outnumbered,” he commented.

While he played many instruments, including the recorder and the harmonica, he still loved string instruments. In 1972 John went into a music shop where the proprietor taught students how to build a dulcimer. The class was iffy at best, he said, but it broke the ice for him and he taught himself to make dulcimers and other string instruments, an art for which he is well known in the Palouse country. And he continued his interest in song writing.

“Song writing was magical,” he said. “It’s a form of poetry you can actually use.”

He contends he got his real start in song writing in the exact space where he will be presenting his Meet the Artist program, the basement of Whitman County Library. He worked as a janitor for the library.

“I would sing along with the sump pump while I mopped the basement floor,” he said.

Then he felt he had arrived as a songwriter when he was invited to put one of his songs on a Dan Maher album. Maher had John sing the song himself. Later, Maher told him he thought the song was a real Scottish folk song and didn’t realize Elwood had written it himself.

Elwood said he didn’t have a favorite aspect of his art. What he loves is the way it all works together—crafting instruments, researching the folk music tradition, performing for the community and writing songs. He and his wife, Sally Burkhart, have taken traditional music to places where it may not have ever gone, sometimes to strange and impossible venues.

He plans to take the audience on the journey of building a song and to play a few of his own songs. He and Sally will sing one of his songs, “Dreamland River,” together.