Local musician Brendan Shafer’s quest to stretch the definition of the word “musician” continues.
He’s a musician in its most basic terms, meaning he rehearses and plays various instruments, in his case, mostly banjo and fiddle. But he’s also a historian, researching various artists both current and from the past, digging into what they have done or are currently doing, along with their contributions to popular and independent music. Shafer’s approach to learning about music has become a lifelong pursuit into researching various artists, where they come from and why they got into playing music, along with perfecting his songwriting and playing skills.
As a member of old-time outfit Six Dollar String Band, he and his bandmates perform decades-old songs that have passed on through generations. It’s music presented by the former middle school math teacher and sometimes bike mechanic as a full historical package; and while Shafer will admit he’s not a culture bearer, he is offering up music’s rich history and connecting many of the dots between genres of American music.
All this history loosely ties into his forthcoming solo effort.
Shafer’s the kind of guy who will travel to a city and immediately try to dig into that city’s roots music scene, whether that scene be country string-band music, jazz or blues. A 2019 trip to New Orleans led him to the Backstreet Cultural Museum in the Tremé neighborhood, where he was turned onto the work of Danny Barker. Barker played with Cab Calloway among others and was a major purveyor of the string band music of New Orleans.
Because of Shafer being turned onto Barker, he was also turned onto Don Vappie, who is currently all about the preservation of string band music of New Orleans along with Creole culture.
All of this research, whether it be studying a banjo player born before World War I who died during the Clinton administration or seeing and meeting the 2021 Steve Martin Banjo Prize winner, has influenced what Shafer is doing musically now. This doesn’t mean his forthcoming solo effort is a soundtrack for Mardi Gras; but it is further exploration of the relationships between all types of string band music.
“The project is called ‘Down By The Riverside,’ that’s the title track. On the record, I play fiddle, so a lot of it is straight-ahead, old-time string band stuff,” he said. “I feel like we’ve moved past the traditional realm a little. So I can’t say its necessarily traditional, but its influenced by traditional styles.”
This influence from traditional styles is leading Shafer away from referring to his music as “bluegrass” or any other term that is used to describe a genre. This music is genre-less, tied more into region and time. All of this music has more in common than you think, and that’s something Shafer tries to discover and share, whether he’s studying the music of New Orleans, Ithaca, New York, or Durango. It’s all roots music.
“I like that phrase because I think it does a better job of tying together some of the common threads and underlying themes that are in my music. It’s a better way to describe old styles of music, and it’s a better way to describe traditional American music,” he said. “I think what really blew my mind, when I researched that music more, it has a lot in common with early string band music and early country music, Cajun music, and all these other styles. They share a lot of things in common, and what appealed to me about the origins of old-time music, I realized that jazz has some of the same origins. A lot of those styles come from the same places. That’s why I like the idea of roots music; it’s not limited to one style or one genre.”
“Down By The Riverside,” which has Shafer in the producer role along with playing fiddle, should drop later this year.
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
