Spaceman” was a wonderfully disarming example of Bakersfield country, with the mop-top, hippie protagonist becoming the sympathetic subject of an alien abduction.
“5D (Fifth Dimension)” clearly drew upon Anglo-Celtic melody, McGuinn’s 12-string electric guitar mimicking bagpipes. McGuinn infused his own compositions with a strong folk ethic. “Turn Turn Turn” and “The Bells of Rhymny”, two of The Byrds’ biggest hits, were written by the legendary social activist Pete Seeger (“co-written” would be more accurate most of the lyrics for the former were gleaned from the Bible, while the latter was based on poetry by Idris Davies). I’m doing a DVD now that I mentioned, and Judy was gracious enough to be interviewed for it, along with Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty and Pete Fornatale and a few other people.When Roger McGuinn was a member of The Byrds - one of America’s most influential rock ‘n’ roll bands - he brought to his band an earnest appreciation for Depression-era and post-War folk music. I did a CD about 10 years ago with Pete Seeger and Judy and Joan Baez called ‘Treasures from the Folk Den. And we got to be friends and kept in touch over the years. I was the musical director on her third album for Elektra Records. I’m using Final Cut Pro, the latest version.” I’m doing a DVD and working on some sea shanty lectures that I’m going to take on the Cunard Line. I’ve got a MacBook here, and iPhone 5 and all that. And nowadays it’s like Madonna with 27 semi-trucks and leapfrogging crews that go from one city to another. In the Chad Mitchell Trio, we’d travel around the country in a station wagon and have our instruments in the back. It’s a whole different ballgame than it used to be. It really got geared up in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s with pyrotechnics and semi-trucks and three busses. The entertainment business is much more of a business than it was then. But the whole atmosphere is different now. “There are still some listening rooms out there. They got Joe Frazier and they got the record deal on Kapp and recorded ‘A Mighty Day on Campus’ at Brooklyn College and ‘Live at the Bitter End,’ and we were off and running.” I think the only person who played guitar in the Chad Mitchell Trio had gone back to college, so they needed a backing musician and I got the job. And I got a call from a guy named Frank Fried, who was representing Chad Mitchell, who heard about me working with the Limeliters and needed somebody to back them up. And once that was over I went up to San Francisco. “I was initially hired by the Limeliters to play on their ‘Tonight in Person’ album, which was recorded live at the Ash Grove. On being a backup musician in the early 1960s, before the Byrds: It was a great venue, a great environment.” There was a bar separated from the listening room, so people could be out at the bar talking, and people inside the listening room would listen. I even made a couple of tape recordings of them, which I’ve put up on my Folk Den site. I bought all his LPs and learned all his songs on the banjo. On weekends, they’d have open mike and hootenanny.
And I loved it so much that she told me about the Old Town School of Folk Music, and I went over there. When I was, I think, 15 years old, I was at the Latin School of Chicago - it’s a private school in Chicago - and the music teacher invited Bob Gibson to do a 45-minute set for us. “That was one of my favorite experiences. He had a lot of instruments up there and told stories and got the audience singing along. I was a little skeptical that he’d be able to pull it off by himself, but I went to see his concert in Chicago at the Orchestra Hall and it was great. When I was a kid, Pete Seeger was in the Weavers and then he went solo. I have a Rickenbacker Electric 12, a Martin 12-string acoustic, a Martin seven-string acoustic that I designed for Martin, and a five-string banjo. “I’m going to be solo, but I’ll have three instruments. I’ll be doing a mixture of things from the Byrds and stuff from my solo CDs and maybe a couple of folk songs from my Folk Den project.” … “My wife and I usually cook up the set list the day of the show. McGuinn talked about his enduring love of folk music, growing up in Chicago, the influence of his groundbreaking 1960s band, the Byrds and his friendship with Collins. Here are highlights from a phone interview with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Roger McGuinn, who will be doing a concert with Judy Collins at the Fox Performing Arts Center in Riverside.
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