------------- Big Water --------------

We arrived in New Orleans for the 2020 Folk Alliance International Conference and drove straight to the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Big Easy. We brought a lot of stuff with us, which we got out of the car and onto one of those hotel carts, as well as having our own cart full of stuff. I left Kristi with all the “stuff” and drove off to find parking. It took me awhile, but I found a place that was $20 a day cheaper than the hotel parking and walked back to the Sheraton. These first minutes were spent soaking in the fact that we were in New Orleans where we had never been before but had heard so much about. Kristi commented that it was a bit like Montreal, but with no snow.

Next on the agenda was getting registered for the Folk Alliance International 2020 Conference. Someone commented before we ever got to the line that we would be impressed with the length of it, and indeed, it was a pretty long line. It wasn’t long before we were having a chat with a large fellow with a big smile who was in line behind us. As you might expect at such an event, he had a colorful name. He introduced himself as “Big” Water, but you can call me “Big”. He is a big guy (hence the name). As it turned out, he is from Portland, Oregon which we think of as one of our neighboring cities even if it is a couple of hours away from us by automobile. Before we got through the line Big was chatting away with everyone within talking distance of him. After registration I took a moment and asked him if he’d like to be interviewed for our blog. He agreed, and here are the results. Big is a little bit awkward. On the other hand, it’s a very friendly thing.

Big: “I have many friends who call me Big.” Steve: What brought you to the FAI Conference? Big: Just kind of a non-sequitur through a guy I met at Burning Man. Burning Man is out in Reno, I'm sure you've heard of Burning Man. It's what I call the creative Olympics of the world. It’s artists from all over the world bringing big art, small art. The way they have their situation dialed last year 75 mayors from around the country came to Burning Man to see the layout of this infrastructure and to see the workings of how the city works. Because it’s a city, it’s 80,000 people. It’s not small. and in the middle of the city they have a center camp area. That’s a main common area for everyone. In that area there’s a stage to perform on, so every year I do a set, a Big Water Set. Five years ago, I met my friend Bruce. He's an attorney from Memphis with purple hair. He comes up to me after my show, gives me a hug and tells me, “I really enjoyed your set.” We sort of befriended each other and it's over the past five years straight I’ve been going to Burning Man, and every year he comes to my set so we just kept talking, talking, and trading info and I have a friend from Clarksdale, Mississippi who grew up in Clarksdale who kept telling me, “Come to Clarksdale to come see the Blues Fest, come see this fest!”. So last October I went to Clarksdale for the Delta Blues Fest just to see, (I wasn’t playing) and I got ahold of Bruce ‘cause I was flying out of Memphis and he lives in Memphis. We met and he does a radio show on WEVL there every Wednesday. It’s an acoustic/folk program. He had me on the show for a couple of hours. I got to play some tunes, and talk. We sat in the radio station and had a blast. Then I went down to Clarksdale and saw the Delta Blues Festival, and that was great. I got to play a couple of places. Then they invited me back to the Juke Joint Festival in April. Bruce and I became new friends. I’ve been out of the country for two months. I just got back on Saturday. Two weeks ago, he wrote me and told me “You should come to this Folk Alliance festival thing in New Orleans’. I said, ‘OK, what’s the dates?’ I looked at the dates changed my flights and got a hotel and he said, ‘if you can come, I’ll buy your ticket and sponsor you’. He bought my ticket and sponsored me. He's a previous FAI board member, and his wife runs the Blues Museum in Memphis. So, they’re both here; they just got in last night. And that's my introduction to Folk Alliance International. I have several friends who are artists who have been here. I’ve got a friend here from Ohio. She has showcases tonight, and tomorrow night, and over the weekend. I’ll see her. I’ve heard about FAI, but I’ve just never been here before.

Steve: “I'm just curious what you do for money? Obviously, you get paid for playing music, but it’s expensive to buy a roundtrip plane ticket to Germany”.

Big: “Yeah I'm blessed, and I’m funded. I am not a trust fund kid. My stepfather passed away about two years ago, so money came from the company, from the business. My mom has been my business partner for years. When I started doing this 35 years ago, with a year left to go in college I went to Germany for two months and stayed for three years. “I said, hey mom I’m going to be a ski instructor.” She said, “Oh great, you’re gonna teach skiing, awesome.” Then I started singing out in bars and then ended up moving back to the states and kept playing, writing songs, playing out and decided that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to pursue music. My mom says “great”. 30 some years later she still supports what I’m doing. Whatever I decide to do, I take seriously. I taught skiing for 20 years. I got my master’s in teaching skiing. Once I grab onto something and take it seriously, she educates herself and becomes a fan of what I do because she’s that kind of a mom.”

Steve: “Have you ever been signed?” 

Big: “No, I’ve never been signed.” Steve: “Have you ever looked for a record deal?” Big: “Not in the ways I probably should. I don’t mind being under the radar. I don’t want to go out and play 200 shows a year. At this point in life I don’t want to do that. I’m 57 years old now. 30 years ago, if I’d have gotten signed, well that would be a different story. I book all my own stuff. I’d like to do more than I do which would be getting help, obviously, but label help? I have 5 albums out that I have produced, written, and paid for. I haven’t done a crowd fund. I’ve always worked my ass off to pay for my records. I was a gardener for 9 years in Lake Tahoe, and San Francisco. Most of my recording has been done in Ohio, because I’m from Ohio. My engineer that I used on my third album needed a gardener so I would do his gardening to pay for time. When he needed a French drain on the inside of the foundation of his house, I worked in a crawl space digging trenches for three weeks to pay for my record. I’ve never been an ‘ask for help’ kind of person. It means more to me when I do things this way. I’m certainly not averse to help in any way for booking things, for advice, management, any of those things. I’ve just been bouncing and pinballing my way through these things I do. I have a great buddy who I play music with. We’ve been playing together for 26 years since I started in Lake Tahoe. He sings, he writes, we both play, do harmonies. We are both guitar players.”

Steve: “How long have you been in Portland?” 

Big: “Been there for eleven years now. I had a girlfriend. We went all over the country looking for where we were going to live. She’s an actress, I was in music. We went to East Coast, Florida, Savanna, Georgia, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Nashville, Boulder, Co, Denver, Nashville, San Francisco, Seattle, LA and Portland was the only place out of all that travel where we both did a double thumbs up. We were on the road for six months looking for a place to live. We were together for a year then we broke up. She’s still there. She’s in film. She produces, and acts. She’s killin’ it.”

Steve: “Do you think you’ll stay in Portland?”

Big: “You know, I’m not a big city person but I’ve got a great friend base there, I’ve got a good fan base there, I’ve got a killer studio downtown that allows me to leave and go away and not worry about being away from home when I want to travel so yeah I don’t see me leaving Portland. I don’t want to move to Seattle. I’ve lived in San Francisco. If I moved somewhere, I’d move where there’s no people.”

Steve: “What I’ve listened to has a very strong feeling of commerce. Do you think about that when you write, or does it come naturally for you to write in genres and with subject matter that has a broad appeal?”

Big: “It’s not something I strive for because it’s not the way I think. I write whatever comes out and I’m inspired by everything. I’m inspired by the stuff around me in my studio. I’ve got a trainyard in back, I’ve got a river in front, I’ve got downtown, a beautiful place where I’m at, and I’m inspired by nature. I’m inspired by love. I’m inspired by anything that’s on the plus side and positive. When I sit down, I’ll just start playing stuff and it just comes out. I don’t think of whatever particular genre it is when I’m writing it. That’s maybe why it comes out in that broad way. It’s not something that I think about or shoot for. I just comes out that way.  I think it’s from having a broad background as a kid listening to rock, disco, classical music, old school crooners from my mom’s record collection. I was in amazing choirs when I was in school. At that time music, sports were really great in schools.”

Steve: “Is your friend who you work with a very big influence on you? You’ve had a long association with him.”

Big: “We’ve never written a song together. We’ve never really tried to write together. He likes working on his own. He’ll bring a song in and we’ll work on it. We’re open to each other’s suggestions. Do we have an influence on each other? Does he have an influence on me? Yes. Do I have an influence on him? Yes. We have an influence on each other, but he writes his songs and I write mine.”

Steve: “It can be dicey sometimes letting the people you work with know that you aren’t happy with something that they are doing. How do you deal with issues as a bandleader?”

Big: “When I play with the band I recognize that I don’t play the drums, I don’t play the bass, and I don’t play guitar like my partner does so I don’t tell people what to play because I don’t want to crush their creative inspiration. I will tell my players what not to play, but I don’t tell them what to play. I’ll tell them, play that thing you were doing, not the one you’re doing now etc. (Gives me a demonstration of how a conversation with a bandmember goes)

Steve: “It’s very hard not to quash someone’s creative input.” 

 

Big: “When I’m playing with other people, I make sure that their input is valued, and let them express themselves how they express themselves.”

Steve: “I noticed that FAI made a point of listing their genres as folk, roots, and blues. They have made it very clear that they are open to a broad array of genres. I’ve seen hip hop here, a folk band using sampled instruments.”

Big: “Isn’t that the modern thing? Cross genre stuff? Mixing elements together. I love that. “

Steve: “I’m not certain. I’ve never been a purist myself.”

Big: “There’s more than one way.”

Steve: “Have barrooms been your main venue that you played?”

Big: “Barrooms, festivals, house concerts, cafes, private parties, whatever I can find. Honestly, a few years ago I just stopped booking music for money and started booking music at places, or opportunities that I wanted to play at. It changed everything. The shows were great. I got a little money in my pocket. It wasn’t the same mentality. It wasn’t the same intention.”

Steve: “We are on the same page. When we were working full-time playing music, we couldn’t do this kind of thing. We inherited a little money, and without that we couldn’t be here.”

Big: “Absolutely. If I didn’t have an inheritance, I couldn’t do this. I’ve always had to work before this. I’ve done every kind of job you don’t want to do in the past.”

Steve: “You’ve been in Portland for eleven years. Are you an established member of the Portland music scene?”

Big: “I wouldn’t say I’m an established member of the Portland music scene. The Portland music scene is quirky and funny to me. You’re either in the little group, or you’re not in the little group. I’ve never been good like that. I just do my own thing. I have a following. I have friends, and fans who come out and support what I do. I’ve got friends and people who travel so much. I can go to Northern California, I can go down to Southern California, I can go to the Midwest, I can go to Montana. I haven’t been to Seattle so much, but I have played there a couple of times. I’ve been invited to great festivals to play with some great musicians, sit down with Grammy winning producers, Grammy winning writers, but something always seems to not work out. I don’t know if I sabotage it somehow. I don’t feel like I’m in the circle of where everybody else is at. I am not always the best at participatory music unless I am playing my own songs. I don’t do cover songs, and I play guitar to accompany myself. It may be that narrow focus that keeps me doing my own thing. I try not to think about it too much and just try to keep doing what I’m doing.”

Steve: “What do you see for your future?”

Big: “Oh, absolutely. For me? I’d love to do another album. I’m trying to finish writing some new songs until I have enough to take to the studio. I’m maybe halfway ready. I have a crazy idea for a project. I’ve got an old 1968 vintage trailer. I have an old Ford truck that I bought when it was new. My truck is red, my trailer is white, and blue. I did a red, white, and blue tour a couple years ago in 2015. My trailer’s name is Lucy. I want to take my truck and Lucy and do a “Live from Lucy” tour. I would have Lucy decked out in cameras and recording equipment and travel around the country to these places where I know touring musicians and Grammy winning people and anyone who will take a minute to sit in my trailer and talk to me, and play a song with me or write a song with me or whatever would come out of it and do a sort of John Lomax kind of deal.  We’ll see what we come out with on the backside. Maybe a new album, or a documentary would come out of it. I’m not sure what would come out of it. Right now, I’m looking at budgets, time etc. I have the resources and the people to go get in touch with. It would be a two-month project. I would collect information and send work to a couple of people who would send the daily recordings to someone to have them start to process it in the studio. I’m a grass roots-y guy. I like face to face. I like seeing people. I like hugging people. I like the tactile part of personal interaction. I’m a loving person. I prefer that to a digital relationship. You can interpret the dialog in a different way in person. “

Big Waters is a really friendly guy. If you see him, be sure to say hello, get a big hug, or if you’re lucky get him to sing you one of his songs, or even better, catch an entire show. In the meantime you can catch his latest schedule at: https://www.bigwater.cc/ or on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/aguagrande/

For more folk music blogs see:  https://blog.feedspot.com/folk_music_blogs/