My Music with Rhiannon Giddens

Hi, I'm Rhiannon Giddens.

Welcome to Ireland, my second home.

We're here in Dublin at Whelan's, a legendary music venue that was one of the first places I ever played in this country.

In this season of My Music, we'll be visiting with some of the wonderful artists who call Ireland home.

[ banjo music] We met up with Enda Scahill at Studio Cuan in Spiddal on Galway Bay.

Enda, who was part of the hugely popular band We Banjo 3 for ten years, has taken the technique of Irish banjo playing to new heights while creating innovative new blends of styles influenced by deep immersion in the American cousins of bluegrass and old time.

I love the way that you play banjo.

And I love, you know, how you advocate for the banjo.

But before we get to the banjo, I would just love to start with your early years, where you're from...

I grew up in north County Galway, so a very rural upbringing and absolutely no music heritage whatsoever.

So, like, there's so many pockets in Ireland where it's, you know, steeped in tradition.

And I knew this guy that taught this guy and he comes from, you know...

So none of that.

So where we grew up was, like I said, small town or small village, rural Ireland.

And we were the first musicians of our generation.

So there was nothing before us in the, in the village.

- Okay.

And I think it was my dad was... just had an interest in Irish music.

A lot of that I think was kind of sort of generational poverty, you know, at that level of where we were in Ireland in the'70s, in the 80s.

So there wasn't really instruments through our family.

Right?

So we were the first and my older brother, aged fourteen, played piano, he's very different to me.

He's like highly academic.

So when we would go away to a music festival, he would write out all of the tunes when he came home, record them on a tape.

- Wow.

- And he would sit at the piano and would play them over and over, and then transcribe them.

So he had that, like, academic head on him from very early.

- Yeah.

An analytical mind.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Whereas I would be like running through walls, like, that was kind of my thing.

So even when the two of us went to sessions as kids, he'd be listening and recording the tunes he didn't know; I'd be trying to play them, even though I didn't know them.

- Right.

So, just running headlong into it.

Yeah.

It used to drive him mad because he'd get the tape back and he'd be like, it's just you, and you don't even know the tune!

Right?

- Right So then I learned everything by osmosis.

So I learned all of the tunes that I know from him playing them.

And I knew the names of nothing.

- Right, right.

I know that feeling.

- Yeah.

So two very different characters.

Now, I played the banjo because somehow or other I knew I loved the sound of it.

Now, we had a music teacher called Bernie Gerachty who's from Mayo, she's like very famous for being brilliant with children.

And, you know, you know, one of those teachers that just is so encouraging and kind to kids that they want to play more.

Yes.

So a very, very special character.

She walked into the school one day.

My memory of it is she goes, who wants to play the banjo?

Hands up!

And I put up my hand.

My mum was looking after her baby.

My mum was a teacher in the school.

She was on maternity leave, looked after Bernie's baby.

So when I went home that evening, there's a banjo in the house with a piece of paper that says, this is the D string, this is the A string.

Here's a pick.

And away you go.

-That was it.

So that'sI was eight years old.

-Amazing.

- Yeah.

- That's wild.

Looking back on it now, I think that I knew inherently that somehow there's a... there's a rebellious, irrepressible nature to the instrument; and having talked to you and listened to you over the years, now I understand that there is.

Like, most definitely.

I like to think that I was drawn to that because I was the kid that just I wanted to say no to everything, do everything my own way.

And the banjo was the way that I got to express that, because I didn't get to express it in any other fashion because, you know, school and bridge and all of that.

- Right.

So instead I had an instrument.

I'm like, okay, well, now I'm going to do things differently.

And so when I was 11 and 12 and 13, you know, when you're in, so in Ireland, there's a, there's a body called Comhaltas.

So they're...

I don't know what you would call them, the gatekeepers of the tradition, in a sense, but they run competitions.

And while I would play in the solo competitions, I could do whatever I wanted.

They also had things called ceilidh bands.

- Yes.

Ten musicians, one person's on a drum, and everybody has to play exactly the same thing all of the time.

Drove me absolutely bonkers, right?

Because I wanted to change it all of the time, I wanted to be doing variations and ornamentation, and it was always a case of like Stop, sorry, sorry.

Enda?

You're supposed to play the same as everybody else, you know. - Right.

So that was part of that drive for autonomy and experimentation, you know, musically.

And so I know I drove people mad in my teens because I was always trying to be the fastest and the craziest with the most ornamentation, and never play a tune the same way twice.

and never play a tune the same way twice.

But it also drew a lot of people to the banjo.

You know.

- Right.

[applause from crew] The biggest improvement I ever made in my playing was when I learned how to breathe and now, this is the thing that I get... not so much pushback, but people sometimes will walk out of workshops once I start talking about this.

And it's usually, you know, older guys not to be pointing the finger at anybody, but...

I've often...

So what happened to me was that I had so much pain when I was playing, so I had pains my head, pains in my shoulders, pain in my elbows, and injections.

I'd gone down the whole route of like the tendonitis and tennis elbow and all that kind of stuff.

And I had done so many different treatments to try and get rid of the pain, and nothing was working.

And I ended up going to this kind of, kind of half crazy lady in Galway who did yet another type of energy treatment.

Right?

Because I had tried all the physical stuff.

And after I went in to see her one, one week, she rang me and she said, I've just seen you playing on the television.

And she said, you're holding your breath.

- Oh, wow!

- This is the problem.

And I was going playing that night, and I went in and I was playing the session.

I realized, oh my God, I'm actually taking big gulps of air and I'm physically, I'm holding my breath.

And it was because I was trying to be so good.

I was trying to be perfect, and I was trying to be super fast and impressive and trying so hard.

I was holding my breath.

And this is why I had all of this pain, elbow pain, the whole lot.

And I was kind of crushed because I was like, oh my God, what am I going to do with this?

And oddly enough, this is where my whole interest in bluegrass and old time banjo came from.

So I went home, went to a yoga class, stood up.

She said take a diaphragmatic breath I nearly threw up and passed out at the same time, because I hadn't released my stomach muscles for years.

- Wow.

Amazing.

Built into this whole thing of, like, trying to be so good, right?

And so I learned how to diaphragmatically breathe.

I went home and I said, well, this is going to be easy.

I'll just do this on the banjo.

So I started playing.

What I discovered is that I had this emotional connection to being really good at Irish music.

Soon as I started, I couldn't play.

It was like, straight back into the tension.

I'm was like, I'm going to have to do something different.

So I had to find something that I had no connection with whatsoever, but it was still playing the banjo.

And so I started doing kind of old time rhythms.

- Love it.

And you can't really make a mistake, right?

Because it's just rhythm.

And I had no connection to it, as in, I didn't have to be good at it.

- Right.

So I would sit in my room and then literally got into where I would do it for two hours at a time.

- Just tranced out.

You know, I'd kind of come around and my wife would have quietly closed the door, and at one point she said, do you know any other tunes?

- That's brilliant.

So I physically trained myself over a period of a couple of months to play and breathe at the same time.

And so then when I went to go and I would play Irish music, then this is where the two clashed.

Right.

And so then I had to go back to the training and trust that I knew the tunes.

You had to kind of totally redo how you approached everything.

Everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

- Wow.

But what I didn't what I didn't count on was that my ability to play was going to like, take off exponentially and suddenly I was faster, cleaner.

Everything was better.

- Isn't that ironic?

- Yeah, yeah.

- As soon as you let go.

- Yeah.

- Right?

Let go of that I want to be the most... Soon as you let it go... -Yeah.

Well, the last time we played together and you were playing the old time fiddle old time viola.

- Yeah.

And you said something really interesting, which is that you try and find the path through the tune.

- Yeah.

And I found that was very inspiring because that's what I'm always trying to think of, as best I can, is that you know, Irish tunes are very simple.

Old time tunes are even more simple.

Yes.

So what do you do?

Do you play just the same notes seven times in a row?

And then... what is it?

Then it's nothing, right?

It's like, where's the story?

Where is that little inflection?

-Yeah.

Where is the tiny little corner within the music that's going to make it interesting mostly for me.

Where's that little half note that I just kind of... aim for.

- Yeah.

And that's what excites me in music, because, like I said, I've never played the same tune the same way twice.

-Yeah.

- I don't think I do anyway.

And that's the reason I can't eat soup.

Drives my wife mad.

Because soup is boring.

Oh, that's funny!

-Right?

One spoon of soup and I'm like, I'm done now; there's nothing exciting going to happen between here and the bottom of the bowl.

- I mean, it's true.

It is true about soup.

-Yeah.

So I can eat chowder... - Because there's stuff in it.

- Right.

- Ohhh... -Yeah.

You're very interesting.

It's very important to recognize these things about yourself.

- It is.

It is.

- Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there's probably a little bit of ego, but then I think you need to have a little be a bit of ego as well, which is that I want to have an impact on the music.

-Yeah.

So when I'm playing with 3 or 4 people, I want to bounce off the other musicians.

I want to do something that the guitar player will go Ooh, and like that, you know, often that's playing a chord that doesn't belong in the tune.

Yeah.

You know, so then they have to adapt.

And it's something interesting that has happened and everyone is like, ooh.

- Well that's a conversation.

- Correct.

Yeah.

It's a story.

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

Whether it's an Irish thing or a cultural thing, there's a devaluation of an awful lot of stuff.

I think one of the things I learned from running a band that went on tour is understanding that you've got to value what you do at a high level, and people will come up to the value that you put on something.

And just backup, We Banjo 3 was your... is a band that you played with.

- Yeah, we played for ten years.

Yeah, it started in 2009 when my wife was pregnant.

-Wow.

-We did our first gig.

-That's handy because you can always date it back to that, so you know how long ago it was.

-Yeah.

- So.

And it was called We Banjo 3, I'm assuming because everybody played banjo?

I don't know, actually.

- The very first time we all sat in my kitchen it was three banjos.

And it was because I wanted to explore all the sounds you could make on a banjo.

And so we had one guy strumming a tune in kind of a claw hammer, boom-chucky kind of stuff.

And then we were mixing Irish music with bluegrass music and we were smiling, which is rare in Irish music!

- Right.

I know.

We were sitting around my kitchen like... And then Martin said to me, he says, you know, Dave sings.

And I was like, really?

And Dave barely spoke at that time, because he was only like 16 or 17.

And he started singing.

I turned into my wife and I go, this guy's gonna make me a millionaire.

And so you got a good ten years playing together.

Ten years.

We did amazing things.

When my son was three years old, he used to, as all three year olds, get into trouble but, like, three year olds can't into trouble, right?

But he would end up in that situation where he'd be in tears and, you know, and he'd say Dad, it's hard to be three.

-Very self-aware.

Very true as well.

So I wrote a tune and I called it It's Hard to be Three. - That's lovely.