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Interview by Steve Lipsher
Denver Post, April 6, 1997
Know to fans as "Dr. Banjo"' Pete Wernick has helped bring
bluegrass music to the '90s with a unique blend of picking finesse,
showmanship and humor. He dispels the myth that the traditional music
is "Grandpa with no teeth on the porch picking a banjo."
As a principal in the semi-defunct, Grammy-nominated bluegrass band
Hot Rize, Wernick proved as polished as the likes of legendary bluegrass
wizards Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs. Through the band's nutty alter-ego
group, Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers, Wernick demonstrated a sense
of humor that poked fun at popular C&W, generated tons of audience
fervor and merchandise sales (Red Knuckles' official flyswatters and
"I'm a Knucklehead" bumper stickers were particularly hot
sellers) and all the while played some accomplished but tongue-in-cheek
western swing.As musical innovator, teacher and tireless advocate
for bluegrass,Wernick brought together the unusal combination of his
Gibson banjo, Dixieland clarinet, vibraphone, bass and drums in the
critically acclaimed Pete Wernick and Flexigrass (formerly
The Live Five) continues to be a dominant force in bluegrass production
and performance.
From his home near Longmont, Wernick, a 51-year-old with a doctorate
in sociology, talked about life after Hot Rize, how beliefs in humanism
helped him cope with being in the 1989 crash of United Airlines Flight
232 in Iowa and why bluegrass hasn't gained mainstream popularity.
Q: Let me start by confessing, I'm a Knucklehead.
A. Yeah, I hear that a lot. It's wonderful to be remembered.
It's a treasure, as far as I'm concerned, to have a piece of a lot
of people's minds. And they don't forget. I have people today... saying,
"Boy, it was a sad day when I heard that you guys weren't going
to stay together,' and "When are you going to get back together?"
Considering it's been seven years now since we broke up and we're
still remembered well by people is just, it's very heartening.
Q: Last year, Hot Rize played several reunion shows. Are you
planning more?
A: All of us, even though we have a lot of other commitments
and busy schedules and so on, want to do it. And we want to do it
not only for our fans, but for ourselves... We spent 12 years together,
which I remember one time realizing that, "Gee, that's the same
time that people go from first grade to graduating high school.'...
In a certain way, we were brothers to each other and had all the spats
and rivalries that you might have, but an awful lot of loyalty and
a tremendous amount of really good time together, too.
Q: You guys especially seemed to enjoy clowning around as Red
Knuckles and the Trailblazers.
A: It brought a little bit of Halloween into every part of
the year,which is a good thing.... For 15 minutes at a time, it's
kind of cool to just completely get outside yourself, expecially when
it's expected for you to be outrageous and you've got a certain amount
of adrenaline and audience participation egging you on. It has led
to some really pretty funny and enjoyable moments. For most people,
you know, it's not part of your job. You go and you sit at your computer
or you have some meetings, and there doesn't come a time when they
say, "Well, it's a quarter after 11. Let's put on our outfits
and everybody go nuts for 15 minutes." That would be good, though,
if everybody would do that.
Q: So what kinds of projects are you working on now?
A: I've been working a lot with my band, Pete Wernick and
Flexigrass (formerly The Live Five), which started as an experiemental
band... My wife, Joan, and I perform together as a duet, which goes
way back to when we were first together... A month from now I'll be
performing in North Carolina with a kid, a 16-year-old kid named Chris
Thile, and he is just a one-of-a-kind prodigy brilliant musician...
I'm producing a record for a Colorado bluegrass band called High Plains
Tradition, and I've gotten to do some record production, which interests
me.
It gives me a chance to mold somebody else's presentation and help
somebody else do what they're trying to do.... Plus I conduct instructional
camps... A lot of this wouldn't be possible if Hot Rize were still
together.
Q: How did you get started playing the banjo?
A: Well, I'd always liked music, and I liked the sound of a
banjo. A friend of mine in the Bronx, which is where I grew up, said,
"Hey, check this out." He had an album that featured Earl
Scruggs, and it just dazzled me so much I didn't even know what to
make of it. It didn't occur to me that I could ever learn how to play
that way. In fact, it amazed me that he was only a single person make
a banjo sound that way. It seemed too impossible, too dazzling. And
the same friend gave me a rudimentary lesson or two, and from there
on it was just me working on my own with almost no kind of help, no
instruction... just a lot of determination.
Q: The banjo is such a happy instrument.
A: It's happy, evocative, American-- the square dance. And
thanks to the movie "Deliverance," it's the inbred, suspicious,
goofy thing too. It's actually a bit of an image problem. "Deliverance"
actually had some good playing in it, but a lot of country stations
completely shunned the banjo, shunned bluegrass.
Q: Do you ever get frustrated being a big fish in the commercially
small bluegrass pond?
A: Many people consider bluegrass music out of step with popular
tastes, and there's a good and a bad side to that. I think if bluegrass
became a mass fad, the kernels of gold-- well kernel of gold, that's
a mixed metaphor. The nugget of corn. That's closer-- the true essence
of it could get buried. On the other hand, it's practically a tragedy
that some of the most talented bluegrass musicians get discouraged
from continuing a career in bluegrass because of the unrealized commercial
potential that it has.
Q: What other music do you listen to?
A: My big favorite over the years besides bluegrass has been
the Beach Boys. They had this ethereal, very beautiful multilayered
harmony, a sense of melody and a purity in the singing and also a
soulfulness that's somewhat comparable but rather different than the
singing of bluegrass... I've always loved the Beatles, as well.
Q: What has been your reaction to surviving the plane crash?
A: I learned that you don't know when you could die. You could
die driving home from here. I could die of a heart attack right now...
The randomness of who died and who didn't die was a very hard fact
to ponder. Some people said, ÒYou didn't die. Somebody up there
must have wanted to keep you alive.' But I find that very insulting
to the peole who did die. Does that mean somebody didn't want to keep
those people alive? People who died were fathers, mothers, children.
I learned that everybody is needed and valued by somebody and to me,
if anything, after the plane crash I wondered how could a loving God
allow that to happen. To me, that's the proof that there isn't any
loving God.
Q: So your religious beliefs-- or lack of them-- have helped
you cope?
A: I'm very interested in humanism. I think humanism is a great
belief system where compassion and realism are primary. It includes
the fact that we don't believe in God or the supernatural.
This week, I'm printing a 40-page book I co-wrote called "Humanism
for Kids" that for the first time will tell the humanist worldview
in very understandable terms for kids and maybe give them a chance
to build some beliefs that will work very well for them and will not
have to include these concepts that I think are doomed because they're
just not right.
Q: How would you like to be remembered?
A: I'd like to be remembered as somebody who's a good person.
If they remember me as a talented musician, that's fine. But to me,
there is no more _self line than "He tried his best" or
"He tried to be kind." To me, if it's a choice between that
or being the best banjo player on Earth, it's no choice. I'd rather
be that.
Steve Lipsher is the staff writer for Empire Magazine.
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