Lord of the strings

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/11/2014 (4291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

David Lindley has built his entire music career on curiosity.

The 70-year-old multi-instrumentalist — or “maxi-instrumentalist” as Acoustic Guitar magazine famously dubbed him — has always had a thirst for learning and experimenting. He started out as a banjo picker in 1960s southern California; now, his arsenal includes not only acoustic and electric guitar, upright and electric bass guitar, lap steel guitar, mandolin and zither, but exotic instruments he’s picked up from around the world. Like the Norwegian hardanger fiddle, the Greek bouzouki, the Turkish baglama, gumbus and cºmbºs, the Andean charango and the oud.

His curiosity led him to experiment with world music in the context of a rock band with El Rayo-X. It led him to Jordanian percussionist Hani Naser, with whom he toured in the 1990s. It led him to work with the likes of Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Crosby and Nash, Warren Zevon, Ry Cooder and Bonnie Raitt.

And, in the late 1980s and early ’90s, it led him to the stages of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, which honoured him with the 2014 Artistic Achievement Award at its annual Folk Festival in the City event on Friday night. Lindley will perform at the Park Theatre tonight; tickets are almost sold out.

During an interview at the Fairmont on Thursday afternoon, Lindley was visibly touched by the award.

“It’s wonderful. I was very impressed. It’s an official recognition of all those hours of practice, of the nine-hour drives. All that stuff. The one thing about lifetime achievement awards, they come later on. Am I supposed to die next? Is that what comes?” he says with a laugh. “But no, it’s a wonderful thing — especially coming from Canada.”

Lindley has family in Canada — his mother’s side hails from the Guelph, Ont., area — but he also has a strong emotional connection to the Winnipeg Folk Festival and, in particular, its former artistic director, the late Rosalie Goldstein. “She was a real important influence in my musical life,” he says of the irrepressible Queen of Chutzpah.

“I remember one year, Rosalie took me by the ear — literally — and she says, ‘We’re going to listen to this guy.'” Turns out “this guy” was venerated Malian singer and multi-instrumentalist Ali Farka Touré.

“He was playing with just a single electric guitar and a percussionist who played a calabash,” Lindley recalls, “and it was a revelation. It was big little music as opposed to little big music. You get two players or one player that makes an entire universe — but with these two guys it was low-key. It wasn’t tremendously loud. It wasn’t bombastic. And that’s what Rosalie wanted me to hear. I talked to her about it years afterwards and she said, ‘Oh yeah, you needed to see that because you can go out and do that.’ And I did. Because of her.”

Indeed, he credits her — and that fateful folk-fest gig — with inspiring his collaborations with percussionists such as Naser as well as reggae percussionist Wally Ingram, with whom he’s recorded and toured.

“It’s always been the best one,” he says of the Winnipeg Folk Festival. “There was one set that El Rayo-X did that was recorded, and it was mind-blowing. No mistakes, no hesitation. Just straight down the middle. I listened to it afterwards and thought, ‘This is what happens when you’re on. When you’re right there in the moment and your brain is working perfectly with your hands.’ I’ll never forget that one.”

The musical education of David Lindley was an unorthodox one. Growing up in San Marino, Calif., he was introduced to world music via his dad’s record collection, which was populated by Korean vocalists and Nigerian drum ensembles.

“I was learning to play guitar, and he’d get me records,” Lindley recalls. “He’d say ‘Listen to this guy’ — and it was (flamenco guitarist) Sabicas. Everything just blew up from that. It was his record collection that got me going.”

Lindley was also raised on Bartòk and Brahms. His uncle was a classical pianist and taught at the University of California, San Diego. “When I was four years old, I would walk under the Steinway, and I would put my head up against the soundboard on the bass end,” Lindley remembers, laughing. “I know that did something to me.”

Still, despite his obsession with music, there was a time when he thought he might be a painter. His mother was a gifted artist, a talent he inherited. “At one point, I had to decide. Am I going to be an artist, an architect, a commercial artist or am I going to play the banjo at Disneyland and teach at the music store in Pasadena?” he says. “And I sat there on the couch, just like I am now, and decided, ‘No, I’m going to play music.’ I wanted to see what would happen.”

That last sentence could serve as Lindley’s personal mission statement.

“That’s the biggest thing there is,” he says. “‘What will happen?’ Those results were more fun for me, when I said, ‘I’m going to see what happens.’ And there were all sorts of things that happened. This (award) is one of them.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca