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Fiddling Poet Comes to Incline Village |
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Written by Morgan Kriz
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Tuesday, 08 April 2008 |
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 In late June 2001, Ken Waldman, Alaska’s Fiddling Poet, loaded his Nissan Sentra and left his home in Anchorage. Two self-produced CDs had received rave reviews in print and wide radio airplay on public and community stations nationwide. Also, his first book of poetry with Albuquerque’s West End Press, a collection set in and around Nome, Alaska had gone into a second printing within a year, and another book was due out in early 2002. A long-time Alaska resident, he’d begun touring outside the state in the late 1990s.
Now, Waldman has six books and six CDs, including a big double CD, the 2006 release “All Originals, All Traditionals,” which includes 27 original fiddle tunes with five-piece band, and another 27 traditional tunes, all but two with Waldman’s trademark poetry and storytelling. Waldman continues on tour, working a variety of venues, from concert series, to university reading series, to arts festivals, to folk clubs, to schools.
On Tuesday, April 15, at 8 p.m., Waldman will perform at Patterson Hall at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village for his first ever Lake Tahoe appearance and his first area appearance in more than six years.
Expect new poems, old favorites, Alaska-set storytelling and some first-class Appalachian-style old-time fiddling. There is no cover charge for the event.
For more information, visit www.kenwaldman.com or www.sierranevada.edu or call (775) 831-1314. To hear some excerpts of Waldman’s songs, visit www.myspace.com/kenwaldman.
Tahoe World Associate Editor Morgan Kriz interviewed the Alaska’s Fiddling Poet, Ken Waldman via e-mail last week while he was on the road in Menomonie, Wisconsin.
Tahoe World: Have you ever performed in Tahoe before? What are you most looking forward to?
Ken Waldman: First time ever in Tahoe--though four years ago I drove from Placerville Calif. to Reno and believe I drove through the south shore of the lake. I'm looking forward to meeting a few more new people — both folks from Sierra Nevada College as well as those in the community.
TW: For someone who has never seen your performance before, how would you describe it?
KW: I’ll be solo, so it'll be different than some of my shows. Poems, fiddle tunes and stories depend on audience--and I don't have any preconceived notion of what kind of audience it will be. I have hundreds of poems, fiddle tunes, and stories to draw from. But what does that mean? I might play a fiddle tune, then I might tell a story about the tune, then read a poem from a book, then I might recite a poem from memory, then I might tell a quick story about the poem, then play another fiddle tune, and so on.
TW: You used to teach a writing class over the telephone as a college professor. Please explain this process.
KW: Usually I'd be in the classroom in Nome with the other Nome students. other students would be in other communities — you have to realize there are no roads to connect these communities. My job was to facilitate: at the beginning of class time, every site called the same phone number. As teacher, I’d call attendance, see who was there. Then we'd do the class.
I have to admit it was kind of like playing chess in that you always had to think several moves — or, in this case several weeks ahead. It helped to have a good syllabus, so everyone knew what was expected. it helped to send handouts along a couple of weeks ahead — if everyone had the same current materials, it would help with the discussions. For instance, if I typed up a sentence from each of the papers and mail them out, we could have a discussion about the issues in each of those sentences, which might include grammatical issues, might include content issues.
Of course, there’s much more to it than that — I have plenty of poems about my time as a teacher out there. I might share a few during the show.
TW: Where does your inspiration come from?
KW: Inspiration? I like to think I’m naturally curious about the world. Over the years, I’ve been inspired — or obsesse — by Alaska, by relationships, by health issues, by political issues, by travel.
TW: You have six CDs released. What is your favorite CD and why?
KW: Oh, I like them all. But my favorite, for now, is the “All Originals, All Traditionals” double-CD, which was recorded in summer 2004, winter 2005 and came out late 2005. One of the CD is 27 of my original fiddle tunes with a terrific 5-piece band. The other is 28 traditional tunes, mostly fiddle and banjo only, with Alaska-set poems and stories. One track is a 10 1/2 minute treatment of my 1996 plane crash.
TW: Is any of your show improv?
KW: Well, it’s a rare show when I don’t surprise myself sometime or other and do something I’ve never done before. In that sense, there’s certainly an improvisational aspect.
TW: Which comes first, the music or the lyrics? How do your write your songs?
KW: Usually the poem comes first when I have poems that go with the tunes.
I rarely plan to make up a fiddle tune. Rather, I have the fiddle in my hand — or, occasionally, the mandolin — and then I start noodling a little, and pretty soon, if I’m lucky, I'm making up a tune that's a keeper. I remember it by playing it into a tape recorder, which I then listen to and listen to (how else to learn my own tune).
TW: Where do you hope to go with your music?
KW: Where else to go? More and more I'm playing in some really nice clubs and theaters — hope to play more of them, and play more festivals too.
Also, not exactly music related, but in a few months I'll have new book out with a new small press, Catalyst Book Press, in Northern California. This book is titled: “Are you Famous, Touring America with Alaska’s Fiddling Poet.” www.catalystbookpress.com has information about that.
TW: If there is anything else you would like to add, please feel free.
Also, you can go to www.kenwaldman.com or www.myspace.com/kenwaldman to have more of an idea of some of what I do. And if you go to www.kenwaldman.com/astheworldburns or www.myspace.com/kenwaldmanthesecretvisitors there's more. And there are other sites too which show some of my work.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 08 April 2008 )
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