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Posted via Orange County Arts Commission | July 5, 2024 | Columns, in Copperline, Orange County Arts Commission
History David Menconi, Down on Copperline, Orange County Arts Commission
Some deficient souls spend their entire lives not knowing what to do with it. Bill Moore, on the other hand, has barely passed adolescence and has already traced an artistic career that involves music, cinema and folklore, and this is just the beginning. If Moore hasn’t figured out the mix or the precise proportions yet, well, he’s only 20 years old and that comes with time.
For now, the precocious Chapel Hill venue has an impressive calling card on his deyet album, “New Piedmont Style” (Oboscope Records). The 12 songs on the album are all original, but recorded with the flavor of Depression-era Piedmontese blues. Seven or eight decades before Moore was born. The music is a throwback to the days when Blind Boy Fuller, the Rev. Gary Davis and other old-fashioned blues titans of the 1930s strolled through Durham’s warehouse district in the tobacco harvest season.
“Tour. Gary Davis is the number one user I see playing guitar,” Moore says. “I also like Charlie Poole, although he’s older, and Bob Wills. I’ve written songs, but the first ones were the most common. joke songs, nothing serious. It didn’t really work for me until I discovered Piedmontese blues. Like Elizabeth Cotten, I was fascinated by the idea that she lived near my home. This led me down that Piedmontese blues rabbit hole.
Moore, a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill, majored in music and American studies. She also worked for the past two summers as an intern at the Music Maker Foundation, a Hillsborough-based organization that supports blues musicians.
Music Maker CEO Denise Duffy admits she had some hesitation when hiring Moore because of his young age. But his fears disappeared as soon as he saw his school’s best film project, “The G. W. McClintock Story,” a sly and funny “This Is Spinal Tap,” a mockumentary Moore made about a fictional folk music legend who can’t seem to keep the main points of his own mythology clear. After working with Moore for two summers, she describes him as “a smart, fearless, super talented old man. soul. “
“He’s a studious, hard-working guy,” says Tim Duffy, Denise’s husband, who is CEO of Music Maker. “He’s a wonderful movie editor, he can look at five hours (of excrement) and locate the 30 seconds that are worthwhile. “Exploiting. And he can play Reverfinish Gary Davis songs like they’re records and it’s hard, you know?I’m a big fan of him. I wonder where it will end up.
Moore’s path to Piedmontese blues began with the music he listened to growing up with his parents, especially Bob Dylan. Research into the folk traditions that Dylan drew inspiration from eventually led to Charlie Poole, a textile employee-turned-musician of the 1920s. In the Milltown string band, Poole played an old-fashioned banjo taste that had a huge influence on the bluegrass that emerged in the 1940s with Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs.
“I play a little bit of banjo,” says Moore, whose main tool is a 12-string guitar. “Charlie Poole likes a mountainous edition of the Tennessee ragtime banjo, and I have a guitar edition of it. It turns out like All My Favorite People Grew Up Playing Banjo. Many Charlie Poole and Piedmont Blues chord structures are similar, with many ragtime influences. There’s more of a sense of movement than trendy songs, which have a lot of loops.
Once Moore had written enough songs to record, he asked Tim Duffy about the studios. Duffy installed it at Music Maker headquarters with undeniable box recording equipment, and Moore recorded the dozen or so songs that make up “New Piedmont Style” in a single three-hour vocal and acoustic guitar consultation.
“One thing about a recording setup like that is that you get exactly the way you sound,” Moore says. “It may not make you better, but the good news is that it probably won’t make you worse either. “I got up and thought, “This sounds like the phone voice memos I’d made to pay attention again. “
Moore’s plan is to make more recordings with an eye toward releasing batches of songs this fall, preferably moving from solo to a small band. He also sought to expand his repertoire by learning bluegrass, to accompany the blues.
Looking back on his academic background, he envisions a career that would be a mix of professional musician and educational folklorist. These are two difficult spaces to penetrate. But if he can change the situation, it turns out that he is the one who can.
“By going for this type of music, you usually attract other older people who are already interested in it and are satisfied to see a young user doing it,” Moore says. “No one would think of inviting someone like me to the showcase of the campus organization. . You know, “Let’s let the folk user play a space party. But at student parties with open mics, I’ve had a really smart reaction to classic songs like “Durham Women,” which are solidly based on Blind Boy Fuller. So I need to bring classical music closer to young people to continue like this. Playing, listening and learning the songs and the story are everything to me, and I try to do it.
Listen to Bill Moore perform live: July 24 at 401 Main in Carrboro or August 6 at Nash Street Tavern in Hillsborough.
History of the Orange County Arts Commission. Prominent symbol Calli Westra.
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