Jerron Paxton
speaker
135 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Jerron Paxton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Fresh Air · Best Of: Folk Musician Jerron Paxton / Lyricist Ira Gershwin's Legacy · 6 Dec 2024
podcast
Most of these songs, if not all these songs, came from a little bit of inspiration and also at least a little bit of pushing the pencil along the page, I think, as Irving Berlin said.
And it's sad, baby, and it hurt me to my heart. Together so long, now we got to get apart. Some things have changed between you and me. Seems just like time can't be like they used to be. Have it done, fizzle out, don't think of change between you and me. It seems like time can't be like they used to.
And faces sure could always be found And I seem like your smile don't want me around Seems like things have changed Between you and me Seems just like time can be Like they used to be
It's good to be here.
Yeah, songwriting is a funny part of the life of a folk musician. Most of us folk musicians tend to play our culturally inherited music, which isn't quite the same as doing covers of other people's music, but... You play music that's reflective of your culture. And I've mostly done that. And every once in a while, something will inspire me, and it'll stick around.
And I like writing music based on inspiration. more so than anything. So a few of these songs, most of these songs, if not all of these songs, came from a little bit of inspiration and at least a little bit of inspiration and also at least a little bit of pushing the pencil along the page, I think, as Irving Berlin said.
Well, I think... My approach to music in general, not just to guitar, but to all the instruments I play, is to get the most out of them I can. That's the guitar, the banjo, the harmonica, all these things.
Everything I like about those instruments, and especially the piano, is that in the style of music I was steeped in and brought up in, which is mostly the world of country blues, there was this magical thing that would happen all where one musician would sit down and create this beautiful world where nothing was missing. You didn't need basses or drums or a second musician or anything.
They just sit down with their fingers and their instruments and their voice and create this world where nothing was missing. So that's the approach I took to all my instruments, and especially the guitar, because that was the world that I was surrounded by. Just having that access to that real full sound is something I want to maintain.
And I don't know, I think that's probably the biggest contribution, why I remain one of the few soloists out there. There's not too many people who can hold an audience's attention for, you know, two one-hour sets with just one person on stage and their instruments. But my audience has never seemed to be disappointed.
Oh, yeah, this is the cheapest guitar that Gibson made. It cost $4.95 when it was for sale, a little Kalamazoo.
Is it about 100 years old? I think it's from 28, 29.
All right, all right. I got you there. I got you there. All right. Well, when you want that nice full sound out of the guitar, you've got to have a nice little rhythm behind you, and that could be just about anything. Let's try this one. That's the rhythm of the song. So now you have this nice accompaniment.
back up anything you want and then you've got your voice which you can lay on top of it which i ain't doing nothing now but talking but you also got some fingers that you can play with too and give the guitar a nice little voice
It was a lovely place, I'd say. We didn't have too much money, but I was surrounded by the one thing you couldn't get enough of, which was love. And had a big multi-generational family. I was in the house with my mother and my grandmother. And for the first few years, it was my grandpa, my uncle, my aunt. So it was with me, it was six of us in there.
And my great grandmother was across the street. And, you know, three of her children were around. And, you know, all the cousins would come over at least once a week to visit her. And, you know, so I grew up around lots of lovely family and, you know, big backyard that 80 percent of the food I grew up eating came out of.
Well, you could probably tell that just in the music I love and my aesthetic that things at certain levels of contemporary don't quite appeal. And I tend to like, some people call it tradition, some people call it old-fashioned. I just like things of a certain aesthetic that tend to be a little bit older than what we have now. And my grandmother was the same way.
She was born in 28, and she was sort of a... a throwback to not her mother's age, she was born in 1906, but more her father's age, and he was born in 1886. In certain ways she was like that, but in certain ways she was a very modern woman. So when you've got a person who's throwing back to the 1880s, you've got something there. And then her father was a bit of a throwback himself.
And when you're a throwback and you're born in 1886,
You're going back a long ways. He played a throwback banjo, which is sort of kind of why I played this instrument. The instrument he didn't play didn't match his age. It more matched his parents' age. But that's the kind of person he was.
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