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Tiny Mix Tapes review, "Baby Gramps Tours, Leaves Reindeer at Home"
by The Friz; June 6, 2008
- Review of Baby Gramps
Baby Gramps Tours, Leaves Reindeer at Home
The Friz
Do you have fantasies of Santa Claus finger-picking a steel guitar? Are you excited by foot-long, knotted beards? How about scarves? Appalachian
folk songs? Jazz music? Songs about eating worms, palindromes, and making a cool milli?
Welcome to Baby Gramps, the purveyor and salesman of the aforementioned musical wares. Gramps, with a voice that sounds like a Swiss cheese
muffler, lovingly guides audiences through a free-associating tour of American music. His origins are purposefully mysterious — he lives in
the Pacific Northwest, he’s been playing music since the ’60s, and he, uh, tours sometimes. A mixture of ecstatic singer-songwriter, unfrozen
vaudevillian, raconteur great-grandfather, and hobo chic paragon, the act goes down like a glass of warm milk.
The best part is that if electricity were never invented we’d still have Baby Gramps.
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Cool Dry Place, The Blog review, "All gravy and Gramps"
by Pete Bland; March 2, 2007
- Review of Baby Gramps performing at the True/False Film Festival
All gravy and Gramps
Pete Bland
Baby Gramps performed his "epileptic swamp music" magic at a packed Cherry Street Artisan, with the crowd more than willing to join in for a rousing
sing-along during his distinctive take on "Big Rock Candy Mountain."
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PopMatters review, "Sinking Low on the Seas, Rising Up with Gold"
by Michael J. Kramer; October 20, 2006
- Review of Baby Gramps and the CD, "Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys"
Sinking Low on the Seas, Rising Up with Gold
Michael J. Kramer
The captain of this ship is not one of the celebrity musicians, but rather one Baby Gramps, a Popeye-voiced, old-timey, bizarro balladeer whose
National steel-guitar workouts and gutteral growls, hoots, and whispers steal the show. Baby Gramps opens the album by steering a full band out
of harbor and onto the open sea while singing about how “Cape Cod girls don’t use no combs, they comb their hair with the codfish bones.
” “Heave her up my bully, bully boys, heave her up, now don’t you make a noise,” Baby Gramps and crew sing, for we are
“bound away for Australia”. Sounding like a Tuvan throat-singing monk on LSD, Baby Gramps chants with the intensity of a Captain Ahab.
This ship might hit the rocks, his singing declares to his shipmates, but we are going to have a damn good time along the way. Sails out all the
way and let’s sing of those Cape Cod girls!
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Star Gazette review, "Saturday night was allllll right!!!"
by Catherine White; October 1, 2006
- Review of Baby Gramps performing at Harry's Inn, Elmira Heights, NY
Saturday night was allllll right!!!
Catherine White
Those of you who weren't at Harry's Inn the Heights last night missed a foot-stompin', hand-clappin, funky vibe partyin' good time.
Baby Gramps opened a night of great performances with his Louisiana-swamp, bluegrass, pirate porch-sittin' music. He was accompanied by "The Boxer"
Tom Brown of Owego who played percussion on a cardboard box. That's right. A cardboard box.
And it was awesome.
Baby Gramps is a dude from Seattle who played on Letterman a couple of weeks ago. He showed the local crowd why last night.
Baby Gramps' plays a "steel-topped" guitar and sings with a gravelly voice that reminds me of Popeye. He can also make his voice sound exactly like one
of those Australian instruments, the djideroo. Baby Gramps also uses his feet as an instrument.
He was funny, engaging and had the crowd joining him on memorable numbers such as F@$k-a-doodle-doo and "Scrotum: Hairy, Scary Voo Doo Bag," (a frat house fave).
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Rochester Democrat and Chronicle review, "Baby Gramps Brushes Off The Dust"
by Jeff Spevak; September 28, 2006
- Review of Baby Gramps and the CD, "Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys"
Baby Gramps brushes off the dust
Jeff Spevak
Staff music critic
Baby Gramps is an attic crammed with curiosities from another era. The floor boards groan and dust swirls about as he rummages through vintage
jazz, sea chanteys, nonsense songs, poetry, Delta blues, Tin Pan Alley, world music and forgotten folk tunes. He bangs them out on an old National
Steel guitar, the words tumbling from his voluminous gray beard in a creepy blend of what sounds like human didgeridoo and Popeye.
"A lot of these musics came to their death in the '30s," says Baby Gramps, "killed by commercial music. What I'm doing is pursuing all these dead
ends."
He drags these resuscitated gems into town on Sunday, for a 2 p.m. children's show and 5 p.m. big-folks performance at Daily Perks Coffeehouse. And before
you dismiss Baby Gramps as some kind of a novelty, or an illusion, get yourself a copy of the new album Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs
& Chanteys. Inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the two discs were assembled by the astute producer Hal Willner, with an
all-star cast that includes Bono, Sting, Lucinda Williams, Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright III, Bryan Ferry, Bill Frisell and Pirates star
Johnny Depp, sportin' an alias not fit for a family newspaper such as this.
But it's the very first cut, Baby Gramps' "Cape Cod Girls" — which he manages to make both joyous and unearthly at once — that steals the show.
The most-startling aspect of it is Baby Gramps' singing: A low-end rumble that sounds like Tuvan throat singing.
Rogue's Gallery is a project that dovetails quite nicely with an in-the-works documentary on pirates that Baby Gramps says he's doing some of the
music for. "There have been stories in Vanity Fair, Village Voice, that say if this pirate documentary takes off, this music will be like O
Brother, Where Art Thou?
"This is gonna be the new phase," he says.
Ballads about whalers may not be your phase, but Baby Gramps is a sprawling anteroom of anachronisms. He claims to know 5,000 songs and to be
able to sing in several languages, including Zulu and gypsy. Indeed, he begins crooning in one of them over the telephone, so fast and
light-tongued that I can't decide if it's Zulu or Gypsy or if he's just making it up.
Baby Gramps apparently lives in Seattle, but he keeps many facts — such as his age — a secret. "I don't like numbers," he says. And he throws
out this warning: "I don't lie, but I exaggerate for a living."
Many of the dead ends that he pursues were victims of censorship. "Cape Cod Girls," Baby Gramps says, almost surely included bawdy verses that were
never written down by the shy Victorian thinkers. "Did you know they used to put bloomers on piano legs?" he says.
"I listen to everything. My dad had that guitar that's on that album cover," he says of the rusty National Steel he's holding on Same Ol'
Timeously. "That's my shoehorn into the past. Back when everyone was buying 45s, I was buying 78s for a nickel. They're all worth thousands of
dollars now. That's my retirement."
He also collects old recording cylinders, the kind of thing Thomas Edison used. But Baby Gramps' interests extend beyond music. "I live in
a hand-made mansion, three stories, a museum of wondrous curiosity and peculiarities," he says. "I travel in a gypsy van. I fill it up with
things, but it's really hard to sleep on top of 78s and cylinders."
He estimates his personal library includes 10,000 books, including 1,000 dictionaries. "Slang dictionaries. I'm really into words," he says.
"I'm looking for one that combines the languages of Africa. You know, there are 400 languages in Africa. It'd have to be several dozen volumes."
So it seems natural that a phrase such as "Knee-high to a tootie bootsie" rolls off his tongue. Ask him to pick his current favorite word and he
quickly suggests twitterpated, which means, he says, "Bambi love." As in Bambi batting those big eyelashes at her mom.
Such a man knows how to react when he comes across a shop selling used tuxedos for a dollar a pound. Baby Gramps says he bought 47, all identical.
"Isn't that incredible?" he hoots. "This life is amazing. Did you know Pee-wee Herman had 250 gray suits in his closet, all the same?"
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The New York Times review, "New Albums From Ray Barretto, M. Ward and Baby Gramps"
by Ben Ratlif; August 20, 2006
- Review of the CD, "Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys"
Baby Gramps
If the new “Pirates of the Caribbean” film has any associative power, this may finally be the public moment for Baby Gramps,
an eccentric, seemingly very old (though nobody seems to knows how old) singer and steel-guitar player based in Seattle, with a voice like Popeye after
smoking an entire tin of Prince Albert. His performances on “Rogue’s Gallery” (Anti), a two-disc set of sea chanteys produced by Hal Willner, are among the
album’s best, and that’s saying a lot: among the other contributors are Sting, Lou Reed, Lucinda Williams, Bono, a gravel-voiced Bryan Ferry, a
midnight-voiced Nick Cave, a twee Van Dyke Parks and Bill Frisell with a beautiful guitar track. Chanteys are durable songs, and this turns out to be a
strong album with heart as well as ideas: the conscious weirdness doesn’t render it inconsequential.
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The Observer / Guardian Unlimited review, "Various, Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys"
by Neil Spencer; August 13, 2006
- Review of the CD, "Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys"
Compilation of the month
Various, Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys
**** A motley crew try hard to prove that hoisting the nautical flag is the next big thing. Neil Spencer searches for doubloons
Shooting Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, director Gore Verbinski became gripped by a
strange obsession - to make an album that updated antique sailors' shanties.
With producer Hal Willner enlisted as captain, the project was soon ready to
set sail with a stellar cast to deliver the work songs and salty ballads thatWillner uncovered.
Hence this two-CD curiosity, whose 43 tracks run from Bono crooning a dying whaler's lament to a typically austere
Martin Carthy version of 'The Mermaid' by way of Johnny Depp, moonlighting under the sobriquet Jack Shit, rocking out on a Napoleonic ballad. Those three
examples encapsulate the uncertain tone of the enterprise. Is this serious musical archaeology (Willner's diligently researched liner notes make
fascinating reading), an excuse for some big names to showboat, or is the whole thing a huge craic?
Willner's ship lurches between all three ports. In general, the folkies fare best. Lucinda Williams, Mary Margaret
O'Hara and Jolie Holland all sing movingly to sparse accompaniments. The father and son teams of Richard and Teddy Thompson and Loudon and Rufus Wainwright
likewise capture the yearning and at times tragic quality of a dangerous sea-faring life spent far from home.
By comparison, the rock names struggle to find the right mood. Sting hams in outlandish Geordie tones as he hauls up the
sails on 'Blood Red Roses'. Nick Cave, as usual, tries way too hard to convince us he has a direct line to the dark stuff on 'Fire Down Below', while Bryan
Ferry flutters a trifle too politely for a jack tar - he's clearly officer class.
Lou Reed, who may have once glimpsed Coney Island beach, is quickly out of his depth while Jarvis Cocker,
pressganged into the navy, tackles 'A Drop of Nelson's Blood'.
As for the craic, Seattle's oddball Baby Gramps makes a winning old salty dog and Gavin Friday relishes the obscene
'Baltimore Whores', though it's Loudon Wainwright who wins out with a deadpan delivery of the deliciously bawdy 'Good Ship Venus' - parental advisory lyrics
clearly go way back.
A patchy collection, then, but despite its longueurs (six minutes becalmed with Ed Harcourt), a worthwhile voyage of discovery.
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Village Voice review by Robert Christgau; January 26 - February 1, 2000
- Review of the CD, "Same Ol' Timeously"
This long-overdue CD from a post-Luddite codger who prefers 78s features a unique guitar style only other folkies can hear and
not a one of his endless supply of Dylan covers. Instead we get blatant blues and welcome Wobbly songs, cartoon heroes,
throat-singing techniques learned from Popeye or a pet frog, and loving versions of "Teddy Bears' Picnic," "Let's All Be
Fairies," and "I'm Gonna Eat Some Worms." Also eight minutes of palindromes (damned if I can make the "Margy" in his sobriquet
do such tricks) and a recitation utilizing but a single vowel (not counting—can't fool me, Bearded Wonder—"Don Juans" and
"ironical"). Inspirational uncontrovertible (sic) facts: "Rooks do not roost on spoons nor woodcocks snort/No dog on snowdrop
rolls/Nor common frogs concoct long protocols." A MINUS
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Hot Bands review by Patrick Ferris
- Review of the CD, "Same Ol' Timeously"
- Interview by Patrick Ferris
The caption "A Ghost From The Past" is listed on the back of Baby Gramps first CD, Same Ol' Timeously, and nothing could be
closer.
Baby Gramps is a true American musical treasure that represents an art form that nearly became extinct in the early 20th
century. A mainstay in the Northwestern United States music scene and a well known artifact throughout the world of folk
festivals, Gramps goes beyond being a beloved entertainer and an amazing 'stunt guitarist'; he's an artist and a
philanthropist, doing many charities for the homeless, always stopping to say hello to anybody that greets him, and putting
a smile on the faces of thousands of people.
I've worked toward this interview for the past few months and it has been very difficult getting this together; Gramps is an
artist to the core, and pinning him down to a certain time is nearly impossible. Fortunately, the day before the end of the
month, he agreed to meet me at a local Seattle pub called the Blue Moon, a long time artsy haunt where musicians, poets and
the other dregs of society would gather to tip a brew. This is also where I saw Gramps the first time nearly 18 years ago.
Aside from a touch more gray, his appearance has changed very little in the last 18 years. Long bony fingers protrude from
gloves with the tips cut off. His hands are soft as a chamois, his twinkling blue eyes as soft as his hands, and the lack of
wrinkles behind a mountain of a beard indicates a long life of clean living.
Although Baby Gramps doesn't have a mass appeal that would earn him a headlining slot at a Lollapalooza festival, he has a
mass appeal in the sense that any audience between the age of 2 and 102 are captivated by his vaudeville antics, hilarious
lyrics and animated guitar playing. An entertainer through and through, Baby Gramps is like a Saturday morning cartoon
character that touches the inner child in all of us. His voice is a cross between Popeye the sailor and a Didgeridoo and the
plinkity plink of his VERY worn National steel guitar, sounds like a wind up jack in the box. If you listen closely and know
anything about music, you'll realize Gramps is an absolutely incredible guitar player. Being a professional musician for over
40 years can't help but give you some sort of chops, but Gramps is a modern day Robert Johnson; a revolutionary guitarist
that, like Theloneous Monk on piano, can play the notes 'between the cracks'.
In conversation, he can't go for more than a few sentences without sneaking in a pun or a palindrome (a sentence that is
the same forward as backward), and was witty, funny and respectful of every drunk in the pub that stopped by to slobber out
a greeting.
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Interview with Gramps: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(HotBands) Hi Gramps. Thanks for taking the time out to talk with me. I spoke with your manager last evening and she said
to keep the questions related to music, but your music and your life are so intertwined. How long have you been playing music?
(Baby Gramps) Next year will be my 40-year ornery-versary.
(HotBands) Is that 40 years you've been playing professionally, or 40 years since you started playing?
(Baby Gramps) Boy...I don't like that word...one of those $3 words. Let's say 40 years that I've been performing.
(HotBands) The liner notes of your CD mentioned a very decrepit teenage Baby Gramps on the streets of Seattle in 1964. Did
you come to Seattle in 1964, or are you from here?
(Baby Gramps) No, I wasn't here before that but everybody comes from somewhere and I was on 'The Ave' in 1964 (University
Way in Seattle's University of Washington district)
(HotBands) Where did you come from?
(Baby Gramps) Well, before that I was in Texas by way of Arkansas by way of Alabama.
(HotBands) I met you for the first time in this very pub about 18 years ago, and I have to say that you've changed very
little in the past 18 years. I'm looking at your skin and notice almost no wrinkles. You obviously have lived a very clean
and healthy life.
(Baby Gramps) Well, I'm a lot grayer than I used to be, and am very into health especially these days. I wrote a song about
Beelzebub’s Bean (coffee), which is a vice I'll still occasionally enjoy. I do take care of myself. It's all about being
healthy, you know? I mean, I want to be doing this (performing) the rest of my life.
(HotBands) You've been an Icon in the Seattle music scene forever and your music is loved by 4 generations of fans. You're
very animated, almost like a cartoon character. You make people laugh, and your voice sounds like...well, I hope you don't
mind, but I described you as a cross between Popeye the sailor and a Didgeridoo.
(Baby Gramps) That's flattering! I was written up on the front page of the Seattle Times after Bumbershoot one year, and
they described me as sounding like "Kermit the Frog on acid" which is a definition they got from a grade-school boy at one
of my shows.
(HotBands) How did you get involved with music?
(Baby Gramps) My old man had an old National steel guitar that's on my CD cover. I retired that guitar after the CD was
recorded. I have quite a collection of these types of guitars. I was really the only one around these parts that was playing
on one back in the old days and I collected them. They're virtually indestructible but I've worn out a few. The one on the
CD was held together by vice-grips...the strings wore big rivers in the fret board and wore the frets all the way down to the
wood.
(HotBands) You're probably the only person I've ever known that has worn out a steel guitar.
(Baby Gramps) Well, I play it pretty hard and wouldn't try what I do on something like a Martin. I used to have a Martin,
but these guitars I play, the National steel guitars and the brass one's I have are indestructible except for the wear I do
put on them. I actually have a collection of over 200 instruments of all types, and I'm writing a book about odd instruments
that I've been working on for 40 years. I have shoebox ukuleles and cigar box fiddles, musical saws. I'll be playing a
bizarre musical instrument festival later this year down the coast. It used to be called the jaw-harp festival for years but
now they include all kinds of strange and unique instruments.
(HotBands) How old were you when you started playing?
(Baby Gramps) I'm not into numbers, but I was just a kid. My first influence was my old man...he'd bring that National out
at parties and play when I was wee little, and my mother used to play piano, so they both had an influence on me. My old man
kept that guitar in the attic and one day I brought it down and laid it at the side of my bed. I used to daydream and strum
my hand across the strings before I could ever play it. It was the first instrument I ever heard in my life. I used to buy
old 78s because they were a nickel where 45s were 50 cents; so some of the first music I identified with had the National
steel guitar in some old time blues songs.
(HotBands) By the time you were say 10-14 years old, were you involved with music in school? Did you have any type of formal
training?
(Baby Gramps) I never went to school much. I was never much interested in school or school activities, and am pretty much
self-taught. I have my own library with thousands of books and records. I do remember one instance in a history class my
teacher saw my interest in music and my attempts at creating my own sheet music by drawing it out with a ruler. He didn't
care what I was doing, just that I was doing something creative so he got me some real music paper to save me some time. That
was a big influence and I'd like to thank him someday but I'm going to have to wait till I get to that hobo convention in the
sky.
(HotBands) Did you have any type of formal training in music? Do you read music?
(Baby Gramps) No, I can't read a note and don’t' even know the names of my strings except one...Henrietta, so I don't play
with anybody else unless THEY really want to play with me. All these other acts that I play with; Bela Fleck and the
Flecktones, Leftover Salmon, String Cheese Incident...I've toured with all of these bands but it's because they've asked
me. I'm a jammin' kind of guy, but I'm like jammin' in my head all the time. I'm really more of a juggler...I juggle all the
notes, take them apart and let them fall where they may.
(HotBands) When you were starting off in music, did you always play this style?
(Baby Gramps) No, I metamorphosized into that as I've grown. I feel like I'm growing faster every day and the more I feed
my head with all the oddiocities in life the more I realize my path. You know the first song ever recorded on wax was 'Mary
had a little lamb' by Edison himself. A lot of that was lost throughout history. Blues wasn't allowed to be recorded until
1923 and nothing ever got on Edison records...none of the one-man bands, and that type of stuff was all over the place during
that period of history.
(HotBands) As far as your act goes, were you always a solo act or were you ever in a band?
(Baby Gramps) I've had a lot of bands off and on; recently I have a trio I play with...washtub bass, jug, and washboard.
(HotBands) Did you ever play rock or was that never a draw to you?
(Baby Gramps) Well, I did when I was real young. In fact Sub Pop recently recorded me for a Kinks compilation album.
(HotBands) Regarding your singing voice, Popeye was obviously an influence on you.
(Baby Gramps) Oh yes! There were several Popeye’s, but that voice goes back even before my time. Back in the 1920s there was
some recordings of throat singing, and it was usually associated with salty old sailors, which is what Popeye portrayed.
(HotBands) You're obviously a big hit with children because you really are a lot like a live version of a Saturday morning
cartoon, and you do a lot of shows for children these days. Is this something you grew into?
(Baby Gramps) Yeah it is, but I don't remember how I got into it but a lot of my props on stage kids love...I have a robot,
a two headed teddy bear called Yogi Beara double header, and a six legged pink elephant named Packy-Derm. Kids relate, but
I'm looking for that child in the adult as well, to get them to think about stuff a little more and about this whole world.
(HotBands) I think people are drawn to you because you bring out the inner child in everybody. I see everybody at your shows
smiling, laughing and having a good time. We all seek reflections of our own image, and you are a great mirror for the child
in all of us.
(Baby Gramps) Well, thanks. I'm just a kid at heart and the old world is pretty tough, you know? We each have to do what we
can to get by.
(HotBands) On your guitar I noticed the knob at the top. Is that so you can spin your guitar without hurting it?
(Baby Gramps) That's a facet I added. It's a brass knob I drilled on and it has a seventh string going down the hollow of the
neck to make it resonate. Ooops I shouldn't have told you that! That's a secret so mum's the word! Mum spelled backwards is
mum! But yeah, it's also so I can spin the guitar without hurting it, and these are valuable instruments.
(HotBands) You do a lot of stage antics...playing with your elbow and the back of your hand.
(Baby Gramps) I learned the elbow thing from hanging out with an old blues guy from Memphis named Furry Lewis and he used
to play down on the houseboats here. He'd roll his sleeve up and actually play with his elbow, which got a different
sound. I'm not sure where he got it from, but I'll give that credit to him. That type of clowning around on stage goes
way back to vaudeville and the old delta bluesmen. My mentor Charley Patton, used to entertain 500 people in a barn with
no electricity...playing the guitar behind his head and behind his back...that type of stuff.
(HotBands) You said Charley Patton was your mentor? Is that who you learned from?
(Baby Gramps) Oh no...he was dead early on. He was Robert Johnson's big influence...Charley and Son House influenced
Robert Johnson. I do some of his stuff on my CD.
(HotBands) Robert Johnson is one of the best-known early bluesmen and it seems you have a lot of his influence in your
playing.
(Baby Gramps) I don't play like that much anymore. I did all that stuff in the early days...you know if you want to be
the drunk on the tightrope, you gotta learn how to do it the right way. I was able to see a lot of these guys before they
died. That was my foundation of my music. They're all gone now except for a couple of them.
(HotBands) A lot of your songs sound like nursery rhymes. The worm song is an example of a kid’s rhyme that you turned
into a song.
(Baby Gramps) There are lots of things out there like that. Snippets of kids rhymes from different parts of the country
that were never really recorded, so I put them together as I remember them...which is why the songs sound different every
time.
(HotBands) What brought you to Seattle?
(Baby Gramps) Boy, I don't even know. I was born in Miami, so probably being baptized in swamp water and the thought of
being able to wash it off in the Northwest rain, was a big factor. I wrote a song about the Northwest rain...charge it to
the dust and let the rain settle it. Something to do with cleansing...the Northwest is a beautiful place and I prefer the
cool weather to the heat. I'm spending more time in Oregon these days...it's more like how it was in Seattle 30 years ago.
Seattle now is more like a little L.A. I have to fight the traffic all the way to Oregon...it's a constant traffic jam. I
came back from Oregon the other day at 4:30 in the morning and it was stop and go all the way from Tacoma to Seattle.
(HotBands) You've played in folk festivals all over the United States. Do you play outside of the US much?
(Baby Gramps) Well, I don't fly too much any more. One time they took my guitar apart, x-rayed it...I got x-rays out of it
and was thinking of putting out a skeletal version of Gramps with the x-rays or maybe use it on a Halloween album...I have
over 400 Halloween songs. There are so many things I want to do.
(HotBands) Do you like to travel?
(Baby Gramps) No, I don't like to travel but am flying around more than I like to. I'll be in Edmonton with Artis the
Spoonman next month. It's a gas traveling across the border with Artis because they look at me like a kaopectate model and
then they see Artis and start blowing the whistles, and when he pulls his string on his pouch and all his knives, forks and
spoons fall all over the floor...and the cops all gather 'round and start blowing whistles and once all the security starts
running and gets to us, he starts playing. The cops give him a standing ovation and don't pay any mind to me...little do they
know what I'm hiding in my beard!
(HotBands) What is your favorite festival and what do you look forward to the most each year.
(Baby Gramps) Probably the Oregon Country Fair. The overall feel of the fair is really nice. Last year they had a scavenger
hunt, and one of the things was to find Baby Gramps and do a sing-along with him, so all these people are fighting over me,
saying "I found him first"... It was beautiful! I'll be there again...2nd weekend in July.
(HotBands) Is there a time of year that you set up for touring?
(Baby Gramps) I used to work on my poems and songs in the winter and tour in the summer, but anymore, I don't have the time
at any time of year and have to write my songs on the road. I'm working on a hillbilly opera and am currently in a play,
which is where I just came from and why I still have white clown makeup under my eyes.
(HotBands) What do you look forward to in life these days?
(Baby Gramps) That's a good question! I guess having some of my dreams materialize what I'd like the most. Things I've
worked on for years. I have thousands of songs and I'm also a visual artist and paint every day...heck, I was born with a
paintbrush (he fondles a braid in his long white beard). The 'Possum Opera' came out of this miniature world I created, and
the songs are about what life would be like in this town. My dream is to come out with my books...I've written hundreds of
books and would like to see some of my stories come to life by working with The Quay Brothers who are world-renowned for
their still motion animation. My dream is to have my world come to life in animation. I love working and writing songs on
the road...any of those songs where you see me stomping my foot were songs I wrote on the road.
(HotBands) You're obviously very well read and well educated...what was the highest grade in school you achieved?
(Baby Gramps) As I said, I'm not into numbers but after I got to Seattle, I would spend time on (UW) campus attending
lectures and had access to the libraries, so I fed my head with everything that I was interested in.
(HotBands) Over the last 40 years, you've reached tens of thousands of people with your music. What type of insight can you
offer someone that is getting started as a professional musician?
(Baby Gramps) In order to be a millionaire folk singer, you need to start off with two million, so my advice is that if
you're doing it for the money, I got no advice...if you're doing it to get women...well...I wouldn't advise that either.
Follow your path no matter what it is...if you like doing something that is what you should be doing for your living.
Everything falls into place after that. I'm into this because I love it...I love what I'm doing. My best advice is not to
do it for all the reasons I just stated, and to follow your path because of the path...not the view from the path.
(HotBands) Where from here?
(Baby Gramps) I have one CD, 2 videos and 1 DVD released to date. Beyond that, I don't really think about it...things
always seem to just fall in place.
(HotBands) What's important to you today as opposed to what was important to you 20 years ago?
(Baby Gramps) Well, I have one foot on the path, one in the grave and one on a banana peel...a three-legged man in a
two-legged race. Seriously, the most important thing to me is my health. I went to the Fremont Fair this year...hadn't
been there in years, and someone came up to me and said "You're alive!". There have been rumors I was dead and/or sick,
but I want to thank my lucky stars that I've been in perfect health. I've been pacing myself I guess.
(HotBands) What words can you offer the readers about life?
(Baby Gramps) It all comes down to having a good time with it. That's why I use palindromes, anagrams, oxy-morons,
spoonerisms and the like in my songs. It's about having fun with words and meaning. Don't get me wrong...life is serious,
but I don't take myself too seriously.
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Sub Pop Records review
- Review of the Kinks tribute CD, "Give The People What We Want- Songs Of The Kinks"
(Gramps performs "Sunny Afternoon")
"He's entertained everywhere from the streets and medicine shows to Bob Dylan's dressing room. In this day and age, seeing
the Seattle based singer-songwriter-guitarist who calls himself Baby Gramps is the closest you'll ever get to experiencing
Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music in person. He sings in a voice that is somewhere between Cliff "Ukulele Ike"
Edwards' and Blind Willie Johnson's, and his style evokes long dead pickers such as Charlie Patton and Riley Puckett. He
plays with metal finger-picks on a battered National Steel that at last count had four useable frets left on it and an old
clamp wrench holding one of the tuning pegs on. With a long, flowing beard and mannerisms that recall early Popeye, Baby
Gramps is something of a national treasure, the final repository of an entire era of pop culture. Gramps draws from
thousands of Paleozoic jazz, blues, hillbilly, and pop tunes. He is a genuine eccentric talent, an old-time songster and an
incredible entertainer." - Time Out New York "Sunny Afternoon" was a single from 1966 and a track from Face To Face. It was
the last #1 single the Kinks had until 1970's "Lola." It should be noted that #1 here refers to the UK charts. The Kinks
never had an American #1.
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The Freight review "Vo-calisthenics & stunt guitar"
"Baby Gramps has created a highly developed and completely original concoction that is easily the most intriguing synthesis
to come out of the roots revival of the late 20th century," says Glenn Howard of the American Musical Heritage Foundation.
Drawing on Delta blues, old-time country, novelty Klezmer, early Hollywood, Tuvan throat singing, and contemporary
improvisation, Gramps evokes Uncle Dave Macon, Blind Blake, Ornette Coleman, Captain Beefheart, and Popeye, all in one
breath. With Tuvan-influenced vocals, he scats the blues three notes at a time, and suspends conventional notions of
timing, timbre, tempo, and pitch with his inimitable scribbling technique on his National steel guitar. Gramps had refused
record deals since the 1960s, opting to wait until 78 rpms make a comeback. Last year, finally convinced that CDs would spin
on a turntable at the desired speed, Gramps released his debut album, Same Ol' Timeously.
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Traditions Fair Trade review
Blues, hillbilly tunes, ragtime, old-time (like early last century) pop tunes are some of what you might hear. Palindromes,
tongue-twisters, whimsy, cartoon caricature are a part of it. Convoluted yet rhythmic, gravelly yet smooth, every which way
at once....well, of course it is hard to describe what Baby Gramps does. For many years he has been entertaining audiences
with a style that once seen is never forgotten. He comes to Traditions each year and we always have a full house and a fully
entertaining show.
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Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine review by GvonT
- Review of the DVD, "I Shall Continuum: Live in Greenwich Village"
A healthy visual dose of just some of
the delightfully eccentric facets and
niches of Baby Gramps’ mainly manic mu-sical
personality. Out of the Pacific North-west,
he’s part ragtime, hokum and coun-try
bluesman, poet, medicine show min-strel,
songster and professional boxcar bum
with a fondness for old (and often forgot-ten)
folk, vaudeville and novelty numbers,
corny jokes and the dictionary. Imagine a
combination of Uncle Dave Macon, Cap-tain
Beefheart, Charley Patton, Smoky Sto-ver,
Blind Boy Fuller and Popeye and you’d
be in the park.
Recorded recently at New York City’s
Terra Blues club, the bearded, foot-stomp-ing
Gramps is as animated as ever, support-ing
his raspy, gravelly, mannerism-loaded
vocal gymnastics with a National steel gui-tar
approach that seems to contain a theat-rical
exploration of all the notes between
the cracks, often employing a percussive
finger-picking technique that involves el-bows
and palms, scribbling, telepathic tem-pos
and angled off-notes.
Dazzlers include the set opening instru-mental
“Ankle Wrench Rag,” a sing-a-long
take-off on Mack McClintock’s “Big Rock
Candy Mountain” (that he topically refits
for the Greenwich Village audience), his
vibrant original “Charge It to the Dust and
Let the Rain Settle It” and a wily ragtime
version of the 1930 standard “Dream a
Little Dream of Me.” Also noted is another
quirky original, “Skillets of Snakes” and
an extended encore segment from his Pos-sum
Opera work-in-progress.
Lots of close-ups, clean split-screen
shots and fine sound that picks up all the
happy-go-lucky vocal conjurations. An
American musical treasure, Gramps is one
of those rare performers who has to be
seen to be believed. An earlier West Coast
concert DVD is also available. — GvonT
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Mercury News review, "Baby Gramps stomps through S.J." by Shay Quillen. April, 14th 2004
For a living, breathing embodiment of what Greil Marcus called ``the old, weird America,'' check out Baby Gramps tonight at the
Espresso Garden in San Jose.
Gramps attacks old-time music with a warped gusto that calls to mind the Holy Modal Rounders, crossed with a really wired
Utah Phillips. He accompanies his own Captain Beefheart-esque voice with some nimble fingerpicking on an old National steel
guitar.
The repertoire is pre-World War II blues and hillbilly, nonsense poetry, bizarre humor, audience participation, and wild
play with words and rhythms. It's not for the faint of heart, but remember -- just one Baby Gramps show will provide as
much entertainment as any five regular concerts.
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