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Music for sure. I've been playing music as long as I can remember, but my first trip to the woods wasn't until I was 9 or 10. Many people care about the environment (although clearly not enough do so yet), but few pursue it as a career. How did you choose to make this your job, so to speak? That's an interesting story. I fell in love with the redwood forest while an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz. When a chance came up to teach English in China, I jumped at it. The place I taught was a small village that had few trees, and they were small. Many trees had been cut down in the Great Leap Forward in the 1950s as part of a government program. One Sunday I decided to go for a long walk to try to find a big tree. After walking for hours, the biggest tree I'd found was about 6 inches in diameter. That got me thinking - it was through people's actions that the trees were lost…could that happen back home in California in my beloved redwood forest? I decided, "Not on my watch!" So after coming home I started my career in forestry, working for a season in the field before going back to school for a masters in forestry. According to your biography, twice fate has intervened to "derail" the role of music in your life (Clarelynn's viola and harp were lost to a fire when she was 17 and she had her guitar stolen a number of years after that). Yet, here you are despite those tragedies. Can you speak a little about your persistence and how you have persevered despite these setbacks? The first wasn't so much of a derailing as a redirecting. After all, that's when I started playing guitar. I just figured the muses were making sure I had the right instrument. But the second one was a real heartbreak. I pretty much stopped playing for about 10 years, figuring that fate had something else in store for me. I played now and again, but so little that I forgot most of my tunes. In retrospect, those years were important in providing the time and space to delve deeply into that something else, to develop strongly held personal beliefs that I now find can be blended into the music. I'm sure it's not easy to articulate, but for the sake of the readers of this interview, can you put into your words how your Zen beliefs are reflected in your music and do you also see your forestry work as being an extension of those beliefs as well? Actually, someone else has already articulated it pretty well. A couple of years ago a friend loaned me the book "Zen Guitar". I thought someone had plugged into my brain one night while I was asleep and downloaded my philosophies about playing guitar. It's a great book and mirrors a lot of my philosophies about playing. I don't want to know scales or chords or theory and never have been interested in formal lessons. Everything - tunings, composition, technique - arises organically, based purely on what sounds and feels right. If something sounds right but is beyond my grasp technically, I either practice until I can play it or simply rewrite the piece. This approach also manifests by not learning other people's music, for the most part. You play your own pieces better than anyone else. I play my own better than anyone else. So why would I want to spend hours learning your piece rather than writing one of my own? You can also look at is as being happy with the gifts we have and not coveting thy neighbor's musical compositions. Also, I don't worry about if something is going to sound good to anyone else. If it does, that's great. If it doesn't, I'm just as happy to play for my concrete Buddha and turtles as for an audience. As to forestry, what I advocate is light-touch forest stewardship, not hard-core extraction. I've wrestled a lot with the fact that simply by living we consume resources, and that has consequent impacts on the environment. We need to minimize our ecological footprint as best we can, and that includes using wood, which is one of the best renewable resources there is. At the same time we need to be respectful of what we take by fully utilizing it, and to be excellent stewards of the forests. What was the main "push" behind releasing your first album, The Redwood Sidthe? Did you just decide "Now is the time to see what other people think of my music" or is there more to it than that? It really came out of the Accent on Music guitar camp in 1999. A lot of people had been asking for home tapes of my tunes, and I wanted to give them something of good quality. At the camp I met a couple of people who had or were recording their own pieces. Then Renbourn made an offhand comment to me one day about "After you've made your first three CDs…", and that's when I decided that perhaps I'd better start on the first. What's been the response to The Redwood Sidthe and are you either encouraged or disappointed by it? The response has been good and encouraging in many ways. What I find is that a lot of people love the album, and interestingly there doesn't seem to be any particular demographic the album appeals to. College students, grandparents, self-described cowboys, even babies respond to the music. One woman gave copies to three generations in one family, something she said she had never done before in all her 50 years. It seems whether or not people like the music has more to do with an internal quality, an openness to and desire for a simple kind of peace and beauty, not with some measurable demographic. What has been disappointing is that we as listeners seem to have evolved to a place where we have forgotten how important it is to support the music and musicians we enjoy and feel an affinity with. We are spoon-fed stars and assume that we don't count…that if we tell someone about an album, or buy a couple of copies as gifts, that it won't make a difference to the artist. But it does. That's the connection that I keep hoping people will make. It seems that not many people are really aware of how important their decisions and actions are. Guess that applies to a lot more than buying music and going to live shows, doesn't it? A question that I seldom read asked of artists is "Was it easier or harder doing the second album?" Why? The second one was harder by far. The first was a breeze…the whole recording process was new, my ears were easy to please, and I was completely amazed at and satisfied with the sound I could get in the studio. I left most everything up to the sound engineers. The second time around, I was extremely picky in terms of getting the sound right, making edits, and getting the right mix and sound in the mastering process. Also, there were a lot more new pieces (post-1999) on the second CD, which were more technically difficult. You credit Alex de Grassi and John Renbourn as invaluable mentors and supporters of your music. What was it like to work with them during the workshop you attended? Have you stayed in touch with them while you recorded Elegant Tern? John and Alex are wonderful people and have been incredibly supportive. Throughout the workshop they were both very down-to-earth and accessible. I remember the first night, there was a little concert arranged for the participants. Alex had just finished playing and asked who (of the workshop students) wanted to go next. Of course nobody wanted to follow him. In the silence I heard him say "Clarelynn! How about you?" I protested I hadn't brought my guitar, at which point he held his Lowden out and said, "How 'bout this one?" (Of course I took it!) That's just one example of how down-to-earth they were. They were both great at emphasizing what you were doing well and giving suggestions that were within your grasp. John was and is a great source of inspiration &endash; what a wonderful, bright spirit he is. His spirit is positively contagious. Alex is tremendous at finding ways to improve the composition and texture of a piece. He offers all kinds of ideas from an incredibly diverse musical palette and demonstrates how something might sound this way or that. I was in touch with both of them while recording Elegant Tern, mostly just giving them progress reports on what was happening. But before the recording ever started, the pieces benefited immeasurably from Alex's advice and John's inspiration. I've always thought of Alex's advice as providing a wonderful polish to a piece. A composition that already shines will sparkle after going over it with him. (I trade him dog-sitting for a couple of hours once in a while to go over a new piece.) Your guitar music blends accessible "melodies" yet the music is not structured like pop music, i.e. the songs are friendly and easy to enjoy without having an adult contemporary feel to them. Do you try to write music that will appeal to both "casual" listeners as well as guitar music aficionados or is this just how your muse directs you? This goes back to the Zen question. When composing I'm not thinking about how the piece will sound to someone else. The only thing I'm worried about is whether or not it feels right in my ear and my heart. If it's right, it's right. If other people like it, that's great. If they don't, that's fine too. Do you play live? Do you enjoy it? Do you ever integrate your forestry work with a music concert appearance? Recently I've been doing more and more live performances. I've never been very comfortable in the limelight and even remember saying once I could never be a musician because of that. I still don't like to put on a "performance" for others. But I'm finding that the more I play out, the more enjoyable it is. I've heard it said that each piece of art should be an adventure of the soul…playing out is a way to share those adventures with people. It's a genuine connection aiming for the heart, not an artificial performance designed to impress anyone. As for integrating forestry work, I have played guitar at some forestry conferences. That's a lot of fun. Quite a few foresters are musicians, you know &endash; I think it's from those long nights around a campfire. Here's a tough one, and feel free to scream "No fair!" and decline to answer. If you had to choose between continuing your forestry work or your music career (not your playing, just the recording aspect), which would it be? Well, I find in general that people are more receptive to me as a musician than as a forester. Forestry, at least where I live, is still largely a male-dominated field, and being a female forester definitely has its challenges. In music, there seems to be much less of that baggage. So, assuming I could make enough at it, I'd have to say I'd go with the recording. But I'd still spend time in the woods, read books on forestry and ecology, and integrate it all into my music as much as possible. Only two other artists in "new age music" (that I'm aware of) take such a direct role in speaking and acting for environmental causes, and that's Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumbel. Do you believe it's a good thing for artists to speak out on social issues? Is this something that is, in a way, an artist's obligation, given their public persona? The mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote about how today it is artists who create our mythology. What does that mean? Artists help define what a society values and strives towards. Now, writing songs about sex, anger and violence may sell more CDs, but the values I want to foster are living gently on the earth and with compassion for living beings. When this life is over, nobody (including me) will care how many CDs I sold or how many people came to shows. But having had some part in people being inspired to show kindness and compassion towards each other or other living beings, that is the hallmark of a successful life. I do think all of us &endash; artists or not-- need to be very mindful of how our actions influence others. As we move more into the public eye, we need to be ever more aware of how our actions may influence or inspire others. It's not that we need to inculcate people with our own beliefs, but rather to not be afraid to express our own views, hopefully in a way that is not overly judgmental of others. Gandhi, one of my heroes, told us to "be the change you want to see". I'm trying to do that. Everyone should, artists or not. But, being in the spotlight, it's especially important for artists to strive for that. Finally, how would you sum up your feelings about what this part of your "journey" (i.e. your recording career) has meant to you so far? Do you see it continuing or are you taking a "wait and see what the universe has to offer" view? It has shown me the importance of staying open to change, and to take that deep breath and just go ahead and start doing those things you intend to do "someday". Will it continue? I'm following my nose, and right now it's pointing towards another recording. But who knows what will happen? While it's important to have direction, it's equally important to let the winds of change blow when and where they will. Everything happens for a reason. Thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts, Clarelynn. I wish you much success with both your music and your continued efforts to save our forests and educate children and adults on the value of the environment. I'm not sure it's so much "saving" the forests as it is being truly mindful and respectful of how we interact with them, and having "sustainability" as our watchword. We all want to be needed, appreciated, and loved &endash; even the forests. Thank you, Bill, for this opportunity and all you do to support independent musicians. Namaste. |
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