Speaking the Same Language
Garth Hudson on pedagogy and "old" music
As I sat outside Landau Grill, waiting for a 2004 Saab sedan to pull up into the restaurants parking lot, “The Weight” blared from the restaurant’s outdoor sound system. The song choice was hardly immediately noteworthy, considering this particular establishment in Woodstock, NY, had played a steady stream of classic rock the past hour. But it wasn’t until this moment that I realized what I was about to do, and with whom I was about to spend the entire afternoon. Part of me hoped his car would pull into the driveway right then, with his band’s—The Band’s—most recognizable song an overture for what would soon transpire. Much to my chagrin, five minutes passed and the song ended, but there was no black Saab in sight.
The car finally pulled up to the restaurant and there sat Garth Hudson—the former organist, pianist, saxophonist, and part-time musical instructor for The Band—in the driver’s seat. This man had shared the stage with Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, and Levon Helm for two decades, and recorded with the likes of Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, and The Staple Singers. Here he was, wearing all black, fumbling change and keys in his pocket, finally extending his arm for a handshake.
Throughout the late ’60s and early ’70s, Hudson garnered both popular and critical claim for his innovative organ techniques, forcing the instrument into a musical realm that no one could have anticipated. Emotivity and inventiveness would become Hudson’s signature, and it wasn’t an accident. “On all Band recordings I would try and play something a little different, particularly soundwise, in terms of the texture,” Hudson says. “It’s clear and emotional, but the Lowrey [organ] did speak in a certain way. It has something like 110 tubes that all created a great tube distortion.” As unprecedented as his sound would become, Hudson’s musical upbringing is hardly atypical.
Born in Windsor, Ontario, and raised in the small town of London, Ontario—halfway between Toronto and Windsor—he thoroughly immersed himself in the few musical opportunities the town had to offer. “They had a concert band, a symphony, various dance orchestras, and musicians that played what we called casual,” Hudson says. “There were only two rock ‘n’ roll bands in London, the Mel-O-Denes and The Capers. I joined Bob Liley’s group, The Capers, playing tenor saxophone and piano. I played the C-melody saxophone in the Medway High School Cadet Band for Parade Day. I wish I had a recording of that. That’s maybe where I began to listen and archive.”
Archiving has since become an important pastime for Hudson, a subject he certainly overemphasizes in lieu of answering questions regarding The Band. Hudson is currently working on amassing a comprehensive history of “old music” with hopes of educating musicians by exposing them to the undiscovered gems of the past. As we sat down to dinner, he asks, “How do I get young people to listen to old music? I want to avoid the words dinosaurs, old, antiquated, archaic.” While the question itself has no simple answer, Hudson himself is certainly working on it, culling mounds of encyclopedic information to create a comprehensive collection of the some of the most influential and important artists of first part of the twentieth century. Hudson hopes that this research, once combined with his recent fascination with pedagogy—or, as he puts it, “Teaching teachers to learn to teach those who learn to teach”—will culminate in a musical education program he has in the works.
Hudson has always been a teacher of sorts, back to the days that he and The Band were playing as backup musicians Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks. “Ronnie [Hawkins] wanted me to teach the guys something,” Hudson says. “He wanted me to give them lessons in music. I didn’t really teach them much in sit down in one-on-one lessons. Where we began to expand was putting together modern chords, more sensible, in a way, to some of the numbers that Richard [Manuel] was doing.” This notion of modernity is one that has stuck with Hudson, who is embracing contemporary technological and musical developments that become evident on our excursion to Allaire Studios.
In the studio, Hudson was finally in his element. As he made his way toward the piano, set in the corner of the enormous studio, Hudson sat himself down and began playing some of his most recent compositions. As soon as he laid his fingers on the ivory keys of the 1930s Steinway grand piano, his sooty hands were rejuvenated with youthful vibrancy. Hudson began explaining the manner in which he approaches the instrument. “I play the piano and what I play is recorded as MIDI information and goes into a music notation program like Concord, Finale, Logic, Sibelius. ...This is a lot more fun than other work ... you have to do in your home studio office enterprise, sometimes called in upper-Canada a cottage industry.”
Hudson’s current operation is hardly a cottage industry, at least in terms of its magnitude; he’s recorded albums with artists the likes of Daniel Lanois, Neko Case, The Sadies, Martha Wainwright, Los Lobos, The Gypsy Kings, Evan Dando and the Lemonheads, Norah Jones, and, most recently, Nicolai Dunger of Sweden. Other lesser-known artists constantly solicit his piano, organ, and accordion expertise, hoping that he’ll help bring that special line that will transform a good melody into a great song.
Oftentimes, however, these solicitors are not the best acts around. “I try to do what I can,” Hudson says, “but some of them just don’t sound good.” It’s these bands, those that just don’t sound good, that take least advantage of Hudson’s virtuosity, failing to translate any musical vision they might have—if it even exists–into organists’ terms. “I did a few demos in L.A.,” Hudson says, “and, in general, they didn’t know much about what I did. They never listened or had maybe heard one thing. If it was organ, maybe all they wanted was a pad, which is fine. Very often, people don’t explain what they want very well. But I find most artists who I collaborate with are informative and inventive.”
Ultimately, the goal of Hudson’s archiving project is to help musicians better explain what they want. By creating a universal musical foundation in the canonical works of yesteryear, he hopes to eliminate any loss of translation between the song and the words used to describe it. It will only a matter time until Hudson’s own musical contribution—especially those of The Band—will be added to this canon, if he hasn’t been already.