The Village happens to be Greenwich, the time was 1960-something and the cast is John Oates with twelve other veteran musicians (including Lucinda Williams, Bruce Hornsby, Los Lobos, Rickie Lee Jones and Amos Lee) putting their spin on classic folk songs. The result is The Village: A Celebration Of The Music Of Greenwich Village – 429 Records’s folk compilation that pays homage to the music that shook the world from the corners of McDougal and Bleeker Street. A phenomenon that Oates believes could only happen once: “It was a special moment in time that can’t be replicated. All of the sudden these new urban artists such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were reintroducing traditional and blues music, the backbone of all music, to a new generation of people.”
The project gives modern day singer/songwriters a chance to pay tribute to the artists that helped shape them as successful musicians in their own right. While many chose to reinterpret Dylan’s creations, Oates took the route of Dave Van Ronk’s traditional song, “He Was a Friend Of Mine” and added his own acoustics. “It was originally done as a slow, sad ballad. I wanted to combine styles and I didn’t want to do it like a dirge. Instead I wanted it to be a bit more ragtime,” Oates explains. He accomplished this with the help of his drummer, John Michel and renowned mandolin player, Drew Emmitt (Leftover Salmon). Going in the direction of ragtime and blues was organic for John, as he adds, “That’s more my style. Doc Watson, Mississippi John Hurt, people like that…that’s the kind of music I gravitate towards.”
Growing up in Philadelphia, a fertile area for soul and folk, Oates became deeply rooted in traditional American music. He reminisces back to his first band, The Masters, “We played everything from Chuck Berry to Little Richard to the Temptations. Over the years, I’ve always kept one foot in that acoustic, traditional music and the other in rock/pop. If you listen to the early Hall & Oates, there’s a lot of acoustic, folky music.” Luckily, for H & O fans there’s even more to listen to with their latest release, Do What You Want, Be What You Are – a unique 74 song box set including seven live songs from a 1975 performance in London. “I dug that up from my closet. We remixed and remastered them,” Oates recalls. “The other unreleased tracks were songs that we thought were interesting and we wanted people to hear some of the material and the songwriting range that we have that goes above and beyond the hits.”
After forty years of success, Hall & Oates are now the go-to-guys for inspiration. Artists such as Travis McCoy (Gym Class Heroes) honor his music idols in new millennium fashion: tattoos of each artist on each hand. Oates reaction: “Be careful what you do with your left hand (laughs). But seriously, I am extremely flattered. It’s great that a new generation of musicians are willing to honor the artists they grew up with …just as I show respect to the people that I grew up with. I guess that’s the way things should be.”
Oates is going back to his roots again, teaming up with Dobro (slide guitar) master, Jerry Douglas and Maura O’Connor for a holiday-themed run of shows, starting December 5th at the Newberry House in South Carolina. The record company has also asked him to do a solo album in the vein of traditional/folk music, which he will hopefully start working on this winter.
Joanne Schenker lives in New York and is a contributing writer for Glide and AOL Music (Spinner.com) She can be reached at [email protected].
