Multi-instrumentalist Melissa Chilinski celebrates the release of Banjo Cake at UMOCA Theater on Saturday. River Map will also debut its album, Fire in the Stars. Doors open at 7:00 p.m.
Play an instrument long enough and you’re liable to find new ways of doing so.
When I spoke with Chilinski about her latest album, she shared how initially creating a solo album of banjo music led her in a direction she wasn’t really expecting: she found a new way to express herself in the process.
Q: How was Banjo Cake born?
Chilinski: I started recording it last summer at my parents’ place in Massachusetts, using really simple microphones. It was quiet and I wanted to record a couple tunes. Originally, I wanted a record to showcase my solo banjo playing, but I got complicated with it, as I do with everything. I played with the idea of using my voice as a rhythmic device, layering banjos on top of each other in harmony and different octaves. The banjos I use have very different tones or are in different registers. One banjo is in one tuning white the other is in a completely different tuning, and I love the resonances of those sounds together. I was playing with that idea, and went song by song, creating an arrangement organically for each one, almost as a meditation, and refining. I really like how it came out, but I also appreciate the process. It was a helpful experiment to do something on my own and see what I can sound like when I’m not thinking about what others want to play. I’m playing how I like to play and making something entirely new.
Q: What did you learn about yourself through creating this?
Chilinski: I’ve listened to a lot of music in my life, and I hear in this album some of my other influences at the forefront. I loved the weird folk era in the early 2000s with Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, Beirut and Department of Eagles … atmospheric arranged folk music. All of these artists have a lot of layers. It was playing into a mix of that experimental, ambient side, combining that with my love of old time and singing. I learned this is a sonic space that feels unique, like its own little universe, something I wanted to figure out more about.
Q: I like that. And at less than 20 minutes long, the album’s relatively brief, no?
Chilinski: I mean, it’s nice, right? We all have short attention spans. People listen to the whole thing, and it’s a little journey. I thought about which songs come after which, and it feels like a cohesive thought, while on my other albums, every song felt like a different one. This was a whole moment in 20 minutes. Maybe it’d be nice to have more of that, of not putting too much on an album, creating something our minds can easily digest.
Q: I feel like that’s the direction music is going. Bands are putting out EPs and it feels like enough, this snapshot of where they’re at in their journey.
Chilinski: Yeah, and I think it is nice. There are very few long albums I listen to fully. I’ll usually like one half or the other. This way, an album feels like a moment versus a series of moments.
Q: I saw someone call this album your “compost pile” of music.
Chilinski: Tom Hurtado says he didn’t say that, but he definitely did. Brad Kolodner is a good friend, an amazing claw hammer banjo player in Baltimore. He’s also an organizer; we lead similar lives in that way. I sent him a first go of “Spotted Pony,” the first song I played with, and he said, “Layers.” And I thought of cake. When I listen to the album, it feels pink and purple and blue, like frosting. It feels warm, but decadent. As for the compost pile, Tom runs a lot of events in town, and it’s how he thinks of his own songwriting. We have all these experiences and music we love, and it all mixes into your unique self. That way, it’s allowed to grow into something new.
Q: What do you hope people get out of the album?
Chilinski: That it makes them feel like we live in a playful world that doesn’t have to have confines of genre of what it should sound like, or how to use a voice or instrument. It can be both playful and sentimental. Don’t be afraid of trying something new. Someone may listen to this and be interested in playing the banjo, all because they didn’t know it could sound like that. In listening to this, they’re allowed to step into my little universe and gain beauty and enjoyment.
I’ll be performing a handful of songs from the album with a looper pedal and vocal pedals, but it’ll still have that layered effect. I’ve been practicing for weeks now, trying to figure out how to piece those all together so that I can still sound like the album, but live and without anyone else. It’s been so much fun to experiment, and I can’t wait to share.
Q: It seems like it would require a lot of concentration.
Chilinski: You have to focus when you’re pushing buttons. I’m hoping that’s part of the entertainment. I’m used to being a performer who is very engaged with the audience, which I still will be at parts, but watching me push buttons can be fun, too. It’s a theatrical performance.
Q: There was a point in your life when you decided to go full time with music. Why?
Chilinski: I’d been in agriculture a long time, and I have a long history of traveling for outdoor recreation and I loved small, urban farms. I worked here as well as West Virginia, Alaska, Massachusetts, and New York. I was managing a local farm, getting my master’s degree in soil science, working at farms for almost a decade. During that time, I was up early a lot. I played music, but I wasn’t gigging, and wasn’t in the scene, because I never stayed out late.
Five years ago, I needed a change and I left the farm. I was finishing my last semester of my research, and found myself not having to wake up early anymore. I had more bandwidth and energy to go out. At that time, Pixie and The Partygrass Boys were doing Gracie’s, and I met a bunch of those folks, people who were excited to play the same music I love: bluegrass.
There was this energy around it. I started getting pulled into gigs. I started working at Acoustic Music and teaching lessons. It got out of control. It felt like it was a path I could take, one I really wanted to take. I always felt like music and my science background and my love of farming were at odds with each other. I grew up playing and doing theater, and then I stopped in college because I didn’t want to be inside all the time. I still played, but it was not at the forefront of my life. Coming back to banjo 10 years ago and getting into this music that is coupled with local food and nature, now it feels like a synergistic combination of those two worlds.
Q: Have you discovered a new way of performing? Will you continue to find additional layers to add to your banjo cake?
Chilinski: This is the beginning of figuring out who I want to be as an artist. For the last five years, I’ve furiously tried to do anything and everything — playing with everyone and learning anything — all in the name of being a better musician. That’s my compost pile, right? Now I am trying to figure out who I am. What is my artistic expression? I’ll keep refining that. Hopefully, I’ll travel more and be part of the bigger scene in the United States as an individual artist with my own unique sound.
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