Uncle Pen's Fiddle
Steve Silberman
Folks:
Here's my essay, "Uncle Pen's Fiddle," which was printed in the new
edition of the Pharmer's Almanac - #3. There's been a lot of discussion
lately on rec.music.phish and rec.music.gdead about loving Phish and
loving the Dead (while not always loving the fans of either band), and
whether it's possible to make an honest emotional investment in both
bands.
Here's my attempt to make an image of the bridge of soulfulness that spans
our two communities.
(For more information on the Almanac, send mail to apha...@aol.com.)
Peace and holiday wishes,
Steve
Uncle Pen's Fiddle
by Steve Silberman
Red Rocks, 1996.
The Colorado sun has soaked into the granite cliffs flanking the
amphitheater, which glow maroon, streaked with different hues showing the
passage of centuries. On my left is my love, who surprised me on our
first date by pulling out a tape of the Dead blowing the roof off of the
Cape Cod Coliseum in '79 - one I'd been searching for for a long time -
and explained that there was this *other* band too...
(Since I'd already taken a Greyhound halfway across the country to see
Phish serenade the moon with "How High the Moon" on the night of the lunar
perigee, we hit the road together on tour a week later.)
Behind us is Donya, a salty, dark-eyed, lovely woman who polished her
line-duty skills at a couple of hundred Dead shows before adding Phish to
her tour itinerary in '92. To our right is a tall and softspoken
16-year-old kid from Nebraska, who likes both the Dead and Phish, but
never saw the Dead, and never will.
And around us, many faces and names I know from shows and the online
world: Mikey the taper, silent under the mics, eyes closed, head
bobbing; big mellow Steve; David from the WELL, who always manages to
get up front, veteran of 81 Phish shows and three times that many Dead
shows; and many others, faces half-familiar as if recognized from a
dream, some names unknown. Deadheads, Phish phans, and those who love it
all, riding together the crests of inspiration coming off the stage.
As long shadows pour down the cooling granite walls, Down With Disease
metamorphoses into something rich and strange.
Mike's funk lines flex below a cascade of notes from Trey and Page, like
sparks showering from alloying metals... Fishman's eyes shut as his body
slots into the groove... the whole audience feels an arc of rising
power...
And it appears - a vision in sound - like a locomotive of white-hot
energy running on a smoldering mainline straight from the heart of
America... its roaring containing all those sounds that speak the American
soul... from the outlawed jazz of Congo Square that made freed men of
slaves for an afternoon, to the high lonesome cry in the voice of a fiddle
(called back then "the Devil's instrument") played for neighbor folks and
kin at the end of the working day - so that, decades later, the young
nephew of the fiddle player would write a song called "Uncle Pen," to
catch that sound for the ages like a firefly blazing in a jar, in a music
he invented called bluegrass.
Late in the evening, about sundown,
High on the hill and above the town
Uncle Pen played the fiddle, Lord how it would ring
You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing
* * *
At least part of my appreciation of the uncharted territory that Phish
opens up, night after night, is related to a memory of turning on the
radio in 1989, hearing songs by the Beatles and Bob Dylan, and thinking to
myself, "Why is a radio station for young people still playing music
that's 25 years old? In 1969, they weren't busting out Benny Goodman."
Later that year, I found myself in a van in with a young guitarist on the
way to a show. I asked him what his favorite bands were, and he told me
the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and
Young. "That's all great music," I said, "but it's kind of odd that all
those records came out when *I* was in high school. Do you ever write
your own tunes?"
"It's hard to write your own songs," he sighed, "when all the good songs
have been written."
Seeing the bliss light up the face of that kid from Nebraska during the
Down With Disease jam, I was grateful for the gift that Phish was
transmitting to him: a universe where the next inspired accident is worth
more than a fossilized monument to genius.
A place in the imagination where it's all right to *play* (Gamehendge!),
to make it up as we go along, to experiment and take risks, and to forsake
any inherited glory that requires us to walk only in the footsteps of
those who have gone before - even those as gifted as Bill Monroe and Jerry
Garcia.
Trey once told me in an interview, "The way I look at it is like being a
filter. The music exists in the universe, and if you're lucky enough or
strong enough to get your ego out of the way, the music comes through
you."
If you can get to that place where an infinite number of melodies await
openings to soar into being on wings of improvisation, it doesn't matter
if your passport is stamped "phan," "Deadhead," or "prep school hippie."
The waters of Gamehendge flow into the future, past Terrapin Station and
by the hill above the town, where Uncle Pen calls his children home with a
fiddle that echoes whereever generous-hearted people dance together.
You can hear it talk, you can hear it sing.
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