ASCOLTI PROFONDI (DEEP LISTENINGS) INTERVIEW

Spring 1997 Issue, Rome, Italy

This interview appreared in Ascolti Profondi (Deep Listenings) an Italian new music magazine in the Inverno (Spring) 1997 issue.

1. How did you start your musical career?

I have no formal music training, but even as a child in Kokomo, Indiana, I enjoyed singing and loved to find places with interesting reverberations to explore with my voice. I also liked improvising with other sounds. My mother told me that when I was very young each time she used the electric carpet sweeper I would sing with the sound of the motor.

In San Francisco, there are several acoustically interesting tunnels in Golden Gate Park. In one, near the Conservatory of Flowers, I met and improvised with many other musicians who liked the acoustics of that tunnel. A saxophone player named Steve Munger and I spent many hours improvising together. One day, about five years ago, Steve invited me to perform with him at an at Cafe International. I consider that performance to be my professional debut.

2. What are your artistic influences and how have they shaped your music?

Singing has always been natural for me. My parents taught my brother and me to harmonize to the old-time songs as soon as we could learn them. We had a piano and my brother and I used to take the cover off and make very strange music with the soundboard of the piano. We made music by blowing into pipes, tapping glasses, strummed rubber bands stretched on sticks, anything we could find. We were very creative and always in trouble for taking things apart and bringing home too much interesting junk.

3. How do you consider yourself? An avantgarde musician, a ritual musician, or whatever?

I consider myself a tunnel singer. I enter a space, listening carefully to the ambient sound. My music is improvised in response to the sounds, visual experience, energy of the people who pass by, my feelings. I become an instrument by joining my voice with the acoustics of the space.

4. What can you tell me about the new music scene in San Francisco?

I'm sure there is much more going on than I know. Each night in San Francisco there are free performances in coffee houses. Many of the performers are associated with the retro-beat North Beach poetry scene. They like my music and tell me I'm really creating poetry!

5. How do you compose? Is it all improvised?

I hear music in my head all the time. All my music is improvised. I remember certain patterns, but I consistently create new versions. I tried to memorize the songs on my CD to perform them at my CD release party, but it was impossible. Even when I sang while listening to the CD, I created new patterns in harmony with the existing music.

6. What kind of records do you like to listen to?

I have very little recorded music. I enjoy listening to all kinds of music live and on the radio. I'm interested in the new ambient music I hear on our local university station. Even though it's electronic sound, I hear similarities to the music I improvise in tunnels.

7. I'm in love with "Inner Runes": tell me something about the creation of this superb disc

I never dreamed I would record my music. People heard me singing in tunnels and asked for tapes or CDs. They wanted to recreate the relaxed, peaceful feeling they experienced in the tunnel. It seems to me the Universe invited me to record my music.

I had to learn how to record and produce an album. I knew a woman who produced her own recording. She generously told me about her experience. Next, I met Stephen Hill from "Hearts of Space." He recommended sound recording engineer Bob Ohlsson. Bob answered many questions and outlined and the criteria for recording in a tunnel. We needed electricity and a wind-free, quiet space. We chose the Sound Column at the Palace of Fine Art in San Francisco.

The Exploratorium generously donated the use of the Sound Column, where we recorded. The Sound Column is a wedge-shaped, sixty-four feet tall room inside one of the support columns for the dome of the Palace of Fine Art. This space has an eight- second reverberation. It is an exquisite place to sing. Bob put two microphones on a boom about fifteen feet in the air and we recorded all the songs on a single stereo track on digital audio tape.

I learned a lot by listening to the first session tape. Only three selections from the three hour session were usable. I learned that a microphone hears differently than ears. My vocal range and volume sometimes exceeded the equipment's capacity for recording.

I also learned that more precision is necessary while singing to record. When heard live, lack of precision is not a problem, but when recorded, it sounds terrible! The next seven songs came from the second three hour session.

I located my sound design engineer, Rona Michele of Michele- Shine Studios, through a mutual acquaintance. Rona really understands my wish to preserve the natural acoustics of the space on the recording and used no electronic effects to enhance the sound.

8. What is the perception of your music in the USA?

People tell me they feel a deep response, something deeper than language. One young man in a coffeehouse where I performed came to me and said, "When I hear you sing I feel that everything is going to be all right." Many people who find me singing in the tunnel have an immediate heartfelt connection with the music. They tell me how well my music fits the visual experience they are having up on the mountain or at the Palace of Fine Art. They hear a variety influences in my music. Some say it sounds Celtic, Middle Eastern, American Indian or South American. Many ask what language I am singing. I tell them it is the language of the heart.

Recently CBS Television News videotaped for a nationally broadcast program, "Sunday Morning." And San Francisco's local television Fox News taped me for a new program, "Our Town." Both will be broadcast soon.

9. During our brief encounter in that tunnel I fell in love with your voice and your music, which opened a hidden door; are you interested in the effects the sound of the voice have on the human psyche?

Thank you. Yes, people write to me and generously share their experience of the music. The music has its own spiritual energy. I hope that someday everyone will find a way to "make a joyful noise." Then it will not be unusual to see people singing their songs in parking garages and stairwells.

10. Do you play live?

Each Sunday,[as of 9/9/00 only occasional unscheduled performances] at noon, I perform in the tunnel atop the Marin Headlands, in a tunnel named "Construction 129." It is a long, high tunnel, part of the coastal fortification left from World War II. This concrete tunnel is U-shaped with a slight curve at one end which causes a slight back bounce of sound. It acoustics are such that when I sing there it is like swimming in a river of music. I also sing most Saturday and Sunday afternoons from two to five o'clock under the rotunda at the Palace of Fine Art.

I have not played at any places where tickets are sold. I have sung for audiences as part of a program; the AIDS San Francisco to Los Angeles Bicycle Ride, Cancer as a Turning Point Conference, weddings, retreats. But what I like best is to be in a tunnel with people stopping by for a few moments to listen, then moving on with their walk or their hike. I like to be a part of the natural surroundings, like a songbird who has stopped for a few moments in a favorite tree.

11. Are you planning new sound explorations?

I always enjoy finding new places with interesting acoustics to sing. I like singing with new instruments and new people. Someone sent me literature about crystal caves at Mt. Shasta which look interesting. I learned about some caves which have "crystal organs," organ keyboards with plungers which strike stalactites and make music. I'm researching this project.

12. What are your future projects?

Presently I am learning about alternatives for music distribution. I am on the internet now and developing The Tunnel Singer Home Page.

I would like to record another album in 1997, perhaps in a cave [12/21/97 note: Ravens in Moonlight, recorded in the Marin Headlands tunnel, Construction 129, was released November 1997].