Abigail Washburn: Song of the Traveling Daughter
Abigail Washburn is a soft-spoken young woman whose banjo playing matches her overall demeanor—it’s gentle and soothing, giving the listener the feeling she’d simply never consider erupting into a wild “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Her slim-but-growing discography, as a leader and a member of the all-female folk/bluegrass quintet Uncle Earl, is filled with tender and introspective songs that focus on melody rather than virtuosity. This may be attributable as much to Washburn’s relative newness on her instrument as to a specifi musical approach. “I started playing about five years ago,” sh explains. “I bought the banjo maybe two years before that, in my senior year of college, because I heard an LP of Doc Watson singing and playing the banjo, and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard. So I went out and bought one for myself.”
Washburn’s led an interesting life, both inside and outside of her musical career. A former law student, she spent years living and studying in China, becoming fluent in Mandarin. Her solo debut, 2005’s Song of the Traveling Daughter (Nettwerk), features two songs—the title track and “The Lost Lamb”— written and sung in the language. The former, in fact, is inspired by/adapted from the eighth century poem “Song of the Traveling Son.” Her latest Sparrow Quartet EP, which features banjo deity Béla Fleck alongside (relatively) longtime Washburn collaborators Casey Driessen (fiddle) and Ben Sollee (cello), is all sung in English, though.
Washburn is nothing if not a realistic, hard-working professional. “I haven’t done a whole lot of manual labor,” she says , “but I’ve worked a lot. Since I was 14 I had summer jobs, jobs after school, worked through college. Being a musician is all the more amazing because I’ve had 9-to-5s, I’ve had eight-to-nine jobs, and I think being a musician is the hardest job I can think of, if you’re going to do it well. Being a musician it’s one person at a time. One person at a time liking your music, and you just hope that more and more of those ‘one persons’ come along.”
Washburn’s willingness to take every opportunity to offer her music to new ears (including government-sponsored tours of China and Tibet) should serve her well down the road. One of the things her travels have taught her is the sheer work required to make it as a musician. “Life is hard,” she says. “When you finally figure that out, life will be a lot more meaningful to you.
“It’s an interesting time to be getting into music,” she continues. “Even two and a half years ago, getting a record deal was what people wanted. [But] in that time, since I’ve been doing this, the general sentiment among artists has been shifting. I think a lot of people are trying to figure out how to do it without a record label. Because labels are just notorious for absorbing your work and then keeping it, and you have no freedom to disseminate it as you wish. All of a sudden, your art is locked up in a prison.” .
For more global beats, check out the March ‘07 issue of Global Rhythm magazine or visit www.globalrhythm.com
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