Folk and Rap, Spooning: Cathy & Marcy with Christylez Bacon
by Peter S. Scholtes
Cathy & Marcy aren’t the first musicians to combine banjo and hip hop—that would be Minnesota’s Crew Jones. But Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer are the first to take the idea to young audiences, and combine traditional old-time American music with beatboxing (oral percussion), courtesy of Washington, DC, rapper Christylez Bacon. Collaborating on 2009’s Banjo to Beatbox (Community Music), Bacon brought a new funkiness to the multi-Grammy-winning folk duo’s music, and introduced an element of live competition: Christylez and Marcy now face off in concert, on spoons, for what they call The Great American Spoon-Off.
Speaking over the phone from Maryland, Cathy Fink recalled how her most recent team-up began while working with kids in Bethesda.
How did you hook up with Christylez Bacon?
Marcy and I live very close to a performing arts center called the Strathmore Music Center. Several years ago, we kicked off a program there called the Artists in Residence Program, and have been involved ever since as artists and mentors. Two years ago, Chris [Christylez Bacon] was a young man in the program. I think he was 21, and he had performed there for a month, and we did a lot of mentoring with Chris. At one of those sessions where we were talking about business, we had a couple extra minutes, and Chris started beatboxing, and I started playing the banjo. And we said, “Whoa, this is so cool!” We started collaborating, and we just thought it was great
One of the best songs using beatboxing on Banjo to Beatbox is “New River Train.” Where does that song come from?
The New River is down in North Carolina, and “New River Train” is a very old, traditional old-time country song. I’ve been playing it for over 30 years on the banjo, and recorded it many years ago. But it kind of came back in that it was a rhythm that worked really well with beatboxing.
What do you think is the appeal of train songs, and trains in general, for kids?
I think it has less appeal than it used to, because I don’t think kids are as exposed to trains as they used to be. But I think there’s just something magical about transportation to kids, and trains are transportation, with great characters for them. There’s a conductor, with a conductor’s uniform. Kids love that stuff. The sounds associated with trains are rhythmic. Even the word “choo-choo” is rhythmic. Electric trains are fun to play with. I think trains offer an incredible amount of imaginative play.
Who plays the spoons on this album?
Chris played spoons on the album, but Chris and Marcy both play spoons really well. And in fact, in our live shows, we have what we call The Great American Spoon-Off. They stand back to back and take ten paces away from each other and have a little competition onstage about who can do the biggest spoon moves while keeping the beat.
What kind of music did you listen to when you were five years old?
I listened to Broadway show tunes, and my favorite songs were “Beautiful Dreamer” and “Little Brown Jug,” which I made my mom play over and over on the piano. There wasn’t much that you’d equate to the kids’ music of the last 25 years.
Did you know that you wanted to make music?
I’ve always known that I loved music. I don’t think I knew that I was going to do it professionally. But I started when I was 20.
Was folk music part of your childhood?
Not really. The folk in my childhood would have been the folk on the radio. I grew up in the late ’50s and early ’60s, so there was plenty of music by people like the Weavers, and Pete Seeger, and Peter, Paul & Mary. But ultimately my initiation into the folk scene was up in Canada. I went to McGill University, and up in Montreal there were all these coffeehouses. That was my first introduction to traditional American old-time and bluegrass music. It’s funny that I had to go to Canada to discover it, because it was right down the street from where I grew up in Baltimore, but they weren’t listening to it in my neighborhood.
You also met Marcy at the Toronto Folk Festival.
I’d moved to the Washington, DC, area by then, and Marcy was living in Michigan, and she was playing old-time music, and her band was performing at the same festival [where] I performed in Toronto. That was also where we met so many of our musical friends and influences.
Why did you guys decide to be a team?
We started jamming at that festival, and we totally loved it. So we just decided to have a couple of visits where we should just get together and hang and play music. Those visits were so much fun, and Marcy’s band was winding down, so she decided to move to DC, and she started a solo career, but we still kept gravitating to playing music together, and within two or three years, we just decided to make the commitment that that was what we were going to do full time.
What’s the DC folk scene like?
Well, in terms of traditional folk music, one of the bonuses of living here is we have the Library of Congress folk archives and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, which is the home of the majority of Woody Guthrie recordings and tons of New Lost City Ramblers, Pete Seeger, but even more importantly lots of the music of the people they learned from. Mike Seeger recorded over 50 albums of traditional old-time artists on Folkways. They also have a terrific catalog of children’s recordings, all 40 Ella Jenkins recordings.
In terms of live concerts, in the Washington area, the folk scene is mostly under the radar and noncommercial. There’s a lot of people that play social music in their living rooms. And that’s every bit of a focus as much as to perform. I love to play. I love to work with other people. That’s where the collaboration with Chris came from.
How did you get started making music for children?
It’s been a very parallel career for me doing folk, as well as Marcy and I playing jazz and swing. For me, it really began in the early ’70s, when I was an intern at a school on the Navajo Indian reservation, and at this particular school, they didn’t have a music teacher, and I had a guitar, so I essentially became the music teacher. When I moved to Montreal, I made some money as a substitute teacher in day care centers, and the word got out: “Get that teacher that’s got the guitar.” Next thing I knew, someone’s calling from the Girl Scouts or to come play for a school. This was when I was learning to become a folk musician. So for many years, every place that I toured, I really tried to get the promoters to include a family concert or a school concert. There’s a way to bring your kids into this music. I really opened up a lot of the arts councils in Canada, getting a lot of the presenters thinking about having afternoon concerts as well as evening concerts. Marcy had a lot of the same experiences. She worked with special-needs kids for a while, and figured anything she was going to work with them on was more fun through music. Music just makes learning fun.
What other things do you do besides play concerts?
We love to get people involved in making their own music. This is active; it’s not passive. We had a ukulele festival that drew 2,500 people this summer; 300 of them brought their ukuleles for the pre-show strum-along. We had a Girl Scout ukulele orchestra and a seniors’ ukulele orchestra. We pulled all those people in, teaching them how to play the uke on a repertoire that they can perform.
Banjo and ukulele aren’t instruments you’d imagine young people would even see that often. Do you find you’re generating interest in these instruments?
Oh, absolutely. At the ukulele festival, there were over 100 ukuleles sold that night.
