THE CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS

DONA GOT A RAMBLIN’ MIND

MUSIC MAKER, 2006

The trio’s arresting debut, highlighting music from the Piedmont region, owed much to veteran black fiddler and mentor Joe Thompson

After being in Gaelwynd, I started to realise that what I’d been told about American music was maybe not the whole truth. I’d started playing the banjo and learning that it was an African-american instrument. Then I met Joe Thompson and here was a living proponent of this whole tradition that had been completely erased from the narrative of American music. I can’t really overstate how important Joe was in terms of being a living connector. He was already 86 when we met him, but Dom and Justin and I made a lot of time to play with him. I definitely wouldn’t be who I am now without that experience, because it also shunted me down the service-based route of music, realising that this was something bigger than how many CDS we can sell. It was more like, “How can I tell this story?” To look at stories that aren’t known, like black people who speak out, for example. We started doing all these school shows during Black History month and that’s the repertoire that we went into the studio with for the album. Everything was honed, because we’d been playing these songs over and over again for children. We were a trio and I was very intent on it not becoming about me singing. There’s a desire to do that – “Oh, there’s a pretty girl, so she’s going to be out front.” I was happy to sit and play banjo; I just wanted to serve the band. And we managed to make it work for some time, then Justin started wanting to bring in more modern stuff, which I was totally into but Dom wasn’t. But for a while we managed to balance it out.