Muldaur takes project time-out for gigs
Life is still good to Geoff Muldaur, long a driving force in the folk and folk-rock blues scenes.
Muldaur just returned from Japan where he played in two Jim Kweskin Jug Band reunion concerts. He was a founding member of the band, which started out in the 1960s.
After his Saturday, May 4 concert in Albuquerque, he’ll be birding in Big Bend country in Texas in search of a Colima warbler.
Then it’s back to Amsterdam, where he is in a long-term project writing music and arrangements of Americana music for several classical music chamber ensembles.
His arrangements for the project include music by bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson and New Orleans legend Jelly Roll Morton.
“The objective is to have enough music for a full album. I’d say I’m about halfway through. I hope it takes the rest of my life. I’m having so much fun writing for longhairs,” Muldaur said in a phone interview from his Southern California home.
“This has been taking most of my energy, which has been a wonderful thing for me to do. ... I’ve never been more challenged or happier doing what I’m doing ... .
“I spend most of my time on it but I have to go out and play gigs,” he added.
One of the planned cuts on the album will have a mezzo-soprano singing music Muldaur wrote that’s set to a Tennessee Williams poem. Williams was known primarily as a playwright.
Muldaur said that at the Outpost Performance Space concert he’ll sing and play one of his compositions that uses the words of another Williams poem.
“Tennessee Williams was such a crazy guy but he had a lot of talent,” he said.
For the concert, Muldaur said he’ll bring a banjo and one of his signature Martin guitars.
“The guitar was a bestseller for them for a couple of years,” he said. “Now it’s a special order.”