Interview: Boris Garcia

Written by Jim Grady Wednesday, 01 March 2006 00:00

If, stored away in your live music collection, you have an old and in the way Old and in the Way disc, and you listen closely to it, you will hear the familiar melody of a guitar being played bluegrass style.  Peter Rowan is the guitarist and, often employing a humble technique due to the presence of Jerry Garcia on banjo and David Grisman on mandolin, Panama Red, as he was and as he is still known, was capable of bringing traditional and sometimes boring songs to life. 

Ever since Bill Monroe and his band invented bluegrass, the genre has not received much mainstream press at all.  The one song that those who are not familiar with bluegrass know is almost always Ralph Stanley’s Man of Constant Sorrow because of its place on the “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack.  The movie, which put a spotlight on a type of music whose refulgence has always been quite dim, helped to educate others the best way that a commercialized industry can about an unpopular, non-commercial aspect of life—with no apparent knowledge or appreciation for it, but with a desire to teach others about its importance in the history of music, culture, and society.

Bluegrass pioneers like Monroe, Earl and Scruggs, and Newgrass Revival took simple songs and made them exciting with complex playing techniques like the three-finger banjo roll, the stomp, and the breakdown, the latter two being basic bluegrass runs colored with fantastic, frenetic playing.  Because of this, it is not often that you will encounter a bluegrass outfit whose main draw is not instrumental ability and technique.  Sure, there is a plethora of outstanding bluegrass songs with superior singing, but, it’s the mellifluous mandolin, guitar, and banjo pickin’ that has made bluegrass as popular as it today, even though that popularity is mainly restricted to those who either reject or censure the mainstream music of today.  These people tend to embrace pure American music, although its roots truly lie in West Africa, where polyrhythmic jamming led to the evolution of the blues, jazz, and bluegrass.  But, no matter where it came from, bluegrass is, today, a well-respected genre. 

The American roots of bluegrass began in the 1940’s, pre-WWII, and eventually bluegrass progressed to what it is now.  Some call the current genre progressive bluegrass, others call it jamgrass, though this latter genre is characterized by more improvisation than the former.  Yonder Mountain String Band, Leftover Salmon, the String Cheese Incident, and the Sam Bush Band are all examples of modern-day jamgrass collectives.  You may notice that they are all from the state of Colorado, but that does not mean that modern-day bluegrass is not prevalent throughout the country—and the world.  Of course, there is bluegrass in Kentucky, where it originated, and it is alive and well in cities, towns, and suburbs from the East Coast to the Left Coast, from ME to WA, and FL to CA.  As far as international bluegrass goes, there is a great bluegrass band from the Czech Republic called Druhá Tráva, which means “Second Grass” in Czech, but the majority of bluegrass bands are in America, though there certainly are many scattered across the globe.   

Now, in a small suburb of Philadelphia, a fine quintet of middle-aged and more-than-middle aged pickers, named Boris Garcia, is peaking its head from behind the music industry’s patrol and is finally seeing the other side of the musical border.  Your first thought might be, “Hm, Garcia is in their name, they must play some Dead tunes!,” but these boys specialize in all original compositions.  Though they have a great love and respect for the Dead (two of their members played in a NJ-based Dead cover band in the 80’s and 90’s), and do exhibit strains of GD and their penchant for improvisation, BG has not covered one Dead song, or any other band’s song, in the last two years that they have been playing.  Most of their venues have been small bars in Philly, NJ, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, but if their most recent shows reveal any prescience, then they will be playing a little further west and south in the near future.  The future looks bright for these cats, and it seems like nothing is going to stop them from realizing their collective dream of impacting the lives of their fans.

If bluegrass is gaining popularity, then Boris Garcia is one of the many bands that are helping the cause.  With their utterly unique approach to creating genre-bending, mind-expanding, and completely original music, they are paving their own lane in a large live performance highway.  Soon, fans of all different types of music will speak of them, but the one thing that their fans will share is a love for a band that has fun on stage, while playing their hearts out and letting the music be a great raconteur of life stories.

After a performance at the tiny Mermaid Inn in Chester Hill, PA, I had the great opportunity to chat with one of BG’s multi-instrumentalists (every member of the band plays at least two instruments), Bog Stirner, about the origins of the band’s name, his and the band’s influences, and how the moral of the film Groundhog Day is about chasing your dreams. 
   
Jim Grady: First of all, the big question, of course, is where does the name come from?

Bob Stirner: Well, Jeff Otto, who is one of the songwriters, came up with that.  That’s his creation.  Jeff is an animator by trade, which means he works in the arts and he makes animations—literally, cartoons.  Boris was this mythical bandito-type character from Mexico who wore a big hat, kind of like Panama Red, that had a mother who was Russian and a father who was Mexican.  So, that’s the story for the Boris Garcia moniker.  Might have a little bit to do with his influence, I don’t know, I didn’t come with it, so I don’t know. 

JG: Is it political, with Boris Yeltsin?

BS: No, not at all.  Although, we are very political. We’re incredibly political.

JG: So, there’s no Jerry Garcia influence, either?

BS: Well, of course, there’s a Jerry Garcia influence.  I’m influenced by the man.  I think we all are to a certain extent.  It’s all in there, man.  It’s all good.

JG: So, what are your main influences, personally and as a band?  Bluegrass…?

BS: Yeah, all of the above.  You go to our site, it says something like jamgrass, folky, rootsy, poppy, and that’s really the deal.  We write popular songs, I think—songs that appeal to people, I think.  We have the whole bluegrass thing going on, we got the jam thing going on, and it’s all roots rock and roll.  That’s what it is.

JG: So, are you influenced by songwriters, like Bob Dylan?  Or classic rock bands, like Led Zeppelin…?

BS: How could you not be?  I grew up, literally, in terms of music, in the early 70’s.  So, yeah, I remember all that stuff.  Literally.  But, of course, Bob Dylan, and Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead, and the Jefferson Airplane, and the Rolling Stones, and yadda yadda yadda yadda.  And, then you get into, you know, the Richard Thompsons, and the Band, and Los Lobos, and whatever, a little closer to now—the oldest cats that seem to be able to tell stories.  Steve Earle is another one.  That cat’s real fucking heavy, man.  He tells stories and he writes really good songs.  I think that’s kind of what it is.  I mean, we’re all of an age, we’ve been around long enough that we don’t really give a shit about typical rock and roll modality, we’re just doing our thing and we’re doing exactly what we wanna do.  So, whatever it is, it is.  Yeah, those are the influences—Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead, and everything that came out of the 70’s, including the folk scene, and the reggae scene, and the roots scene, and the bluegrass scene, all of it, Doc Watson, the whole thing.

JG: I think it’s amazing that you guys play all originals.  You played, what, 27 songs tonight, and they’re all original?

BS: Probably, I didn’t count.  We have a few more actually.  We got some new ones coming up, the record’s coming out soon.  We really like what we do.  I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but we’re just doing it because we really dig it.  And, that’s the only reason.  I swear to God, that’s the only reason we’re doing it.  But, it appears that other folks like it, too, and that’s good.  It’s all good.  Personally, I dig playing in front of people.  I dig playing in front of a lot of people.  There’s something about doing it, doing art, in a static sense, there’s always something about doing art in front of people in the moment.  I mean it’s not performance art.  Like today’s performance was like performance art.  Music, all that, and, it happens in a nanosecond and people react to it.  Jam, folk, bluegrass, whatever, man, there’s a certain kind of mindset and they’re reacting to shit as it happens.  So, we’ve got an audience, and we really dig that.  We play for the audience, we play for our heads, just the fact that people are diggin’ it while we’re doing it is a good drug. 

JG:  So, what about bluegrass festivals, like Telluride…?

BS: Shit, dude, the guy that is mentoring has us applying for it.  So, we’ve applied for it.  I don’t know if it will happen or not, but we’re processing it as much as we can and we’ve applied to all the bigger festivals.  We’ll see what happens.

JG: Give me a short history of the band.

BS: What you see right now is about a year and a half old.  Boris Garcia has existed for about two years.  Bud, the mandolin player, is the most recent addition.  He’s been on about six, seven months.  I’m going on a year.  So, we haven’t been around that long.  (Though we’ve played in) bands peripherally or inter-personally, we’ve never actually all played together in a band before.   But, we’ve all known each other for a lot of years.  Three of us write songs, songs that will work together, and it’s the Mutual Admiration Society.  We dig each other’s shit.  We support each other.  I guess we’re all at a point, once again, that has to do with lines in the sand.  We serve the music, and that’s all.

JG: Who are the major songwriters?

BS: Jeff Otto, myself, and Eugene, we write the songs. 

JG: When you guys write songs, how does it happen?  You guys write individually, you guys collaborate?

BS: I can’t answer for those guys.  It just sort of happens. 

JG: What’s your inspiration when writing a song?  You play on a piano, guitar…?

BS: Sometimes I get a melody in my head, sometimes I just comp shit on the guitar.  It’s usually in response to something.  Heartache, or death, or catharsis, epiphany, I don’t know.  I don’t know why it comes.  For me, as a songwriter, I’m either overpowered by something and have to let it out or...It usually happens in the course of five minutes or so, or it doesn’t happen at all.  I can’t sit down and say, “Now, I’m gonna write a song.”  That’s just me.  I can’t speak for these other cats.

JG: What are your thoughts on the jamband scene?

BS: I’ve been immersed in it for the last 25 years.  I play in this band called Living Earth, which is, for lack of a better way of putting it, a passionate tribute to the Grateful Dead.  We play with some nice folks, like Bernie Siegel, and we played with Barry Sless over the years.  That’s very cool.  It’s a place for me to emote in a way that I can’t emote anywhere else.  And, I’ll probably always do it in some capacity.

JG: Who is your favorite jamband?

BS: Grateful Dead. They’re the archetypal model. What jam means right now is…it depends on who you ask that question.  Jamband means a lot.  It means John Scofield, it means Railroad Earth, it means Particle, it means Umphrey’s McGee, it means Widespread Panic.  It means a lot of fucking things, man.  I don’t what it means exactly, but it’s all good, you know. I support it.  I’m part of it. The band’s a part of it.

JG:  Okay.  One last question, man: what’s your favorite movie and why?

BS: My favorite movie? Oh, shit. Groundhog Day.

JG: Why?

BS: Because the guy that walks through life that’s kinda fucked up with whatever is suddenly thrust into a situation where he has to live the same day over and over and over and over again.  And, it bites you at first.  But, eventually, probably after a millennium of the next same day, he turns into this really whole person.  I mean, it’s kind of fantastical, of course, for somebody to actually work themselves or learn to that capacity. But, there’s a moral there and that is…what is the moral?  The moral is if you work hard enough at something and you really try to make yourself better, dreams will come true.  That’s what we’re jumping at here—just dreams.   We’ve been chasing dreams all of our lives, individually.  And, now, we’re sort of in some little collective.  We’ll see what happens.