String theory before (GASP) bluegrass
Anna Wiegenstein - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 2/15/07 Section: 80 Hours
- Page 1 of 1
As someone who worked his way up with a stringed instrument for eight years in school, it's hard not to hate Norbert Sarsfield, just a little bit. Would that we all could've taken as easily as he took to the fiddle since picking it up in 2002 - all the world could be a concert.
Unfortunately, this is not the case, and the rest of us will have to settle for envying Sarsfield's ability to learn an instrument he had no background in, and in a scant year, found his own self-described "old-time string band," Iowa City's Gilded Bats.
Oh, and he doesn't really read music, either. The book he brought along to meet with the DI, featuring an ancient-looking fiddle player on the cover, gets much more use for its biography section than the abundant selection of transcribed music.
He prefers, instead, to learn "the way tunes have always been learned," listening over and over again, much like the oldest of old-timers have done.
"It's not just the notes," said the unassuming Sarsfield, stroking his silver-streaked beard in a habitual way. "There's a certain quality you can only get by listening."
He then expanded a bit on this je ne sais quoi notion, making the analogy between music and the spoken word. "If English is your second language, you can learn to speak it [by reading], but maybe it won't sound quite right."
Growing up as a fan of more traditional rock acts, such as Captain Beefheart and Neil Young, it was only in 2000, when Sarsfield was asked to back several fiddle players with his acoustic guitar that he was exposed to the rootsy, "pre-bluegrass" style of music that The Gilded Bats now bring to the area.
"I hadn't ever really heard anything like it before, but when I did hear it, I got obsessed with it," the autodidact Sarsfield said, who two years later took up the fiddle (never the violin - he says the difference is in the slant of the bridge, with a fiddle's being shallower to allow easier droning between the strings).
Now, though he still counts himself as a rock-music fan, his favorite list is far more obscure, thanks to a taste developed for field recordings (or, as he describes them, "tons of recordings of some fiddler who lived in West Virginia in a shack, and someone recorded it in 1930") taken from earlier decades.
The Gilded Bats takes its name from a book by the renowned Gothic-styled author/illustrator Edward Gorey, whose "slightly dark, slightly absurdist quality" eventually led the band members to actually list him among their influences on MySpace.
Sarsfield recalled the moniker from his days spent working for an undergraduate degree at Michigan State University, employed in the special-collections division, host to a great deal of first-edition Gorey works. Plus, he added, it helped that at the time of the band's formation in 2003, Sarsfield was plagued with an actual infestation of bats in his home.
Once the bats had been taken care of, what remained was the connection formed between Sarsfield and Bill Bryant, the band's guitarist, while both doing graduate work in the UI American Studies department. Gilded Bats has gone through several lineup changes in its four years, adding current banjo player Andrew Epstein two years ago and brand-new washtub bassist Chris Clark recently enough that a Feb. 10 gig at the Hall Mall was the group's first time playing a live show together.
Not to worry, though, Sarsfield reported - Clark rocked so hard he not only wore through his protective gloves for the evening, he actually broke the gutbucket in question.
This intensity of performance may perhaps not be expected of a band whose genre, well … it says "old-time," right there in the tag line.
"I think younger people might have a notion that it's boring, it's old, it's not hip, whatever," Sarsfield said in a dismissive manner, going on to say that while the group members continue to play only what they hear from other, older artists, no one should ever confuse a Gilded Bats show with a trip to the museum.
"I can understand the impulse to tell people about it," he said. "We try not to get up to the lecture podium too much. It's really a living thing, and you don't want to pin it down."
In fact, the band's somewhat impromptu, unstudied beginning has brought the group some younger audiences. The band's ethos of "just because you don't know how to do it, doesn't mean you can't do it," as Sarsfield put it, has led many punk-based fans of Do-It-Yourself music to them.
"You make it for yourself," Sarsfield said. Given the ability he so clearly possesses, if there's anyone who could do just that, it's him.
E-mail DI reporter Anna Wiegenstein at:
anna-wiegenstein@uiowa.edu
For more information about barn dances at the Scattergood Friends School, see the venue's website
Unfortunately, this is not the case, and the rest of us will have to settle for envying Sarsfield's ability to learn an instrument he had no background in, and in a scant year, found his own self-described "old-time string band," Iowa City's Gilded Bats.
Oh, and he doesn't really read music, either. The book he brought along to meet with the DI, featuring an ancient-looking fiddle player on the cover, gets much more use for its biography section than the abundant selection of transcribed music.
He prefers, instead, to learn "the way tunes have always been learned," listening over and over again, much like the oldest of old-timers have done.
"It's not just the notes," said the unassuming Sarsfield, stroking his silver-streaked beard in a habitual way. "There's a certain quality you can only get by listening."
He then expanded a bit on this je ne sais quoi notion, making the analogy between music and the spoken word. "If English is your second language, you can learn to speak it [by reading], but maybe it won't sound quite right."
Growing up as a fan of more traditional rock acts, such as Captain Beefheart and Neil Young, it was only in 2000, when Sarsfield was asked to back several fiddle players with his acoustic guitar that he was exposed to the rootsy, "pre-bluegrass" style of music that The Gilded Bats now bring to the area.
"I hadn't ever really heard anything like it before, but when I did hear it, I got obsessed with it," the autodidact Sarsfield said, who two years later took up the fiddle (never the violin - he says the difference is in the slant of the bridge, with a fiddle's being shallower to allow easier droning between the strings).
Now, though he still counts himself as a rock-music fan, his favorite list is far more obscure, thanks to a taste developed for field recordings (or, as he describes them, "tons of recordings of some fiddler who lived in West Virginia in a shack, and someone recorded it in 1930") taken from earlier decades.
The Gilded Bats takes its name from a book by the renowned Gothic-styled author/illustrator Edward Gorey, whose "slightly dark, slightly absurdist quality" eventually led the band members to actually list him among their influences on MySpace.
Sarsfield recalled the moniker from his days spent working for an undergraduate degree at Michigan State University, employed in the special-collections division, host to a great deal of first-edition Gorey works. Plus, he added, it helped that at the time of the band's formation in 2003, Sarsfield was plagued with an actual infestation of bats in his home.
Once the bats had been taken care of, what remained was the connection formed between Sarsfield and Bill Bryant, the band's guitarist, while both doing graduate work in the UI American Studies department. Gilded Bats has gone through several lineup changes in its four years, adding current banjo player Andrew Epstein two years ago and brand-new washtub bassist Chris Clark recently enough that a Feb. 10 gig at the Hall Mall was the group's first time playing a live show together.
Not to worry, though, Sarsfield reported - Clark rocked so hard he not only wore through his protective gloves for the evening, he actually broke the gutbucket in question.
This intensity of performance may perhaps not be expected of a band whose genre, well … it says "old-time," right there in the tag line.
"I think younger people might have a notion that it's boring, it's old, it's not hip, whatever," Sarsfield said in a dismissive manner, going on to say that while the group members continue to play only what they hear from other, older artists, no one should ever confuse a Gilded Bats show with a trip to the museum.
"I can understand the impulse to tell people about it," he said. "We try not to get up to the lecture podium too much. It's really a living thing, and you don't want to pin it down."
In fact, the band's somewhat impromptu, unstudied beginning has brought the group some younger audiences. The band's ethos of "just because you don't know how to do it, doesn't mean you can't do it," as Sarsfield put it, has led many punk-based fans of Do-It-Yourself music to them.
"You make it for yourself," Sarsfield said. Given the ability he so clearly possesses, if there's anyone who could do just that, it's him.
E-mail DI reporter Anna Wiegenstein at:
anna-wiegenstein@uiowa.edu
For more information about barn dances at the Scattergood Friends School, see the venue's website
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