In this series, Joselyn explores what it takes to make the leap from campground picker to professional performer. In this ninth installment, we hear from Tristan Clarridge, whose many accolades as a fiddler and cellist include five-time winner in the Grand National Champion division at the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest in Weiser, Idaho, and two-time winner of the Grand Master Fiddler Championship in Franklin, Tennessee.
Joselyn Sky: What do you remember about your first tour, and what have you learned about touring since then?
Tristan Clarridge: It depends what you mean by tour, because I remember playing a series of shows with my sister as a family band when I was 4, and I don’t remember as much from that … We did a bunch of twin fiddling, and I sang a song. I remember the feeling of singing harmony. We didn’t know about three-part harmony yet, but she and I sang two-part harmonies.
The first thing that felt like a tour … I was 19, and Darol Anger had invited me to come on a Republic of Strings tour as the cellist. I really didn’t consider myself a cellist at that point, so that was an interesting journey as far as self-confidence.
It was a dilemma for me at first, because he’d asked me to sit in on a show at the Freight & Salvage, and I played a couple of tunes … I think it went pretty well, but I tried to stay out of Darol’s way. He came to me after and said, “I’d like to invite you on this tour, but on condition that you won’t play tentatively and that you’ll just step forward and be fully present.” I thought, “Well, it was for his sake that I was trying to stay out of the way.”
If you were in the middle of a conversation about bluegrass with all your bluegrass heroes—like, Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs were there—you probably wouldn’t say much. Because you’d think, “It’d probably be better if they say things about bluegrass, than if I say things about bluegrass.” So I felt that way being on stage with Darol, Scott Nygaard, and Brittany [Haas]. Especially playing an instrument that I didn’t really think of myself as really playing at that point … It was a big learning experience.
What is your pre-show routine?
There are a lot of variables on tour, as far as where you are and what it’s like physically and emotionally. I would say it varies a lot depending on the setting; because for me it’s about finding balance within myself, wherever I am—correcting whatever imbalances are in the current environment. So maybe you’re worried and anxious, or just tired. Maybe you woke up at 4 in the morning to get there … It’s like, how many pieces can I put into place so I’ll be feeling my best and feeling musical at 7:30 tonight?
There’ve been a lot of tours where, if I wasn’t quite feeling like jumping on stage and being excited, I’d go for a run around the block … The contrast is doing the very slowest open string bowing warm-ups to calm the mind. Basically you’re trying to harness the right kind of excitement, so that it’s excitement rather than nervousness.
How do you approach playing for bigger venues vs smaller ones?
With a small venue, it’s a lot easier to relate to the people as just individual people. It’s easier in most ways. Occasionally it can be harder, especially depending on who the people are; maybe you know them really well, or admire things about them or about their music. So, that can be a challenge, but mostly it’s easier because it’s not a big crowd that’s staring you down … With a big venue, it helps me to imagine that they’re all individual people with lives relatively imperfect like mine, and they probably have things that would make them uncomfortable also, like, possibly, being on stage in front of a bunch of people. So you remember that they are just like you. A small venue is easier in that way.
For me though, the biggest difference is that a small venue is likely to have less or no PA system between you and the listener. That’s a lot easier for me because you can project the actual sound—the actual resonant frequencies of the instrument—straight to the ears of the listener and you can almost always hear the detail of that yourself way better than even the best monitors.
Sometimes I play with my eyes closed—if it’s a big venue— and I’ll picture that I’m sitting in one of the seats, hearing the cello come at me, in order to connect with what their experience may be.
Do you have any tips for coming up with song and setlist arrangements?
The two bands I’ve toured with the most are highly arranged, and I love a good arrangement. But I would say it’s worth really questioning when you have something that you think you should do in an arrangement of a song. Consider, if you weren’t in the know, if you were just the listener, would this arrangement detail actually change your experience at all?
A lot of things people put into song arrangements—like, this thing is going to happen this time, you’re going to play the harmony the second time, and there’s going to be two extra bars before the third chorus—a lot of it doesn’t really matter. If it makes you more comfortable and enjoy playing the song more, then that matters. But a lot of the details themselves, the listener doesn’t really care. But there’s some things that really do matter. If the bridge modulates up a major third, those kinds of things really do affect how it sounds. If everyone gets really quiet suddenly on this verse … Listening back to yourself as an impartial audience observer is the best way to know how well an arrangement’s working.
The first three songs of a setlist really set the tone. That’s a place to put most of one’s attention. Like an arrangement, beginnings and ends, to some extent, are the big things. But to me one of the biggest things—as well as tempo difference—is the harmonic content of the setlist. What key changes you have where, and how long you stay in a certain spot. You want to counterbalance that with practicalities; often there’s practicalities to staying in one key, whether it’s instrument tunings, capos, or being warmed up in a certain key. Sometimes that’s great for the listener to have two or three songs in E, and you really get in an E major mood and feeling.
Performers pay a lot of attention to the diversity of switching everything around in setlists. Some of that’s good, but I think sometimes that gets too much focus in setlist making, and we might want to give more attention to continuity in setlists.
Just like loud and soft, fast and slow are relative to each other. Alison Krauss is a master of this on her records. A song that’s slightly faster than really slow will sound fast when you go into it compared to the thing you came from. And something you play at 60 percent of your volume capacity on your instrument will sound really loud if you were just playing at 20 percent. It’s more about the shape and continuity of the set list. You don’t always have to alternate between fast and slow, or change keys, in order for it to be interesting. Sometimes you change something just slightly, or put a song that’s the same tempo but in a drastically different key. It’s a tritone away from where the last song was. The masters of composition are able to use subtle contrast. Something that’s almost the same, like modulating a melody, where you hear the same melody but in a new key. Our ear likes familiarity.
How do you navigate staying true to bluegrass roots, while still creating your own unique sound?
As far as staying true to bluegrass roots, it’s important to remember that bluegrass was in the name of Bill Monroe’s band, and Bill Monroe was doing something that was both completely different than anyone else had done, and was informed simply by just who he was and what he had heard …
If we want to be true to roots and we’re falling somewhere in a lineage of bluegrass music, it’s important to remember that in order to be living, it has to be changing—it has to be alive. But also, that many of the people that we admire who developed a new sound; they were actually really well versed in an old sound.
Studying and listening to an old sound really moves me, because I can really hear a lot of depth in it. Then, when it comes time to actually create my own music, there is no trying to stay true to something—unless it’s to stay true to myself. So, whoever I am, that’s the music I want to come out … The point is to make music the way you hear it. But the way you hear it is a product of everything you listen to, and even more so how you live, and what you do in your life.
We like bluegrass music because of many of the architects of bluegrass music, which are not just Bill Monroe, of course—but he’s a good example. They lived a life of a lot of work and a lot of hardship. They heard the sounds of the mountains; they heard trains and horses. The galloping of a horse—that’s pretty apparent in bluegrass music, I think. If you want to stay true to bluegrass music, think about the things that actually inspired the sound of it and relate to those in your life … The place to be conscious and responsible is in what you put in your ears and how you live your life, and what you want to be inspired by. Immerse yourself in that and dig deep into the roots.
How do you engage with the audience and make them excited about your music, especially if the energy feels low?
First and foremost, you have to not worry that they’re not engaged. Which can be tough, but just don’t put your focus on it, not while you’re performing. If you’re going to focus on that, I would suggest focusing on their experience, not your experience of whether they’re engaged, because that leads to a self-consciousness that doesn’t help in any kind of performing.
There’s practical tips: Say something funny; say something surprising. It might have to surprise you if it’s actually gonna surprise them. It can’t be premeditated, or at least not fully. Hit them with some contrast, wake them up a little bit. That’s not necessarily to play as fast as you can, just some kind of contrast.
What’s the first thing that comes to mind as a piece of advice for someone looking to make a career as a performing musician?
Real art comes from following the art and not from doing things for money … Basically, every opportunity, every band I’ve joined, every record I’ve gotten to make, has led from going somewhere, because I enjoyed the music and the people. I’ve been in the right place at the right time because it was something I wanted to do.
I think of Tim O’Brien retelling the advice that John Hartford gave him. Basically, in essence, his advice to Tim was to not get famous doing something you don’t like doing. If you’re always true to what actually excites you, as far as what music you make and what gigs you take or don’t take, you’ll avoid the risk of finding yourself supposedly successful, in a financial sense, at doing the thing that isn’t actually most true to yourself.
Do the thing that’s really true to yourself. It takes a lot of faith, but have faith that the money and the material success will follow as much as is needed.
