Tonya plays guitar, sings and writes most of the songs for the band Old Belle that she co-founded. We chatted on the Bearcat Stringband’s couch at the Good Old Fashioned Bluegrass Festival this year.
db: How did you get started playing music?
tn: I grew up with music. My dad, Jeff Newstetter, is a musician, acoustic guitar player, songwriter, and artist. He played lots of stuff – folk, blues, and jazz. From the time I was really little I’ve been singing, and I remember sitting on his lap filling in the blanks to songs like You Are My Sunshine, which was a family favorite. Also, my mom is an actress, teacher, and great singer, so it was all around me.
db: What instruments do you play?
tn: My first instruments were recorder and clarinet in primary, middle, and high school. I was lucky to have gone to a high school that had a good marching band, which made up about a quarter of the school. I thought all the cool kids played trombone, so I learned that in my junior year.
db: Did you have any private lessons?
tn: I had some private piano lessons but not a lot. I taught clarinet some.
db: When did you take up guitar?
tn: That was after college. I actually stopped playing music for a while and focused on school. I thought about joining the Cal band but never did. It’s funny though, I thought I never wanted to play guitar because that’s what my dad played, but it turns out that I really wanted to play guitar, very much like him.
db: Is that when you were bitten by the bluegrass bug?
tn: I’d heard bluegrass when I went to the Strawberry Music Festival in college, but it wasn’t until our friends in the band the Creek started a pure bluegrass band that I got more interested. They’ve since taken some different directions, but they inspired us to start our own thing. I always loved the 80’s and 90’s country music like Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks, and the Dixie Chicks, so I kind of knew I wanted to do something in that vein.
db: Were you still involved with your dad musically at this point?
tn: Oh, sure. Around that time, he took me to Guitar Center and bought me my first guitar. That’s when I started teaching myself to be in this band. I’ve always talked to my dad about music. He taught me how to improvise, which I was terrified to do. I was in a great music theory class in high school. The sight singing and ear training helped me a lot with bluegrass harmonies.
db: Where did you start Old Belle?
tn: We just started writing a bunch of songs, all the lyrics and chords.
db: Did writing come natural to you?
tn: Yes. A lot of my friends did it and I like telling a story, my story, about the small town girl from the foothills going off to the big city. We borrow from country songs and toy around with the melodies in our head until they come together. Ashley has written a lot of lyrics, especially to the early songs, and we did co-arranging.
db: Would you describe the early sound as a pure bluegrass sound?
tn: Not really. It wasn’t until Niki Savage, our great old time fiddle player, joined that I personally started getting into and singing more bluegrass.
db: What was that like for you and the band?
tn: After meeting her, I started following her to bluegrass jams and found out that you have to learn to call and lead a song in a bluegrass jam setting. The Bay Area has a wonderful and supportive bluegrass community. When I came upon this scene, it was a time when I was kind of searching for my life passion, and I think that’s why I always try to play fearlessly.
db: Where did the band name come from?
tn: It came from a song my dad wrote about our old Plymouth Belvedere we had growing up that we nicknamed it Old Bel.
db: You’re also involved with the Handsome Ladies. Tell us about that.
tn: It’s really exciting. I love my band where ¾ of us are women playing our own songs. We’ve noticed that jams are usually more men than women, and that can be frustrating and intimating for some women. There are built up perceptions about what women can and cannot do. A lot of women don’t take solos, due to pressure or fear about how fast they can pick, etc. There’s no judgment here, but being a woman in that environment can be very intimidating, so a few of us decided to create a collective of female bluegrass musicians to support and inspire individual female musicians in our bluegrass community. We focus on traditional bluegrass music, how to jam, and how to call and end a song.
db: That’s really cool. Tell us more.
tn: Jessica Furui, Gina Astesana, and I all met probably through Niki at some camp or festival. We played for a couple years informally in a small self-contained environment until one day we just decided to open it up and schedule a regular jam to get women out there playing music. It’s gotten more formal in the last year, where the core-founding members meet regularly to discuss projects, develop a mission statement, do PR, and figure out what we want to create in the world of bluegrass music for women. We’ve played on KKUP and a showcase at the Kentucky Twisters camp at the CBA Fathers Day Festival. We host a monthly jam at Amnesia in San Francisco the third Monday of the month and also a Berkeley house jam open to women of all levels.
db: Have you been affiliated with CBA Kids on Bluegrass in any way?
tn: No, I kind of missed that since I didn’t get involved with bluegrass until I was older.
db: What kind of guitar do you play?
tn: I’ve upgraded a couple times and now have a Collings D2H dreadnought that I love. Gryphon Strings in Palo Alto is a wonderful place to buy instruments. I also use Blue Chip picks. My dad thinks it’s ridiculous to pay that much but I notice a difference.
db: What’s the next level for you, goals and such?
tn: I still feel I don’t have a guitar idol or know what I want to really sound like. I can do flatpicking and fiddle tunes but I don’t feel I have my own personal sound yet. I think that comes from more years of improvising, trying stuff out and playing different things. I also want to be more conscientious about listening to guitar players, bluegrass or other it doesn’t matter. I mean, I love Doc Watson but I don’t think I’m ever going to play like Doc Watson.
db: So you continue to improve and find your own sound on guitar?
tn: Yes. I’d like to improvise solos better and play things that are not just single notes. Double stops, chord melodies, up the neck. Courtney Hartman, a female flatpicker guitarist, and the amazing Della Mae are two people I really like. They both have a wonderful sound, not strictly bluegrass, but an interesting layer of sound the whole band can play over.
db: Any other guitarists you like?
tn: I’ve been listening a lot to Larry Sparks. His guitar playing is not super complicated, but he has really solid solos. Doc Watson is just perfect in every way in my opinion.
db: Do you play any fiddle tunes?
tn: I recently learned all of the parts to Jerusalem Ridge. I like any fiddle tune with a VI chord with that sad and lonesome sound like Billy in the Low Ground. I also like some that are played more in old time circles like Duck River or Red Prairie Dawn.
db: You have a lot of drive in your music. What’s behind that?
tn: It’s my creative self-expression outlet for when I’m feeling frustrated, sad, or angry. When you pick up the guitar or play music, you can’t really think about or focus on anything else. It takes all of your emotional energy and is a full sensory experience, which is a great stress reducer and nice place where I can be me. Oh, and I like singing.
db: You played Vern’s stage at FDF. How was that?
tn: Really, really fun. I was super excited that we got to do that. I love our bluegrass community and playing for a lot of people who I consider friends. We were well received and played almost all originals, plus an a capella song, which is not all that common at bluegrass festivals. People were really welcoming to us and that was exciting.
db: How do you work out your harmonies?
tn: That’s been a long process for us. I’ve been singing seriously since we started Old Belle. I had a lot of ear training and am good at improvising harmonies, but Niki and I have taken lessons with Melody Walker from Front Country, which has been the best. She’s great. At the beginning, I wrote out the harmony parts and painstakingly worked on them note for note to get them right. Learning to sing with someone else takes a lot of time. Now the harmonies flow a lot easier and we both write harmony parts or even ad lib them on occasion, so it’s much more collaborative now.
db: Do you do two- or three-part harmonies?
tn: Mostly two-part but we’re getting Ashley Conrad, our mandolin player, in there. She does a ton of the arrangements of the songs. If there are any special things in a song, like structure, little licks, and other stuff, it’s mostly from her.
db: Do you all sing lead vocal at different times in Old Belle?
tn: I mostly sing the leads but Niki sings one, and we expect as she writes more songs she’ll sing more lead.
db: What singers do you like?
tn: I love Tim O’Brien, but really I like any good singer.
db: Did I see where you also won a songwriting competition?
tn: Yes. I had a song that didn’t really fit with the band. It was an important song for me, so my dad and some friends recorded it and we submitted it to a songwriting competition in Modesto. It won, so I got to go to a songwriting retreat with Joe Craven.
db: What’s dad grass?
tn: That’s funny, our bass player Mike Gubman made that up. He really hangs in there to be in a band with three women. Dad grass is just a term for men who have children and day jobs and come to festivals and jams on the weekends to have a few beers and enjoy playing bluegrass.
db: What advise do you have for young lady players learning to play?
tn: Do it as much as possible and find what gives you focus. It will pay off as you get older and experience life’s ups and downs. Having that creative outlet is crucial and necessary. Also, don’t be afraid to take solos.
db: Do you have any shows coming up you want to pitch?
tn: Nothing comes to mind but it’s always best to check the web site at oldbelle.com.
db: Are you Beatles or Stones?
tn: I don’t really know what that means but I like both. Old Belle’s approach is to play what I describe as southwest charms. We play fairly structured songs with parts all written out and we don’t have improvised solos. The vibe we want is an easy, relaxed sound that isn’t complicated to the listener but it actually is more complicated than your typical bluegrass tune. We love the Eagles’ singing and easygoing sound.
db: Thank you Tonya. I’m sure the readers will enjoy hearing your story.
tn: Absolutely, this was fun.
Dave Berry
