From Seattle, banjo master Dave Leddel will join Evo and Barry Shultz at Cal Arts Academy. 6:30 pm, $6 suggested donation. A public performance is also in the works. Check the calendar at evobluestein.com. You’ll want to listen, even if you don’t like to dance! I asked Dave a few questions so you can get to know him better. –Evo

I’m from Long Beach, California. I started playing music in1960–folk and old time. My brother, who played Balkan music was brought up to Sweet’s Mill with another player. He encouraged me to go up.

 I like the abandon of old time music, the comparative raucousness, primitiveness, the helter-skelter, and the rhythm which can either be like gently rocking in a cradle or like going down a steep rocky hill in a toboggan.

 Banjo music can be like all of the above and has multiple functions in old time music.  Not only can it support the rhythm, the melody, and the mood, but it can also be a sensitive accompanist to singing. Not many people know this but banjo played alone with fiddle can be a very complete sound. Before the guitar entered into country music, either a solo banjo or fiddle would be the only instrument that would play solo for a square dance.

When I first started, Snuffy Jenkins, Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley,  Don Reno, the early bluegrass masters, inspired my picking.  I liked to play bluegrass at the time. Also Hobart Smith was my chief frailing inspiration and he still is. Hobart was so bombastic, aggressive, and raw. It’s kind of hard to find someone to compare to him.  I guess Uncle Dave Macon on the picking, along with maybe George Pegram or Roscoe Holcomb, in some ways. 

I was very fortunate to have a playing buddy named Richard Geiger.  We met while working out on the track field in junior high. 

Miraculously we had identical interests which grew in tandem as we got older.  There was a McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Long Beach at the time, which was just like the well-known store in Santa Monica.  Every Saturday it was a meeting of the high-school regulars at that store.  John McEwan, who would later become a famous banjo player and other players who would eventually form the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, would be there.  Also around the area was Tom Carvey, who would eventually form a rock band in L.A., and Tony with his brother Larry Rice.  There was no internet back then of course, but fortunately, for the two of us, we were not isolated.