TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The music of Will Holshouser defies easy categorization. Streaming services have variously filed his albums as jazz, folk, even easy listening. There's more than a grain of truth to these classifications, but adjectives like elegant, ebullient and saucy fit much better, and maybe ambitious. Holshouser is an accordionist, and his new recording, "The Lone Wild Bird," is a solo effort, a rarity for a virtuoso on his instrument. Martin Johnson has this review, and after Martin's review, we'll hear my interview with Holshouser. He brought his accordion and played.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "THE LONE WILD BIRD")
MARTIN JOHNSON: Accordionist Will Holshouser has played in a wide variety of bands - from violinist Regina Carter's jazz hybrid group Reverse Thread to singer/songwriters like Suzanne Vega and Rufus Wainwright, to klezmer bands, to his own trio, Musette Explosion. On his latest recording, "Lone Wild Bird," he goes it alone, solo. The austere setting allows Holshouser to really showcase the sound of his instrument and its versatility. In the hymn-like track that we just heard, it can be solemn and pensive, but it can also be boisterous and joyful.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "OURO PRETO")
JOHNSON: The setting also allows us to hear the inner workings of his instrument. Underneath the accordion sound are grunts and huffs from the air that gets pumped inside of it. On the track Avery, he shakes the bellows on the instrument to create a rhythmic underpinning for the tune, almost as if he was accompanied by someone on the washboard.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "AVIARY")
JOHNSON: Holshouser grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the son of two ministers, so hymns were an early part of his musical diet. He was studying jazz piano and turned to accordion when a college pal gave him one as a gift. He was fascinated by the mechanics of the instrument and its versatility. It was a cornerstone in folk musics from New Orleans to Madagascar. And Holshouser, who is 56, was finding his way through his instrument's range at a time when exotic music was rapidly becoming more accessible via the recording boom of the '80s and '90s and the rise of the internet shortly thereafter. It is this variety of music that is reflected on "Lone Wild Bird." Holshouser's original "Three Glasses" is a minor key and intimate tribute to composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "THREE GLASSES")
JOHNSON: Holshouser's jazz roots are a prominent part of the program. "Blue Waters" reflects his interest in counterpoint, and it has a bluesy feel. It's a tribute to jazz organ great Jimmy Smith. You might not get the collard greens and cornbread that Smith's music often evoked, but you can feel the soulful grit.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "BLUE WATERS")
JOHNSON: Holshouser's jazz interest also led him to the traditional hymn "Abide With Me." The music dates back to the 19th century, but legendary jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk recorded an all-horns arrangement. It made the accordionist ponder, what would it have sounded like if Monk played the piano on the track? You can hear some of this idea here.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "ABIDE WITH ME")
JOHNSON: For many music fans, the accordion will bring to mind the music of the Celtic punk rockers The Pogues, and Holshouser touches on the Irish traditions on "Reel To Reel," a tune written in part by his brother-in-law, who makes violins and played in a band with his father, a first-generation Irish immigrant.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "REEL TO REEL")
JOHNSON: There aren't many rules for what you can and cannot do on a solo accordion recording, but it seems essential to address the Cajun tradition, and Holshouser covers the New Orleans waltz "Chez Seychelles" in tandem with "Balfa Waltz" to close out the stellar recording.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HOLSHOUSER'S "CHEZ SEYCHELLES / BALFA WALTZ")
GROSS: Martin Johnson writes about jazz for the Wall Street Journal and DownBeat. He reviewed "The Lone Wild Bird" by Will Holshouser. I recorded an interview with Holshouser a few years ago, during which he played his accordion. We'll hear that after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Now that we've heard Martin Johnson's enthusiastic review of the new solo album "The Lone Wild Bird," by accordion player Will Holshouser, let's hear from Holshouser. I spoke with him in 2014 when his album "Introducing Musette Explosion" was released. It features French waltzes and dances, as well as original songs in the musette style. He brought his accordion to the studio and played.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: Since I think most people don't have an accordion at home and don't get to see accordion very much, I'm assuming a lot of people aren't really familiar with what an accordion can really do and how it works. So give us a little tour of your very beautiful accordion.
WILL HOLSHOUSER: Well, sure. Well, on the right side, there's a keyboard. It looks like a piano keyboard. And these keys - when you push a key, it opens a valve in the accordion, and that allows air to pass over metal reeds, which are inside the box. So...
(SOUNDBITE OF ACCORDION WHOOSHING)
HOLSHOUSER: The nickname for it - one nickname for it is the squeezebox. So as you move the bellows back and forth, that generates the air. And then when you push the keys on the right hand or the buttons on the left hand, that lets the air through, and the reeds sound. So my accordion has four sets of reeds. It can play very low notes on the right hand...
(Playing accordion).
...Or very high notes if you hit a - there's these register switches. You can change the reed bank that's activated.
(Playing accordion).
And then there are two middle sets of reeds, which are slightly detuned.
(Playing accordion).
And you can also play all four sets together.
(Playing accordion).
And then the left hand has buttons, which in the standard accordion system are bass notes and chords.
(Playing accordion).
And this was made, invented in the 19th century to play music that did that...
(Playing accordion).
...European music. And it's all based, of course, around the European tonal system. That system is called Stradella. There's a town in Italy called Stradella where it was invented. So it's a lot of fun. It's a very versatile instrument with a very wide range and wide dynamics. The dynamics come from the bellows, which - it's often said the bellows in the accordion is like the bow of a violin. That's where you get dynamics, expression and a whole host of other effects.
GROSS: So manipulate the bellows differently to give us a sense of how the tone changes depending on how you're - what's the verb for what you do with the bellows (laughter)? What's the right verb?
HOLSHOUSER: Bellowing
GROSS: Bellowing, all right (laughter).
HOLSHOUSER: I suppose, but yeah. Well, you know, it's mostly dynamics. But you can - the sound of the note does change as you change the air pressure.
(Playing accordion).
GROSS: So that's going from slow to fast, in terms of what you're doing with the bellows?
HOLSHOUSER: Yeah, as you push harder, it gets louder, as you push more air across the reed. And there's some special effects. If you open the valve halfway and push the air really hard, it can bend the pitch.
(Playing accordion).
GROSS: Wow.
HOLSHOUSER: (Laughter).
GROSS: I didn't know you could bend notes on accordion. To bend notes on a keyboard instrument...
HOLSHOUSER: Yeah.
GROSS: ...That's not a synthesizer, that's pretty (laughter)...
HOLSHOUSER: Right.
GROSS: Pretty good. So I should ask you to play a song for us.
HOLSHOUSER: OK.
GROSS: And your new album, "Introducing Musette Explosion," is all musette, which is a type of French song. Tell us what the genre is.
HOLSHOUSER: Well, it's basically French dance hall music from the first half of the 20th century. And it's lead - accordion is the lead instrument. Guitar is also very important. And one of the standard forms in this type of music is the waltz, and to us as Americans, it sounds iconically French. But then if you look beneath the surface, it actually has a very multicultural family tree.
So it began with French peasants in Paris playing an instrument called the musette, which was actually a little bagpipe. And then around 1900, there was a wave of Italian immigrants who brought the accordion and a lot of their music to Paris. And they kind of took over the dance halls. The accordion became the lead instrument. The bagpipe was forgotten but left its name to the genre, musette. And there were also a large Roma Gypsy population in France, and they contributed a lot of their style to this genre also. Some people say that Roma guitarists were the first ones to write waltzes in minor keys, which became a classic musette sound.
GROSS: In the tradition that Django Reinhardt was from?
HOLSHOUSER: Exactly. His first gig was playing banjo in musette dance bands.
GROSS: Banjo? Wow.
HOLSHOUSER: Yeah.
GROSS: Oh. You have banjo - your guitar player, Matt Munisteri, plays banjo on some of the tracks.
HOLSHOUSER: That's right.
GROSS: On your album. Oh, OK, OK.
HOLSHOUSER: Yeah. Yeah.
GROSS: So you should play one of the musettes from your album for us. Do you want to do "Swing Valse"?
HOLSHOUSER: Sure. That sounds great.
(SOUNDBITE OF ACCORDION CLICKING)
GROSS: What are you doing to your accordion (laughter)?
HOLSHOUSER: Oh, I was just making sure that I had the right register on.
GROSS: OK.
HOLSHOUSER: Because you can - depending on which register you have, you can get, you know, in a different octave. Each one has a sort of different sound or a different flavor.
GROSS: OK. And this is my guest, Will Holshouser.
HOLSHOUSER: All right. This is "Swing Valse," written by Baro Ferret and Gus Viseur.
(Playing accordion).
GROSS: That's great. That's just so beautiful.
HOLSHOUSER: Thank you.
GROSS: So how were you first introduced to the songs known as musette?
HOLSHOUSER: Through reissues that came out in the 1990s - there's a great label in France called Fremeaux And Associates. So I heard them, and I was struck by this music and kind of blown away by - how do they get these sounds out of the accordion? And Matt Munisteri, my friend, felt the same way. And that's sort of how we started playing together. We were both interested in French musette. And it's so expressive, virtuosic. It's an unusual type of some of these tunes, especially swing valse, are hybrids of jazz and French music. So when some of these French musette musicians fell in love with jazz in the '20s and '30s, they began to write these hybrid tunes that were - and hence the name swing valse - inspired by the American records that they were crazy about.
GROSS: We'll hear more of my interview with Will Holshouser, and he'll play more music, after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with accordion player Will Holshouser in 2014, after the release of his album "Introducing Musette Explosion." He has a new solo album called "The Lone Wild Bird."
There's something very old-fashioned and avant-garde about the accordion, and me - so if I can explain that (ph), it seems old-fashioned because in this era of, like, digital instruments and everything, like, you're physically pumping air into it, you know? You're doing it manually to get the air over the reeds to create the sound. But there's something kind of avant-garde about it because you can get all these really unusual overtones through this array of buttons, almost as if it was some kind of either synthesizer or organ where you're - you know, you're just creating unusual harmonics.
HOLSHOUSER: It's true. And especially, yeah, dissonance on the accordion, playing notes very close together, can bring out those overtones. And there's a whole range of effects you can get.
GROSS: Go, show us some effects you can get.
HOLSHOUSER: All right, well, here's a - here's some very high notes with special overtones.
(Playing accordion).
And if you shake the bellows, you can make it...
(Playing accordion).
...Shimmer like that. You can do these bending notes, like I showed you before.
(Playing accordion).
There's sort of cluster - nice clusters you can get.
(Playing accordion).
Let your hand...
GROSS: I like that.
(LAUGHTER)
HOLSHOUSER: ...Flop around on the keyboard like a fish. There's rhythmic things you can do with the bellows.
(Playing accordion).
Sometimes, when I play for my daughter's class, I'll do a train effect, and the kids like that.
(Playing accordion).
GROSS: I like that, too.
HOLSHOUSER: (Playing accordion).
GROSS: (Laughter).
HOLSHOUSER: Anyway, so yeah, that's - and that's done by shaking the bellows back and forth. So yeah, there are all kinds of things. You can do - you know, you can use the breath, the breathing sound.
(Playing accordion).
And you just heard the bellows kind of squeezing, flopping together. So yeah, there's a whole bunch of effects you can get.
GROSS: I love it. I love it. There's an original song I'm going to ask you to play that you do on your new album "The Musette Explosion." And this is an original song in the style of a French musette. And it's called "Chanson Pop," which translates to pop song.
HOLSHOUSER: Yes.
GROSS: So would you talk about composing it? And there's two different parts to the song. It's, like, a six-minute piece on the recording. I'm going to ask you to play an excerpt of the opening melody, and then we'll talk about that, and then we'll play an excerpt. I'm going to ask you to play an excerpt from deeper in.
HOLSHOUSER: OK.
GROSS: So - but give us an overview of this piece and writing it and what your intention was.
HOLSHOUSER: Well, one of the kinds of work that I've really enjoyed doing as an accordionist in New York over the last, you know, 20 years or so is accompanying singers, and I've had great pleasure to accompany some singers that do French repertoire from the chanson tradition, which, of course, just means song. But it's - for example, the most famous exponent of the Chanson tradition is Edith Piaf.
And for a while, I was playing with a great singer from France named Michel Ermont (ph), and I was the only accompanist. It was really fun because I was - it was just vocals and accordion, so I was the entire backdrop. And he would - he was very good at coaching me in developing these accompaniments. And he said, a song - one of these songs is like a movie. So this verse is one scene, and you need to create a backdrop. Maybe it's, like, a sunny day or something. Then the next verse or the next part of the song is totally different. Create a different backdrop.
So to me, learning about that tradition - which is a little different from the musette tradition. The musette tradition is more the waltzes, the dances, the dance music, and the chanson tradition is more the poetic songwriting. There's some overlap, but this piece, I was thinking of some of those Piaf songs and not really trying to imitate them but sort of trying to tap into the wonderful grandiosity of some of those pieces. So I'll play the opening melody first.
GROSS: Perfect. Yes.
HOLSHOUSER: OK.
(Playing accordion).
GROSS: Oh that's beautiful. And that's Will Holshouser in our studio, playing the opening of his song "Chanson Pop." And I know you said that that's based on, like, chanson, French song. To me, it sounds like it's also based on hymns.
HOLSHOUSER: OK.
GROSS: And I know that your father was a minister.
HOLSHOUSER: That's right.
GROSS: And I imagine you heard a lot of hymns growing up. Do you hear a little hymn-like quality in that piece?
HOLSHOUSER: You're a very perceptive listener.
GROSS: Aren't I?
HOLSHOUSER: Yes (laughter), absolutely. And that's really - for me, that's almost the beginning - very beginning of my musical life, my interest in music, is going to church as a kid and hearing these hymns and feeling something stirring inside me that I couldn't describe - you know, feeling almost, like, a kind of truth or something that was a very direct experience and that I really couldn't put into words.
GROSS: Was it a combination of beautiful music in a sacred place?
HOLSHOUSER: I think so, yeah. It was, you know, clearly people coming together to be quiet and to think about serious things. And the - my first music teacher was the artist in residence at our church, and he wrote jazz for the services. His name is Douglas Cook (ph), and he wrote very beautiful, very dissonant, meditative jazz that would be in the services. So for me, that's the beginning of a lot of my - what I like about music is the hymns, the music that Doug wrote in our service. And to me, it's - music - that's what's great about music is it's this internal language that we can all share. It's accessible to everybody.
GROSS: My interview with Will Holshouser was recorded in 2014. He has a new solo accordion album called "The Lone Wild Bird." Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, we'll talk about how JD Vance rose from a struggling Ohio steel town to Yale Law School to Venture Capital and now the vice presidency. Along the way, he shed old convictions and adopted new ones, some deeply divisive. We'll talk with Atlantic magazine staffwriter George Packer about Vance's transformation and what it reveals about the future of American politics. I hope you'll join us.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR'S executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering today from Adam Staniszewski. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson (ph). Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
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