By Todd Ellison - March 1995
For Acoustic Guitar Magazine
He doesn’t much like labels, but if you call Harvey Reid a “modern minstrel” he won’t mind. What’s a modern minstrel? In Reid’s case it’s a guy who plies the trade of steel string pluckery on six and twelve string guitar, mandolin, banjo and autoharp. This well-traveled man who’s not afraid of the label “folksinger,” is also a songwriter and recording artist who has ten albums under his belt. And he’s performed on-stage with numerous legends of the folk, folk-rock and country genres.
Reid is definitely his own man. As an instrumentalist, the term versatile virtuoso may well be appropriate. Acoustic guitar is his principal instrument, but even here diversity is the name of the game. He’s plays both six and twelve string guitars, has earned “champion” titles for both his flatpicking and fingerpicking and is an accomplished slide player as well. Reid has also made a contribution to the technology of guitar playing as inventor of the Third Hand Capo, a clever mechanical device that allows any combination of strings to be clamped. Then there are the books he’s written, including Modern Folk Guitar, the first college-level folk guitar textbook ever published.
Stylistically, Reid has chosen to become a master of many instrumental flavors rather than to develop any one “signature” style. He is fluent in such domains as baroque, Celtic, ragtime, blues and their myriad folk offspring. His playing is evocative and is cool or hot, sparse or dense, wild or poignant as needed by the song.
Reid is also his own business. “Making music has been my entire source of livelihood for twenty years, going on twenty-one; my career is almost old enough to vote,” he notes with a touch of stubborn Yankee pride. The rocky Maine coast near the New Hampshire border serves as home base, recording studio and corporate headquarters of Woodpecker Records.
In live performances, you start to get the idea that the man behind the instruments is propelled by a serious iconoclastic streak. Reid sits—not stands—comfortably in front of the audience and plays with passion, inspiration and not a little perspiration. Between tunes his patter is spiked with a dry, deadpan wit, occasionally mordant. But like a fine wine, never bitter.
Reid clearly enjoys performing, even after two decades of minstreldom. “I discovered at a very early age,” says Reid, “that I like to play music for people. I started out playing at parties and street corners and everywhere I was. I played in bars for fifteen years; I’ve done probably 4,000 gigs of every conceivable sort plus every open mike and street corner and all night campfire.” This sort of life is probably not what Reid’s parents expected from a son who majored in math and French in college.
“The sound of the steel stringed acoustic guitar was the sound that really snapped me to attention,” says Reid of his musical origins. “I first heard that sound when I was probably eighteen or something. I heard Doc Watson and Norman Blake and all those guys all at once in a period of a few months, and I’ve never wavered from that sound.”
Reid grouses that the music education system in America at the time made it impossible to study the instruments he loved. “The kind of music I was interested in was not taught in school; they don’t allow you to study steel string guitar. They offered me an opportunity to study Macedonian bagpipes or Indonesian gamelan, but I couldn’t study autoharp or banjo or Dobro or mandolin or steel string guitar or any of the instruments that really interested me. I had to basically quit school to study music.” And he did, dropping out of graduate school after two weeks, to become a full-time musician.
Over the years Reid has developed a deep affection for traditional American music. “There is more music out there than just what we write ourselves,” he observes, decrying the purely economic motivations behind much of the mediocre material recorded by “corporate music.” Reid put out “Steel Drivin’ Man,” a recording which contained 19 traditional ballads, folk songs and tunes—no originals—as “sort of a protest statement” against this pattern.
Reid’s solo minstrel orientation extends to recording. His jacket notes to “Steel Drivin’ Man” tell the story. “There was a great temptation to invite my musician friends to help, but I felt that folk songs are preserved properly only in the memories of individuals, and that the right way to present this music in its purest form was completely solo. So it went straight into the digital recorder—no tricks, no makeup, just me and my hands, feet, voice and various instruments.”
“The Steel Drivin’ Man album was kind of a watershed.” he recalls. “I was so frustrated because I felt that what I was doing [solo performing] had no value. Luckily, people seemed to like it. Even now, there’s a constant temptation to think that it’s not enough if it’s just you doing it. Even though I’m a guy who’s sort of known for doing it, it’s still hard for me. Every time.”
The success of that album no doubt had something to do with the 1994 release of “Chestnuts,” a sparkling all-instrumental album of old favorites. Interestingly, in this collection he yielded to temptation; more than half of the cuts are ensemble pieces. But only other steel-stringed instruments, of course.
Although Reid has become proficient at wearing a lot of hats, he didn’t initially take on being his own record company by choice. “I tried to get a record deal,” he recalls ruefully. “I sent my stuff to all the places, but for some reason I don’t have what you call a ‘commercial sound.’ I don’t fit neatly into any of the categories; I’m not a bluesman, I’m not a hillbilly, I’m not a maestro. That kind of makes me like a basketball player who’s five feet tall. It means that I can’t play in the big leagues. But does it mean that I should give up and just say ‘forget it, kid, you’ll never play ball?’ There is room in the world for people who do not fit into commercial music.”
As you might guess, Reid is not a great fan of Hollywood and Nashville. He says, piquantly: “The list of people whose creative output has been improved by their contact with multi-national entertainment corporations is a short list.”
Reid seems to be comfortable with his role as a modern minstrel on the outside of the music establishment. “The solo guitar—the minstrel thing—you can do a helluva lot with just you and your guitar. But in this world of heavily produced music it requires constant vigilance to remind yourself that it’s okay to be a solo guy.” He enthuses about current musical projects which include recording music for two new albums: a collection of banjo music which he plays on the 6-string banjo and a batch of partial capo tunes. “Maybe it’s ‘non-commercial,’ but I’m content to be a ‘fringe’ player, playing for audiences of people who understand the difference between handmade music and machine made music. It’s a meaningful thing and it’s a good life.”