These performances were touching, funny, and revealed the many layers of Artis the Spoonman. Arguably the best part of the night happened when his friends brought him out a giant, spoon-shaped, birthday cake.
This was the final touch that made me fall in love with this community. Even if one is not familiar with spoon music, it is regardless something that you should not miss the opportunity to see.
The tight-knit, family atmosphere of the performance is surely something that all are bound to enjoy. Hats off to Artis for a once in a lifetime experience. The editor may be reached at [email protected]. A Bachelor Franchise Update. Cancel reply. Your email address will not be published. Close Menu. He recalled a time "a 7-year-old came and picked up two spoons, and I'll be damned if he didn't hold them back to back and play it.
Whatever he did, it was going on. Just to pat my own back, I gave him a pair. He started playing for kids at the Seattle Children's Hospital in the '70s, performing and then teaching. He'd go from room to room, playing for three or four kids at a time; one little girl, he said, was indifferent when he first played for her. Then they brought all the kids together in a waiting room. At the end of the show, he gave her two small spoons to try.
Making music with minimal equipment, sticks or spoons or whatever's laying around, or just with clapping and snapping and slapping, is fun and free and everyone can do it. It is this moment, this experience. When he was about 10, his mom gave him and his sister each a pair of musical spoons, the kind that are connected with a plastic handle. They were made by Walt Haines, who had a cottage industry funded by Lawrence Welk. Artis loves Lawrence Welk.
Many, many years after he broke that first pair of spoons, Artis was on the street busking and a woman asked him if he'd ever played the kind of spoons with handles. She turned out to be Haines' daughter. Another early influence was seeing some Cossack squat-dancers on the Ed Sullivan Show, doing the drop kick and playing spoons in each hand "hambone style," slapping thighs and chest.
In , while living in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, he began playing teaspoons along with the jukebox at the Fremont Tavern and the Too-High Tavern. People started coming to see him.
Around , someone showed him a move involving playing spoons all the way up the side of his body, to his face. That was the period when he started making a living with his art, playing his rhythms on the street, busking and "chasing the Spoonman," he said. He did so for decades. Advice for buskers: "Do not use it for practicing.
Do not use it for rehearsals. And don't expect any money. If you only get a dollar bill and a dime for the whole day's work, that's two tips. Allow yourself to receive money, but if you're gonna go out there on the sidewalk [to earn money], go sell something or get a job.
Do you want someone to come back two years later and tell you you changed their life by banging some spoons on the sidewalk? Typical Pacific Northwest rain with a coastal breeze welcomed us to his studio. Cardboard boxes and black music crates along with scattered memorabilia were laid about the one room studio. Artis settled himself in front of his computer. Artis turned his computer on, and he handed me a pair of headphones.
We listened to his CD Finally , some of his unreleased recordings and a DVD video performance that he would like to release down the road. Making our way back to his apartment, the sound of waves crashing on the beach filled the brisk, cool air.
We continued to talk about his ideas of writing an autobiography and putting together a DVD of all his previous work, when he paused. You can sit here and listen to all the things going on with the beach. If you have perfect pitch you can tell what key the water and beach is in when the waves come over. You can just listen and hear it. They wanted some simple riffs for the movie, for some background stuff. He's a street musician, but when he's playing on the street, he is given a value and judged completely wrong by someone else.
They think he's a street person, or he's doing this because he can't hold down a regular job. They put him a few pegs down on the social ladder because of how they perceive someone who dresses differently. The lyrics express the sentiment that I much more easily identify with someone like Artis than I would watch him play. On November 10, , he released an album titled Entertain the Entertainers. The album was rated four and a half stars out of five by Allmusic. Artis has performed at many festivals, mostly in Canada and the United States.
Other bands he has played with include Aerosmith and Phish, and he has been a featured performer at Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival and and the Oregon Country Fair.
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