My mother came from St. Thomas. I heard that melody and all I did was actually adapt it. I made my adaptation of sort of an island traditional melody. It did become sort of my trademark tune.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
My mother - the Irish side of the family - was very musical. My mother was a singer; there was music around the house all the time.
My father used to sing to me in my mother's womb. I think I can name about any tune in two beats.
Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.
My dad's Irish music was such a huge influence.
I started hitching about the country when I was 16 or 17 years old. I found the music that was played around the country - Irish music - had a particular resonance.
I grew up in St. Louis in a tiny house full of large music - Mahalia Jackson and Marian Anderson singing majestically on the stereo, my German-American mother fingering 'The Lost Chord' on the piano as golden light sank through trees, my Palestinian father trilling in Arabic in the shower each dawn.
I am fascinated by the places that music comes from, like fife-and-drum blues from southern Mississippi or Cajun music out of Lafayette, Louisiana, shape-note singing, old harp singing from the mountains - I love that stuff. It's like the beginning of rock and roll: something comes down from the hills, and something comes up from the delta.
The first song that I ever recorded was written by my mother.
I'm actually the son of Mary Guibert. My mother was born in the Panama Canal zone and came to America when she was five with my grandmother and grandfather, and that was the family I knew. Everybody sang; everybody had songs all the time, and they loved music.