Muriel Anderson - Interview with fingerstyle guitarist Muriel Anderson

We got to chat with Muriel in Nashville recently. We talked about her musical influences, her latest CD, and the 'Music For Life Alliance'...

MQ: Let's talk about your musical tastes. It seems like you have a very wide spectrum - going from a pseudo-classical, Chet Atkins style to traditional classical pieces or even arrangements of pop songs such as the Carpenters. I was just wondering what kind of music you grew up listening to or what you can attribute to for your wide variety of musical interests?

Muriel: I started off as a folk guitar player - just playing music with other people and having fun. Then I discovered bluegrass music. I just loved the drive and the feel - and that wonderful core of emotion in bluegrass. It's also a great way to enjoy music with other people. So, I really gravitated toward bluegrass for a while. I always enjoyed the music in nature - just listening to the crickets and birds - or the rhythms of the waves lapping up against the shore. The other thing that I think was a big influence was - I remember as a young child going to a yearly meeting of our church retreat, and I heard this music. chatting with Muriel And I told my parents, "Pull the car over! Pull the car over!" And I'd never heard music like this and I loved it immediately. I said, "What is this?!" And I ran out there and it was a group doing folk dancing and it was Macedonian folk music - 7/8 time. And my heart just jumped when I heard this 7/8 time - I loved it! And I joined in the line immediately and started dancing to this wonderful 7/8 time - just following people's feet - and following along the lines. There was an immediate attraction to the Bulgarian, the Macedonian, the Eastern European rhythms and sounds. I got interested and joined a folk dance group. I got interested in music of all different countries. There's just some beautiful, some interesting sounds there. Just opening my ears to that just gave me a wider spectrum - I guess - of music to draw from - both in my compositions and in my interests. It wasn't until I heard the music of Christopher Parkening that I really fell in love with classical music. I heard classical music since I was in the womb. My mother was a pianist and a great afficianado of classical music. I was reluctantly dragged to oratorial concerts when I was growing up - during which time I would color! (laugh) It wasn't until later in life that I could understand and take in and appreciate the great orchestral and the great choral works. And now I'm composing some things in a larger spectrum. I've written some things for guitar and strings. I was commissioned to write a piece for a women's choir in Chicago - and enjoyed it so much that I wrote them four pieces! (laugh) So, I think I never felt like I had to put boundaries on my music and on what I do. I just take the music that's coming to me at the time and bring that out. And for a long time that was instrumental guitar music. It's only as of late, that music has had words attached - and all of a sudden I'm hearing music together with these words that are very important to me. In the new 'Wildcat' CD, I have stories behind each song in the program notes.

MQ: Are there any particular songs on the CD that you would like to share about?

Muriel: Every one of them has a story that's significant to me and that's one thing that's special about this album. I'm really happy with the way it was produced and the way all the music came to life. To give you one story, 'Castles In The Sand' - I wrote that when I had taken a week off from the road to spend with friends and family in Montauk, New York - the very end of Long Island. There we went out - the kids - and built this great sand castle that was beautiful. And the next morning we went out and the tide had come and gone and left this lump of what used to be our sand castle. So, we took that and dug around it and built another sand castle even more spectacular than the first. And we went up to the top of the hill and there we could see the people as they walked down the beach, stop and just admire the sand castle. And I happened to have my harp guitar with me at the time and I wrote the song, 'Castles In The Sand', which ended up meaning more than just that castle. Sometimes a song brings greater meaning to me - it creates itself. And in fact, it was only a couple days after I wrote that song that Hurricane Katrina hit and my friends commented on how appropriate the song was for the hurricane. I sent it to Habitat for Humanity and they were going to use it for a video.

MQ: I was going to ask you about the 'Music For Life Alliance'. You founded that, correct?

Muriel: Yes.

MQ: Can you share a little bit about what it is and how it came to be?

Muriel: Sure. It's kind of a long story. The whole concept came because there was a string of crime on my block. Every night, somebody's car, somebody's house is being broken into. One of my neighbors kept track of this and each night we would call the police and ask them to put an extra watch on the block. Every night we'd get a response, 'No, we can't do that. Our funds have been cut back and we're understaffed.' So, finally I called my congressman, my representative, the mayor's office, the police office, channel 2, channel 5 (laugh) - and said, 'What is going on here?' In fact, some people had seen two young people running behind bushes in that area. The police that I talked to in that area said that 90% of the people they arrest are actually on drugs at the time. So, I had a meeting with the head of the juvenile court at that time and some core community leaders of the depressed areas of our city to talk about what I can do as a citizen to help this problem because I felt like I needed to do something. And I realized that we couldn't just ask those kids to 'just say no', when there was nothing to say yes to. They'd cut back the arts and the music departments so drastically in the inner city schools - and that's something that can give young people something to gravitate to - something to dedicate their life to - something of some great inspiration in their life, and it can lead to a greater understanding of the spirit - certainly through music in particular. I realized that through producing my 'All-Star Guitar Night' show, I had all sorts of contacts in the music industry. I put together a program to teach guitar and eventually bass and drums - to inner city schools on a volunteer basis with assistance from the musicians union and the community groups. The members of the union could teach community leaders to teach the guitar. Washburn guitars offered to donate all the instruments we would need. GHS strings offered to donate all the strings we would need. The main core of support was through the juvenile court to provide all these centers for us to do this. However, that happened at a time that there was an election and the head of the juvenile court we had worked with lost the election. So, in one fell swoop we lost all of our support for this program. So, I thought the program had gone on ice. But in the meantime - through researching - I found out that there were other small programs that were doing similiar work in our city - like W. O. Smith School for example. What they needed was support. Rather than create what was originally the 'Music for Life', I thought we needed to create an alliance to provide support to collect instruments so that they would have instruments to further the efforts that they were already doing. That was the concept for the alliance. Sheldon concert hall in St. Louis took great interest in this and they became our partner and really brought this idea to fruition. They've recently retitled their program as the 'Music For Lifelong Achievement' - so they can open up branches all over the country. In the meantime, my little outline for my program had drifted around and ended up the hands of a friend of mine in Chicago who unknowingly - nobody knew where the outline had come from - she out of that had created a program called 'Guitars in the Classroom' which is now a national program. It was only recently when I was at her house and we compared the outline that she got from Washburn guitars with the outline that I gave to Washburn guitars - and it was the same one! (laugh)

MQ: That's cool!

Muriel: So, it was just the most incredible example of, you know, scattering seeds. I thought that those seeds had fallen in the rocks, on the pavement, and withered. And indeed, they had taken root in the most wonderful way and developed in a way that I could have never developed them - that Jessica Turner had turned this into a marvelous program.

Muriel in Nashville - April 2006: Pictured (L to R) are: Matt McPherson, Sherry McPherson, Tom Hemby, Muriel Anderson, John Morgan (George W. Bush impersonator and speaker), Phil Keaggy and Andrew Peterson.

MQ: That's encouraging. It shows you what just one person can do...

Muriel: It turned into three programs, essentially. And now what we're doing since the Sheldon operation is concentrating on collecting instruments and distributing them to schools and extra-curricular programs, now we're concentrating our efforts on the Music For Life Alliance and creating a national database of who's doing what and where and helping to unify the efforts. So, I feel that once again we're at our infancy and we're looking for volunteer support on that as well. Mostly we need people to help us collect information.