Getting to Know . . . PHIL MINISSALE
 by Kathy S-B  ·  21 November 2007

Phil Minissale is a young blues musician whom I recently met at NERFA (North East Regional Folk Alliance) conference in New York. I'm impressed by passion that Phil shows toward his music and toward educating other young people to learn and appreciate the blues. Check out Phil's music on his MySpace page and take some time to watch the videos too. Good stuff!

When did you first discover that you had an affinity for the blues? It’s quite unusual for someone your age to have embraced this kind of music, isn’t it?

It seemed real natural for me. There was a lot of blues played in the house growing up. When I was fourteen my parents took me to see Dave van Ronk at the Landsdowne Folk Club in Pennsylvania and after I heard him play, I wanted to learn “Gamblers Blues.” I took lessons for a couple of years, learning scales and chord progressions, but couldn’t find anyone to show me the music I wanted to play. My music teacher started asking me to teach him “that alternating thumb thing,” so the lessons stopped and I kept learning from listening to records. It was all in my head, I just had to figure out how to make it sound right.

I put together a little jazz band in high school and played at different school functions; we played “Take Five” and other really recognizable jazzy favorites. We were a big hit with the parents and grandparents, not so much with our friends. My buds just thought it was weird. Eventually they gave up trying to get me to play anything written after 1970.

Then as a senior in high school, a teacher of mine put on an “Acoustic Night.” I played “Embryonic Journey” by Jorma Kaukonen and a bluesy rendition of “Over the Rainbow,” then just kept on going.

There is always a lot of discussion about young people getting more involved in roots music. I don’t know; it has to be about the music. Most of my time is spent with musicians two and three times my age. We’re kind of a lost generation for folk and blues music. I want to be judged on the merits of the music and not because of the novelty of me performing it. There’s an urgency about it; this music, in its live form, will be lost. It would be a real shame if the music of the Piedmont and the people who helped it evolve, existed only on a library shelf. There needs to be a delivery system (hopefully, the internet will help). There are a bunch of really talented young people playing some great music. The bigger challenge is getting young audiences to come out and listen to them.

Why the blues?

The blues is story telling with a universal appeal. The emotions are basic. It’s about cause and effect, love and hate, jealousy and revenge, trust and mistrust, justice and equality, heaven and hell, making deals with the devil and having that mojo hand (magic and luck). It’s about taking wrong things and making them right. There is also a discipline to playing well, you need to work at it constantly, it suits me . . . and . . . everyone has the blues from time to time.

How do you classify your type of blues?

This style of blues comes from the Piedmont, which is the coastal foothills east of the Appalachian Mountains from Georgia to southern Pennsylvania. I like the term Migration Music, as the rural south migrated north from the Mississippi Delta (and other parts of the deep south) looking for work and a better life, the music developed a real folksie bounce. The Piedmont blues has threads of Celtic music, Delta blues, the urban protest songs and southern mountain music all woven together.

Recently, one of my songs was described in a review as a “hip-hop style brag,” which I really like (even though the reviewer didn’t like the song), because it uses a term that my peers can relate to. Needless to say, it’s my most requested tune. I’m interested in the lineage of the music, from field holler to spiritual to jump blues to rap. Sometime I feel as if I’m sitting in the middle of a bridge urging kids to take a few steps across . . . and . . . once in a while . . . one or two do.

Who would you say is your primary influence?

Dave van Ronk . . . one foot in the blues and one foot in folk. It’s nice to feel comfortable at a folk festival like Falcon Ridge and be able to play the Riverhead Blues Festival as well. Unlike the blues purists, I try to write a lot of my own material while still keeping the historic integrity of the music. Toby Walker calls it “carrying the torch.”

If you could have an all night jam session with some of the blues greats (dead and alive), who would you invite?

Wow, there’s a thought. You would need a pretty big room, but Dave van Ronk would have to be there to jazz things up a bit, Skip James for the falsetto harmonies, Sonny Terry for the “fox chase,” Son House on slide guitar, Elizabeth Cotton and Brownie McGhee for that country bounce. Sara Watkins would be playing her fiddle, John Hammond and Paul Geremia would be there, just for the joy of playing. I wouldn’t keep Chris Thile out; his mandolin playing is pretty tasty. I’d have to find room in the circle for Doc Watson as well. Me . . . I’d just sit out and enjoy it.

I like to write my own songs, so, I’d need another night for the songwriters . . . Chris Smither, Bill Morrissey, Jeremy Wallace, Pat Wictor, and Bob Dylan (only if he was in a good mood). Then sleep.