Jayme Stone is a guy who likes travel.
He’s also a guy who likes to tell stories of his travels through his music.
Fortunately, he doesn’t mind sharing those songs and on Oct. 8, the Juno Award winner will share them with you at Communitea Café.
Stone’s Café stop is just one on a Canadian tour which will carry him from Vancouver Island to Halifax to support his new release (Sept. 28) Room of Wonders.
Along with Stone (banjo) will be accompanists Casey Driessen (fiddle), Rob Martin (guitar) and Joe Phillips (bass).
With his new album, Stone has moved from the Dark Continent’s rhythms and beats (Africa to Appalachia with Mansa Sissoko, which won a 2009 Juno) to sampling folk music from around the world with Rooms. Stone’s 2008 Juno was garnered for his instrumental album The Utmost, released in 2007.
Africa to Appalachia, Stone said recently from his home in Colorado, featured mostly West African music, while Room of Wonders, “is a whole new project I’ve been working on for more than a year. It’s all music I wrote based on folk dances from around the world. They’re traditional tunes that I re-worked.”
Songs are based on folk dances from Norway and Sweden to Brazil and Bulgaria. “I re-imagined them and it’s a really diverse sound,” said Stone. “It doesn’t sound like your grand-dad’s folk. It’s a real international theme.
“I’m fascinated by music from other parts of the world. And I like to work with traditional music, even if it’s not played in a traditional style.
“And I love rhythm. Every country has different rhythmic sensibilities and the music just keeps invigorating me.”
Stone’s early interest in the banjo as a Toronto youth was fuelled when a librarian stocked banjo recordings, which eventually led to lessons with banjo maestros including Bela Fleck and Bill Frisell.
His The Utmost was influenced by Japanese poetry and Brazilian literature and featured what he called “a tiny symphony that takes place inside an imaginary lightbulb”.
In travelling to Mali in Africa on a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, Stone went with his knowledge that the banjo came from West Africa. He became particularly curious about the music that may not have made it across the ocean on slave ships headed west from Senegal and Mali in the 1700 to 1800s.
In Mali, Stone found himself sitting in with Toumani Diabate and the Symmetric Orchestra in downtown Bamako, lost in circles of Wassoulou polyrhythms and in a rural Dogon village with no electricity where he inadvertently discovered a banjo predecessor unheard of in the West.
This adventure led to Africa to Appalachia, a boundary-crossing musical collaboration with singer and kora maestro Mansa Sissoko. Produced by David Travers-Smith and featuring celebrated ngoni master Bassekou Kouyate, the recording won the 2009 Juno Award for World Music Album of the Year.
In adding Driessen, Martin and Joe Phillips to his acoustic tour mix, Stone has added “quality, versatile musicians. Interest in acoustic music has grown in the last few years, especially in the U.S. and people are starting to push the boundaries of acoustic.”
When it comes to his songwriting, a hectic schedule means Stone needs to find some quiet time to work. “It’s hard to compose on tour,” he said, “so I need to be less busy when I’m writing.
“And I wish it wasn’t so, but sometimes, having a record on the horizon is the instigator for me to get to work.”
Tracking down some of the music for his latest folk dance-based music including a fair bit of online surfing, which results in his buying 30 Norwegian albums.
“The process is always ongoing,” he said. “Even things I’ve recorded now and am practicing for the tour, I’m re-discovering. At heart, I’m an improviser and I’m always finding new ways to hear and play things. I’ve fiddled with tunes for my entire career.
“And when it comes to recording, I really put the tunes under a magnifying glass to try to keep things fresh.”
