Sleeping Bear inspires local musician and composer James Filkins
By Holly Wren Spaulding
Sun contributor
James Filkins makes moody, optimistic music that sounds like the natural outpouring of a real guy who has played long enough to have a sound and understand what he’s trying to say with his instrument. Listening to his finger-style guitar tunes, one imagines a languid outdoor scene, enough time to just hang out for a while — days and weeks, even — and the kind of weather that makes everything seem just fine. It’s also genuine music, and in this way reflects what Filkins calls the essential nature of his basic urge to make it: “I write music because I have to. I have no choice in the matter. It is as essential to my existence as breathing to a very real extent. I really believe some people, maybe all people, must create something in order to exist fully in the world. Call it an essential part of our nature as human beings, if you will. At any rate I have the need hardwired in me somewhere, somehow.”
On the occasion of the release of his new album, “Summer Sands & Sleeping Bears”, I contacted Filkins and asked him about the project and how he started playing guitar.
Glen Arbor Sun: What got you interested in making music?
James Filkins: My brother began playing guitar in his teens and it was just a natural thing for him to teach me. We both got infected with the singer-songwriter explosion in the 1970s and the damage was done. I also helped start a high school radio station, played bars like The Sawmill, The Keller and The Mayfield Inn. Later, I went to work in the radio biz for 13 years, both on air and programming music. I have been, and will always be a music junkie.
Sun: Is your creativity responsive to the weather or shifts in seasons?
Filkins: Creation, whether it is of an artistic nature or some other kind, can be triggered by mood, emotion or reaction to sensory stimulation. Weather and seasonal changes are just that. Some of my tunes are direct descendants of this kind of stimuli— “A Bleak December” and “Summer Sands” come to mind.
Sun: What do you feel like playing in November?
Filkins: Darker tones from the sonic pallet. A guitar being made of wood can literally adapt to a mood through the touch of the player, the tuning used and the actual response of the wood to things like humidity and temperature. A solid wood guitar is to some extent still alive and as such, the wood responds to the atmosphere it resides in. In the drier winter months I find my guitars are much more lively and more resonant. In the summer months there is a degree of warmth present that I don’t hear at other times. Playing a guitar is a very sensory related activity. If you are holding the guitar you aren’t just hearing the sound it produces, you are connected to the guitar through your fingers, your torso and chest as well as your arms. You can feel the vibrations in a well-made guitar, which informs, directs and inspires the playing of the musician.
Sun: What are your musical influences?
Filkins: The whole California singer-songwriter thing of the 1970s was very influential, particularly in terms of the guitar-oriented artists like Stephen Stills, Neil Young David Crosby, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. More contemporary artists include people like John Gorka, LJ Booth, Shawn Colvin or Antje Duvekot. There are also the guitar players like Martin Simpson, Jesse Cook, Al Petteway, Ana Vidovic or Brooks Williams. Add to that a little Mozart, Vivaldi, Miles Davis, Robben Ford, The Who, U2, Yes, Grand Funk RR, Marvin Gaye. You get the picture. And my brother has always been a strong influence for me. He always had much better ears and ability, which helped me approach playing in ways that helped me grow in terms of skill.
Sun: Talk about the new album a little bit.
Filkins: I am always writing new music but the recording process takes time and in the end it is a matter of choosing what to leave on and what to leave off. Several tunes, “Foamfollower”, Tintagel”, “Farethewell” and “Sleeping Bears” were the core of this project, and by and large represent, or were born out of, travel, vacations and summer leisure activities like the ones my wife and I enjoy around this area. Glenn Wolff, who created the artwork for my first CD, “Borderline Normal” (2007), was very open to creating a new piece. I basically gave him the title and the general concept and let him do what he does so well: immortalize the splendor of our region with drawing and watercolors.
I consider what I compose to be sort of sonic landscapes that often need to be expanded in terms of elements or that tend to be a bit stark. The added accompaniment [by other musicians] really opens the music up, not unlike opening the window in the spring and letting in those first new breezes into the house.
Sun: Your playing has been described as “sensitive”. Obviously we live in an era that values bold strokes, volume, even noise. How do you see your music as it relates to the world of the everyday. The broader culture, if you will.
Filkins: Back when I started playing, music and lyrics went hand and hand for me. Today I don’t hear lyrics anymore, and probably couldn’t put music and words together even if I had to. I think it has to do with the dissonance that I experience in the world today, whether it is from the ubiquitous nature of technology or the inundation of information.
I am guessing here, but I wonder if my need to create music that is not too technologically advanced or digitally regimented might just be a reaction/response to the dissonance I perceive in the world today. What I write are sort of melodic landscapes filled with sonic textures that are not the sort of thing one listens to like a pop song, rather they are part of the background, ancillary to a moment, to life and that is fine with me.
You can purchase Jim Filkins’ CDs at the Cottage Bookshop in Glen Arbor. All local sales include a chance to win a signed and numbered exclusive limited edition giclée print of the pen & ink and watercolor drawing “Summer Sands & Sleeping Bears” by Glenn Wolff. The drawing will be in December.
