Music from the Hill: You can call him Banjo Bill

There is hardly anyone in the music or theater scene in Bowling Green who has not at least heard of “Banjo Bill” aka William Green.  Although a native of Alabama, this multi-talented individual has been associated with learning and the arts from Java House Café to the Fountain Square Players to our Java City venue at WKU Libraries.  Every time he has performed, he does so to rave reviews for audiences of all ages and backgrounds.  In 2008 he was the subject of The Amplifier’s cover story, so, I thought it would be great to get up to date with this truly amazing individual who is a treasure to our community before he returns to Java City on April 12.

Bill, I know you’ve been around the SOKY area for a few years, but for those few who may not know you, Can you tell us a bit about your personal and musical history?

I came to Bowling Green in 1994 after my wife took a job teaching English at WKU, and I taught as an adjunct until recently. My musical life, after childhood piano lessons and high school band, began in the 1960’s, when I was writing songs but had nobody to perform them. So I bought a Sears guitar and taught myself to play it. There were coffee houses and student parties back then, and my high point was performing before a huge crowd in the Student Union at LSU. Then came a lull as I raised a family.

My identity as Banjo Bill began in the 1990’s when I bought a pawn shop banjo and figured out how to retune it so I could play the sped-up thumb-picking guitar style I had developed from wearing out a set of Leadbelly LP’s. My plan was to stand out at open mics, where guitar players are a dime a dozen, but Banjo Bill quickly developed his own identity and song list, popular at the open mic I hosted for years at the Java House. After the Java House closed, Banjo Bill found a home on YouTube—including a video of my song Bowling Green (over 18,000 viewings) and on a situation comedy series named after him. In The Banjo Bill Show, I’m a local a ne’er-do-well with a slow-witted musician buddy, BJ. Sheldon Shaffer, who plays BJ in the series, is in real life a translator of Spanish and Russian and a blazing blues guitarist, and will be playing and singing with me at Java City on April 12th, 2011. Dr. Green, the English professor, will be nowhere to be seen. Instead, look to hear high-school dropout Banjo Bill and his pal BJ, talking trash and jamming to original tunes.

I was recently talking to someone who knew you from a while ago and they asked me to ask you about Café Voltaire?  How did that get started?

Café Voltaire, in an old house on Broadway, led a coffee house revival in Bowling Green, and it’s where I got my start locally. With Dutch DeBoer, Liz Bissette, and others, I co-wrote and performed cabaret shows of music, comedy, and poetry and hosted an open mic. The open mic started as poetry reading but evolved into musical performance and other things, from magic shows and standup to improv and political rants. I fit in with the poetry venue because I published more than a hundred poems in literary journals during the 1980’s, but of course I write songs too. After Café Voltaire closed, I hosted an open mic at Bread and Bagels and then moved to Java House.

Bill, how do you define your music?

My music is an extension of writing and performance. Some performances come to mind with music attached, and they are songs. Some do not, and they are poems or plays. I’m a songwriter but not, in the purest sense, a musician. That is to say, my melodies seem to appear with words riding on top of them. As for my style, it leans heavily toward what is called roots music—blues, bluegrass, old country, and gospel, with a dash of rock and jazz. I apparently have a personal style, because musicians have said to me, “I just wrote a Bill Green song.” That seems to imply quirky, close-written lyrics set to a rousing old-style melody.

I know you write your own music, where do you get the ideas for your songs?  Songwriters love to know how other songwriters work.

Songs, or their beginnings, come out of nowhere, or out of a something recollected in a time of quiet. I wrote Bowling Green to fight boredom on a long car trip. Two of the best songs on my CD, Greyhound Blues and Burt Reynolds came into my head during the same overnight bus trip. I have written songs on assignment, but that too involves making a quiet time and letting an idea incubate. The noises of life interfere. Of course, once a song has created itself, there is a lot of hard work ahead, crafting additional verses, finding chords, and giving it shape and complexity. A song takes a final form only after I’ve performed it several times before a live audience.

I still love listening to your CD Banjo Bill.  Do you have any more CDs in the works?

My first CD happened at the suggestion of Paul Petersen, a brilliant South African musician and sound engineer who lived in Bowling Green at the time. You can still buy it, by the way, at Greener Groundz. I selected my most popular open-mic tunes and other favorites, avoiding the more raunchy ones. At the time, I planned a second CD, Bad Uncle, with more of Banjo Bill’s dark side. The songs are in place, but other projects have swept me along, and now the CD may be obsolete technology. It may make more sense today to shoot HD music videos to post online. I have the studio for that and have produced music videos for Johnny Thompson, David Williams, Artie Johnson, Sheldon Shaffer, and Shady Jake, as well as my own.

I know, in addition to being a musician, you are also an accomplished playwright. Tell us a bit about your life in theater?

Since moving to Bowling Green, I’ve acted in or directed fifty stage plays, most with Fountain Square Players or Public Theatre of Kentucky. Out of twenty or so full-length plays I’ve written, four have been produced in Bowling Green, and others in Baton Rouge, Chicago, and Waterloo (Iowa). Meanwhile, in downtimes between acting and directing, I’ve gathered theatre friends to write and produce dozens of short scripts that can be seen on my YouTube channel (Banjo Bill Green). A pile of short scripts are in my drawer begging to be produced once I find slack time from the current project with Fountain Square Players, directing The 39 Steps. Writing a script is always easier than producing it, or finding someone else to.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?  I’ve heard rumors that you are moving?  Can this be true?

Sad but true. My son and collaborator, Nathan, got a job with the navy in Virginia last year and left Kentucky, taking his wife and our three lovely grandchildren with him. We have no kin nearby, and it is a long drive to visit the grandchildren, so as soon as my wife retires in 2012, we plan to move to Fredericksburg. But I’m still here picking Bowling Green for a few golden months. I love the city, and it has been good to me.

Thanks Bill, thanks for so many years of wonderful music and theater.  You will be sorely missed and we hope you drop back by for a visit sometime in the future.  You will always have a stage in Java City.  I am sure all of us in Bowling Green wish you well on this new chapter of your life and we look forward to hearing you on April 12th at Java City.

About the author: Jack Montgomery is a librarian, author and associate professor at Western Kentucky University where he handles bookings for musical acts in University Libraries, Java City coffeehouse. Jack has also been a professional musician since 1969 and performs with a celtic quartet called Watersprite. Visit him at MySpace/shadowdancerjack or on Facebook.