Hollister's Last Waltz
Delta Democrat Times
Sunday, January 4, 2009
By DOMINICK CROSS
GREENVILLE - For the first time in three years, Jamison
Hollister began a new year without a band.
He's not hanging up his fiddle, but Hollister's last gig
with the Oxford-based group, the Mayhem String
Band, was New Year's Eve at Martin's in Jackson.
“Well, you know, it's .. it's .. you know, it's bittersweet
in a lot of ways,” Hollister said. “I'm definitely going to
miss the guys and everything. And miss playing with
the band. But, at the same time, it's nice to do
something different.”
That something different will actually be somewhat
familiar as Hollister is returning to Ole Miss. He plans
to take classes in the Southern Studies program that
encompasses the literature, music, art and history of
the South.
“Kind of like a big cultural cornucopia,” he said. “It's
pretty cool. I'm really looking forward to taking
some classes.”
Once he gets accepted in the master's program, Hollister plans to focus on Mississippi and the state's fiddle music in particular, something he began as an undergraduate.
“So I'd really like to expand upon that and see if I can do something cool with it,” Hollister, 24, said. “I'm still looking really forward to just doing it and seeing what happens. I'm looking forward to going back to school for the first time of my life.”
Up until New Year's Day, the band consisted of J.T. Lack, banjo; Chris Steiner, guitar and vocals; Ben Johnson, bass; Kevin Larkin; mandolin, accordion and harmonica; and Hollister on fiddle.
Hollister's second-to-last gig was in his hometown of Greenville at the Walnut Street Blues Bar Dec. 27. (At the show, Jeremy Odom filled in on mandolin and Ferd Moyse took over on bass.)
“It was good to play on that stage again,” he said. “That was one of the first stages I was playing on when I was younger.”
The Mayhem String Band plays “Mississippi Outlaw Bluegrass.”
Broken down, the obvious explanation of the first word in their self-named genre is that the band hails from Mississippi. The ‘Outlaw' portion is a direct attribution to Waylon, Willie and the boys.
“They were all about writing their own songs and just weren't going to conform to the standards, necessarily, of the country industry at the time,” Hollister said. “So, there's where your outlaw comes from.”
It's the same approach Mayhem takes to bluegrass, which also might be described as non-conforming.
According to Hollister, when listening to bluegrass band on satellite radio, “They all just sound the same; it's like they're all chasing the same thing there. There's nothing really unique about it,” he said. “They're all incredibly talented. Their harmonies are really tight, and they have blazing instrumentals and all that stuff. But we just want to take a different approach to things.”
While Mayhem's instrumentation is the same as any bluegrass band, “we wanted to have real honest songs,” said Hollister, “We tried to stay away from trite lyrics and chords and stuff like that and just try to do things, while harboring on a tradition, but doing things our own way without being - because you can be too much of your own thing - and be ... bad.”
With that in mind, the group released their first CD, “Rapscallions and Ne'erdowells” in 2007.
“That's something that we've always focused on, primarily, is doing our own thing while having one foot firmly in tradition and one foot just kind of hanging off the cliff there, trying to find a foothold that sounds good.”
Along with outlaw bluegrass, a set can consist of Irish jigs, Mississippi blues, some Willie and Cajun music, too.
“I've always thought Cajun music was really cool,” said Hollister. “I've listened to a little bit here and there and downloaded some in high school and college.”
A friend gave Hollister a “How to Learn Cajun Fiddle” video with BeauSoleil's Michael Doucet as the instructor. And with Larkin learning accordion and with Pokey LeFarge giving the two the Balfa Brothers' “Yellow” album, there was no question some Cajun songs made it into their sets.
“I spent countless hours probably learning the words,” Hollister said. “Dewey Balfa is what re-sparked my interest in Cajun music. His stuff is so amazing. And then I've read all about him and all he did for the Cajun French language and the Acadian culture and everything. I think that's so cool.”
Hollister said he researched Cajun French pronunciation and while he admits to singing just one Cajun song, Balfa's “Tit Galop Pour Mamou” (Canter to Mamou, or Giddy-Yap to Mamou), he wanted to sing it correctly.
“The songs, you want to do them justice. You don't want to sound like some idiot up there who says it real half-heartedly and doesn't really pronounce everything at least as correct as I'm able to,” he said. “I have a lot of respect for the culture and the language, so we've spent a lot of time working up lyrics and harmonies and all that kind of stuff.”
Hollister has been a musician pretty much his whole life. He started with piano lessons, moved to guitar, then drums and bass, did some rock and roll and picked up mandolin and bluegrass along with the fiddle.
“Music has always been my thing,” he said. “It's been what really fires me up.”
The band played more than 170 gigs last year all around the country. That's something that looms large with Hollister.
“I'd say more so than everything, the travel experience,” he said. “I've traveled a little bit and went on vacations with my family, but it's not until you really go on the road by yourself or with a small group of people that I think that you can truly experience travel.
“Before I joined the band, I would've been petrified of just driving to a city and playing a show and not know anything else, just know you're going to play a show,” Hollister said. “Not where you're going to stay, where you're going to eat. You know - nothing.
“It definitely taught me to just trust fortune that it will all work out in the end and that everything will be fine and not to be too worked up.”
Hollister also recalls the sights and sounds of the road, as well as the people.
“I've seen so much of the country. I've met so many interesting people because a lot of times after dark in a lot of these towns, all the crazies come out,” he laughed. “It's just lots of fuzzy memories.
“I'll miss all the traveling we've done and I've ‘learnt the ways of the world' in many aspects,” he continued. “Like make sure you got a late check out at a hotel. In case you didn't know, musicians are in constant battle with the hotel industry. They don't do us right.”
Hollister enjoyed his career as a musician, especially when he first began bowing the fiddle fulltime.
“You definitely live a different lifestyle. It was really cool when I first started fulltime and I was out of school and everything,” recalled Hollister. “I was like, ‘All I have to do is wake up and play the fiddle.' Maybe send out some e-mails for the press and that sort of thing.
“Now I guess I'm going to have a little more responsibility,” he said. “I wouldn't trade it for anything. Everything I've learned has been quite amazing, actually.”
Hollister said he'll continue to play between studies “with whoever will let me.
“I'm going to be a freelancer.”
And it's the whoever aspect that Hollister finds attractive.
“I really enjoy playing. That's another thing that I've kind of missed a lot, I've always enjoyed playing with different people and playing different things,” Hollister said. “I love just playing with different people and playing every different kind of music I can because I love the challenge of improvising on the spot.”
