Poem for an Ancient Bard
Never mind that there’s no central heating...
(winter won’t last forever).
Never mind that there’s no indoor plumbing...
(we’ll wash this spring).
Forget that there’s a plague raging just beyond the horizon
in some not too distant town...
(we’ll go around it).
Never mind that there’s no electricity, no dentistry,
no refrigeration, nothing to stave off the inevitability of decay.
Ours is a world lit only by fire,
driven from cradle to grave mostly by muscle.
In squalor and filth, in superstition and injustice,
our days are a paradox of longer hours...
yet years that come more quickly.
As for me, I know nothing of a better world...
only: that I would make it so...
one note at a time.
Owain Phyfe
EVENTIDE
c/o NIGHTWATCH RECORDING
PO BOX 721010
BERKLEY, MI 48072
TEL: 248-399-1070
FAX: 248-399-1542
E-MAIL: inngate@nightwatchrecording.com
Editor: Joseph Physician
EVENTIDE Staff:
Jean Elliot
David James
Donna Physician
The
growing world of early music suffered a true loss October 27, 1996 as Cantiga
and New World Renaissance Band member, Malcolm Smith, passed away suddenly in
his sleep at his lake-side house in Lake Estates, Texas. Malcolm and his lady
love, Christi, had returned from another successful Texas Renaissance Festival
appearance only hours before. Cause of death has been determined to be ‘left
ventricular hypertrophy.’
Malcolm has been a valued member of the Nightwatch family, recording with both
Cantiga (the group he co-founded with harpist Martha Gay) and the New World
Renaissance Band. Over the span of four years, he and his fiddle (and madolin,
viola, rebec & gypsy guitar) amassed a considerable discography, starting
with NWRB’s Live The Legend in 1992 and ending with the 1996 release,
Odyssey. 1994 brought us Once Upon A Time capturing the magical
sounds of Cantiga’s many years at festival play. Owain Phyfe, the voice
behind the NWRB, said of Malcolm, “His Style was gutsy, explosive and always
unpredictable. Two standouts in my mind are his fiddle solo in ‘A La Una’
(from NWRB’s second CD, Where Beauty Moves And Wit Delights, 1993)
and the gypsy guitar in Odyssey’ s Hungarian song (cut #4:
‘Minden Allat Orul Az Tavasznak’). Malcolm’s flamenco background
brought a free-spirited freshness to all his music.”
Malcolm Brian Smith was born two days after Christmas 1951 in Graves, Texas.
He began playing guitar when he was only six years old,
following in the tradition of the Smith family. His Granfather played piano
in nightclubs in the days before prohibition, and Malcolm too began soon to
display a talent for the keyboard.
Malcolm’s father, while serving as mayor of a small Texas town, was employed
as a top chemical engineer at the Gulf Oil Corporation. His oil refinery experience
being in demand, he was transferred to the country of Wales in the British Isles.
Malcolm, age 10, and family eventually settled in London, England.
The flamenco guitar now became Malcolm’s center of attention. In four years
his diligent study earned him a featured performance spot on the David Frost
Show, no small feat for a fourteen year old lad. The study of flamenco also
led him to Spain where Malcolm had opportunity to learn from some of the best.
Traveling throughout
Europe and noting the popularity of American folk music, Malcolm formed the
country and bluegrass band’Chickenfeed’ in the Netherlands. And in
London, he joined with other troubadors in taking his music into the streets
and subways. It was about this time that Malcolm picked up the violin. Says
Rio Blue, longtime friend and partner in the group, Celtic Stone, “He never
stood still musically. He was always looking for some new instrument to play,
some new rhythm to learn. Malcolm was so diverse. We could go out and do a Latin
gig and the next day be throwing down some Irish standards. It wasn’t that
he could just play the music either. He understood it.”
Back in the United States in the early 1970’s while attending Central Texas
University, Malcolm formed The Swampstompers, a hybrid bluegrass band, with
the sole intention of making and keeping music fun. The Swampstompers atayed
around in various incarnations for over fourteen years. They were a fringe band,
almost breaking out into the mainstream. Acts like Lyle Lovett and Bonnie Raitt
opened for them while they toured America. A retrospective compact disc is in
the works which will highlight the band’s unique sound and style. Malcolm
was compiling and arranging tracks for the unnamed album at the time of his
passing.
In 1976 at the Texas Renaissance Festival while performing with The Swampstompers,
Malcolm chanced to meet harpist Martha Gay. Realizing that they were both headed
in the same direction musically, the group Cantiga was subsequently born. Recorder
player Bob Bielefeld joined in on Cantiga’s TRF performances and, eventually,
Max Dyer added his cello. Meanwhile, as Cantiga was discovering the melodic
enchantment of late Medieval and Renaissance repertoire, in the north and on
the east coast Owain Phyfe was searching for musicians to form The New World
Renaissance Band.
In the fall of 1991, an underground Cantiga cassette (produced by Malcolm Smith)
found its way to the Michigan Renaissance Festival and into the hands of Owain
Phyfe. Malcolm took Owain’s telephone call and invited him to Texas. A
weekend performance at TRF with Cantiga convinced Owain that his search for
musicians was over. This was the sound he was looking for.
During the next five years Malcolm shared his talent with thousands of listeners
through his performances, both live and recorded, in Cantiga and in The New
World Renaissance Band. Today, on upwards of 250 radio stations across North
America, his fiddle can be heard. In March of 1996, Nightwatch Recording signed
agreements with Renaissance Records in Taiwan bringing the music of Cantiga
and The New World Renaissance Band to the far east.
As the world discovers the inspiration and enchantment of the music Malcolm
helped to pioneer, his untimely passing has moved many friends and family members
to keep his spirit and memory alive. Recording engineer and life long friend,
Karl Caillouet, has set up a cyberspace memorial dedicated to Malcolm at website
address:
http://www.hsound.com/Malcolm/index.htm
NIGHTWATCH RECORDING is proud to announce that
their entire catalogue of recordings will now be available through The CHIVALRY
SPORTS RENAISSANCE CATALOGUE. Chivalry Sports Renaissance caters to the medieval
and renaissance re-creation audience offering clothing and accessories, weapons,
armor, books and music. For more information contact:
Chivalry Sports Renaissance
P.O. Box 18904
Tucson, AZ 85715
(800) 730-5464
When a romantic young sixteenth century commoner fell star-struck in love with
the girl of his dreams, the French poet Pierre Guidron chronicled the event
in song. Four hundred years later, Owain Phyfe recorded ‘Cesse Mortels
De Soupirer’ on his CD Sweet Was The Song. Fifth Column Productions
now brings this chivalric tale to the screen. Filmed on location at the Michigan
Renaissance Festival, this seven minute music video captures the sights as well
as the sounds of the Renaissance via the technology of today.
“It’s sad to hear such a free spirit
as Malcolm has passed on. He was the master of the obscure fiddle tune - I remember
playing the Houston International festival with Malcolm. He had just gotten
back from Europe and was hot into 16th century Finnish dance tunes - odd time
signatures, strange keys, and the pickup band (8 of us) with only two practices
several months apart. One of the most unusual and most fun gigs I’ve ever
played.” ‘Charlie Bones’ Johnson
“This is terrible news indeed. Malcolm was a gentle, talented, enthusiastic
and supportive person, and a fine man to have as a friend. We shared many an
evening over a span of seven or eight years after “the day’s shows”
were over at the Texas Renaissance Festival, and I always appreciated Malcolm’s
wry wit and seemingly bottomless cache of obscure tunes. He will be sorely missed
by his large circle of friends and admirers. Max McCullough
“Malcolm was like Johnny Appleseed. He went around the country spreading
music (instead of apples), and he was friends with the animals and loved nature
too.” Bryan Fowler
“Dear Nightwatch,
It only took a moment with the wind in the trees, the sunshine of a flute and
the raindrops of a harp, the shifting light on the highs and lows of fiddle
and cello, and the calmness in a voice to change my life forever. This is no
exaggeration. When I first experienced Cantiga and The New World Renaissance
Band at a Renaissance Fair and on the recording “Live The Legend”
I knew I was being asked to leave the mundane for the magical. Perhaps I was
too eager to go. But it was what my heart so sorely needed: romance, adventure,
mythology, the poetry of the sublime and the fanciful; to travel back through
the hearts and minds of other times and lands and be sent onwards to where I
was surely meant to go.
For me listening to Early Music is like surrendering to a compassionate embrace,
feeling sage and even content within its sentiments whether melancholic or joyful.
It is enchantment, for how else could it persuade that happiness should not
be taken for granted but cherished while it lasts. It is the reality and the
dream of life, of love; what the heart feels, the spirit knows and the intellect
can only try to understand. With lyrical simplicity it expresses, now as then,
our humanity and divinity. Its intimacy is its universality a story, a thought,
a desire, a prayer of someone long ago and far away that suddenly becomes our
own.
These talented musicians of today not only have the ability but the desire to
make this music more beautiful and relevant than ever; those distractions that
lead us away from a nobler, kinder, more believing, more melodic and poetic
side of ourselves. With every breath that plays or sings its way into my heart,
I think of all those other hearts that only need the opportunity to hear it.”
I couldn’t bear to edit one word so it ran in it’s entirey.
Ed.
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