Jay Atwood: Articles and Reviews

Didgeridoos and Don'ts: A Talkabout with Didgeridude, Jay Atwood

CRAZY CELTIC COOL!

Following the success of 2004's Classics Regrooved, which reinterpreted various classical compositions for the chillout and electronica crowd, Koch Records visits another sacred body of work, this time applying the same formula to various Beatles songs.... Jay Atwood and Susan MacCorkle's take on "Tomorrow Never Knows" retains much of the swirling inevitability of the original, and is easily the most successful of these "regrooves,"

WASHINGTON COUNTY HOSTS SCOTTISH FESTIVAL

(my first appearance with the Tinkers)

...Other entertainment this year includes a repeat appearance by the Wicked Tinkers, a lively band of roving musicians who perform appealing renditions of dance music of Scotland and Ireland.
This year, the Wicked Tinkers' performance will take on a decidedly local twist, as Charlestown resident Jay Atwood has been asked to fill in for a missing member of the band.

A 2001 graduate of Boston's Berklee College of Music, Atwood has worked as a professional musician for about 15 years.

Atwood said this week he's "thrilled" to be filling in with the Tinkers, a group he's always enjoyed immensely. Atwood will be playing the didgeridoo with the group, a long horn indigenous to Austra-lia, originally made out of a termite-hollowed log, and which has a unique, unforgettable haunting sound when played.

STUDENTS IN JAY ATWOOD'S CLASSES ARE ENCOURAGED TO SPIT.

He even asks them to practice the Archie Bunker raspberry retort, all in the name of music.

Didgeridoo music.

Charlestown's remote roads may feel something like the Austrialian outback on warm days when Atwood practices the didgeridoo in his own backyard.

"It's a very mellow sound," he said of the phenomenon which eminates from this termite-hollowed eucalyptus tree trunk. It requires those who play it to buzz their lips and breath in a certain style.

Mellow? Not mellow like a violin, but mellow, perhaps, like a warning for ships in a fog-shrouded night.

"People have two reactions to it. They either think it sounds like the voice of the earth or that it sounds like a dying elephant," said Atwood.

He obviously hears it as the former having invested a dozen years in learning its finer points and spreading the world in workshops at the University of Rhode Island and at All That Matters, Wakefield.

The ancient instrument, native to Australia's Aborigines found its way into Atwood's life some 12 years ago when he was at an outdoor festival in New York.

"I was immediately blown away by it when I heard that sound coming from across the field."

It was only natural that he add it to his instrument inventory, having spent much of his 36 years pursuing music, starting with piano lessons as a child and later as a music major at Boston's Berklee College of Music.
...
URI students come out in small crowds to learn its finer points _ some even missed the sold-out basketball game last week to take part in his class. He thinks the students enjoy it because as musical instruments go, it doesn't take long to learn.

He likens it to a percussion instrument." The beauty of it is you can get it in an evening," though like anything else, fine-tuning that drone takes years.

...Atwood said he often plays it alone and unaccompanied.

"I love it as a solo instrument. It is very much a meditative tool for me."

Atwood has taught use of the ancient instrument to small gatherings and large, substituting PVC pipes for the real thing, though he has several.

"There's nothing hard about it. You just have to learn how to breathe."

Atwood offers a bit of history in his classes, telling how the unusual instrument is thought by some to be 20,000 years old. ...