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The traditional fiddler has performed on three Grammy-winning albums in the past three years. He’s written music for many well-known films. For 2003 Academy Award-winner “Cold Mountain,” he served as musical consultant on the set, arranged traditional material, and acted on screen.
And he’s earned praise from the likes of Loretta Lynn and T. Bone Burnett.
“Now that’s the kind of fiddlin’ I like right there,” Lynn has said. Powell played on her 2004 Grammy winner “Van Lear Rose.”
“Dirk’s got great subtlety, tremendous feel, and he’s very loose and very modern, in the best sense of the word,” Burnett has said.
The fiddling legend, who served as artistic director of Port Townsend’s acclaimed Fiddle Tunes from 2005 to 2010, is also known for working with a great bunch of collaborators, both famous and unknown.
“He always brings collaborators from deep traditions in American music,” said Dick Meyer, owner of Traditions Cafe in Olympia, where Powell will perform tonight. He recalled a show a couple of years ago with Powell, banjo player and “Cold Mountain” cohort Riley Baugus, and young musicians from the hills of Kentucky.
Powell, who lives in Louisiana, was too busy for a phone interview but answered these questions for The Olympian via email.
I understand you got interested in traditional music through your grandfather. Can you tell me more about the beginnings of your interest in the music and what caught your attention?
When I was a small child, my grandfather’s music held a place of beauty and mystery for me. I always loved those sounds he coaxed out of the banjo, but it wasn’t until I was in my early teens that I began to understand that the music could be mine — that it existed only to be mine and to be each successive generation’s for a while until they could pass it to the next.
I had been studying classical music and was finding the formality of that challenging. I’d also been listening to punk rock and wanted to find a way to rebel. At some point, I realized how deep the rebellion of my grandfather’s music really was. There was no image there, no self-consciousness, no reaction to any other trend. It was social and open and generous and sustainable. In a way, it’s like the contrast between violent rebellion and non-violent rebellion. My grandfather’s music was like non-violent rebellion.
How do you balance your respect for the roots of the music with your own creative expression when you’re writing a new tune?
The parallels with language are spot-on. I want to speak the language fluently, but I also want to say what I have to say within the context of that language. You can speak eloquently, but if you can only say someone else’s words, you are limited in a pretty severe way. There are always new things to say and express. To limit those things would be to ignore the deepest reasons the music exists. Personally, I just want to dig in and have it come from the heart, and if it does, then I have faith in it.
Are your playing and writing influenced by newer musical styles as well?
In some ways, we’re all influenced by everything we hear. I’m definitely influenced by many kinds of music. It all goes in my ears and a lot of it lands in a place from where it will eventually be cooked up into something new. It might get put through my particular filter in a way where it isn’t so recognizable to others on the way out, but I feel where it comes from.
I just made a pretty heavy record with Patrick Keeler, drummer from The Raconteurs. Those hard-rocking sounds are part of me, too.
When you listen to music, what do you listen to?
I listen to a really wide range of music, from Bach to Jack White to Muddy Waters to George Jones to The Wailers. There’s something I hear in music that tends to transcend style. I’m not sure exactly what it is. It might be something about the strength and integrity of intent. There’s something cohesive about certain musical expressions that resonates with me, and it creates a set of music that other people might find incongruous. I had a cassette of Muddy Waters’s earliest Chicago recordings in my car for 10 years and never got tired of it. I could never get tired of it. It would be like getting tired of breathing.
You’ve worked with so many legendary figures. Who were you most excited to meet and work with?
I don’t know whom I’ve been most excited to work with overall. I just got to play some with Kris Kristofferson, and that was amazing. Playing “Me and Bobby McGee” with him was a transcendent experience! I’ve loved working with Loretta Lynn and Levon Helm. Playing regularly with Joan Baez is an honor and a blast. I’m very proud to be on stage with her. I just played a bit with Steve Earle, and I consider that a deep honor and thrill as well.
Is there anyone you’d like to work with that you haven’t gotten the opportunity to yet?
There are a lot of people in this category, for sure. Too many to name! Aretha Franklin!
This show is with Portland’s Foghorn String Band. Can you tell me a little about your collaboration with them and how that began?
I met the Foghorn crew through our mutual friend Kevin Burke, the great Irish fiddler based in Portland. From the moment I first played with Foghorn, I felt how much they loved the music and how completely they lived it.
At that point, I hadn’t found many players, in my experience, who got all the subtleties of the music but also played with so much soul and wide-open drive. I felt an instant connection to them. At this point, we’ve played together all around the world.
They live the music, and they live for the music. That makes all the difference.
How does the Northwest compare to other parts of the country in terms of the traditional music scene?
The Northwest traditional scene is great because it is heavily focused on the social aspect of the music, which is the reason for its existence in the first place. I love being in the Northwest. It feels like the priorities are right, and that translates to the music scene as well.
Dirk Powell
What: Traditional American fiddler Dirk Powell returns to Olympia for a performance with Portland’s Foghorn String Band.
When: 8 tonight
Where: Traditions Cafe & World Folk Art, 300 Fifth Ave. S.W., Olympia
Tickets: $20 for adults, $15 for students and those with low incomes
More information: 360-705-2819, traditionsfairtrade.com
