Deli: When was the last time you played up here in Burlington?

Jamie Masefield: It was in 2004. For the reopening at the new Higher Ground. It opened right before Christmas, it sold out and it was a really fun time. That was the last club date we did around here because then I started developing a new performance of the Jazz Mandolin Project.

I got a grant from the Vermont Arts Council to make [How Much Land Does a Man Need?]  which involves film, narration and live musical accompaniment. The show is based on a short story by Tolstoy. The story is narrated and the visuals are up on a movie screen, the band is in front of the movie screen and we are basically playing a live soundtrack to this movie of sorts that I made.  All the footage is footage  I collected in 2005. It is a lot of landscapes and that is what the story is about, a guy traveling along the land and trying to buy all the land. It is actually a really cool story. We put that together and put that on for two sold out shows at the [Flynn Theatre, Burlington, VT].

Deli: Who played with you? Did you have a jazz trio or a bunch of people?

JM: JMP is a quartet. I play the mandolin, there’s a drummer and an upright bass player. There’s a fourth guy who plays woodwinds, saxophone, and a whole slew of percussion instruments.  Then I just tried to focus on us performing that performance and trying to do new things. We performed at arts centers and colleges. We have some really big shows coming up for the Tolstoy performance.

I wanted to play some straight up music and we haven’t had any time to do some straight up music, or club dates, because I’ve been focused on this other thing. We have two club dates in Burlington, we are really looking forward to it.

Deli: Who’s playing with you at the shows?

JM: John Fishman is playing drums, and Scott Ritchie is playing upright bass, a guy who’s been playing with me for a long time. When I met him he was still living in Louisville, Kentucky. We make fun of him because he’s got a funny Kentucky hick accent. The fourth guy, the multi-instrumentalist I mentioned, Peter Apfelbaum, he’s played in Tre’s [Anastasio] band.

Deli: Do you think that doing the Tolstoy project was a good transition, a good break, to see another part of your creative mind? Is that why you wanted to do it?

JM: Yes, that’s the way I feel. There were a lot of reasons why it all came together. We spent 13 years running around the country, playing a lot of shows. It just seemed like things needed to change. Everyone was tired of running around, sleeping in funky hotel rooms on the side of the roaring highways. 

Life is short, it seems like there is so many things one person can do. I wanted to connect the music to something else.  In the concert it is just us. I wanted to connect the music to something thought provoking. That people wouldn’t come out of the show discussing whether they liked the music or not. Instead they would be engaged in this bigger conversation about the state of affairs or things that we grapple with, philosophical things.

Deli: How long have you been playing for, any music? Did you start with the mandolin?

JM: I started when I was eleven. I started with the tenor banjo. The tenor banjo is different than the five-string banjo. The five-string is what you hear in bluegrass and the tenor banjo is what’s played in traditional New Orleans jazz. You don’t fingerpick the tenor banjo you strum it. It has four strings and the mandolin has eight, but they are in pairs, so they are very similar. We had a close friend of the family we took lessons every Saturday from when I was eleven until I moved to Burlington for college.

Deli: Good for you, you stuck with it through your teenage years.

JM: I’m a weirdo. Other people were into Zeppelin and Kiss and here’s dorky Jamie learning how to play doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo (to the tune of Campton Races).

Deli: What do you think of the Burlington Music scene, right now?

JM: I’ve been part of it for a long time, but I feel like it is really dead right now. But then I get concerned because I think I’ve just gotten older and I’m out of the loop and don’t know what is going on. But when I was first getting my band together, I remember the walls were covered with posters with all these bands.

Deli:What year was this?

JM: This would be anytime between 1988-1995. People really going to see all the music and talking about the music. I knew there were lots of musicians and lots of musicians that played with a lot of different bands. It just seemed more thriving. I don’t get the same impression. I know UVM has a much better music program now than when I was there. I get a vibe that people really aren’t into live music right now. What do you think?

Deli: I whole-heartedly agree. I used to work at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, MA for a bunch of years, I also tagged along to my friend’s sound gigs around major Boston venues. So that’s where I’m coming from.

JM: Yeah, that’s like the institution.

Deli: I like your stuff, like jazz and blues, I don’t really see stuff like that promoted around here. I like older stuff. There really isn’t an older scene here.  I mean, it seems it drops of after a certain age, and after college age, like 25. There doesn’t seem to be any seasoned musicians and bands don’t last very long. I have barely lived here a year, but this is the impression that I get from being involved with music for so long.

I don’t know if the Burlington venues don’t support the musicians or there nobody playing or something.

JM: I think that the players are still into playing. I think the economy of it all is still so difficult. People don’t come out to see it as much. I think there is a fascination of the technology of music right now. iPods and downloading music. When I talk to 20 -year-olds.

They say: Aw, man I’ve got eight days of music in here. Really what are you listening to: Everything! 

Like what? What’s in your cue. Rolling Stones. Led Zepplin.

 And all this stuff is thirty years old and I’m thinking, but what’s the band that you identify with from your generation that’s your sound, not your Dad’s sound?

Deli: There doesn’t seem to be a lot of places around here, other than Nectar’s or Radio Bean, that support young new musicians. It seems like the kids themselves are supporting themselves more. There is this group called Tick Tick who are young people, my age or younger, I’m 26.  They started a whole booking agency. They found a screen printing kit on the side of the road or something and started overnight. They put together press sets, flyers, CD, a venue to book in. They started it because they though Burlington wasn’t a happenin’ kind of a place.

JM: Used to be really happening.

Deli: I know that’s what I’ve heard.

JM: I like Radio Bean a lot. You walk in and any kind of stuff could be going on there. I checked out your website and I couldn’t recognize any of the bands.

Deli: I know what you mean, [the scene] is more like indie rock, under that big umbrella.

JM:Indie rock is the thing, right?

Deli: I guess so.

JM: What’s the most indie rock band right now?

Deli:You mean here, or in general?

JM: In general.

Deli: I don’t know I think it is such a big term, it’s a broad term. It’s like new rock? I don’t know… Modest Mouse?

JM: That’s what I was going to say. I was going ask if Modest Mouse was the biggest. I didn’t want to say it because I wanted to see if you would say it first.

Deli: I’ve been listening to them for like ten years.  I also like this other band, Arcade Fire.

JM: Yeah, my friend turned me on to them. You gotta listen to this other band, it is called The Fleet Foxes. It’s got a kind of retro sound. A lot of these bands have a retro sound.

Deli: That’s like the thing. I don’t know what other word there is to describe it. It’s all recycled. It works that way for any art. You play what you know.

JM: We are all influenced by something that comes before us.

Deli: Then there is all this 80’s stuff, like bands coming back together, like Guns ‘n’ Roses. That’s why I think the live music scene should be cultivated more; you have to keep it going.

JM: Yeah, it’s a strange time.

Deli: What do you like for popular music?

JM: I’m a big Radiohead fan.

Deli: Yeah, they are in a league all their own though.

JM: Do you listen to Pandora? I have my Radiohead station and there’s almost nothing on it that I like. They keep trying to turn me on to stuff that I don’t think has much connection to Radiohead. It’s kind of like what you are saying they are in their own category.

Deli: I have that same station too, and they keep playing Belle and Sebastian, that mellow stuff. But what would you say that would be like Radiohead?

JM: I don’t know. I’m a big fan of those guys. I like Wilco, I’m a huge Neil Young fan.

Deli: What influenced you when you were little?

JM: Well I already told you, I was pretty nerdy with my banjo. I wasn’t into the Zeppelin and all that stuff. When I would get on the school bus, the bigger kids from the tough side of town had the first boom boxes and they were blasting that on the school bus.

 I guess Neil Young was one of the guys I first thought was so cool. Not so much the bluegrass yet.

Deli: How did you get into bluegrass?

JM:I started taking lessons from this guy on the banjo, then my brother started taking lessons on guitar then my two cousins, and the four of us started a little band. And it kind of moved in the bluegrass direction because that was the kind of instruments we were playing. And we spent a lot of time in the woods. So we weren’t that into electric guitars or hanging out in the basement with an amp. We liked building shit and being outside. The instruments seemed to fit that hillbilly vibe.

Deli: Why is it the Project and not the Band or Experiment?

JM: The way it got its name is that I was playing with different bands around Burlington, but I wasn’t playing mandolin, I was playing banjo and guitar. What I really wanted to do was play jazz on the mandolin. So I started booking a gig once a month a coffee house called The Last Elm café in the North End. I called it the Jazz Mandolin Project.

-          Interview by: Meghan Chiampa