>> Stephen Winick: Welcome. This is Steve Winick with
The American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. We've been doing the Homegrown
Concert Series for many years. During the pandemic of
2020, we shifted focus to doing this series as
a video concert series, which we call Homegrown at Home. So, now in 2021, we are
in our second season of Homegrown at Home concerts. And we were very
happy to have with us in this year's series
Hubby Jenkins. Hubby is a great old
time and blues musician, does gospel songs as
well, living in Brooklyn, and we have him here
for an interview. So, Hubby, welcome
to the Homegrown at Home interview series. >> Hubby Jenkins: Thank you. Good to be here. Had fun playing the
concert in my backyard. And, yeah, look forward
to talking to you. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah,
that was really fun. So, you are from Brooklyn,
I believe, a New Yorker. So, tell us how you got into
music growing up in Brooklyn. >> Hubby Jenkins: Sure. Well, yeah, I grew
up in Brooklyn. I grew up with two moms. One of my moms is Puerto Rican. My other mom's family
is from North Carolina. But she was born and
raised in Queens. But with that, I grew up
with like a lot of music, so like whenever a cookout or
barbecue, just hearing lots of different types of music. On my Puerto Rican
side of the family, there was always conga drums. And, you know, someone would
put a cowbell in my hand and like probably learning the
Clave was the first thing I ever did as a kid. And then I started playing
saxophone from the age of like five, I played
saxophone from the age of five all the way
into high school. And I guess that's where I
like learned to like read music and play with other people. And I had a really good
teacher in middle school, Kevin K. Knutsen, who had a
very funny sense of humor. All of our permission
slips, he would just put KKK on because he thought
it was funny. And 11 year old me
thought it was funny too. But just like how to use
your ear, he made us, he did sure everyone could
snap with both hands and play with rhythms and do
things like that. And around that time, I kind
of like discovered music and stopped watching as much TV and obsessively listened
to everything. And back then, CDs were
cheap, so I could just like get my allowance
or whatever and just spend it all on CDs. And, you know, one movie
at a matinee or something. But, yeah, I guess that's most, the bulk of my childhood
and raising. And I guess I grew up
like in the late 80s. I have like distinct
music memories. Like I remember when
like 36 Chambers of Death by Wu Tang Clan came out,
and like just walking on the streets, and just heard
it everywhere, every boombox, every car passing, just like
things like that just amazed me. And one last tangent. But just like I remember
being 11 or 12, and our apartment was right on
the corner, and I was listening to the radio, 103.5 KTU,
that's a dance music station in New York, and they were
playing Rick James' Super Freak. And it's the part
where he goes ha ha ha, like that part of the song. And I'm like just sitting
like looking out the windows, listening to the radio, and
there was this person walking across the street and they
have their headphones in and they just stopped
in the middle of street and went ha ha ha like that,
and I like was like oh, snap, we're listening,
like, I don't know, like it just blew my 12 year
old mind, like, all right, we're all listening to it. Something about that really
stuck with me for sure. >> Right. No, that's great. And, yeah, it kind of gives
you that feeling of the city and how, you know, that's
going on all the time during like your, it's a big
community, and it's great, it's a great place to live
and grow up in many ways. So, so, at some point,
you took this, you know, giant musical stew, right,
of everything, and you ended up focuses a little bit on
what we would now say was like old time music or
folk music, or, you know, given one of those names. So, how did that happen? >> Yeah, in high school,
I dropped the saxophone because the music
teacher was weird. He was too patriotic
for me actually. And then I started
playing cello and viola in the orchestra,
classical orchestra. And then started
playing bass there. And people were like, oh, you
can read, you know, the same, it's the same cleft or whatever,
so you can play this music. And I started playing bass in
bands, getting into, you know, I heard Jimi Hendrix
for the first time and Bob Dylan for
the first time. And so getting into playing
bass and I started a band with some friends and we were
just like imitating 60s music. Like we were just
all about the 60s. And then we got really
into Bob Dylan. And somehow eventually
we got our, you know, got our hands on
his first record. And that's basically blues, they're all blues
covers, that album. I think he covers
like Bukka White on there and some other stuff. And so I had a good friend,
who is still a friend of mine, Jonah, whose dad is a, or I
don't know if he still does, but he was a collector of
CDs and tapes and records. This is pre internet now. So, well, not pre
internet, but like, you know, the way it is now. So, we would like,
oh, like I heard of someone named Bukka
White, you know, we'd just go to Jonah's dad house
and like look through the shelves
and borrow the CD. And so that was kind
of my first intro to a lot of that, that music. And I now am in like
post high school. I'm taking my year off from
college, which is a couple of decades in counting now. And I threw a party like
my parents were out of town and threw like, you know, let's
just have a few friends over, and it turned into
a big old party. And a friend of mine
made me a mixed CD and I had a terrible fight
with my then girlfriend and ticked everyone out of the
party and put on the mix CD that he had made for me
after everyone was gone, and the first track was
Devil Got My Woman Blues by Skip James. And I was like, I was like,
I get the blues now entirely for the very first time,
and I got a paycheck from the ice cream stand I
was working in at Bryant Park and went to Guitar Center and
said turn this into a guitar. And that's how I
got my first guitar. And I spent the whole day in the ice cream stand
just learning cords. And then I quit like
maybe a week or so later, and was like I'm
going to play music. >> Stephen Winick: That's cool. So, so that was, so that sort
of put a guitar in your hands. But you also now play a whole
bunch of other instruments, some of which are, you know,
things that have become part of the identity of you
and some of the bands that you're in, including
the banjo. So, why don't you talk about
how you sort of diversified into other string instruments? Because, I mean, I know
you also play mandolin, you play a lot of stuff. So, talk about your
instruments a little bit. >> Hubby Jenkins: Sure. Yeah, that's how the
guitar came to me. I think the banjo came next. And is that true? Wow, at my age, it's hard
to remember the orders. But like it was around the time
I was living with some musicians in College Point in Queens. And we would hang out in
Washington Square Park a lot, kind of our connection to the old time music being
New Yorkers was the, you know, the West Village, and the
folk scene of the 50s and 60s. And so that's where we
would congregate a lot. And we would meet
musicians who would also, folkies who would go there,
and we just, you know, you need a place to crash, and they would just
crash at our house. And one day I woke up and
was walking in my living room and I tripped over someone. I'm like, who are you? And he's like, I'm the Don. I'm like, the Don? No, Dom, Dom Flemons. And my roommate had met Dom
in Washington Square Park, and that's how we
met each other. And I think it was maybe
the next year he came past, or maybe later, I don't
know, at some point he came through with a friend,
Lydia, from, I think she's from Baltimore, or D.C., and they were just
traveling together. And she had a banjo. And we were in Washington Square
Park, and she was like, oh, yeah, this is my
traveling banjo. And she started showing
me how to claw hammer. And I picked it up like in an
hour or a stupid quick time. I always tell people
it was like, you know, the light from heaven shined
on me, and it just clicked, or bounced, or bum diddied. And just, you know, a little
bit of a tangent too, you know, you know, I'd listen
to like, you know, Harry Smith folk anthology
or whatever, and I would skip like Clarence Ashley and
skip a lot of that stuff. I was kind of like I
don't know what that is, I don't really get
what's happening there, it's not really, I don't
know if that's my music, I don't know what the
hell that is, you know, and I was just really like blues
focused for a very long time. And then like reading whatever
book, I think I was reading like Birth of a Banjo or
[inaudible] or something and just like learned that the
banjo was a black instrument, and it kind of like blew
my mind, you know, 20, 21 year old Hubby just like, ah. And then the banjo, and then
literally this banjo came into my hands, and
then I was able to like claw hammer
very quickly. And she gave it to me. She was like, you can
just have this banjo. And so that became that. And then I ended up getting a
mandolin and doing that to play, you know, blues stuff, and just
kind of picking with friends. And the bones I actually learned from Michael [inaudible]
Common Ground on the Hill in Westminster, Maryland, which
is a, if we had a lot of time, I could tell you a lot
of stories about that. But, and then when I joined
The Carolina Chocolate Drops, you know, I got a call
from their manager who I started doing some work
with solo, and he was like, hey, do you play the violin? And I was like, not
even a little bit. And he was like, okay, do you
want to be the main banjo player for Carolina Chocolate Drops? And that really like catapulted
my banjo playing for sure. >> Stephen Winick: That's great. Well, let's talk
about The Carolina. >> Hubby Jenkins: Oh, go ahead. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah,
I was going to say, let's talk about The Carolina
Chocolate Drops a little bit, because we've sort of
gotten there in your story, and that was a big part of how
I met you, but also, you know, it's how you first
came to the library, but also just your
musical career. So, let's talk about that. How did you meet up with those
folks and start that process? >> Hubby Jenkins: Sure. How long is this? Can I just ramble like
I've been rambling? >> Stephen Winick: Well, it's
going to go probably close to an hour, so you can probably
ramble a little bit, we're okay. >> Hubby Jenkins: All right,
we're good, we're good. >> Stephen Winick: I'll ring
it in if I have to, but, yeah. >> Hubby Jenkins:
Yeah, yeah, I give you, I give you that power, please. >> Stephen Winick: Thank you. >> Hubby Jenkins: But,
yeah, so me getting into The Chocolate Drops, I
guess there's a few things. So, like in that time
period of like hanging around in the West
Village, there was me and some friends found out about
a show happening in the back of a Thai restaurant
on McDougal Street, and the person running
the show was like I don't want
to do this anymore. So, my friend, Farol
[phonetic] Foster took it over and every Wednesday night just
started doing a folk show. And we would just invite
young people and just like we were playing
folk music in the back of this Thai restaurant and a
show called Roots and Ruckus, which like grew and
still happens today. We're actually having
their Roots and Ruckus festival this weekend at Jalopy Tavern,
or Jalopy Theatre. But anyway, so I met a lot
of people from playing there. And like my first like gigs were
playing there every Wednesday and like, and through that I
ended up meeting this guy, Sam, and Karen Duffy,
who were a couple, and Sam Duffy was a
brother of Tim Duffy, who runs Music Make
a Relief Foundation, and was the first manager
of Carolina Chocolate Drops. So, I met him and Dom like within a couple
years of each other. And just through like, you know,
me being good at playing music and them needing someone
handsome and black and talented to fill in after Justin
left, I got the call. And we, I did my
little audition, and it went great,
as you can imagine. And I remember like, they're
like, okay, we're going to go, it was like maybe the fall, they're like, we
start in February. Like, great. Like, what's your repertoire? And they're just
like, oh, no problem, and they just mailed
me all of their CDs. They're like, that's
our repertoire. I was like, okay, cool. And just kind of
started to go through it. It was the first time I had
really like listen listened to Joe Thompson and
started breaking down his stuff a little bit. And then, of course, and then in
that first year, we did 260 days on the road and 200
and some odd shows. So, that really like
busted my chops and learning more in that way. And I don't know if they,
had they already had the kind of tradition of stopping by
when they came through D.C.? >> Stephen Winick: Yeah,
the first time we had them in the reading room, you weren't
in the group yet, but, yeah, so Justin was there
actually that first time, so >> Hubby Jenkins: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Hubby Jenkins:
And so when we went, I was, I was totally amazed. And I remember the first
time that I, we came through, because I remember I
played Sam Cook Live at the Harlem Square Club in
the band on the way there, which I think is one of the
greatest albums of all time. And they didn't, they
didn't like it as much. And I was like, these
people are weird. And then we got to the, and
then we got to the reading room, I was like, all right, they're
all right, they're all right. And, yeah, and I think
that was just, you know, it was also a cool
thing to being able to, what's the word I'm looking
for, I just like feel like part of the reason why I became,
you know, I don't know if I would call myself
a researcher, but like became interested in
that sort of thing is just, you know, when you're black
and you play this music, old time music, you
can feel very isolated, especially if you're, I
don't know, in New York, but I don't know what it can be
like if you're also in the South and like the spaces you
go to are very white and people are telling
you like, you know, different things about it. So, you just end up reading
and wanting to dive into more and just, you know, get
to the truth of things. And so that was kind
of the impetus for me. And so when we're, you know,
in an all black string band, and our mission is to like,
you know, reinsert black people into the narrative of American
music, and then, you know, there's this wonderful place
that we can just walk into and like hear it, and also
hear like, oh, you've heard that recording, but have you
heard this one before, you know, or like, you know, I've never
heard Skip James curse before, or whatever, I'm
making stuff up. But like that just
seemed very magical to me. Yeah, it's like Hogwarts
or something like that, I don't know. >> Stephen Winick: Right. It's interesting that you say
that, because one of the things that always comes to my mind
is people really associate the blues with just a guy with
a guitar, but if you come to our archive and you listen to those first muddy waters
recordings, for example, he's playing guitar, but there's
a mandolin and there's a fiddle and it's basically
string band music with muddy singing
and playing guitar. And people have kind
of erased black people from the string band
tradition in their minds, but there were always
African American string bands, and Carolina Chocolate
Drops, you know, is a great example
of that tradition. Did you meet any of the old
timers from other string bands, other African American
string bands as a member of The Chocolate Drops? >> Hubby Jenkins: Did I
meet any other members of African American
string bands? I don't know. I think like through Music
Maker, I was able to meet, you know, they had a big heavy
focus on blues, so I met a lot of older blues musicians there. In my life, I mean, no,
I would say probably not. You know, without The Chocolate
Drops, I was able to spend time with people like John Cohen of New Lost City Ramblers
and stuff like that. But no, I don't think so. Oh, and I guess I met,
what is it called, I went to the second
black banjo gathering in Boone, North Carolina. And there I met like Joe
Thompson for the first time. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Hubby Jenkins:
I think I met Otis, Otis Taylor for the first time. Yeah, sorry, I'm
blanking on that one. >> Stephen Winick: So, just,
so, just a couple of folks, but, yeah, but, I mean, it just
speaks to what you were saying, that the tradition, you know,
there was kind of a hiatus, right, so that most of
the folks who played in that tradition were very old by the time you were
getting into the scene. And so, yeah, and so it was,
that speaks to the isolation that you were talking about,
right, as a black person trying to do this person, and you find that your antecedents
are either, you know, super old or they're white. So, it's >> Hubby Jenkins: Right. >> Stephen Winick: You know. >> Hubby Jenkins:
Yeah, for sure. >> Stephen Winick: That
you found yourself in. Yeah, well, one thing that I've
heard you talk about before, and you might want
to mention it now, is the Black Banjo Reclamation
Project on this same topic. >> Hubby Jenkins: I guess it's
the Banjo Reclamation Project is in California, in the Bay
Area, in Oakland probably, I'm going to say
it's in Oakland. Hannah Mayree is running it. And it's this project of,
you know, getting, you know, they're getting money,
getting instruments together and being able to take banjos
and put them into the hands of black and brown kids. And, you know, this, the
banjo reclamation, you know, it's just such a very strong
name, but, you know, the power, let me just still my emotions. When I started playing the
banjo, when I started touring with Chocolate Drops and we
would play shows and say, you know, the banjo
is a black instrument, and at that time I think
that would be like the most, you know, radical we would
get with what we talked about, you know, and still after
shows people would be like that's a lie, my granddaddy
played the banjo, like, boy, you don't know what
you're talking about, like people would get
aggressive, like upset, like very mad about it. And so it becomes like, you
know, also like, you know, just this denial of history,
right, it's a denial of history, but it's a denial of my
history, it's a denial of me, it's a denial of my
ancestors, it's a denial of their importance, but
like by proxy my importance as an American, right? To say like, no, you had nothing
to do with the thing that you, like this is my, this is
ours too, you know, fuck you. And so I'll try not to curse
that much, New Yorker over here, so I'm like, you know, to be,
so that became very important, very emboldening to be like,
no, banjo is a black instrument, you're going to deal with it. And then you're also going to
deal with an hour and a half of black people just
playing banjo at you. You know? And not to
make it us versus them, but just that pride
of doing it, right? And so when you have this thing, like this Banjo Reclamation
Project, or just like, you know, when we, when I go to schools,
or when we used to go to schools as a band, you know,
looking at kids and saying like this is yours too. Right? Like you are
not a visitor here, you are not a guest here,
like this is also yours, this country is also
you, like you are part of cultivating this thing. And so I just think it's
a very beautiful project and very important. >> Stephen Winick: Cool. Well, thanks for talking
about it a little bit. To go back to The
Chocolate Drops, so, so, you joined this band, you said
you did this first massive tour, you know, 200 plus dates in your
first year, and then you stayed with them for some years. So, talk a little bit about the
dynamics of that band and some of the great people you were
able to play with in the band. >> Hubby Jenkins: Sure. I guess, you know,
over the years with The Carolina
Chocolate Drops, you know, I won't go too deep. Oh, you meant musical dynamics,
not band dynamics, obviously. >> Stephen Winick:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Hubby Jenkins:
I've been watching that Beatles documentary. And, boy, you know, I just
relate to so there's one part where Paul looks at
George and he goes, look, you can play it slow or
you can play it good. And I was like, oh,
I've been in that, I've been in that room before. But, you know, when I first
joined Chocolate Drops, it was me, Rhiannon,
Dom, and Adam Matta, the human beatbox machine. And just right there,
you can see a lot of what we were doing was
taking different traditions, different folk traditions. I include hip hop
as a folk tradition. But that's maybe another
video we could make. But like didn't you guys
just do the hip hop? Anyway, I'm on a tangent. The coffee's going to go away, I'm going to bring
the water over here. But, you know, just combining
these different traditions, and just seeing how that works,
you know, being able to just, you know, boom, soured mountain,
straight, we're all timing it, we can bring it to you with
a little blue razz flavor. But we could also play
for you, Rhiannon's going to do some Gaelic little ting. Adam's going to do a beat
on the human machine, on, you know, with his mouth. Dom's going to play a giant bass
drum and the [inaudible] drum, and I'm going to play bones
in the style of madness. You know? And that becomes
all these different traditions coming together. So, that was always kind
of a cool aspect, you know, cool aspect of playing. And so that he had with
that, and then we got to play with Layla Macala
[phonetic], Malcolm Parson, my brother from another
mother, Rowen Corbit [phonetic], I think that's all The Carolina
Chocolate Drops, before we get into Rhiannon Giddens' band. And it's funny, we
also, we played, we played the Grand Ole
Opry a couple of times. And I forget like, it's like
the second time we played there, because Malcolm was
with us at this point. And there was a guard there
who was telling us that like, you know, there are maybe
like six black people who had ever performed
at the Grand Ole Opry, and it was like Charlie Pride,
Ray Charles, DeFord Bailey, James Brown, the guy from
Hootie & the Blowfish, and then like eight people from Carolina Chocolate
Drops, you know what I mean. So, I was like that's pretty,
there's something amazing about that, you know, but also
Grand Ole Opry got it together, but also just, you
know, amazing. And so, yeah, that was
just the beauty of that, and just traveling around and
seeing people react positively to the music, being able to
create and combine these things. And then over time, you know,
like the first couple of years, it's like the banjo
is a black instrument, the banjo is a black instrument. And then eventually getting
questions like, you know, what are the ramifications of an all black street
band playing this music in America today? Like okay, we're
getting there, you know, like how does this relate
to like what happened to Freddie Gray last
week, like yes, okay, now we're getting
there, you know? So, it was interesting. I don't know. It's just, I'm just very
grateful to have that journey and have that band during that
time, if that makes sense. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, and
I guess through the success of the band, you were
able to play in spaces that as you say have
been typically dominated by white people, you know, the
Opry being an obvious example, but just the whole bluegrass
scene, the whole kind of Americana scene, the image
that we have within those, you know, those spaces
is typically a bunch of white people. So, what was it like to be that
band that was able to, you know, go in there and have
everyone go, whoa, these guys are amazing? >> Hubby Jenkins: You
know, across the board, like just generally,
it was great. And it was just great to like
perform and people to be like, whoa, you just knocked
my socks off, or whoa, you just blew my mind. Excuse me. And it's also work, you
know, it can be hard, because sometimes you'd have to
break, you have to break the ice or break through to
people sometimes, you know? And people will quickly put
up their guard if, you know, like we were saying before,
with something as simple as the banjo is a
black instrument, that chiaroscuro
put people on guard. You know, and then
you also have things like would people
get too comfortable. You know, one of my first
festivals I ever played, this is before Chocolate
Drops, but I played at Shakori Hills Festival
in North Carolina. And one night I was hanging out
like around a fire playing music with all these musicians
and having a great time, and then all of a sudden like
they start dropping N bombs and telling nigger jokes. And I was just like, oh,
you know, like they told me about the South, you know, and
so he says, I just have to deal with it, you know,
I dealt with it by like telling the worst
nigger joke that I know, and it made everyone stop. But I was young and drunk on
moonshine for the first time. But like as you get older, you
also like deal with things, where people are calling
you boy or talking to you in a certain way that you
have to like, oh, yeah, assert yourself and like
constantly have to defend, not defend, I think it starts
with a word in these spaces, and then other times it's just
welcoming, you get to play music that you freaking
love with people who are really good
at it, you know? So, it's a mixed bag, I guess. But now I think, I don't know,
that's all turning around. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. Well, so, you know, you
mentioned, you know, that's all The Chocolate Drops
before it became Rhiannon Giddens' band, before we
moved into that phase. So, talk about working
with Rhiannon as the Rhiannon Giddens' band. >> Hubby Jenkins: Yeah. I mean, that was, how did
that even start, you know, I guess like T Bone Burnett
was a big part of that, and we did some stuff for that
movie, the Llewyn Davis movie. But that's when we like,
when we got some white folks in the band, Jason, Jason
Sypher and Jamie Dick on drums, Jason on bass, whose birthday
is coming up in a couple days. And just so became like, you
know, bigger and more rockish. Your boy, Hubby Jenkins,
started playing electric guitar. I had never even owned an
electric guitar until this band. And just people would talk about like you don't
know how to set an amp? And I was like, uh, you know,
but I learned about that kind of stuff and reverb
and just loving it. You know, you could just hit
one note and just walk away from the guitar if you want. And so that was pretty rockish. And then I think we started
getting, I don't know, we started getting more shows. We did David Letterman. That's where I got this cup
from, was like Rhiannon Giddens. And so like we were able to
incorporate these sounds, and I think we're reaching
out to more people, and, yeah, I was traveling further
around the world. And I'd say like even, you know,
talking about like audiences in spaces, you know, like we
started noticing more POCs showing up to shows, like
especially like in New York or D.C. or in California. I remember we played
Atlanta, and like people from Afropunk came to check it
out, and it was just like, whoa, like, you know, that would
not, that was not happening when we were, you
know, [inaudible]. But, yeah, I guess that,
I guess that, I don't know if you have more
specific questions, but I think that's
it in a nutshell. >> Stephen Winick: Sounds good. Well, you know, might make
sense to talk about your kind of solo work as well,
particularly, you know, just before and during
the pandemic, what have you been focusing on
lately I guess is the question. >> Hubby Jenkins: Yeah, sure. Yeah, before the pandemic, it
was kind of continuing the work of The Chocolate Drops and just
like using the music to kind of tell my interpretations
of his, not, interpretation of history is a bad thing,
let's go back three, two, one, but it's my understandings of
history, and just, you know, putting a scope to it. So, for a long time,
I was doing a show of like why are black people
not associated with the banjo, the instrument that
they created? Like what sort of factors
could contribute to that? And so I could do like an hour,
hour and a half of just like, you know, we could
talk about [inaudible], we can talk about
the record industry, we can talk about
the great migration, we can talk about all these
things that like, you know, now we get to this time where
we don't associate black people as much with the instrument. And then my next
obsession became spirituals and gospel, which I am still on. I think what I need to do
is to make like a record. Like once I make my
spirituals gospel album, it will be like closing
the chapter and then move onto my next thing, which I am
not a hundred percent sure what it will be yet. I've been working a lot
on Joseph Spence right now and breaking down
his guitar playing. And I have a big dream of, or I
had a dream anyway of playing it in a band, like having a
fiddle and base and trying to turn his style of music, I don't know what
you would call it, like Caribbean blues
gospel jazz, you know, but I want to maybe turn
it into a band thing. And that's, you know,
copyright Hubby Jenkins 2021, but there's that. I don't know, I just have
many things percolating. I'm thinking about
double entendre stuff. Also thinking about just like, I
mean, it's hard to do work songs and to do prison songs, but
just wondered like, you know, just all those like great
recordings, you know, that [inaudible] did, like going into prisons and
stuff like that. I was like, what would that
experience be like today? Like what is the music now? And I know a lot of it is
hip hop and I lot of people, you know, which I love,
and like I said earlier, consider like a folk art, so like I know someday someone
might give me money to try and do that, and, anyway, I'm
telling you all my ideas, but, you know, stuff like
this, they're percolating. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, I
mean, that would be cool to take that hip hop tradition that's
there, you know, in prisons, as well as other places, and try
to sort of infuse it with some of the older styles of
music, some of the, you know, the banjo stuff, the stuff that
you play in other contexts, and sort of marry
those traditions, that would be very cool. >> Hubby Jenkins: For sure. But also to even just look
at it in the same way, right, because like if I, you
know, I don't know, what's one you can think of,
like No More Cane on the Brazos or something like that, right,
like, I don't know why I picked that one, but, you know,
if I hear something today where someone's, you know, got
some song in there that's about, you know, having to do the
rodeo in Angola, or having to, you know, the chance to get
free, or doing license plates or whatever, it's
that same context. You're able to kind of
connect them in that way. And I think that's a part
of like what I do musically as well, so it's like, you know,
I might play when the, you know, [inaudible] Frisco by
Mississippi Fred McDowell, it's not, you know, it's not
about the great migration, but it perfectly fits
it so I can use it in that way to like describe it. So, I think that would be, not
necessarily that I would want to put a banjo under what's
happening, but to really look at it as now, and then, you
know, we have this whole history and this whole musical
library, you especially, that we can reference to
say this is what this, like this is how this stacks
up, or it's connected, or is part of the stream. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. And one of the interesting
things is that even though people kind of
associate hip hop per se with, you know, like you said,
the 80s, and that great era, you know, that tradition, that
rapping tradition goes back as long as any of these other
traditions we're talking about. And there's, you know, field
recordings of that as well. So, just to look at it as its own thing is another
I think important part of talking about, you
know, American history and black American
history particularly. So, yeah, do all those projects. That would be cool. >> Hubby Jenkins: Yes, sir. I've got to go. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. Right. >> Hubby Jenkins: And
there's also toast, which I think I first heard,
like I feel like I have a memory of you playing for me like
the, like a Hitler toast or something like that. >> Stephen Winick:
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, we have a lot of toasts. Yeah. >> Hubby Jenkins: And I don't
know what you do with them. I remember I got go ahead. >> Stephen Winick: I was going to say those things
are basically rap. Early, you know, if you look
at the very early hip hop, there was a lot of those
kinds of stories being told within the raps as well. So >> Hubby Jenkins: Oh, for sure. And then you have stuff like,
what's that record, six boys and six boys in danger
or something like that, six it's a Smithsonian record. It's like six boys in trouble. And it's like, it's like a
bunch of kids in New York and they're playing like, I
don't know what they're playing, maybe like buckets or something,
and they're telling stories, like I'm so hungry, or
something like that. But, and it's like in the same
tradition, six boys in danger on the streets or
something like that. Anyway, I could go on. And I remember trying to
do some toast, and they, I think I picked the
wrong toast, because some of them can go off the
rails really quickly, and people are not
ready for that kind of raunchiness necessarily
at an old time folks show. It surprises them. >> Stephen Winick: Cool. Well, you can, you can keep
working on integrating some of that stuff into the show. But like you say, it
can be a challenge to put all these things into one
audience and I guess that's one of the issues that you're
always going to have is the, is the audience question. And sort of emerging from the
pandemic, what are you finding in terms of finding
an audience again? >> Hubby Jenkins: You
know, it's been a little, finding an audience again, I'm still doing things
online, which is okay. This year has been a little
bit tougher, you know, some plans that I made got
canceled by second waves in areas or third
waves at this point. Even Omicron is messing
with some of my plans for next year already. But when I do go out,
and also, you know, going out too people are a
little bit hesitant still to be indoors, you
know, for two hours or whatever it's going to be. But when I do play, you know, I was in Rhode Island this
weekend, and people came, and they were happy
and like appreciative and like glad to be out. And I miss it, you know, it's
weird to, you know, play a song and then finish and you're just
staring at yourself silently in your apartment or whatever. So, I really do miss it. And it's coming back,
you know, people need, people need live
music, and, you know, it's going to be all right. >> Stephen Winick: It
always will come back. You know, one of the great
things about your concert for us that you did in your backyard
was when your neighbor got in on the, like you can't, you
can't escape entertaining people when you do stuff as great as
the music that you do, Hubby, so >> Hubby Jenkins:
Oh, thanks, man. [ Inaudible ] Oh, yeah. Well, I wish you guys
could have seen it, you know, it's New York, so it's like all
the backyard, in the summertime, it's a beautiful scene,
you know, people have, two people have pools
and they're splashing, everyone's music is competing, you smell five different
barbecues. It's one of the things
I love about, you know, I'm a city mouse,
or a town mouse. But, yeah, to this day, like every time I
[inaudible] my man, mandolin. I keep telling him it's
a banjo, you know, but >> Stephen Winick: That's funny. Yeah, well, that's kind of
an interesting question too. So, you are, as you
say, a city mouse. And yet a lot of the music that
you play has these associations with rurality, with
the rural world. How do you negotiate that
difference or that distance? >> Hubby Jenkins: You
know, I, how do I? I definitely, I think
like as I got older, it might have affected like
some of my song choices. Like I think I definitely
dropped saying lordy at a certain point. Stuff like that. And then just when I'm in the
country, you know, I can hang, I can hang in the country,
you know, I can do, you know, but I just can't live there. That's the only difference. I just can't live there. But for me, you know, like
the music is country music, but it's also part of
this bigger thread. So, I feel like I can, you
know, be my Yankee city self and still respect
and honor the music. And other country
folks, you know, they give me proper,
so it's all good. >> Stephen Winick: So, we often
kind of end these interviews by asking the person being
interviewed, you know, what message do you want to
convey in this interview? What would you like
most to tell audiences at the Library of Congress? >> Hubby Jenkins: Oh, wow. The most. You know, I
always know that this type of question is coming and
I'm never fully prepared. I think that, you
know, the importance of knowing your history and
not just your, you know, your personal history,
your country's history, the history of the things that
you're interested in, and, you know, love, it cannot
be understated how important that is to know it. And when you know it, you know,
for me, understanding, you know, this music and the history
around it has allowed me to dig deeper into American
history, which has allowed me to feel stronger as a person,
as a citizen of America and the world, as a black man. And it's just done all
these things for me that makes it harder
for me to, I don't know, put down someone else
or press someone else or also [inaudible] I don't know
it just makes it hard for me to do all of these things. And so I just think that,
you know, dig into the roots of what you love, and like
do it honestly and openly, and you just, the whole
world will open up to you, and it will be a better place. Something like that. >> Stephen Winick: Well, that's
a great, that's a great message to close an interview with. So, thank you very much. Hubby Jenkins, we should
say that as a member of The Carolina Chocolate Drops,
Hubby has played at the library, but he also performed in the
homegrown 21, 2021 Homegrown at Home concert series. You can find that
video on our website. And Hubby's also joined us in the reading room
as a researcher. And we hope that you'll
come back and listen to our recordings more,
even though so many of them are online that you
can listen to them there too. So, Hubby Jenkins, welcome
back to our concert series, and thank you so much
for doing this interview. >> Hubby Jenkins:
Oh, any time, Steve. Glad we got to talk.
