Switched on Pop - The Gideon and Hubcap Show

Episode Date: August 15, 2016

This episode marks something of a departure from the norm. With Charlie away, host Nate, aka "Hubcap," takes us on a home-show tour of the Scottish Highlands with his traveling minstrel act, The Gideon and Hubcap Show. It's an entirely different kind of summer music spectacle.  Featuring: •13,000 Miles - Gideon Irving •Oh Wow - Gideon Irving •Ida Done - Gideon and Hubcap •Safe Word - Gideon and Hubcap •Hebrides Overture – Felix Mendelssohn •Mouth Music - From the Smithsonian Folkways Collection, Scottish Drinking and Pipe Songs •Breabach - Gig Face •Cuyahoga - Gideon and Hubcap Check out www.mynameisgideon.com and www.gideonandhubcap.com for more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Much of this episode was recorded on the road, hence the rough sound quality. Also, be warned as a few curse words lie ahead. It's going to be my first podcast I've ever been on. What, uh... You don't have to take me out to dinner and celebrate. Welcome to Switched on Pop. This is your host, Nate Sloan, talking with my friend and collaborator, or frlaborator,

Gideon. Charlie is off this week on well-earned vacation, so here's Gideon and I walking along the craggy cliffs of a remote island in Scotland called Aig. The night before, we played a concert here as part of a two-week tour through the Scottish Highlands. Our act is called The Gideon and Hubcap Show, and for three years we've been performing in homes around the world when I'm on break from teaching. Gideon, though, plays in homes full-time. Sometimes he says he's a professional house guest. but he's much more than that. He's really a modern-day minstrel,

a 21st century version of the bards of yore that used to wander these far-flung Scottish Isles singing for their supper. On today's episode, we'll do something a little different. While pop megastars convene at massive festivals and summer concert circuits, this will be a tale about a quieter, more intimate, and totally ancient kind of musical experience.

Here's a journal of sorts from our 14 shows in living rooms across Scotland. He finds his hosts by putting up a map of the world after every show and asking the people there to write the names and contact information of their friends and family from

across the globe who they think would want to have a concert in their own living room. In this way, he's played in over 500 homes. He's done a tour of New Zealand on a bicycle and a tour of New York City on rollerblades, pushing a shopping cart full of instruments.

Why should people listen it's a different it's a different way of doing things it's a different system of power that generates the machine forward it's a different sort of atmosphere of a show it's a different understanding of what the show is in that it doesn't really begin or end because you know this whole tour and the journey is part of the show. Like that's part of the conversation and the experience that we get to share. I think that's part of it. And that it's interesting in that we are reinventing, you know, for ourselves, a format of performance, a style of performance and a means of performance. We're reinventing that

by way of doing it in the oldest way. And the process of reinventing something just by doing in some ways the most natural thing you know the most natural thing is to like just play for people around in the space they have which is their home and to find other places by just asking people day one of the trip we arrive in glasgow and somehow miraculously managed to fit two banjos one guitar a harmonium an accordion a shrewdie box a musical saw plus assorted bells chimes whirly tubes, kazoos and juice harps, along with a few assorted surprises that I can't mention, our luggage, and ourselves, all into a hatchback sedan, and then finally hit the open road. Immediately it became clear that driving on the opposite side of the road,

in the rain, on a stick shift, would present something of a challenge. especially for one of us. You don't go to the left, they go to the left. Oh, so what do I do? You go to the left. You go to the left. Well, fuck me. Yeah, going first.

Well, now they're doing so, go to the right, right, right. Sorry. Whoops. Sorry. I see. Okay, so... That's for them. That's for them.

Yeah. Right. So if you're here and you come there, they'll pull out up, or if they don't, and you're near. Yeah. Right. Okay. Gotcha. This guy. And, you know, if it gets too hairy, then you're both close.

Yeah. Yeah. How am I doing? I'm not freaking out. You're doing great. Are you scared shit listening? Yeah. You're like I'm doing that.

But I also think you're doing a great job. They're not mutually exclusive. No. Still, once we managed to get our bearings, we found ways to entertain ourselves on the long, beautiful Scottish drives. Where I'm going, I can't be seen Where he's going can't be seen I leave behind his fields of green

He is behind his fields of green And I travel to a land of pure caffeine If Kai is sound as a coffee bee Bitch Westeros Don't they, isn't the name of the place Game of Thrones? Is it not Westros? Sorry

Go, go, stone. Sorry, it's just a giant. Yeah, I didn't see that, thanks. Am I going to hit it? No, but that would have... That would have taken out the front tire. If not, the car. You got to put it in first gear to turn it back on.

And clutch down. Yeah, it is. That's reverse bags. Thanks, good. Yeah. Doing good, bud. Thanks, bud. Often we would pull up to a home that felt like it was smack dab,

in the middle of nowhere. I like that the address for Ken is just Ardeniskin, Scotland, Ken, and gets to him. And sometimes en route, we'd have to have difficult conversations about the show. Things can get tense when you're on tour. But yet, if you want your band to stick together, you always find, a way to make up. So even when your bitch is flat and no is not always exact that chance I For another

Chlovers Oh Shorebirds You got seabirds You got seabirds They fly and dive and uh Nests on rocks and whatnot Yeah

Seabirds, right? Seabirds, petrels Uh Gannets Turn. Farsons. Those are seabirds. Shorebirds are the birds

are the birds that work the shores, okay? They're your oyster catchers, your sandpipers, your flovers. You're tickle me almost. Those are the ones you see with the long legs and the long beaks waiting or combing the beaches for little...

little insects and plankton and whatnot that gets caught in the waves. Are you sure this is the right way? Yeah, she said just walk along there. Walk along the thing. I mean she said you can walk along the beach. Oh nice. See, that's a seabird, right? Nope.

You go shorebird. Like I said, it's a shorebird. Touring like this, we never know quite what we're getting into when we pull up to a house. On this Scottish tour, we've been played for crowds that ranged from 60 people in a country estate to a family of eight, including one four-year-old and one 94-year-old who lived basically at the end of the world. Performing this way isn't just about the music. It's also about the connections you forge at every stop. Look, hop cats over there. Watch this. I'm going to throw it to him. And now I'm going to put it on

the couch like that. Okay, now pick it up off the couch and throw it to me. There it is. You're going to put it back in the couch. You pick it up off the couch. Throw it to me. There it is. I'm going to put it back in my cake there. And then not knowing.

I mean, from both sides of the equation, you have a deep, like, a leap of faith that something will be okay or at least worth your time. And your time is your life, so it's valuable and precious. And we don't know what we're getting showing up, you know?

And they don't know what the hell show is going to be like. I mean we've got fairly limited amount to go on so that's that's I think a profound thing you know to offer up to offer for us up our time and our work and our energy to get to a place not knowing what anyone or anything is going to be like and for the audience to come without knowing what they're getting into and the host you know to really put their name behind something that they can only vouch for through a third party. Being a latter-day troubadour can be tough at times, but the reward of putting on a great show is beyond measure. Bringing our music to remote corners of the world means that towns and villages that rarely have traveling musicians come their way

get to experience something totally new, direct from New York City without ever having to leave their house. As a result, the hospitality we'd receive was often staggering. George has made us for our arrival a banjo bread. George the baker of Aaron. Yes. And George, can you describe this banjo bread for us? Well, the banjo bread was conceived as a commission. I decided that no ordinary bread would do,

so I filled a good sourdough white leaving bread with some cheese from the local creamery. I studded it with pine nuts to try and replicate the studs on the room of the banjo drum. Expertly achieved. The fretboard I made in the spirit of mahogany of rosewood or other hardwoods in a seeded emmerloaf

dough, which I then studied with olive tuning pegs. The result, I think, you'll find is delectable and sounds just like the real thing. Yeah. Again and again, the sense of gratitude and warmth was almost downright overwhelming.

The best concert I've ever been at. That's straight from Agnes his lips. And you've been to a lot of concerts, I am. Agnes has been to a lot of concerts. And Ada has also been to a lot of concerts. Oh yeah. What is Ada? Ada thinks you are the most, you're important too. I think, thank you, dear. I think you are the most fantastic pair of boys. And I've had the best night that I have in absolutely years. But it's exactly the intimacy of our home show touring model that makes this mode of music so meaningful.

And when we come back after a quick break, we'll talk more about the surprising musical exchanges that made this tour so indelible. Hadda, then she come to time she gets me on the cheek and then she turned around without a sound and headed down the line. You got a smile I can forget to make my niece so very weak and hold the kisses to remember just a sweet-ass from wine. Hadda done gone and I got to the going. Had it done gone, done gone and I got going to it.

And I've got to get to the go and Going and the Go ahead and done and gone and a Go ahead and done and gone and gone and gone and gone and gone and gone and go in a way. Convience your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of with a better conversion of the world. Has heard it.

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Shopify. orgs. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly

Democratic cities for ICE raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration

and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process

of returning millions and millions of of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE.

When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Gideon and I quickly discovered the West Coast of Scotland is a special place. Mysterious, ancient, isolated.

We could understand why the composer Felix Mendelssohn back in the mid-1800s was inspired to write a whole over-executive. overture after visiting the Hebrides Islands, the elemental force of waves crashing against cliffs, the decaying castle slowly slouching into the sea, ancient ruins communicating some forgotten meaning. This area has its own rich musical traditions too, and music is a huge part of the heritage and identity of the land. Gallic culture has experienced a huge resurgence in recent years, and music is an essential element of that reclamation. We got to hear some incredible piping, plucking, singing, and fiddling on our way. We were taught old and new songs, blown away by a 13-year-old piper on the island of Barra,

and heard some unrepeatable rhymes from a retired doctor on the Isle of Aran. We were also lucky to participate in a few jam sessions ourselves. Some Scottish traditions seem to resonate with our own approach to music in surprising ways. The nonsense phrases of the vocal style known as mouth music, which here recorded on the Hebridean Isles half a century ago, totally blew us away. and we found in it in it Rican and a lot of

Bury and I'm down to be a bitty. And we found in it some corollary to some of our own nonsense lyrics. Supercalifera, the list of HB. Aladoches. Tilemonish, working, milking, could lose out of glass.

Feeding, ocean, nephew, people, people, waiting, tons of bourbon, sooty, hint, and bird, feet from my sex operas, sournel or lazy juice juice,

schizophrenic, white milk in office, Jesus banking, working, running, laptop, a lapelite, a lapelette, a lap,

Meanwhile, bands we discovered along the way like Brebaugh became the soundtrack of our tour. The way they update traditional Scottish music resonated with our own reinventions of this wandering minstrel tradition. And many long drive was made more endurable by a round of head-banging to Brabock's epic bagpipe rips. In an era when music shows and festivals are getting bigger,

more elaborate, more expensive, musicians like Gideon are trying to bring performance back to its roots. His stovetop folk show folds into a suitcase and drives to your door. For musicians and audiences alike, it's a totally different kind of musical experience. Switched on Pop is produced by me, Hubcap Sloan, and Charlie Harding. Big thanks to Gideon Irving and all the hosts and audience that made our Scottish tour possible. Learn more about Gideon. adventures at my name is gideon.com and tune in in two weeks for further hyperanalysis of pop hits

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