BILL AMATNEEK
Acoustic Stories
Vineyards Press

www.amatneek.com
 

Bill Amatneek’s Acoustic Stories is a compelling read from a virtuoso bass player whose artistry has placed him on stage and in the studio with many our finest folk, rock, swing, and roots performers. As a bass player, Amatneek has a deft and sensitive touch, the same gift that as a writer he brings to this collection of thirty-three polished behind-the-scenes stories, as he calls them, “unamplified tales.” The book is also a visual delight, beautifully set up in design, typeface, and with a sampling of interspersed photographs that give image to the tales within.

A little background is in order. Amatneek grew up in the heyday and close to the heartbeat of the unfolding American folk music revival: Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, New York City, within walking distance of venues such as Café Wha, the Bitter End, and Gerde’s Folk City.

Amatneek’s parents were musical, his father a squeezebox accordionist and mandolinist, his mother a pianist. His father was also a go-to engineer for the magazine Consumer Reports, a doyen on audio/visual technology, the latest in recording equipment always on hand. That made the Amatneek household a magnet for folk musicians who enjoyed making homespun music and hearing themselves played back at a time when home recording was still a novelty. As Amatneek in his introduction reminisces, “Village musicians would hang out … Pete Seeger and the Weavers were frequent guests, as were Paul Robeson and Charity Bailey.” Bill Amatneek saw the train a’coming and got on board.

Fast-forward a few years. The family now lived in the Philadelphia suburbs where, while in high school, Amatneek was assessed as having the extended reach of a bass player. The acoustic stand-up bass became his primary instrument, the 5-string banjo a close second. Amatneek took lessons at the Philadelphia Folk Workshop and developed his performance artistry gigging where he could. One of his earliest stage memories was “playing the first Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1961, backing the Greenbriar Boys: Ralph Rinzler, Bob Yellin, and John Herald.”

During his college years at Penn State University, Amatneek extended his range to include swing and progressive jazz, and then it was off to California in pursuit of happiness as a musical professional.

Indeed, part of the appeal of Acoustic Stories is the glimpse Amatneek provides of the rarified experiences that draw so many into the musical life. These are adventure stories, some historical, some pure tribute, but all taking the reader back stage and by doing so throwing an illuminating light on people who have created some of the most memorable music of our time. Among the luminaries, Buddy Bolden, Al “Jazzbeaux” Collins, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bill Monroe, Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Kate Wolf, Mimi Farina, Jerry Garcia, Bill Keith, David Grisman, and Tony Rice.

Late in Bill Amatneek’s career as a local, touring, and session musician, he was drawn to another outlet for his creative energy. He became a storyteller, a performer of carefully crafted spoken word tales designed to reveal, captivate, and entertain. Word music, in a sense.

Most of the tales collected in Acoustic Stories started that way, as stories to be told, but some saw first light on the printed page. In the end, however, all came down to words on paper, a written record of one man’s perspective on a life well lived in music.

As for the stories, no giveaways here. Suffice it to say that Amatneek is a fine writer, his stories transporting readers into fascinating quarters that include a brush with the memory of a New Orleans jazz legend, a bluegrass picking session with an icon of San Francisco rock, the illusion of romance with a leading lady of the folk era, a moving exchange with a WWII-era liberated Frenchman, and a surreal performance for a U.S. President.

Amatneek offers this caveat in his preface. “Storytellers seek the fundamental reality known as the story’s heart. If a teller has told the heart of a story as he feels it, he has told its truth, even if alleged facts have been stretched or ignored.” Some of these tales, he writes, “dogleg towards the not-so-factual,” but the reader will “know them by the smiles they wear.” Like the best musical performances, liberties might be taken with the melody, but in the end, emoting is what counts, and Acoustic Stories emotes.

— Jerry Zolten