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Pete and Joan Wernick
Traditional Bluegrass, Country Duet, Blazing Instrumentals by "Dr.
and Nurse Banjo"
Joan Wernick - guitar * Pete Wernick - banjo
Pete Wernick, known for his banjo playing with Hot Rize, and his singer-guitarist
wife Joan present one of the West’s most engaging country duets.
Joan’s clear, soulful singing and Pete’s masterful picking
bring life to a diverse repertoire including traditional bluegrass,
vocal duets, and blazing instrumentals.
In the early 70’s the pair performed with the groundbreaking progressive
bluegrass band Country Cooking, based in Ithaca, New York. Since 1976
they have been based in Niwot, Colorado in the foothills of the Rocky
Mountains. Pete has been nominated for Banjo Player of the Year in national
polls and is also known for his best-selling instruction books, videos
and workshops. For 12 years he toured full-time with the highly popular
Hot Rize band, named Entertainer of the Year by the International
Bluegrass Music Association.
Joan, also known to music fans as “Nondi”, has sung with
various groups in Colorado, and hosted a bluegrass radio program on
KGNU Boulder CO since 1978. Her natural sparkle and the couple’s
on-stage repartee adds an extra dimension to their duet performances.
For a show to make you smile, tap your foot, and remind you of life’s
good things, don’t miss “Dr. and Nurse Banjo”!
Profile by Bill Donaldson, from Pow'r
Pickin', February, 2004
Suppose you set out with the objective to have a positive influence
on the human condition. Would you strive to be sociologist? Or a bluegrass
banjo player? If you were Pete Wernick, a.k.a. Doctor Banjo, you would
do both. Pete has credentials as both a Doctor of Sociology and a renowned
banjoist who has delighted listeners around the world for the past thirty
plus years. Thus, the Doctor Banjo moniker really means something.
Pete started out a product of New York City, growing up during the
Eisenhower years in the Bronx where he was drawn to the banjo from listening
to Earl Scruggs records. He was there in 1962 to see Flatt and Scruggs
at Carnegie Hall. It was the first time he had seen them live.
“While in high school,” Pete explains. “I discovered
the banjo and bluegrass. I had friends who played folk music, and I
started playing an instrument just to fit in with my friends. I was
just lucky I had great personal friends who I grew up with in the Bronx.”
So, if home was “da Bronx,” you may wonder why his vocal
inflection doesn’t remind you of Tony Soprano. “I made a point
to lose the accent when I was in junior high school because I thought
it sounded awful.” Wernick tells of listening to people down south.
“I liked Elvis. I liked rock-a-billy. I liked Fats Domino. All
these guys are from the south, and a lot of our best music comes from
the south. Language is more musical down south.”
A sheepish grin crosses Pete’s face. “I really liked the
banjo, and I realized it would help get attention for me. And, well,
the guy who was doing better with this particular girl that I was interested
in, he played the banjo, but he wasn’t really that good.”
Wernick reasoned that he could work up some skills on his banjo and
make a better impression with the ladies. “I thought, well I’m
going to play better than he can.” Apparently that was enough incentive.
It didn’t take him long to get real proficient.
He started hanging around with other musicians who were into bluegrass.
“There was enough interest in bluegrass in New York City, there
would be jams in the park between two and six on Sunday afternoons,”
he says. “I’d go down on the subway with my banjo to Washington
Square Park and play with these people. That’s where I met David
Grisman. I got a good bluegrass education playing with the small number
of people who played around the New York area.”
While still in high school, Pete was hosting New York’s only radio
program dedicated to bluegrass. “In my radio job, I got to talk
to and ask questions of Jimmy Martin, the Stanley Brothers, and Bill
Monroe.” His mother, though, was concerned that he was spending
too much time on his radio show. One hour a week. “I just couldn’t
believe she wouldn’t want me to do the bluegrass radio show because
it was so cool.”
The radio show was also a learning experience for Wernick. “My
friends would listen to the show and tell me what I had done wrong.
David (Grisman) took it upon himself to educate me. He said he was fed
up with my not knowing enough about Bill Monroe.”
Pete went on to school at Columbia, but he continued to play his banjo
and host the radio program on the side. There was an influential professor
at Columbia who heard Wernick play at a Christmas party. “He was
a really famous dude and I was a first year student. He told me, ‘Give
up the sociology. Play the banjo.’ He was saying I would do more
good in the world with music.”
Following graduation from Columbia, Pete further pursued academia earning
his doctorate in sociology from prestigious Cornell University in Ithaca,
New York.
It was while traveling across the country in 1969 during a hiatus in
graduate school that Dr. Banjo met singer/guitar player, Joan “Nondi”
Leonard, in Boulder CO. “Nondi,” Pete explains, “is an
African word that means ‘sunshine.’ It was a great name for
her because sunshine fit her personality.” Pete was on his way
to California at the time. “But I stayed in touch with Nondi by
letter and by phone. About the middle of the summer I was in a band
in California, but really wanted to see more of her, so I went back
to Colorado from Berkeley. By the end of that month I had to head back
to New York for more graduate school stuff. I invited her to come with
me.” She agreed to travel. Pete and Nondi stopped in North Carolina
on the way back to New York to attend a bluegrass festival. It was the
same weekend as Woodstock.
“One of the things that is really wonderful in my life,”
Pete says, “is that (Joan’s) appreciation of bluegrass is
very similar to mine. She doesn’t like stuff that doesn’t
come from the heart. That’s what I like, too. Proficiency used
to turn my head around, but now I don’t think proficiency is where
it ends. Proficiency is a tool. That’s what’s special about
bluegrass; there’s a lot of heart and soul flying around. Tim O’Brien
certainly can do that. He’s got the great instrument, but he also
knows how to sing with feeling. Bradford
Lee Folk, right here in Colorado, is that kind of singer. Glenn
Zankey is another.”
While at Cornell, Pete started a band, called Country Cooking, with
Joan as the lead singer. When a new record company, called Rounder Records,
opened for business with an eye toward producing roots music, Pete approached
them and worked a deal to record Country Cooking.
He was working at Cornell as a research associate studying population
growth. Music was still an avocation. A friend had written a book and
suggested Pete should also take a shot at writing. “I said just
as soon as I finish my doctoral thesis, I’ll write a book. So I
wrote my second ‘thesis’ right after that. It was a rather
large book.” Naturally, his topic was playing banjo.
As it happened, the book, Bluegrass Banjo, came out at the same time
as Dueling Banjos and Will The Circle Be Unbroken. “A lot of people
then wanted to learn banjo,” Pete says. Bluegrass Unlimited included
Bluegrass Banjo in the Book of the Month Club, and it became a best
seller.
He followed that one up with his Bluegrass Songbook. Also a best seller.
“So I had these big fat royalty checks coming in for a while. It
was more than I was making at Cornell. And I realized that in academia,
the people are . . . well, musicians are more fun than sociologists.”
That’s when he decided it might be better to focus his attention
more on music.
“In my college days, all my friends were musicians. Not the people
I studied with for class. They may have been friends, but not my buds.”
And then there was the goal of making a positive impact. “As a
sociologist, I really wanted to help change the world, but I found that
no politician is going to listen to a sociologist. When I had a chance
to bolt, I did.
“I left academia partly because I felt the musical community was
more my kind of people – more diverse kinds of people. And musicians
can do a lot because people relate to musicians. In the early seventies,
musicians were really leading the way.”
By 1976, however, Pete and Nondi were growing weary of the “cloudy,
rainy, humid New York weather,” and were thinking of other places
to go. The choices were narrowed down to Colorado or Boston. Pete says,
“I didn’t want to live in the city. And I really wouldn’t
have wanted to move to Colorado except there was a good music scene
there with the Denver
Folklore Center. I thought, wow! This was a happening place. Charles
Sawtelle was there. I thought any town that can support a thing like
this has got to be a good town.”
They took up residence in bucolic Niwot. “Two and a half acres
with a creek running through it.” The Wernicks found their home
and have remained ever since.
“Two weeks after I moved to Denver CO, I was playing at the Folklore
Center regularly with Charles Sawtelle and Warren
Kennison.”
Wernick continued to hang around the Folklore
Center and meet new players. In 1978, he looked to bring together
a band that could make a couple records and play for one summer. “That’s
how Hot Rize started,” Pete tells us. The band comprised Wernick,
Sawtelle, Nick Forster, and Tim O’Brien. “We were full-time
right from the beginning. Hot Rize took on a life of its own. That one
summer turned out to be twelve years.” And Hot Rize has continued
as an occasional band for the past thirteen years.
“None of this was exactly planned,” Pete says. “Hot
Rize worked very hard. We played a lot of cheap and sometimes undignified
gigs just to keep working. Charles talked us into buying a Cadillac
to travel in. It turned out we had a great bunch of know-how in the
critical areas. Charles was a genius on sound. Our motorhead was Nick.
I was the guy who could do phone calls.”
Tim O’Brien thought the band would be better if they included
some variety, a little breakaway from non-stop bluegrass. Wernick thought
maybe adding a little Dobro might be a nice change of pace. Instead
of a Dobro, however, he got a deal on an electric steel guitar, and
Hot Rize began to include what they called the “steel stuff,”
honky-tonk and swing tunes that utilized the “electric table,”
i.e., the steel guitar.
One thing led to another. Jokes were added. A change of wardrobe. Sunglasses.
Before you could say, “mighty fine, and a great big western howdy,”
Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers hitched a ride in the back of the
bus and spelled Hot Rize for one set each night.
“We really felt Red Knuckles was another band,” Pete says.
“In our own mind we were not thinking of ourselves as Red Knuckles.
They were them, and we were us. I’m not Waldo.”
What about the charge from some quarters that the humor wasn’t
appropriate in bluegrass? “Some of the only bands that presented
stuff that was fun were Bill Monroe, Reno and Smiley did skits,”
Pete explains. “Flatt and Scruggs had comedians. Ralph Stanley
would have Ernie Thacker dance on stage. All the copy bands were too
scared to have any fun happen because it was like it wasn’t respectful
to the music. They didn’t seem to have noticed that their heroes
were entertainers and not just musicians.
“The Kingston Trio had what they called the ‘X Factor.’
They let the audience know they didn’t know what was going to happen
next, and they didn’t care what was going to happen next, except
that it was going to be fun. The audiences loved it.”
Pete tells of the extra effort he took to be sure the TV viewers on
Austin City Limits knew he was having fun. “I practiced smiling
while I played, mindlessly smiling because a lot of people don’t
get it when they see a banjo player not smiling. They think something
is the matter. It has to look like it’s fun.
“One little ethic within Hot Rize is, if there is any way we can
do it better, let’s do it. A lot of bluegrass bands come out as
hobbyists. And that’s okay. It’s a wonderful hobby. But they
will pick material that’s jam session material. They don’t
do anything special. They don’t try to do hard-to-write material.
As the Riders in the Sky would say, it may be the easy way, but it’s
not the cowboy way.”
Pete ran his first five-day banjo camp in 1980. He has had a banjo
camp annually for the past twenty years. At this year’s camp, there
were students who traveled from England and Italy to learn bluegrass
banjo. “I always ask at the beginning of the class, who thinks
they will be the worst player in the class. About half usually raise
their hands.”
Pete’s goal is to instill enough ability and confidence in the
students so that they can jump into a jam and feel comfortable and feel
that they belong. “My mission now in life is to get other people
to fulfill their dream. Then I’ll be happy to know the bluegrass
world is a better world, and I honestly believe if the bluegrass world
is healthy, the whole world is healthier. Bluegrass is an art form that
is also a wonderful community. A bluegrass festival at two in the morning
is the best place in the world. I’ve met some really nice people
in those situations.
“You should see the peace and love that’s going on over at
my banjo camp. Those people are high with the experience of playing
Worried Man Blues, and it works.”
Pete Wernick’s Live Five is now in its eleventh year of playing
a blend of Dixieland and bluegrass, what Pete calls “flexigrass.”
“I’ve just always loved Dixieland music,” he says. “It’s
a tremendous sound, and I think it’s really tragic that Dixieland
is sort of passé. It’s great music, and it’s much more
related to bluegrass than most bluegrass people know. These are great
players. I would think, wow! Wouldn’t it be cool if a Dixieland
player would get in a bluegrass band?"
Wernick acted on the idea and brought together some jazz musicians
to record some tunes. “And it would have lived and died right then
except a lot of people, when they heard some of the stuff, said I should
do a whole record of this. Tim O’Brien said I should do a whole
record, and so did Jerry Douglas.”
After Hot Rize, Pete was not eager to do another bluegrass band with
another twelve year climb to the top. “I was still loving bluegrass
and wanting to play it, but I just got into wanting to play music with
these guys. We got to play MerleFest and we went over real well.”
“John Hartford would tell me, ‘Do what you love. Then, even
if it doesn’t work out, you haven’t wasted your time.’
I enjoy (playing with the Live Five) so much. I don’t want the
Live Five to ever stop playing because they’re so good.”
Of the Colorado bluegrass community, Pete says, “I just think
CBMS is the greatest thing. I think Mike Dow should get some major award,
and all the people who have worked on CBMS, B.J. Suter, for example.
“Think of the great things that have been concocted by human beings.
I think of the Beatles. I think of great art. People are capable of
wonderful, incredible things. I think bluegrass is a very positive thing
on Planet Earth.”
Pete Wernick and Flexigrass
Bluegrass Infused with Jazz
Kris Ditson - drums * Roger Johns - bass * Pete Wernick
- banjo * George Weber (shown. replaced by Greg Harris, not shown)
- vibraphone * Bill Pontarelli - clarinet
The supercharged sound of Flexigrass, formerly known as Pete Wernick's
Live Five, began as a musical experiment by Dr. Banjo in 1992. Fresh
from 12 years with bluegrass legends Hot Rize, Wernick assembled a unit
based in bluegrass, but infused with traditional jazz elements-- something
like a bluegrass band with banjo, bass, and... clarinet, vibraphone,
and light-brushed drums. Originally intended just to record several
cuts for Wernick's Sugar Hill album On a Roll, the virtuoso combo clicked
so well, they started tackling new tunes and making live appearances.
At major festivals from Carolina's Merlefest to the west coast's Strawberry
and Wintergrass events, Wernick's Live Five has delighted audiences
with its unparalleled blend of American music forms. Their Sugar Hill
release I Tell You What! reached the top 40 of the national radio Americana
chart, and they have been heard on National Public Radio's All Things
Considered and E Town. The message of this band is entertaining, high-energy
tradition-based music, and the attitude "We don't have to know
what it is-- it sounds good!"
Pete Wernick ("Dr. Banjo") has been described by Bluegrass
Unlimited as "among the most creative and just plain fun musicians
in (blue, new, jazz) grass." The Live Five follows two other significant
Wernick-organized bands: Country Cooking, known for groundbreaking instrumental
albums in the early 70's and the internationally acclaimed Hot Rize.
In addition, he's been mentor to thousands with his music camps, bestselling
books and videos, and since 1986, first president of the International
Bluegrass Music Association. Pete's blazing innovations have crossed
back and forth over the borders of bluegrass, but fans can always count
on his love of tradition, taste, and tone.
George Weber's vibraphone, or "vibes", gives a sweet-ringing
texture to the Live Five. Both mellow and percussive, George's mallets
on brass achieve a rhythmic drive that thrills audiences. His background
is in jazz, notably eight years with the Medicine Bow Quartet, but he's
also studied bluegrass banjo and guitar. Banjo Newsletter says: "Weber's
Scruggs-style playing is worth the price of admission."
Bill Pontarelli swings and soars on "flexigrass" clarinet.
Not many horn players have studied bluegrass fiddle players along with
Benny Goodman, but Bill does it all. His lightning-quick lines and sophisticated
ear add many exciting moments to Live Five shows. A veteran of the Denver
CO dixieland and swing music scenes, Bill was a founding member of the
Platte River Jazz Band.
Kris Ditson is possibly the world's only drummer who thinks "bluegrass".
With brushes, a light touch, and a natural feel for the bluegrass beat,
Kris has teamed with greats such as Andy Statman and Tony Trischka,
and performed with a number of bluegrass bands including Jimmy Martin
and the Sunny Mt. Boys. Kris' easy smile and that floating pulse help
keep the "Live" in the Live Five.
Roger Johns, the newest addition to the band, brings formidable bass
chops and an uncanny ear to the Live Five blend. A mainstay among Denver
CO's traditional jazz artists, Roger's extensive repertoire includes
not just countless old standards, but many fine antique jokes. Unfazed
by the band's demanding tempos, he blazes new trails with his solos,
and keeps the group locked in with his strong, smooth tones.
The Reviews:
- Exciting, intriguing... Delights at every turn. Superb composing
and arranging. --Bluegrass Unlimited
- They sound great. --Jazziz
- Fantastic acoustic music. Is it bluegrass? Dixieland? Bebop? Who
knows? If you've ever felt your body move of its own accord when listening
to any of these styles, you'll like this. --Bluegrass Now
- Wildly enjoyable instrumental music. --Pinecone Traditional Review
- I love it. --George Winston
- It's fun, well-crafted, entertaining. Should appeal to anyone who
enjoys hearing top-notch musicians strut their stuff. --Sing Out!
- Wernick, the masterful banjoist of Hot Rize fame, combined bluegrass
with dixieland jazz to land the hippest sound this side of Austin's
Bad Livers. All 13 cuts are action-packed. --Dirty Linen
- This was a SHOW. Magnificent music. A vastly entertained audience,
a double encore and standing ovation said it all. --The Black Rose
- A joy to hear. An amazing accomplishment... Lights a real spark
under bluegrass. --SCOPE
- It works. Accessible, fundamentally futuristic music. --Knight-Ridder
news wire
- Truly great instrumental album. This one is the award winner. --Montreal
Gazette
- One of the most exciting sounds I've heard this year. --Public News
- My absolute favorite band. The most unique, the most creative. --Meredith
Carson, former Concert Director, Swallow
Hill Music Association
See "Bluegrass
Jamming Pointers" by Pete Wernick
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