Last month, I attended my first Monthly Grind. As a junior at Mt. Edgecumbe High School with an interest in the arts, I was excited to see what it was about.
When I first stepped into the Performing Arts Center, I was surrounded by original paintings and music crafted by talented artists. The atmosphere was exciting, as the front entrance spotlighted a mini band playing the bass and fiddle. There was a mellow audience full of music lovers.
The Monthly Grind is a show featuring mainly local (but occasionally far-flung) artists. Once every month, the community comes together to broadcast artistic talent. The March theme was Original Artists, with local artists sharing self-written, composed, and crafted music.
One particular artist stood out to me. He captured the audience's attention by writing a song over the course of the show using ten random words shouted out by the audience. This made him one of the opening and closing performers of the night.
He was Tom Begich, from Anchorage, who sings and plays the guitar along with writing his own songs. He's been performing at the Grind for 20 years, coming to Sitka annually because “It's the most beautiful place in Alaska and the people are absolutely wonderful… it's easy to come back when the city is filled with so much good will.”
Begich says his music aligns with a genre called Americana, which he describes as "sort of like folk but it's more than folk,” because it is music with its own uniqueness and American roots . He performs with his wife, Sarah Sledge. Together, they sing in harmony showing the love that they share.
“I’ve always liked music from the very beginning,” Begich said. His mom used to sing in the house and he loved her voice. Bob Reid, a teacher and musician, inspired Begich to pick up the guitar during his first year of high school. He quickly learned and within a year he was playing music on the radio. On the topic of his composing process, he said that “after a certain while when you play by ear, your fingers know where to go.”
How did he write his ten-word song, I asked. The audience's excitement brought cheering, laughing, and clapping after each humorous word was shouted out. Despite the challenge, Begich said that penning the song came naturally. “There's always some common theme in the audience because… humans are social people.” In this case, the common theme was food.
Begich said he looked over the very different words and thought to himself: “How do you take a needle and thread it through the words so that they all become a sweater of a song?”
At this show, one woman in the audience shouted the word “gowl.” This Tlingit word set the tone for the song. He asked the woman what the meaning was, and she responded that, “It means drum and it means timing.” Begich understood that the drum speaks of distance and time, and he began to imagine someone who was away from home. Another word that initially seemed difficult to connect was “bubbles.” However, Tom cleverly thought of champagne as a source of bubbles. Another audience-sourced word that had to be incorporated was rosemary,” which he used as a woman's name.
Ultimately, Tom composed a song which he describes as “a story about a guy who misses his home and the traditions of his home (as well as) a woman there who he’s in love with.”
“You look for… something that threads everything together,” Tom concluded. “There is always a story to be found.”
I told him it seems like a good lesson, to know how things tie together. “If you realize that there's almost always a way to find a connection, it helps you in life," he said. "Look for something new or some different way of seeing the world. Stop seeing it the same old way, which is how most people write music; think about it differently. That's what I try to do.”
In my opinion, thinking differently is what defines an original artist, like many of those featured at March’s Monthly Grind. With his originality and creativity, Tom Begich is an artist worth listening to.
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Editor's note: Ariana Wassilie, from Eagle River, is a student in Mt. Edgecumbe High School's arts journalism class. She is an artist herself, doing sewing, beading and painting.
