Everything has the capacity to be musical

Musician recycles instruments, improvises new forms

BY LAYLI WHYTE Staff Writer

BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer

LAYLI WHYTE Jon Francis plays a tune on his banjo with a violin bow. Some of his recycled homemade instruments are displayed below. LAYLI WHYTE Jon Francis plays a tune on his banjo with a violin bow. Some of his recycled homemade instruments are displayed below. Making music in untried ways is Jon Francis’ inspiration.A self-taught musician, Francis is a creator and resurrectionist of musical instruments. His sometimes Frankenstein-like creations range from almost normal to “How’d you think of that?”

While sharing a house with several other musicians, Francis came upon the raw materials that would provide his first inspiration

He found an old banjo and a violin bow, and was soon at work.

Removing all but two strings and stuffing an old T-shirt into the head of the instrument, Francis threw the banjo strap around his neck and began to bow.

Eight years later, he is still playing the same banjo, as well as dozens of other instruments of his creation, making haunting sounds that resonate through a sound system that, to the uninitiated, appears to be a pile of pedals, wires and knobs.

“Anything is capable of sound,” said Francis. “Everything has the ability to be musical or thought-provoking or has something inside it that is unique.”

Francis has never had formal music training — a fact, he said, that has allowed him to go about making music in his own way.

“Some of these are done,” he said, waving his hand in the direction of a group of homemade instruments in the corner. “Some are in a constant state of change.”

Despite the fact that some listeners have difficulty recognizing that the eerie yet mellow sounds he creates are music, Francis has found a niche.

“I was asked to play with this band one time at a show at CBGB’s,” he said, “and they just said, ‘Just get on stage and make noise.’ So I sat there the whole show with a guitar, kneeling over, playing with knobs, and after the show, someone came up to one of the guys and said, ‘You guys sounded great. I just felt bad for the guy on the side of the stage. He couldn’t get his sound right the whole time.’

“It’s funny. People think I’m just setting up and I’m done.”

Francis’ ability to make something out of nothing and the old new again, what he calls “recycled improvisations,” has led him to examine instruments of other cultures, finding common threads connecting all musical instruments.

“Almost every culture in the world has a two-string bowed instrument,” he said, holding his banjo.

He sees all music as communal, an ancient form of communication in which everyone can participate.

“You can sing or grab a pot and just bang on it,” he said. “That’s the origin of folk music. It was just people getting together to become familiar with each other.

“Everybody, whether on key or not, can sing. There is the ability for people to do that inherently. To me, it’s a pure form of communication for people to relate to the world around you.”

Although he has played in several bands, including the Philadelphia-based Like Moving Insects, Francis never wanted to be a rock star.

“Living a normal life seems to be enough for me,” he said, sitting at the kitchen table in his Red Bank home, looking over at a pile of musical instruments and wires. “I never wanted to spend my life touring and recording. I never had rock ‘n’ roll dreams.”

Francis lists among his inspirations musicians Jeff Buckles, Frank Zappa and folk singer Eva Bittova.

“She just runs around on stage,” he said of Bittova, “and relishes the old folk tunes she grew up with. It’s this beautiful rapturous music.”

As for being an inspiration to others, Francis said he hopes that people listening to him will just want to find their own voice.

“When I’m playing out on the street,” he said, “there’s always some kid just staring up and looking at me. I like the idea that maybe it will stick in the kid’s head. It’s not about them being musicians, but scientists, doctors, architects, and just having that same spark. That’s beautiful.”

As a part of the Red Bank Music Community, Francis has done a few Street Life performances, including last Saturday on White Street, and he worked the recent Kids Day at Riverside Gardens Park, helping youngsters find and work with their own creative spirits. His music can be found at his Web site, www.myspace.com/jonfrancis.

Over the past few months, Francis collected random objects, with the hopes that children, with their ability to think outside the box, would find new and imaginative ways to make the objects musical.

Francis rummaged through a cardboard box, filled with empty water bottles, pieces of cardboard, rubber bands, waxed paper and an assortment of bowls.

“Kids have a wonderful spontaneity,” he said. “I feel most satisfied when I just, on the spot, come up with something. Kids are the most receptive to that.

“Adults just want to market that. Kids want to experiment and enjoy.”

Francis said that he has never had any interest in selling any of his creations.

“If any of these,” he said, waving his hand toward the instruments, “were burned in a fire tomorrow, I wouldn’t care that much, but I would never sell them. It doesn’t interest me.”

But solving problems related to playing musical instruments does interest Francis, who currently is working on a prototype for a different kind of violin.

“Everyone I know who plays the violin says it’s the most painful instrument to play,” he said. “You’re compromising your hand and neck.”

To alleviate the strain of bending the neck and twisting the wrist for hours at a time while playing the violin, Francis is building a cradle for a violin, so that it can be played much like his two-stringed banjo, which is bowed while worn across the chest.

“I’m used to carrying things around my neck,” he said.

“Doing things like this has pushed me in so many different directions.”

Francis said when he plays around with these different instruments, he knows he’s not any sort of expert.

“I can’t play the viola in the standard way,” he said holding up a viola that has been bungee-corded to a guitar body. “That takes years to do. I don’t pretend to be any kind of virtuoso.”

He finds inspiration in comic virtuosos like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin because of their ability to “just do odd things.”

“That’s the same stream of logic that goes through all of that,” he said, “whether it’s a song you make up, improv comedy, a book — it doesn’t matter.

“It’s like being able to look at different things and see different possibilities. I never know what’s going to happen.”