Bill Staines
Looking for the great songs
by Tom Nelligan

There's nothing flashy about Bill Staines. He plays an old guitar, one with the wear and tear of two hundred shows a year carved into its face, and his idea of fashion leans toward work shirts, cowboy boots, and wide-brimmed hats. There's nothing flashy about his songs either, with their simple, singable melodies and straightforward lyrics that point toward a quiet wisdom and an appreciation of life. That's probably why, through more than 30 years of folksy concerts and cross-country travels, he has built a loyal following of longtime fans and an enviable reputation as a songwriter's songwriter that's shared by few others.

The statistics of his career so far are impressive: He counts 22 albums, about 275 published songs, and, as of last spring, an amazing 2,158,000 miles under his wheels. "I like being on the road," he admitted with a smile and considerable understatement before a show last April at a coffeehouse outside Boston. But far more important than those numbers are the songs like "Roseville Fair," "River," and "A Place in the Choir" that have found their way into American folk tradition, passed along both by three-chord guitarists singing around countless campfires and by fellow veteran performers like Nanci Griffith, Jerry Jeff Walker, Gordon Bok, and even Grandpa Jones.

On stage, Staines is an engaging, amiable performer who always invites the audience to sing along, and most do. His comfortably weathered baritone voice has the tone of an old friend telling you his stories, while his songs of roads, ranches, and mountains, believable small-town characters and high-flying dreamers take you on a cross-country journey. Plus, he's both funny and wise. His patter between songs is a mix of corny jokes and wry tales of adventure and misadventure filtered through dry Yankee wit, mixed with seasoned musings, homespun philosophy, and sage advice.

Staines was born in 1947 and grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, about an hour's drive south of his current home in southern New Hampshire. As a teenager living in suburban Boston, he immersed himself in the city's vibrant folk scene and set the tone for his life. "When I first picked up the guitar, I was doing junior high school rock 'n' roll," he recalled. "The Ventures and a lot of surf music and things like that. But at one point somebody played me The Weavers at Carnegie Hall, and something went on inside of me, and I just knew the type of music I wanted to play. Boston at the time was a great place to grow up musically. There were a lot of coffeehouses, like Club 47 and the Unicorn, and a lot of people like Joan Baez, Tom Rush, and Richard and Mimi Fariña were living in town at the time. There was a fellow called Jackie Washington. He did the first fingerpicking that I ever heard. I was just enamored by the fact that someone could keep the rhythm, play the melody, and sing at the same time!" He also mentioned the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and the Charles River Valley Boys as major influences. "That whole time was a big influence," he added with a chuckle. "When I was in high school, three o'clock would roll around, and I'd throw my books in the locker and head off to the coffeehouses. It was the only thing I ever really knew." He organized a student coffeehouse while still attending Lexington High School, and shortly thereafter he got a regular gig as host of the weekly hootenanny at the prestigious Club 47 in Cambridge.

He taught himself to play guitar left handed and flipped over, with the bass strings on the bottom, although his smooth fingerpicking and steady rhythm are none the worse for it. "Well, I was young," he explained with a laugh. "People look at it and say that's really weird, but it's not that uncommon. I figured, I'll put my hands where the dots are and learn some chords. The finger style just kind of evolved from listening and hearing notes and picking out patterns. It's the same for everybody who plays like that — Jim Rooney, Jimi Hendrix, Elizabeth Cotton."

He describes the 1965 Newport Folk Festival as "probably the most important musical event of my life," particularly that year's New Folks concert. "Gordon Lightfoot was there, and Mark Spoelstra, Tim Hardin, Cathy & Carol, a bunch of people. But Lightfoot especially turned on another light inside of me, and I left that concert knowing what I wanted to do, the type of music I wanted to write, what I wanted to write about, the style... I even dressed the way those people did. I walked away from that concert sort of knowing who I was. I just went on from there. I started playing the coffeehouses around Boston, and then it was 30 years later."

This is an excerpt. Read the full article in Dirty Linen #89 (Aug/Sept '00).