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I’ve re-found the banjo again and the music of the United Kingdom, the people who had left England

shortly after the colonial days. They had left England and come to the US and brought with them all
the Scottish music and the music of the Highlands and England and so on and here it is. It’s what
we now call in the US Appalachian music and it’s what gave birth to country music, and it came all
the way down into the Okefenokee Swamp. I said, here’s how I’m going to survive without Richie.
I’m going to take some of these tapes and rework them on my own and do my own arrangements of

them and I started doing these things and I took on five songs. There were three types of music
made out there. There were hollers, and there was Appalachian-style music, fiddles and banjo
music. Dances, kind of like reels sort of thing and then there was sacred harp music which is shape-
note singing. I’m sure they probably call it shape-note in the UK, or certainly in Ireland they call it
that.

BiTS: I know what you’re talking about.

WP: A lot of this stuff again came from your country and it just survived and got changed and got

Americanised, but because it was passed down from word of mouth, it went from family member to
family member. It was passed down generationally, there was a purity to it. What I did is I started
taking these arrangements and translating them to the electric guitar, translating to the guitar. I
wasn’t playing them on fiddles. I wasn’t taking shape-note songs and singing them with the voice. I
was translating them to the guitar, and it reopened this whole style for me, and I had this prideful

moment where goosebumps went all over my body. In the year 2016 or 17, or whenever I started
doing this research, I found something in the modern-day that nobody has really opened up. It was
like a time capsule of listening to these recordings and I guess what I’m saying is it’s hard to find
something sort of original and unique and I found a way to do that, and I was feeling kind of
blessed in a certain way like a gift had been given me and it was just because of my own survival. I
needed to figure a way to do something that was my own. The Library of Congress found out about
my research and asked me to be in their archives. That’s all. That’s how I would like to wrap up that

story.

BiTS: Walter, that’s absolutely wonderful. I don’t want to take any more of your time. You’ve given
me more than enough. I congratulate you on your research work which I think is fascinating. I
could talk to you about it for hours. Thank you very much indeed for speaking to me.

WP: Bye-bye.

BiTS: Bye.

WP: See you.