The String Revolution is My Inner Revolution!
Tony Bird
“ I was raised in a pretty open minded family, artistically speaking. My parents are not musicians but great music lovers. My father would put every weekend different kinds of music (from Mozart to old Pink Floyd, from Ravi Shankar to Miles Davis…). As I was starting the basic technique of Violin at the age of 4, I was already introduced to artistic diversity, which has shaped my curiosity. My passion at the time was animals. I could name a bunch of different species in a very detailed way, as I was spending my time watching animals documentaries and encyclopedias. My mother would take me to the zoo very often and that was with excitement I could remind her all the specificities that each animal had while other parents were trying hard to get their kid guessing animals’ name!
I was also fascinated by insects. The main reason I wanted to start violin was that I wanted to play music with them and the rest of nature. As weird as it may sound, I was scared to play music with other humans and was envisioning to gather my two passions, discovering and feeling what would never be discovered and felt like… I was also obsessed with Prokofiev’s famous « Peter and the Wolf »!
But like any other kids, I had to go to the Conservatory to learn how to play my instrument, about harmony, solfege, music history…
Little by little, my passion for animals disappeared, then came the time I was confronted to myself, my desires, and the other music students. This is where I would start creating music with Gabe Bird. We were both talented hardworking student but sometimes recommended to stop « fooling around » each time the conservatory director or any staff would see us in inappropriate places (underground, any vacant space in the conservatory) to take freedom and composing or improvising out of nowhere.
In orchestra, we were assigned to respect our concert master’s (first violin chair in an orchestra) authority (although his/her voice would literally become sweeter when talking to the conducteur/any other person with a « higher conservatory hierarchy »). Our teachers loved us but the rest of the conservatory had a tendency to treat us like some sort of saltimbanques! Which of course could only strengthen our rebellious behaviour, as it was obvious for us that we had something artistically beautiful to maintain. This is at this point that we silently started to observe and analyze the different sad and absurd facette of music teaching in France. The old musical French tradition is so rich and inspiring but its institutions can be very oppressing. Jamming on a simple blues or a Led Zeppelin tune was pretty badly seen.
However we were regularly assigned to perform a contemporary classical piece for exams, which had a considerable impact on my playing. I will always remember the day I randomly figures out my « acoustic distortion «technique (imitating the sound of a rock guitar without distortion pedal). At this time, I was obsessed with the music of Jimi Hendrix, not only for his incredible blues phrasing, but also for his infinite timbral research and his revolutionary guitar playing. I loved to play his recordings , play along with him some of his licks, songs…and eventually entering in his sound the most realistically as possible. This day, I was practicing a contemporary piece involving a lot of « Sul ponticello » (play near the Violin bridge) and « sul tasto » (play near the fingerboard) techniques. This piece required a lot of timbral precision. While I was taking a break I went to the living room and played the usual Hendrix record to quiet my mind down. A little bit later, my mother when to the kitchen to prepare food and I decided to come back to practice. She asked me to let the CD running while she started cooking. This is a few minutes after it started practicing that one wired « missed » Sul ponticello sound on my violin randomly matched with the Hendrix record. Everything went very quick! I immediately came back to the living room and tried to reproduce this « mistake » over the album then succeeded little by little to imitate Hendix’s guitar distortion. Everyday I was spending a little time to retrieve this feeling and explore more fingers and bow placements, creating my personal distortion sound.
I’m now using this sound to any jam sessions I’m going to, as it is part of my sound. This type of sound also allowed me to be more confident and literally go and improvise with blues rock and metal musicians, making my violin sound like an electric guitar. However, I wasn’t always welcome. I remember going to a blues jam session back in Paris. Killing players, loud and dirty! The jam session opens, I pull out my violin and tap the jam organizer’s shoulder, who was playing guitar and singing, asking him to join the jam. I felt his eyes getting lost for a moment as he was watching at my instrument, like if thousand scary thoughts were going through his head!
Then the music started again and he naturally followed the flow and sang another song. I told myself that I could wait for a bit longer and asking him again a bit later. Which I did. His response was pretty absurd: « It’s a blues jam, man… ». Which I immediately replied with a smile, trying to contain my anger: “I know, that’s why I’m here”. Then the leader counted off a tune, ignoring my response and called a harmonica player from the audience to play on the amp I was planning to play on. This is at this point I notice a second input on the amp. I wait the ideal moment, the plug myself on the second amp input while the leader is closing his eyes, to busy soloing. Then comes my solo right after his. Impossible for him to kick me out of the set, as a big crowd was having a great time with us. I finish my solo, get my applause like any other solo instrument. The song ends with a big ovation forcing the jam owner to present the jammers. « What’s your name!!…What’s your name!! »; his voice sounded like he was trapped, apologizing and angry at the same time, at myself and at himself. I replied « Well, you can call me Mr Nobody, but people use to call me Tony!… ». He smiled at me, inconfortable, and presented me to the audience. I acknowledged it, plugged out, finished my beer and as soon as I was about to leave the bar, he (I forgot his name unfortunately…) came to me and apologized about the situation and his behaviour, which I peacefully accepted. Then I told him about the story of blues violin (violin being one of the oldest blues instruments, with voice, banjo, guitar, harmonica and drum, brought by the Irish in the US) and that I loved eclectic music. After a little chat, we left peacefully. This experienced convinced me about one thing: I had to pursue my mission to make people’s meditate about violin and strings, their use, history and everything that goes with through my playing and creativity.
Because music has been drastically evolving since these past twenty years, especially computers based ones, I told myself “why not creating a new approach and a new sound in my area of expertise”.
Since 2008, 2Birds Band fan base is growing slowly but surely. It seems hard for some people to sometimes get out of their listening comfort zone and routine and what I want to do with my music is to surprise them, to free their mind from any expectations for a moment!
This even applies to people working in the music field! I have been so many times confronted to situations where strings are just needed to make the show look good, more professional on stage, and where producers or arrangers have absolutely no idea about what to compose for these kinds of instruments, so they write infinite background pads, to make it more sellable to the music market. It is clear that the life of a musician isn’t always the most creative and enjoyable because most of the best money opportunities are not always the funniest ones, bill needs to be paid at the end of each month and that each of us need to make a living out of it, but I think there is a balance to find in order to enjoy as much as possible its artistry and keeping good monthly earnings.
My attempt in music is to target any type of people, coming from different cultures, with various opinions and having them meditating about their existence. This music is not really purely “political”, “race”, “sexual orientation” or “gender” oriented as many other songwriter or band would write about! 2Birds Band’s music is mainly instrumental and proposes an unusual sound and artistic psychology, that we named The String Revolution. As of today, I’m invested into this music and this band because it shows the face of our personal revolution, our own way of getting out deep existential questions. I invite the listener with my band fellows to let its mind wonder and its expectations aside, and maybe find answers to universal questions concerning each and every one of us. We hope to inspire people so they can find their own inner revolution!”