SPIDER JOHN KOERNER: BEEN HERE... DONE THAT
(source: The Official Website of Spider John Koerner)Produced and Directed by Don McGlynn Executive Producer Celia Mingus Zaentz Associate; Producer Mark Trehus; Photographed by Frank Axelsen, Jef Burns, Hal Lansberry and Don McGlynn Edited by Christian Moltke-Leth and Don McGlynn with John Koerner, Dave Ray, Tony Glover, Willie Murphy, Mark Trehus, Laura Koerner and M.J. Mueller Running time 98 minutes.
About John Koerner and the documentary
Image by Daniel Corrigan |
SPIDER JOHN KOERNER may be the greatest American folk musician you've never heard about. But then again, lots of people have heard about him, and love his music. Some of them are quite famous. As BOB DYLAN confirms in his autobiography, Koerner was not just a crony in the Minneapolis folk music scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was a major inspiration. Appreciation of his music and his influence has extended to other musicians, such as THE BEATLES, THE ROLLING STONES, THE KINKS, THE DOORS, DAVID BOWIE, BONNIE RAITT and BECK. His audience has been a deeply devoted one, and he has always been treated as a favored artist in his home of Minneapolis, Minnesota. |
Minneapolis has had a vital music scene for decades. Many artists received international recognition - the most visible being BOB DYLAN and PRINCE, and later on SOUL ASYLUM. Akin to Minneapolis rockers HUSKER DÜ and THE REPLACEMENTS, SPIDER JOHN KOERNER also has a very intense following throughout the world, even though he has not sold millions of records. And those who know Koerner's records have pretty much committed them to memory, with numerous followers in such stongholds as Boston, Montreal, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Denmark. So, he is far from unappreciated.
This documentary gives us a very full picture of the special nature of this paradoxical musical giant. As great as Koerner is, his performances have been notoriously under-filmed. SPIDER JOHN KOERNER: BEEN HERE...DONE THAT corrects that mistake, and we see him in numerous setttings, with a wide variety of different musicians, which gives us quite a full picture of the depth and breadth of his accomplishments. His performances were photographed in a lot of different venues like First Avenue nightclub and the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, the Plough and Stars in Boston, and the Mojo Blues Bar in Copenhagen, Denmark. And we follow him into many of his haunts, both private and public - his Minneapolis home, his vacation cabin in Northern Minnesota, his neighborhood bar Palmer's, rehearsal sessions, his adopted home of Copenhagen where he lived for a time in the 1970s. And you will see a wide variety of visuals which show the atmosphere (and the passage of seasons) of the places he has lived.
Koerner tells his own life story, with assistance from such longtime collaborators as DAVE RAY, TONY GLOVER and WILLIE MURPHY, with special insight coming from his ex-wife LAURA KOERNER, Dave Ray's wife MARY JANE MUELLER, and close associate and record producer MARK TREHUS.
Koerner was born in Rochester, New York into a an upper-middle class family which lived on the outskirts. He was quite isolated from the outside world. A product of post World War II consumerism, Koerner attended the University of Minnesota, and shortly thereafter discovered the world of American folk and blues music. There was a thriving arts scene on campus, and Koerner joined the Bohemian atmosphere of painters, musicians and intellectuals. Before long, he was playing at local Minneapolis coffee houses like the Coffee Break and the 10'Clock Scholar with DAVE RAY and TONY GLOVER, and also BOB DYLAN. They were all big fans of blues and folk music, people like LEADBELLY, WOODY GUTHRIE, SKIP JAMES, SON HOUSE, BIG JOE WILLIAMS, etc. - and even invented colorful stage nicknames to emulate their heroes - "Spider" John Koerner, "Snaker" Dave Ray, and Tony "Little Sun" Glover. They were among the first white musicians to seize upon this vital music, and introduce it to a new audience.
After some strong support from the publication The Little Sandy Review, Koerner, Ray and Glover made their first recordings, for Audiophile and then Elektra, in 1963. These records - "Blues, Rags and Hollers" and "Lots More Blues, Rags and Hollers" - inspired a host of musicians on both sides of the Atlantic, many a part of the British Invasion of the mid-1960s. Koerner was always drawn to characters in blues and folk songs that were ramblers, or travellers. And for much of his young life, he was on the road, gaining wider experience. This separated him from Dave and Tony, during extended stays in Boston.
Not long after, another important longtime collaboration with WILLIE MURPHY began, Koerner's early records with Murphy - "Running, Jumping, Standing Still"(1969), and "Music is Just a Bunch of Notes"(1972) - were made at the height of the hippie movement and were a dramatic departure away from blues music, with some very elaborate arrangements played sometimes by a large band. Koerner married a Danish woman, quit music "forever" in 1972, and moved to Copenhagen. But after briefly enduring a boring job, decided to take up music again. He didn't want to play blues anymore. He didn't want to play his own compositions. Instead, he embraced the long and deep tradition of American folk music. For years, John played only traditional American folk songs, which helped bring these great compositions back to life. But they also inspired John a great deal, as he could relate to the themes in these songs.
After his marriage broke up in the 1970s, Koerner moved back to Minneapolis. It was a slow time, and he lived in a tiny room on Minneapolis West Bank about a decade. During that time, he decided to amp up his approach to traditional music, adding Scotish and Irish elements into bigger bands. The results were heard on his 1986 release "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Been" from Red House Records.
A little later, Koerner made peace with some of his old songs and started to play them again, along with the traditional numbers. After a 15 year pause, he decided to write again, and "Summer of '88" was the first result - a magnum opus running 5 plus minutes - which Koerner said crammed 15 years of ideas into one song. Koerner always had an analytical mind, and liked to build or invent things. He built his own vacation cabin. Later, Koerner started to build boats. And in the documentary, you see a couple of his inventions - an ingenious harmonica holder which more effectively stays in place when he is performing, and an odd contraption he made to cut the lawn on his rustic property in Mora, Minnesota , the Billy Goat.
Around this same time, Koerner also became fascinated with Astronomy, and was able to build numerous telescopes from basic raw materials. He studied the universe for many years. He married LAURA KOERNER in the 1990s. He seems at peace with himself. He has arrived at a fascinating mix of old blues and folk, his old compositions, and newer songs that are full of maturity - a mix of insight, humor and cosmic enlightenment. The late career songs, like the previously mentioned "Summer of 88" and "Last Lonesome Blues", provide powerful proof of that very special combination. When the documentary was in production, an enormous amount of musical performances were photographed, enabling quite a comprehensive access to all the different songs and different periods in Koerner's careeer.
Luckily, many of the tunes performed featured the formative trio of KOERNER, RAY AND GLOVER. 6 months after these performances were shot, Dave Ray passed away. Understandably, this had quite a dramatic impact on the documentary, and the structure and focus had to be seriously re-considered. Some additional shooting made for maybe the most poignant sequence. In December of 2003, there was a Dave Ray Memorial at the First Avenue nightclub in Minneapolis, which was also photographed. During this section, we hear how the classic Koerner, Ray and Glover tune "What's the Matter with the Mill?" sounds without Dave. Then we go back in time, and hear all three of them playing this classic. Koerner has not been the most prolific musician in the world. He made only 5 albums in a 25 year period. Yet, at the end of the documentary Koerner promises to get real busy soon. But the very special character and quality of his music cannot be rushed. He is a true American original, and this documentary gives a vital picture of this great artist.
About Producer/Director Don McGlynn
Don McGlynn is a veteran director who has made over 25 documentaries, many of them musical biographies. McGlynn was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and discovered the music of Spider John Koerner at a young age, and remained a fan for several decades. Like Koerner, McGlynn also became quite a world traveller. He lived in such other cities as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Copenhagen for long periods, and has also had extended stays in cities like Stockholm, Sweden, Poitier, France, and Perugia, Italy. His documentaries, however, have brought McGlynn, and his work, to a many more places all over the globe. He has conducted over 400 interviews, photographed in dozens of cities. His work has been shown in over 300 international film festivals, many which McGlynn has attended. His work has been either screened, broadcast or seen on home video in over 70 countries. His work has covered an enormously wide number of musical idioms - from opera to hip hop, Tin Pan Alley to techno, American folk music to jazz, comedy music to blues - plus an array of big band and popular music.
The documentaries tend to emphasize either footage all newly shot (as was the case with the Spider John Koerner one), or a blend of carefully researched, pre-existing performance footage with new material. Many of these documentaries have been prize winners. Recently, THE HOWLIN' WOLF STORY won the prestigeous W.C Handy award, in Memphis, Tennessee, for "Keeping the Blues Alive". Most of these projects have been inspired, in part, by cities in which McGlynn has lived. SPIDER JOHN KOERNER: BEEN HERE... DONE THAT has a special resonance for McGlynn, because it is a tribute to his birthplace - Minneapolis. A longtime fan of the Minnesota music scene in general, and with a particular fondness for the music of Koerner, McGlynn sees this as a sort of professional homecoming. Page 6 Here is a list of some of McGlynn's work: ART PEPPER: NOTES FROM A JAZZ SURVIVOR (1982) THE SOUNDIES (1986) THE MILLS BROTHERS STORY (1986) THE SPIKE JONES STORY (1988) GLENN MILLER: AMERICA'S MUSICAL HERO (1992) DEXTER GORDON: MORE THAN YOU KNOW (1996) CHARLES MINGUS: TRIUMPH OF THE UNDERDOG (1997) TECHNO: LOST IN BASS (1997) SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW: HAROLD ARLEN (1999) LOUIS PRIMA: THE WILDEST (1999) HORACE PARLAN BY HORACE PARLAN (2000) THE LEGEND OF TEDDY EDWARDS (2001) THE HOWLIN' WOLF STORY (2003) SPIDER JOHN KOERNER: BEEN HERE . DONE THAT (2005) More information about these documentaries can be found at - http://www.mcglynnfilms.com. McGlynn is currently working on several projects, including one about the fabulous drummer ED THIGPEN.
