Bill Melton: Transcript

5th-generation Musican
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My name is Bill Melton. I am a fifth-generation musician. I’m originally from eastern Iowa, a little town called Maquoketa. I currently live in Ankeny, Iowa, which is just north of Des Moines. My introduction to music was before I could even walk, they would stand me on my grandfather’s feet, and I’d hang onto his pant legs, and he would dance around as he would play fiddle.

My grandfather was my original inspiration for music, I’m remember as a child going out to see him, there would be a room full of musicians standing around jamming and playing all this great music.

He did a lot of stuff in the forties and fifties. The real Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow, stuff like that, and of course some Irish songs and traditional songs, too. He did a lot of square dances and things like this. It was a lot of fun because then, as an adult, playing in Eastern Iowa traveling around, I got to play some of the places he used to play thirty, forty years before. In eastern Iowa, quite often you’re playing; people would come up and say “Oh, Bill I like your playing, you know when we were young, we used to come and your grandpa would play these places.”

Both sides of my family came directly from, to America to Eastern Iowa about the 1840s, and stayed right around Jackson County. As a fifth-generation musician, you’d think I’d have a lot of background playing, but the sad part was, it was all gone by the time I really learned how to play. I never got to play with my grandpa, and, my stepfather taught me the basics and then that was it too, so there was none there.

Six months before my grandfather died, he gave me one of his fiddles. And it was, the fiddle he gave me was in pieces; it had come unglued and it was in a bunch of pieces. He said, “To play fiddle right, you’ve got to really want to learn to play it. And I am going to give you this one in pieces because if you really want to learn it, you’re going to have to put it together first. If you go to that much work, you probably will learn it.” So it took me ten years before I finally glued it together though.

The types of music I’ve played through the years has been everything blues to bluegrass. I’ve played in country bands, rock bands, bluegrass bands. The songs I write are about life in Iowa primarily, at least life in the Midwest. I have written songs about my grandpa, the fiddler. I’ve written songs about individuals or stories I’ve been told or quite often overheard, while eavesdropping. But it’s about real people; I like to base my music on that.

Many types of folk artists they are doing it because of their ethnic background or their history or something like that. Mine is I guess, if I was to categorize it as one thing, I guess it would be family. But it’s more than just my bloodline family, it’s my family and my community. Like I said if I was back home in Maquoketa, Iowa, there’s 7,000 people. And everybody knows who you are and where you’re from. They joke like, “Well, I can’t do something wrong because somebody’ll tell my mom,” you know, and that’s true. And I like that. I like that small town feel.

I think even living near Des Moines, where I am in Des Moines all the time, after being around the country--Des Moines is still a small town, it’s kind of a farm town. And I think that’s a good thing. Going to these get-togethers, family functions--and most of the kids would all be running off playing and I would sit there, and just sit there. I was just mesmerized by it. Cause I do believe that music is definitely a gift from God; and it’s pure magic. These little kids are like, “That’s magic! How do they do that?”