Jonas Friddle grew up listening to classic rock, Creedence Clearwater Revival, for example. He also heard a lot of folk musicians, including John Prine and Doc Watson, while growing up in the North Carolina mountains, especially when the family was heading somewhere in their station wagon.
Friddle’s heart settled on old-time music and today he is an award-winning claw-hammer-style banjo player and songwriter. Friddle, along with two other folk musicians, Anna Jacobson and Andrew Wilkins, will perform at 7 p.m. Nov. 20 at Grayslake Village Hall, a Lake County Folk Club venue.
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They’ll present songs from Friddle’s latest album, “The Last Place to Go.” It’s the first album he’s released that features all of his own songs. Friddle moved to Chicago in 2007 and began teaching at the Old Town School of Folk Music as well as performing. Since then he has released multiple studio albums under his own name and with the folk group The Majority.
Though he’s known for his banjo picking skills and old-time style, Friddle learned music on a guitar his dad bought him at a yard sale when he was 12 years old.
He didn’t start playing banjo until he was in college. “I bought my first banjo while I was living in Toronto and I had met a great banjo player there named Chris Coole,” Friddle said. “I had lots of time for fooling around so I decided to get one and give it a go. I wish I had started earlier. It’s my favorite instrument now,” he said.
Friddle plays clawhammer banjo. He describes the style as using “the back of the finger in a strumming motion with the thumb following behind to catch another string off the beat. It produces a really great rhythmic effect with a lot of possibilities for syncopation and groove.
“That style of play often finds its home in what folks call old-time music. The clawhammer style of playing the banjo definitely has its particular grooves and that affects how the song ends up musically.”
Friddle is as much a songwriter as he is a banjo player.
“I have an old cassette tape somewhere of a piece of music I wrote with my piano teacher before I quit lessons,” he said. “But 18 is when I wrote the first song I can still remember and still play sometimes. It was a waltz. I just really like good songs and really enjoy trying to write songs.
“Unfortunately, most of the songs you write starting out are pretty bad,” Friddle said. “Mine were anyway. I know that John Prine’s first batch of songs ended up being some of the best ever written. But Carole King said something about having to write hundreds of songs before getting a good one so I’ll comfort myself with that I think.”
Friddle and his folk group The Majority won a John Lennon Songwriting Award for the song, “Belle De Louisville.”
“That was the first time I felt like I had put my finger on how to put a song together, thought I can’t say for sure why it won,” he said. “I know at the heart of the song is a longing for home and that’s a pretty strong feeling that a lot of folks know.
“I’m sure if I picked through my stuff all of it would owe something to someone. I spend so much time with friends playing fiddle tunes, Carter Family songs, Memphis Jug Band songs. All of that social music certainly makes its way into what I write. A surprising number of chickens show up in my songs. But, I don’t think of my music as throwback or old-timey.
“I really like songs with interesting writing, good stories, strong images, maybe a little abstract and funny … I always love how Prine can tell a sad story that’s somehow a little funny at the same time. ‘The Last Place to Go’ has some of that in, it I think,” he said referring to his newest album.
“‘The Last Place to Go’ is the first record I’ve done where I wrote all of the songs. Before that I would mix in traditional tunes. Most everything on ‘The Last Place to Go’ was written about memories of younger days. It was a more personal kind of writing and didn’t seem to mix with the traditional stuff as well,” he said.
The album includes what he calls sung stories with drum, fiddle, dobro, electric guitar, bass, organ and trumpet accompaniment.
Among the songs on that album is “Drinking in a Dry Town.”
“I was back on different folks I knew when I was younger dealing with the challenges of coming out to their friends. I think and hope that process is easier now … but looking back as an adult and understanding better how hard that was for those folks at that time … that’s where ‘Drinking in a Dry Town’ came from,” he said.
“I certainly try to write lyrics worth singing. Hopefully they hang around with somebody after they hear the song. The words are important to me.”
Friddle said folk and rock music have similar hard-driving energy but with different instrumentation. He had access to old-time jam shows much more than rock clubs, so that’s what he followed, he said.
He added “Playing folk music makes it a little easier to meet people and play together. That said, I haven’t given up on my rock ‘n’ roll career yet.”
Jonas Friddle
When: 7 p.m. Nov. 20
Where: Grayslake Village Hall, 10 Seymour Ave.
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Tickets: $13-$18
Information: 847-602-8882, thelakecountyfolkclub.org
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.