It's been 40 years since Ezra Idlet and Keith Grimwood started writing and playing music together.
"Heck yes, I feel older. Things hurt more. A long car trip is harder on my back and my hips than it used to be," says Idlet, the duo's guitarist. "But my passion for playing music has not diminished. If anything, it's increased."
FAQ
Trout Fishing
In America
WHEN — Doors open at 5 p.m. Sunday; music at 6 p.m.
WHERE — 17 Elk St. in Eureka Springs
COST — $15 donation or $60 for the seven-concert series
INFO — 244-0123 or eurekahouseconcerts…
FYI
Eureka House
Concerts 2016-17
Sunday — Trout Fishing in America
Oct. 23 — Ed Snodderly: “A singular modern Appalachian style you won’t soon forget.”
Oct. 30 — Richard Gilewitz: “An American fingerstyle wizard who has a quirky take on everything around him.”
Nov. 27 — Bill Hearn Trio: “His husky Texas baritone finds its way into a song’s interior with the mellowness of fine bourbon and the warmth of a Sunday picnic.”
Feb. 26 — Johnsmith: “Beautiful, high tenor voice, excellent guitar playing, and spirited, uplifting songs. His music is open-hearted, unpretentious, grounded in the personal, yet always accessible and universal.”
March 12 — Emily Kaitz, Mary Catherine Reynolds & Louise Goldberg: “Emily Kaitz has a wonderful knack for being funny, silly and sometimes annoying, and then turning around and being amazingly poignant.” “Mary Reynolds and Louise Goldberg perform with passion, humor and total commitment to the emotional power of the music they love.”
April 2 or 9 — Kevin Welch: “He is one of the performers that everyone wants us to bring back to Eureka House Concerts.”
In fact, he says, he and Grimwood are working in more musical combinations than ever before.
"Keith went to Louisiana a couple times to go to a Cajun cultural music camp to learn Cajun fiddle. He was passionate about learning," Idlet says. "I'm taking drum lessons when I can from people around the country as well as learning the guitar stuff and producing records." Grimwood plays in a Cajun band. Together, Idlet and Grimwood perform as part of Wheatfield, the Outliers and, perhaps most famously, as part of Dana Louise & the Glorious Birds with Idlet's daughter, Dana, and Adams Collins.
"I was so surprised," Idlet says of the harmony with his daughter. "Dana was on a trajectory to be a visual artist. She was part of the Fayetteville Underground and was receiving a lot of encouragement for her visual art. Then she went to the Azores to paint and make films and take pictures, but she found a guitar and started writing and came back a changed human.
"As her father, I am really proud, and as a band member, I'm involved in creating something I haven't seen before. Dana is about as spontaneous and in the moment as a human being can be. She's very courageous on stage and interesting, and I consider her a peer. She handles the show. Keith and I are there to help if she needs help, just as we are for each other. But I'm not her dad on stage, I'm her drummer."
All that said, Trout Fishing in America remains as dedicated as ever to creating songs for kids of all ages. The duo will play Sunday evening as the opener of the Eureka House Concerts series, and Idlet says audiences will hear material that's coming together for a new adult album.
"The songs that have been coming out recently are 'big kids' songs," he explains. "It's nothing that would make a child burst into flames if they heard one, but it's a little more introspective. We have a new song we play where Keith plays an impossible bass part, and then he sings the song on top of it, and it's just stunning. And the two of us pull it off like we think we're bigger than we are."
Returning to Eureka Springs suits the duo perfectly.
"When we first started playing in Arkansas, we played in Fort Smith, Fayetteville and Eureka Springs," he says. "Friends told us we needed to play Arkansas, that these were our people. It was an instant love affair with us and Arkansas -- and we have loved that town for a long time!"
Eureka Springs loves Trout right back, says Nancy Paddock, one of the Eureka House Concerts organizers.
"They're always fun," she says. "And we listen to our audience. They tell us who they want here."
The series was born 13 years ago out of the desire to keep folk music alive and well in Eureka Springs, Paddock says. But the definition of the genre might have expanded a little. "I say all music is folk music. It's all made by folks!"
NAN What's Up on 09/16/2016