Multitalented Musician Don Flemons at the Pocahontas Opera House Friday, Oct 20th
If you google musician Dom Flemons, you’ll find a long list of accomplishments – singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, music scholar, slam poet and podcaster. But what started him on this long journey of discovery in music?
“Well I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona and when I was around 17 or 18 I decided to start playing guitar after playing drums for years in the school band,” said Flemons. “And I started getting into folk music and really started to play this old type of music. And by the time I made my way through college, I was busking on the streets and playing old time country blues.”
But he didn’t play in the streets for very long. In 2005, he moved to North Carolina and eventually formed the group The Carolina Chocolate Drops with Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson with a focus on old time string band music. Stops in New York City and Washington D.C. followed until he finally landed in the Chicago area. He found he was drawn to American Roots music.
“Well I found it was a genre that was so rooted in tradition that being a fan of history as well as a fan of just reading in general, I found stories of all these old time musicians and their lives moved me,” he said. “Over time I’ve traveled around and I’ve gotten a chance to play with a lot of different old time musicians as well and it’s been the same. A real treat to know about their lives and stories and be able to sing their songs.”
After he left the Carolina Chocolate Drops, he went on to work on a variety of projects involving roots music.
“When I left the group, I did an album called Black Cowboys and that led me into doing the narration for a documentary series The Real Wild West. And after I did Black Cowboys, I did my album Traveling Wildfire which is a series of original numbers that sort of reach into the heart of my spirit as well as the roots music.”
“It’s one of those things that just naturally comes one thing after the other, as I move along, new projects come along. Another one of the great things, just like with the Black Cowboys, that people find a relevance to the material I’ve recorded, and then they’ve been able to apply it to the work they’re doing so it all falls hand in hand.”
Dom Flemons will be at the Pocahontas Opera House Friday, October 20th at 7:30pm. Tickets are available at the door and there is no charge for those 17 and under.
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