Listening to the lute
WL resident’s recent album was nominated for a Grammy
VERN UYETAKE / West Linn Tidings
West Linn resident Ronn McFarlane plays his lute on a lookout point near his West Linn condo, one of his favorite places to play. McFarlane’s album, “Indigo Road,” was nominated for a Grammy award.
Growing up listening to music by Paul McCartney and Smokey Robinson, West Linn resident Ronn McFarlane said he’s still getting used to the fact that some of his favorite songs are now only played on classic rock radio stations.
The 55-year-old musician recently brushed elbows with his two idols as they shared the red carpet at the 51st Grammy Awards ceremony at the Los Angeles Staples Center in February.
“They really do have a red carpet. It’s the sort of place where you see stretch limos and stretch Hummer,” McFarlane said of the eye-opening experience. “I arrived in a taxi that let me off on the corner.”
Although nominated for his album “Indigo Road” in the Best Classical Crossover Album category, McFarlane is humble about his nomination and instrument of choice: the lute.
The rounded, stringed instrument that resembles a guitar was popular in the medieval, renaissance and baroque periods. And McFarlane said that most who play the lute nowadays – which isn’t many – play in an old style.
“To see one is pretty rare,” he said. “You don’t see them hanging on the walls in music stores, for instance.”
But McFarlane’s compositions are original, and many of his instrumental songs are inspired by nature.
“I find it very evocative,” McFarlane said of the nature theme carried throughout “Indigo Road.”
The song “Pinetops” was inspired by one hot July day in Houston. “Cathedral Cave” musically describes the area of the same name beneath the ocean near Australia. And “Denali” was written about McFarlane’s first trip to Alaska.
But why are so many songs inspired by faraway places? McFarlane spends half the year away, performing. And when he returns to West Linn, he often composes his music by a bubbling brook atop a hill overlooking the Willamette River near his home.
The setting is peaceful, just like each note played.
But McFarlane hasn’t always been a lute player. In fact, his musical career started like many other kids in junior high – with rock and roll.
“When I was 13, I heard a band play ‘Wipe Out.’ To me it was the greatest, most exciting thing I’d ever seen, and it was just some of my classmates,” McFarlane said. “Music was about the most fun thing I could think of to do.”
In college, he studied classical guitar but played in a rock band on the weekends. When he found music from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries he found an “organic connection,” and in 1978 he picked up the lute and has been strumming ever since – and on cold days, he plays in his garage.
“Maybe it comes from my old garage band days,” he said. “It’s not like the instrument is very loud.”
But it is emotional and rewarding.
“There is music to describe just about every kind of human existence you can think of,” he said.
And McFarlane is brimming with inspiration, with material already written for seven more albums, he said.
His ultimate goal with music, though, is to bring more attention to his favorite instrument of yesteryear.
“I love the lute very much. I’d love to see it become more of a participant in the musical mainstream, not just this dusty musical instrument that used to be played,” he said. “It’s really very versatile, a very beautiful instrument. It can be uplifting and put people in touch with their finer sensitivities.”
For more information about Ronn McFarlane and his music, visit http://www.ronnmcfarlane.com/.