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"We had 260 members at the beginning of this month," he announces. "I
logged on to the Internet this morning to check -- we now have 276."
These lucky enlistees have joined Wash- boards International, Johnson's
brainchild and fixation. They do not pay dues -- "Nah, no one's ever gonna
pay me," he says fatalistically -- and get, for their non-existent ante, a
couple of bumper stickers. But bonds between washboard players run deeper
than that. Or else, Johnson muses, they are more shallow.
"It's not a terribly complex instrument," Johnson admits. "You just get
one and figure it out. You end up having more fun than money."
Johnson was working steadily as a rock-and-roll drummer in 1970, the
year he heard his first jazz washboard while waiting tables at a Dixieland
theme bar on Larimer Street. "It was rowdy and up-tempo, and I loved it,"
he recalls. "Swing, Dixieland. I just kinda picked it up, and even today,
I'm looked down on."
But at least Johnson has made sure he's been disdained in good company.
While checking out the Sacramento Jazz Festival in 1983, he conceived the
idea of an all-washboard concert, in which as many cacophonists as possible
would take the stage at once. Thirty washboard players showed up -- a wide
segment of humanity, if Johnson remembers it right -- "and none of us had
any pride. Was there a singer? Ha! You try to sing over thirty washboards."
Nevertheless, the Washboard Concert became one of the most popular
events at the jazz festival, and as Johnson began to compile addresses of
musicians he'd met, the idea of a fraternal cell began to take hold. "We
weren't even international, really," he says. "I just liked the sound of
it." But just when the paradox was getting predictable, five washboard
players from Sweden joined up.
Like all of WI's members, they play their own, absolutely unique
instruments. "You go out and get a couple of thimbles, stick them on a
couple of your fingers," Johnson suggests. (He gets his,
industrial-quality, at Denver's Able Tailoring Thread and Supply.) "You
might attack it with a kitchen whisk. You might have a horn. The zydeco
guys use bottle openers. There's spoons, of course, and wood blocks.
Cymbals and cowbells. No two sound alike."
And no one would want them to. So at this year's Washboard Concert,
Johnson says, he'll be acting not as conductor, but as traffic cop.
"I'm expecting forty washboards," he says. "And a gutbucket bass. And a
guy that plays duck call. It's a very big draw." -- Robin Chotzinoff
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