When Life & Times by IPFW professor John Minton came across my desk I immediately feared the upturned and haughty nose of academia. The artwork was very professional and bore (gasp) a real barcode, and the press kit came complete with a detailed bio sheet and a Life & Times postcard. A postcard? "Surely," I thought as I shared an International Coffee moment with myself, "this is grant money gone horribly awry." My fears were proven to be unfounded by the time the first track soaked into my head. Minton's thin, gentle voice serves as a friendly introduction to his world where scholarly study refuses to interfere with good music, showing why he is so popular at acoustic venues such as Toast & Jam.
With lap steel lending its lonely sound to the uptempo "New Cumberland Parkway Blues," Minton rounds out the song with acoustic guitar and a backhills bass, all played by himself and recorded in a very simple, clean style by Tempel Recording Studios. The song ends with an extended instrumental section where Celtic-influenced guitars play nicely with lap steel to create a sense of longing in the listener. "Black Night Is Falling (Seven Sisters In New Orleans)" and "The Devil Been Busy (Down In Carterville)" are bluesy numbers featuring electric guitar lead lines, light organ, piano accompaniment and backing vocals. Although still sparse, these are probably the most complex tracks, as most rely on only one or two guitars and vocals, effectively capturing the live sound that Minton brings to local venues. Such a song is the traditional "Glory In The Meeting House/Ships Are Sailing," an impressive display of finger-picking prowess that shows little sign of overdubs. As much a poet as a musician, Minton has an amazing ability to tell an entire story with just a few lines. A prime example is "Birdie," where Minton sings a novel of political corruption and the senseless death of "that armless hippie" in only four minutes.
Many of the songs are sweet love confessions that portray a tired but earnest smile, each sprinkled with gentle, healing humor. "Moon Going Down Slow," with light acoustic guitar and a sunny melody, gives the feeling of a relaxed summer day spent with your love. "Some Familiar Heart" takes a dark turn with an ominous and hypnotic melody that sounds like it was recorded in the dead of night by the light of a single sputtering candle. Perhaps the strongest song (and it's difficult to choose) is the endearing "Ivy Lee," whose cathartic melody and lyrics of rejection will draw tears from the very marrow of your bones, all carried by a frail guitar accompaniment.
By drawing from a wide pool of influences Minton has created a unique sound with Life & Times. Although the instrumentation and rhythms are Americana, the melodies and hooks are inspired by classic pop, making these songs enjoyable to all but the heaviest metal head. If you aren't inclined to beg for candy or bang your noggin', stop by Toast & Jam October 31 at 8:30 for the CD release party and hear these haunting melodies for yourself.
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When you get your first look at the photo on the cover of John Minton's winning new CD "Life & Times," you may think, as I did: "Well, John certainly looks authentic enough."

   Minton is a purveyor of folk music and folklore, and the picture is of a craggy person in a straw hat on a wood bench looking grim but holding his guitar with an easy familiarity.
   I had never met John before, so I was surprised to find out that he is, in fact, only 46 years old and has a timelessness of face and twinkle of eye that can shave four 4 or five 5 years off his age depending on who's looking at him.
   Minton says the photo on the cover is called "A farmer and his children." It was taken in Natchitoches, La., more than 60 years ago and is now stored at the Library of Congress.
   In other words, it's authentic enough, but it's not a photo of John.
   "So here I've got 1,000-plus copies of the final product, shrink-wrapped in the big boxes UPS just dropped off, all stacked up in my dining room," Minton says, "and I hand a copy to my daughter, Janet. She looks at it and the first thing she says is, 'You know, dad, everyone's going to think that old guy on the cover is you.'
   " 'Huh? Well, that seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? I wonder why that never occurred to me?' "
   Minton's music generates similar, captivating confusion.
Minton's singing voice could easily belong to an old Southern preacher or a feed store retiree serenading his wife of five decades at a barn dance.
   It has eons in it.
   But there are intimations of urbanity.
   Take the leadoff track "New Cumberland Parkway Blues," for example. 
   It's a great traveling song that could have been written 60 years ago . . . except for the tasty lap steel lick that provides bittersweet commentary throughout, evoking such slide guitar masters as Duane Allman, David Lindley and Mark Knopfler.
   Then there's the wry instrumental breakdown that ends the piece — a chunk of latter-day Chet Atkins.
   Minton wrote or arranged all the songs on the CD and played all the instruments (including acoustic and electric guitars, bass and lap steel guitars, keyboards and percussion).
   British reviewer Jeremy Searle of Americana UK magazine said of the CD, ". . .(it) is no dry academic exercise, it's an album of the year contender. . . . It's amazing that something this good can come fully formed out of nowhere, but hopefully there will be a lot more where it came from."
   The hackneyed phrase "a lifetime in the making" doesn't begin to credit all the living that went into this CD.
   Whenever you come across an unclassifiable musical talent like Minton, one of the first things you ask him about is his day job.
   You expect him to reluctantly cotton to Office Depot or the like, but what you want him to say is, "Music is my full-time job."
   Music is Minton's full-time job in a sense, but it's also his hobby.
   Minton is a professor of folklore at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
   He came to Fort Wayne 13 years ago, having previously haunted several localities in Texas, where some of the best music in the nation has been made and is still made.
   He did his undergraduate work at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches.
   Folklore wasn't quite the bonded academic discipline it has become, but Minton pursued it anyway, earning both his bachelor's and master's at SFA.
   He also pursued music in his spare time, tracing artists like Bob Dylan and the Flying Burrito Brothers back to their roots and sources.
   "It occurred to me that the music my friends and I were listening to wasn't all that different from the music my grandma and grandpa listened to."
   In those days, the mid-'70s, Nacogdoches featured an eccentric collection of confoundingly like-minded people.
   "It's not what most people think of when they think of Texas," Minton says. "It's the Deep South area of Texas. These weird bands would form comprised of hippy college kids like me and 60-year-old farmers."
   Minton moved to Austin, a hotbed of musical trendsetting and musician misbehavior, in 1980.
   Austin had long been a haven for country-loving hippies and drug-loving cowboys, and Minton found much to occupy his mind and satisfy his soul, if not fill his coffers.
   "It was like Nashville is today. There were almost more people playing music than wanted to listen to it."
   Minton founded the "punkgrass" group the Foves and mingled in a musical community that included Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark.
   "I remember Lucinda Williams and Nancy Griffith playing to empty bars," he says.
   Eventually, it was time to "sing or get off the stage" — to freshen an earthy cliche.
   Minton had a wife and child to support, so he went back to school and earned his doctorate at the University of Texas.
   Next stop, Fort Wayne.
   His first few years in the Summit City were consumed with that Herculean task called tenure, so Minton didn't play out much.
   "I started playing out a lot more right after I got tenure. Getting tenure tends to relax the mind."
   One would think that being a folklore professor and being a folk musician would be complementary states of being, but it just ain't so — to employ a folksy contraction.
   Minton says folklore studies is still seen by some pointy heads as akin to basket-weaving: "I'm sure many of my colleagues still think my courses involve sitting in a circle on the floor and singing 'Kumbaya.' "
   Touchy folklorists made a loosely concerted effort to professionalize their academic pursuit in the '60s. That meant putting considerable distance between the classroom and the coffeehouse.
   Folk-performing professors were suddenly seen as hopelessly non-objective, potential threats to folklore as a discipline.
   Minton has never agreed with this view.
   "Many of us have managed to achieve some comfort level with both halves of the equation."
   Minton sees a lot of value in "being able to enjoy what you study at such a level that you are able to participate in it.
   ". . . I see nothing wrong with remaining a little subjective," he says. "After all, I really love this stuff and still get a great deal of pleasure out of doing the coffeehouse folkie bit that got me into this business to start with.
   "From my point of view, aside from the therapeutic function and sheer enjoyment I get from it, this simply allows me to contribute to a subject I love on another level.
   "And where others — especially the public - are concerned, I think it's important in demonstrating that academics aren't just a bunch of joyless pedants. That most of us really do love what we do, and on various levels."
   Devotees of the local folk scene learned long ago that Minton is far from a stuffed shirt, and Minton has accrued a couple of observations about them as well.
   "One of the really striking things I have noticed is that there are two basic groups of performers: An incredible array of really talented young musicians like Sunny Taylor and Matt Sturm and Matt Gates and then old farts like myself who are raising families and working jobs but still manage to get out."
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Rating: 3 out of 5 smiley faces = "Just Plain Good Stuff."   Je zal het niet vaak tegenkomen, maar het staat er echt wel: John Minton is niet enkel een graag geziene gast als performer van akoestische rootsmuziek in z’n thuisstaat Indiana, hij is ook professor aan de Indiana University – Purdue University in Fort Wayne, alwaar hij een veelheid aan colleges geeft met betrekking tot folk en andere populaire muzieksoorten. Een hoogst interessante verschijning dus!  Vreemd genoeg heeft Minton er zelf zo’n dertig jaar over gedaan om met een CD op de proppen te komen. Zijn onlangs verschenen debuut “Life & Times” kreeg als ondertitel het bijna wetenschappelijk aandoende “Originals & Adaptations In The Southern Idiom” mee. Gelukkig voelt het album zelf een stuk minder stijf aan. Het gaat integendeel om een geheel waar een zekere warmte van afstraalt. Zeker wanneer de man zijn akoestische gitaar omgordt en zich in zijn eentje door folky stuff als titelnummer “Life & Times” of “Moon Going Down Slow” werkt. Dan hang je binnen de kortste keren geboeid aan zijn lippen. Minton bespeelt trouwens alle instrumenten hier zelf: van de akoestische en de elektrische gitaar over bas en keyboards tot de lap steel en de percussie. En dat dwingt vooral het nodige respect af in bluesy deunen als “Strange Dream Blues” of “Black Night Is Falling (Seven Sisters In New Orleans)” of in de van heerlijk pickwerk voorziene versie van het klassieke “The Leaving Of Liverpool”. Best wel een aangename CD dus voor al wie bij tijd en wijle een potje pretentieloze rootsmuziek tot zich neemt en een ideale gezel ook voor de late uurtjes.   (You won't find it often, but it's for real: John Minton is not only a popular performer of acoustic roots music in his home state Indiana, he's also a professor at Indiana University-Purdue University in Fort Wayne, where he teaches a variety of classes on folk and other kinds of popular music.  Thus a most interesting release!  Strangely enough, Minton has performed for about thirty years without doing a CD.  Recently, though, there has appeared his debut, "Life & Times," which has as its subtitle the almost scientific sounding "Originals & Adaptations in the Southern Idiom."  Fortunately the album itself is hardly that stiff.  To the contrary, as a whole it radiates a certain warmth.  Certainly things work when the man straps on his acoustic guitar and, all by himself, plays folky stuff like the title number "Life & Times" or "Moon Going Down Slow."  Then you hang, captivated, on his every word.  As a matter of fact, Minton plays all the instruments here: from acoustic and electric guitars to bass and keyboards to lap steel and percussion.  And that's especially essential in reinforcing bluesy tunes like "Strange Dream Blues" or "Black Night Is Falling (Seven Sisters in New Orleans)," or providing the delicious pickwork on his version of the traditional "The Leaving of Liverpool".  Best of all, though, this is a pleasant CD for those with the time and an interest in unpretentious roots music in and of itself, and also an ideal companion for the late hours.)
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John Minton is Professor of Folklore at Indiana University.  But this, possibly his debut album, is no dry academic exercise, it's an album of the year contender.  The front cover has a black and white 1940 photograph of a farmer on his porch holding his guitar, his two young sons next to him, and it is precisely the music that the picture conjures up that you'll find on this album.  Better produced, yes, more instruments, yes, but the feel and tone are right there.  There's a sparse emptiness around the songs, lots of open space, no unnecessary notes.  Ten of the twelve tracks are self-penned, but they could have been around forever. Musical echoes abound, from Charley Patton to David Rawlings, but John Minton is very much his own man, and brings a unique sensibility to the music.  Standouts include "Birdie" (about an uninvestigated death) and "Some Familiar Heart" (a wonderfully brooding love song). There's also a cover of "The Leaving of Liverpool," which in these surroundings appears in a whole new light, reclaiming its place as a vital part of the shared American/British musical heritage.  But to pick out individual tracks is invidious as there isn't a weak moment, or even second, on the album. It's amazing that something this good can come fully formed out of nowhere, but hopefully there will be a lot more where it came from.
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