Ten years ago, when Hubby Jenkins was 20, he found himself in Tucson en route from California to his home in New York. And, he says, this is what happened to him in the span of 36 hours:
He hitched a ride with a guy whose car was filled with meth, met a lot of “different homeless characters,” wandered into a skinheads punk show and was escorted out, got a free meal from a kind restaurateur downtown where he was busking and then was robbed by an older homeless woman.
“That was a very magical day,” the 30-year-old said with a slight chuckle. “I felt the planets were aligned in some way to create this whole day for me. And it ended with me meeting ‘environmental anarchists.’ ‘Yeah, we’ll take you in,’ then at the last minute decided not to. It was a gamut; I went to the college side of town. I met everybody. ... I had all kinds of craziness when I was in Tucson.”
Not surprisingly, Jenkins has been back just once in the years since for a 2014 Rialto show with the prominent old-time string band Carolina Chocolate Drops.
He is making his solo Tucson debut this weekend when Rhythm & Roots hosts the multi-instrumentalist in a Monterey Court show. Jenkins is bringing along his banjo and guitar — just two of the instruments he regularly plays. He also plays mandolin, electric bass, bones, and, in a-life-and-death emergency, the violin.
Jenkins’ show on Friday, Oct. 14, explores old-time American string music that draws its roots to African-Americans. It’s music he discovered a little at a time starting with the Beatles, blues and soul.
Jenkins was born and raised in Brooklyn, where his parents filled the house with blues, salsa, soul and the Beatles.
“We didn’t hear a lot of folk in my house. My mother hated Bob Dylan’s voice,” he said during a phone interview from a Brooklyn coffee shop last week.
Jenkins’ first instrument was alto sax; his parents wanted to steer him to jazz. In an act he now thinks might have been a bit of teen rebellion, he picked up the cello in high school and played with the school orchestra.
At 13, he heard retro singer-songwriter Lenny Kravitz for the first time. It was a revelation; a young black artist not rapping or playing soul or funk.
“It opened up this whole thing for me, this idea of what black people could be in pop culture,” Jenkins said.
The deeper he dug into African-Americans’ role in traditional American music — the string music most associated with the South — the more enamored he became.
Expect Jenkins on Friday to draw from traditional songs that go back to the early 1900s and his eponymous solo album released earlier this year. “Hubby Jenkins” is seeped in traditional country blues and folk with songs including “Banjo Sam,” “Little Log Cabin in the Lane,” “Dollar Bill Blues” and the traditional gospel blues song “I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole.”
