Crawdaddy!: Can you give us a profile of a Baby Gramps fan?

Baby Gramps: Tommy Dean has been listening to me since he was five years old. He’s 22 now. He even does my song, “Old Man of the Sea” from the pirate album, Rogues Gallery. He stole the show on my Northwest Folklife Festival stage this year. [Folklife is an annual Seattle music event].

Crawdaddy!: I know some of the Seattle rockers are fans. Did you ever jam with any of the grunge bands? Any other involvement with rock you could note for our readers?

Baby Gramps: I don’t know about any of that, maybe they hung out in Seattle at the Dog House; Kurt Cobain used to hang there. I used to put on the nosebag there. [It's open] 24 hours, you know musicians…

Crawdaddy!: Did you get set up with Akron/Family for the Rogues Gallery album or did they know your work/you theirs?

Baby Gramps: That was producer Hal Willner’s doing. He also said Bill Frisell wanted to play with me.

Crawdaddy!: How long have you been collecting pirate songs?

Baby Gramps: Since I saw an episode of Leave It to Beaver (now there’s a real pirate with his head ‘twixt the slates of a fence).

Crawdaddy!: What is a great, under-appreciated pirate song we might like to know about?

Baby Gramps: “Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga.” [He's not joking with that title; it's a real song dating back to the early 20th century, in case anyone's wondering.]

Crawdaddy!:Baptized on Swamp Water is your tribute to New Orleans. What’s your favorite New Orleans record?

Baby Gramps: “James Alley Blues”, Rabbit Brown.

Crawdaddy!: Do you mostly play in the Northwest?

Baby Gramps: I play not mostly in the Northwest. I’ve always toured, going through countless cars, and I’m on my third high-top gypsy condo. The last van I put 350,000 miles on.

Crawdaddy!: I read about your collections of things… have you found any items, musical or otherwise, that particularly delighted you lately?

Baby Gramps: A recent acquisition was a player piano attachment you roll up to a regular upright piano that enables one to play piano rolls on a non-piano-roll piano. Pictured on my second CD, Hossradish is a miniature QRS saxophone that has a small piano roll upon it that one cranks, just like my hand-cranked steam computer at www.babygramps.com.

And with that, the good old-fashioned Baby Gramps signs off, in the canniest of 21st century ways.

Watch: Baby Gramps Live at O.U.R. Fest [at youtube.com]

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