About The Drops

Dom Flemons

“I left Arizona because I knew the music would take me somewhere - but I had no idea!”

You don’t have to be born in the Piedmont to feel the music in your blood. It may even be fair to say that Dom Flemons’ journey has been a trip from instinct to action. It all began with a PBS documentary about the history of rock and roll. “There was an episode on the folk music revival that got me wanting to do it,” Dom explains. “At the time, Dylan albums were inexpensive so I started buying them. From there I read about the folk scene in New York City and I tried to do that in Phoenix. I began busking and playing in coffee houses.”

Dom calls this a natural progression backwards. From writing short stories and poetry slams he moved to music, from a fascination with the 60’s and playing guitar he collected recordings of the early masters and used them as teachers. Finally, Dom added banjo to the mix, going for the sound of the old-time players. “A friend let me borrow a 5-string banjo with a missing string,” Dom remembers. “He didn’t like the 4th string. So I learned how to frail and I did an approximation of claw-hammer without the fifth string. I didn’t even know that it was essential to have a fifth string!”

Dom shares a flare for the intrepid with his fellow band members. While still a student in Arizona, he headed off for Encanto Park in Phoenix and jumped into Wednesday night music jams. If he was the only young player and the only black man with a banjo, Dom didn’t care. He did find his way to a website, blackbanjo.com, and learned about plans for a Black Banjo Gathering in North Carolina. “At first it was just supposed to be a one day fish fry,” Dom recalls, “so I didn’t see how I could afford to go.  Then I saw the list growing and I figured I had to get there!”

The Black Banjo Gathering in April 2005 turned out to be the switch that shifted Dom’s life from busker in Arizona to string band musician in the Piedmont. He met players he had only heard on recordings, Algie Mae Hinton (blues and buck-dancer), Clif Ervin (bones), Daniel Jatti (African gourd banjo or ekontane), and idols like Mike Seeger who had spent a lifetime both preserving and innovating. He also met Joe Thompson.

“I was playing banjo and someone said, ‘No, no, no, you don’t pick it, you claw-hammer it.’ People said, but he doesn’t have a fifth string!” Dom says laughing. “Joe [Thompson] looked and saw that I only had four strings.”

Dom decided to move to the Piedmont, hooked up with Rhiannon Giddens and followed her to Joe Thompson’s house where Justin Robinson was playing. Without even planning, Dom’s music revival dream was real. “It gave me a different perspective” Dom reflects, “going from being someone who was learning from recordings – it was very different to learn sitting next to the artists and hearing them talk and seeing how mannerisms are translated into the music.”

On stage Dom rolls from one instrument to another with a fearless attitude toward tradition and repertoire. As the Carolina Chocolate Drops push Joe Thompson’s classics into new territory, Dom   remembers his idol, Mike Seeger, who died in 2009.  “Mike is the person who changed my outlook – he got me trying to do what he was doing, taking traditional things and smashing them together and making something different.”