John Kruth, The Troubadour Who Sang With Patti Smith On The Bowery
John Kruth The Troubadour Who Sang With Patti Smith On The Bowery by Larry Baumhor (All photographs courtesy of John Kruth) John Kruth is a celestial being! He is profoundly affected by our musical ancestors and is motivated in part by his collective unconscious. John is therefore like the Carl Jung of music. You can’t pigeonhole John into a genre. His music is inspirational and improvisational. This multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter plays the mandolin, guitar, banjo, harmonica, sitar, Indian zither called Bulbul Tarang and the mandocello. “I never learned the bebop language. I can play jazz from improvisation with the flute and mandolin. I was inspired by African, Eastern European, Irish, and Middle Eastern folk melodies. Don Cherry was drawing music repertoire from folk music and he brought that into jazz. Cherry and Taj Mahal were a huge influence on me. They expanded the vocabulary of folk music.” ...