DAN Gribbin, an American folk artist who uses his music to help raise awareness about the environment takes to the stage tonight as part of a special family event hosted by the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum & Zoo (BAMZ). The singer/songwriter is a frequent visitor to the island and is hoping to engage kids and adults with songs from his two albums as well as ditties penned about Bermuda. This week he spoke with Mid-Ocean News reporter Heather Wood and photographer Chris Burville about his love affairs with the island, the environment and music.

Q: What is your profession? Do you do anything other than sing?

A: I'm a college teacher. We moved to Florida from Virginia about seven or eight years ago because friends of mine were doing music in the folk community in central Florida. I'd lived there earlier in life and as soon as I got there I was really struck by how the development had begun to encroach upon the habitat of these beautiful shorebirds so I wanted to write songs that would (highlight that). With me it's always kind of playful. I've done a couple songs that are pretty serious digs at the developers but most of the time I'm writing songs about birds that just kind of enhance people's awareness of the environment.

Q: What do you teach?

A: I teach American literature and African American literature. People say, "I hear you teach composition. It must be musical composition right?" And I (have to explain) it's writing.

Q: Where did your interest in folk music come from?

A: The folk revival of the 1960s, you know with Harry Belafonte doing the calypso music and groups like Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, the Kingston Trio, (they were) really kind of raising people's awareness of what it meant to be a full human being. They came along at a time when I was in high school and then went off to college (and so) we were all playing folk music when we were college students. I went to graduate school, got a job, had a family, and one day (noticed) my beautiful guitar was just sitting there. I said to my wife, "You know maybe I should sell it cuz it's worth a lot of money". And she said, "Why don't you play it?"

There just happened to be an occasion on campus where they wanted the parents to be entertained and they were offering $75 to those of us who were willing to do it - wow, that's a lot of money to a folk singer. So I thought I'd better (become more professional) and really practise. As soon as I got back into it, I really wanted to be back into it. A friend of mine from college is a great blues singer, Chris Smither. He tours the world now. I heard Smither on the radio, at just the right time, about ten years ago and I thought, 'I'd sell my soul to be making music like that'.

Q: When did you start playing the guitar?

A: During high school. I made a commitment to try to play every day and improve as much as I could and see where that took me, about ten years ago. It's surprising what you can do with the right kind of focus. As far as giving concerts and things like that, I try to accommodate anybody who is doing a fundraiser and would like me to participate. The peace movement is music-based to a great extent - I've done peace concerts - but mostly I'm doing concerts for environmental groups.

Q: How did you end up singing about environmental concerns?

A: Just because I was singing about birds and things.

Q: But why?

A: I had a terrible job. My first year back in Florida I was teaching high school and was hired the day the school year began - with no preparation whatsoever. So here's this college teacher thrown to the woods in an overcrowded school. It took six weeks for me to really figure out how to discipline them properly. I was going home exhausted and discouraged and I'd walk down to the lake - my wife was still back in Virginia because we had to wait for the house to sell - and there were these beautiful birds everyday.

And so on Saturdays, when I had a little time, I'd start writing songs about birds. One of those birds was the ibis. I still have on tape recorder, a little tape of me sitting there, fiddling with how I wanted to do (record a song). I'm wondering if maybe I should play it like the blues but not (have it) be the blues when it suddenly strikes me - and I say it out loud - "What rhymes with ibis?" I realised that was going to be a problem. It ended up being: "Oh the ibis, wonder how he'd describe us? Oh the ibis, he's a funny kind of bird". So I wrote the ibis and a little song about the little blue heron - I haven't seen any here but little blue herons are about the size of the cattle egret (at BAMZ) and they're just striking looking. So I featured him as a bird that was living in the shadow of the great blue heron - a bird that doesn't get much press.

Q: Were you performing these publicly?

A: I had a place to sing. On Friday nights I'd drive 60 miles to sing at a place where my friends and others lived. We just had this place called the Eustis Street Grill in Eustis, Florida. I live in Daytona Beach so it was a drive inland. This was four or five years ago and it was just a magical time where we all came together and we were all working on our stuff and now we're at a different level. When we go to the Florida Folk Festival we're more featured entertainers.

But at the time this was where we just got together and worked on our stuff with a really appreciative audience. It was a small place but it was packed.

So these songs went over pretty well. And I was sort of trying to live down the birdman reputation at this point, doing other things.

Q: So you're now writing about things other than birds?

A: Oh yeah. Definitely. Looked For You, my latest CD, has a couple (songs) that are bird related but lots of other kinds of things.

Q: How did you end up being - for lack of a better word - a "spokes-singer" for threatened species?

A: There's a fair amount of awareness that has grown in our area that we're going to lose what makes Florida a beautiful place to live if we're not careful. And so you have the Audubon society, the Sierra Club and different organisations working - they don't know what to make of me because I'm playful with the subject (as a way of trying) to involve kids and people. But they always like to have me around if they're going to fundraise. And you really have to promote your own event sometimes. I don't think they have Unitarian Universalism as a denomination here in Bermuda. It's a fairly open denomination and you can believe anything that you want to. We come together to search for truth together. The Unitarian church in any American community becomes a focus for social action and, in this case, environmental action. So we're doing a lot at our church. We've gone solar with electricity and we've preserved the dunes around the church. So I've given concerts at the church and arranged concerts at the church.

Q: So your reputation just grew?

A: Yeah. I played at a restaurant close to home - nobody close to home, nobody right in my neighbourhood knows me (as a singer). So they're still trying to figure out how to get people to come in to hear me. Restaurants and bars are places where environmental singing probably (isn't well received). But people who like Jimmy Buffett songs, by singing those songs, are a little bit aware of the fact - with all this talk about the life of the sailor and so - that so much depends on saving the ocean. That's kind of how I ended up meeting (BAMZ's Bermuda Biodiversity Project leader) Annie Glasspool and she arranged for me to do this concert, with (BAMZ Education Officer) Joe (Furbert).

Q: How did your song about the Bermuda skink come about?

A: My wife likes the Botanical Gardens. I'm a sometime stamp collector of commemorative covers and so on and I'd gone to the home of a woman who had some stamp goodies. I got back to the Botanical Gardens - her place was near there - and I was waiting for my wife. I'd picked up at brochure that the Aquarium puts out about the Bermuda skink, how to protect it in your own backyard. I was looking at that and thought if I wrote a song about that more people would pay attention maybe. So I did a song about 'the sweet Bermuda skink' and how he needs to be protected from the kiskadee. And so we'll do that (tonight). It starts out, "Kiskadee, kiskadee might catch you but he won't catch me. I'm a sweet Bermuda skink and I refuse to be extinct."

Q: Prior to that you had no real affiliation with the Aquarium?

A: Only just that I've been coming here since 1963 when I worked in Bermuda for a summer when I was 17 and had just graduated from high school. I was over here for the entire summer and (BAMZ) is one place that I just always liked to hang out.

Q: You were here doing what?

A: A friend of mine's father was head of PX Services on the (Kindley Air Force) Base and they invited me to come over for the summer. I worked at the gas station. We worked for tips because we only made $1 an hour. But then I became the bookkeeper when Harry Holgate, that was the name of the Brit who ran the Base gas station, went on vacation for two weeks or a month or something like that and I kind of ended up keeping the books - me, this $1 an hour guy. But that gave me a chance to really get to know Bermuda and Bermudians because I was working with native Bermudians too.

I had a crazy time with the tyre man who did all the heavy work pulling tyres off the rims and everything. He was the most foul-mouthed guy you ever heard in your life. Also working there was this nice, gentle Bible thumper. So there was this constant pressure between those two. One day a hurricane hit and they didn't realise it was such a bad storm. We all went to work on a Saturday morning and they said, 'Hey maybe you ought to go home. We think it's a hurricane'. Big Reggie put me on the back of his tyre truck and we went across the Causeway with the water coming over us and got me back home that day. So, he didn't have a very good vocabulary, but he had a good heart.

Q: What was Bermuda like then?

A: Obviously not nearly so developed although you still had motorbikes just flying. The cars were all small, British Austins. The raciest cars I remember there was a spider, a little MG, the Triumph Herald convertible - the dentist on the Base had one of those. I hitchhiked to work with him a lot. But I thought it was neat that there were a couple cool English cars that were here. It was a slower paced place in the '60s for sure. It really pained me to learn about the civil rights history that took place between then and when I got back in the late '70s. There (were) a lot of strikes.

But we think of Bermuda today as just a great place to go because of the people. Because of my stamp collecting I met Mrs. Basden who was the second in command at the GPO (Government Post Office) and she was so wonderful. She's coming to the concert (tonight). She's retired now. But she was always so welcoming to us. Just through another connection I knew the accountant for Sealand Construction - a big construction firm that built the Southampton Princess and other places. He was Australian and a really nice fellow. So through the years I've got to know a few people. Charles Webbe, he was the head of the press bureau here and I would always arrange with some publication to be writing an article about Bermuda for them when I would come over, mostly stamp publications. And I actually got to know a couple of Bermudian musicians.

Q: Are you writing about the island on this trip?

A: No. Actually I'm relatively retired as a journalistic writer. At this point I'm mostly writing music. So I've written (all the songs) on my two latest albums. There's a really neat young woman singer who was at the Florida Folk Festival. She's getting opportunities to go national with her music and I think she'll do it the right way. She's a symphonic violinist who's doing jazz and folk music as well. So I sent her one of my songs and she's getting ready to listen to it. I love the idea that somebody might enjoy (performing) my songs and so that's why I'm pushing for that right now.

Q: Did you take song-writing lessons? Are there courses offered?

A: I had the background in poetry as an English teacher. We lived about 45 minutes outside of Roanoke, Virginia, in the mountains. Roanoke had a very strong literary group, an artistic group. In fact we put out a magazine every year and so for about ten years I had a place for my poetry to be published and that was a great experience. We gave poetry readings in bars and as well at colleges. Nikki Giovanni moved into the region to teach at Virginia Tech at that time. She's one of the wonderful African American poets. She and Gwendolyn Brooks are two of the leading African American poets. I had met Gwendolyn and brought her to our college (when suddenly) here comes Nikki moving into the area. So she helped out with out fundraisers and things. So the poetry was near and dear to me and when I got to Florida I was really wanting to do music. A lot of your ability to write poetry translates over - I never wrote formal poetry I always wrote kind of (free verse) and people enjoyed hearing it at poetry readings.

Q: Why are you here now?

A: My wife (Martha) and I come about every two years. I had done the skink song and Annie lost it. She rediscovered it and contacted me and said, "Hey, this is marvellous. We'll use it in the schools". This time I said, "Well who's the education director at the Aquarium now?" Joe and I e-mailed back and forth and (as a result) the free concert is going to happen (tonight).

Q: This is your first time performing here?

A: Yeah. I was talking to a lady the other day. Her husband does music and she said it's a little bit tougher for foreigners (now). There's not as much tourism as there has been and so there are fewer opportunities for performers. We were staying at the Grotto Bay for the last two times and the Swizzle Inn (had someone) playing on Saturday nights. I contacted them (about playing there) but I didn't hear anything back. Probably because there's a lot of competition and they probably thought I was going to ask them for money. Little did they know¿.

Q: What is the message you try and get out with your music?

A: I mentioned that we go to the Unitarian church. Most of us believe that there's one spirit that flows throughout the nature and that anything we can do to enhance that spirit is important in our spiritual living. It involves our entire life and environment. I think if I can bring alive these creatures who are around us as kindred spirits that people will kind of get that sense of treating the environment well. I'm helping maybe, through my music, to condition people that there's one spirit and we need to honour that spirit by the way that we treat our environment. That's very important to me.

Q: The concert tonight is aimed at kids?

A: It is but there will be some opportunities for adults to join in the singing too. We're enlisting Joe and two of his colleagues - at least we'll do Yellow Bird together.

Q: What keeps you coming back to Bermuda - aside from the people?

A: Somebody asked me that the other day, "If you live in Daytona Beach what are you doing in Bermuda?" But it's a bit of a different environment. We live a block off the ocean so in that regard they're similar for us but the geography, the architecture, everything is unique in Bermuda. It's just very different.

The last two times we were here, we came in March, not exactly snorkelling weather. We did a lot of hiking. There's a little nature preserve down by Grotto Bay. We hung out there and saw the old dolphin pool where they once had a show.

One morning I eased myself into that area in the sun and the hillside there around the pond. I could still hear the traffic and everything but there turned out to be seven great blue herons around that pond. Of course we have those in our neighbourhood at home, but to find them there was really amazing to me. They weren't feeding. They were just taking it easy waiting, I suppose, for the proper feeding hour. So there are echoes of home here, especially with the atmosphere - you want to be outdoors and part of the flow of nature. And there are the unique features of Bermuda as well.

Q: Aside from the skink song do you ever write while here?

A: I wrote one for this event, The Only Cattle Egret in Bermuda. Cattle egrets are ubiquitous in central Florida. Nobody thinks of them as very special because they hang around on farms inland and so on. But we have them also over on the coast and the great egret and the snowy egret, all these different ones are more prized than the cattle egret.

One of my friends (was telling me) that on the ranches they call them "cowbirds", because they hang around the cows. I said, "Cowbird? That's a terrible way to talk about a cattle egret. In fact there's already a blackbird called the cowbird." The last time we were here there was one cattle egret. He'd blown over here from Florida and I thought that was amazing. He had broken his wing and they rehabbed him and kept him (at BAMZ). When we got (to Bermuda) I was hoping he was still here because I'd written the song and there he was looking just as cute as ever. So I'll be doing the song The Only Cattle Egret in Bermuda, Don't Call Me Cowbird (tonight). But I'm not specifically here to write music, more to practise for the concert and we're hoping to involve kids.

Families are invited to bring a picnic supper to the BAMZ 'Animal Sing-Song'. It will be held on the Discovery Cove Lawn at BAMZ from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Admission is free. Organisers ask that no alcoholic beverages be brought, as the event is for children.