Last month, Dom Flemons released his new album Traveling Wildfire on Smithsonian Folkways. It’s currently one of our Featured Albums of the Month. In his album review, which you can read in full here, Danny Neill opens: “The title alone says it all, Dom Flemons has travelled far and wide in recent years, giving him a rich perspective on the effects of both social and climate crisis, the destruction it is causing, and his own battles to find hope and encouragement as he moves along life’s troubled and turbulent highways.” He concludes, “…the one thing that keeps Dom Flemons engaged and inspired is his indelible belief in the magic and wonder of music. It is that spirit which rises to the fore so definitively on this deep, indispensable new album.”
Dom is our latest ‘Off the Shelf’ guest, in which we ask artists to present objects from a shelf or shelves from their home and talk about them. There are no rules, and what occupies our shelves can be quite revealing. In Dom’s case, his record collection was, not surprisingly, at the top of his list…and he’s very organised, as he reveals.
Record Collection
Currently, my record collection is the biggest shelf in my apartment, and it is one of the most important parts of my creative process. I have upward to about 5000 albums on my shelf that I’ve collected over the past 25 years. The albums categorized on the shelf include a wide variety of styles of music ranging from blues, jazz, country, R&B, soul, rock ‘n’ roll, as well as music from different parts of the world such as Africa, England, Germany, India, France, Cuba and Trinidad. I enjoy my record collection in two different ways: the first way by casually listening to the music playing through the speakers, and inspiring me with the sounds of creating music, while on the other hand, I conduct much of my research with the written notes that accompany a lot of the records I own. I currently have the records broken down into 82 individual categories alphabetized within sections based on genre and specialized record labels so I can access any record I wish to hear quickly and efficiently. I have a hand-typed list of all of my records so I can look at them on paper. Plus, my record shelf is decorated by my wife, Vania Kinard, who is always finding ways to creatively display some of the unique gifts and artifacts we’ve collected through our travels.
Crosley Jukebox
Right next to my record shelf is a beautiful Crosley Jukebox that I found at a random Walmart in Chicago. I was wrapping up a music video shoot and just stopped by there to grab a few small items when I noticed that the full-sized jukebox was the perfect player for my large record collection. Thankfully it was on sale, and I knew I couldn’t pass it up because it plays LPs, CDs, radio and Bluetooth. Now my whole family gets to enjoy a high-quality audio experience along with a flashy LED light show.
GRAMMY Trophy
I was so fortunate back in 2010 to win a Grammy for “Best Traditional Folk Album” with my former group, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. I keep it on my record shelf to remind me that I have so many more years of great music to look forward to, and I hope that I can make it back to win a second one with my own name on it. Even though the group has disbanded, I still find a lot of positive memories of the upward trajectory we had from 2005-2013. There was something special about “Genuine Negro Jig” and the legacy we created in the roots music community, so when we made it to the Grammys over a decade ago, the experience was completely over the top once we took home the trophy.
Akubra Hat
Back in 2013, I took my very first trip to the continent of Australia. Between shows, some of my fellow musicians and I went to a little hat shop in Katoomba which is where I found my Pastorale hat. The model is a staple of the Australian Cowboy, and I like the feel as well as the flat crown on the top. It in some ways, reminded me of a Porkpie hat with a larger brim. I have worn it on stage ever since that trip and continue to find it being a unique and quality adventurer’s cap to take with me on my next exciting endeavor.
Framed Photograph with Northern Arizona University President Dr Jose Luis Cruz Rivera
In the spring of 2022, my alma mater Northern Arizona University asked me to participate in the year’s commencement celebration by accepting an Honorary Doctorate and serving as the keynote speaker. It was such a powerful and humbling experience to become a Doctor of Humane Letters because my family‘s history in the town of Flagstaff goes back several generations. In the mid-1940s, my grandfather married my grandmother and settled in the small western settlement, later raising my father there. My dad went on to be a basketball player and a member of the black fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi at NAU, so my roots there extended to myself and my older brother. This framed photograph of me standing by NAU President Dr Jose Luis Cruz Rivera was a gift from the university and a positive reminder that all my hard work didn’t go unnoticed.
Joe Hill Louis Framed Bass Drum Wall Poster
When I appeared on the CMT original TV series “Sun Records” based on the famous Rock n’ Roll label, I got to play the role of “one man band” Joe Hill Louis. I spent a week out on location in Memphis, shooting my scenes and recreating the record “Gotta Let You Go”, which was the first record produced by Sam Phillips. During my scene, I got to work alongside actor Chad Michael Murray who played the larger-than-life record producer in the historical Silky O’Sullivan’s Bar and Grill on Beale Street.
One of the ways I got hired on the job was that I could play in the one-man band style with voice, guitar, harmonica and bass drum. Driving down from North Carolina, where I was living at the time, I was glad that I had the low-end rumble of my 1920s Slingerland marching bass drum. After my audition and recording session for the television program, the show’s production team made a replica of Joe Hill Louis’ original bass drum head which displayed the radio station he played on WBIA as well as his nickname “The Be Bop Boy”. At some point after the shooting, the placard fell off my bass drum and had fallen on the floor. As I was packing up, I noticed people had accidentally walked all over it, and I asked the crew if I could have it. “Go ahead”, they said, and I brought it home with me as a momento, and later I would frame and hang it on the wall.
A huge thanks to Dom for granting us a peek inside his home.
His new album, Traveling Wildfire, is out now on Smithsonian Folkways – Stream/Buy