Ashland, Oregon’s Tommy Graven found his soul in the gift of a Native flute
(This article is also featured in Breedlove’s Winter Magazine).
Tommy Graven’s flute is a healer.
The Ashland, Oregon resident had all but given up on music, until about five years ago, when his mother in law handed him his first flute as a wedding gift.
It opened new doors for Graven, who had long ago edged himself out of the punk and heavy metals circles of his youth by getting off the road, getting sober and selling all of his gear, save a single, cracked Guild acoustic which even then was sitting on Craigslist.
Graven, who had discovered his calling as a social worker helping homeless families and disenfranchised veterans, doubted the flute at first.
“Honestly, I thought it was hokey,” he says. “I hadn’t been involved in ceremony in a long time. I did sweat lodges and danced in a couple powwows as a very, very young boy. My dad would shuffle me around to these events, and as a kid, I never liked it. So, when I got this flute, it brought all that hokiness up to me like, ‘oh god, not this old world crap.’”
“But it was a pretty flute,” Graven says today, “and I know my mother-in-law meant well. She knew I was Native. She knew I was a musician. She wanted me to have this; it was a very special gift. So I was honored and I went to go put it next to my little Native area, where I have my feathers and my smudge and pictures of my dad, who’s no longer here. I walked it over there and on the way I just kind of played it a little bit. My wife really liked it. It took her breath away. It’s funny, but she never liked my loud music, my rock music.”
The pandemic, of course, has slowed Graven’s renewed professional career. In keeping with his social work roots, he had been playing at elder care facilities as often as twice a day, leavening those performances with occasional concerts, including an ambitious full band outing at Portland’s Old Church Concert Hall last February.
“Venues were booked and ready to go,” he says, echoing the woes of so many musicians this year. “Then COVID.”
Graven has been a presence on Facebook and Twitch, but he’s also taken the time to record a new solo record, playing and tracking everything on his own, with a focus, of course, on a variety of wooden flutes.
Its title, “Learn to Listen, Listen to Learn,” is a phrase he learned from his Native mentor Elder Rod McAfee.As with live dates, he balances flute and guitar, sometimes using the latter to accompany the former.
“It’s acoustic guitar, Native flute, rattle and a little bit of backing stuff I did with keyboards. This new album’s going to be all instrumental and it’s mostly finger style. I used to do a lot more percussive guitar work, experimenting with tapping and stuff like that.”
Graven, whose family is descended from Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, is Oregon through and through. He has a number of Beaver State-themed tattoos and places his moving, meditative videos, like “The Water Pourer & The Fire Tender” in the great outdoors.
“My family’s literally been in the hills and the mountains surrounding the Willamette Valley since before time!” he laughs.
It’s fitting that he plays a Breedlove Oregon Concert CE, made with sustainably sourced myrtlewood from the Pacific Northwest.
“This guitar is grown in Oregon,” he beams. “Everything about it is Oregon. I literally have my dream guitar, man. It’s really neat and kind of full circle in that I now play more guitar than ever.”
Graven, who teaches guitar and flute, even had David O’Neal from Rising Moon Flutes, handcraft him an A-scale instrument from myrtlewood to go along with his Oregon.
“They match each other and they’re beautiful. It’s like my depression fixer. This flute’s definitely a prayer tool and a healer, you know?”
Both instruments, Graven says, connect him to the land and to the history he is so proud of.
“Elder Rod calls it the natural way,” Graven says of his respect for the earth and all of its inhabitants. “Elder Rod says, for example, that water is the first and most powerful medicine—simple little things we all know but forget too often. When we’re in the lodge, we talk about the stone people and we talk about the one leggeds and the four leggeds. The one leggeds, that’s a tree, that’s a plant. The four leggeds are the animals, the star people. It’s like we’re all people. Everything has a personality.”
“When we realize how clean our water is—or isn’t—and how clean it needs to be, we realize how we’re all connected. We have to listen to learn.
See More
Photo Gallery
