Grammy-winning Dom Flemons brings folk music explorations to Macey Center

Grammy Award winner and nominee, multi-instrumentalist, music scholar. “The American Songster.” All of these describe Chicago-based folk roots musician Dom Flemons. But each description only scratches the surface of the person he’s become.

Flemons’ story begins in his native Arizona. After honing his craft in Flagstaff and earning an English degree at Northern Arizona University – and finding the first of many musical mentors, Sule Gregg Wilson - he ended up in North Carolina. Speaking on the phone recently, Flemons reflected on the early days.

“A couple years back, NAU gave me an honorary doctorate, and so I’m now a doctor of humane letters,” Flemons recalled, “and I thought when I got that, I thought to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, the vagabond has returned.’ So I think if I think of myself back then, I would be very proud that I was able to have accomplished so many things. Because at that time, I think I was sort of an open book to what the future could be.

“I never tried to think of a limited vision of myself, but I also didn’t necessarily think I was going to be able to get as many things done as I have,” he concluded.

Once in North Carolina, Flemons helped found the groundbreaking string band Carolina Chocolate Drops with Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson in 2006. The innovative group, which was nominated for two Grammy Awards and won Best Traditional Folk Album in 2011 for its album, “Genuine Negro Jig.”

Still a vagabond at heart. He soon set off on a solo career. He has since released five albums, including his most recent, 2023’s “Traveling Wildfire.” After a stop in New Orleans, Flemons is kicking off his current tour with four shows in New Mexico, including a stop Sunday at the Albuquerque Folk Festival and Tuesday at New Mexico Tech’s Macey Center. His show in Socorro, which kicks off NM Tech’s “Presidential Chamber and World Music Series,” is free to the public.

Flemons will not only flex his musical chops at the Albuquerque Folk Festival, but he will also show his scholarly side with a workshop, “Black Cowboys: Workshop & Song Share.” The workshop will take the audience on a deep dive into songs from his Grammy-nominated album, “Black Cowboys (2023, released on Smithsonian Folkways), as he speaks about the songs themselves, his research, and his process as a scholar and artist.

“Black Cowboys” was a culmination of sorts of his musical exploration, which included early rock and roll, jazz, ragtime, jug band music, and traditional folk instruments.

“I picked up a lot of different traditional instruments like the quills, the pan pipes, and also the rhythm bones, the jug,” he explained. “These are all instruments that have their own histories outside of the more conventional instruments like the guitar and the banjo.”

“And then of course a big part of the scholarship that I ended up being swept up in is the story of the Black cowboys, and so that became a whole other massive journey into Black western culture, which, of course, I’ve been a part of being from Phoenix, Arizona.”

Flemons added that, “the extensive nature of all of the different facets of Black western culture was a missing piece he brought into his scholarly work and music.

On his current string of shows, which runs through November, Flemons said he will be “doing a really comprehensive overview of my whole discography.”

“People are going to hear a little bit of the music I picked up in my travels going through North Carolina and the south,” he said enthusiastically, adding that he will touch on songs from the “Black Cowboys” collection and his original material. “It will be a panorama of all the phases of my career.

“In some ways, it’s interesting, you know? I’ve been finding myself in a position like a musician, like Tom Waits, where I’ve kind of come to my ‘new variations phase’ where I’ve done so many different phases,” he said with a chuckle. “Now I’m sort of reaching into all of them at one time, which is interesting in many ways. Because it allows the audience to kind of go on a journey with me.”