Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff — a former New York City councilman and New Jersey state treasurer — needs no gavel to call to order his bluegrass music jam at Small World Cafe, nor any spreadsheets to organize it.
“We can shift these tables and make room for the bass,” he suggests on a recent Sunday evening as the musicians arrive. Everyone helps open a seating circle. Soon coats and cases are stowed. Novices carefully cradling banjos sit opposite experienced pickers holding theirs with sharp confidence. About a dozen people gather, a varied group, also playing guitars, fiddles, and (like me) mandolins, all sharing the surging, “high lonesome” country-folk sound of bluegrass.
Sidamon-Eristoff is an immediately likeable man, both boyish and avuncular. Spurred by his enthusiasm, structured by his benevolent guidance (and encouraged by a full house of drink-sipping, pastry-savoring onlookers), we take turns leading a song or an instrumental tune.
“What are the chords to that?” someone asks about an unfamiliar number. Everyone listens carefully to a quick tutorial. Soon we are all on the same page (metaphorically speaking — bluegrass players rarely use sheet music), taking turns at playing solos in a respectful progression around the circle.
I had heard about the Princeton bluegrass jam during its earlier incarnation just down the slope of Witherspoon Street at the Alchemist & Barrister. Somehow the timing was never right for me to attend those gatherings. But now, at Small World, it is. After decades of performing bluegrass and writing about it, this gathering feels like a homecoming.
Meeting founder-organizer Sidamon-Eristoff is like returning to your home town to find that the current mayor is an especially congenial and dedicated public servant. That’s pretty much what Sidamon-Eristoff has been in his professional career, and he has studied bluegrass with the same combination of seriousness and joy as when mastering fiscal policy and the hierarchies of state and local government.
Indeed, Sidamon-Eristoff finds a powerful commonality between good politics and good bluegrass jamming. To him, it’s all about a win-win structure of basic respect — and listening to the other person.
“I think bluegrass is virtually unique as a musical genre,” Sidamon-Eristoff tells me some days later over lunch. “Provided you follow basic rules of the road you can come together with total strangers and have a good time playing music. You can’t do that with most forms of music, like classical — you have sheet music and everyone needs to be of a capable ability to make it sound okay.
“In a bluegrass jam you have novices next to experts. And as long as the novice observes certain conventions like staying in tune and in time, it’s magical. There’s nothing like playing with other people and having it work.”
So what is bluegrass? And how did Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff — the son of public service-conscious New Yorkers — fall under its rustic spell? And could this knowledgeable, civic-minded listener be the kind of political leader that might appeal to those New Jerseyans who are eager for their bull-like current governor (whose approval rating has sunk to 18 percent) to be finally put out to pasture?
Sidamon-Eristoff might run for public office some day, but for now he urges interaction, adaptation, and empathetic listening — behavior that comes naturally to a player at a bluegrass music jam.
First the easy question. Bluegrass has culturally diverse roots, combining Southern folk ballads and fiddle and banjo tunes, African-American blues (and even jazz) and modern compositions, all coalesced by singer/songwriter/mandolin player Bill Monroe (who named his band the Blue Grass Boys to honor his roots in Kentucky, “the blue grass state”).
Like the blues, bluegrass is a deceptively simple form, with profound layers of subtlety. Mastery is a lifelong quest. In particular, a surging, anticipating timing, even on slow songs, and use of syncopation makes bluegrass special. “If bluegrass is in perfect, regular time, it doesn’t sound right,” Sidamon-Eristoff says. “There’s something weird about it.”
If bluegrass is truly American music, the Sidamon-Eristoff family has a truly American back story. “It’s a classic immigrant experience,” Sidamon-Eristoff says.
His paternal grandfather came from what is now the Republic of Georgia. An officer in the Georgian army when the independent nation unsuccessfully fought the invading Soviet Russians in 1921, he emigrated to the U.S., eventually earning an engineering degree at Johns Hopkins.
Sidamon-Eristoff was born in New York City in 1963. His father was a lawyer who spent his professional life in and around government: he served as transportation administrator for Republican mayor John Lindsay in the late 1960s and early ’70s and as an EPA administrator for President George H.W. Bush in the 1980s.
“He was very much a public citizen, heavily involved in umpteen committees and commissions,” Sidamon-Eristoff says. “I grew up talking to him about this stuff all the time. He wasn’t a play-catch-in-the-backyard kind of a guy. But if you wanted to talk about public administration or politics, the field was wide open. And he was a fantastic listener.”
After prepping at the Hotchkiss School, Sidamon-Eristoff graduated from Princeton University in 1985 and received his law degree from Georgetown University in 1989. He took a gap year between college and law school to work for the New York State Assembly’s Republican leaders as a research assistant.
“Because of my father, I had met a lot of people in leadership positions in city and state government. When it came time for me to enter the work force, I found myself interacting with the minority leader and other senior officials in Albany. It was really cool and I liked the culture in Albany, believe it or not. I knew before that I wanted to get into governance, but this confirmed it.”
But what about the legendary corruption and adversarial nature of New York State government?
“We’re talking 1985, ’86,“ Sidamon-Eristoff replies. “There were still a lot of influential, dedicated, and exceptional leaders on both sides of the aisle. There was a gentility and a civility to the way politics was conducted at that time.”
His father died in 2011, but his mother still lives and has been on the board of the American Museum of Natural History in New York for more than 50 years. Says Sidamon-Eristoff: “I grew up in a family that thought public affairs were important and relevant. And if you had the opportunity to devote your time to it, you should.”
His wife, Catherine, whom he met in New York in 1994, has retired as a managing director at Morgan Stanley and is now involved in not-for-profit work with the elderly. The couple has three children, a daughter in college and two sons in high school (formerly at Princeton Day, now attending a school in Connecticut).
Sidamon-Eristoff got serious about playing bluegrass guitar after he took a position with New York governor George Pataki’s administration as executive deputy commissioner of taxes and, six months later, as full commissioner.
How? As a youngster, Andrew had taught himself a little folk and folk-rock guitar. (“I got to the Bob Dylan-Neil Young stage.”) Then at Hotchkiss he made friends with a student from West Virginia who got him into bluegrass. He played guitar occasionally during his college days, but mostly folk and country rock.
The tax commissioner’s job meant being in Albany four days a week, living in a hotel. “There‘s a social scene in Albany, but I wanted to stay put and be quiet!” he says. “So I decided why not take a DVD course in [guitar] flatpicking?” A popular course by flatpicking champion Steve Kaufman became his tutor and downtime hobby. He began to make real progress.
Then in 2003 he saw an announcement for a “jam camp” offered by bluegrass performer and teacher Peter Wernick, right there in New York State and immediately prior to the popular Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival. This total immersion experience appealed to Sidamon-Eristoff’s growing love of the bluegrass culture: “Not only the culture of playing with other people.
There’s something that resonates with me about the hills and hollows and the country. There’s something of a romantic appeal to me in that, although I’m very definitely an urban kid. I’m sort of nostalgic for 1946 in Kentucky. I wish I’d been around to see Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys.” (Monroe died in 1996.)
Sidamon-Eristoff describes himself as ‘a card-carrying pro-free trade person’ but he is also ‘quite liberal’ on many social issues.
He had been part of a bluegrass jam in New York City but found that, despite a friendly folk music scene, there was no equivalent in Princeton. So he started a Meetup group, which currently has about 280 members. Only a fraction actually show up at Small World, where bluegrass now brews the second Sunday of the month from 7 to 9 p.m.
After leaving the New York State treasurer’s position, Sidamon-Eristoff chaired a 2009 strategic planning initiative after the 2008 election proved largely disastrous for the G.O.P. And in 2010 he made a contribution to Chris Christie’s New Jersey gubernatorial campaign but was not otherwise involved.
After Christie’s election, almost on a whim, Sidamon-Eristoff submitted his vita to the incoming administration. Multiple interviews and a personal meeting with the governor-elect led to an offer to become state treasurer. Sidamon-Eristoff and his family relocated to Princeton, settling in the town’s western section.
“It was an unexpected but welcome turn,” he says. “I came to New Jersey completely fresh. I approached the position of treasurer from a technocratic perspective. Ultimately, the treasury is responsible for tax policy and putting together the state budget, and my passion is public administration, albeit in a political context.”
He adds: “If you know anything about New Jersey politics there are a lot of layers of connections. These connections are by no means obvious and alliances are by no means always partisan. Sometimes they are regional or economic. I was a fresh face and treated as such.”
Sidamon-Eristoff says that he “enjoyed my service and the people I worked with.” But he left in July, 2015, after five years, actually a long tenure for New Jersey state treasurers. While he considers his New Jersey public service a success overall, he says that “the battles were exhausting, a lot of acrimony between the legislature and the governor’s office.”
Sidamon-Eristoff proudly identifies as a moderate Republican in the mode of former vice president Nelson Rockefeller and president Gerald Ford. “It means that I recognize the role of the state in managing public affairs and improving people’s lives. I have a respect for the limits of government as well.”
For example, as a fiscal conservative, he supported efforts to privatize some city services, such as sanitation and human services while a New York City councilman in the mid 1990s and he describes himself as “a card-carrying pro-free trade person.” But he also reports being “quite liberal” on many social issues; for example, as councilman he advocated for gay rights.
However, during the recent presidential election he supported the Libertarian Party ticket.
“I’m a registered Republican and I don’t have plans to change,” he says. “I supported the Libertarian ticket chiefly because I saw two experienced moderate Republican former governors who enjoyed success in their respective states” — former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson and former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld — “advancing a candidacy more in keeping with my own system of values.”
His take on the 2016 election?
“I was, like most Americans, completely and totally taken by surprise by the outcome,” Sidamon-Eristoff admits. “And like most Americans I’m anxious about the national reaction. To me, it’s disquieting to be confronted with the fact that we’re living in two fundamentally different political cultures in this country.”
Sidamon-Eristoff advocates breaking out of the information and social bubbles in which we rarely know anyone who voted for the opposing candidate. And he urges interaction, adaptation, and empathetic listening — just like in making music.
“In a bluegrass jam session, you’re going to meet a lot of people from different backgrounds.” To play successfully, Sidamon-Eristoff stresses, “you have to have empathy.”
“We all know a lot of people who play guitar at home and they play very well. But they fall apart in a jam session because they haven’t been taught to listen to other people and adapt. [But] if you’ve got five, six, seven, ten people who are doing it, it works. It’s magical, it’s just so much fun.”
Now at age 53, Sidamon-Eristoff still has a lot of political and musical life ahead of him. He’s working as an investor in small scale private equity with a brother in Washington and with his wife. He’s taking beginners’ Spanish at Berlitz. He recently addressed a multi-state tax conference of certified public accountants. He writes a periodic and quite thoughtful opinion column for the online newspaper NJSpotlight.com: “That’s been a nice outlet and opportunity for me to keep my hand in public policy. My goal is to help inform public debate.”
“I’m keeping an eye out for other possibilities,” he says. “I’ve even thought of running for public office. There may be openings at the legislative or congressional level.”
But he takes a pragmatic view. “Quite frankly, I’m still learning about the political landscape here in New Jersey. I have to be realistic about my lack of strong roots. It’s a different dynamic than New York. The situation is very complicated for any Republican. This is an overwhelmingly Democratic state.”
And with limited choices. He points out, for example, that New York State comptroller is an elected office. But not in New Jersey, where the governor is the sole state-wide elected official. “For the time being,” he says, “I’m content to watch, look — and listen.”
Running for office in New Jersey would take a lot of adjustments. Again, it’s just like being in a lively bluegrass jam session. “For me, the metaphor is of real-time adjustment as you’re playing with people, the micro adjustments you need to make,” Sidamon-Eristoff says, adding, “The very best players spend 99 percent of their time listening to other people. It’s all about listening. It really is.”
And maybe it’s about enjoying our common American heritage. Sidamon-Eristoff reports that a friend in Washington, D.C., who is very depressed about the state of the country after the election, said, “You know, clearly we need to play more music.”
“I couldn’t agree with him more,” Sidamon-Eristoff smiles.
About the author: Richard D. Smith says that he “resonated with Sidamon-Eristoff like a well-struck bluegrass guitar run. Although I was an upper-middle class Jersey kid, I grew up surrounded by corn fields and dairy farms in rural Montgomery Township near Princeton. And my mother’s people had been real country people from Hunterdon County. One of my great uncles even played the fiddle. Getting into bluegrass during the Folk Revival of the 1960s seemed natural.”
Smith says that he was “fortunate to hear, meet, and report on Bill Monroe during his lifetime, and then to write his biography,” Can’t You Hear Me Callin’: The Life of Bill Monroe, Father of Bluegrass, published in 2000 by Little, Brown & Company. The book has been optioned for a possible movie with the working title “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
,
