Joe Elmo

Joe Elmo is a Woodstock, NY based songwriter and guitar player. I caught up with him at a mutual friend's home in Woodstock.

Joe started playing guitar when he was 17 years old. He was at a friend's house, he said, and his friend was playing the keyboard. There was a guitar in the corner and his friend suggested he pick it up.
"Nah," he replied. But then something changed and he decided to pick it up. He liked it, he really liked it. And he understood it. He could play. 

I asked him if he ever took lessons. He told me that after he picked up the guitar, he arranged to have a lesson with his cousin, who had played for a long time. He met with his cousin and arranged to take another lesson a few months later. When it was time for his second lesson, his cousin said he had nothing new to teach him: Joe could already play better than his cousin.

Joe plays by ear. He never learned to read music. But he did learn where all the notes are on the guitar. When I was jamming with him, he had a keen sense of music theory, including chord progressions (including 9ths, 7ths, walking bass, etc.) and he would call them to me so I could play along. When I started to call a chord progression, he corrected me right away when I mistakenly called a B flat chord a B minor. 

 "Things are going good," he tells me. He has a recording contract on the table right now with plans to tour Europe with his original music and band.
When I asked him who has influenced him, he lists off many of his friends as well as Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones.

Peggy Lynn

 

I caught up with Adirondack folk musician Peggy Lynn at Camp Huntington, in the heart of the Adirondacks. Peggy has been making a living through her music for twenty plus years.  She is beautiful, talented and has an absolutely gorgeous voice that is both strong and delicate. She wavers and slides and holds her own gentle vibrato in this northern country and does the music more than justice.

Peggy started playing the guitar when she was twenty years old. Her older brother was a popular tenor when she was growing up and she never wanted to be compared to him, but the music was living in her too. She was often asked, she said, to sit in with folk performers and so she naturally picked up the guitar and taught herself to play it. She started writing songs and at the age of 32 recorded her first album. Her website, http://www.quercusmusic.com/music, shows ten albums to her credit to date.

She is an Adirondack woman. She frequents places like this one, Camp Huntington, and other of the Great Adirondack Camps.

I was fortunate to be at two performances here with her, where she graciously asked me to sit in. The first performance she was accompanying her husband, Dan Duggan, master hammered dulcimer player and nationally touring artist and educator. While I was sitting in with the duo, and Dan was calling out dances, Peggy leans over to me and says, "I'd rather be dancing." Soon after, she did just that. She got up and led one of the dances. The two brought a good old fashioned super fun time to many people who have never had the pleasure of olde time dances before.

Two nights later, Peggy led a song circle, her beautiful voice filling the room. Every note hanging in on the birch bark ceiling like it was a deliberate decoration of the Adirondack camp.

Most interestingly to me, is that Peggy has an entire album about Adirondack women. She relayed to me how after she wrote her first song about an unsung Adirondack woman, Lydia Smith, wife of the Adirondack legend Paul Smith, of Paul Smith College namesake. Lydia, apparently had been the driving force behind most, if not all, of her husband's endeavors: making investments, teaching their sons how to run the hotel, and many other behind the scenes, but vital doings that made her husband the highly respected man he was. Nobody every said anything about Lydia, until Peggy Lynn wrote a song about her. Since then, audience members and others have encouraged Peggy to write about other formerly unsung Adirondack heroines. She has an entire album about these women. The music is authentic and at times breathtaking, and the lyrics are humorous and poetic.

Peggy Lynn is about as authentic as it gets: she lives in the Adirondacks, writes music about the Adirondacks and performs in the Adirondacks. She is keeping the Adirondack traditional music scene alive by her contributions and preserving the old songs as well. She is a gem of traditional music and culture.

Mike Clip Payne Part oNe

I first met Mike 'Clip' Payne one afternoon in Woodstock, NY. I was playing music outside my friend's place, where Clip happens to be a neighbor. I was playing some new songs for my friend when he comes out and says something about a record.
"No record," I said.
"You will," he replied. I liked him right away.

I asked him if he was a musician and he laughs, a big full belly laugh. He's good at those. Turns out he is a career musician, with 40 years of experience performing, writing and grooving with George Clinton and Parlament Funkadelic. (Oh yeah, I think, I've heard of you guys.) He takes me inside his home and shows me, just in case I'm having a memory lapse, videos of his band, P-Funk.

"Ok," I say, "but what do you play?"
"I don't really play an instrument," he says.
"Well, what do you do on stage," I ask.
"I try not to be on stage these days," he says.
"Well, ok, but if I'm at a Parliment show and I'm looking for you, where do I find you?"
He laughs, one of these eye creasing, belly laughs again. Then he takes a puff of his smoke and goes onto Facebook and puts the question out there to his friends.

 OK, so  he's the narrator, keeps the low end tight, found in the crowd possibly playing the fool. One reply to this thread takes us here:

 Clip is that deep resonate MC. "We're a freak show," he tells me. He likes to be in the crowd or leave the stage for a bit, or be singing from the sides. He keeps it interesting.
 I see a couple of these machines.

I figure out Clip is a producer, a creator of funkadelic music and writes hooks. He writes pop music, he says.

He's pretty funky. I jam with him for a few hours. He plays this:

And creates beats on his computer live. Sometimes it works, sometimes we just get through it (me on a nylon string guitar and all), but all in all its definitely funky. And fun. He tells me that my choruses are like poetry and he laughingly contrasts this with hooks he writes, like the late 70's smash hit "Flashlight":

 These days, when not touring with Parliment Funkadelic, Clip has other bands he produces. He has a podcast,  a history and a future. Stay tuned for part 2 in which Clip tells us about how an early music experience watching a Motown recording session when he was 9 years old changed his life, about bad music deals and working for the man... And how he's keeping the funk alive.

Musician's Tea Beginning to Brew

Greetings My Friend,

I am a songwriter, harpist, and guitarist. I love to play music and jam with other musicians. I decided

to create a post based on my curiosity and passion for music and interest in musicians. I have several musical friends and acquaintances and I will be bringing them to you, through pictures and a brief synthesis of my interviews and conversations, sometimes over a cup of tea, often in their homes, mostly right here in the Hudson Valley between Woodstock and New Paltz. We will explore these musicians' creative processes, their instruments, inspirations, aspirations (or lack of) as well as brief biographies in their musical lives. I will display photographs of the musicians and their instruments, sometimes while playing, hopefully in a natural relaxed state.

Photograph by Christine Fromm

This subject is fascinating to me, be the musicians pro, on the verge, semi-pro, or hobbyists. Because my interest in music is far reaching and expands beyond one or two types of music, I will be featuring musicians who play music from many different genres. Some of the musicians I have in the line up are: career musician Clip from the international touring band Parliment Funkadelic, Steve Bernstein from the Hudson Valley's own Bernstein Bard Trio, newly signed rock guitarist/songwriter Joe Elmo, and life long sometimes pro musicians Jimmy Giampa (congas), Virgil Fowler (guitar) and Wave (hand drum player and maker). I will bring in my avant guard composed father-in-law, Dary John Mizelle as well. I plan to bring you some female musicians too, like virtuoso cellist and friend
Ling Kwan and an international singer-songwriter (and former bandmate of mine) tba. Maybe my mother-in-law, pro classical bassist Diana Gannet will make an appearance as well.

I hope to present these performance artists in a casual, down-to-earth way, with simple photographs

photograph by Christine Fromm

that hopefully capture some of the beauty and depth of the experience of making music, without the bright lights and stage dimension. Come on in and have a cup of tea as we explore the multi-faceted world of musicians. Please feel free to join in the conversation by leaving comments. I love comments and hope to hear from you soon.

Kind regards,
Veronica