Bob Deakin Short Stories

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Sunset at Treasure Island Beach in St. Petersburg, Florida in June 2010. Photos by Bob Deakin and the music is “Lady Love” by Les Baxter from 1970.

Dennis Dunaway of the Alice Cooper Band

“Let me have some coffee and then I’ll listen,” said a groggy voice-like that of a mother to a child who rises early and eager on a Saturday morning. It was 1968, and the voice was that of Frank Zappa, who was speaking from his bedroom to Dennis Dunaway and his band mates who were outside the door. Mr. Zappa got his brew, gave them a listen and essentially agreed to sign them to his record label that day. It had been a long dark road to getting there, but the Alice Cooper Group had a deal.

These days, Mr. Dunaway, 58, who played bass, sang and co-wrote many of the band’s hits, is occasionally spotted performing in Litchfield County and is in the midst of a new album project at a studio in Brookfield. He survived the rock & roll scene in the 1970s, continuing with Alice Cooper through the band’s heyday and has since played in other bands, done sessions in the studio and pursued business ventures with his wife of nearly 30 years, Cindy.

Last week, he took some time during a recording session to explain his new project, which thus far involves about 20 tracks of varying styles, all based on a quirky sort of heavy rock he’s played throughout his career. You might be able to find a couple songs that you could play back to back and say those are kind of similar, but the whole album has quite a variety, he said.

Relaxed and approachable as could be, Mr. Dunaway looks back on his experiences fondly, though he loves the laid-back feel of the current sessions as compared to the old days.

“I’ve always worked in very collaborative, almost volatile environments. When you brought an idea to the Alice Cooper Group, it was sort of like tossing your heart into a pool of piranhas,” he said. “But the best ideas rose to the top because if it wasn’t worth fighting for, it had no chance. This is much more spontaneous because we don’t have that deadline hanging over our head,” he said, noting that he is not under contract and has no deadline for completing the project.

One of the songs, titled Subway, rumbles like a freight train with Mr. Dunaway’s patented bass sound with a pick, complemented by heavy drum tracks. It is an approach taken during the Alice Cooper days, when the band’s powerful drummer, Neal Smith, needed little help with the bottom end and Mr. Dunaway filled in the gaps, playing partial chords and sneaking solos in between guitar riffs.

He is joined on the project by other veteran rockers, including guitarist Joe Bouchard of Kent, formerly of ‘Blue Oyster Cult’ and Englishman Ian Hunter of ‘Mott the Hoople’ fame. Smith, too, may join him on the project that is being engineered by Rick Tedesco in his Brookfield studio.

“That’s what’s great about this whole experience for me,” he said, joyously pointing out a song with a gunshot solo. “This is the first time I’ve ever had people who have been willing to explore every idea that I suggest.”

Originally from Oregon, Mr. Dunaway attended high school and college in Phoenix, Ariz., which is where the Alice Cooper Group originated. As a youngster, his discovery of guitarist Duane Eddy inspired him to be a musician, and bassist Paul Samwell-Smith of ‘The Yardbirds’ was the first major influence on his instrument of choice, which wasn’t really a choice at all.

“Alice and I formed the band in high school, and at our first performance we kind of pretended we were playing instruments,” he said, laughing and referring to the band’s leader, whose real name is Vincent Furnier.

“Then we decided to really get serious about it and everybody else chose what instrument they wanted to play before me, which I think is fitting because bass players’ personalities are more like the followers,” Mr. Dunaway added.

His original band mates, including Smith, Michael Bruce and the late Glen Buxton, then went on a long and treacherous journey through bars, theaters, gymnasiums and outdoor shows, plying their trade and developing a style. The early material was abstract by comparison to the songs that later made them famous.

“We were too weird for Los Angeles when we lived there,” Mr. Dunaway said with a wry grin.

They weren’t too weird for Frank Zappa, however, and he was already a force in the music business, composing movie scores and albums of his own while producing other bands worthy of his complex tastes. At the time, Alice Cooper happened to be dating Miss Christine from the all-girl group The GTOs, for whom Mr. Zappa had produced an album. She was often at the Zappa home, baby-sitting for his daughter Moon Unit, and Mr. Dunaway and his band mates were occasional visitors. They would always invite Mr. Zappa to hear them play and he would never come. One day, they were desperately trying to convince Miss Christine to let them come over and play for him.

“She said, well he’s going to be home really late tonight, and so we’re like, come on, can we come over tomorrow?” Mr. Dunaway remembered. Eventually, she gave in and made tentative plans.

“O.K., come over tomorrow at nine o’clock and I’ll ask him if it’s O.K., and if it’s not O.K., I’ll call you, was her reply,” according to Mr. Dunaway.

“We were knocking on his door at nine o’clock in the morning; the whole band and all of our equipment,” he recalled. “She didn’t say anything about equipment [to Frank Zappa] and she certainly didn’t say nine a.m.” he said, laughing. “As soon as she opened the door, we marched in and set up all of our equipment in the hallway outside of Frank’s bedroom and we started playing. The song’s like halfway through and the door opens and a hand comes out and goes like this,” he said, motioning to quiet down.

The notorious night owl begged them to wait.

“So, he got his big mug of black steaming coffee and he’s sitting at a card table all miserable and we’re playing and jumping around and everything, and after four songs he says, ‘You guys play stuff I couldn’t get the Mothers [of Invention] to do,’ which I don’t think was true but that was quite the compliment,” he remembered.

Mr. Zappa agreed to sign them to a contract provided they get themselves a manager, which they did.

“That’s called making your own break,” Mr. Dunaway said. “But everybody in L.A. still hated us.”

The band had gone by names such as the Earwigs, the Spiders and almost settled on Lizzie Borden until they went with the Alice Cooper Group. Their popularity grew following a stint in Detroit with upcoming acts such as the MC5, the Stooges and Ted Nugent. Their on-stage wardrobes of glitter, leather, makeup and theatrics started to catch on, while their songwriting became more focused, absorbing some of the energy from the other bands they met. Their stage show and wardrobe rubbed off on others, such as Iggy Pop and David Bowie, both of whom were still trying to make it.

The first single to hit the charts was “I’m Eighteen” in 1970, written by the entire band and launched at a radio station in Canada when one of the jocks began playing the song followed by a flood of requests to hear it again. Still, it took a while for the music business to acquire a taste for the band.

“For everybody that liked us there were ten people that wanted to kill us,” Mr. Dunaway joked.

The band found out that the vitriol was real when it began a nationwide tour and concertgoers would greet Alice Cooper by throwing hammers, M80s and other surprises. One group the band always had on its side, however, was the bikers – who didn’t want to get too close to the band, Mr. Dunaway joked, referring to the mixed messages the makeup and costumes may have transmitted. But they liked the hard-driving music.

“We played the Fillmore West and [promoter] Bill Graham hated us,” Dunaway said. “He thought we ended everything that was good about music. Finally we got so big that he had to bring us in.”

Other hits followed, including ‘School’s Out,’ ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy,’ ‘Desperado’ and more. The band had a cult following, particularly with rebellious teenagers who yearned for the straightforward lyrics and heavy rock sound.

A guy band with a girl’s name was confusing yet ultimately memorable.

“It almost closed every possible door. Then we spent years with people coming to our show thinking they were coming to see Al Kooper,” Mr. Dunaway said of the keyboardist who formed Blood, Sweat & Tears. “He came up to me once and said ‘You don?t know what you’ve done to my audience.’”

The original band broke up in the mid-70s, when the members decided they were ready to make another album but Alice decided not to participate. The rest of the band recorded the album titled Billion Dollar Babies and that was the end of the road for the original Alice Cooper Group, although more albums came out with a different lineup and a more commercial sound.

Dunaway does not speak of the breakup with remorse.

“We were on the road constantly, putting out two albums per year, and we had done an extended tour and everybody was kind of road-weary and decided to take a break,” he said. “I had gotten rather disenchanted with the music business and decided to just write music for the fun of it and that’s what this recording session has been.”

In the past three years, Mr. Dunaway has performed and recorded with Joe Bouchard and Neal Smith going by the name of BDS. They recorded a studio album, Back from Hell, and a live album from a performance in Paris.

“Dennis is a really unique person,” Tedesco said. “Just his outlook on life in general, he brings this totally different viewpoint that I’ve never experienced. It’s a lot of fun. It’s just so cool to have somebody present something with the enthusiasm that comes through.”

Mr. Dunaway and his wife have two grown daughters, and the couple spends considerable time at their Wilton, CT store, Moon Hollow, selling an array of antiques, gifts and other items. The Fairfield County resident credits a sense of humor for getting him through the rock n roll lifestyle and cherishes the memories that return time and again with just the touch of a radio dial.

(Originally published in The Litchfield County Times in 2005)

Copyright 2005

"Besame Mucho" by Bob Lenz of Kent, Connecticut

After 35 years, painter Bob Lenz finally feels at home in front of an easel. Following retirement a few years ago, the Kent resident picked up the brushes he’d left behind in college and is just beginning to explore the heights of his resurgent career.

Mr. Lenz’s recent works will be included in a month-long exhibit opening tomorrow at the Nutmeg Gallery (now the Morrison Gallery) in Kent. The show is an encore of an exhibit at the same venue last May that featured an earlier portfolio.

“It’s similar,” the artist said of his latest collection of oil paintings. “I think they’re better. It’s just a process of maturing and making them a little more interesting-moving up the ladder a little bit.”

The Nutmeg Gallery will launch the exhibit with an opening gala from 2 to 5 p.m., featuring guitarist Joe Beck. Mr. Lenz will be on hand while his works are displayed throughout the first floor of the old Eugene Bull homestead. A former advertising executive, Mr. Lenz retired from that world in the mid-1990s, and then revisited his early days as a painter.

“In college, I was a fine arts major but I took a few advertising courses and I guess I just decided that in those days – it was 1961 – I decided to try advertising and I sort of got hooked by it. I didn’t really paint or draw anything for 35 years. When I left that industry, I just picked it up again and wished I had started sooner,” he said with a chuckle.

As with many of his works, the new images are cast with a warm hue and recall the past with a combination of resonance and realism. One work the artist is just completing is titled Listening to Verdiand features an old gramophone. His mentor in the art world is Kirill Doron, formerly of Moscow and now of New Milford, with whom Mr. Lenz has been studying for several years.

The painter began his career in the advertising business with ad giant McCann-Erickson and later formed his own agency, Backer & Spielvogel, with four partners.

“I was always on the creative side throughout my career,” Mr. Lenz said. “I stared as an art director and eventually wound up doing television campaigns and that sort of thing.”

The phrases, tastes great and less filling may bring back memories for many television viewers. It was the hit exchange from the Everything You Always Wanted in a Beer … and Less ad series for Miller Lite, which began in 1973 with New York Jets running back Matt Snell and other athletes arguing over the merits of the new low-calorie beer.

The enormously successful campaign featured retired sports stars such as Dick Butkus, Tommy Heinsohn, Mickey Mantle and Bubba Smith, former coaches John Madden and Billy Martin and even the mystery writer Mickey Spillane. They were an instant success and made even bigger stars of Bob Uecker and Rodney Dangerfield. The commercials, featuring more and more stars, aired from the early 1970s through the late 1980s, with more than 200 spots, many directed by Mr. Lenz, who came up with the original concept and oversaw the campaign throughout its run.

Noted sports author Frank Deford even wrote a book about the commercials and what it took to keep the ex-jocks in line behind the scenes.

“Some of them were hysterical,” Mr. Lenz said of the personalities. “Especially when we got them all together. They were like a bunch of high school kids.”

The ad-executive-turned-artist also introduced the late Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s Restaurants, to TV viewers in the good-natured spots for the fast-food giant, which continue on a similar theme today.

In the early 1970s, he was responsible for the TV ads that let viewers know when it was Miller Time.

“It was for Miller High Life with the sunset – ‘At the end of the day, if you’ve got the time, we’ve got the beer,’ Mr. Lenz recited, noting that he recruited deep-voiced actor Gene Barry to perform the voice-over, which was imitated and spoofed by many at the time.

“We were one of the first, I think, to use a fairly well-known actor as a voice-over,” he added. “Nobody, in general, knew it was him but he had a very distinctive voice.”

The artist has a handful of paintings to be included in the upcoming art show at the new gallery at the Sharon Playhouse, and in recent years, he has exhibited at the Kent Art Association, the Paris-New York-Kent Gallery and at the Mark Twain Library in Redding.

Art is not merely a part-time passion, and he sets a goal for himself of one painting per week. Mr. Lenz has nearly accomplished that over the past year, and will hang about 25 of his works at the Nutmeg Gallery this month. He paints his landscapes outdoors and has no problem finding interesting locations in which to set up his easel. He spends the winter months in his studio, focusing mostly on still lifes.

Bill Morrison, owner of the Nutmeg Gallery, frames the works of Mr. Lenz, and the two share a musical bond. Mr. Morrison is a guitarist and Mr. Lenz a drummer. He played professionally, mostly jazz, in the early 1960s while at the University of Illinois. After graduation, he set out for New York City and sold his old set to help pay the way. Though his career as a performer was apparently over, music was an inspiration for him in his days in the ad world and it is still evident in his paintings, with the occasional ode to musicians or musical instruments.

“Music has always been sort of my second love and I still stay up with it,” he said last week, explaining why he has jazz guitarist Joe Beck performing at the opening at the Nutmeg tomorrow. “It’s sort of a dream I’ve always had-to have my own one-man show, have a great jazz musician and have people over to the house afterwards.”

The artist also got a taste of the rock star lifestyle at last year’s gala, surrounded by guests from the start of the event. Mr. Beck, joined by bass player Bill Crow, will set up his custom hollow-body electric guitar inside the gallery and play at a comfortable level for conversation, while guests can sip wine and sample hors d’ oeuvres. The gallery is located at the intersection of Routes 7 and 341 in Kent.

Mr. Lenz was born in Chicago and eventually ended up in Ridgefield, where he and his family lived for a number of years while he worked in the city. He and his wife discovered Kent in the 1980s, bought a weekend home and eventually moved north full-time.

“Somehow Kent seems to be perfect for us,” he said. “It still has the rural beauty but a little vitality that some of the other towns don’t, and I can get into the city in less than two hours.”

He lives in South Kent, high up on the top of Ore Hill, and keeps a neat studio, separate from the house.

(Originally published in The Litchfield County Times in 2004)

Copyright 2004

Inside The Morrison Gallery in Kent, CT.

The Nutmeg Gallery (now The Morrison Gallery) has been in Kent now for 20 years but only in recent years has it has become an art destination.

Bill Morrison, originally from Danbury, bought the business from Neil Kenny in 1999, moved it to a new location and expanded its scope. Today he continues to run a thriving framing trade, but has added a gallery as well where he has held a number of well-received art shows.

He moved into his current location at the corner of Routes 7 and 341a few years ago, into what was once the home of Eugene Bull, former Kent postmaster and a descendent of the Bull family from which the covered bridge takes its name. Previously, the Nutmeg was strictly a framing business and was located across the intersection, tucked behind where Belgique Patisserie & Chocolatier now stands. But the move profoundly increased traffic into his store and he was aware that the small town center was a draw for art devotees.

“When I first bought it and I saw the shop, the first thing I did was knock out some walls and start hanging some art work,” he remembers. He began hanging works by local artists, among them David Armstrong, Robert Andrew Parker and Eric Sloane, and found himself attracting visitors who sought those works or the many large prints he sells. He also framed the works of local painters and over time realized he could use the open space he had more efficiently by putting up an occasional show featuring a chosen artist or two. 

Last year he took it a step further and began featuring an artist for a month-long show complete with an opening gala with wine, pastries and live jazz. The shows brought many new faces to the Nutmeg and, as is the case with the other more established galleries in town, more artists wanting to show their work there. He guesses two or more artists approach him each week now and, while he’s always receptive, he says his space will fill up with slides, folders and disks full of portfolios if he’s not careful.

He’s well aware, however, that it’s part of the business and is often overwhelmed by the talent that walks through the door. He’s had a good experience with the other galleries in town as well. The members of the art community seem to enjoy a mutual benefit from each other, referring artists or enthusiasts to one another. While he has more than enough work to keep him busy framing, he can see the focus already drifting to showing art instead of framing it.

“It’s definitely crossing over into the gallery,” he said. “The shows have been great. Hopefully next year we’ll try to do a couple more, kind of keep them back to back.”

His most recent show featured photographers Peter Strongwaterand the late Fred Stein in a show of black and white photos. The reception was well attended, featuring the music of guitarist Doug Proper and bassist Bill Crow. The show itself was well received throughout the month and nearly all of Mr. Stein’s photographs sold and many of Mr. Strongwater’s.

A guitarist himself who has stepped on stage to play with guitar legend Les Paul, Mr. Morrison vows, “We’ll always have music at the openings.”

This coming October he will feature the works of painter Ira Barkoff of Cornwall, and he is making plans for a winter show to follow that. As has been his style since arriving in Kent, he is taking one step at a time and relying on his own intuition when deciding what will show next.

(Originally published in The Litchfield County Times in 2004)

Copyright 2004

Denis Curtiss at work in Kent, CT.

It’s a most wonderful time of the year for Denis Curtiss.

The Kent-based sculptor has just shipped some of his biggest works to singer Andy Williams, in Branson, Missouri. The animal sculptures, some weighing in excess of 650 pounds, were picked up by crane and put on a flat bed truck last Friday morning in preparation for the journey.

A veteran of the Peace Corps, Mr. Curtiss, 55, has been creating large steel sculptures of animals and people for the past seven years, ever since he and his wife, B.J., returned to this country.

Following a two-year stint in the Peace Corps, which ended in the mid 1970s, he and his wife taught for the American School in Switzerland, which had opened a branch in Greece. After a few years, they moved to Saudi Arabia, taught school there, and stayed for the next 10 years. They finally returned to the United States in 1993, after a total of 18 years abroad.

“We came back home and things got started here and they’ve just taken off,” he said with satisfaction. Once back in the U.S., Mr. Curtiss, who had taught tech courses overseas, decided to explore his artistic side. The results of that exploration can be seen in the yard of his home along Route 7 in Cornwall Bridge, formerly the site of Harry Holmes Antiques.

The Oliver Wolcott Technical School graduate was Mr. Holmes’ stepson and, as a teen, apprenticed with the dealer, for many years a cabinetmaker and antiques restorer. Mr. Holmes passed away last week after a long illness. Trained in woodworking, the sculptor was no stranger to creating figures out of big blocks of hardened materials.

“I’ve always been sculpting,” he said. “There were a couple of people in the sculpture business that were very influential in my design, which is revolutionary. That’s what makes it work and that’s what makes it sell. I’m building representational works because everything is fabricated in this shop out of eighth-inch sheet metal-either steel or bronze.

“Dancers are what I sell the most,” he said, gesturing toward photos of life-size wood carvings depicting dancers in various poses, each balanced so delicately on toes or fingers that they appear ready to float away. He also has dancers made of steel on display in his yard and showroom. He hasn’t sculpted with wood since he switched to metal, though Mr. Curtiss is not likely to be turn his back on any art form for long.

“I wanted permanence and it just kind of came together,” he said of the switch. “All my pieces are three-sided. That’s what lets the parts become juxtaposed.”

The artist makes precise patterns for each piece, which are then cut out and welded together. The pieces fit together like puzzle pieces, forming angular but surprisingly delicate shapes, particularly when seen from a distance. Each creation, human or animal, appears poised for movement.

“Yes. Hopefully there’s motion,” he said. “Sculpture, forever, has been to take a static figure and try to make it move. If I’ve done that for you then I’ve been successful.”

“Most people don’t see it,” he added ruefully. “It can’t be explained-you have to just see it.”

He also noted out that all of the pieces have an aloof air. “The animals don’t look you straight in the eye, they kind of look over your head,” he said.

Originally trained in mechanical drawing, Mr. Curtiss has a natural bent for physics and a keen mind for numbers and geometry. He has never taken a welding class but has picked up pointers and techniques from many professionals.

He raves about the craftsmanship of W.J. Layman and Sons in Warren. “They’re my mentors,” he declared. “I put everything together and they come down here and ‘finish weld.’ They are masters of welding. When they weld it, it’s perfect the first time.”

Layman & Sons also gives him occasional help lifting heavy pieces and provide another benefit. “They have a water-jet cutter,” the sculptor said. “With 60,000 pounds of water pressure, they can take my drawing and cut out a 12-foot giraffe.”

The cutter is like a tremendously powerful sandblaster with a computerized directional guide. Once the pieces have been cut out, Mr. Curtiss takes over and finishes the creation.

His art originates from his own inspiration and the thought of a sale doesn’t enter his mind during the creative process, he said.

“The job that you saw loaded is just a person who discovered that they have the same taste that I do,” he said. “I build for myself. If [the sculptures] sell, they sell.”

According to Mr. Curtiss, Andy Williams has friends in the area that may have alerted him to the sculptures, or it’s possible that he drove by and noticed them. Almost 20 pieces will eventually find new locations at the singer’s home or at the Andy Williams Moon River Theatre in Branson.

Mr. Curtiss appears to be done with extensive traveling for the immediate future though he never quite knows what’s coming around the corner.

“There’s no way to know in this business,” he said. “You certainly wouldn’t want to try to do what I do to put your children through school. I call it the sixes. I’ve gone six months with no sales, whatsoever, and I’ve also sold six pieces in one day to six different people.”

Mr. Curtiss’s work can be seen at the Interlaken Inn in Lakeville, which has him keep a fresh supply of dancers and animals on the property.

The well-traveled artist has no misgivings about his trade and eagerly looks forward to each new day, which he begins at 5 a.m. with two hours of reading. He and his wife are active in animal rescue, especially with the Little Guild of St. Francis, in West Cornwall, and he refers to himself as an “ad hoc” historian of Cornwall.

“Happiness and tranquility” are two words he uses to describe his life these days. “I’ve been all over the world and there’s no place like Northwestern Connecticut,” he said.

(Originally published in The Litchfield County Times in 2003)

Copyright 2003

Tonight is opening night for the Kent Community Players’ Blithe Spirit. Jocelyn A. Beard directs Noel Coward’s 1941 classic, originally set in the County of Kent, England, updating it by placing it in Kent, Connecticut in 2004.

The story revolves around writer Charles Condomine (Viv Berger) and his second wife, Ruth (Heather McNeil). Mr. Condomine is working on a novel about spiritualism when he invites two friends to join him and his wife for dinner and a séance. He finds soon enough that the medium he hired to contact his deceased first wife has done the trick.

She appears before him, but only he can see her. This drives the story as he struggles to maintain his sanity while grappling with emotions left over from his first marriage. He eventually tells Ruth of the odd predicament, which makes her jealous, and she has to contend with the “return” of his former wife. Eventually Charles is taunted by both wives and must try to make sense of it all. He goes to extreme lengths to reverse the spell that brought his first wife back from the dead, but the results are not as he had planned.

The original play is long, but the director has streamlined the dialog into a two-hour show. Originally a three act play it has been pared to two.

“It’s leaner and meaner,” Ms. Beard joked. “You might sit through it and say, ‘This doesn’t seem very lean and mean to me,’ but believe me we have taken huge parts of the script out that were charming, but just didn’t move it forward.”

This is Ms. Beard’s first production in Kent although certainly not her first anywhere else. She is is an accomplished playwright and familiar with some of the Kent actors from shows in other towns over the years. The Harlem Valley, N.Y., resident is originally from Patterson, N.Y. She graduated from Eisenhower College of the Rochester Institute of Technology, has a graduate certificate in filmmaking from New York University and completed the graduate program in dramatic writing at the Yale School of Drama.

Her works have been performed around the country and abroad including Vladivostok Blues, published in “Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 1996″ and I Kissed Elvis, which won awards in several national festivals. She has directed at many local theaters, including Theatreworks in New Milford, the Sherman Playhouse and the Danbury Actor’s Repertory Theatre.

In another twist on Coward’s work, the role of female psychic Madame Arcati, played memorably by Margaret Rutherford in the 1945 film version, has been changed. Adam Battlestein will portray Arcati sans the Madame. Mr. Battlestein has performed with the Pilobolus Dance Theatre and brings his own energy to the role with some unexpected acrobatics.

Katherine Almquist portrays Elvira, ghost of the first wife, and Sara Bouchard, also the president of the Kent Players, plays Mrs. Bradman, who attends the initial séance with her husband, Dr. Bradman, played by Jack Murphy. Shamus O’Reilly, owned by Ms. McNeil, makes his Kent stage debut as the dog.

“The highlight of the show for me is our maid,” the director said. “I pumped up this role way beyond anything Mr. Coward ever imagined.”

Adelka Polak, a newcomer to area stages, plays the role of Edith, the maid. She and Mr. Battlestein combine their dancing and choreographic skills in unique comedic elements.

“It’s a huge challenge to take a piece like this and to make it a little more relevant,” the director said on Tuesday. “People who would say they’ve seen Blithe Spirit a thousand times, they should come see this one because it’s a different Blithe Spirit.”

The play is the 20th production of the Kent Community Players and the troupe has been performing at the Community House since 1994.

Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973) wrote the play in 1941 just after his London offices and apartment were destroyed in the Blitz. He reportedly felt that his nation could use an escape into fantasy during a time of war and the play was written in just five days. It hit the London stage six weeks later, directed by the playwright himself.

Performances will be Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. from Nov. 5 through Nov. 19 with an extra performance Sunday, Nov. 14, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $13. The Community House is next to the First Congregational Church.

(Originally published in The Kent Good Times Dispatch in 2005)

Copyright 2005

Grace Potter at the keys in 2005.

Singer/songwriter Grace Potter performs at the Kent, CT Community House Friday night. The 21-year old artist sings and plays keyboards and guitar and brings an authentic sound evoking southern styles of country and blues. She brings along the Nocturnals, a four-piece band featuring bass, drums and guitars.

The ensemble is partial to the instruments of an older generation. Potter plays piano and tours with a Hammond B-3 (porta model). Bryan Dondero on a vintage Kay upright bass from the 1950s and Matt Burr on a simple old Gretsch drum set accompany her with Scott Tournet on acoustic guitar, slide and Fender Telecaster. Jen Crowell adds vocals and percussion.

Potter also sings into an old ribbon mic and the band uses vintage amplifiers. She plays acoustic piano and B-3 on the band’s latest album Original Soul, released last year in the U.S. and Ireland.

Potter and the Nocturnals are from Vermont and got their start a couple years ago as a jazz/blues trio in Canton, N.Y. while some of the members were students at St. Lawrence University. They fashioned the Nocturnals name from their propensity for late-night rehearsals and first recorded a demo in summer 2003. A short tour of New England followed while they performed covers of Little Feat, The Band, Bonnie Rait and others.

Original Soul was released exclusively in Ireland last spring and followed by a tour of Great Britain. The album sold very well over the summer and fall and a new release is due this spring.

In recent months the band has played throughout the U.S. in clubs such as The Fez in N.Y.C., the Viper Room in L.A. and at Club Helsinki in Great Barrington, MA. They have also gained a following in Austin, TX, which is partly responsible for their performance in Kent.

Potter and the Nocturnals arrive courtesy of Peter Nugent as part of his “New Life Shows” promotions in Connecticut and New York State. He often books acts from the Austin music scene and brought singer/songwriter Eliza Gilkeyson from Texas to Kent this past December.

Nugent works with WKZE in Sharon, CT to promote the shows and Potter will be on the air for an early afternoon interview on the day of her show. Those who listen to the station have probably heard some of her songs as she has gained a following on independent radio and country stations.

“As soon as I heard the music they were making I knew I had to book them,” Nugent said this week. “You have to see her live. The recordings don’t do her justice.”

With her growing popularity on the international scene, he decided to book the young singer while still possible. She has gained much acclaim in a short time on the music scene and her innocent good looks promise to add to her appeal.

She is originally from Waitsfield, Vermont, and the band rehearses there in a big old deserted warehouse.

At first listen to the Original Soul album the listener might be reminded of a favorite female country or jazz singer from the 1970s with her breathy voice and heartfelt melodies. She tends to blend styles throughout shows and recordings.

“In a time of boundless possibilities in music technology, some of the freshest music out there is still 30 years old; simple and timeless,” she said this week explaining her sound. “I strive to create that same timeless quality in what we do.”

The show begins at 8 p.m. at the Community House. Call Peter Nugent at (xxx) for tickets or go to the New Life Shows web site for more information.

(Originally published in the Kent Good Times Dispatch in 2005)

Copyright 2005

The cellist and composer David Darling has been nominated for a Grammy Award for his recent recording, Cello Blue. The album, which Mr. Darling recorded in the studio in his home here, which he calls Camp David, is competing for the award for Best New Album (New Age Category).

David Darling began his career as an elementary school teacher and then an orchestra conductor and faculty cellist at the University of Western Kentucky. In 1969 he landed a plum role as a member of the Grammy Award-winning Paul Winter Consort, renowned as one of the earliest ensembles to blend African, Asian and South American music with jazz.

Mr. Darling was a composer, soloist and vocalist with the Winter group. Adagio, the Italian musical term for slow, or leisurely, is a term often used in describing David Darling’s music. He acknowledged that when he’s composing, he naturally gravitates toward slower rhythms.

“That’s who I am, I guess,” he said. “Even as a child I remember liking the slow movements in a symphony concert. I must have an affinity for that kind of writing.”

All of the compositions on Cello Blue are originals. The album is, in effect, a follow-up to his 1993 album 8-String Religion. Mr. Darling said most of the songs were arranged from free improvisation-part of his method, as he described it, of creating textures of sound in the studio through the use of “midi” program techniques, keyboards, percussion, vocals and overdubbed cellos.

Midi, for musical instrument digital interface, is a computer link among instruments. All the songs contain at least eight tracks of instruments and as many as 24, all performed by Mr. Darling. He plays a traditional 4-string acoustic cello, an 8-string electric cello, and a custom Steinberger 5-string electric cello. He’ll pluck the strings as well as bowing them, and he’ll use all of the cello’s wide range. It plays almost as high as a violin and within an octave of the low bass.

“In a way, it’s an oversized guitar,” he said. “It’s actually one of the most stunningly versatile instruments.”

The opening piece on Cello Blue is titled “Children.”

“Children of the universe have such a wonderful energy and they always make us adults feel better, in a way,” he said of his tribute to the youngsters he’s worked with over the years. The song has gotten considerable airplay on what he describes as the “space” channels-Echo’s Radio, Hearts of Space Radio and other syndicated radio shows and formats that play New Age music.

Actually, New Age music is a term he and many other musicians shy away from, even if they ultimately find themselves categorized under it. Two other pieces on the album are “Prayer” and its second arrangement, “Prayer and Word.” Mr. Darling said he didn’t know it when he was writing it, but after he began to listen he realized it was very complementary to “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber, which provides the score for the 1986 movie Platoon.

“It’s quite a unique and unusual movie because [director Oliver Stone] decided to put that particular slow-moving adagio behind this violence,” Mr. Darling commented. “There are many who think that was one of the most beautiful compositions written in the 20th century. When I first heard it just killed me it was so beautiful.”

Mr. Darling is very content with the set-up of the studio in his home. He uses an engineering and mixing program called ProTools Mix Plus, and the rooms are filled with all sorts of instruments from around the world, and very nice microphones to record them. He uses a Neumann U47 and AKG C12 for many of his up-close microphone techniques.

“I’m always playing a lot of instruments,” Mr. Darling said. “My first exposure to music was because my mother was a pianist, and so it was in our house and it was something I really loved. But when I heard the cello in fourth grade, I really felt that was an amazing sound, so I really spent most of my life training as a cellist.”

Early on, Mr. Darling was interested in classical music. When he was in about seventh grade, a friend of his, whose parents were into jazz, exposed him to Miles Davis.

“That really changed my hearing a lot,” he said. “I became a heavy, dedicated, jazz musician while I was in junior high school. I was concentrating on both classical and jazz. I liked jazz so much that I totally missed The Beatles. I didn’t even think about them until many years later when I realized how significant they were.

“Some people over the years have said that my music has a melancholy nature to it, and it could be that it does,” Mr. Darling continued. “First of all, though, it’s hard to play the cello and make it sound very happy…. I think my tendency over the years has been to play in minor keys and choose minor over major combinations in forms and in tonality. There’s something in me that likes that sound.”

He commented on the liner notes for Cello Blue that one of the recurring themes in his life is that he’s never been able to understand why human beings are so unkind to each other. He said as he has gotten older it’s bothered him more and more, and that sentiment, he said, may in some way be reflected in his use of minor keys-often associated with evil or pending trouble in musical scores.

“I just have more of a tendency to go into minor, or what you might call modes of ethnic music from all over the world,” he said. “In the Paul Winter Consort I learned so much about world music. All of a sudden that was another development area. The beginning to understand Hindu, African and Brazilian music.”

He left the consort in 1978 to pursue a solo career and teach, once again. In 1988, he co-founded “Music for People” with classical flutist Bonnie Insull, based on the principle that music is a natural creative expression for everyone. It offers musical workshops taught by professional musicians to anyone who wants to play.

“It’s absolutely open to everybody and we get a vast array of people, some are musicians and others are not musicians,” Mr. Darling said, as he was interrupted to listen to a mix of his new recording, downstairs in his studio, by musician Paul Butler.

He also devotes his time to Young Audiences Inc., a National Medal of the Arts organization dedicated to enriching children’s lives with in-school programs, workshops, artist residencies and performance programs. In addition to the Paul Winter Consort-Mr. Winter is a Litchfield resident-Mr. Darling has performed or recorded with Arlo Guthrie, Spyro Gyra, Bobby McFerrin, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Washington-based dance ensemble Pilobolus, and many more artists. He also collaborated on musical scores for the filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and Wim Wenders.

He doesn’t like his chances of winning the Grammy. He is up against A Day Without Rain by Enya and Ancient by Kitara, both heavyweights internationally and in the New Age category, as well as Philip Aaburg’s Live From Montana. The 44th annual Grammy Awards, with Jon Stewart as host, are scheduled for Feb. 27 at Staples Center in Los Angeles, and Mr. Darling plans to attend.

“To have lasted in the music business and to be able to raise a family [he has two grown daughters and one grandchild, doing music from my heart and from my soul, is just a stunning affirmation,” he reflected. “Life can work.”

 (Originally published in The Litchfield County Times in 2002)

Copyright 2002

Kent residents Dolph Traymon and Ray Girardin are quietly combining their many years of experience in the entertainment industry for the benefit of local charities.

Mr. Traymon, the veteran musician/composer, and Mr. Girardin, the actor/writer, have created a musical comedy entitled The Great Svengali, loosely based on George Du Maurier’s novel, Trilby, originally published in 1894.

The performance is scheduled for the Kent School’s Mattison Auditorium in late October, and has been underwritten by the Kent Lions Club to benefit several charities. Charles Emerich, music department chairman at Kent School, will be musical director and Jane Farnol will direct the cast of seven. Mr. Traymon had written music for a reading based on the same subject matter a few years ago, which was performed at the Community House, yet always yearned to try it again with a different twist.

“One day I’m talking to Ray [about it] and he said, ‘Let me go to the library and take a look at the book,’” Mr. Traymon said, recalling a conversation that took place nearly two years ago. His friend did so and was disturbed by what he read because he had a musical comedy in mind when the idea was first presented.

“It was lurid and depressing and the lead guy was characterized as a filthy, creepy ghoul,” Mr. Girardin said. “Dolph said, ‘Come on. Take a crack at it. It’ll be fun.’”

He had no intention of copying the story in any way, but the challenge had been issued, so he went to work. “What I did do was use the names of some of the characters and I made up a few of my own.”

Throughout his story, he needed to leave places for songs, so he wrote lyrics and created slave melodies that he could present to Mr. Traymon. He then let the master musician take it from there. After Mr. Girardin gave him a completely new book for the musical, Mr. Traymon wrote the entire score – 30 compositions.

Ms. Farnol, an actress and director who is well respected in the region and beyond for her theater experience, then came into the picture. They knew her input would be crucial before taking the project any further. She is also a friend of both and they hoped she would direct it.

“Everybody might have gotten discouraged because she was key, but she loved it,” Mr. Girardin said. “The music is brilliant.”

“It does have possibilities,” Ms. Farnol agreed. “Probably the hardest thing is that we need a coloratura soprano, which may be difficult to cast – a trained voice and a young person.”

A coloratura is the highest of the sopranos, often called on for elaborate colorization of the melodic line and vocal acrobatics. Now in the midst of a hectic summer directing Musicals at Richter in Danbury and Shakespeare for Children in Kent, Ms. Farnol has yet to begin preparations for the production, but will start auditions in August. Rehearsals would commence in September.

The story takes place in turn-of-the-century Paris and concerns a charming conman who can perform a little magic and a bit of hypnotism. A young girl plays the other principal character and a cast of artists and others surrounds them that may or may not be out of place for the time period. The two leads, Svengali and Trilby-the female love interest-have most of the solos. Trilby’s role will be for the coloratura soprano. As with most musicals, multiple musical styles and emotions are incorporated, yet Mr. Traymon prefers not to elaborate on the compositions, though rumor has it he occasionally tries one out in performances at his family’s restaurant, the Fife ‘n Drum in Kent.

Work on The Great Svengali was slow going at first, but eventually the co-creators got into a groove and progressed with the project on a regular basis. There were times when Mr. Girardin could be seen in the back room of the Fife, standing alongside the Steinway, his counterpart composing on the spot as they discussed where they wanted the piece to go.

“I would keep yelling at him, ‘No, I don’t like the way the words come out,’ and he’d say, ‘How do you want ‘em?’ I’d say, ‘I don’t know.’ It’s a whole process where you have to be nudging together,” Mr. Traymon said. “I’ve done 30 songs and now what I’m doing is orchestrating it, doing an overture and so forth. When I’m finished we’ll have to copy out the parts and then we can perform the show.”

It has two acts with one intermission and runs slightly more than two hours. Mr. Girardin has written lyrics before, but had never worked with a composer, particularly not a classically trained Juilliard graduate who has backed Sinatra and a host of other legendary singers, songwriters and lyricists. Mr. Traymon has written the piece for two violins, cello, saxophone, piano, bass and percussion.

He will not be playing in the show, but will be there for assistance and may help with a recording, which could help generate more money for the Lions Club’s charities. Last year, he performed at the Marvelwood School in a similar charitable event. Including sales of the recording of that, more than $21,000 was raised.

“We had a hell of a time,” Mr. Girardin said of the work. “We both got cranky at times, but I think it’s good.”

Originally from Locust Valley, Long Island, Mr. Traymon was taking piano lessons at 5 years of age. He has done music for film, album projects, news documentaries, television shows, commercials and just about any other source that required music, most of it not credited and aired in the 1950s and ’60s. He also did a stint as organist for a TV soap opera in the late 1950s, though it wasn’t one of his favorite ventures.

Formerly a staff pianist for ABC Studios in the 1950s, Mr. Traymon played on recordings by Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Eddie Fisher, Johnny Ray and countless others. Listen closely to “Is That All There Is,” “Oh, My Papa” or numerous Sinatra hits and one might recognize the familiar tinkling on the piano in the background. He was also a staff composer, conductor, arranger and orchestrator.

“Whatever it called for,” he said of the job’s parameters. “I was a studio musician.”

He eventually left ABC to be a performer when politics changed and the studios released all of their musicians and left it to the record companies to hire their own. He then traveled the world as a musician until one day his wife, Audrey, said he was becoming something of a stranger around the house, and suggested he settle down while the kids were still young. It was the early 1970s and he decided to take her advice. He opened the Fife ‘n Drum in 1973 and devoted his efforts to the new business, combining his talents by putting a Steinway grand in the middle of the restaurant to entertain the patrons. The Traymons’ hard work paid off and the restaurant recently celebrated its 30th anniversary.

“When I came to the town I didn’t know one person,” he remembered. His wife had done very well as a salesperson for a greeting card company and had a some customers in Kent. One day the couple went out for lunch and quickly discovered options were limited, spawning the idea for the restaurant.

“We’ve made friends with a lot of people,” he said. “Not only that, but one thing a restaurant can’t always have is an international audience. We have the schools here and they bring people from all over the world-Japan, South America and all over.”

Mr. Girardin has been living in Kent since the early 1990s, after living in Los Angeles for 25 years where he made his living primarily as an actor and by doing some writing, directing and teaching. He continues these activities in Kent.

He grew up in Wakefield, Mass., served in the Marines and enrolled at the Boston University Theater School. From there he moved to New York, did a lot of theater, met his future wife, Marlene, and moved to Hollywood.

“I got lucky right away and got a couple good parts and got an agent,” he said, recalling his regular role on General Hospital from 1968 to 1974, which lead to countless other roles. “In 25 years I did probably 80 to 100 shows and another hundred commercials,” he said, adding that he’s also done about 100 plays.

He also co-wrote and appeared in the action biker film, Hollywood Man, in 1976, a cynical view of biker/action films that has developed a cult following. The most recent film he appeared in was Gospa, filmed in Croatia with Martin Sheen in 1995. Through the years he has appeared on television in The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Rockford Files, Happy Days, Mork & Mindy, Dallas, Hill Street Blues, Newhart, St. Elsewhere, Murder She Wrote, L.A. Law, Beverly Hills 90210, The Cosby Show, Married With Children, Bay Watch and many more.

In recent years he’s had a recurring role on Law & Order. He currently has a screenplay in the works for Disney, based on a novel he wrote a couple years ago. When the Svengali project is complete, Mr. Traymon and Mr. Girardin will venture off into other projects individually. Mr. Traymon wants to try his hand at a completely different project as a composer. An idea that intrigues him is providing the score for a documentary on someone’s life story. Mr. Girardin has a number of writing projects in the works, as well as continuing his acting career.

“Ray’s like a big kid,” Mr. Traymon said, jokingly. “He’s excited about it. I don’t want to get excited because I want to see it on stage and see the results. Like my concert, I didn’t get excited I just worked hard at it. The result was fine but you can’t live on your laurels. You’re as good as tomorrow.”

 (Originally published in The Litchfield County Times in 2004)

Copyright 2004

Gordon Hall at Music Mountain.

It has been 75 years since Jacques Gordon, a Russian immigrant, founded Music Mountain in Falls Village. He was the founding member and violinist in his renowned Gordon String Quartet, which was touring the country, and in 1930 he decided he wanted a permanent home for his quartet.

“When he decided he wanted to have a quartet center, my mother, who was an avid reader of The New York Times, read the real estate ads and saw Barrack Farm on Barrack Mountain,” said Nicholas Gordon, Jacques’ son, referring to the 113-acre property that has become home to the cherished summer music series.

Most of the land belonged to members of the Dean family. Nicholas Gordon’s mother took the train north, had a look around, and she and her husband bought it in the late 1920s. Nicholas Gordon, a former cellist, is president of the Music Mountain Board of Managers and a familiar face at summer events, which he enjoys as much as the patrons.

“The place to be for string quartets” has been a phrase often used to describe the venue up on the mountain, high above Falls Village. Forty-four concerts make up the coming (2004) season, which begins with a jubilee benefit concert to honor the 75th anniversary and will feature Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf for piano, flute, clarinet, oboe, French horn, bassoon and tympani. The guest narrator will be actor Sam Waterston, who stars in the television series “Law & Order.”

“This piece, because it is so delightful, everybody in the world likes to narrate it,” Mr. Gordon said. “So we asked Sam Waterston, who happens to live nearby, and he said, ‘Sure.’”

The concert is scheduled for May 22 at 3 p.m., and it will also include guest artists Ruth Laredo on piano, Eugenia Zukerman on flute, Stephan Milenkovich on violin, Andrey Tcheckmazov on cello and members of the Jupiter Symphony of New York. They will perform the Haffner Symphony by Mozart, arranged for piano, flute, violin and cello by Johann Nepomuk Hummel.

Music Mountain has not held such a benefit since the mid-1980s, when the late Victor Borge performed on the mountain. As the summer arrives and deepens, this year’s list of performances will appease a wide range of musical tastes with choral music, jazz, piano recitals and, of course, string quartets.

“The quartet series is obviously why we’re here,” Mr. Gordon affirmed. “We decided to celebrate our 75th birthday by doing all of the Beethoven quartets.”

The Shanghai String Quartet is first group on the list this year, opening the Chamber Music Series June 13. They will return to perform a running program of 16 Beethoven string quartets, The Beethoven Cycle, through the end of August. It will be the first time each of the 16 Beethoven string quartets has been presented in one season.

“They are without question the most important quartets ever written,” Mr. Gordon said.

Chorus Angelicus, with director Paul Halley, is scheduled to perform July 11, leading off the Choral Music Series for the season. Eight groups in all will perform as part of the series, which is held on Friday evenings.

“Then we have what is probably the finest Ukrainian chorus in the United States: Dumka,” Mr. Gordon said, “which comes out of the Ukrainian neighborhood on the lower east side in Manhattan.”

A choral workshop for adults with Marguerite Mullee, conductor of the Kent Singers and other choral groups in the region, will be a new attraction on the mountain this year. Four piano recitals are also on the agenda, utilizing Music Mountain’s beloved house Steinway.

“In seventy-five years of this place we have never done a series of piano recitals,” Mr. Gordon said, not even sure if one piano recital has been performed.

A jazz series is also scheduled, featuring Jive by Five with a jump band style of the 1940s, and the Alan Simon Quartet, among others, covering seven nights of performances this summer. The Wednesday feature involves Community Family Concerts, held at 7 p.m. Created to appeal to families and to show off local talent, the series begins June 16 with the Magic River Dance Band performing Celtic and World music.

The admission price is $10 at the door, $5 for children 6 or older and $25 per family. Eleven groups are scheduled to perform the Community Family Concerts, which ends with Bethany Yarrow, daughter of Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, on Aug. 25, putting a fresh twist on American folk songs.

“We think that there’s more that we can do to bring the audience to this place and to the music,” Mr. Gordon declared. “We’re not terribly elitist in our approach. I think music should be fun.”

His sentiments are evident through other forms of entertainment that have crept into the schedule from time to time, including an event encouraging guests to bring their dogs to enjoy music outside, and a roving bagpipe player who makes an occasional jaunt through the grounds before Sunday concerts.

“One reason we don’t have subscriptions is we don’t want anybody to feel that they’ve got to go to six concerts,” Mr. Gordon explained.

Many of this year’s concerts will be broadcast to a much larger audience via WQQQ FM radio in Lakeville. The station has been granted the rights to air broadcast any of the jazz, choral, piano recitals and Wednesday evening concerts. Some will be live and others recorded and broadcast later.

Concert broadcasts from Music Mountain are not new. In 1937, the New York radio station WNYC broadcast some of the concerts using a unique transmitter that was a large balloon flying high overhead with an antenna hanging down. As suspect as it sounds, it provided a quality transmission to the city.

As stunning as the natural surroundings are on the mountain, Gordon Hall is an instrument in itself. It is not insulated, by design, and is built much like a violin. Constructed of pine, it has exposed beams that resemble the underside of the sound post and bass board of the instrument, with the French doors acting as the F holes and the walls left hollow for added resonance.

“Insulation in a wooden concert hall would kill the sound,” Mr. Gordon affirmed. “The whole bloody building vibrates. When you have something happening on stage, put your fingertips to the wall and you’ll feel the wall vibrate. There’s nothing interfering with the transmittal of sound in this building.”

The cinderblock foundation, a few feet thick at the stage end, tapers off to mere inches at the other end, focusing the vibrations and sound. No heat or air conditioning exists. It was not a famous architect who built the hall, but the Sears Roebuck Corporation. In 1930, Sears chairman Julius Rosenwald was a patron of the arts and offered one of his company’s “Honor Built” homes for the hall. The homes, many of which still stand, were prefabricated in the early 20th century and shipped to the building location, nails and all, for the owner to assemble.

Jacques Gordon and architects from Sears designed the hall in 1930, which was reportedly the largest construction project in Connecticut that year, with 70 or more laborers.

“You would expect that in that time you would have a floor go up and down,” Mr. Gordon said, rhetorically. “Nothing. Everything they built was with properly dried lumber. Nothing was wet or green.”

As soon as the hall was complete, the sound was right-almost. “My father thought it was a little loud,” Mr. Gordon said, “so they put down carpet liners and a runner under the three isles and that was all that’s ever been done.”

Some small cushions were added for comfort in recent years that dampened the sound slightly, but that has been the most significant change. All of the hardware is original and so are many of the light fixtures. Design elements that tie together each of the handful of “Honor Built” buildings on the grounds are the red chimneys and patios.

Another part of the allure of seeing a concert in Gordon Hall is not having to strain to hear the music. With the acoustical precision, the sound level is virtually identical throughout the hall and true to the instruments on the little stage. All concerts are indoors at Music Mountain, and Gordon Hall seats 335.

The concerts and educational programs are supported in part by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Music Mountain is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is located near the junction of Routes 63 and 126 in Falls Village. For ticket prices, schedules and other information, see the Web site, www.musicmountain.org.

(Originally Published in Passport Magazine for the The Litchfield County Times in 2004)

Copyright 2004

Paul Winter, leader of the Paul Winter Consort, sat down at his Litchfield, CT home for an interview with Bob Deakin in 2003.

Paul Winter, founder and leader of the Paul Winter Consort, spends more time at his home in Litchfield these days, to be with his wife and young daughter, but remains as active as ever in his musical pursuits.

He recorded live albums in 2000, Journey with the Sun, and 1999, Celtic Solstice. Brazilian Days is his most recent studio album, recorded in 1997 with Brazilian guitar legend Oscar Castro-Neves. His concerts still take him around the globe, and he continues a 20-year tradition of celebrating the summer and winter solstices at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.

The 62-year-old composer-bandleader-saxophonist has lived in Litchfield since 1974 and has created an eclectic catalogue of music spanning more than 40 years. His curiosity and respect for foreign cultures, and for the planet and its inhabitants, have provided him with an endless source of inspiration.

The World Tree is a project Mr. Winter has been working on for the past three years. He describes it as an event, an album, a book and a PBS-TV special. It is based on a participatory musical celebration and intended to give the audience a “deeper experience of its own expression and a reconnection to a larger family of life.”

In the program, the musicians are positioned upon 10 stages surrounding the audience in a large arena with a 22-foot aluminum spiral sound sculpture on center stage, which is hung with hundreds of bells, gongs and chimes, representing the diversity of life species. An ensemble of African-American dancers ascends and descends the stages, and the musicians periodically play instruments hanging from the tree.

One of the first World Tree performances had eerily ironic timing. On Sept. 9, 2001, an all-day celebration took place at the Shelburne Farm in Vermont, an environmental center on Lake Champlain with an immense barn for performances. The final version of the Earth Charter, a document developed by Professor Steven Rockefeller of Middlebury College and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, was presented. It is, in essence, a “Magna Carta for the Earth,” signed by all nations regarding their commitment to peace, the environment and sustainable usage of resources.

“On the morning of the tenth, we had breakfast with a group of people who spoke and presented, and we said goodbye as they were leaving for New York,” Mr. Winter remembered. “On the next morning I was still there and we knew that they were right there in the city. It turned out that they actually saw the second plane hit and the buildings go down. It was such a phenomenal shift from the sheer optimism that we all felt, to that.”

Another summit at the Shelburne Farm was scheduled for Sept. 14, 2002. On April 27, the Paul Winter Consort is scheduled perform at the Warner Theatre in Torrington, in a benefit concert for the Litchfield County Association for Retarded Citizens.

On June 21, he starts off the longest day of the year with his ninth annual Summer Solstice Celebration, beginning at dawn, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The core of the current Consort includes keyboardist Paul Sullivan, bassist Eliot Wadopian and cellist Eugene Freisen. A raft of percussionists play with the Consort, including Barry Olsen, Chris Berry, who lives in Zimbabwe and plays the mbira, or thumb piano, and Valerie Dee Naranjo, a Native American who plays the Gyil (jee-lee), a marimba native to Ghana. She arranged the percussion for The Lion King on Broadway and is a regular member of the Saturday Night Live Band.

“What I loved most were dance bands,” Mr. Winter remembered of his childhood in Pennsylvania, where he started playing the saxophone at age 9. “I remembered how good everybody in that whole dance hall felt when that music was playing. I grew up kind of aspiring to that. I just loved to create situations where people felt that way.”

As for composing, Mr. Winter doesn’t have a ritual. He said he will often come up with a “seed” idea and improvise on it via the soprano saxophone, piano or voice, then compile a group of ideas on cassette tapes, of which he has multitudes lying about in his barn/studio.

“I listen to the cassettes for those rare gems where something really seems to have a magic to it,” he said. “There’s usually a story that I start with, but it’s not always the one I end with. It’s a very slow process for me.”

Living Music is Mr. Winter’s record label, which is a part of Earth Music Productions, LLC., though no one is currently signed to a contract. Since the label was created in 1980, it has released 30 albums, and 10 of them have received Grammy awards or nominations. Artists who have recorded for the label include former Consort members and local residents David Darling, Paul Halley and Rhonda Larson, as well as Oscar Castro-Neves and Pete Seeger.

“I’m not inclined to want to sign people and lock them up,” Mr. Winter said. “We’ll just decide to produce an album for someone and whatever we do together has to be from a mutual enthusiasm. It’s more a music production endeavor. It’s not a record company.”

Mr. Winter’s aversion to labels is noteworthy. Reluctant as he is to refer to Living Music as a record label, he is well-known as being even more reluctant to categorize his wide-ranging music. Contemporary contrapuntal Connecticut country consort music is the label he offers those requiring one.

“Triumph,” from the Consort’s Celtic Solstice album in 1999 – also titled “Trio Busk” on other collections – represents a unique sound Mr. Winter has captured in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The more than 20 years of performing and recording there have had an undeniably positive effect on his work.

“Triumph” features uilleann (pronounced ILL-in) pipe virtuoso Davy Spillane, who gained a loyal following after his performances with the Riverdance tour in past years. He literally stepped off the jet from his native Ireland and headed for the Cathedral for the recording of “Triumph,” which was accomplished in the first take. The harmonizing and trading of solos between the two, backed by Paul Halley on pipe organ, combined with the ambience of the immense cathedral, give the listener a recent example of Paul Winter at his best, in one of his favorite environments.

“When improvisations come together like that, those are milestone happenings,” Mr. Winter said. “It was the consciousness everybody was in at the time, the space. It’s not something you can always duplicate.”

Those familiar with the recordings of Mr. Winter’s saxophone are used to hearing the space he records in, whether they realize it or not. He likes to record in exotic surroundings utilizing the utmost of the natural acoustics. Exploiting the sound involves allowing for distance between his saxophone and the microphone.

How close does he stand to find the right distance?

“As far away as I can,” he replied. “My instrument sounds better at a distance if it can pick up some ambience. My favorite recording setup of all time was in the Grand Canyon. There’s a particular side canyon that we found in the mid-eighties. It’s a place we call Bach’s Canyon. It has phenomenal acoustics.”

The Canyon Lullaby album and the sax overdubs for Brazilian Days were recorded there. It’s a cul-de-sac canyon with an 800-foot curved wall at the end that throws the sound back down a side canyon, more than a mile from the river, and has a seven-second reverberation time, which, according to Mr. Winter, is the same delay achieved at the Cathedral of St. John The Divine.

“Icarus” has been the Paul Winter Consort’s most widely known song, and album, recorded in 1972 and produced by former Beatles producer George Martin. The Consort members rented a beach house in Marblehead, Mass., and set up a portable recording studio inside for the recording.

“One of the allurements for George to come over and spend three weeks with us was that he and his family could be right on the beach,” Mr. Winter said. “All of us spent the mornings at the beach then we would come in and work from two until midnight. It was a happy way to record. Here we got even more time to explore.

“One of the great things with George is that he loved to experiment with using studio techniques,” Mr. Winter continued. “He had developed a lot of amazing techniques with The Beatles and he just gave us our heads. He gave us a lot of great ideas. That was a wonderful experience. After that I realized that I never wanted to go back in a studio again.”

The meticulousness of the recording sessions in the 1960s and 70s, when he was recording for major record labels, contributed to Mr. Winter’s finding his big barn in Litchfield and settling there.

“I was always very frustrated by the time box that I was put into [in recording sessions],” he said. “We would never really explore things in depth. My mentors, in producing my own albums, were people who had the luxury of going to great length.”

He mentioned Paul Stookey, of “Peter, Paul and Mary,” who produced the first Paul Winter Consort album in 1968. The Consort had played on “The House Song” from Peter, Paul and Mary’s Album 1700 in 1967, and had toured with them in earlier years.

“Being involved in their recording sessions was a revelation,” Mr. Winter said. “Prior to them, with my jazz sextet, we recorded seven albums for Columbia in the early 60′s and we used to do a whole album in one session, in three hours. No record company was going to give you the budget to spend much time, but Peter, Paul and Mary spent an entire session on one song. I thought that was astounding.”

The Paul Winter Sextet, formed while he was a student at Northwestern University near Chicago, won the 1961 Intercollegiate Jazz Festival in Washington, D.C. Legendary trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie and record producer John Hammond were the judges, and the main prize was a recording contract. Mr. Winter was planning to attend law school, but when the recording opportunity presented itself, he and the other members put off school for a year to give music a try. It was then that they decided to approach the State Department with the idea of sending them on a goodwill tour of the world.

“I was very fascinated by the fact that jazz was so beloved in many other parts of the world, seemingly more than in our own country,” Mr. Winter said. “I think they were intrigued by the fact that we were not only the top college jazz group in the country, but that we were perfectly integrated with three blacks and three whites. It was just the beginning of the Kennedy administration and civil rights was a major issue.”

They were sent on a tour through Central and South America in 1962, and that culminated with an invitation from Jacqueline Kennedy to play at the White House. It turned out to be the first time a jazz group had ever played there, and the sextet made the front pages of newspapers around the country the next morning with headlines such as “Jackie Digs Jazz.”

A tour of jazz clubs throughout the country followed, and “that nearly did us in,” remembers Mr. Winter. The experience had a profound impact that would last throughout his career.

“Our experience in jazz clubs was that you were just really kind of a liquor salesman, a whole other environment,” he lamented. “The context that we played in during our six months in Latin America were concerts. People listened in concerts, and that’s what I loved most.”

The sextet broke through on the college jazz series tour in the early 1960s and one of the other acts that had broken through, at that point, was the Dave Brubeck Quartet. In 1963, Mr. Winter visited Mr. Brubeck at his home in Weston and thereafter decided to move to Connecticut.

“He gave me a model of a path in music that I’d never known,” remembers Mr. Winter of his breakthrough. “You could live in the country and travel around and play your concerts and come back. You didn’t need to live in the city. That was my key to escape New York.”

Having grown up in Altoona, Pa., Mr. Winter is at home in the country. Though the strings attached to a career in the music industry have kept him connected to the big cities, he remains grounded in Litchfield with his wife, Chez, and his 5-year-old daughter, Keetu.

“I am extremely fortunate to get to continue pursuing the dream of creating the music that I want,” he was happy to say. “And to do it within the context of these different adventures in different places in the world, and to come back here and reflect upon it.”

(Originally published in The Litchfield County Times in 2003)

Copyright 2003

D.B.S. – Home for the Holidays

D.B.S. – Christmas Time

Album cover from Christmas Time featuring the Wes Lachot song "Christmas Is the Only Time"

This Christmas is the only time I’ve ever written a review of one song. It’s been a few years since Wes Lachot wrote and recorded “Christmas Is The Only Time,” which appeared on Christmas Time, an assorted mix of tunes by a collection of singers and bands from the southeastern U.S., but it’s new to me, and will be for a long time.

I loved the melody immediately. It doesn’t sound like a Christmas song as much as it does a mellow rock duet of John Lennon and Brian Wilson with Roger McGuinn on guitar and backing vocals. I thought of the Dan Fogelberg song ‘Same Old Lang Syne’ not long after I heard it as it expresses a melancholy sentiment lodged within a Holiday theme.

Lachot, a multi-instrumentalist/singer/songwriter, now spends most of his time as a recording studio designer and builder, but was for many years an engineer and producer. Steeped into the sounds and musicians of his corner of the country, he came into circles of players such as Mitch Easter, Peter Holsapple, Don Dixon, and others including Chris Stamey, who produced “Christmas Is the Only Time.”

“He’s a great producer,” Lachot said of Stamey from his new home in North Carolina. “I think at one point I credited both Chris and myself as the artists because he had so much input, but on the record he gave the credit to me.”

The song was recorded in 1995 but released for the first time in late 2006. Lachot wrote the song as a sarcastic tribute to his ex-wife not long after their separation.

I’ll never know for sure if we were ever meant to be,
I don’t know if I miss you or I miss the memory

So the line goes.

I was relaxing this past Christmas, listening to my new-found treasure of a Christmas song and turning my girlfriend on to it when she made the following comment: “That’s not really a nice thing he’s saying to this girl is it? That’s the only time he thinks of her?”

I hadn’t noticed the sentiment because I was so taken with the melody but she posed a great question. I decided to find out for myself and liked the song so much that I had a few questions for Wes anyway, so I set out to find him. I quickly found his studio design web site, then him, and asked the same question.

“I had recently split with my first wife, and the song is a nostalgic look back at my life with a woman I met in high school and loved for 17 years. I guess that’s why the opening melody sounds so mournful,” he said in our initial conversation.

Sad story, I thought to myself, but it must have been somewhat therapeutic to put those words and chords down on tape to memorialize the relationship. I’m still struck by how sweet the song is considering how sad the sentiment.

Lachot sings lead and backing vocals and plays acoustic guitar and Rickenbacker electric guitar on the track. He is joined by Stamey on the same instruments and vocals, as well as John Howie on drums, Mitch Easter on bass and Brent Lambert on nylon string guitar. An accomplished group although they aren’t a “group,” Easter has a host of credits in addition to producing R.E.M.’s Murmur, Howie sings lead for alt-country band ‘Two Dollar Pistols’ and Lambert is a mastering engineer.

“Chris Stamey produced the song and I give a lot of credit to him,” Lachot said of Stamey, his friend of many years. “I originally had the second bridge, where it slows down, as the end of the song. He made the change[to put it earlier] though, and that’s how it ended up. Some times, when you hear criticism like that you say Hmm, but it worked, and that’s what makes him such a great producer.”

Stamey was the founder and lead singer of The dB’s, sometimes referred to in regards to a ”jangle pop” sound they are known for from the Southeast college-radio music scene, likely because of the ringing electric guitars and slight country sensibility to their sound. I’m not sure if he cares for the “jangle pop” moniker, but I wonder.

The dB’s ‘Christmas Time’ is the staple song of the Christmas Time Again album. The song gained some fame after its initial release in 1986 and has gained a growing popularity ever since. This past Christmas it was a fixture on the Holiday mix in stores of clothing retailer The Gap. With just a few dozen songs on the Gap mix it gained even more exposure and is likely to be heard by more and more listeners in years to come. High energy, innocent lyrics, clever and classic melody, jangling guitars and Beatles-like harmonies, the song is a winner at first listen. It’s not a Christmas classic only because of its lack of air play and availability.

Hopefully in years to come, radio consultants, execs, programmers and the other influential beings who have never taken a call from a listener will put aside a Kenny G or Maria Carey Christmas song for just one rotation and play one of these two songs. The listeners will be rewarded.

Christmas Time Again is available on Amazon.com, other major online retailers, and on download at select sites. Lachot has never released a song or an album as a solo artist but this Christmas he experienced for the first time what it is like to have fans and admirers.

“From time to time, people find me on the phone or they email me telling me how much they like the song,” he said, adding that one of his musician friends has a special place in his heart for the song. “Peter Holsapple (who played with REM and Hootie and the Blowfish) told me it’s his favorite Christmas song.”

Lachot is extremely busy with the increasing demand for his studio design skills and is building a much bigger name for himself than he had as a studio musician, engineer and producer, which was considerable. It could be said, I suppose, that you can take the musician away from the studio but you can’t take the studio away from the musician.

He recently got back together with some of the aforementioned musicians for some live dates and greatly enjoys his re-emergence as a musician. He’s a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston and is primarily a keyboardist and a sought-after player of the Hammond B-3 organ. He has also played countless sessions on guitar, bass, vocals and a whatever other instruments you can find in a recording studio.

“I haven’t let go of the music,” he said, despite of the demands for more than a handful of new studios each year from Wes Lachot Design. “I never seem to forget it and it’s a little more fun for me ever since I got back into it.”

As for Lachot’s “Christmas Is the Only Time,” I can only hope it gets more exposure on radio and beyond. Those who haven’t heard the song are missing something special. Many people like myself keep looking for new Christmas gems each year, and this year I found one. I hope you do too.

Copyright 2009