An Artist Retrospective: Where did it all begin?

As we slide toward the end of the year I tend to think a lot about ‘endings’. The tail end of the year, what I wasn’t able to accomplish this year but hope to in the new year, another year of life behind me and the inevitable end of the world under the current political climate. But I digress, I think its also important to realize what we do accomplish and reflect on our triumphs and where we are in relation to where we came from as well.

I reached out to artists within the community for their insight and input…their story. In an effort to give us all a tiny glimpse into how it all started for them on their musical journey. A collective effort to share and tell our stories with folks from all walks of the folk and roots life and community and hopefully learn something new about an artist you already love or get the origins of one you may love but just don’t know it yet.

What does that all mean? Here is an example:

For me, it all started in my parent’s basement when I was about 12 years old. I wanted to be Stevie Ray Vaughan. I wanted a beat to shit Stratocaster with my initials engraved into the pick guard. What I was able to get my hands on was a worse for wear Yamaha acoustic my aunt had in her closet for the past 20 years. The strings hadn’t been changed in that long and the action on this thing was higher than the Prudential building. I’d sit down there with a standard, run of the mill mid 1990’s cassette recorder and play out the rhythm parts. Rewind, push play, attempt to solo. Rewind, push play, attempt to solo. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Later on I got myself a paper route as my parents were of the blue collar working persuasion and said “if you want a guitar, work for it”. I hustled my tail off for the summer and came out the other side with a beautiful blue Tascam 4 track portastudio and a knock off hunter green Strat…yup, with an engraved pick guard.

Some folks kept it surface level and simple, others went deep but all took a moment to share a bit of themselves here and it means a lot to me as a music journalist, a story teller and a music lover to hear them and share them with you all.

They are folk singers and bluegrass pickers. They are harmonizing angels and rock n’ rollers. They are song singers and guitar slingers. They are artists and these are their stories…

Ian Meadows (The Meadows Brothers, Wise Old Moon): “I was 7. My Dad was watching the Freddy Mercury Tribute Concert (on Laser Disc!), when I walked in. The surviving members of Queen playing “Tie Your Mother Down” with Slash helping out on guitar; shirtless and smoking a cigarette with his Les Paul down to his knees. It ruined me, I just thought it was the most badass thing I’d ever seen and I didn’t even know that word. My little nylon string guitar my parents bought for me a few years before came out of storage and I played “Smoke on the Water” on the high E string for the next two years straight, until I switched over to “Iron Man”. I became a Rock n’ Roll Salvationist from that moment forward, and I am still attempting to grow out my Slash hair.”

Holly McGarry (Honeysuckle): “It all started in a parking garage in Vail, CO. I was probably about 4 or 5 years old, my mom had just purchased a Pete Seeger record and a record by Gene Autry. She played the Gene Autry record first and from that moment on I knew I wanted to play the guitar. It took me until I was about 11 to start actually playing the guitar. My dad found a teacher in town named Doug Bond and it was the perfect fit. I was very shy, couldn’t even talk to him at my lessons at first but he would write down chords and songs to practice and gradually he even got me to sing. If not for him I never would have known that I could sing. I owe just about everything to Gene Autry, Doug Bond and of course my parents, who introduced me to music and my teacher.”

Carolyn Kendrick (The Page Turners): “For me, like with most people, everything that happens in life is an extension of what’s happened prior to birth. My parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. are all musicians, so they set up my life to be as musically infused as possible, like a hibiscus blend of everything they like and care about. Luckily, this made it quite easy to figure out which path is right for me, and I’ve always understood that being a musician is what I want. (Even though the chosen path itself can be tumultuous, at best.) It has never seemed there was an origin point of “this is how it started”, but rather a jumble of steps that led to “this is how it is”. Although if we’re being incredibly scientific, I suppose you can say the origin of my musical story was when my grandparents met in the FSU marching band, and when my other grandparents first went dancing. However, the most significant steps in my own lifetime have been: listening to Glen Campbell and Ray Charles in the car with my dad, hearing the Punch Brothers for the first time, joining my first funk band in high school (‘Ship of Foolz’- terrible band name, great people), getting into Berklee, moving to Boston, finding other people who knew about John Hartford and Willie Nelson and Alison Krauss. I’m so lucky and happy to be part of a story and community that is larger than myself, and thankful for this reminder to cherish the path we’re all on.”

Dann Russo (solo, Three at Home): “I’m trying to think of the moment when I knew. I guess it was something I always did, at least a little. I’m sure I have a lot to thank my parents for, and this is definitely one of them. When I was about 5 or 6, my dad was in grad school at Brooklyn College and conveniently I had mallet music class at Brooklyn College. I learned xylophone, timpani, all different kinds of percussion. I had guitar lessons, which I really wasn’t a big fan of. And it kind of faded away for me. But every Sunday, my dad was on the altar at St. Brendan’s at 9:30 playing the best the Saint Louis Jesuits had to offer on his 12-string Ovation and every December 23rd, my dad and what my friends called his “baseball bat guitar” (a ridiculously old and thick-necked Spanish guitar he had gotten for his 15th birthday and put steel strings on) would lead sometimes ten and sometimes ten times that singing carols as we walked around the neighborhood.

A few years later, when my grandfather passed away, my mother bought a piano for the house. And EVERYONE had to take lessons. First with a young Irish teacher whose name escapes me and then with Mrs. Montemerano, the name that sends shivers down the spine of many residents of Dyker Heights. She was, in retrospect, probably a nice lady? Maybe? To me and my siblings, she was a no-nonsense Italian woman of grandmotherly age who demanded good posture and high wrists and “NEVER look at your hands.” She was so borderline terrifying that when I see my kids’ music teacher play piano with the proper arch of her hands and eyes focused on her music, I get the bad kind of chills. I was, once again, thanks to my parents, always into music (the only time music wasn’t playing in the house is when the Mets game was on the radio & it’s still like this 30 years later). So one day, I took whatever money I made in altar-server tips down to the local record store and got “The Complete Works of Billy Joel: Volume One.” I, being the eager young lad I was, brought it to Mrs. Montemerano completely pleased with myself. I was convinced we could come to a sort of understanding and maybe meet in the middle somewhere. She hated it. She wouldn’t teach it to me, she didn’t want me to play it for her, she looked at it with disgust. So, I went home and decided I’d learn the intro to Miami 2017 myself.

Fast forward a few years, and something started happening. Bon Jovi. Whitesnake. Van Halen. Bands with keyboards that rocked. I was in a band with my friend John Blackford who played guitar and Peter Costalos on drums. He had a drum set and an extra space in his basement that soon became our “practice space.” Actually, come to think about it, I don’t think I remember anything else about his house. We never left the basement. Peter would set his cymbals on fire as John and I tried to scream over his playing and maybe hear what we were doing as we played Runaway and Once Bitten, Twice Shy. I wanted to be the lead singer…well, I WAS the lead singer, I guess, because John was super shy and Peter sounded like he had glass in his throat at all times. And then MTV Unplugged started. And I knew my dad had that baseball bat guitar, and I taught myself the beginning to Wanted Dead Or Alive and got a chord book to learn the other hairband ballads on the radio. Something was definitely happening.

But I think the IT, the OMG I WANT TO DO THIS was really in Sophomore year of high school. I was in the chorus, it was fun, and I met a ton of people who wanted to make music. There was a concert – it must’ve been a dance or something – and we decided to put a band together. I played bass, because no one else wanted to play it, and my friend Jaime and I pooled together $260 for a bass and an amp and painted it to look like Eddie Van Halen’s guitar. We opened with Van Halen’s Jump. It was awesome. Jaime was the tall(ish), long-haired lead singer. I was the bass player and backup singer with mystique wearing a long black jacket and black cowboy hat. Everyone was having fun – on stage and in the audience. Second, we kicked into Sweet Child O Mine. The next day we listened to the tape we had hidden up in the balcony of the auditorium, and – I just got chills writing this. The good kind, not the Montemerano kind – WE COULDN’T HEAR THE MUSIC. All there was to hear was the crowd. A roar that started out as a cheer and very quickly hit us in the soul. And I’ve been chasing that ever since. “

Brian Sousa (Strangers by Accident): “It all began for us with a spare, acoustic song I’d been working on, called Busted Heart. I’d broken up with my longtime girlfriend in Colorado, and moved home to New England to lick my wounds and try to get a new band together. I recorded the song in the bathroom, trying to get some reverb on it, then put it on cragislist in an ad for a female singer. Amy was the 3rd or 4th woman to get in touch. I sent her some other songs I’d been working on, and she came over on a rainy November Saturday. I was living in a ramshackle spot in Fenway with a bunch of old friends, a third floor walk-up, and our hallway light was out. It was pitch black as Amy climbed the stairs; turns out she had given her boyfriend — now husband — the address, in case I was a serial killer. We exchanged some forced small talk and I offered her a beer. She declined. Even more awkwardly, we sat down to play in my bedroom because one of my roommates was watching football. We played one song – called Accident – and she sang these sad, soulful harmonies that were just perfect. We looked at each other and just knew. And then she asked for a beer.”

Dave Richardson:“I was digging through my parents’ small record collection when I was around 9 and found two albums that particularly interested me: The Beatles’ Abbey Road and a John Lennon compilation. We always listened to oldies radio around the house and in the car, so I was familiar with some of The Beatles’ big hits. These two records pushed me over the edge and I went full blown Beatles obsessed. The lyrics, the guitar riffs, and the harmonies exploded my brain.

A couple years later, I was at a friends’ house and their parents had a dusty old acoustic guitar. I marveled at it and gave it a few tentative strums. I couldn’t stop thinking about it when I got home; I wanted to figure it out, work with it until music emerged from the strings and the sound hole. I talked to my parents about it, and they talked to my friend’s parents. The old acoustic guitar, a Norma brand (I’ve never seen another one since) ended up in my possession, and I went to work teaching myself open chords so I could play along with my Beatles CDs.

My influences have broadened considerably since then, but every song I write and every chord I play can be traced back to the music of the Fab Four.”

Ryan Flaherty (Muddy Ruckus): “I cannot say where it all began for me… I would have to write a novel… for the starting point radiates from multiple locations in time… waking instances and dreams tangled in reality… obscured over the years by the saturation of experience and memory… so with eyes closed I put my finger down on the map… when eye lids release… I see and I remember my first concert, The Pixies, in Davenport, IA, across the river from my hometown of Rock Island, IL (and also birthplace of Bix Beiderbecke, one of the most influential jazz soloist of the 1920’s… look him up!) Davenport and Rock Island were both considered “River Cities” and lay deep in blues and jazz roots and history, mostly because the Mississippi River which runs between the two cities, which served as a passage for many of those musicians back in the 20’s and 30’s. But in the 90’s… a great punk and alternative music scene had emerged.

So fast forward to 1992 (I believe I was about 14 years old). At the time, I wasn’t allowed to go to rock concerts, and I had to make up some story to get out of the house and tag along with my friends. The show was at the historical Col Ballroom. Hendrix had played there back in the day. I knew I was entering a sacred place. There were so many people… the house was packed like a sardine can. The band appeared on the stage and exploded in front of our eyes… If anyone remembers seeing the Pixies in the 90’s, or any band in that scene… you need no explanation. By the end of their first song I knew that I wanted to do exactly what I was witnessing. The elation that came over me as I watched them coarse through their anthems…. Was indescribable. I had never heard music like this before. And I thought, this music is way better than the stuff I was familiar with. I had not yet been moved so deeply, so spiritually and physically by music. I had no idea this world existed. The crowd was insane. Dancing, moshing, hailing the band as they guided us through their harmonious exhibition.

Of course I had deeper influence that came before. My older brother had a huge vinyl and cassette collection, mostly punk and classic rock . I learned so very much about music from him and not always to his approval… being my big brother and all, he had very little patience for my grubby hands rummaging through his records un-attended. Which I did on a regular basis. But when my brother went to college he left lots of those records for me and his stereo, letting me take over his basement bedroom and make it my own. It was my first haven of solitude and private creativity. I painted the floor into spirals of rainbows and filled in any wall space still left untouched by my brother with punk rock posters and paintings I made at school. I wrote my first poem and my first song in that den. I played my first guitar and painted my first portrait in that space. When I was 15 I started my first band with my friends and wrote all the song lyrics and melodies from my head and we rehearsed in that basement after school. When I was 19 I started playing my first guitar. The guitar had actually been sitting in my house my entire life. I had picked it several times over the years but it wasn’t something I gravitated towards until my late teens. By that time, it was a beast of an axe due to neglect, the strings quarter inch off the neck, I had no idea and thought it was naturally supposed to be that hard to play. Finally, I got that thing fixed at the local luthier in Rock Island. Took a few lessons at the local community college and convinced the classical guitar teacher to teach me about blues and finger picking. Luckily he was thrilled to do so and take a break from the usual curriculum. I learned some Doc Watson and Chet Atkins tunes from him. He showed me how to listen and tab out the notes. He showed me it wasn’t impossible to learn this seemingly foreign language of music. From there I got deep into the blues and delta blues. Although I had been listening to punk rock and classic rock for most of my childhood, when I started playing guitar, the blues immediately snuck in and took over for years to come. When I was 21 I moved out to California and scuffled around the coast busking and playing open mics. It was there I learned how to play with other people and learned that I could play with anyone… because music was not a foreign language after all, yet very flexible and universal form of communication and expression, especially with the absence of ego. I’d say I had already written 100 songs by then. Songs that I don’t even remember. Few years later I found myself in Europe, and I witnessed the street performance culture over there. The “gypsy” music took over my soul. I dove deep into that. Years to follow, from blues to world music, the road finally led me back to my teenage roots, punk rock mostly. Now all these styles ring true in my expression. But that is another story. There are so many more details… but that is a glimpse at my beginning… or one of my beginnings. There are many more starting points. But that is just one, or a few, that I recollect with little effort.”

Emily Mure: “There was a time I went out to my sister’s friend’s beach house with my mom and sister when I was really young. 7? 8?

It was a gorgeous day and a bunch of kids and adults were getting ready to go to the beach for the afternoon.

But someone put on Michael Jones’ “After The Rain”. It was playing in the background as we were all hustling and bustling to get our bathing suits, swimmies, and towels. But I couldn’t focus, the sound of the piano, those weird reed instruments. I never knew anything could sound that beautiful. So I asked my mom if I could stay behind with a few other people who also opted out of the beach day. She agreed and instead, I sat there, listening to the cassette tape of Michael Jones’ “After the Rain” on repeat for the entire day. I remember noticing how the room looked as the day wore on. At one point someone lit candles and I remember watching the lights dance on the wall to the music. Could the candles hear it too?

I felt guilty that I wasn’t out with everyone else, but I also didn’t care. I couldn’t miss this. How could anyone want to be anywhere else?”

I couldn’t explain it then and probably can’t now. But that feeling never went away. It comes back all the time with other songs and albums, and making them too. And I chase that feeling because it’s how I understand emotion and love and patterns of light on the wall as the day turns to night.”

Ethan Robbins (Cold Chocolate, Uncle John’s Banjo): “My relationship with the guitar started when I was 14 and I busted out my dad’s old nylon-string guitar. The guitar had only five strings (which I, at first, did not realize was abnormal) and I was using the edge of a small plastic ruler as a pick. At the time, I think I just wanted to figure out how to play some Dave Matthews songs, and as I’d played classical violin for 10 years at that point, I was hoping some technique would translate across the two instruments. After messing around on it for several days, my dad eventually showed me a few chords, and once I got that sixth string, I was off to the DMB-races.”

Carlin Tripp: “As a young child I obsessed over my parents record collection. I was constantly cycling through a few very specific albums, “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band”, “Brothers in Arms” and “The Phantom of the Opera.” As I got older and began collecting tapes, I was in love with Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, Genesis and Motown. I was in love with how the music made me feel. It was such a magical escape, and as an only child, I spent hours in my room playing these tapes over and over again.

When I hit middle school I started playing saxophone, but without much enthusiasm. I soon switched to trumpet and became a bit more proficient at that, but when I entered High School and tried out for marching band, I felt like it was a bit too serious, and I just couldn’t hack it. I wanted to play soccer and hang with my friends instead. My senior year, my parents told me they were getting divorced, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I refused to talk about it, and escaped through friends, and partying, sleeping in, and missing school. It was around this time that an aunt of mine lent me her Ovation acoustic guitar. That was when it all began.

I became obsessed with songwriting, trying to capture the same feelings I had experienced as a child and create them myself. And as a fan, I was still obsessing, except now it was Phish, the Grateful Dead, and the man who really drove me to play, Dave Matthews. I had a few songbooks and struggled relentlessly with his odd chord shapes, unorthodox rhythm patterns, and enchanting vocal styles. I wanted to write songs that were just like his. I was also in a band, and we used to try to cover Phish songs, without much success, but between jamming and skateboarding, our days were full.

When I graduated I headed to Northeastern, but spent the majority of my time playing guitar in dorm rooms, not attending class. Dispatch was flying around on Napster at this point and we were having a blast singing “The General”, “Elias”, pretty much anything with four or five chords and catchy lyrics. I didn’t stay there long though, and the next year I was off to art school in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My trend continued however, and along with a truly great friend who taught me more about the inner workings of the universe and music than anyone I’ve met, I managed to skip class just about every day. Sitting on the quad and playing guitar was something we became known for, and I’ll never forget the first time friends sang along to one of my original songs. It made me so happy!

My travels went on and on from there, I hit a different state every year in my twenties. From New Mexico, to Wyoming, to Michigan, Texas, Colorado, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York and eventually back to Massachusetts where it all began, riding buses, sleeping on couches, playing the acoustic guitar, writing songs all the way. I didn’t perform much, except for friends and family, and an occasional open mic, but when I moved back home at age 29 I broke out of my shell and actually started playing in front of audiences. What a blast! I’m still searching for that feeling, and I think Chad Stokes has summed it up perfectly on the newest Dispatch album. “I have no expectations, just an adolescent heart.” “

Patrick Coman: “I remember very clearly in sixth grade we had a talent show. I had this buddy named Ryan Westphall and I knew from him talking at school that his dad was a guitar player and he had started learning when he was like 7 or 8. For the talent show he and a couple other guys from our grade worked up two Nirvana covers (sans vocals) and in the song “Lithium” there’s that part where he hits the distortion pedal and the volume goes up like ten notches for the chorus, and I’m watching this and I can just feel this indescribable adrenaline rush well up inside of me.

I thought I HAVE to do this there was so much power in the music and I really wanted to figure out a way to conjure it up myself. From a really young age I had always been into songwriting or just making up goofy rhymes and poems but it clicked around then that there could be a whole different outlet for that type of creativity and one that would not get you punished by other kids but could actually make it seem cool. Anyway, I had a birthday a few weeks later and I convinced my mom to buy me this $89 Yamaha strat clone with a chip in the body the size of a golf ball. Wasn’t much to look at but it got the job done and kept me going until I traded in for a real deal Fender Mexican Strat a couple years later.”

Brian Dolzani: “I’ve been creative for as long as I can remember. My first efforts were to compose ‘Little Short Stories’, as I titled them, on tiny pieces of paper that I slipped into my father’s plastic slide film cases (and still have to this day). They were no more than 4 or 5 sentences (the brevity was perfect training for songwriting), and usually held the themes of people (or frogs, in one case) not being treated fairly for who they were or what they looked like. At 7 or 8 years old I knew the feeling of shame and how badly it made people feel. Yes, and frogs too. And me.

Discovering music, and the ability to create it, made me know there was something powerful I could harness to express my feelings and the desire to connect with the ephemeral. I wanted to go beyond this planet and bodily experience as far back as I can remember. My serious embracing of music and the guitar came the same year that I lost my father, 15 years old. Ever since then my songwriting and guitar playing has been an attempt to reach the other side; to reach whatever is missing from this world, including him. How can we so easily lose someone we love? How can the world be so cruel? If things I love can be taken, I deeply try to make right by offering work that can perhaps come close to what I long for. My only recourse and redemption for pain seemed to be through writing and music. I could perhaps make something beautiful and meaningful from a place of loss and meaninglessness.

Almost 9 records and 20 years later, the effort and intention is still the same: Can I come to terms with who I am and what this life really is? Can I reach a place I haven’t been yet?”

Damn Tall Buildings: (Max Capistran, Avery ‘Montana’ Ballotta, Jordan Alleman, Sasha Dubyk)

“One of the first times I felt inspired to play music was when Jonny Lang made one of those crazy faces when taking a big ole solo at the Paradise Rock Club. I was front row with my Dad and he accidentally splashed some sweat and spit on the front row and I was like – that is fucking badass I want to play guitar like that.”

– Max

“From the time I was a little girl, a variety of music was constantly being played around the house. I didn’t have a choice, music was part of my life. However, the first time I truly felt inspired to perform was when my Nana played me an album by Ella Fitzgerald and I just became obsessed with her voice and style. I wanted to do that.”

– Sasha

“On Sunday mornings I would watch reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies on the Hallmark channel, the theme to which was written and performed by Earl Scruggs. The sound of his banjo was like nothing I’d ever heard up before—powerful, complex, and primal. To my ears, it was the apex predator of instrumental music. I felt like the banjo was not a choice but an inevitability in my life, so I did what any kid does: solicited, nagged, and manipulated my parents to buy me a banjo! They finally gave in on my brother’s 15th birthday. It’s the best present he ever got.”

– Jordan

“It all started with my mom’s voice. She’d sing constantly and would have a diverse collection of albums playing on repeat in our house. Her excitement and musicality is what triggered my own. After hearing about her time playing violin in school orchestra, I became interested in trying the same. One day (at an instrument swap in a middle school cafeteria) I came across a fiddle that looked about my size and instinctively reached for it. I remember standing at the table with my hand on (what would soon be my first) fiddle for what felt like an eternity. I’ve been hooked ever since.”

– Montana

Hawthorn Duo: (Taylor Holland and Heather Scott) “Asking when it all began is like asking when you grew an arm, when a seed began to make a tree: music began when we began, and neither of us can remember a time without it. From Taylor growing up in a Waldorf school where song and instruments were present throughout the day, to Heather losing track of how many choir and singing ensembles she was part of, music was woven so deeply through our childhoods that we don’t see it as something we ever started. We were born into music, and choosing it is only something we do over and over as an affirmation of what we already know.

There are beginnings of different chapters. When Heather heard Joni Mitchell’s Blue album for the first time. When Taylor’s mom taught her the first three guitar chords she knew. When Heather began music school at Guilford college. When Taylor sang in a pub for the first time and realized people connected to the simple old folk songs she grew up with. When Heather performed songs she’d written with a band. When Taylor, while in South Africa for a research trip, was asked to record some of her first original songs and made her first EP.

Our chapter together began because we each realized at a similar time in our lives that we wanted to do more with music than play it at home as a hobby. I (Taylor) had just gotten back from South Africa, and Heather called me up. It was kind of out of the blue—we had mutual friends and had sang together once or twice before, but nothing had come of it. She asked if I wanted to jam and also maybe sing a few songs at a house show she was hosting the following week. At the show, we each performed solo and then sang together…there were three songs: Don’t Think Twice (Bob Dylan), Across The Blue Ridge Mountains (Rising Appalachia), and Goldenrod, a tune we had co-wrote with our friend Henna a year earlier. Singing together, we realized how uniquely our voices blended—totally different, yet somehow perfectly compatible, we knew it was special. We grew from there, as musicians and friends.

We called ourselves Hawthorn because of the tree’s heart-healing properties, it’s folkloric connection to the spirit world, the strength of the word’s sound. For us, Hawthorn is sisterhood. It is a platform upon which we are able to see and be seen, where we can bare our hearts to one another, where we can encourage radical openness and passionate strength. Hawthorn serves as a portal to our collective and individual purpose.”