By Kathy Sands-Boehmer
John McCutcheon (Photo by Irene Young)
Your biography states that you got intrigued with folk music by hearing Roscoe Holcomb and Clarence Ashley. Tell me a bit about these musicians. I have to plead ignorance. . . . I don’t know a thing about them so please tell us what intrigued you about them.
They were giants of Southern Appalachian music. Both were banjo players and singers. . . . Roscoe from east KY and Clarence from western NC. I spent lots of time w/Roscoe. He was one of the most soulful and haunting singer I’ve ever heard. . . . Eric Clapton cites him as his favorite singer. Another interesting bit of trivia is that Clarence is Doc Watson’s father-in-law. Their respective albums that truly “got” me were Mountain Music of East KY and Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s, both on Folkways from back in the early 60’s.
From your bio, it sounds like you took off on a journey to learn about this music and had many adventures. What did you learn about experiencing music in the homes, the churches, and the picket lines? How did all of this influence your own personal politics?
I thought I was going South to learn the banjo. What I found was that it was impossible to separate the banjo (or any other piece of culture, for that matter) from the entire community scene . . . as is the habit in academia. (I was a college student) What I found was art getting its hands dirty, involved in the anti-strip mining (now called “mountaintop removal”) movement, reform efforts in the mine workers’ union, land rights issues, community health care, etc. It completely took politics out of the realm of pure ideology (remember, I was a college student!) and into the practical. I got used to wanting to get things done.
“Christmas in the Trenches” is perhaps one of your best known songs. What prompted you to write that song? How did you first learn about that poignant moment in world history?
I heard the story from a backstage janitor at an AL concert hall at the time I was putting the album “Winter Solstice” together back in ’84. I was so moved by the story (and realized it coincidentally fit into the upcoming album’s theme) that I immediately wrote the song. It just rolled out, nearly complete, during the intermission of a concert I was doing.
Tell us about your commitment to children’s music. What messages do you want to deliver to the next generation?
I really stumbled into it. I was a new father and decided to do an album for my oldest son’s first birthday. I did a lot of research into what else was out there at the time (this was in ’83) and found a dearth of what I considered good music for kids. I also wanted to create an album that was for the entire family, not just for the children. So I took an approach (novel at the time) to present much more musically sophisticated and thematically varied stuff. It seemed to work so I went on to chronicle my sons’ growing up with seven subsequent family albums. I actually haven’t done a family album for over 10 years now. But my first grandchild is expected in early February so I suspect there’s another batch of music gestating.
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We’d love to know about your connection to baseball and how you began to write songs which resulted in Sermon on the Mound.
I’ve always loved baseball, played it all my life. It was really the first thing I ever did right, in the estimation of my peers. Music was the second. I’ve used baseball as a vehicle for songs many times over the years and realized I had a sizable start toward an entire album of such songs. In ’07 I started fleshing out the missing themes and figures and Sermon on the Mound was the result.
I was very touched by the photograph of you and your father in a convertible — on a trip through your old hometown. Can you describe what that little tour was like and what it meant to you and your dad? I, for one, would have loved to have been able to do that with my parents before they passed.
My father is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and I’ve been spending a lot of time with him of late. My wife and I went up in July and spent a weekend with my Dad and my stepmother and that’s when I thought it’d be fun to travel around our mutual hometown together and just listen to him talk about the places he remembers and the things he did as a young man. It was great fun for both of us and it got us out of the women’s hair for a day or so.
Like many of us, Kathy Sands-Boehmer wears many hats. An editor by profession, she also operates Harbortown Music and books artists for the Me and Thee Coffeehouse in Marblehead, Massachusetts. In her spare time, Kathy can be found at local music haunts all over New England. This and many previous Q & A interviews with artists are archived at www.meandthee.org/blog,as well as in the Features section of AcousticMusicScene.com.
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