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Born in Ithaca, NY, I came of age in the heartland of an exploding folk music scene, led by a new wave of steel string guitar junkies and fiddle driven bands. Watching from the sidelines as a teenager, I was there for Trumansburg's first old time music gatherings and moonshine parties as well as Phil Shapiro's nascent "Bound for Glory" radio show at Cornell University. At the larger campus venues, artists such as Joni Mitchell, The Byrds, Taj Mahal, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Bonnie Raitt, the Incredible String Band, Aretha Franklin and James Taylor were my regular fare.
My performing life got started in Cambridge, MA where I moved in 1976 to be a student, and began playing solo gigs in clubs and restaurants, occasionally joined by friend Bela Fleck. Meanwhile, my double life as a volunteer in the avante garde film-making community took me to diverse performance venues, including the punk rock lofts of Boston’s North End, the Barnum and Bailey Circus Train, Metallica parties in city mansions and onstage filming with Holly Near. A short stint as a cook in Sweden and a spiritual awakening later, in 1980 I found Vermont, where I settled and began the slow work of honing my skills as a songwriter. In the quiet of a remote mountain farmhouse in winter, I wrote most of the material for my first self-produced album of original music "Crazy Sorrows" in 1986, while living with no running water, and just enough electricity to run my electric piano.
For the next decade my composing and performing went underground as I met the demands of full-time single parenting, but eventually I worked my way back into music from a new angle, one that could be compatible with family life. In 1997 from my home office I built a successful non-profit organization whose mission was to reinvigorate central Vermont's relationship to national folk music. My work as founder and director of "Live Art", booking major acts at the newly restored Barre Opera House and other regional venues, enabled me to forge new personal connections locally as well as within the music industry.
My next step was to make my way back into music as a player, exploring traditional Irish, Scottish, French and Appalachian tunes on guitar, mandolin and cittern and then to bring my distinctive cadences to regional sessions and contradances. I'm perhaps best known in Vermont for my work with several bands: "Lunatique", "Scatter the Mud", "Bellatrix" and "Wagtail". As an accompanist, I also worked briefly with singer-songwriters David Francey, Nikki Matheson and Michele Choiniere. During this time focused mostly as a guitarist, I began to consider that I could get back to writing songs and figured out that learning how to do recording would help me jump start the process.
After a few years of winging it, I went back to school and received a “Specialist Certificate" in studio production from the Berklee School of Music's online program in 2008. My first full length project was my album “In the Earth’s Fading Light” which was designated “Best Vermont Album of 2005” by The Times Argus/Rutland Herald newspaper. I recorded it here at Pepperbox and took it to Imaginary Road Studio in southern VT for mixing and mastering. I'm now in my fifth year running Pepperbox Studio out of my home in Chelsea, VT. My newest/next solo CD of my own original songs is a collaboration with pianist and producer Phil Aaberg, and is scheduled for release on the Sweetgrass Music label, out of Chester, Montana Nov. of 2010.
Out in the performing world, I most regularly show my face and play stringed instruments in a trio called "Holy Plow" with pithy rocker songwriter Bow Thayer and fiddler extraordinaire Patrick Ross; our recently recorded disc "Shooting Arrows at the Moon" (Bow Thayer) was something I dreamed up, engineered and stayed up too late for too many nights with Bow to produce. I have other jobs that also involve guitars, and some that require gardening tools. Behind all of my efforts is the tireless support of my husband, guitar maker Michael Millard of Froggy Bottom Guitars, who moved his shop up to my place in Chelsea, Vt in 2004.
