1 10 3 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/846ecd2e9132ce5a2131fde702a7cec1.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=Oxx4EXmojx9X7A16tyhdta45908UnldoGmZiKfpwwcjpnfLGT0dA3L9JGTUbgRZdPbktir%7Ee41ovTPOK7jO%7EL47-KHmCmjN2gkdD5eNxUdfQ0VX431hBwbId6fDDo0GW7AkZIMGKfwQy2lkRBtM1VisdowzOjTOGsVdxoMT%7ERrS5iL7vGeaDbL3hGPIR7XDrDd4ahUWZP8LkH9uSsQQWJ-Addztu9c5KNwTUv9bGSMAeAcgcKfTbqKWWa-bL0rgwLAzNf%7E1XAPcVZ3fou-VqJVx9SLAscPahqW4200iqGwMbk2SA2oIb34qF%7E3KKyeFKYdpyo%7EQyre3minmb-XNimw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 077c73afa9470da83c1b888ef3c10068 PDF Text Text TRANSCRIPT - DELIA RIOS CHARIKER Interviewee: DELIA RIOS CHARIKER Interviewer: LAURA BROWN, DENNIS JOYNER AND CODY MAHEN Interview Date: APRIL 18, 2017 Location: CHARLESTON, SC Length: 60 min. INT: Sometimes it gets stuck, so I want to make sure it's moving. Yeah, as long as that clock is moving, you're good. DJ: We're rolling? INT: Yeah. DJ: All right. INT: But feel free to continue with your preliminaries. DJ: Good morning, ma'am. If you could state your name, your age, and where you were born, for the record. DELIA RIOS CHARIKER: Sure. Delia Rios Chariker, born in Kingsville, Texas. DJ: Okay. If you could just give us a little bit of background on your early childhood life, I mean, there's really not a lot of information on you that we could find. DRK: Okay. I was born in Kingsville, Texas. I'm Mexican-American, and I was raised, when I was younger, for about two years there before I moved to South Carolina. But my grandparents and all my family back then, here was always music in the house, always people singing. No instruments. They would just break out in song. You know, it was great. So, there was a lot of vivacious energy around, singing. People didn't really care that they could play an instrument or that they could even sing in tune, but there was �Delia Rios Chariker 2 just a lot of celebration around music. And I remember always thinking that was just something in me to do, I guess. I don't know. DJ: Now, how big was your family. DRK: I have five brothers. I'm the only girl. But I have, on my mom's side, my Mexican side of the family, is I can't even count, probably fifty or sixty cousins. And it's a huge family, because my grandfather, who came over, he actually started, there's actually a small town in Texas called Rios, Texas, where his family was established. DJ: So, your father was from Rios and your mother was from Mexico? DRK: Actually, no. My mother is Mexican-American. My father is Anglo. He's in the Navy. So, my mom and dad met in Kingsville. He's my stepfather. So, they met in Texas, and his family lived up here in South Carolina, so that's how we moved up to South Carolina. And, yeah, so, that's kind of the nuts and bolts of music, and I just have a lot of great memories with aunts and uncles and cousins all singing and playing or hanging out. DJ: Now, what was your big thing whenever you were younger? What was your favorite thing to do with music? DRK: Well, when I was younger, I started playing guitar, probably when I was in high school. And I remember watching TV and seeing, I don't know if you all know The Ed Sullivan Show. You do? DJ: I do. DRK: All right. And there was a woman, Joan Baez, familiar folk, a folk singer that was famous, or still is famous as a folk singer, and I remember seeing her on Ed Sullivan and going, wow, I didn't know girls could play guitar! (laughs) Because I had �Delia Rios Chariker 3 never seen a girl play guitar. And from that moment on, in high school, I got my church choir director to teach me how to play guitar. Yeah. DJ: Now, did you sing, as well, with church? DRK: Yes. Yes, sang with church and started — they have a folk band and it's a Catholic church, so they had a folk music group, choir, yeah. DJ: Which family member had the biggest influence on your younger life? DRK: Probably my mom, my mom. She is Hispanic, so she wasn't born in Mexico. So, a lot of people think, oh, you're Mexican-American. You're part in Mexico. No, that wasn't the case. My grandfather. So, she is like third generation, I guess, American. My grandfather's mother, my great-grandmother lived in, was born in Mexico, and then they moved over to Texas. DJ: What was your education like at the time? I mean, did you grow up, go elementary school, middle school, high school, or college? DRK: Yep, that's what it was like. I went to elementary school in Clover, South Carolina, and that's where I was raised. DJ: Oh, so you moved from... DRK: Texas, yeah. DJ: ...Texas. When did you move, if you don't mind me asking? DRK: I was about four years, three to four years old. We moved up from Kingsville to Clover, South Carolina. So, I was raised there. Yeah, and I remember singing in the, you know, church, school groups and things like that. Yeah. DJ: Now, when did you realize you wanted to be a musician? DRK: Well, that's funny, because I was in the Catholic youth group, and the �Delia Rios Chariker 4 Catholic youth group has a talent contest. So, that was the first time I, I mean, I always felt a connection to music, even when I was a little girl. So, the talent contest I entered and I won. I got fifty dollars. I'll never forget that, (laughs) and a trophy. And it was actually in Beaufort I won it. And from that moment on, it was just a really affirmation or validation, I guess you'd say, that it's fun to do and I've always, in church we'd sing and feel it, just feel it all in me to sing and people liked what I sounded like. So, it was great. DJ: Now, did you have a favorite song that you would sing whenever you were in the choir? DRK: In the choir, it was, you know, it was church stuff, so. It's a lot of Catholic hymns that I really like. I can't name one. But I won the talent contest with a song called “Billy Jack”. I don't know if you know about Billy Jack. DJ: I think I've heard it a long time ago. DRK: Yeah, it's an old Native. The guy that's the character is Native American, and he protects a lot of people. It's a great song. It's about people being up on the mountain and thinking all their riches are coming from the city down below. I mean, up above. And so, there's people down below and they're trying to get up to the top of the mountain to get all these riches, because people, they think, are rich. But what they find out later, that it's not about the money. It's about, you know, their values, you know. DJ: Okay. Now, I'm going to go a little bit to the dark side. DRK: The dark side. DJ: Is there anywhere where you thought that music wasn't your thing or that you shouldn't be a musician? DRK: Well, I don't know if I. Yeah. I mean, there's times, you know, when you're �Delia Rios Chariker 5 in high school, you know, you get a little insecure, because I think a choir director told me I shouldn't sing, because I was too loud. (laughs) Because I do have a projecting voice. And but I'm glad I didn't listen to her. I don't know why I didn't, but I'm glad I didn't listen to her and just kept on singing. And there was times going, you know, growing up that I thought, I mean, that's how I actually went back to college and got my master's, because I was in a crossroads of my profession singing for professional reasons or as a career. Yeah. DJ: Where did you go to college at? DRK: I went to Sacred Heart College in Belmont, North Carolina, a four-year college, and then I went to Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, which is a Buddhist school, studying music therapy, actually. So, that's when my life changed a lot. DJ: Can you talk a little bit more about that, like your education in music therapy? DRK: Yeah. I was working as a—oh, what do you call that—a psych tech, I guess you'd call it, at MUSC for like four years, and at that point, I was playing a lot of music around town in a lot of the folk clubs that were here back then and playing for certain events. And I remember thinking, okay, I don't want to be working on the psych unit for the rest of my life, because it was depressing, you know, and it only seemed like it only went so far. So, I was at a point I said, okay, I want to do music professionally full-time, or do I want to be a therapist and go back and get my master's in psychology or therapy? I mean counseling. And somebody said, "Have you ever heard of music therapy?" And I said, "No." I never had heard of that. So, that would be perfect, because I can do both. So, that was probably '94, I guess. �Delia Rios Chariker 6 DJ: Now, when did you start performing at venues? DRK: When I was in college at Sacred Heart. I played for events there, obviously. There was always something going on. And I played for the services. They had like a club thing going on at the university at Belmont Abbey. I don't know if you're familiar with Belmont Abbey, but I'd play music for them, had a little band. And from there, I left and played like what they call the hotel circuit. So, I played Holiday Inn. I was booked in that for a little bit. And so, I did that when I got out of college, for a while. And so, whatever. And then I took a break from music for a long time, because, you know, it's no guarantee that you're going to make money doing music, and you got to make a living. You got to live. So. DJ: Did you do anything else other than music? DRK: Yes. When I left college, my first out of college was at the, it's not the Peace Corps. It's called the VISTA Corps, which is a volunteer-in-America corps. And I did that in Kentucky, because I think everybody should serve their country on some level, and that was a way for me to do it other than military. So. DJ: And what exactly did you do for them? DRK: I worked in this rural area in Kentucky, and we were responsible for working with a senior center that they had there. And I'm talking rural. There was nothing out there. (laughs) And so, it was like three of us women. We had never met each other, that's what I did working there. And I didn't do much music there, you know, because we were way out in the boonies. And so, we just kind of helped senior citizens with activities in a small town. I did that for a while, a year. It's a year commitment. And I left that and �Delia Rios Chariker 7 went to Nashville, and Nashville is where I started back up into the music thing. I was getting a momentum going in Nashville playing music professionally. Yeah. DJ: Who was your musical inspiration? I know you mentioned that your mother, you looked up to your mother, but who would you listen to to get inspiration, or who did you want to be like? DRK: I didn't have any one person. I just really was influenced by the Motown sound, you know, all the soul music. Ray Charles, I really liked him a lot, and I liked, there wasn't many female musicians back then, so, that were on the radio, so, other than The Supremes. I like them a lot. And Joan Baez, I really liked her a lot. Yeah. Melanie, I don't know if you remember her. She was an old folk singer. I think she was on Ed Sullivan. So, like I said, there wasn't tons. Familywise, it was just really my mom and her sisters. You know, they sang and just would always sing, just out of nowhere. (laughs) They would just break out into song. You could be in the grocery store, and they'd start singing. You'd be in the car, walking, you know, whatever. They'd think of these old songs, and they all have these — the Mexican songs have a lot of history and memories for them, so they would just start speaking in Spanish, which up until two, that was my primary language, but then we moved to South Carolina and then I didn’t get encouraged for me to keep singing — or using Spanish. So, that was kind of weird for me. So. DJ: Now, was that a — I know you were young, but was that a major change for you moving from Texas to South Carolina? DRK: It was huge, a huge change. DJ: Can you talk about how that impacted you? �Delia Rios Chariker 8 DRK: Well, my mom's side of the family is very big and loving and, like I said, very outgoing, colorful, a lot of celebration, always there. And then when we moved to South Carolina, my dad's side of the family was not like that at all. (laughs) It was the total opposite. So, his family was more disconnected, so I didn't have that influence around me all the time just to sing and be in that setting, you know. So, it kind of, I guess, stifled me a little bit, you know. So. DJ: Now, do you have any regrets that you made in your younger life, like when it came to music or anything affiliated with it? DRK: Regrets. You know, that's a hard word, because yes and no. I mean, I was in Nashville for a while and I was really starting to get some momentum to be, you know, performing more and getting more gigs there. And something in me said this place will eat you alive, because there's so many good musicians in Nashville. I was too insecure at the time to think that I was, you know, that I could hold my own. So, I felt like I couldn't do it. So, I left Nashville. So, then a part of me thinks, wow, I wish I kind of had just hung in there. But then if I had, I wouldn't be able to work with veterans doing counseling and work in that. And that's actually my most rewarding work, I think. DJ: Now, when did you come back to Charleston? DRK: Charleston, Charleston. Okay, 19 when I came back. I went to California after Nashville. California, I played music out there in the coffeehouses and stuff out there. DJ: Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, that's quite a change going from Nashville to California! DRK: It was weird, you know, but, yeah, so, I left Nashville and went to �Delia Rios Chariker California, didn't know anybody, go out there by myself and got a job working as a counselor in a group home for mentally handicapped kids up in Ramona, California, where there is nobody up that way. And then one day I went to the coast, and there was — on the coast, there was a coffeehouse on the beach. And they had open mics, so that's kind of where I started in the music scene there in California. DJ: Now, what kind of kids did you work with? DRK: Well, they were adults, but they were probably at an age mentally around teenage age. And so, girls and boys, and we, it was a house that we worked as a group home. DJ: Okay. DRK: Yeah, so, a counselor for them, yeah. DJ: And did you just find music that would help them, I don't want to say cope, but that would make them relax? DRK: Yeah, I mean, music was always a fun way for them to feel entertainment and dance and it's always a—it was cool, because—don't know if you've worked around mentally handicapped kids, but most of them were Down syndrome. So, and they love music, and they will sing and play and anything. And it was cool to see that. DJ: The reason I asked is my cousin has Down syndrome. DRK: Oh, okay. DJ: I actually just spent the weekend with him, and he loves music. He loves karaoke. DRK: Yeah! DJ: And it just really relaxes him, and he takes pride in it. So. 9 �Delia Rios Chariker 10 DRK: Well, good for him! Good for him. Yeah, it's a very therapeutic tool, music, you know, on lots of different levels, yeah. DJ: Now, you went to Nashville, you went to California... DRK: Right. DJ: ...then you came back to Charleston. DRK: Came back to Charleston, yes. DJ: Or South Carolina. DRK: Yeah. Came back to South Carolina, Charleston. DJ: What was the goal whenever you got here? You came back to Charleston. What did you want to do? What was the plan? DRK: Well, there was no plan. It was just I was homesick. I missed my family. (laughs) But I didn't want to move to Clover, because Clover, I don't know if you've ever been around there, it's a very small town. Charleston was more transient. There's more people. There's different cultures, different types of people, so it was more colorful to me. I like Charleston, so when I got back here, I got a job working at the Psych Institute at MUSC, and then, again, going around Charleston, there was coffeehouses and I started playing for open mics, open mics that way, and then got in meeting a lot of musicians that you've probably have interviewed, I'm guessing. (laughs) DJ: Oh, yeah. We've interviewed a lot. But I did notice that you are you signed with a record label? DRK: No, I'm not signed at all, but I have a CD, yes. DJ: Okay. There was a company that popped up, Hungry Monk Music. DRK: Right. Hungry Monks, right. And John Holenko is one of the founders of �Delia Rios Chariker 11 Hungry Monk. That's his and his wife, Hazel Ketchum. And at the time when I was walking to finally record something, it was I wanted to do something that—just to do a CD, because everybody wanted me to do a CD, but I didn't have enough vocal material together, but I play Native American flute, so I was doing an instrumental and he played the guitar for me in there. And his company or his label is the Hungry Monk label. So. DJ: Now, how did you get to that point? DRK: When I moved back to Charleston working at the Psych Institute and that's when I was wanting to change careers, and I ended up in Boulder, Colorado. So, that's where I went and got my master's in music therapy and counseling. So, that was really a great experience. DJ: You've done a lot of traveling! DRK: I have done a lot of traveling. (laughs) I mean, I think that's most of it. I've been around here and there. Yeah. DJ: What's been your favorite place? DRK: Oh, gosh. I really like Boulder a lot. I like Colorado a lot. I like them all, really. You know, I like them all, even though my friends said, "You're going back to Charleston. It's so redneck. It's a small town," blah, blah, blah, blah, "so prejudiced," and, which, you know, the South has that reputation, but I haven't really come across that too much, you know. DJ: Yeah, Charleston isn't that small anymore. DRK: Un-unh! It's growing all the time and more culturally diverse and cray cray. I don't like it as much. So, I liked it when it was more easygoing. I mean, I could go to Folly Beach, and there would be no traffic. It was great. Yeah. Now, it's crazy. �Delia Rios Chariker 12 DJ: Those are only dreams now. DRK: Mm-hmm. I know! Yeah, so, Colorado, I went back there and went and got my master's and music therapy led me into playing Native American flute, because that's where I got introduced to that. Culturally, my great-grandmother was Mexican Indian is Indian, and which when I was growing up, Indian culture was not encouraged, because if you were Indian, that meant you were too dark. If you were too dark, that was frowned upon. And I looked at my great-grandmother's picture, who I never met, and I said, wow, she looks really, you know, Native American. And when I had gone to college, I had taken women's history and, you know, all the different classes that you had to have, and I remember studying about Native culture and I connected to the Native American spirituality more than Catholicism. And but then I saw her picture and I thought, wow, maybe that's where I get this feeling, I guess, I can't describe when I play the flute. It gives me a really strong connection to Native culture and spirituality. So, it's been a very healing instrument to learn, and it's opened up a lot of doors for a lot of different settings, especially therapeutically, working with relaxation therapy, working with veterans just to kind of connect. I should have brought my flute. I thought about that when I got here. (laughs) Yeah. So, from Colorado, music scene, had a little band there, just a lot of different introductions to how music can help people heal, can help people get in touch with feelings that they didn't know they had, because it really disarms people in a way that talking therapy doesn't. You know, people have to think really hard about what you're going to say mentally. So, you have these filters. And when you're with music, there's no �Delia Rios Chariker 13 filters, because the mind is not thinking about how it's going to say things, you know, so you don't have this guardedness, which is pretty cool. So, music disarms you in a way you're not expecting. And there's a lot of memories associated with music, favorite songs, you know, and memories associated with that, because part of my internship in the program was I worked in an Alzheimer's unit, working with a nursing home, and I don't know if you all. DJ: I've been there, as well. DRK: You've been there with that? DJ: My grandmother had Alzheimer's for, oh, eight years. So. DRK: So, did you ever see them, I mean, did you ever see her with music? DJ: What I would do — I was younger. She passed away when I was twelve. My dad and I, every weekend, we'd go down. She lived in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. We would hop in our car. We lived an hour away. We'd drive down Saturday mornings at 5:30. We'd stop, get haircuts. We'd pick her up and we'd take her out for a fish sandwich at the local café, which was her favorite. And they would always play old-fashioned music. And it would bring her memory back. DRK: Oh, yeah. DJ: And it was fun to watch her eyes light up and she would just start talking about all this and it was crazy how she could retain that information. DRK: It is amazing. And, actually, music is like the first sound that a person develops developmentally. Sound, not music, but sound. And so, it's the last sense to go when you pass. So, there is a long-term memory piece that they call, people with Alzheimer's, that they can recall those songs. But I witnessed, playing sometimes, people �Delia Rios Chariker 14 that were catatonic, you know, drooling, not even lift - heads picked up, and you'd play “You Are My Sunshine”, and, boom! They're like, whoa, back to life! I just think it's the most miraculous thing I've ever seen. So, I just love music for that, you know. DJ: Now, I'm going to get a little off-topic. Have you done any a cappella work? DRK: Yes. Yes. A lot. Some of my stuff is a cappella, yeah. A lot of it is, actually. Chanting. I do a lot of Native American chanting, but I do, you know, if I play for a service, as sometimes I play for services in town, and I'll do some a cappella songs. DJ: Now, do you play for like Catholic services or just... DRK: No, just different. Circular Church. I don't know if you know it. It's a nondenominational church, Unity Church. I'm a music director at Unity Church right now, and it's the smaller one in Mount Pleasant. There's a bigger one here in Charleston, but I do the one. DJ: Okay. I'm going to pass the mic off over to Ray. DRK: All right. LB: So, I'm going to be covering kind of your middle life up to career kind of area, just so you can get ready for those kinds of questions. So, tell me a little bit about your family life now and, you know, are you married, have any children? What do they do? DRK: Okay. I am gay, so I'm in a marriage we're not married yet — thirty years we've been partners. LB: Oh, wow! DRK: Yeah, we've been together a long time. (laughs) And we might as well be married. And we have a daughter, and her name is Delaney. And so, she's nineteen, so �Delia Rios Chariker 15 I'm trying to get her to college. (laughs) And so, She plays an instrument, so she likes that. So, we have that connection to play. LB: I was about to ask you if she was like followed in your footsteps and was musical in any way. So, she plays an instrument? DRK: She plays an instrument, but she's more into sports, so she really digs that a lot. But she has played in, I don't know if you've heard Girls Rock Camp, Girls Rock, the nonprofit. Are you familiar with them? LB: I've heard of them, yeah. DRK: Yeah. So, she's been in that, and that's been really — that helped her really develop. It really made her grow up and get more empowered as a woman or a young girl and it's been neat to do that. I've played some music with them. So, yeah. So, that's kind of — and my partner works at the Roper Hospital, cardiac ultrasound technician, so she does that. LB: That's neat. DRK: Yeah. And she's in California. We met in California, and I made her come back to this side. (laughs) And she's never forgiven me. "It's so hot here!" LB: So, kind of just to go off of that, how is that challenging for you, you know, before, because I feel like now, people are more accepting of different cultures and different, you know, sexualities. How was that a challenge for you early on when you, you know, were in California and in Colorado and in coming back here? DRK: Out there, there was not any challenge. People are very open and accepting. When you come in Charleston, and, you know, I don't tell my clients I'm gay. I work at the Charleston Vet Center, which is on Montague, and there might be two clients I know �Delia Rios Chariker 16 that know that about me, because I do groups a lot and one-on-ones and things like that. But I haven't shared that, and, you know, it's kind of weird, because I've been with them three years now and they get very personal with you and you get very personal with them. It's like you become a family, you know. And I think it might be a matter of time before that does happen. But, yeah, I'm kind of cautious about it, because I'm not sure. Some of the guys are very old-school... LB: Old-school, yeah. DRK: And they're very religious, to the hyper-religious. (laughs) I can respect — you know, I respect that, obviously. So, I'm not sure how they'd be. But I'm hoping that they'll be accepting if it happens, when I do come out, I guess. (laughs) But my coworkers are great. There's no issues there. I've been blessed that way. My family has, too. I mean, I remember coming back to Charleston wondering if my daughter was going to be ostracized or whatever, but the daycare we put her in was very loving for us. And I remember one little boy said, "I wish I had two moms," (laughs) and told her that. So, yeah, we've been blessed that way. Yeah. LB: Was there any challenges that you faced, you know, being, you know, Mexican-American, Native American, kind of just that blend? Was there any, you know, challenges in that kind of arena? DRK: Yeah, there has been, actually probably more than being gay At one point, when I was taking a break from music, I was a traffic-control officer in California at the airport. And I remember people thinking, oh, you got your job because you're Mexican, where they have quotas. �Delia Rios Chariker 17 And then I remember I worked as a park ranger when I was in Tennessee. I worked as a park ranger in the Smoky Mountains and loved that and I probably would have done that, but it was seasonal work. But, anyway, that was probably my favorite job. (laughs) And I remember a guy. I worked at the World's Fair in 1992, I think it was, the World's Fair was—was it '92 or '88? Anyway. One of those years. And I was at the booth in Knoxville and a man almost jumped over the counter and points his fingers and says, "I know how you got your job!" And it was the freakiest feeling in the world. I'm like, whoa! Where did that come from? So, I don't know if it was because he thought I was Indian, Mexican, woman. I mean, it could have been all of that, you know. LB: Any of them. DRK: Any of them, you know, but I remember having that. And even now, I mean, I mean, now it's better, but I remember growing up through life, just lots of feelings of like, do I have this job because I'm really good, or do I have this job because—so, there was like kind of a little insecurity about that. But now I know I have my job because I'm, you know, I've earned it... LB: Good at it. DRK: ... and I'm good at it, yeah. Yeah. LB: So, I know you talked about pursuing the music and kind of going back and forth with if you wanted to do career music-wise or career, you know, your musictherapy-wise. What made you decide, what was that kind of deciding moment that was like, you know, this is the path I'm going to take? Or if you even had one. DRK: I just guess when that door opened that you could blend both, and I �Delia Rios Chariker 18 remember being with somebody talking and he said, "Well, you know, there's music therapy." And I, I don't know, something just said, well, yeah, that resonated. And as I went through the program, it was a very healing thing for me, too. It was very cathartic to see how music can be used on so many levels that we don't even experience in this world here. I mean, everyday life. Yeah, and I just saw so many good things done with it. And being able to do the therapy piece to it and put it together really helped kind of do a whole-person, I guess, treatment, therapy, yeah. LB: So, you mentioned that you work at the VA Center on Montague. I read a little bit about it. You help teach guitar lessons. What other kind of stuff do you do for the therapy part? DRK: I worked at the VA for six years, five years in the drug-and-alcohol program, and when I was there, drug addicts, alcoholics need something to do, or their mind goes to the dark side. So, when I was there, somehow, I got introduced—I don't know, somebody told me. He said, "Have you ever heard of the Guitar for Vets program?" I said, "No." So, I looked it up on the Internet and it was a nonprofit and I became one of the chapter coordinators for it here. LB: Oh, wow! DRK: Here, yeah. So, I started that there. So, what that is, that program, twelve weeks of lessons and you get a free guitar. LB: Oh, wow! DRK: Yeah. It's a really good program. So, I got a lot of guys into that program, a couple women, mostly men were in that program. So, I started it there, and while I was there at the VA, I started a band, a veteran band. Veteran in Arms it was called. (laughs) �Delia Rios Chariker 19 And it was great, but it was the funniest experience, because, yeah, I'd get all these drug addicts, alcoholics that were great musicians, and I would see them in groups. And I'm thinking, man, you're so good. And we would do performances. I'd get them on stage, and we would do Christmas programs, Memorial Day programs, anything, you know, that could keep them going and inspire them. And a lot of them, it really helped feed their soul and their therapy. So, it was part of their therapy, whether they knew it or not. And that was pretty fun to do that group. And then from there, when I worked at the Vet Center, carried over that music for guitar—Guitar for Vets. But because I'm a counselor there at the Vet Center, they said they thought that would be a—I don't know. You know how the rules are with the military (laughs) and the government. So, it was like I can't do it officially. LB: Right, right, right. DRK: So, but they — thankfully, my supervisor did bring in the other volunteers that had become instructors. So, they teach. They do the Guitar for Vets program there at our center, which is great, and we've had a lot of people take on and do it. My veterans now that I work with are a lot of Vietnam veteran survivors of PTSD, OIF/OEF survivors with PTSD. And so, what they did let me do, instead of doing music therapy, I get to do a music activity group. So, again, finding it's such a creative outlet for them and it just relaxes them, distracts them. I mean, I have guys tell me, "I'd be an alcoholic if I didn't have this group," you know, or, "I'd be miserable right now if I didn't have this group." You know, so there's a lot of validation for them doing it. And they just light up, you know. So, I do a group on Mondays, a music-activity jam, really, and I'm not technically supposed to be teaching them, but I teach. �Delia Rios Chariker 20 LB: But you do. (laughs) DRK: Yeah. Yeah, and we share a lot of memories around it. So, it's been great. So, I'm happy I've been able to keep that going. So, we bring in the guys from Guitars for Vets. They're welcome to come in and join the activity group, as well. And there is a band that's still going. That started another band that one of my vets, he actually took over being a band leader. And then they go to the Veteran's Victory House and play and they play a lot of events that they don't get paid for. It's all volunteer, and there's like four or five of them. Yeah, I'm proud of them. They've kept it going, even though I can't be in the group. Sometimes I want to be. On the down-low, I might go once in a while. (Laughter) DRK: But don't tell my supervisor. LB: I just got to go check up on them. DRK: Yeah, go check up on them. LB: Well, yeah, this sounds like kind of like the work that my mom does. My mom works at an assisted living facility back in Georgia. And so, she's the activities coordinator there. And so, talking with her, and, you know, she says the same thing about music. She's not very musically inclined, but the people that she like brings in, you know, plays all the older music, some of the people there are just kind of out of it and don't really know where they are and kind of just are all over the place. Once they hear, like you said, “You Are My Sunshine” or an older song, they just, you know, come out of their shell a little bit. And she said that's been really rewarding for her, as I'm sure it's been for you. DRK: Yeah, it is. It kind of keeps you hooked, you know. I love performing. I �Delia Rios Chariker 21 love doing that, too, but the other part of it is if I don't feel a connection, I mean, I'm not one of these people that has to play in clubs kind of thing. I'm done with the club scene pretty good, because it's just so people get drunk. They want to do weird things, you know, like get on stage with you or hand you a bite of a steak, you know, just kind of wacky stuff, and you're like, what? You know, so, I like coffeehouse, low-key, church places, you know, concerts. I've played for the Spoleto Festival and Piccolo Festival. I've still got a lot of events I've done like that over the years. So, yeah. LB: So, you mentioned the Piccolo and you mentioned the Native American flute, was it? DRK: Mm-hmm. LB: How did you decide that that's kind of what you wanted your sound to be for your CD? Like, what made you decide like, you know, this is the kind of message that I want to put out there for everyone? DRK: Well, for that CD, it was I didn't have a lot of money. I'll be honest. (laughs) Didn't have a lot of money, so I had to do something quick and simple. And I knew with just the flute and the guitar and whatever vocal things I wanted to do, it wouldn't cost me that much. I mean, it was still expensive, but it was quick and quicker to get done. It was more practical. So, yeah, and actually, it's been great, because it's a good business card, because people say, "What do you sound like," or, "What do you do?" You know, and I can say, well, now you can go on CD Baby, and at the time, I just gave them CD. But you can go, I don't know, type my name in, and you can see my CD clips and things like that. So, that's a good way to market yourself, and that's kind of what I've done with that. �Delia Rios Chariker 22 But it, really, you know, I didn't it got, what's the word? The flute, I think, you know, things don't happen accidentally. Things happen for a reason. Somehow my friend who I was in the music therapy program and a great sax player, he was the one who started wanting to make flutes and playing, because he knew, he met Carlos Nakai, who is a Native American performer that does Native flutes. And he met the guy that made his flutes. So, I got him to make me a flute. And from then on, it's just been this great world of Native music and culture and experiences, you know, I never would have thought would have taken me such on a spiritual journey, you know. So, yeah. I don't know if that answers your question. LB: No, yeah, yeah, yeah. What was your kind of message, I guess you could say, that you wanted to send out and kind of your staple for this is me as an artist? What did you want kind of that to be? DRK: Message? I think that's just an ongoing thing for me. I don't know that I put it in a box like that, because I don't know that I define that. You know, it's a different experience every time that I perform, and people will take away from it what they want. They'll want to put you in this, oh, you do this kind of music or you do that. Well, I do a lot of different kind of music, but I try to put some of all of it together in some way when I perform. But mostly, it's just being positive. The music I want to do is about positive messages, you know. And validations and storytelling. There's a lot of different songs. Like John Prine does a lot of story stuff, and Leonard Cohen, his stuff. I like that music a lot. So, things that give you just that heart, heart connection, heart strings. LB: No, that makes sense. A lot, well, that is it for my questions. I want to go �Delia Rios Chariker 23 ahead and pass it on. CM: All right, well, I think we've pretty much covered everything that's I've really wanted to ask. I was curious what your inspiration was for your Animas album. DRK: Oh, for the Animas album? CM: Animas. DRK: That means "souls," souls, animas. My ancestry. I wanted to kind of honor my ancestry, and that's where that came from, you know. So, in the moment of playing the music and just feeling it, vocables are what Native Americans use instead of words. And because there's so many tribes in the world or here, they use vocables to help bring in lots of inner tribes together to be able to sing and connect. If you've ever been to a powwow or anything like that, you'll hear a lot of "Ay, ay, ay, ay, yai, ay, ay," which is all in the neck stuff. And it's easy to pick up. It's easy to follow. So, that brings people together. And then the drumming, which is another part of the Native music, is also a very cathartic, powerful feeling, because the drums are very — the deep mother drum has a real strong vibration. Music is vibration. You know, the sound is vibration. So, we all are connected through vibrations. So, when you hear something that resonates with you, whatever tone that might be, whatever pitch that might be, something in you is going to feel that. And it'll pull at you. I mean, have you all had experiences like that with music, certain songs that kind of just like — CM: Oh, certainly. DRK: Yeah. You know, “Amazing Grace”, you can bring that song up, or even in the “Star-Spangled Banner”, you know, and it'll just, whoa. �Delia Rios Chariker 24 DJ: Hallelujah. DRK: Hallelujah, Leonard, oh, yeah. DJ: That was my junior song for choir. DRK: Was it? DJ: I did the solo on it. DRK: Did you really? DJ: Yeah, a cappella. DRK: Oh, well, let me hear it. (laughs) DJ: Maybe afterwards. DRK: Okay. That's a beautiful song, yeah. DJ: It really is. It's one of my favorites. DRK: That one and Suzanne. Those are the two I like to do, Suzanne. Yeah, but Leonard Cohen. CM: Yeah, excuse me. I'm very sick. DRK: I know. I know you are. Bless your heart. You're good, though. CM: We've really covered just about everything that I wanted to ask. DRK: Are you going to ask me what I want to be when I grow up? (Laughter) LB: What do you think your future is going to be in music or in therapy or both? What's your next step, do you think? DRK: Well, while I was raising my daughter, I kind of took a break from performing. So, in the last year, I guess, I've been doing some musical opportunities, because I'm with the church. And, mind you, I was never expecting to ever be a music �Delia Rios Chariker 25 director for a church, because I didn't go to church all the time. I'll be honest. And somehow that opportunity opened up and I ended up liking the church and the message, because it's all positive messages, you know, and it's a very open and affirming of all different kinds of diversities. And that's led to me saying, okay, now it's time to just call a friend who plays percussion who I've known over the years, and he and I had done some music way back when. And he said, "Yeah, let's get together." So, we've kind of done something together now. There's a program, World Café, which is done once a month. Anyway, that guy that coordinates that, he called me up and he heard about me through other musicians. So, I did a program, a performance with him. And that's led to a couple other ones. So, on May the 5th, Cinco de Mayo, I'll be at the Eclectic Café on Spring Street, if you all want to have nothing to do. And June the second, I'm doing another World Café and May the twenty-seventh, the Charleston Music Hall, I'm going to be part of a program there of women in music. So, all these doors are opening. It's weird, and I'm just kind of watching it going, okay, whatever, universe. Thank you. Spirit, whatever. Just take me there. And so, it's wide open right now where it's going to lead. I don't know. I'm just kind of not trying to get too rigid about it. Do I wish I was retired so I could just do it full-time? Yes. (laughs) I would love that. DJ: If you don't mind, I'm just going to ask. What do you want to be when you grow up? That's a question I always ask my dad. My dad is sixty-one years old, and I always say, "What do you want to be when you grow up," because, I mean, he's going to retire here in about four years, and he's not going to sit there and do nothing. DRK: Yes, yes. Right, and that's me, too. I'm not going to sit there and do �Delia Rios Chariker 26 nothing, either. I'm hoping, because I have three and a half, maybe four more years to retire, I know music is going to be a part of that. So, my hope is to be able to maybe even travel and perform, you know, in different countries, but to always have music in my life, doing something like that on some level. So, when I grow up, I'm just going to be a happier musician, I think. (laughs) DJ: A happier musician! DRK: And then I don't have to worry about where I'm going to get my next paycheck, you know, because I'll have retirement money. You know, and that's kind of a trade-off for musicians, because you want to be healthy and you want to have insurance and you want to be able to put food on the table and when you're a musician, it's hit-andmiss, I mean, what you're going to get paid. Sometimes people don't want to pay you or they'll forget. "Oh, we said six hundred? Oh, we meant two hundred." You know, that kind of stuff. So, now I won't have to worry about that. Now I can do music just for fun, and people pay me, great. You know, I'm going to do another CD. I'm getting ready to start on a vocal CD. DJ: Just vocal? DRK: Vocal, yeah, well, you know, guitar and vocal. DJ: Oh, okay. DRK: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so, I'm going to do that next. That's my next project. DJ: What guitar do you use? DRK: I have a couple of acoustic guitars. I just got lucky and got a Baby Taylor guitar, which I love. It's a Mini Taylor. And I have a Takamine Santa Fe, which was my �Delia Rios Chariker 27 other guitar, which I love that one. And I haven't gone to an electric to perform. I'm fooling around on electric. I like it, but it's heavier. (laughs) Yeah. DJ: That's one thing I was never able to pick up. I play a little bit of piano. I tried to learn guitar over a summer, and I just couldn't do it. It drove me insane. I took lessons and I was there playing the guitar and my instructor is like, "Oh, play Ode to Joy." I'm like. DRK: Oh, no! DJ: Yeah. So, I'm there strumming, and I'm just like, okay, I'm done. DRK: I'm done, yeah. Piano is great. I would like to do more piano stuff. DJ: Yeah, I did. There's some song that I did on the piano and I recorded it. DRK: Oh, good! So, well, yeah, do you all play music? Any of you all play instruments or anything? LB: I was very musical when I was younger. I did. I play the piano a little bit. I also play the flute. And I did the violin. And I also sang a lot when I was younger, but then, you know, it got to a point where I was doing kind of the artistic side and the sports side, my dad was driving me back and forth all across town. He was like, "You got to pick." So, eventually I picked soccer, I play soccer here now. So, I haven't really done much of it then, but I still like to sing. And I sing, I used to sing with my church and stuff like that. But I haven't really been that much into it lately. But I did when I was younger a lot. DRK: You'll be surprised. I think it will come back to you, because you do miss it. I mean, it's more than just a performing for fun and attention. It's really a need. You know, when I'm not playing music, I'm very miserable. So, it's my drug, I guess. (laughs) �Delia Rios Chariker 28 LB: That's what my mom would always say. She's like, "Soccer is not going to last you forever. You can't play forever." I was like "But you can sing forever." I was like, "Man, forever?" DRK: You could sing forever. Yeah, you never know. DJ: You might sound bad, but you can sing. (Laughter) DRK: But who cares? It's so cute. Yeah, last time they had one of my music activity groups, and this is probably the most powerful thing, to see these guys come in, never been talking about Vietnam for forty years, never have talked about any traumas they've experienced for forty years, and they come in and they're—won't look you in the eye, you know, because their pain is so deep, tremble when they talk to you, hands sweating. So, to see these guys go from that to playing music with each other and just, "Hey, you know, how did—" and helping each other out and saying, "Oh, man, you're going to be good, you know. Just hang in there." And it's just great to watch them start to be able to be comfortable, outside their comfort zone. You know, for instance, I've got this one guy. He would always just drink in his van and smoke pot. That's what he did. And he had his business, but that's how he coped. So, he comes in last night for his first time to meet the group, because he had just finished the Guitars for Vets class, and he comes in there, and all the guys are, "Atta boy! You're doing great!" You know, he's, "Well, I only got" I said, "Just stay on that one chord. It's okay. Don't worry about changing chords. Just keep in time and play it." And he just lit up. It was the best feeling. I said, "This is why I do this work," you know? This is what's - �Delia Rios Chariker 29 . DJ: What was the greatest impact you had on someone, or what would you say was the biggest change you had on someone's life? If you can remember some individual. DRK: Well, recently, I mean, I got a real cool compliment, I guess. I have a guy who is six years' sober now, and not knowing that he had PTSD and that's what he was doing to cope was to drink. And, yeah, six years of sobriety, he called me and his wife, too, because I worked with both of them, and he just said, "Thank you, thank you, thank you," you know, because I'm part of his journey. You know, he did the work, but I'm part of the team that helped him to get together, but he really was appreciative that I didn't give up on him, and he was real appreciative that I've been able to see his strengths versus his weaknesses. And, yeah, that's probably the most rewarding thing, seeing that. And seeing the band play, it's pretty rewarding, yeah. CM: How much longer do you think you'll work with music therapy and the Guitars for Vets? DRK: Well, I guess at least four more years until I retire. And the Guitars for Vets, I'll probably try to hang in with them afterwards as volunteering. There's also a program in Nashville I just saw called Operation Song and working with veterans and helping them write lyrics and songs about their experiences. And I wanted to work with them, but I can't. There's just too much on my plate right now for that. I'm on their Facebook page, and they seem to be doing a whole lot of stuff with people writing songs about their military combat experience. And with women and sexual trauma, that's a real deep, and men and sexual trauma. There's a lot of sexual trauma in the military for men and women. And so, a lot of �Delia Rios Chariker 30 them have written songs about that. You know, it's heartbreaking stuff, but it's very, again, cathartic to get it out. So, any of them think, "Oh, I just got to hold on to it. I've got to be the man, you know, can't be". You know how you guys get trained. You know, I was like. LB: I don't know anybody like that. DRK: Wait, wait, wait. Can't laugh! Don't show your emotions, or you're a wuss or whatever. So, we have to change your attitudes or their attitudes from that to say it's okay to talk. It's okay to cry. "Oh, I can't cry." You know. But as — the mind can only hold on to that tightness for so long. But as you age and get older, it softens up, and it has to, because that takes a lot of energy to keep it like that. But as we get older, our bodies change. Our minds change. The chemicals in our brains change. So, we have to talk and get it out. Yeah. So, it's a good experience. Yeah, hard. It's weird. Then you get some funny people that are — you meet interesting military people. (laughs) DJ: I'm sure. DRK: Interesting vets. I'm sure you've met them. Yeah. Vets are interesting. That's for sure. Civilians have no clue. And I'm a civilian. I had no clue. My partner is a vet, Army veteran, and I didn't have a clue until — I said, "That's why you do these weird things." (laughs) DJ: Why do you gravitate towards the veterans? Is there like a backstory behind that, or was it with your stepfather, because didn't you mention he was a veteran? DRK: He's a veteran. You know, again, I mean, I think your higher power leads you where you're supposed to be. I really believe that. And I don't think there's any accidents. So, before the VA, I worked in Charleston Mental Health, County, for the �Delia Rios Chariker 31 State of South Carolina, worked in that for many years, working with all different populations, kids, all different mental issues from schizophrenia to everything. And I was doing that for the state, and when you work for the state, you only get paid to a certain level and then there's no raises. There's no promotions. It's just you're stuck at a certain level. And, again, divine intervention came about, and my coworker, who is a nurse, got a job at the VA. Well, she said, "Delia, you ought to apply to the VA." And I said, "Well, I never thought about that. I thought you had to be military to apply." I didn't know it was just civilians. I just didn't know. So, I applied and got in. And what's so funny is I slid in under the door, because the door got closed after I got in, because I don't have a license in counseling, but I have my master's in counseling. But I didn't get my license. I got my certification in music therapy, but I didn't have to have a license to get a job as a counselor at the VA, a substance-abuse counselor. I said, "Well, that's great. I've got all these years of experience," and blah, blah, blah. But that door closed. Now you have to be a social worker to be at the VA. So, I was kind of the last person (laughs) that got hired in mental health that way. Even the LPC counselor, even licensed ones aren't hired at the VA, which they don't hire LPCs. I think that's changing, which is good, Licensed Professional Counselors. I don't know — are you all in that program, anybody? No? Okay. So, after that door I slid in under there, that's how I started working with the veterans. And it, again, divine intervention. It's been great. I'm happy that I've been able to do it. I've learned a lot about military culture, which is so great. DJ: Now, you're still working for the VA? �Delia Rios Chariker 32 DRK: Well, the Vet Center is under the VA. The umbrella is the VA, and we're underneath it. We're a branch of it, the Vet Centers. The way that we're different is that we are free counseling for veterans and their families. And they have to be combat veterans or sexual-trauma veterans. We can do some humanitarian stuff for three or four visits for different serious situations. So, we help the vets readjust to civilian life. We help vets navigate the VA system, because there's a lot of—and you need to know this, too. If you're in the military, make sure you go, if you stay in the military, to keep all your medical records, to make sure if you go and sneeze and have to go to the infirmary for that, that is documented, because as you age and get older, those things can be used to help you. And especially all this stuff that vets get exposed to in combat, you know. Who knows how that's going to play out for all my guys, all you guys. You can get compensated for it medically and financially, if it's in your record. So, that's a thing to always know. So, I always tell the vets that. (laughs) So, we do a lot of outreach events, too. So, I like working for the Vet Center a little bit better than the VA, because I don't have to just work with alcoholics. I can work with like everybody, you know. I mean, I love my drug addicts and alcoholics, but after a while, it's just one thing you're working on. DJ: Have you seen any changes in the VA in recent years? I know there was a lot of controversy in like 2010, 2012 about the VA backing up people and all that. Have you seen any changes? DRK: I do. I mean, the public doesn't get to see a lot, and I know there's still a lot of work to go, but they are making changes to try to better customer service. More and �Delia Rios Chariker 33 more, we're always getting these, you know, emails or trainings that, you know, about customer service and all these things that they're trying to provide. But there's a lot of red tape. I think that creates a lot of obstacles. Customer service still is a problem, I think. But I've heard, some guy, he came from, was it New York or Massachusetts? He said he loved the VA. And we'll still hear guys here, "We love the VA. It's always helped us." And I'll hear people complain, "Well, they're such assholes. They never do this and never do that." But sometimes that's their personality, because, you know. LB: Right. That's everywhere, too. DRK: You know, it's everywhere. DJ: Well, I've heard very good things about the Charleston VA. DRK: It's one of the best in the country, yeah. DJ: I've never heard any complaints about it. DRK: Good. Yeah. That's good to know, because it works hard at trying to keep, to change and meet the veterans' needs. But there's so many veterans that are coming back right now. I don't know that they're hiring. They can't keep up with enough staff. The VA now is hiring tele-mental-health people, which means people that are out in the rural areas or whatever being able to be counseled through television, tele-mental-health kind of thing. DJ: Oh, wow. Okay. DRK: Yeah. And they're hiring more people for that, more clinicians for that one. And it actually, you wouldn't think, well, gosh, you know, I'd rather talk to somebody one-on-one, but in some ways, it works better for them, so you never know. DJ: They don't want that interaction. �Delia Rios Chariker 34 DRK: Yeah. In a way, there's this nice, I think, safety from it, maybe. And I just recently started in McClellanville doing an outreach clinic there trying to get veterans that are living way out that way, though, because a lot of them still don't want to come to the VA. They don't trust the VA. They don't want the traffic to Charleston, whatever they got. And slowly starting to, I hope, open doors that way. Yeah. LB: So, this is just a personal question that I wanted to know. What kind of work did your partner do in the Army? DRK: Where they have that specialty clearance. She did radio communications stuff. DJ: Oh, Signal Corps. DRK: I guess that's what it was, yeah. DJ: Signal Corps. DRK: Yeah, she had top clearance or some kind of secret clearance, whatever. Yeah, so, she did that. Yeah. She really liked it, yeah. You know, and not to put her business out there, but I think her sexuality got in the way, and so she left, had to leave early. It's sad, because she really wanted to make it a career. And so, yeah, that's been tough. But I finally got her back into the VA to get service. I said, "You're eligible. I mean, you did more than 90 days, you know." My brother, couldn't get him to go. Finally, he went in, you know. A lot of people don't know they can get services, and they'll say, "Well, they already said I make too much money." I said, "Well, yeah, but now you lost your job and you don't make." And so, people can, if they have a change in income or things like that. Yeah. The military is something. I'm meeting a lot of veterans, �Delia Rios Chariker 35 too. It's like it blows my mind. (laughs) They're everywhere! (laughs) In a good way, though, I think, and I feel bad for younger ones that don't know that they can get more help, you know. So. Oh, moving this way? Okay. Oh! (laughs) LB: So, I guess just what kind of work does she do now? Is she kind of in with the veteran program, or does she just kind of do her own thing? DRK: She's at Roper Hospital. LB: Okay, you did mention that. Yeah. DRK: She's a cardiac ultrasound, sonographer I guess they call it. Yeah, so, that's what she does. Yep. She's been doing that for thirty-something years, I guess. LB: Oh, wow. She likes it there? DRK: She likes it there a lot, yeah. So, she's been doing that, and she's good. (laughs) Yeah. DJ: Now, when will your next CD be coming out? I'm just curious. DRK: When will it be out? I'm hoping by the end of the year. DJ: By the end of the year? DRK: Yeah. It's a — recording studio cost is — DJ: Is it going through the same CD company? DRK: I wanted it to, but my guy that I recorded the first one with, his studio is getting rebuilt. So, I'm going to try another studio. But I just met the guy recently. But sixty-five bucks an hour to record, so I have to kind of do it maybe a little bit at a time kind of thing, yeah, because, you know, recording a song, you could record a song, but then you listen to it and go, oh, I should add this instrument, or I don't like the way I did �Delia Rios Chariker 36 this, you know. It can get tedious that way, second-guessing yourself. DJ: Or if your voice is a little off-pitch and you're like, I don't like how that DRK: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. DJ: You say the end of a word differently and you're just, okay, I have to redo the entire thing. DRK: I know! LB: The whole session. (laughs) DRK: The whole session. Yeah, it's crazy, because you can rehearse a song a certain way, and then you perform it, it's like, whoa, where did that come from, you know? So, I'm hoping by the end of the year. Thanks for asking, though. Yeah. It's exciting. Well, I hope you guys keep up creatively, keep something creative in your life: art, sports, whatever, music. Yeah. DJ: I'm stuck with music. DRK: Oh, good! Good. Stuck with music. I love that! Me, too, doggone it. (laughs) It's the best thing, though. It's good medicine. Do you do any? CM: I do visual arts, but I've always wanted to learn guitar, but I just haven't really put the time into it, though. But I — there's nothing I love more than seeing live music. DRK: Oh, yeah, yeah. CM: I can do a lot of music festivals. LB: And Charleston is such a cool place for that, too. DRK: Oh, yeah. There's a lot of good music around here. It's growing, too, because when I was first starting in the music scene, there wasn't that much, you know, �Delia Rios Chariker 37 and now it's like all over the place. And so, it's great to see. And that was the one thing in California when I went there. They don't pay you to play. Nashville doesn't pay you to play. You come to Charleston, they will pay you to play, which is nice. So, you can get some gigs and get paid for it. So, I like that about Charleston. DJ: What music do you like listening to? I mean, I know you like to sing folk and all that, but — . DRK: I actually, I like really good, soulful gospel stuff. I love The Neville Brothers. I don't know if you've ever heard of them. They're a good New Orleans band. I love them. Alicia Keys, I like her. I like anything with a little gutsy kind of thing. Etta James. Bonnie Raitt. I love Bonnie Raitt. And then I like stuff that have a really good message. I like John Prine a lot. I like the Eagles. I like a lot of different styles of music. Yeah. DJ: My dad loves the Eagles. DRK: Your dad? I love the Eagles, too. And my buddy, Neil Young. Yeah, yeah, I like Neil Young, yeah. Yeah, man. So, that's cool. LB: I always ask this question whenever an artist comes in here and I get a chance to. If you could do a collaboration song with any artist of your choice, who would you pick? DRK: That's a good question. That is a great question. Who would I do? I would like to sing with Bonnie Raitt. I'd like to do a harmony piece with her. And — oh, gosh, who was it, really, the other night? I said, "Man, that would be so cool to sing with her." It wasn't Adele. I like Adele stuff, too, but... Oh, man. I can't remember who it was now. Oh! Nina Simone. I'd like to do something with her. I like Nina Simone. Yeah. That's one �Delia Rios Chariker 38 collaboration. LB: Oh, it's that song, just to see what people say? DRK: Yeah, there's a lot of good musicians. Yeah. John Legend, I like him a lot, too. Yeah, he does — yeah, there's some great music, musicians out there now. I laugh now, because my mom... what was it? We were listening to a song the other day, and she said, "Oh, I like that song." It was a Maroon 5 song. I said, "You like Maroon 5?" (laughs) LB: (laughs) DRK: "Yeah, I really love that song." She was going like that. My mom and I, that's the one thing I got to say. My mom and I, we connect musically in a way that gives a way to talk to each other, versus saying, "Oh, how are you doing today?" She and I connect through our music. And she'll say to me, because it's hard for her to talk about feelings, she'll say, "This song reminds me of you," or, "This song is what I feel about you." There's that one, Bette Midler. I love Better Midler. I would love to sing with her. The one about (sings) "Did you ever know you were my hero?" (speaks) That song? Oh, gosh, what's the name of that song? Anyway, she'll tell me, "That song reminds me of you." LB: Wow. DRK: You know, and that's... I'm sorry. (laughs) But that's what, you know, that's what music does, you know. It really hits you in a part that, mm! DJ: So, does your family still live in South Carolina? DRK: Yeah. My mom still lives in Clover. My dad still lives in Clover. And then my brothers all over. So, yeah. (sighs) Yeah, it's that music thing. Mm, mm, mm. (laughs) �Delia Rios Chariker 39 DJ: So, does anyone have any other questions? CM: I don't think so. LB: I think I've got mine covered. DJ: I don't think so, either. DRK: How many have you all interviewed? How many musicians? LB: We've done. DJ: About one a week. LB: Yeah. We usually dedicated Thursdays to interviewing. It really just depends, and now that we're getting down to finals, this is actually part of our final project. So, we have to write a paper on you now. DRK: Oh! DJ: I have to go out. I have to go ask him how to teach me how to shut that off, so. DRK: Oh, okay. (laughs) LB: I'll go ahead and have you do this. Just I'll let you read it and look over it. It's just basically that we can make a copy of that and use it and write a paper on you, if it's okay. DRK: Sure, yeah. CM: Yeah, we must have done, I think, like five or six artists. LB: Yeah. DRK: Wow. Yeah. Yeah, all different experiences, I'm sure. Do you want me to put my... LB: Yeah, you'll be on the left. �40 Delia Rios Chariker DRK: Right here? Right here? Right here. LB: Yep. DRK: Yeah, and it's funny, because I... over the years, it's like, oh, yeah, I know that guy. Oh, yeah, I remember that guy. (laughs) So, right here, too, on top? LB: Yeah, just write your full name on the top, so we can — yeah. So, you're part of our final paper. DRK: Yay! Well, I hope you got something out of it. (laughs) And address too, or no? LB: Do we need that part? CM: I'm not sure. I don't think. LB: Put it down just in case, but I don't think we'll need that. DRK: So, what are you all going to be doing? What's your — LB: I'm also criminal justice. DRK: All right. End of recording. Edited ML 8/17/2018 � https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/e928cc636c596f696c4b699b44ba3e95.mp3?Expires=1777507200&Signature=kSuUq5f7R8l8-DiHzpNDF9o2ztG2xmTdwTqn8U07GLbffa5jmfQ37tBR%7E40wNxI2HdL8b3T2OsqzJFkaDcULVGH9hUVNa67AA0sjherPqjbyOW4KHSO8oQ2znvghRgMOSgiIjGEZ8tKCQN78BB4dACxSMQy9-lCf4Mn0dJSwt3pTaPimaPR7swKt8sUL9dj5rJk7ITi4uAKCjnILlrBrX7wBgnOBCq%7EUQ1dKZUdPVJID3L-rgA5bWQaav9eXY%7EBViVNDhrSgUCnVMhFO9HQ9UF%7Eef0rNtlO1mMXgPomamG%7EVoQcYT1LyQsFdfWuTrUU-4G56yyuajSH3%7E2o46fwX9w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM dd724a9df0cb7da25e123229352c575f https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/71b35ec15802c41ab3f84357c026ef6a.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=GtdJXEFH0kDCcueWoojxrMS2gmvwNLu5RQ-Snzi2KpE79oJDnW4M%7EJ-EqAp2kdUMs7K9P4r9B3hBe%7EZ%7EodPXK5FcyX4pixFt1sYFUqg1D6-0Kse7llhftSmPPspCtFeKKxzwD5sWBsTV5AsOEOtGf8FjQP4IUelChC-wmsqY-duqBnFNmEFkPjtKt-uwvCD-NR555bYqFtLVX2E9S4b-bUb0rFbzQSyb87aoKWYE6b%7Ed%7EjzFKHfH0Hr958BcaYRHoYjn1ar8H1qb3tHhUYg4NvM3YgvMBX5PZmzNbt0IZkJGOT6620DhJx6g5du8lr2IvTTKXAfIZ-j6KowliEXHHA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM af5267f4c52016481f32f34aa1c3a1d1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource The oral histories in this collection were produced by The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel. Founded in 2008, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel seeks to deepen understanding of the Lowcountry’s rich history and culture through the gathering and presentation of recorded memories from area residents.<br /><h3>Search Tips</h3> Interviews may be browsed by scrolling to the bottom of this page and selecting "View all items".<br /><br />When using the search bar, we recommend putting quotations around your search term, and selecting the Boolean search option, as illustrated here:<br /><p><img src="https://gdurl.com/aYPj" alt="aYPj" /><br /><br />To view interviews of a specific theme, please see the search tips in each series below.</p> <h3><strong>The Citadel in War and in Peace<br /></strong></h3> With generous support from the <a href="http://www.schumanities.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Humanities Council of South Carolina</a>, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel collected thirty interviews with Citadel alumni regarding their experiences during WWII. Journalist and historian Jack Bass conducted the interviews during the Fall of 2008.They serve as a powerful testament to the veterans' experiences and their critical contributions to the war effort.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- World War II"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Korean War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Vietnam War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The Second Gulf War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The War in Afghanistan"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Working Charleston</strong></h3> Working Charleston documents the on and off job experiences of the longshoremen and lawyers, the bartenders and carriage drivers, hospital aides and high tech workers who make Charleston among the nation's prime tourist destinations and vital centers of global trade.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"Working Charleston"</li> <li>"Charleston City Workers"</li> <li>"Lowcountry Foodways"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</strong></h3> <span><span>These interviews explore how community activism continues to shape modern life in the South.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /></span></span> <ul><li>"Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</li> <li>"Civil rights movement--South Carolina"</li> <li>"African Americans--Civil Rights--South Carolina--Charleston"</li> </ul><a target="_blank" href="https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/193" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a> <h3><strong>Las Voces del Lowcountry</strong></h3> <span><span>This project is designed to raise the profile of the Hispanic/Latinos who call the Lowcountry home and to promote a rational and humane conversation regarding immigration, education, and employment policies.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:<br /></em></span></span> <ul><li>"Las Voces del Lowcountry"</li> <li>"Latin Americans--Southern States"</li> <li>"Hispanic Americans--Southern States"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Women in World War II</strong></h3> <em>*To search this series, type "Women in World War II" into the search bar, using the Boolean search option.<br /></em> <ul><li>"Women in World War II"</li> <li>"Women--Employment History"</li> <li>"World War, 1939-1945--Participation, female"</li> </ul> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Laura R. Brown Dennis R. Joyner Cody C. Mahen Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Delia Chariker Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1 hour Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History of Delia Chariker, interviewed by Laura R. Brown, Dennis R. Joyner and Cody C. Mahen, 18 April, 2017 Subject The topic of the resource Women musicians--United States Music therapists Description An account of the resource Delia Chariker was born in Kingsville, Texas and she moved to Clover, South Carolina when she was two. Her earliest musical memories relate to her mother’s big playful and musical family. She learned to play guitar when she was in high school. She attended college in North Carolina and after that she moved around the country, playing in Nashville and California. However, making a living as a musician proved to be a struggle and she returned to school to obtain a Masters in music therapy. She reflects about being a working musician and states this is one of the most rewarding times of her career: She is able to make a living creating music with her veteran clients and plays around town with her musician friends. Animas, her solo album, reflects Chariker’s deep connection with her Native American spirituality roots. At the time of the interview, Chariker was employed at the Ralph H. Johnson Veterans Affair Medical Center and was the Music Director at Unitarian Church in Mt Pleasant. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Working Charleston Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Citadel Archives & Museum Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Materials in The Citadel Archives & Museum Digital Collections are intended for educational and research use. The user assumes all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of copyright. For more information contact The Citadel Archives & Museum, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, 29409. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/625 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Charleston (S.C.) https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/db9833642c58bcea1bab5111b8f256a1.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=pG6eoha1-bX4E6kCRxTBiG4Bp6TjeBQTYiu6j3VqyRlby-tdTpkmjAC-e%7ESBDbzH4K4K7PCXIUu9e1yJ-RtY%7E6eMkF33ikTIOsZZlAGn2KcYVk1c3duIWc8c7VFTA8KQPItugzp3IX-55I085BP4YfhnNIS6q1LI1x6oWvg3sJZbpg3Ra6LXuKuS3N5idLDySVG9EL4zWjzR6FhF17SwsaR3cb08dNCO9amsP51KxiIwIkR-uf8LG6OfkofqjJQXIyzAusK6hbiyBNk6Tt7HRIZ--mWi3ZvRfubaxyXUzYJEzVrBfj7GjM-RgF2JIY50su-osjUgwHbxWfGh08EQqw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 748a86d8fd218d9d76c4604b3afd5374 PDF Text Text TRANSCRIPT - CLELIA REARDON Interviewee: CLELIA REARDON Interviewer: JONATHAN TAYLOR, WILLIAM VAUGNH, JEREMY GIBBONS Interview Date: APRIL 18, 2017 Location: CHARLESTON Length: 67 min. WILLIAM VAUGNH: Good morning ma’am, I’m Cadet Vaugnh Greenville, South Carolina and I’ll be handling kind of your early life and how you got involved in music. For the sake of the recording, can you state your full name and where you were born? CLELIA REARDON: Clelia Hand Reardon and I was born in Huntsville, Alabama. WV: Can you tell us a little bit about your family background and if any of your family members like parents or siblings, were they involved with music? CR: My father was an engineer and he worked at NASA when I was born on the rocket ships and von Braun was his boss as a matter of fact. He had a guitar, he wanted to play guitar. He took a few lessons, he didn’t really get accomplished on it. It was his guitar that I got started with. My mom and all the females on her side of the family were pretty much required to take piano, so I started piano when I was in the first grade. My sister became accomplished on several instruments and was a band director and a choir director and a general music teacher here at the Creative Arts School in Charleston. WV: Do you have, or can you recall first musical memory? CR: Yeah, I probably could. My first introductory to string instruments, which is �Clelia Reardon 2 my specialty, I was at a church Sunday school, maybe I was in kindergarten and my aunt was leading it. She was a musician as well. She had this thing called an autoharp. It was one of those string instruments that you press the button and you strike across and it makes a chord. When she did that I was fascinated and when she went on to crafts I didn’t want to leave that little string thing, so I think it’s her fault that I became a guitarist. WV: What was it like growing up in Charleston? You grew up in Charleston, correct? CR: Yeah, I’ve been here since the first grade, so it really is home to me. WV: Did that have any kind of impact on your musical career? CR: Yeah, absolutely. There were two people that were really big in the music teaching field then. A guy by the name of Fred Sabback and he became my musical partner later when I got a studio and Leonard School of Music. He came to the high school that I went to, which was First Baptist, downtown. He had to teach the third-grade little song flute things and he tested everybody for band instruments and my sister, by then, was already playing flute and I wanted to play something. So, he put me on clarinet. I don’t know how he put up with me for three years on that squeaky squawky thing. WV: Did you have a particular vision as a kid? CR: Once I hit the guitar. It’s like the minute I played it. I was thirteen years old and I remember going to my mom and telling her that I was going to grow up and be a classical guitarist. I was very specific. My mom was like sure, that’s good honey, okay. She remembers me going to her saying this is it mom, I’m telling you, this is what I’m going to do. The minute I played it, I knew. �Clelia Reardon 3 WV: What kind of got you started on the guitar? Did anything influence you? CR: Well, John Denver was pretty hot, so I’d have to give him some kudos. But, the fact that my dad had it in the corner. We were not supposed to touch it. He wasn’t around and I’d touch it all the time. One day I felt his ominous presence at the door and I thought oh man I’m going to get in trouble. But, I guess because I was being very respectful to it he was like do you want to take some lessons on that thing? Yeah. He had two albums, one was a Segovia album and another one was a Montoya album which is a flamenco guitarist. I would have to say that that influenced me into wanting to be a classical guitarist because I heard it and I just knew that that was much harder. It was a different sound and I wanted to be able to do that. WV: Did you have any other early life musical influences? CR: My mother was such a good pianist she could have been concert pianist. My grandmother also played piano. My aunt sang really well. I would say I don’t think I can even remember a memory without music in it. It was such a second nature thing. WV: Tell us a little bit about your experience and classical training and how you got started in the classical music area? CR: I went to Leonard School of Music and it was a while before they actually had a classic guitarist. Back then, they were just very few and hard to come by. I had some other teachers teaching me guitar, but they were not really specialized in classical guitar. Finally, this guy moved to town and I signed up immediately. I remember going into his class, he says okay what you want to learn. I was like I would like to learn classical guitar. He sees this teenager and he goes �Clelia Reardon 4 oh yeah, right, what do you mean? Later he said I thought you were going to say James Taylor or something like that, but you came up with the Segovia, Montoya thing and he freaked out and ran out the room and came back with a stack of books and slammed them down and said okay, let’s get started. That was it. He knew I was really serious right then. I knew what I was talking about. WV: Thank you. JT: Good morning ma’am. My name is Johnathan Taylor. I am from Charlotte, North Carolina. I am going to be talking for the second portion of these questions. One question that I do have, going back to your dad working at NASA. You said he was pretty much busy a lot, I’d assume, working. CR: Oh yeah. He never talked about his job ever. It wasn’t until the movie Apollo 12 came out that I really started grilling him. Like dad is that one of your rocket ships, is that one of your rocket ships? He finally relented and I got this little children’s book on rocket ships and I said was that one? I know it was the Saturn. Wasn’t it the Saturn? Finally, he corrected the children’s book and the engineer that he was. He started telling me about the rocket ships that he worked on. The detail, the math side of the brain is the same side as music. I think that’s why a lot of mathematicians are drawn to that kind of thing. I think it helps their field. I know Einstein, they say, he came up with the theory while he was playing his violin because it relaxed him to really kind of think about it. JT: Did you have any aspirations of pursuing science like your father did, or was a musical career something that you kind of always wanted to do? CR: I think I had a doctor one time call me an extreme right brain. I was always a �Clelia Reardon 5 creative child. My dad, actually, was very creative too. He did these little ships in bottles. He was always doing some kind of little craft thing. My mom was a visual artist. So, I was surrounded by the arts and was encouraged to be creative. I wish I could say I was better in science class than I was, but I know for sure that I got his fingers and thankful for that. These long fingers can reach places that those little short fingers can't. His math brain, I think. In music, I can pick out patterns and it’s like that pattern becomes a word. You put those patterns together, the word makes a sentence, and the sentence becomes a song. I think science is in there too for sure. JT: With your dad being really busy with NASA, would you say that you playing his guitar kind of brought your relationship together as in he’s gone, but his guitar is still here? So, still having that connection, I guess. CR: I’ve always said I was my father’s child. I think a lot like him. I have his organizational skills. If you come into my studio my albums or my CDs are in alphabetical order so that I can find them. The music magazines have been cataloged so I can find the songs really quickly. I am positive that I wanted to please my father. I think that’s the first inkling of wanting to be a classical guitarist. JT: Can you kind of describe your transition from early school over to you starting to get into music a little bit more professionally? CR: It was immediate. I am that kind of personality that once I find something I won't say I’m compulsive about it, but I certainly put my whole self into it. When I really decided to dedicate myself to it my teacher was like okay you’re going to practice six hours a night. I was like I can do that. I can do that. �Clelia Reardon 6 Hour on scales and hour on this. Really taking it seriously. At the same time, I was part of the jazz band that was at Leonard School of Music. I started taking other styles of music as well, so I had to get really organized with my time. I started playing when I was thirteen. By the time I was sixteen I was playing professionally and getting paid to do it. But, because I had taken from different teachers and different styles and had that different background I was playing with jazz bands. When you can read scores like that then Broadway people learn about that and so I started doing some of the local Broadway shows. Then the choirs, a lot of the churches, again, if they find out you are a classical anything please come play at our church. Yeah, sure, okay. So, I had a lot of experience there and the fact that my sister played flute, we did a lot of solo performances out as well. The next thing you know I’m out doing classical guitar things. I remember in high school at one time being with four different bands at the same time. I don’t know how I got my homework done, I seriously don’t know how I did it. JT: Awesome. Also, we all took a look at your website that you have and I read your bio. You have in there that you perform at some weddings sometimes. Do you have a memorable wedding that you’ve performed at? Maybe something that is really special to you? CR: I started a notebook years ago because funny things happen at weddings, especially if you’re an outdoor musician which is what I really specialize in. I’ve got the equipment to go out on these plantations. I was trying to think all the crazy things that have happened, but good ideas too. I remember one morning my trio worked at �Clelia Reardon 7 Middleton Place and if a bride called there she got us. This particular bride wanted a sunrise kind of wedding, again, musicians are not early people. We had to get there so early that we had to go in a back way to get in. I remember going down this crazy dirt road to get where we needed to get. Luckily, I knew the plantation really well, but I get there early and it’s beautiful and you can hear the little whippy-whippy birds in the background. The girl that ran it there she was setting up the chairs. I was setting up my equipment and all of a sudden, we heard this crazy growling sound. We both stopped what we were doing and looked at each other like uh that’s a bobcat. I said I think that bobcat is not happy that we are out here this morning. She says uh. We kind of got a little closer together and I said don’t worry, I have a guitar and it makes a pretty good weapon if we need one. I can just see me batting a bobcat across the plantation. I’ve had a lot of great weddings and a lot of inspirational things happen at weddings. I love doing weddings. JT: Have you ever played at a family member’s wedding or a best friend’s wedding? CR: Sure, yeah. Especially friends if they find out. I think some of my favorite ones are when my students got married. They took guitar from me and I said okay just remember when you’re ready to get married come back and I’ll do your wedding and they remember and they do. They come back. I say okay, this is my gift to you. This is my wedding present. They go oh no. Oh yeah. Those are some of the sweetest ones to me. JT: For your Broadway shows, can you tell us some of the Broadway shows that �Clelia Reardon 8 you’ve worked on? Maybe some of the more famous ones that we might know? CR: Yeah, I’ve done all the little venues, I think, except for the one that’s in Summerville. I’ve done several at the Dock Street Theatre. I’ve done several at the Footlight Players. My most memorable ones are Jesus Christ Superstar which they had a nineteen-piece orchestra which is really rare in Charleston and the fact that it was a little bit more rocked out. The fact that I played multiple instruments, on that one I played bass. I did a lot of Broadway shows on just bass. I think I convinced a couple of directors that that’s all I played. One of the biggest compliments I ever got was from a bass friend. He said oh yeah, you know those guitar players that think they can play bass? At the end of the show he says you weren’t playing that like a guitar player at all. I went well thank you, that’s because I took bass lessons, thank you. There was also a director at the Dock Street Theatre, we did Man of La Mancha twice and the director was the original music director from New York. He had schooled people like Ethel Merman and Robert Goulet, really famous people. He was so hilariously funny though. He’d call me up and said do you think you could do this thing? I was like well, yeah, I think I can do this “thing”. He goes do you mind trying out? I was like of course not. Are you rehearsing? Yeah, we’re rehearsing tonight, you think you can come over here? I was like yeah, sure. I get in there and I open it up and they are about to practice. I say well do you want me to play along. I think that stunned him because I think he thought I was just going to sit there and listen and then get with him later. It turns out that he tried a couple of other guitar players and they could not keep �Clelia Reardon 9 up with the score. It was one of those scores, there were two guitar scores and you kind of had to go between the two scores, but it was one of my favorite shows. So, I knew all the music before I ever got there. I got the job without knowing that this other person just couldn’t handle the situation. That’s why he asked me to come in and try it out. That was a very memorable one. JT: Are there any local Charleston musicians that kind of influenced your career or some good friends that you’ve made while working as a musician here in Charleston? CR: That’s a good question. Influences, wow. I have played with so many really good musicians. They all are inspiring. I remember Lonnie Hamilton, for one, he was in a jazz band that I was in when I was in high school. I just remember being stunned by how incredibly good he was. My first jazz band, I was sixteen and all the guys in there were thirties and forties. That was another one that I had to beat out seven guitar players. I thought well I’m never going to make this. My theory and bass teacher took me. I was like you’re crazy, this is all guys, I’m a girl. Back then girls didn’t play electric guitar. He goes “trust me, just trust me”. They tried me out first, they thought let’s get the girl out of here first. They pulled up “String of Pearls”. Okay, you can't get any harder than String of Pearls. I looked at my teacher and I grinned and he grinned back because that’s something I’ve been playing for quite some time. They go do you mind if we do it up tempo? Yeah, no problems, let’s do it. Ran right through it. They went okay this girl can play. Uh-oh. Okay you sit right there, three guys walked right out. They didn’t even sit down, �Clelia Reardon 10 the minute they heard “String of Pearls” they are out the door. Then the next guy comes and he sits down. We want you both to play. We’re playing along and the guy is getting lost. I kept pointing to where we were because my band director made us sight read all the time which is a very good skill to have. This guy was just lost. I’d just play and point, play and point. He was out of there. We get down to the last guy and the last guy was the bass player’s best friend. I thought okay we’re out of here. They decide you are going to try a solo. This guy was so good, really rip roaring good. I thought I’m out of here. They said no, you’re not out of here, we’ve decided to keep both of you. You’re going to be the lead guitar, you’re going to be the rhythm guitar. I was like yeah. This guy was so good and I watched him all the time thinking gosh I wish I could play lead like this guy. He finally said I’m turning it over to you because I can't read like him. I said yeah, but I can't solo like you, come on you’ve got to stick around. The music community in Charleston it’s pretty small and it’s hard not to run into people that you know. I think I’ve had not too many people that I didn’t like, that I didn’t learn from. Like I was telling him, Roger Bellow is kind of a bluegrass guy and he’s from the Nashville school of thought and he plays multiple instruments. He’s quite the entertainer. I like watching him work a crowd. It’s one thing to be a musician, it’s another to entertain. Shrimp City Slim is another guy, you’ve got to get him in here because he’s a radio announcer and really good. He used to have a CD store on Wentworth Street up near Justine’s. He and I were doing one of those School of the Arts things and he was down the hallway getting the �Clelia Reardon 11 kids to play harmonica and I was down the hall doing hound dog and those kinds of things with the kids. We became friends and I said can you hook me up with some blues stuff? He said yeah come to my shop. I said okay, all the blues I’ve ever heard were all men. I need some songs that I can sing as a female. Oh, I got you, I got you. There’s this girl Koko Taylor, man you’re going to fall in love with her. He gave me this stack of CDs. He was right. You just don’t know how much history or knowledge somebody knows. He just is a walking encyclopedia of blues. I just learned so much from him that I don’t think I’d have gotten into blues as heavily as I did without his influence. You just never know. JT: Going back with Lonnie Hamilton, since he influenced your musical career, he was also an educator, so do you think that definitely he influenced you teaching people how to play guitar as well? CR: Well, he was just so incredibly nice and encouraging. I didn’t come across too many people that weren’t encouraging to me. I don’t know if they just spotted something in me or they were just super nice all the time. I’ve yet to know him in any situation where he was not encouraging to somebody. I think that’s the educator in him, just encouraging, seeing a little seed in there and seeing maybe if I say a little bit of encouragement maybe something will blossom over there. I think most musicians are willing to share what they do. In the jazz band world. I remember when Woody Herman, if you look him up he was extremely big in the big band days. He played through the seventies, I want to say, at least. He came through Charleston and our band director asked if we could go observe a rehearsal and he was �Clelia Reardon 12 like yeah, have the kids bring their instruments. We did and he had us all sit next his musicians and play along with them. Talk about school. You kind of get stunned, star struck. I’m forgetting to play because I’m watching this guy that can really play. He was incredibly encouraging a really nice. A joy to play with. When you get a really good band of really good musicians they spur each other on to play better. This little magic thing happens, it’s hard to describe into words where just a little fire gets combusted. You even walk away and go wow, what just happened there? Where did that come from? JT: I think I’m going to pass off the mic. Thank you, ma’am. JG: Good morning ma’am. My name is Jeremy Gibbons. I’m from Boca Raton, Florida. I actually read that you did some work over at Miami Dade Community College. CR: As a matter of fact, he just called me and I think they are going to have another music festival down there. They’re talking about it, we don’t know when yet, but he wants to know if I want to come work another festival. Yeah, let’s do it. JG: What brought you down there? CR: Well, I’m a member of the Guitar Foundation of America. They do international conventions and competitions. The way it usually works, and we’ve had it twice in Charleston, I worked both of those. While the competition is going on, which is closed door the convention is going on and they have guitar makers which was my part because I have some retail experience they wanted somebody that could get the people that make guitars together and sell music and things like that so the guitar players can go through and purchase those kinds of things. JG: What kind of festival was it? �Clelia Reardon 13 CR: It’s classical guitar. People don’t realize how big classical guitar has gotten. There are several competitions and the money has gotten extremely big. There is a guy at the College of Charleston that placed second and third. These people, even though this is Guitar Foundation of America, these people come from Germany, Japan, China, everywhere to compete. All week long these judges are adjudicating these guitar players. They get down to the last four. Those last four have to play in front of everyone. They get to play one piece of their choosing and one piece that is a set piece. I’ve walked out of some of those competitions going I would hate to be a judge because they were all just brilliant. It starts a career. That person usually ends up going on to be one of the travelling artists that goes out and performs big arenas. JG: Did you ever perform at one of these festivals? Or what do you usually do? CR: Usually they have me organize, but possibly the first year and it wasn’t even called a convention back then. There was a world premier. They got this guy, his name just went out of my head, but he wrote a piece for a guitar orchestra if you will. They had all the major artists on the main stage and then they had us sitting out in the audience and his inspiration was the Amazon forest. So, he had us beating the back of the guitars to do drums and do bird sounds and things like that. That year, I did get to perform as part of that. I was the only one smart enough. I thought gosh we are never going to get this many stars together at one time. There was a little poster, so I run it up to the stage and I had every one of the artists sign the poster. They saw me getting signatures so they though oh, I’m supposed to do it. They all came over and signed it. That’s my awesome memory of that. The �Clelia Reardon 14 competition, I tried out for one and the set piece, I think a Handel piece, no it was a Vivaldi piece. That thing was fifty pages long and you had to memorize it. I was thinking gosh I don’t know about this. I don’t know. It’s good to try out and participate, but the money has gotten so extreme now that I don’t know if I would want that stress. I’d rather go play. And I have. They have three concerts, one is in the morning that would be the up and comers, then they have one in the middle of the day and that’s the more experienced players, and then the ones at night are what we call the super stars. The rock stars of the classical world. JG: A fifty-page sheet of music, how long of a song would that be? CR: That one was, I think, thirteen minutes long. Most concertos they have three movements. You’re talking about fifteen minutes at least. It can be done if the think of the Rodrigo concerto and the Vivaldi concertos and things like that. That one particular one was really hard. It was good to try. JG: You said there is kind of a similar festival that goes on here? CR: No he GFA moves it from one side of the country to the other. I think next year is in California. They’ve had it in San Antonio, Texas. They’ve had it here. It just allows more people to get a little bit more centrally located, but they try to have it at a different spot every year and that’s how it ended up in Miami. I think the festival really became known with me when it came to Charleston the first time, which was in 1999. We worked the festival and the vendors were so happy that somebody here knew retail and knew about them. They were pushing the people to hire me and since then I’ve helped organize that part. They had no list of vendors to contact. They had nothing organized. �Clelia Reardon 15 There go those organization skills again. If I go to Miami again that’s probably what it is. When you work these festivals, you end up doing all kinds of things. When it came to Charleston the second time I ended up working what I call the front desk with another gentleman. We had so many different languages coming through, he spoke five different languages. Thank God for Google Translate on my phone. We had this poor kid and his mom, I think were from Vietnam, and nobody spoke that language. Usually you can grab somebody. It finally dawned on me I had that on my phone and that was the only way we were able to talk to them. They come so far away it doesn’t matter if they speak English or not, they speak guitar. They just sit down and play. You could walk down the hallway at that thing and they’d be trying out guitars. You’d be thinking wow that’s a star and it’s some seventeen-year-old kid just up and comer. It’s fascinating. I’m sure we’ll have in the Charleston again. You just never know. JG: I hope so, I’d like to go to that. CR: It’s really good. Usually Marc Regnier at the College of Charleston, he’s been the host two years in a row. They do have a pretty good program at the College of Charleston and a lot of times his students are playing on the Monday night recitals. I always encourage my students to go to those things and hear some good talent. For somebody to place second in that festival, just incredible. JG: Classical guitar, is that your main genre that you like to focus on? CR: I call myself a guitarist. Originally, I was a classical guitarist. It’s amazing to me, I was thinking the other night, how many people still come over to me and say I have never heard guitar like that because when I play the weddings have turned from classical �Clelia Reardon 16 music into pop music. They would rather hear stuff that they know on the radio. They want to hear it, they don’t want anybody singing it. They want to hear instrumental versions of those things. That’s just as hard because nobody’s singing, I’ve got to do arrangements and depending on the different groups that I have they might want violin, guitar, and cello. I’m the one that usually writes out the arrangement that we do, but it’s just as challenging as the classical music is sometimes to get it like that. Especially, when they ask for Led Zeppelin as a matter of fact. All of my love and they’ve got that guitar solo in the middle and you give it to the violin player. It gets a different sound, but it could be extremely hard to play. JG: At the music festival in Miami you said a lot of people come from all around the world for this classical guitar, how does it differ from country to country. Does it differ really that much? CR: There is always a festival in Germany and Japan. I would say definitely when I’m in Europe it’s more respected than it is here. Here they just think guitar player, over there they think oh a maestro. You just get treated completely different. It’s a shame that they take it more seriously over there than they do over here. They are serious competitors too. I remember one year we had these two Chinese girls and they had similar names and they were both in the running. One thought her name had been called and it hadn’t, it was the other girl. She was devastated, just devastated. We had to actually go out and calm her down because she thought she had to win that competition to further her career or it was over. We had to tell her no this is not the end of the world, there are other competitions. They are people that didn’t place in the competition that are now artists and there are �Clelia Reardon 17 other ones that won the competition that now work at a credit card bank or somewhere. That doesn’t determine it. Sometimes I think depending on the country sometimes it can be a little too much stress. That’s the difference I see when I see competitors coming from different countries is the amount of stress that is on them to win. Yeah, there are a lot. You should look up the GFA website. It’ll give you a little taste of how big that world is. JG: I haven’t had much experience with classic guitar. It’s something I didn’t really know about actually. It’s pretty interesting. CR: I’ve become friends with a lot of the artists and my favorites are the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. You can YouTube them all day. They have websites too. Andy York used to be a member and he writes classical music, but his is kind of contemporary classical music, it’s kind of hard to describe. He did a piece called “Sunburst” that every big star like John Williams and Christopher Parkening, everybody recorded that song. That’s something else right there. You’ve got all these people that play at Carnegie Hall and things like that and they all want your piece. Okay, he’s worth checking out for sure. He’s been through Charleston too. He’s another one. David Russel is another one, originally, he’s from Scotland and now he lives in Spain, but he travels all over the world. He’s a very likable kind of guy. He’s funny. When you go to his concert he’ll tell you a history about that piece and he’ll do a little joke or whatever, but his playing is just above and beyond brilliant. Those are just some of the guys that you should YouTube for sure. JG: I read that you did a tour in Europe, where did you go? �Clelia Reardon 18 CR: I was with a jazz band then. I’ve been to Europe twice. The second time I was studying Celtic music in Scotland and that was awesomeness right there. The first time was with a jazz band and we started in Cologne, Germany and went to Rotterdam; Dijon, France and Paris. We played there for three days. We had our own bus, our own Uhaul, our own translator. We were spoiled rotten for sure. We were actually representing America. It was just an awesome trip. It was very drooling though, we were playing up to four concerts a day. We were catching our sleep on the bus. To this day, if I get on a bus and hear that engine start, I just want to fall asleep, that’s it, that’s my little kitten to go I’m gone. We ended up in Switzerland at the Montreux Jazz Festival that they have there. That was awesome to be a part of that. I remember playing a dome on Lake Geneva and how beautiful that was and how into the music the people were. That was different too. They clap different too. So, you have to get unnerved by that. They might clap together instead of clapping separately. Very respectful which is great, but when you’re not used to something it can unnerve you for a second. JG: Is there any particular memory in the tour of Europe that you have? CR: I remember we recorded an album the last two nights we were there. We played four concerts a day and then we’d go into the recording studio and the guy would start doing levels. They guy was, I guess, German and he was drinking a little beer and by the end of the night he got his levels, but one night he just put them all down and it’s like starting from scratch again. So, we had to get up and do four more concerts the next day and then we had to finish the album and then go catch a flight. There’s a thought, we were doing “Pink Panther”, I think, and that’s a pretty laid back song and I just remember �Clelia Reardon 19 laying my head on my guitar and being very tired. Just seeing the sunrise while we were playing through the window and just wanting to almost fall asleep while we were playing. To this day, it’s the most laid back version of the song I think I’ve ever heard yet it turned out being the best track on the album. JG: Is there any place in Europe that you liked the most to play in? CR: That’s a good question. They were all really good. There was a park in Paris that was great. To me Paris was like New York and Dijon was more like Charleston. So, when we got to Dijon I felt more a kindred spirit there. The attitude was different, people weren’t minding our terrible French or they being super sweet to us. There was one particular memory I have, we had some off time and we were walking the back streets in Rotterdam. We were peering in the window of a guy that did woodwork and he stopped and saw a couple of us. We thought uh. He said no, come. We walked in and he had a map on his wall with all these little tacks and in his broken kind of Dutch he was saying where and handed us a tack. We went over and put a tack in Charleston. South Carolina, I just remember the way he said that. JG: Being really busy just playing music for people and all, what made you want to start teaching people to play? CR: That was pure accident. My teacher had me teach when I was in high school. It was not a good experience. I thought I am never going to teach, this is just not me. These kids are not serious. I just wasn’t mature enough yet, that’s what it was. I think I needed all this �Clelia Reardon 20 experience and I did have some retail experience by the time I was ready to do my studio. I went to work at a little music store and I was doing retail and I really wanted out of the retail thing. Even though I was good at it, I just was done with it. He wanted to take the summer off and he said why don’t you take my students for me this summer? I was like well, okay. It’s money, sure, why not. I did it and it was completely different. It was fun. The students were great and I was thinking okay, must have been me. I thought well yeah, maybe it is time for me to do this. People have bugged me for years to teach them. I thought okay. I started with two days of teaching. I started my student base there. He got some other teachers there including Mr. Sabback, the one we talked about, he got quite a history behind him. He had a group on the Ed Sullivan show in 1957. What was that like? So, he decided to downsize and told us we needed to find another place. I went and I’m not kidding in two days found a place. I called the guy and guy starts laughing. He said hey, do you know who this is? I go no. He goes this is Angie’s dad. In other words, one of my student’s dad. You want to talk about destiny? Telling me where to go. So, I came back and I said Mr. Sabback has two rooms and place for a lobby. He just stuck out his hand and said partner. That’s how I got started. Now I’ve had my studio for ten years on Daniel Street. To get my students I’d go around to the schools and I’d play or I’d give them a free music class. This is the different styles you can play on guitar. This is the history of guitar and it would get some interest. They would come in and want to play lessons. Or, I’d be out performing and somebody would want to take lessons. Then it became word of mouth. I’m one of these �Clelia Reardon 21 people that you can advertise all day, but the best advertisement you can have is your student. I take my teaching pretty seriously. I want it to be fun, but they are a product of me so I do want them to have a good well rounded education, just like I got. I never know. I never know who’s going to do what. I was there for ten years and then I got some other teachers on board and then I ended up on DuPont in the place that I’m in now. I’ve been there for sixteen years. We just celebrated the twenty-sixth anniversary of the studio which is kind of hard to believe. Mr. Sabback he taught three and four generations. I told everybody that’s my inspiration right there, I want to do that. Now, I just started on a second generation. In other words, an old student brought me her son. So, here we go. Second generation. But, I’ve got to go up to four. Got to go up to four to beat Mr. Sabback. Great, great grand kid. He was maybe two months shy of being ninety years old. He didn’t have to teach, he liked to teach. It gave him purpose. He was such a character. He’s somebody to look up for sure. He’s definitely a history of Charleston. I just remember him being a doorway on the lower part of King Street. A door, Sabback School of Music. Really getting the history behind him, he owned several music places. He was one of these teachers that taught everything. I teach a lot of string instruments. Guitar is my main thing. It’s unusual that I teach all styles of guitar, but I also teach bass, mandolin, banjo, ukulele now is very popular. But, this man, he taught everything. You’d know somebody come in and say I want to take trumpet. You teach trumpet Mr. Sabback? Yeah. Drums? Yeah. Violin? Oh certainly. �Clelia Reardon 22 Harmonica? Oh yeah. Accordion? Oh, yes. I’ve done that for years. Okay. You’re the man. JG: Are you trying to broaden your instrument horizon then, maybe try to follow in his footsteps? CR: My band director made us, every summer, take a different instrument. I was thankful for that because it really has given me a lot of knowledge about the different instruments and that’s come in handy when I arrange for other instruments because I know what the ranges are. I know what the limits are. For me, I have to be proficient on that instrument to really want to teach it. When I started playing banjo I just practiced and practiced. There are two different styles of banjo. There is claw hammer which is old style and then there’s a bluegrass style. The bluegrass is what I am, but I am teaching myself the claw hammer and when I get proficient at it that’s when I’m going to teach it. Not until then. My big debut with the Charleston Symphony was on banjo, which I think is hysterical. Tell everybody you go to school for years and years, you practice for years and years on your classic guitar to go play banjo with the Charleston Symphony. That’s a bit of history there. It was for Porgy and Bess which was written about Charleston. If you don’t know much history about that, it’s well worth looking into. JG: What is it called? CR: Porgy and Bess. It’s the show that has “Summertime” and the living is easy, fish are jumping and things like that. It was written about the Gullah history and it has Gullah history in it. It was on Cabbage row. The guy lived across the street so it’s for �Clelia Reardon 23 real. You couldn’t get more Charleston than that particular program. One of the songs is called the Banjo Song on the score, I’m not kidding, I’ve got plenty of nothing. They needed a banjo to go along with the singer that’s signing it. They had to hire somebody that could play banjo and there you go. I almost lost that job thought because we were practicing the spotlight hit me. Spotlights are hot. It popped my banjo head out of sorts and it instantly went out of tune. I thought what do you do? You’re going to sound horrible. So, I sounded horrible for a minute there. I just looked at him and I could tell by the expression on his face this is not going to work. I left and we had one more practice the next day. I thought he’s going to call me and fire me, I’m sure. I don’t know if they tried to call me and I didn’t get them or what, but I walked in and I saw another guy with another banjo sitting next to where I was, but nobody said anything. So, I went over and I sat down. David Stall comes walking in and looks over and starts whispering to a guy and I went oh I’m fired, I know I’m fired. He comes walking straight over to me and he shakes my hand. I said gee Mr. Stall, I’m surprised I’m sitting here because I was sure you were going to fire me. He goes why do you say that? I said well, when the spotlight hit me yesterday and made my banjo go out of tune I sounded horrible, so I’m surprised I’m still sitting here. Because I was so frank with him he said well, I guess we’re just going to have to give you another try then. I said okay. He pulled that song up first for the rehearsal. Of course, I’m going to peg it because that’s just the personality I am. I’ve got to prove to you guys that I can do this. I did and he grins and he smiles and he gives me the old more, more, more. He says okay �Clelia Reardon 24 and that was it, I was able to do it. I thought I’m fired. JG: When did you start playing the banjo? CR: Gosh, probably it’s been over sixteen years for sure. I would say probably twenty years ago. That’s crazy to think about. I was trying to think, how long have I played guitar? I was doing with my calculator last night. I’ve played guitar for forty-three years now and professional forty years. That’s older than most people are old. So, when people come in and they say how long have you played? I say longer than you are old. JG: What got you to start playing the banjo? You wanted to just start going with more string instruments? CR: My dad came across a banjo, but he wanted to tinker with it. So, I thought well, okay, I’ll get my own. One just came walking in the door one day. You want to buy this? Yeah, I do. I purchased it and started playing it. I got some method books and the good thing about being a professional musician, and I emphasize this my students all the time, if you read music you can play multiple instruments. There’s no doubt about it. You’ve already got fifty percent, it’s just where does that note go on this instrument? There is a technique involved too. We’ve got YouTube now. You can get some lessons there. I usually try to find somebody that plays and take a few lessons from them to get the technical aspect because it’s more than just knowing how to play it. You really have to have the right technique to be able to play it. JG: Do you enjoy teaching or performing? �Clelia Reardon 25 CR: That’s a good question. I would say it kind of flips and flops. I really enjoy teaching. I really enjoy teaching. But, when you’re a musician you’ve got to have what I call that performance fix to some degree. Performing with my students is one thing, but challenging myself is another. You don’t have to necessarily, you can always do a recital. You can always find a place to play if you’ve got a concert ready to go around Charleston. That’s a good thing about Charleston. I tell my friends. They were like how many weddings a year do you do? Well, for several years I averaged sixty-four weddings a year. They went what? Are you crazy? They aren’t spread out evenly either. They are seasonal. You might be doing four weddings a weekend for three months and then you’re off and off and then more. It can be stressful too. I fell, I was on my way to play at MUSC. I was on the compound to play at St. Luke’s Chapel for a children’s memorial service of all things. I was coming down the ramp and you know how uneven the sidewalk is downtown. I miss-stepped and fell and broke my wrist in three places on my left hand. I thought great, but I’m in front of a hospital. There you are. Doctors and police were right there. One of the police men was kind of funny. Do you want me to call an ambulance? Dude, ER, right there. Let’s go over there. I was lucky because I got the best plastic surgeon. I got the best physical therapy. But, I had to learn to turn my hand again. But, because I was a guitar player they were like oh man, you’ve got an advantage that most people don’t because you’ve got muscle memory. It’s kind of like you’re an athlete in your left hand. I was like yeah, you get me �Clelia Reardon 26 out of this cast and I guarantee you I’ll do a lot of my own physical therapy. The stress was I had a wedding the next day. I’m in the ER. Am I worried about me? No. I’m sitting there texting everybody I know; can you do this wedding for me tomorrow? I spent a lot of my time covering weddings there. The first time I was thinking boy I’m getting too old for this, maybe I need to retire from doing that. I didn’t have that same feeling with the lessons. Of course, my students were like how are you going to teach if you can't play right now? First of all, I know how to play as long as I can explain to you how to do it that’s the main thing. My piano skills came in handy because I had one of those little keyboards with the rhythms and stuff. I put it over to the side and right handed everything when I needed to give them examples. To make it fun I would do the bass lines and the little drum things. I did the whole Christmas concert like that on this little keyboard thing. They were like okay she’s got it going on. That’s where the extreme right brain comes in, got to get creative and just adapt to the situation. JG: Have you written music before? CR: I have. One of the coolest things that I ever did with the songs, I’ve had a couple cool things. For one of my students’ weddings I wrote a song for her called “From This Day Forward”. It’s one of my better songs. It was just one of those inspirations. There you go, a wedding song. Everybody goes you’ve got to record it. One of these days I will. It’s just something I do for fun. Robert Ivy, who was a director friend in town well known for his dance choreography. He asked me to write something one day he wanted to choreograph. �Clelia Reardon 27 I wrote a piece, I thought I’m going to be as unusual as I can. It was for guitar and soprano saxophone because I had a friend that could play that. You envision what you think he’s going to do, but he didn’t. He did something completely different. It was just the two of us and this one dancer on stage. It was one of my favorite things. Not only did I get to write a piece of music, I got to see it choreographed. I would like to do more writing for sure and I am. JG: Have you recorded any of the ones you’ve written yet? CR: I have recorded some, I just haven’t released them yet. It’s one of those things. I will. I have done a solo classical album and it’s out of print now though and a Christmas album which was easy because I arranged for my students. That was fun because I’d do one part and then I’d do another part and then another part. So, it was like I was playing my own little orchestra parts. The jazz bands, I think seven or eight albums with that. Those are probably still out there somewhere, who knows. You never know. I know he recorded that thing that I did with the dancer with my music. I think it’s on VHS or something. I probably need to take that and get it where I can YouTube it or something. JG: Yeah, digitalize it. CR: For sure, to save it. JG: Since we are closing out. Do you see anything going on in the future, like something you want to do different? Or something in the works? CR: It’s an ever-changing world. You just never know. I just started a bunch of ensembles with my students. I hope they take off because that could be fun. I just never �Clelia Reardon 28 know. I’m open, what I call, to the universe because it has always sent me the next new, cool thing. I’ve just been smart enough to go wait a minute, let me try it, yeah, sure. Write you a piece? Yeah. Choreograph it? Alright. Go to Europe? Okay, I’m on the plane. Or work at Miami festival. Are you interested? Yeah. Let me see, a week of guitar and a nice kind of vacation place, yeah, sure. I never know what the future holds, but I’m open to it whatever it is. JG: Do you guys have any further questions? JT: I have one quick question. How does performing in places like Europe, outside of the country, how does that compare to Charleston? CR: I would say they are more receptive to the classical music, I think. JT: In Europe? CR: Yeah, I think more people come out and participate. They just like music in general and respect it all. They were not very open, when we were in Paris in the park. One of the guys that was on saxophone with us, Bob Belden as a matter of fact, who is from Goose Creek originally and became, I think, a Grammy award winning musician. He had written some kind of contemporary jazz stuff and in the middle of us playing regular jazz things he wanted to play one of those. So, we did and people started walking away. First time I had ever seen them not like something. They were not quite ready for that contemporary kind of sound. We had to go back immediately to the standard stuff. That was really interesting to see that reaction so quick. �Clelia Reardon 29 The minute we started playing the traditional stuff they came back. I thought okay, they don’t like it they tell you immediately. Otherwise, I think enjoyment of music. That’s a cool thing about music, it’s universal. You might not be able to speak that language to that person, but you can play guitar and a lot of the literature is the same. They will shake their head and they will start playing too. That’s the common language right there. I think that’s the cool thing when I go overseas. There’s always something to learn over there. They will do something and we’re like what did you just do? Teach me. JT: I have two questions too if that’s okay? The first question I have is going back along with music festivals. Back in the day music festivals, like the rock ones like Woodstock are pretty much the focus points for American culture. Nowadays electric dance music and also rap festivals like Coachella are the focus point for American culture. Do you think the country is changing for the better or the worse in terms of what music cultures we enjoy? CR: I would say the difference that I am seeing is nowadays it’s like a dance or a particular person signing and the microphones can even fix what they do. The technological aspect has gotten way up there, but that can also detract from learning how to correct yourself. I think it’s a double-edged sword there. But, when there were bands playing, I certainly had more interest in people wanting to play guitar. I have to say when I first started teaching Kurt Cobain did a lot for my musical career. Almost half of my students came in the door wanted to play his music because they saw him write. They saw him write his feelings down. They saw him play guitar. Nowadays it’s very rare. I think everything has to go through phases. �Clelia Reardon 30 It’s no different than going through the disco age and I did that. I thought oh boy, here we go. I remember playing at a place that the floor lit up. That can throw you off too, but it can also be fun. People were really getting up and dancing and having a really good time. I do not have that many people come in and ask for rap music to play on an instrument. So, I wonder where their inspiration is going to come from. I think it’s going to turn around. I look at people like Ed Sheeran, you see him and a guitar generally speaking and that’s it. But, is he using technology? Yeah, he knows how to use that loop pedal. Sure enough. I really am encouraged by him, the fact that he’s writing his own stuff, he’s getting up there and doing his own thing. Yeah, it’s bringing it back where it needs to go. Not just somebody manufacturing a hit. Somebody getting these kids together and calling it a boy band. You can tell that those things die quickly. I think there’s a lot to be said. I remember one of my favorite kind of rap things. When one of the Godzilla movies came out Jay-Z was doing a rap of a Led Zeppelin song and Jimmie Page was playing the guitar part. It was awesome. He did a cover and it was awesome. It’s my favorite version of that Led Zeppelin song. It depends on the artist and their caliber, I think, and their creativity. There’s good and bad in everything. JT: My last question is, do you think Charleston has a unique guitar sound that’s different than other regions around the country? CR: That’s a very good question. Playing for tourists, I started out playing things like the candlelight tours and things. I can't tell you how many people would come up and say, and I tried too, it would be real easy for me to come up with what I call a Charleston �Clelia Reardon 31 sound, put it on a record and really push myself with that. But, there’s not one. There really is not one. So, what did I do? Well, I’m playing in these historic homes and I thought well let me do some history. Okay, these homes were built in the baroque era and the classical era. Let me do some of that music in that home, that way when that tourist comes and says why are you playing that? I can say to them well this song would have been played in this home about that time it was built because that’s the era and how old this home is. I don’t know, sometimes I think when I first started they were thinking I was going to have some Civil War songs. There are such things. They even came up and said are you from here? You don’t sound like you’re from Charleston. What do you mean? You don’t have an accent. What do you mean? My aunt from New Jersey says I have an accent. I guess they were (01:05:45) and all by Gone with the Wind. I said I hate to tell you, but I don’t know anybody that sounds like that. I have cousins who live in Darlington and Dillion. They have a very southern drawl. I don’t think we have a particular sound. I’ve tried to tell tourists the reason for that is because we are a port city. You get a port city and you get a lot of different cultures, you get a lot of different music and it all intermingles with itself. That’s why you can go down the street and hear reggae in one bar, blues in the next bar. That’s the advantage to living here, I think. There’s not a Charleston sound. I’d be rich if there was. I’d have capitalized on that for sure. JT: Awesome. I think that concludes our interview. Thank you so much ma’am. CR: Thank you. I really enjoyed it this morning. �32 Clelia Reardon End of recording. Edited by ML 8/17/2018 � https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/5f77db8fe1c342a5f940205279783510.mp3?Expires=1777507200&Signature=BE5z6VgseBta%7EA7h38wjt26areidClRnA89NLjzgPS4JBI6u4wZwckw0FssGAEGBVyXKC1G%7EOF4h5nsQls8MLhpWakdLEetx4c25j7ECrOKbShNMd2QRBFIbby%7EQxrePM7utDmtYarxvU6zvM6ZRQc8ngM8C807mcaWhWx7ZIYVB3Q9P2DA%7Ep89psmLi7CwY6a3id9s5K21ubN0Wsc7oOKq1w3oTDG4LaJtQpgS7dpuvuqWMg-UiJaLjY%7EFNHddq%7ERuNKV4UTVX7k13GDVDd4V-QpZ6IryefaBF9W120UEajDScqBf5OK7lAHEUv0cjweOr01OT-U3ilNUbOFp9JDw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 0ad11ad7d5c8f15a0dc5d705380f97e1 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/3ba382d35a4fd9c4458b68d3a823df88.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=WVxu5oGLBxeLFyUxQYsaS1%7EUboJX-mTqpBOs3awTvE4qewRhsrsB1xixsbnwKxTnU7gZ47CgzBU3-auiVKnwdoM1Gb2gTg3OLWKifjyTPQ19wvUBYsLx7x1Omu9sKS3IoRo%7Eu91k4XVC8reup-cMFU0QeEdJAsCn4rNOFKT2UbPiwTZujQBQw1W7EwvnxF7FGY487hguAt1pXxeOZVFGUJrLpor218DXYQstOorzi7Ig-bTY6sIl7ck%7EQasc1Miu54F3MRHV0S3AyJpgzVHExsrFKFbmXfYF3LOA96wxdTvDHy14CanYBgNhOk7-Q4jtQzY1oZVwI8etKVvN6lvbiw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f9b2f07fc848ad0e55e358182771ed52 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource The oral histories in this collection were produced by The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel. Founded in 2008, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel seeks to deepen understanding of the Lowcountry’s rich history and culture through the gathering and presentation of recorded memories from area residents.<br /><h3>Search Tips</h3> Interviews may be browsed by scrolling to the bottom of this page and selecting "View all items".<br /><br />When using the search bar, we recommend putting quotations around your search term, and selecting the Boolean search option, as illustrated here:<br /><p><img src="https://gdurl.com/aYPj" alt="aYPj" /><br /><br />To view interviews of a specific theme, please see the search tips in each series below.</p> <h3><strong>The Citadel in War and in Peace<br /></strong></h3> With generous support from the <a href="http://www.schumanities.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Humanities Council of South Carolina</a>, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel collected thirty interviews with Citadel alumni regarding their experiences during WWII. Journalist and historian Jack Bass conducted the interviews during the Fall of 2008.They serve as a powerful testament to the veterans' experiences and their critical contributions to the war effort.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- World War II"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Korean War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Vietnam War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The Second Gulf War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The War in Afghanistan"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Working Charleston</strong></h3> Working Charleston documents the on and off job experiences of the longshoremen and lawyers, the bartenders and carriage drivers, hospital aides and high tech workers who make Charleston among the nation's prime tourist destinations and vital centers of global trade.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"Working Charleston"</li> <li>"Charleston City Workers"</li> <li>"Lowcountry Foodways"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</strong></h3> <span><span>These interviews explore how community activism continues to shape modern life in the South.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /></span></span> <ul><li>"Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</li> <li>"Civil rights movement--South Carolina"</li> <li>"African Americans--Civil Rights--South Carolina--Charleston"</li> </ul><a target="_blank" href="https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/193" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a> <h3><strong>Las Voces del Lowcountry</strong></h3> <span><span>This project is designed to raise the profile of the Hispanic/Latinos who call the Lowcountry home and to promote a rational and humane conversation regarding immigration, education, and employment policies.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:<br /></em></span></span> <ul><li>"Las Voces del Lowcountry"</li> <li>"Latin Americans--Southern States"</li> <li>"Hispanic Americans--Southern States"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Women in World War II</strong></h3> <em>*To search this series, type "Women in World War II" into the search bar, using the Boolean search option.<br /></em> <ul><li>"Women in World War II"</li> <li>"Women--Employment History"</li> <li>"World War, 1939-1945--Participation, female"</li> </ul> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Jeremy K. Gibbons Jonathan J. Taylor William S. Vaughn Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Clelia Reardon Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1 hour, 7 minutes Location The location of the interview Charleston, South Carolina Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History of Clelia Reardon, interviewed by Jeremy K. Gibbons, Jonathan J. Taylor and William S. Vaughn, 18 April, 2017 Subject The topic of the resource Women musicians--United States Guitar player Music entrepreneurship Description An account of the resource Guitarist and entrepreneur Clelia Hand Reardon was born in Huntsville, Alabama. She recalls her beginnings: taking piano lessons when she was in first grade and knowing when she was only thirteen that she wanted to be a classical guitarist. Reardon talks about her mentor and friend, Mr. Fred Sabback, and states he was the biggest influence in her career. In the interview, Reardon reflects about her prolific career as a performer and as a teacher. She remembers her experiences playing in many shows in Charleston including Man of La Mancha, Porgy and Bess, and Jesus Christ Superstar. She also toured Europe twice with a jazz band, and participated in the organization of the Guitar Foundation of America international conventions and competitions. Finally, she reflects about the rewards of her teaching career. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Working Charleston Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Citadel Archives & Museum Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Materials in The Citadel Archives & Museum Digital Collections are intended for educational and research use. The user assumes all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of copyright. For more information contact The Citadel Archives & Museum, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, 29409. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/622 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Charleston (S.C.) https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/ea2eeb13a4a884db3b264e50d0305fa9.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=isUx5ZsAVQhykqPyQQdh1cSE16DIxK-VnjFBTh73rb-taulAnpMqVn6MMIvmPgR5hL45WzbWQLTXUGAED%7ECEU0CJR47JqfOEE-zuXBc21jkdzq1%7ESeR98Gmoud27tFKfneFpyTDC7TC6wHEIhxR5XQzRGJZtsHX4J8o8iH4Of15qmpViYzKBCZl0AE94%7E5wRaETp7nb4yhK25r9NjehVsFQ%7Er%7Ed5p9IMdem6rmgfLdobf8nHqLPN9uF5LrRT4bGHNfj0-7A-sIrjqgaRRfQvlJBfZXpcm9xLH87JcTGEVJcXutwqS9hQezbWIRLS3qA6Uuofk%7EA%7EpmQBTJ6a7ajpBA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b3b7e75472d36875d9c71f061ea72c23 PDF Text Text 1 TRANSCRIPT – LINDSAY HOLLER Interviewee: LINDSAY HOLLER Interviewer: KERRY TAYLOR Interview Date: March 30, 2013 Location: Charleston, South Carolina Length: 119 minutes LINDSAY HOLLER: Looks like an alarm clock. KERRY TAYLOR: Do what? LH: Looks like an alarm clock. KT: Do you have a portable digital equipment that you use, or you use a Zoom or anything? LH: No. No, I really don’t have a lot of recording equipment. I’m not a gear head. KT: Yeah, that’s good. Let others lug it around. LH: Yeah, I mean I lug around other people’s stuff, but I have no compelling desire to collect more stuff. KT: What about you have an idea and you play three chords, and you want to remember then, what do you do? LH: This is me adapting to technology. I use my iPhone now. KT: Okay, which is perfect. LH: It was funny, that was one of the things that prompted me to go ahead and make the change to that type of phone. I thought, oh, that’s too much. I don’t really like the phone to begin with. Then I thought about all these other things that came along you know, and that kind of thing. It’s come in handy with rehearsals, when you’re in a �2 rehearsal and you come up with an idea. And sometimes it’s really hard to either maintain that or remember it later, so that voice memo is such an easy little gadget. KT: Is it a Belkin attachment, the mike that you put on, or no, it goes right into it. LH: I mean I’m not going for quality. I’m definitely just getting like a little glimpse of whatever. KT: The quality is actually probably pretty good. I just had an earlier version of an iPod once, and now it’s probably all built right in. There’s a condenser, I’d imagine. LH: Not bad, but yeah, it’s worked out, and we’ve had to play back before in a rehearsal, and say oh, that’s it, good thing we got that down. It’s huge. KT: What’s your first musical memory? LH: I feel like I blocked out a lot. I remember trying to work my dad’s stereo system when I was younger, to listen to music. And it was kind of complicated, and it was in some sort of thing with a glass door and it always felt dangerous, like I don’t know if I’m allowed in here, but I wanted to work with tapes because I was a little nervous about records. I thought I’d scratch it or something like that. But that was kind of my first memory, and I remember exactly where in my living room, everything was situated. I’d just kind of sit there and listen to what I wanted to hear. But as far as performing goes, I guess my first singing experiences were in church. Yeah, probably. KT: Tell me where and when were you born, and what church? LH: I was actually born here in Charleston. I’m from Moncks Corner, or if you want to get even more specific, Pinopolis--a tiny, tiny little community. And I was born in Charleston September 11, 1976. And yeah, I grew up my whole life in the same town, there was no moving or anything like that, which was I guess kind of nice. I didn't have �3 to deal with that kind of issue. And I was raised Presbyterian. KT: Okay, so family been in Pinopolis a long time? LH: My mother’s side had been in the Moncks Corner area for a long time, and my dad grew up in Columbia and kind of Myrtle Beach. Those were like his primary areas where he grew up. We were all local as far as the state goes, definitely within the south. But my mom’s side of the family was more over there in Moncks Corner. So, that was good for her, yeah. KT: Do you know how they met? LH: Oh, wow, I want to say it might have been a blind date. Both by parents had been previously married, so they had been divorced from their first spouses. And my mom had had my two brothers. So, I think it was kind of cool that my dad you know, was like, you know, didn't faze him about other children or anything like that. But I think it was a blind date if I recall. And my mom had just moved back to Moncks Corner, and my dad, I think he’d moved there to start a law practice. So, they were just kind of settling down their roots there, and I think they met as friends. KT: And the church was important to the family? LH: You know, it was. Most Sundays, we would go to church, and you know, we would say grace during formal meals and that kind of thing. I mean religion wasn’t as prevalent as it could have been. At least with my mother, the older she got, the more important that became to her. But I mean you know, we went to church on Sundays, and my brothers and I probably complained about it, having to get dressed up, do all that kind of stuff. KT: But it gave you the opportunity to sing. �4 LH: It did. Well, I could sing. I’ve always been able to. I can’t remember the first time I ever tried. It was just something I’ve always been able to do. My family has always been very supportive of it. And I don’t come from a musical family. At least my immediate family. I’ve got an aunt and you know, some other people that are musically inclined, but nobody in my family immediately can do anything musically. And they were always encouraging me very strenuously, you know, you can sing. You need to go sing. Go do the choir. I was like okay. KT: I mean you must inherit somebody’s voice because it’s very distinct--even your talking voice is so distinctive. LH: Yeah. I think my dad said on his side, there’s an aunt or somebody who was an opera singer, or a cousin, like a third cousin, something like that, so there’s some music I guess, a couple of steps away. And with my mom’s side of the family, they were all concentrated in the Moncks Corner area, more of a rural south area. And they, from what I understand were really into stringed instruments, guitars, banjoes, mandolins, that kind of thing. And it was frustrating because I realized the older I got and the more interested I became in that, I said well, where are all these instruments now? Where have they gone, because those people are long gone, and I don’t ever remember seeing any of them. So, I wonder if, you know, somebody’s got an attic full of just amazing stuff somewhere, possibly. That was way before I was born, so I was never around that. I just heard stories about that. Now I’ve got an aunt who is a very good piano player, and it’s very interesting because she’s in her late eighties or early nineties, and she just plays by ear primarily. Although, she’ll have sheet music up, she claims she can’t read it. And she �5 almost approaches the piano as a jazz musician. She’s got her independent base line going with her left hand, and she’s doing all kinds of things up here. KT: That’s interesting. LH: She always disregards her talent. She’s like, “Oh, I can’t play.” And I think, you actually are doing something pretty amazing, that a lot of people could never do, generate just kind of a dialogue without really sticking to what’s in front of you. It was funny because she’d always wear these long fake fingernails, and so they would tap. So there was an accompanying tap that was not necessarily in the rhythm, it was just amazing. KT: Her own percussion, huh? LH: Yeah, a really weird auxiliary percussion, her independent charm right there, but she would never acknowledge that she had any kind of talent really. She just enjoyed doing it. KT: What did you listen to as a child? LH: First of all, from my parents. I remember my mom really liked Anne Murray. I had to hear a lot of that. You know, they did okay with the music. I think there was some Motown, and maybe some beach music. I didn't have some spectacular musical epiphany listening to my parents’ collection. KT: So, it sounds like they’re listening to what I might expect a family from Moncks Corner to listen to, just American pop, a little bit of regional beach music. LH: Nothing earth shattering, and my musical taste really started to develop when I was in middle school and high school and all that, I was right there with everybody else, as far as whatever anybody was listening to. I have two older brothers, and the middle �6 one, who I was really close with, or still am, he started trickling down his music to me. And that’s where my taste really started to form and I started to make an effort to go out and seek stuff out, which was probably in high school, I guess. I was a little late to the game I guess. KT: And he was listening to what? LH: He loved the Black Crows, loved them. And got me onto them for a long time. And he also checked out other stuff, but that was a really big thing with him. This is something I always loved to talk about with people, especially in defense of musicians playing covers. I mean I loved to write songs, and that’s an important part to me, but I’ve discovered so much good music through the covers that bands choose, that I like, and I investigate. And the Black Crows really did a huge favor to me by turning me on to Gram Parsons. That’s how I first discovered Gram Parsons, is they would cover a lot of his songs. And they also covered Nick Drake. KT: I didn't know that. Did they ever record any of that, or was that just in live shows? LH: It was in live stuff, and I mean via my brother, we would get in deep to live shows, B-Sides, all kinds of hidden little gems. And Rich Robinson, the guitar playing side of those brothers, he was really into Nick Drake because of the open tunings. He used a lot of open tunings after Keith Richards. So I think like that Nick Drake stuff came up a lot in sound checks and reference points in interviews, and that kind of thing, were like oh, his melodies or whatever . But it led me to go check out Nick Drake, and he’s amazing. KT: So, Nick Drake as a high schooler, or not as a middle schooler. �7 LH: No, that was high school, and that was probably like towards the end of high school. Middle school, I was--you know, whatever was going on. KT: A middle schooler. LH: Yeah, totally. KT: But you didn't sing in like school performances, I mean were you recognized for your voice? LH: In high school, definitely. In middle school, the thing that kind of threw me, because of course, I mean elementary school, you’re not doing a whole lot of stuff. I mean I did whatever any class was required to do. In middle school, my school didn't have a choir. They had a band. There was no singing opportunity in middle school, so I took up the flute. I didn't particularly care for it that much, but I thought it looks easy to carry, why not? I was okay at it. I mean I could get a pretty good tone out of it. Never got to first chair. I got to second quite a bit. I was limited to opportunities. There weren’t a whole lot of opportunities in Moncks Corner, and I wasn’t traveling yet to Charleston to do anything. I just kind of went with that as a musical outlet, and I also took piano lessons. Yeah, my parents started me on that at a very young age. I was lessoned out. I had dance lessons, piano lessons, yeah. And actually, I did a lot of dancing as a younger child. I think they started me going at five, and those are interesting memories. I really just remember costumes more than anything else. And we even had some of our recitals at the Gaillard, which I keep thinking why? Why were we in such a big room? I need to sit down with my mother one day and try to fit the pieces together. KT: Someone had a connection or something? �8 LH: It wasn’t that big of a deal. I don’t know, like a program, a dance program. And they had several classes, and that’s just where they would hold their annual recital, or biannual recital. And my mom loves to tell the story about how we were off to the side getting ready, and she asked me if I was nervous, and I said, “What is nervous?” You know, and so she thinks oh, you’re ready to go. I just didn't know what words meant at that point. I was too young. What do you mean, what is that? So singing didn't really take off for me until I got to high school. And our high school had a pretty substantial choir, chorus situation. KT: This is which high school now? LH: Berkeley. Went to Berkeley Middle, Berkeley High, Berklee College of Music, which was strange. I was going on a Berkeley track, you know, all over the country. But yeah, high school, I really got to get more in-depth with singing. I kind of put the flute down. I started taking lessons, which was a big deal for me. KT: Voice lessons? LH: Yeah. There was a woman in Charleston, my high school choir director, chorus director. My parents approached him and said, “We want to get her lessons. Who do you recommend?” So, he gave my parents some names. And first we tried a lady in Summerville, and it was okay. She was more of music theater. That was definitely more of her thing than singing. And I really wasn’t into theater that much, that aspect of it really didn't appeal to me. She sent me on one audition, and it just terrified me. I thought oh, my God, this is not for me. I don’t even want to be in the theater, you know, I just want to sing. So, we tried another name that was given to my parents, and her name was June �9 Bonner. And she was amazing. She kind of put me on a path. She taught her lessons outside of the Dock Street. And she was a retired opera singer, had done a lot of stuff up in New York, that’s what she did was she taught singing. I mean like she would encourage you if you wanted to go do musical theater, but that was what she did. So, I would go there once a week, I guess it was probably an hour. And she was great. She was just such a strong lady. And she took me on my first trip to New York when I was 13. No, I might have been younger than that. No, I guess I was like 13, and one of her other students, Quiana Parler, was ten--real young. Do you Quiana? KT: No, no. LH: She’s a local jazz singer, jazz and R&B, amazing--she’s been on American Idol and done a lot of stuff. So, June took Quiana, myself and one other girl to New York for a long weekend. We were going to go see a Broadway show, and she’s like, “We’re going to go to this Italian restaurant, and just do the whole New York thing.” And it was amazing, you know, we just had a ball. KT: I bet. LH: Yeah, went and saw Jelly’s Last Jam, which had Gregory Hines and Phylicia Rashad. And I kept thinking that is not Mrs. Cosby because she was a siren. So, when I got back, I kind of fell in love with New York a little bit, and I was like, oh, man, that’s where I want to go. And my parents were not really happy about it, like what are you talking about? But yeah, my singing definitely took off in high school. KT: But do you remember a moment when either somebody told you that you were different, or that you realized, “I have a gift here?” LH: It probably would have been in high school. I mean I always knew I could �10 carry a tune. I mean I could hear that I was in pitch. KT: Harmonize. LH: Yeah. Well, I probably hadn’t messed around with harmonizing that much. It had just been more of kind of getting a hold of my voice and learning what it could do. And that was something that June Bonner really worked with me, was like getting control, doing the fundamental things, like breathing and all the stuff that’s boring. I want to come in and sing songs. Well, you’ve got to do other stuff. And that other stuff has contributed countlessly later, you know, and I can never thank her enough for that. KT: I can imagine yeah, that it sustains you. LH: Yeah. I mean I’ve got a lot of control over my voice, and that’s something that a lot of people comment on, and that was developed then with her. And just also, when it was time for me to pick a college, I had some really, really great choices. I was really lucky enough to have that, and she was very helpful with making the right choice, and yeah. KT: For guitar and songwriting, when does that start? LH: Didn’t start writing songs until real late. Probably after I’d left Berklee College, that’s where I really got exposed to people writing songs. I mean that wasn’t really happening a lot in Moncks Corner. I mean there were a couple people I knew that played instruments, but not a whole lot. There wasn’t like a band scene or anything like that. It’s such a small community. So I really didn't have any kind of experience around that. And then I got to Berklee, and just my mind was blown about possibilities and all this kind of stuff. And that’s where I started thinking about oh, maybe I can write songs. Maybe that’s �11 something I can do. And then guitar just seemed like an easier option than a piano, and I didn't have a piano, and it took me a long time to actually deal with a guitar. Like I had one sitting around for probably two years, that I would just kind of look at, and not put the time in. KT: But you didn't really start concentrating on the guitar till you were like say, nineteen? LH: Yeah, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, yeah. I was not in a rush to play it. It wasn’t some passion thing for me, like oh, give me the guitar. It’s a crutch kind of, a little bit, like I like to have something to do. It’s not something I’m just bullying people to let me do, like I want to play the guitar. That’ll never come out of my mouth. KT: So, when do you go off to Berklee? LH: Right out of high school. KT: So, that’s ’95? LH: ’94. KT: ’94, yeah. LH: Yep, I knew one person in Boston. KT: What was that like going from the small town to the big city? LH: Amazing. I was ready to go to college. I was ready to go to college, probably my sophomore year in high school. KT: Do you remember high school fondly? LH: It was kind of a drag, yeah. I mean I always felt like I thought differently than a lot of the people around me, and yeah, it wasn’t something I felt like oh, this is where I want to be. I’m going to live and die in high school. I was ready to go. �12 KT: So, you were ready to move on. LH: Yeah, and every college choice I had was pretty far away, I knew nobody in any of these choices. But yeah, I went straight from Moncks Corner to Boston, and it was just eye-opening, just a complete 180, not only the environment, I mean obviously with every eighteen-year-old, the freedom, you know, wow, I’m in Boston, and my parents aren’t anywhere. I’m in this extraordinarily prestigious music school, and everywhere I turn, there are just people playing music, you know, just like where am I? KT: Smart, amazing talented people, too, right? LH: Yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, I was okay with that. It wasn’t like pressure. It was like good, let’s do this. I lived in a dorm definitely. And it was right downtown in kind of the Back Bay area of Boston, and that was an interesting experience because it was a boy and girl dorm, like even with the floors. Like, you know, my neighbors were boys. And thankfully, my roommates were girls. And I had an interesting roommate situation. There was a girl named Rakia Diggs. And she was from New Jersey, like I think Orange, New Jersey, or somewhere just like really tough. And she was very conservative, like extraordinarily conservative. Then there was this girl named Cary, and she was from northern Maine, like above Bangor Northern Maine. It was just a crazy mix of people, and then I met some great friends there, and just got exposed to all kinds of stuff I never would have gotten exposed to anywhere else. It was so unbelievable. KT: Was that when you first started playing in a band? LH: No. KT: You didn't play in a band then? �13 LH: Mm-mmm. KT: I mean there must have been constant like pickup sessions. LH: Oh, there were, and I would go and sit and listen. I didn't participate. I’ve never felt the need to jump in. No, not even now. Even now, when I go see some friends play, and they’re like, “Hey, you want to come up and sing a song?” It makes me a little nervous. KT: Really? LH: Yeah, absolutely. I really enjoyed sitting back and just watching a rehearsal, and watching how people interact when you’re not doing a song, and the dynamics. And then I just enjoy watching people play, like that’s what I did primarily my whole year at Berklee. I mean I had my own individual lessons, but I’m not an in-your-face kind of person. Yeah, so I was just kind of absorbing everything, taking it all in. KT: I mean I don’t know. I would just imagine everybody’s like chipping in, that’s it’s almost like a hootenanny sort of spirit. LH: It is, and it was. KT: Or it could be, but you chose just to not worry about it. LH: That’s just kind of my natural inclination is to kind of hang back a little bit, and it weirds people out a lot. It does. They get offended a little bit. I’m like, “Look, it’s nothing personal, I don’t know.” Yeah, it’s weird. But I took in a lot, which was almost more helpful than just ah, look at me, I’m singing. I mean I really observed a lot, and I tried to expose myself to a lot of different style that I’d never come across. I went to my first--I don’t know if you would call it punk or hardcore show, or something ever, when I was up there with a friend of mine. And it was just eye-opening. I was like, “Yeah, let’s �14 go.” They didn't think I wanted to go, and I said, “Sure, I want to go check this out.” So, it was beneficial in that respect. KT: They were surprised that you wanted to come along because what, they identified you as a different sort of vocalist? LH: I was one of the southern girls? KT: So, what were you supposed to say? LH: Demure, I don’t know, stuff. Well, you know, I mean there were a lot of mix of backgrounds, geographically speaking, and just in general in almost every respect. I mean it wasn’t like a situation with College of Charleston, or USC or Clemson, where there are a lot of people you know going to the school, so you’ve already got built-in relationships. I mean we’re all coming from different places. And there are a lot of preconceived notions. Oh, she’s from some hick town in the south, she’s not going to dig a punk show. KT: Would they have thought of you as a country person? LH: No, in fact, I hated country music at that point. And I associated country music with Nashville pop. I had not discovered the difference. I was kind of more into jazz. KT: Okay, jazz vocalist. LH: If you were to ask me at that point what my singing style is, that would have been that. KT: Which still comes through, I think. LH: Yeah, yeah, it does. But the thing that I didn't like about Berklee is they kept trying to push me towards R&B. And I was really resistant to that, to the point where I’m �15 not coming back. I’m not going to pay this much money and you keep pigeonholing me in something I don’t want to do. KT: They do that with their students, huh, they really try to what, like market you? LH: Groom you, and you know. KT: It’s very professionally oriented in that sense? LH: Kind of. It’s funny, I had an instance at the College of Charleston, where I ended up graduating, where I had to sit down in front of some administrative people, general, and within the music department, and I said, “Look, I’ve had an opportunity to go to one of the most prestigious colleges of music in the country, and I finished my time out here, and I value my time here one hundred percent more than I ever would have if I’d finished out at Berklee.” Berklee, you meet a lot of people, you make a lot of contacts. You have a lot of great life experiences, I mean with the College of Charleston, I knew my professors were kind of invested in what I was doing. And they were giving me opportunities to come out in a real live situation and sing some songs, and do some stuff. I don’t know if I would have ever gotten that if I had stayed all the way through Berklee, you know. It was just kind of like a process dynamic, like here you are, you’re in the machine. You paid a lot of money to get here. Go through the steps and good luck on the way out. KT: Do you think that’s kind of what’s driving that because tuition is so high, they almost feel like obligated to make sure that you graduate with some marketable skills, or what? LH: I don’t know what their situation is. Now back when I was there, there was a �16 very alarming statistic, where seventy percent of their freshmen didn't come back. I don’t know if it’s the same way now because it’s almost twenty years, but that was a viable statistic, from what I understood. I mean from all the people that I know that I was there with that first year, I only know two or three that did finish the program and graduate. KT: How long did you stay? LH: A year. KT: Just a year, okay. LH: Yeah, I was one of those. KT: So, you came back to Charleston then in ‘95, and enrolled in C of C right away? LH: No, I hit a speed bump. I was pretty sure I didn't want to go back to Berklee. I’d come back to Charleston this summer after my first year, and was really trying to think about what I wanted to do and what my options were, and really wanting to concentrate on that jazz thing. So then I decided well, if I want to sing jazz, let me move to New Orleans, and I’m gonna enroll in the University of New Orleans. Why not? You know, that seemed like the best plan. And I had a cousin who lived in New Orleans at that time, so was enrolled. Flew down like a week early, and hung out and stayed with my cousin. And then I was going to go enroll in school, you know, get going. All my stuff was with me. So, we’re driving and his car catches on fire, completely, like in this huge eight lane situation. It was just horribly traumatic. I mean it was in flames, and we’re trying to move the car over, and just like, well, all right, most of my stuff’s burned. It was just like wow, this is--. KT: What? �17 LH: Yeah, it was awful. He was driving a Volkswagen square back, and the engine was in the back, and the engine caught on fire. KT: Oh, my God. LH: So, we regrouped, and I went back to his place that night, and was like, “All right, I’ll go back tomorrow and try to get settled in.” So, I went in and got moved in the dorm. It was a little weird. KT: Yeah, moving in a pile of like burnt metal. LH: Charred stuff. And I went to go register for classes, and they said, “Well, we didn't have as many students enroll in the vocal program as we wanted to, so we’re not doing that this year. You can either do jazz in another instrument, or you can do classical voice.” I was like, “Well, I didn't come to New Orleans to do classical voice, no way.” And I wasn’t proficient enough in another instrument to play jazz. I mean piano, I could do a ballad maybe. So I said, you know, I’m out of here. New Orleans is telling me something, you know. So, I came back to Charleston, and I didn't go back to school. I took four or five years off, got my first apartment, shared apartment here in Charleston, actually on St. Margaret Street. And this was back in ’95, ’96. KT: Uh-huh. LH: I was supporting myself. I was kind of on my own. My parents weren’t supporting me, and it was just kind of like doing that. And then um, in 1998, I had a friend from Berklee, a really good friend of mine, who was living in upstate New York, this town called New Paltz, and he said, “My roommate just moved out. Why don’t you come up here. You’re not doing anything in Charleston. Are you playing?” And I hadn’t been playing at all. I hadn’t sang that entire time probably. �18 KT: What about as a guitarist, are you developing at all? LH: Yeah, as a guitarist, I’m trying to get past the--get some calluses developed, you know, and just kind of get to the point where I could play for thirty minutes without giving up. Um, so I’m kind of doing that, but I’m definitely not performing. KT: You’re not playing with other people. LH: No. KT: Just noodling. LH: Yeah, just you know, hanging out by myself. So this friend of mine in New York, he was an active musician, like he was finishing up college, but he was definitely a song writer. He exposed me to a lot of song writing in Berklee. And he was trying to give me a little tough love. He’s like, you know, “You’re not doing anything down there. You need to whip it in shape, so why don’t you come up here.” So I moved up there in February of ’98, and kind of stayed in New Paltz. It was kind of tough. His name was Jeff, and Jeff was traveling and doing a lot of gigs and stuff, so he wasn’t around much, and it was a small town. I didn't really know anybody. KT: There’s a college there, right? LH: There is a college there, yeah. KT: One of the SUNYs maybe? LH: Yeah, one of the SUNYs. And my parents were kind of pressuring me to go back to school. They’re like, “You need to finish.” KT: Yeah, yeah. LH: So, in August, Jeff decided he was moving to Austin for music to take off, and I had to make a decision on whether I wanted to stay up there, and maybe enroll in �19 SUNY after another six months, once I’d established residency, or do I want to come back to Charleston. So I decided to come back here, and then that’s when I enrolled at the College of Charleston. KT: Okay. Now, but in terms of your jobs here in Charleston before you went back to school, these are just basically to pay rent kinds of things and that thing. LH: Yeah, super random. KT: But you’re not developing any other kind of career beyond your--? LH: Skills, no. I totally should have. This is my dilemma that I find now. Well, yeah, in between moving to Charleston and briefly moving to New York, I was working for a guy who had started a small business--it was a really weird business but very successful. He dealt with copying documents. He would call up law offices and say, “Are there briefs that you don’t want to copy? Well, we’ll copy them for you.” And that was his business. KT: Like scanning and archiving kind of stuff? LH: No, just copies, you know, like just running a copying machine. I mean just random, that’s what his business was. He did all the copying jobs that nobody wanted to do, and he would come and pick them up, do it, and then deliver it back, and so all of these office assistants and personnel that didn't want to do this, they’d call him up and he had an office set up with several industrial sized copiers and staff to run them. And he would take a bag of cookies back with each job, and that was his brilliant move because all of these office assistants would call and say, “Okay, I’ve got a new job.” And then they’d always get a bag of warm cookies with their finished copy job. KT: Yeah, Kinko’s does not give you a bag of cookies. �20 LH: No, they don’t. I was doing that. I had a weird job working for the farmers’ market. I had a job in a retail spot. I had a job working at Bleeker Street Bagelry. I was working all the time. I was nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, so I could do that then. I could get up for a six a.m. shift. KT: Was it in the back of your head though that you’re going to sing at some point. LH: I was just kind of trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and I wanted it to be singing. I didn't know though. I didn't know how to get it started, that was a big problem, so like what do I do? And when I came back to Charleston after New York, and I enrolled in the College of Charleston, I was actually going to start in arts management. That was the program that I started in. And I thought here’s a good possible career--or at least helpful career, you know, like a supplemental situation, in case singing doesn't work out. Although, I’m still trying to figure out how to make that work anyway. I must have done a semester in that program. And I’d heard that the music department at the College of Charleston had these jazz combos, and someone said you should talk to them about singing for one of them. And I thought okay. So I went and met the head of the jazz department, and his name was Jim Bastian. And I met him in his office. I said, “Hi, my name’s Lindsay. I’m currently in Arts Management, but I’d like to do some singing. And he was just kind of like, “All right, why don’t we sing something? Why don’t you sing something for me?” And I think he just kind of thought I was a flake, you know, so he pulled his guitar out and we sang--I sang a song, and he was--wow. So, he gave me this really amazing speech about you know, obviously singing is your passion and why not go full �21 force with your passion, and why are you in Arts Management, and sold me right then. Walked out the next day, changed my major to jazz. They didn't even have a vocal niche. I was with poor Tommy Gill. I got stuck with Tommy Gill, the piano professor, that’s kind of where they put us. KT: Right. Do you remember what you sang? LH: “The Nearness of You,” yeah. KT: And he was obviously impressed. LH: He was; I did a good job. I mean sometimes you know when you nail it, you know, and I felt real good about it, and I could tell by his reaction that--I can’t imagine what he thought when I walked in, it’s like wow. But yeah, he was impressed, and they kind of made some space for that. And I--to this day, I think that should be more developed within that program, that vocal track. When I was there, there was another singer, Aaron Armstrong, and then Leah Suarez. And I think we kind of all started maybe a semester or two around the same time as each other. KT: She was a student. LH: Mm-hmm. So, we were all kind of dealing with the juggling that happened with us, and at one point, they had hired a vocal teacher from Atlanta, who would come down once a week, but that only lasted about a semester or two. But it was still a great experience, just the combo aspect of it. That was a class. That was my first experience in interacting with a band and learning the dynamics of that, which is beyond helpful. I’ll maintain that the College of Charleston’s music experience was just stellar, as far as what I got to do, and the opportunities I got, and the support. Yeah, it was amazing. KT: So, what was your first band? �22 LH: Well, when I’d gotten up to New York, I was starting to write songs. I was feeling like I had some things to say I guess. So, that was starting to really build, and then when I got back into town, I somehow got on a singer songwriter night at the Mezzane. And I was on with this guy name--there were several of us there, and I met this guy named Danny Cassidy. And he’s an amazing character, an amazing musician. He’s since moved to New York, and he’s still playing music actually. I think he is. But he and I connected over Gram Parsons. And I remember after that show, he was working at the Terrace, and so we went to the Terrace. He had a set of keys. We went in after it was closed, and just sat around all night playing Gram Parsons songs. And that was kind of my first experience really coming out and saying this is what I can do. And then I met some people through Danny. I mean that wasn’t a formal thing or anything. That was just kind of my real first jam session. And then through the College of Charleston, I met a couple of guys that were interested in trying stuff other than jazz because the songs I was writing were not jazz songs. I’ve never felt that I had the vocabulary musically to write that. I respect the complexity of jazz, and it’s like my medium is different for writing. But within the jazz department, I found a couple of people that were open to trying that. So, that’s where like relationships started being built, as far as you know, little band things here and there, but nothing official. I mean my first official band as--I guess a band leader would have been the dirty kids, which was years later, 2006. KT: Okay, very recently then. LH: Yeah, yeah. KT: So, like mid-to-late nineties, are you starting to like identify with--I mean �23 Parsons is an influence, Nick Drake, but like are you aware of and identifying with like the alt country, no depression crowd, is that what you want to listen to, and that’s kind of where you’re gravitating. LH: That was where my head was, and my heart. I finally discovered the differences between pop country and old country, and alt country. Very much big into Wilco--huge Wilco fan. Ryan Adams was really appealing to me, and yeah, all those people, Lucinda Williams. I try to go to a lot of shows, and that was a thing I was doing more was trying to seek out these shows and these experiences. KT: What was the Charleston scene like at that point, I’d imagine there’s like a younger punk crowd, but was there a sort of roots--Americana cluster? LH: There was. KT: You start seeing the same people at the Lucinda Williams show, or how does that work? LH: Yeah, I mean I was really, for the late ‘90s, and up until about 2001, I was very insulated, and that was probably self-imposed. I didn't go out a lot, and I didn't work--like I didn't go out meeting people and networking and doing anything like that. I was keeping to myself, and so I really have a hard time describing the scene. It’s like I don’t feel like I was a part of it. KT: I see. LH: Especially the local scene. I mean I was starting to run into people in 2000 and 2001 that I started to recognize. Cary Ann, Bill Carson, these were people that I was seeing in Charleston around Danny Cassidy, who I had initially connected with Gram Parsons, he was playing with Cary Ann. And that scene really started to come up. They �24 had a weekly gig thing at a place called Fluids, and I think if anybody could attribute the growth of the alt country scene in Charleston, to my recent recollection, it would have been that period and that group of people that kind of started that weekly thing. So then, I mean I really started to get my feet like into the Charleston scene, and the local scene probably 2005. I’d had some friends that I’d actually met--the Black Crows have just been unbelievable in how they keep popping up in my life. There’s a guitar player in the Black Crows called Mark Ford. I love him, he’s an amazing guitar player. He’s no longer with the band. And back in 2001, he had a show at Music Farm. And I was going to go, and my brother Jeremy, my older brother, you know, said, “Are you going to go?” I said, “Sure, of course.” He said, “Well, there’s this band called the Dirty South opening. Are you going to go check them?” I was like, “Well, that’s kind of a lame name; I don’t think I am. Really, the Dirty South?” So I end up catching the last song of their set, the Dirty South, and I thought oh, my God, I recognize some people. And it turns out they were huge Black Crows fans. And one guy, his name was Brad Russell, and he was a guitar player, just rhythm guitar. And I really started to connect with him and this group of guys, and that was kind of the genesis, was our love of that band and that music, but then Gram Parsons started to bleed in. And that was a timeframe for me, a lot of jam sessions. 2001 to 2003, that group of people--Brad lived with his two best friends, and they all kind of played, and his brother played, and they were all around, and I would hang out with them. And we would get together three or four nights a week and just play. No one ever did anything out of the house. It was all just in the living room, but it �25 didn't matter. I mean it was still as fulfilling to me as whatever. So, my first show ever, as like a show show, was probably 2003 or something like that, at Theater 99, where it used to be on Cumberland Street. And I got Brad to play a couple songs with me, and then I did some solo stuff. And it was pretty good. It was a pretty good show. KT: I mean it sounds like a step above a kind of open mic thing basically? LH: Yeah, yeah, I mean there were tickets. I mean it would be like throwing a show at Theater 99 now, just it was a different space. And it was kind of great because it wasn’t a bar scene. I mean people were listening. And that might have been my first experience playing in a completely quiet room, where there was no clinking of glasses, no chatter. I mean it was a theater, you were on the stage, there were seats there. KT: Were you nervous for that? LH: Not really--a little bit, but not really. When I’m singing and someone’s listening to me, that’s kind of like the dialogue, you know, and that part of it helps me do my part. I have a much harder time playing to like just noise, like when you’re in the background in the corner or whatever, and no one’s listening. That’s what I struggle with right now. When I’m in a position where I know someone’s actually listening to what I’m saying, it makes me better. KT: Yeah, yeah, interesting. LH: It doesn't make me nervous, no. KT: What would your set list have included at that point? You’re doing a couple originals? LH: A lot of covers. KT: And mostly some Gram covers and a couple other things? �26 LH: Yeah, a couple of weird covers. I probably had at that point, three or four originals. I don’t put it out there unless I’m feeling about 90 percent good about it. Some people are--they’ll try anything. They’ll pull out some little thing they’re noodling on and debut it. KT: So, your unfinished work is not performed generally. LH: No, no, no, no. KT: Your works in progress. LH: Yeah, that’s mine until I’m ready--I feel like it’s ready. And I stand behind all of my songs, you know, because I haven’t let them out until I feel like, okay, they’re ready. KT: So, the reception to the show? LH: It was great, yeah. And it was nice because that--Brandy and Greg--oh, man I forget his name--the guys who run Theater 99 and the Have Nots, they were there that night, and they had a lot of positive feedback. I’d seen them around town and stuff, so that was really helpful for my confidence, like oh, well, these guys kind of dug it, and obviously they know what they’re talking about. The show went really well, and they said, you know, Theater 99 said, “Anytime you want to do it again, please let us know.” And so I thought, okay, great. And the unfortunate thing was those guys moved. My little core group of music cohorts, they moved to Colorado. So, I was kind of like, oh. So, I kind of, just kind of piddled around a little bit for a couple of years. I tried to get a little band together to do some original songs, and like maybe record them. I’d never done that before, and I got a group of jazz guys together, and again, my songs were not jazz. And it never seemed to quite gel. I don’t know, we weren’t all on the same page. �27 And I think some of them will definitely agree with me to this day, you know, we all wanted to play together, and it’s just about, you know, directions that you wanted to head. KT: Did that band have a name? LH: I don’t think it did, no. KT: It didn't quite get that far. LH: Didn’t get that far, although we actually had a great situation where we recorded some music with Kevin Taylor, he is more known for his visual art, but he had a little studio set up in his basement, and he was more of a rock punk guy kind of thing. I felt like oh, this is a great experience; good to meet somebody like this and just try to do some recording stuff. Although, it didn't really work out and it didn't go anywhere, the experience was valuable, I would think. But I don’t know where any of that stuff is, to this day. I have no idea where those tracks are. I mean some of those songs are still in play, but I have no idea what happened with all that, yeah. KT: So your first band that sort of had legs that--you know, that played out, that recorded, who would that have been? LH: That would have been the Dirty Kids. KT: And they were formed in what year? LH: Well, in fall of 2005, at this point, my friend Brad Russell had moved to Cincinnati. He had started a family and was living up there, and we would still email back and forth quite a bit, just talking about music or whatever, and he said, “I want to write some songs together.” And he’d never brought that up before. I thought well, okay, I’ve never done that, like co-written stuff. Sure, I was like, “Well, you’re in Cincinnati.” �28 So, for my birthday, my brother Jeremy had bought me my first four-track, hot pink fourtrack. And I was kind of figuring it out. I didn't have my own computer at that point. I was hesitant about technology. And Brad definitely didn't have a computer, so we FedExed this four-track back and forth for three months, writing songs, packed it in a box. KT: In 2005, 2006? LH: Yes, yes. KT: That’s late in the game to be doing that. LH: It is real late in the game, but it’s so appropriate for both of us. If you knew both of us, you would say, “Yeah, that’s not surprising.” But it worked out. One of my best songs I’ve ever had a hand in came out of that. KT: Yeah. LH: So, we got a couple songs together and we decided we wanted to record them. And I knew this guy Jason Dodson, who was a musician in town. He had a little step above a home recording studio, and he recorded onto tape, which Brad and I liked. We’re like, “Oh, let’s record on the tape,” because we’re dealing with a four-track, of course. So, Brad comes down for Christmas for the holidays because his family is here. So, I said, “Well, we’ll do it then.” And then he decided he wanted to have drums. So, Jason Dodson recommended Nick Jenkins. He’s like, “I play this guy every now and then. He’s a real nice guy. You should meet him, and he might dig what you’re doing.” And so, I met Nick and I kind of played some stuff, and played him the four-track tapes, like this is what we’re thinking. And Nick said, “Sure.” So, right around Christmas, like I guess it might have been a �29 couple days after, we recorded these two or three songs, and then Brad went back to Cincinnati, and Nick and I said, “Well, that was a lot of fun, you want to play again? You want to play together?” And he’s like, “Sure.” So, he said, “Well, let’s fill out the band, you know, drums and guitar.” So, he knew a guy named Michael Hanf, who played vibraphone. And at this point, I was really into a big Tom Waits phase. And Michael also played a lot of percussion. He was actually a background and drummer, and he played a lot of found instrument percussion, which I loved. I thought oh, here we go. And it’s funny because when we first started rehearsing, I kept trying to nudge Michael towards the percussion and not the vibraphone. I wasn’t sold on that yet. KT: But you had a drummer, right? LH: Yeah, but I liked just the whole rhythm. KT: A drummer and another percussionist. LH: And percussion, I just like a wall of rhythm. But Nick kept us on track. He kept redirecting Mike back to the vibraphone, you know, like, “Look, you’ve got this beautiful instrument here and this guy who can actually play it, get behind the ball, Holler.” So, we found a guitar player. Again, these guys were younger than me, they were a lot younger than me, like ten years younger than me. So this was almost a different generation. And they had some mutual friends, a bass player, his name was Ben Wells, and then a guitar player, his name was David Linaburg. So, we all got together and we all had very different backgrounds, but it worked. This was the first time I’d ever felt like I was in a situation where the personalities all gelled really well, and the creativity was off the charts. And yeah, I’ll attribute that to the �30 first tour I ever went on was with these guys. So, I mean there were a lot of firsts with that band. KT: Well, I want to hear about several things. So, you know, I’ve not been in bands, but just in being around musicians, my sense is that in terms of musicians’ ability to kind of plan, organize, handle logistic stuff, that among musicians, those skills are kind of few and far between. LH: Oh, yeah. KT: And so that when you have somebody with--like an organizing head, you know, that person’s an absolute, so I’m wondering like where do you fit in your bands-there’s usually like a sensible person. LH: That’s me. I’m the organizer. KT: Okay, okay, I kind of thought so. LH: Yeah, I’ve taken it to an extreme actually recently. I’m geared that way anyway. I like to organize, and I’m getting much better at scheduling, and so yeah, I was happy to take that part on. That was definitely me. In every band I’ve ever been in actually. KT: I mean I love musicians, but they’re generally just nuts, they’re flakes, I mean they’re really difficult. LH: Yeah, they’re very difficult. And the thing that was great about the Dirty Kids is there wasn’t a whole lot of that to begin with. These guys were all actually out of the jazz program at the College of Charleston, and they were all going to school there in that track. KT: So, serious about practice. �31 LH: Right, they were very cool with rehearsals. We loved to rehearse. We had a weekly rehearsal, which I think is kind of almost key for a band, you know, you’ve got to get together continuously, and just play together. They were all for that. The Dirty Kids was a lot--it was a first thing for a lot of them as well, so we were all on board, and it made it a lot easier. And they were all really good about being where we need to be on time, and getting back to me. And I was older, so I think that helped a little bit. They were kind of like--you know, I think in that respect, that helped a little bit with getting responses back and that kind of thing, so didn't really have an issue too much with that. KT: Yeah, and the personalities gelled, too? LH: They did, and we have wildly different personalities. And I even talked about this within the last couple of years. I’m in contact with all of these guys, and Michael Hanf and David Linaburg, always had very different approaches, and usually very different opinions. And that would come out in a rehearsal, to the point where they’re challenging each other. And we’ve always agreed that that really helped us quite a bit, you know, having that tension and they respected each other enough where there was always that respect there for each other’s abilities, but their perspectives were different. And yeah, that totally helped us. KT: But how do you figure in terms of--because these are your songs primarily. LH: Because I gave up a lot of control. KT: You do give up a lot of control. LH: Yeah, I don’t want to play guitar. I’d rather have somebody playing guitar who knows how to play guitar, you know, I don’t want to play drums. I don’t want to do everything. I would prefer to be around people who know how to play their instrument, �32 and let’s let everybody do their job, like my job’s to sing. I’ll take care of that part. Now with the songwriting, I mean I would bring songs in and they were real basic--I mean basic folks songs, pretty much. My chord knowledge is not extensive on the guitar, so I was limited with what I could do. Although I would do unorthodox things sometimes because I dealt in shapes and not really theory on a guitar, so it would drive them nuts sometimes, like what are you doing? But I would bring a song in. We’d sit down, and all these guys like Michael and Ben are in composition classes. So we just kind of tear it apart, you know, and try to find a path that we all can live with, and that’s my preferred way of doing it. I don’t need control over the music process. KT: But the tension is--at least I would--I could see it, but your vocals are the draw. And to what degree should the musician be sort of working to foreground you, to spotlight you? Does that make--I’m not saying that very clearly, but--. LH: I mean are you. KT: Lucinda Williams is a parallel. She’s had great people play with her over the years, but it’s always Lucinda. I mean it’s built around Lucinda. She’s the real draw, and it’s the power of her songs, so that nobody can ever be sort of so into their own thing that they detract from that. I don’t know, does that even come up? LH: Does it come up? KT: That kind of tension, does that play out? LH: It hasn’t seemed to. KT: Yeah, okay. LH: Maybe it’s just my approach. I don’t know, I mean I don’t ever try to be �33 overbearing about my presence within a situation or a song. I’m never taking that position. I mean I feel like my voice is big enough where if it just shows up, it’s going to --. KT: No one’s getting around it. LH: It’s going to stand where it’s going to stand. It’s kind of like a little bit of the bully in the room, and just by what it is, not even that I try that. So I’ve never felt like I’ve had to fight for a position or say, “Hey, you need to support me on this.” Yeah, it’s never really come up, and it’s never been something that I’ve cared about. It’s just been like you know, I’m going to do my thing, and I’m cool with wherever it lands. And usually, it lands in the front. As far as least dynamics, you know, I mean I have a big voice, and it’s usually right there. It’s kind of hard to get around it. KT: Being around like all these young guys, does this get tiring? LH: I feel like it’s energizing. Yeah, I mean I think it kept me a little younger. And I was able to relate more to different people. I was around these guys a lot. Yeah, those three years, I mean we did a lot of playing, and probably did three or four tours together. KT: How far did you tour? LH: They were always East Coast tours, and they were usually up to New York and back. Some were longer than others. And the first couple of them, we toured with another local band, called a Decent Animal, amazing band. It was a three-piece. Jonathan Nicholson was the singer. Richard Well was the bass player, and then the drummer’s name was George Baerreis. And they were a little bit more rock, like there wasn’t much of an acoustic element to them. I don’t really know how to describe them, and they were �34 all veterans. They were a little bit older than me. They were veterans in the music scene, like they’ve been around for the long time. Jonathan had been in a lot of bands around the area for a while, from probably like early ‘90s. It was an interesting dynamic because you had these guys here who were a little bit older than me, and definitely more in tune with the music scene. There was me, who was kind of a weird hybrid, and then I had the younger guys in the band. I mean there was only a fifteen, sixteen year difference between my youngest band member and the oldest band member of a Decent Animal. And we would play a lot together, to the point where there was a year where I think every show we played was together, whether it was in town or we’d even go out of town to play together. KT: Oh, wow. LH: Which was amazing because they were so experienced in a lot of things, in band things and that was helpful to have. And they found my band to be hysterical. Like they just thought they were just like funny kids. KT: Kids--well, tell me--I mean do you like touring? LH: I did. It was everything I’d ever want it to be, you know, I mean it wasn’t some big flashy thing by any means. KT: Not very glamorous? LH: No, but it was so much fun. I mean just one of those things where it was just the weird shenanigans all the time. I think the first one was ten days, and Richard in a Decent Animal and I booked it together, and we just kind of put it together. And they had a van, and I rented a van, and we did a caravan type situation. KT: So, two vans and a car maybe? �35 LH: No, no. KT: Just two vans. LH: Two vans. KT: With how many people? LH: Well, they had three in theirs, and we had five in mine, and we put all of our gear in there. KT: Oh, my God. LH: Oh, we would get one hotel room with eight people, to save money. KT: No. LH: Oh, yeah, we would do three people in each twin bed, and then two people would have to sleep on the floor. And usually, nobody wanted to be--like Jonathan and Richard and George did not want to be a part of all that. They’re like, “We’re not going to squeeze into some bed.” But we wanted to save money, and so yeah, there would be no problem with that. And the shows were fun, the shows were real weird. Some were successful, some were just weird, but it was still like what you would want to happen on your first tour, you know. You just--wow, you know. KT: So, broken down vans, any end up in jail, anyone? LH: Nobody ended up in jail on a tour. A Decent Animal’s van would break down quite a bit. They tried to go play by themselves to Savannah one time, and they broke down on Seventeen, and they ended up calling me to come get them. And yeah, they had problems with their van. I got into a wreck one time. Well, no, it was a stupid thing. We were all going up to play a show in Asheville, and I just kept renting things because I didn't have my own van. So, I had rented a Yukon, and it was gigantic. And we were �36 probably almost at the border of North Carolina and South Carolina at a gas station. And we were going to leave, and somebody needed to throw something away, so I was going to pull up beside the trash can, misjudged, ran the whole side down one of those metal things. And it was awful. I mean the damage was extensive. Everybody got out and hugged me. Oh, my God. So, this is a rental, and I mean it could run. It still ran. And I called the company. KT: Did you buy the supplementary insurance? LH: I didn't. KT: No, who would, nobody does. LH: Well, this was my thing. I said, you know, “I’ve got insurance through my credit card.” So, I called the company and I explained what happened. They asked me if it could run, and I said it could. They said, “Well, just bring it back tomorrow when you’re planning on doing that.” So, we went up and played the show. Needless to say, I was pretty bummed out, like this is going to be a disaster. And so, the next day, I took it back to the airport, and I remember giving the keys to the guy, and he was walking out with me to look at it, and I thought--this guy, he just shook his head when he looked at it. It looked like somebody had taken a bulldozer around the side of it, and it was brand new, too. But it turned out all the fine print worked out in my favor because my credit card company said, “Well, we’re a secondary coverer. We’re not your primary coverer of insurance for car-related stuff. Your car insurance would be your primary coverer.” So, I got in touch with my car insurance, and I only had liability. I thought oh, my God, we’re going to have to have like a fundraiser. But because I only had liability--. �37 KT: It goes to secondary. LH: It goes to secondary, so they covered it all. KT: Wonderful. LH: And it was--oh, man, the day I got that letter in the mail was just--because it was about $4000 in damage. I mean it’s just unbelievable. KT: What was your worst show? LH: Probably that night. No. Worst show with that band? KT: Ever. LH: Ever, oh, God, that’s tough. I don’t know. I mean I guess to me, what would constitute the worst show, would be when no one shows up. That’s the hardest thing for me. Yeah, I don’t know, that’s tough. I mean when we were at that show after that car thing, we were playing in a really small place in Asheville, to the point where it didn't really have a stage. It had kind of a side pocket, and then the door, and then the bar. And so, we played our little set, and Michael and I got off and were walking to the bar, and the door guy kind of looks at us. And he goes, “Hey, you guys look like a couple. I’ll only charge you five bucks.” And I looked at him, and I said, “What are you talking about?” He’s like, “The cover to get in.” And I looked at Mike, and I looked at the guys, like, we just played. It’s like we were literally five feet away from you fortyfive seconds ago, just playing. I looked at Mike, and we looked at this guy, and it was just the most bizarre thing in the world. I thought this day’s getting worse. Yeah, it was weird, not necessarily a bad thing. I mean it was funny. We still laugh about that to this day. One time out on a tour, we played a show in North Carolina, and the venue was under construction. They should never have had the show. I mean under construction to �38 the point where it didn't have running water. And there were five bands there to play, all out of town. There was us, there was a Decent Animal, and then there was a really cool like punk duo from New York, another band from Virginia, like all these out of town bands, and they didn't want to cancel it, so they had it happen anyway. So that was weird because there was really nobody there, just the other bands. And so, we’re sitting there doing our set, and some guy walks up, and he walks right by me on the microphone. He starts trying to sing the song he’s never heard before, and I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to keep kind of going and not laugh. And all the guys from A Decent Animal are standing in the back laughing because they’ve seen our set and they know this is not supposed to happen. So I hate to stop songs. I hate--I would never try to stop a song in the middle, so Dave kind of says, “Well, come use my mike,” to the guy, like, “let’s just get your own mike here, whatever.” It was just ridiculous. KT: So, you did an impromptu duet with that Memphis dude. LH: Yeah, and we tried to wrap up a song real quickly. It’s like, “I don’t know. I don’t know who this guy is. He doesn't know the song either.” It was just random, it was weird. There are a lot of weird shows, but that’s okay. I mean they’re funny stories usually. KT: A best show? LH: On one of these tours, the Dirty Kids backtracked and kind of separated from A Decent Animal to play, which is never what you want to do on a tour. You never want to backtrack like 200 miles. But there was a venue in Winston Salem called The Garage, some people had recommended, and I had gotten in touch with them. And the guy was like, “You really want to play with this band, I need an opener.” And I was like it doesn't �39 really work much with our track, but if you--he’s like, “You really need to do it.” I said, “All right, we’ll do it.” So, we’ll separate and come back. And it was opening for the Felice Brothers, which are a really great band. And this was probably 2006, 2007, so they were still kind of getting started. And we got there, and they were real rock and roll, just in every respect. And we were like a junkyard gang walking in, you know, with the youngsters, and with the vibraphone, which is so not rock and roll. And we saw their sound check, and we all looked around at each other and thought oh, we’re going to get shown off the stage here because they were amazing, great, you know; real tough, too, like seasoned guys, and we’re like, “Oh, man.” So, we went up and played the show of our lives. I mean we played the shit out of our songs. And I remember we came off the stage and they were like, “Wow, all right, where are you guys from?” I liked the fact that everyone in the Dirty Kids, they kind of felt that pressure and were like we need to step up our game a little bit. And it was obvious, you know, and we all felt it. We thought man, you know, that was a great show. And it was a great night, like their set later was just you know, amazing, and it was just like one of those kind of shows where--wow, do you remember all that? Yeah. KT: But the band broke up after what, three years? LH: Three years. Michael moved to New York, and David Linaburg moved to New York, both of those guys did. And I don’t know, it had been such a close knit unit for so long, I was like I don’t want to keep going with the Dirty Kids. I’d prefer to get a new name, and maybe probably some similar songs, but you know, let’s kind of start new. So Ben Wells, the bass player, was still in town, and Nick Jenkins was still in town, �40 so we found a piano player, Sam Sfirri. He played Rhodes, primarily, so he was interested. He joined us, and then as far as guitar goes, I reached out to Bill Carson. I thought you know, he and I had a conversation because he said, “You know, I’m not a guitar player.” And I was like, “Well, you know, I’m not expecting you to do what Dave Linnaburg did. Dave Linnaburg was a guitar player, you know, he’s a jazz guy, and tootle ooh. I was like, “That’s not what I’m looking for from you.” I said, “When you play guitar with your hollow body, you have such amazing tones.” Kind of like Marc Ribot with Tom Waits, that was kind of what--. KT: So, you’re looking for a little rhythm, and like some phrasings. LH: Yeah, yeah, and just that texture. KT: Because you’ve got the piano. LH: Right, if we need crazy solos--although I’m not really into solos that much. That was a little bit of a thing with Dave and I was he would kind of bring a little too much jazz into it. I’m like, “Look, take all the notes you just played and cut them in half.” The song’s not going for that. So, I convinced Bill that you don’t need to play a lot of notes, that’s not what we’re going for. So we came up with another name, the Western Polaroids. And we played together for about--well, I mean I guess technically it’s still around. I mean that group played together for about a year or two. We went on one tour as the Western Polaroids, back up to New York and back. Then Nick moved to New York. And the Stuart White is a local drummer that kind of joined in. Bill got kind of busy with stuff, and was like, “Look, I’m not going to be able to play as many shows.” And you �41 know, things just kind of drifted a little bit, you know, as far as focus. Yeah, and then I picked up a project back in 2010 with Michael Hanf, a duo, vibraphone guitar project called, “Oh, Ginger.” And that kind of took over a little bit more precedence with my time and energy and focus. So, I mean the Western Polaroids could come back. I mean they show up every now and then. It’s funny because I always refer to it more as a catalogue of music now than a band. They’ve got songs that are the Western Polaroids. KT: Okay, and since the Western Polaroids, have you had another--kind of a fuller band other than the--. LH: Yeah, I’ve got something now that I’ve been playing with for about a year, called Matadero. And it’s such an incestuous situation because all these same people are coming back in. George Baerreis who played drums for A Decent Animal, is playing bass in Matadero. And Sam Sfirri who played Rhodes in Western Polaroids is playing Rhodes in Matadero. And then there’s a drummer named Ron Wiltrout, who is playing drums. And there’s no guitar. KT: You’re doing a little rhythm? No, nothing. LH: No guitar, there’s not a guitar in the band. KT: So, wait, what was that lineup? LH: Bass, drums, Rhodes, voice. The bass takes on a very unique presence. George’s style is very in your face and full, and he uses some fuzz pedal things. KT: Oh, interesting. LH: And it boosh. KT: Okay, would Grove Street, would that be a Matadero track? �42 LH: That’s a Matadero’s, yeah. KT: Oh, yeah, that’s really interesting. LH: Yeah, yeah, no guitar, that’s all bass, and he’ll solo on the bass. It’s a very interesting dynamic because Sam’s a lot like me. He doesn't feel the need to jump in and do a bunch of stuff. He’s perfectly fine hanging back and kind of doing his thing. And that works really well tone wise, with the tone of the Rhodes, and the bas sound. They occupy different spots rhythmically and tonally, and yeah, it’s been a wonderful dynamic. KT: That’s kind of is dark and grungy. LH: Very, very, very. KT: Yeah, it’s interesting. LH: The bummer now is Sam’s moving. KT: This is a recurring theme in your life here. LH: Yeah, it is, lots of moving. He’s moving to Canada, and very far away, to go to school in a couple months, so the rest of us are trying to figure out how we want to go forward. I mean we want to because this project is not like any other project any of us are involved in, so it’s definitely unique in holding onto that spot. KT: Well, what are your goals? LH: I don’t know. I just keep moving forward, you know, like going forward. That’s what I’m kind of trying to figure out right now, what are my goals? That’s been a huge topic lately, the last six months. I mean I’ve gotten into producing shows recently, has been a big thing with me, and that kind of goes back into my organizing mind. KT: I wanted to talk to you about this, yeah. LH: That’s been a thing I’ve gravitated towards in the last year. I’ve had a really �43 good relationship with the Tin Roof, kind of taken the reins on a couple of theme shows. And that’s been a really big interest. But I don’t think it’s anything I’d want to do exclusively, you know, sometimes I need to remember I play music, too, and to not forget about that. But then you’ve also got a day job, you know, so it’s like there are a lot of hats. KT: I mean that’s where I heard you was the Gram Parsons Show, and--. LH: The Gram Parsons thing, yeah. KT: And not as well attended as I would have liked, but I thought it was just a night of phenomenal music. LH: It was. KT: I thought it was terrific. LH: Yeah, and that show--the Holy City Cold Heart Revival is something that-it’s a kind of an annual music night that I conceived with some friends of mine back in 2005, 2006. We were in Cumberland’s, and we were all talking about how we needed to play a show. It’s like we’ve all got kind of bands, like let’s put a show together. And we wanted to do kind of an alt country theme. So the guys at Cumberland’s were nice enough to give us a night, and we kind of reached out to some local people and some outof-town bands, and put together about a five or eight-band bill, all geared towards alt country, not necessarily towards a specific person. And did that at Cumberland’s for two years, Cumberland’s closed, and then that’s when we moved it to the Poor House. Alex was really great about kind of letting me again, grab a night in November and go for it. The two friends who had started it with me, both moved away--back to that theme. And so I kind of kept going with it. And I was kind of done with it after 2011. It �44 had been six years or something, and it was okay. I mean it still felt like it never was super well attended, and it was a lot of work, and so I was really not feeling like doing it again. And then Brian Hannon, who is in a band called Company, he is a huge Gram Parsons fan as well, and he approached me and said, “Well, why don’t--are you doing this again this year?” And I kind of was, “Maybe not.” And he said, “Well, why don’t you make it a Gram Parsons night?” And I thought well, that’s kind of interesting because that’s easy. He had a relationship with the Gram Parsons Foundation. And so we could tie it into a benefit. And I thought, well, great. So, having his energy on board really helped a lot. It made me kind of want to get back in and try it again. And we decided to put together a little Gram Parsons band, and that was a lot of fun. The night ended up being great, you know, the different bands involved were awesome. And it was nice because I remember when we were rehearsing for that show, with that Gram Parsons band, those were people I’d never played with. I hadn’t played with any of those guys before, so that was a nice experience to kind of--oh, cool, I’m feeling out new people here. KT: I remember it being really tight, too. LH: Yeah, yeah, it was real good. Well, those guys are--I mean they--talk about hustling, I mean they play all the time. Like I remember Mackie Bowles probably had three gigs a day or something. I mean he’s just like gig to gig. KT: Well, what’s your sense then of the Charleston music scene over the last few years? I mean do you feel pretty positively about it? LH: Oh, yeah. KT: Or is it just--you know. �45 LH: It’s exploding. I seem to have been catching waves of generations, I guess. You know, I mean like whether it’s knowing Jonathan and Richard and those guys, who really started kind of an early ‘90s alt rock kind of thing, to meeting you know, like Cary Ann and Bill Carson and those guys that really started an alt country kind of thing. And then, you know, with my first band, the Dirty Kids, that’s a certain timeframe and age group. That kind of group was more into experimental stuff, and like the New Music Collective was kind of born around that time. And then you’ve got these guys now, the Royal Tinfoil, and Sarah Bandy, and Rachel Cade. And then this whole group of people that I don’t even know, like these younger bands. And I mean I can’t keep up with it. I’m older now, so I can’t go to as many shows as I’d like to go to, but it just seems to be exploding, whether it’s productivity, there are a lot of bands out here. They’re recording, they’re making music, they’re playing a lot of shows, but then there seems to be a lot more recognition for that work as well, coming outside of Charleston, as well as inside, but I mean it seems like people are noticing the music scene here a little bit more. KT: Do you have to move away to make it? LH: No. That’s an interesting question. I don’t think you do, no. I think things are changing so quickly with how that’s even defined. I mean what is making it at this point? That’s tough. And the lines are being blurred so much. I mean there’s so much more you can do now than ten years ago, as far as publicity, as far as getting your music exposed. I mean it’s just a different game. So I don't feel like you’ve got to move. It’s just hard to keep up with how to even �46 define that, you know, I mean selling your music, how do you make money doing that? What’s the best way to do that? I mean is a label really something you need now? I don’t know. It’s funny, a lot of people joke about this invisible train to New York that Charleston seems to have. I know a lot of musicians who have moved up there, and they’ve been very successful, and they’ve put a lot of work into it, and they’ve suffered through a lot and it’s great to look at what they’ve gone through and the progression they’ve come to now, where they’ve got some success under their belt. But I don’t think you have to do that. I mean and it kind of depends on what you’re doing. I mean if you’re an instrumentalist or if you’re a front person, or that’s a different part of it as well. I mean that’s an ongoing dialogue. And I don’t know if I’ve got the answer to that anyway. KT: Did you play shows at all with like Megan Jean? LH: Yeah. KT: Because I think, didn't they just leave the city, or they’re leaving soon? LH: I mean I don’t think they’ve lived in Charleston, technically like lived here for a while. I mean they live on the road, I’m pretty sure. I mean I think that they had possibly a mailing address here, and this was kind of a hub for stuff. But from what I understand, they were just traveling and playing, and kind of living on the road. And I think for them, as far as routing goes, it made more sense to have a hub that was more in their track. I mean Charleston’s off the track, definitely, unfortunately, which has been an issue. They’re moving their base of operations to Atlanta or something like that, which makes it a little bit easier. And I mean if it saves them money, that’s something they’ve �47 got to consider with their situation. I saw an amazing thing. Megan kind of wrote about, as far as a DIY band and the economics behind it. And she did this crazy comparison with another band. And I don’t know if they were a label band or what it was, but it was a--she broke it down financially, yeah, about each little bracket. And I mean she--it was amazing. KT: They’re about as economical as you can get, right. LH: Yeah, but I mean when it comes to those tight budgets, every little dollar has got to be accounted for, so if you’re going to save a dollar or a bunch of dollars, move in your hub, and you got to do that. KT: But you’ve never been seriously tempted to move? LH: To relocate? Yeah, I have been a lot. I just never knew where. I didn't actually--ironically, I didn't want to go up to New York. Part of my fear is I hustle so much here, I was like I can’t imagine what would be required of me up there. Although maybe if I’m doing my same hustling up there, maybe it goes farther, I don’t know. But kind of where would be my big question. My brother Jeremy has always wanted me to move to Austin. He lived there for a number of years. KT: I mean there’s a logic to that, right, I mean there would be great musicians. LH: Great musicians. I’ve been there enough where I feel pretty comfortable with the city, I know it pretty well. Yeah, I guess I’m kind of romantic in the fact that I want to go somewhere, where I’m automatically, yeah, I got to go, you know, where there’s zero question, just automatic pull. And maybe that’s a terrible way to approach it. Maybe I need to be more thoughtful about it. Yeah, the idea is there, definitely. I’ve been here for a long time. I need to maybe embrace some change, mix it up a little bit. But yeah, �48 figuring out where--I mean and then when you get older, you know, your family starts coming into play. You don’t want to be too far. KT: Your parents are both still alive? LH: Mm-hmm. My mom lives in Columbia. And my dad lives outside of Asheville, so they’re all pretty close. KT: Is he still lawyering? LH: No, no, he’s retired. No, they’re both retired, yeah. Yeah, he’s living in the mountains. Actually, completely away from technology. His wife will answer my emails, but he doesn't even do email, so it’s--yeah, I can’t email any mp3s to check out. KT: Tell me just a little bit about your other gig. LH: Oh, my job, my day job? KT: Yeah, I assume that’s what pays the bills mostly? LH: Oh, yeah, I’ve never made money off of music. Music has always been just putting it back in. That’s why I’ve always had a day job is usually any excess is funded right back into recording or--my current day job is--I came upon it very--I needed a job. Back in 2009, I answered a Craigslist ad for an administrative position, and I thought okay, I can do this, I’ve worked in an office before. I went to my interview, and it was a little bit different than what I’d read about. This was a recruiting firm. And so they recruited restaurant managers for different restaurants all across the country. And I thought weird, okay, try it out. And that’s kind of been my attitude with a lot of things. I’ve tried a lot of different things, and usually I’m like sure, why not? So, you know, by the second day there, they had me doing interviews with people, the restaurant managers. I’ve never conducted an interview--didn't really know much about �49 what goes into a restaurant manager’s position, but I jumped in and I’ve kind of been doing it ever since. I really like my boss. He’s like just somebody that I can kind of--he understands me. I’m kind of a direct person, and that doesn't freak him out that much, so it’s been good. And he’s been really supportive about the music thing, if I need to go out of town for a show, or last year I went on a tour in the late summer, and he was so supportive about that, so it’s just been great. KT: You work in an office, like basically nine to five? LH: Yeah, yeah, I work in an office downtown, and I live downtown, so I’m in a situation where I can walk to work, which is really nice. KT: Oh, terrific. LH: Yeah, it’s been so great. Which I realize that at some point, that might come to an end, so I need to appreciate every day that I can. But yeah, it’s an interesting office setting. His wife is a painter, and so he’s got a little gallery set up in the front for her stuff, and then in the back is his office. And there are two other people with me, and then he’s there. And then we also have an office in Greenville as well. KT: And you place people in restaurants all around the country, not just Charleston. LH: Right, oh, yeah. We really don’t do that much work in Charleston. Every now and then we will, but it’s primarily across the country. We’ve even done a little bit of overseas stuff, but it’s a sales job basically, and it’s something I’ve never tried before, and it’s been good for trying to get me to be more outspoken because I’m not into intruding on a lot of things. I’m kind of like uh. And at this point, when you’re talking to people about why they left positions and why they did things, you’ve got to ask these �50 questions, and you’ve got to be forward, and you’ve got to be more proactive about it, and that’s--. KT: Goes against you kind of. LH: Yeah, this has been good for me to kind of exercise that part of me, and now I’ve developed that a little bit more. I mean I can close the deal now, which I don’t know if I would have been able to do a couple of years ago. KT: I could ask this two ways. I’ll give you the option, favorite or most influential album? LH: “Rain Dogs,” Tom Waits. KT: Both favorite and most influential you think? LH: Yeah, yeah. I remember right where I was when I heard it for the first time, exactly where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, which my memory’s usually pretty terrible, so that kind of right away tells me that it made an impact. KT: Where were you? LH: I was in upstate New York, I was with my friend Jeff, and I was actually visiting. It was before I’d moved there. Jeff and I had met at Berklee, and I was up there for a visit, and we were playing Scrabble, and we were eating pizza with eggplant on it, which I thought was really weird. It’s like what is that, eggplant? And he put it on, and I said, “Who is this?” And he explained it to me, and I was hooked. And I can’t think of as far as what I want out of a musician or a band, or whatever, that’s everything, right there. His authenticity, originality, and everything, daring. I mean Tom Waits is just a bad ass, so much so, yeah. And I’ve been lucky enough to see him a couple of times, which has been great. It’s been amazing. �51 KT: Do you think Charleston marks you as an artist in any way that’s particular? I mean do you consider yourself either a regional, a southern, or a Charleston artist that-anything about the south that marks you as unique? LH: Probably things that I’m not aware of. For a long time, I didn't embrace that I was a southerner, and it was usually something I had to defend, especially when I was up in Boston. I go a lot of grief about my accent, which I don’t think I’ve got one now, but I think I did back then. And living in different places, you come across people painting you with that stereotypical brush, and so I always felt like, don’t hate me because I’m from the South. And it felt like it wasn’t embracing it at all. And I’m trying to change that around a lot more. I mean as far as making a mark on me, I don’t know. That’s a good question, like musically? KT: Yeah, do you feel particularly southern as a musician somehow? LH: I mean I think that certain visual themes will come up in some of my songs that--. KT: That might reflect the region. LH: The region, yeah. I don’t know if my delivery is necessarily southern. I mean I guess it’s a little soulful. I don’t know if you’d equate that just to the south though. I mean people could say Detroit is soulful. KT: Sure, indeed they could. LH: Yeah. I mean I guess if you had--you know, some of the country or elements that I’ll incorporate, you know, a little twangy kind of element there. KT: But that could as easily be Midwest or you know, no one has a monopoly on country in this country. �52 LH: Right, yeah, maybe I don’t have anything that’s--that I know of that’s easily-I don’t know. That’s tough, I don’t know. KT: Who are the singers that you’re most often compared to? LH: Janis Joplin, got that last night, or the night before last. KT: Do you like that comparison, or is that? LH: It’s okay, it’s great that you get compared to someone so talented, sure. I don’t hear that a lot. I mean yeah, there’s a raspy quality that I would imagine, but that’s just not something that I wouldn’t--. KT: I was thinking too, of the jazz and blues influences. LH: Oh, really. KT: Yeah, that I hear in Janis, you know, I think those come through in your approach, yeah. LH: I’ve gotten Lucinda Williams a couple of times, especially in songwriting. She can be a little direct with her songwriting, and I tend to go that route. I kind of figured at one point when I really wanted to start writing songs that you couldn’t hold back, you know, everything’s fair game. I wanted to take that approach. Who else do I get compared to a lot? Definitely those two would be the tops. KT: Does Melissa Etheridge come up? LH: That has come up every now and then. I would never think that either. Although it’s funny because I think about all of my vocal influences over the years, and how at some point in time, I’ve tried to sound like somebody, and they’ve all been men. KT: Yeah, yeah. LH: You know. �53 KT: So, it’s Tom Waits and Gram Parsons, and Nick Drake are the people that you--. LH: Yeah, I went through a huge Pearl Jam phase in high school, and I wanted to sound like Eddie Vetter so much, and he’s got a very distinct presentation with his voice, and I could kind of mimic it a little bit. Even that, or you know, I’ll say I was always a fan of the way Harry Connick, Jr. sang, like his ballads. I mean I know people always wrote him off as a Frank Sinatra guy, but I loved the way he sang, and I can remember like doing some jazz stuff trying to check myself a little bit and like don’t completely copy what he’s doing. You know, you can borrow a little bit. Yeah. KT: Yeah, I hear all those, definitely, you know, the Tom Waits comes through. LH: Yeah, he does. But then you want to make sure that you are coming through, too, you know, where it’s not just a Tom Waits--. KT: I don’t think you ever even--. LH: Need to worry about that? KT: No, no, no. You’re--no. LH: Well, I keep--. KT: I would never--these comparisons are useful to some extent, but I never hear where you’re being derivative. LH: Oh, that’s good. Whew. KT: No, it’s definitely--it’s a unique voice. LH: Thank you. I feel like I can’t take credit for it, you know, it’s just kind of always been there. I’ve kind of beat it up actually. KT: Were you ever a smoker? �54 LH: Yeah. KT: Are you still? LH: No. KT: Okay. How did that change your voice at all? LH: I was a mezzo soprano when I went to Berklee. KT: So, you don’t regret being a smoker? LH: Well, I kind of made a decision when I was at Berklee, when I was getting pushed into that R&B thing, and I thought no, I want to do jazz stuff. And then I started listening to more jazz, and there weren’t sopranos singing jazz, and if you came across someone who tried to take that stand, I wasn’t as into as much. So, I thought well, let’s change the voice a little bit to adapt to the medium you want to do. I mean there are all kinds of ways you can damage your voice. A perfect example is the way you talk. I had a vocal coach at Berklee try to advise me to talk higher. She wanted me to raise the octave of my speaking voice, and I said no. I’m not going to do that. I mean I’ve heard of that before, a little bit of that. KT: To stretch your range, is that the idea? LH: No, no, no, it’s like if you just wallow down in the depths of your voice, it’ll just kind of stay there, you know, you’re using it too much, and you’re using certain parts of your vocal chords that don’t need to be used all the time. And in order to preserve everything, you should talk in a little bit of a higher voice. I’m talking too low, I basically what it is. And it’s more probably for a preservation of the vocal chords. It’s probably great advice; I just chose to ignore it basically. I mean all kinds of things are bad for your voice. �55 Caffeine’s bad for it, alcohol is bad for it, yelling’s bad for it. I mean and I used to go to concerts and yell, like just going as an audience member and yelling, and then coming back with a hoarse voice or no voice. That’s terrible for your voice. And even talking, I mean really talking too much is not great. I’m not going to say it’s a purposeful thing that I just said I’m going to just mess it all up, but I think in the back of my mind I was realizing that I wanted a different sound and a different texture and a different tone, with my voice. KT: Do you have recordings from your earlier voice? LH: There might be some tapes somewhere. KT: Yeah, that would be interesting to hear yourself, yeah. LH: Yeah, although it was always big. I mean in fact, with my vocal coach June Bonner, her background was opera, and for a second there, she was kind of saying, “Hey, have you ever thought about this?” Because I had a very big voice, even when I would get in to an upper register. But that just kind of thing never really appealed to me, so I didn't follow it. But it was always big, it was just my range. And I mean even now, I have kind of high-ish range for how low my voice sounds. I mean I can still--it’s funny, I’ve come across this situation where I’ve been playing--singing with a group of people on some Pink Floyd stuff. I’ve come across this where people are wanting to redo “Dark Side of the Moon.” And there’s a song on there called “Great Gig in the Sky,” and it’s a woman wailing. KT: Aha, that’s right. They want you to do that? LH: I’ve done it now. I’ve done it four times, and it’s funny because the first time �56 we tried it, I was kind of sick and I realized it was kind of high, and I thought I can’t get to it because I’m kind of sick, but I did it anyway and we got through it. And then the next time, I sat down and I looked at a transcription of the part, and it goes way up to like some high B--like high G above C--like some crazy place that I would never get to. And I was thinking this is not because I have a cold, this is because this muscle has not been used in fifteen years. But I was still able to kind of get closer than I would have thought. I was kind of-go, there’s some spark in those upper notes. But I’m happy with the way it’s gone. And it’s funny, my friend Jeff, who I met at Berklee, he’s playing music, very successful, and he heard something recently of mine, and he said, “Wow, your voice has held up really well.” And you know, and it has. I’ve been really grateful that I can tell some aging in it, certainly, and I have to be more aware about being kinder to it. That’s definitely more my thought process than ever before. But it has held up really well. I mean I’ve gotten the gruffness that I kind of want, but it’s definitely not falling apart yet. So, it’s weird, but it’s something--again, it’s like something I think I never could take credit for. It’s always been there. It’s always been something I could do, and it’s always been real easy to do, don’t know why. KT: Is there anything that either that we talked about earlier that you want to elaborate upon, or is there maybe something like that we didn't touch on that you think is really important for understanding you, but you as an artist, anything. LH: I mean I think it’s interesting that you’re so surprised that I don’t like to be in the spotlight. And I think a lot of people don’t realize that that’s an option with a singer. I mean like these days, everybody is me, me, me, show me, let me show you, you know, �57 it’s such a prevalent posture nowadays, where it’s in your face, and who’s going to be the loudest, and who is going to be the most out there, and that’s never been my thing. But I worry do you have to be like that in order to be successful? Because yeah, I mean I’m not going to change myself to make that happen, but I wonder about that now, it seems like there’s a trend where that might be an actual concern, you know, if I’m not in your face all the time, that’s going to be to my detriment, which is a little alarming. KT: Who is your ideal band in that sense? LH: In your face? KT: No, no, no, in terms of what you would like out of a band, you know, is there a band out there who you can think of who work together musically? LH: Wilco. KT: Yeah. LH: You mean as far as the dynamic--yeah. KT: You think Wilco’s your model? LH: Kind of, yeah. KT: Really? LH: Especially I’ve probably seen that band perform more than any other band. I first caught their show in ’94 in Myrtle Beach, to a room with nobody in it. So, I’ve seen that band change. I’ve seen the personnel change; I’ve seen the songwriting change, the style. Jeff Tweedy is not in your face. In fact, I don’t think he likes for you to be in his face. I think he’s probably not like the nicest guy in the world, you know, but he’s doing what he’s doing, and it’s there for your consumption. And I like that. He’s not trying to run for office, you know, it’s not a popularity contest. And I feel like that’s too much of �58 what it is, and I like the fact that he doesn't give a shit about that, you know, this is what I do. And he’s not going to pander and do all that kind of thing. And the way that that band has come about, especially now. I was watching a clip of theirs off of Letterman recently. Oh, he’s got Nels Cline on the guitar, which is kind of a wild card move to pull that element in there. KT: Somebody who is so present in the mix. Yeah. LH: Yeah, but I mean his background is varied, and then, you know, you’ve got that dynamic, and then you’ve got--who’s the guy’s name on bass, who’s been there forever. KT: John Stirratt. LH: Yeah, he’s been there forever. He’s the only guy that’s lasted the whole time, you know, and I like that there’s that different element. KT: I was wondering about that, like would you want to play piano for Jeff Tweedy, or would you want to play bass for Jeff Tweedy? I mean somehow Stirratt’s figured it out, but he strikes me as a pain in the ass that would be a nightmare for background musicians. LH: I think Tweedy is prickly. I think he’s prickly about the way he does things. KT: Everything. LH: And you know, maybe I am a little bit. Probably going to have to backtrack a bunch, do a little back peddling. I mean he seems to get along--the dynamic that’s currently there with Wilco--I mean I don’t have any inside information on anything, but I mean it seems to be the best dynamic he’s ever had, as far as there’s no visible tension between anybody. Everybody looks like they’re enjoying themselves as much as they �59 normally do. I mean he looks happier than he’s ever been on stage, you know, and I think it’s just finding the right fit of people. I mean like whatever these current personalities are, they work. And you’ve just got to find the right fit. KT: I mean one guy did kill himself. LH: Do you think he killed himself? KT: Didn’t he? LH: I thought he kind of died. KT: Of an accidental overdose? LH: Yeah. KT: Oh, okay, I shouldn’t say that. LH: No, no, no, what was his name, Jay--. KT: Jay Bennett. LH: Jay Bennett, yeah, yeah. I thought it was kind of an accidental thing, or like--. KT: I could be totally off on that, but I would think that the experience would be really--. LH: Stressful? KT: Very stressful, and I’m a huge fan, and you know, I saw Uncle Tupelo and absolutely loved him, and saw Tweedy shows before he formed Wilco, solo shows. LH: Oh, you saw some solo ones, oh, wow. KT: Yeah, in Chicago, and so--. LH: You think he’d be a nightmare to work with? KT: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. LH: Huh. �60 KT: I think he’s kind of a prick on the stage. LH: He is a prick. KT: Yeah. LH: I saw a solo show with him before, where he kind of just berated the audience. KT: Yeah. LH: I mean I don’t respect him for that, you know, there’s no reason where that should go down. Almost nothing happening should result in that kind of behavior, but there are aspects of him that I like, and that I recognize. I don’t feel like he’s in your face all the time, and he has that drive. KT: Right, in his defense, what he’s gotten out of his supporting cast has been absolutely brilliant. LH: Oh, yeah. KT: And he remakes himself continually. LH: He does evolve, and I like that. I like that his sound’s going to change from record to record usually. I don’t think it’s easy. I don’t think living in that lifestyle for as long as he has, that’s--I can’t imagine. But I don’t know, I’m okay with that. I don’t think being a prick to the audience is the right call, right direction to take, although I found it to be kind of funny when I saw it. Well, this guy in the audience kept saying, “It’s my birthday.” And Tweedy kind of looked over and said, “Do I care?” And it’s kind of the thing sometimes you wish you’d say that he kind of does. KT: Right, right. LH: But I mean on the other hand, you can’t really do that, you know, you got to-- �61 . KT: I’m sure you must be tempted though, you know, I mean a guy comes and takes the mike, after you’ve been driving twelve hours to play for eight people. LH: As much of a hot head I can get, and I’m learning more and more that I am a hot head--I try to not have public scenes, you know, like nobody needs to see that. Now if you need to go walk around the block and have a fit like around the corner, sure, take your time. But I mean like again, with that guy who came up, I don’t know, we’ll just keep going. I mean sure, there are certain things that I would probably not--you know, would shut down, but I don’t know, I feel like you’ve got to be--especially with people coming to your concerts and paying money to go see you, you’ve got to be cordial to some extent. And you’ve got to be present a little bit. Like I saw a couple of shows last year or the year before at the Performing Arts Center. Both bands, different shows, didn't know where they were, like thanking Charlotte, and thanking Charlottesville. And you’re like, you know what, I get it, you’re on the road, but you know what, I just paid fifty bucks, and you’re going to say, “Thank you Charlottesville. Oh, you ladies look good tonight.” Or something, I don’t know. KT: We’re so happy to be in Charlotte. LH: Yeah, and everybody in the audience is like oh. KT: That’s bad. LH: You know, I mean if that’s the worst that happens, that’s okay. Wow, now I’m going to have to think about Tweedy. I’m going to go home and think about him some. �62 KT: I mean I think I get your point, in terms of like band relation to the--you know, the central figure. LH: But he seems to take that position where he likes to have people that can do their job, you know, I need a guitar player. Well, let me go get Nels Cline if he’s interested. KT: And it creates a kind of healthy tension because his style is so distinct. LH: Yeah, and finding a balance between that distinct style and what’s already presented with Wilco, you know, and where does that fit in. I think he’s navigated that pretty well. I mean yeah, yeah, I’m okay with Jeff Tweedy, [01:56:40] if he wants to. KT: Any kind of final thoughts about anything? LH: Final thoughts, you know, I guess you know, when talking about directions, yeah, that’s the next thing is being more forethoughtful than just reactionary is kind of what’s on tap, and figuring out a plan, yeah. Talking about people moving all the time, it seems like I should be pretty good with change by now, like trying to just rebuild stuff. I was talking to somebody about spring the other day. I was like, “Spring is here; time for change. Time to redo stuff.” KT: Time to form a band. LH: I feel like I’ve been forming a band every year, for the last couple years. Maybe just sit and develop one for a little while is probably a good plan, instead of just trying something new, yeah. KT: Well, thank you for taking out the time. I mean this is wonderful to get to know more about you. LH: Well, thank you for listening. �63 KT: No, and I think there will be a lot of people who are interested in this. And you know, the other thing I didn't mention this, but we should probably--you know, once we get this digitized, we’ll figure out a way to link it to the website. LH: Okay. KT: Your website. LH: Oh, cool. KT: If you can think of any kind of use for this for--you know, professional stuff, you know, we’ll have to draw web traffic to it. LH: Oh, wow, that would be--who wants to listen to me talk for a couple of hours. It’s going to be funny. KT: Well, I certainly enjoyed it. LH: Well, thank you. Yeah, again, I’m not much of a talker, so this has probably been like the most I’ve talked in forever. Yeah, this will be good. KT: Great. Thank you. End of recording. Verified by Paul Garton Paul M. Garton, Inc. DBA The Transcript Co-op Date: April 4, 2013 LBP 8/29/13 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource The oral histories in this collection were produced by The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel. Founded in 2008, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel seeks to deepen understanding of the Lowcountry’s rich history and culture through the gathering and presentation of recorded memories from area residents.<br /><h3>Search Tips</h3> Interviews may be browsed by scrolling to the bottom of this page and selecting "View all items".<br /><br />When using the search bar, we recommend putting quotations around your search term, and selecting the Boolean search option, as illustrated here:<br /><p><img src="https://gdurl.com/aYPj" alt="aYPj" /><br /><br />To view interviews of a specific theme, please see the search tips in each series below.</p> <h3><strong>The Citadel in War and in Peace<br /></strong></h3> With generous support from the <a href="http://www.schumanities.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Humanities Council of South Carolina</a>, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel collected thirty interviews with Citadel alumni regarding their experiences during WWII. Journalist and historian Jack Bass conducted the interviews during the Fall of 2008.They serve as a powerful testament to the veterans' experiences and their critical contributions to the war effort.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- World War II"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Korean War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Vietnam War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The Second Gulf War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The War in Afghanistan"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Working Charleston</strong></h3> Working Charleston documents the on and off job experiences of the longshoremen and lawyers, the bartenders and carriage drivers, hospital aides and high tech workers who make Charleston among the nation's prime tourist destinations and vital centers of global trade.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"Working Charleston"</li> <li>"Charleston City Workers"</li> <li>"Lowcountry Foodways"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</strong></h3> <span><span>These interviews explore how community activism continues to shape modern life in the South.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /></span></span> <ul><li>"Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</li> <li>"Civil rights movement--South Carolina"</li> <li>"African Americans--Civil Rights--South Carolina--Charleston"</li> </ul><a target="_blank" href="https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/193" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a> <h3><strong>Las Voces del Lowcountry</strong></h3> <span><span>This project is designed to raise the profile of the Hispanic/Latinos who call the Lowcountry home and to promote a rational and humane conversation regarding immigration, education, and employment policies.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:<br /></em></span></span> <ul><li>"Las Voces del Lowcountry"</li> <li>"Latin Americans--Southern States"</li> <li>"Hispanic Americans--Southern States"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Women in World War II</strong></h3> <em>*To search this series, type "Women in World War II" into the search bar, using the Boolean search option.<br /></em> <ul><li>"Women in World War II"</li> <li>"Women--Employment History"</li> <li>"World War, 1939-1945--Participation, female"</li> </ul> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Kieran Walsh Taylor Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Lindsay Holler Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1 hour, 58 minutes Location The location of the interview Charleston, South Carolina Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History of Lindsay Holler, interviewed by Kieran Walsh Taylor, 30 March, 2013 Subject The topic of the resource Women musicians--United States Musicians--Training of Music--Social aspects Description An account of the resource Born in Charleston, SC on September 11, 1976 and raised in nearby Pinopolis, Lindsay Holler is a singer, composer, and guitar player who has additionally been a strong advocate for local musicians and a fixture of the music scene. In this interview she recalls her musical influences, including her parents’ mainstream pop records and her brother’s enthusiasm for the Black Crows. In addition to playing flute in the middle school band and taking piano lessons, Holler also studied voice with opera singer June Bonner. That association led to a visit to Broadway at age 13, where she saw Gregory Hines and Phylicia Rashad in Jelly’s Last Jam. “I kind of fell in love with New York a little bit, and I was like, oh, man, that’s where I want to go,” Holler recalls. Following her high school graduation, Holler studied jazz at the Berklee College of Music before returning to Charleston to complete her musical education at the College of Charleston. She has recorded and performed with several locally-based groups, including the Dirty Kids, the Western Polaroids, and Matadero. Though often in the spotlight as the lead singer, Holler is ambivalent about the attention that it brings her and worries that that ambivalence may undermine her success: “Everybody is me, me, me, show me, let me show you, you know, it’s such a prevalent posture nowadays, where it’s in your face, and who’s going to be the loudest, and who is going to be the most out there, and that’s never been my thing. But I worry do you have to be like that in order to be successful?” <br />This interview is a part of the COHP’s “Working Charleston” series. Working Charleston documents the on and off job experiences of the longshoremen and lawyers, the bartenders and carriage drivers, hospital aides and high tech workers who make Charleston among the nation’s prime tourist destinations and vital centers of global trade. The digital recordings and transcripts are part of The Citadel Oral History Program Collection at The Citadel Archives &amp; Museum.<br /><br /><h3><strong><a target="_blank" href="http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:63997" rel="noreferrer noopener">Listen to the audio on the Lowcountry Digital Library.</a></strong></h3> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Working Charleston Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Citadel Archives & Museum Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-03-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Materials in The Citadel Archives & Museum Digital Collections are intended for educational and research use. The user assumes all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of copyright. For more information contact The Citadel Archives & Museum, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, 29409. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/182 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Charleston (S.C.)