Category Archives: Mother’s Wine Emporium

More Thoughts on Scott Alarik and Others

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I’m sitting here listening to The Hudson River Sampler on WAMC a local Public Radio station, hosted by Wanda Fischer and reflecting more on Bill Staines and Scott Alarik. There’s a lot to reflect upon, but I’m going to comment on just a bit.

First is a quote from Scott Alarik talking about folk music and how memory is how a person remembers, but tradition is how a society remembers. He then talked about how we can tell what was important to a society by what is preserved and what we hear years later and how we can be drawn back in history by tradition.

But the other thought is a basic tautology: every performer has their own style of performing. This reminded me first of the two “worst” folk performers I’ve heard over the years. Now, worst is relative. Neither technically were bad performers. Technically they were competent and their performance enjoyable, but…

In the first case, it was a performer who performed at Mother’s Wine Emporium at RPI. I honestly don’t remember who it was, but they did their two sets, and at the end of the evening asked for their check, which I promptly handed to them. Now, let me point out here, that as much as many performers loved performing, performing was the way they put bread on the table. Performers who appeared at Mother’s were professionals and we paid them as such. But… In all my years of interacting with performers this was the first, and only, that treated it simply as a job. There was nothing more there. I think they would have put in the same effort with no crowd, or with the largest crowd ever. I’d say their heart simply wasn’t in it or something. That’s fine, but not what we wanted.

The second performer was one my wife and I caught at a lodge on the Skyline Drive in Virginia. We were staying there for the night and during dinner, there was live music. The performer setup, and segued from a warm-up into the performance. He was quite good, and he had some good monologue to go with it, but unfortunately he failed to make any attempt to connect with the audience. It was a shame because there was another family there with young kids and I suspect they walked away without any sense of the specialness of the music. From his demeanor and comments, I suspect this was a regular gig he did every week and was simply a bit jaded. Which is a shame.

This is not to disparage either performer, but more to offer a contrast to other performers such as Scott and Bill.

Bill loved to perform, as the mileage on his car, and the name of 2 of his albums suggested. I don’t think he’d pass up a chance to perform. And despite how many performances he did, I always felt like he was there for the audience. He’d give his all and the audience always enjoyed it. I think the bigger the crowd, the more energy he’d give and make the room feel all that much larger. He could make a small room feel like a concert hall.

But listening tonight, I realized Scott had a very different style, one that worked for him. I’m not sure Scott ever was performing for the audience per se. He was performing for himself, but inviting the audience to come along for the ride. As he’d sing, you could tell he was enjoying the songs and if you joined him and enjoyed the show, great, but if not, he was going to enjoy it anyway. It was almost like being invited into the inner sanctum of his mind. In his case, no matter how large the room, he could make it feel like an intimate, small space where it was just you and him.

Both had their styles and I enjoyed both and will miss them.

Life Shortened

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As I start to write this, the TV reminds me, that this is the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor; and that there are still a few veterans alive from that day.

This is both a somber note, and a somewhat celebratory one to start the day. Horrible things can happen, and yet life can still go on. I was reminded of this over the weekend.

I woke up on Saturday morning to read on Facebook that Scott Alarik had passed away. Some of my readers will recognize the name immediately, but for those who don’t, a little background. Scott was a singer-songwriter who was also a columnist for the Boston Globe and write a book on folk music and wrote for a number of other columns. I first met Scott at Mother’s Wine Emporium so many years ago. He had performed his opus Fresh-Water Whaling, telling the little known history of the glory days of whaling on the Great Lakes. I must add that the history is so little known as to be non-existent. But, for those who do recall it, remember those little harpoons you sometimes find in drinks memorialize it. Or so it was said by Scott. As much as Scott liked to sing, I think he preferred more to talk and write. He was a living, walking history of the world of folk music. I still recall one night, after he had performed at a Mother’s Wine Emporium show at RPI where we discussed “what exactly is folk music?” We agreed it was “music of the folk” but beyond that we decided it had no easy definition. As I write this, I’m listening to the first video I found on YouTube and it is Scott at his best. Yes, there’s a song or two in there, but mostly it’s him telling stories. It’s as I remember Scott.

Scott Alarik at Mother’s in 2019

That news was hard enough, but to myself I said, “at least Bill is still with us.” I had read late last month that another singer-songwriter I knew, Bill Staines was fighting cancer and the battle was not going well. Alas though, on Sunday I woke up to more tragic news. Bill had journeyed to the next folk stage. Bill was another performer I had met through Mother’s Wine Emporium many years ago. I have several of his albums, at least one I believe signed. He was known for the prodigious miles he would put on his car, I believe at one point he said he averaged 100,000 miles a year, as he drove from performance to performance. Three of his albums reflect this: The First Million Miles, The First Million Miles, Vol 2, and The Second Million Miles. His best known song was perhaps River,(Take Me Along). I think his final journey though is longer than all his rest.

Finally, later on Sunday I also read of the death of fellow caver Mark Hodges. I can’t say I knew Mark very well. I want to say I caved with him at least once, but I honestly can’t remember. But I knew the impact he had on the cavers around him. He apparently suffered a heart attack while exiting a cave over the weekend. The tributes left to him from his friends and fellow cavers are touching and serve as a reminder, that one doesn’t need to write books, or travel 100,000 miles a year to have an impact on those around him.

I’m going to close with a memory of another friend and also former “Mother” at Mother’s Wine Emporium: Tom Duscheneau. Tom was a fixture at Mother’s for more years than I can remember, and many an attendee will recall him taking a seat at the front of the room, settling in as the music would wash over him, and closing his eyes. Yes, occasionally he’d need a nudge if had started snoring, but otherwise he would simply sit there, soaking in the music until the set ended. He passed in 2006, but I still recall him from time to time. I suspect if there’s a great beyond, he’s just pulled up a chair and sat down, preparing to take in a great concert as Scott and Bill decide to tell a few tall tales and perform a duet or two.

Mother’s Wine Emporium aka Mother’s Coffehouse – For those who don’t know what Mother’s was, it was a magical place at RPI, a place where one could retreat from the hustle-bustle of the busy world and sit back and listen to singers, raconteurs and more. It had moved at least once over the years (the above photo is the latest incarnation). For the longest time, it was the oldest, continuously student run coffeehouse in the nation. Scott liked to talk about how if you made it here, you knew you had probably gotten your ticket to the college coffehouse circuit. Those of us who had the honor of working here were known as “Mothers” and it is were my wife and I met. Due to a variety of circumstances, including the death of Tom Duscheneau, it had its last show sometime in 2007. In 2019, I worked with the RPI to bring back Scott Alarik for a performance, with a hope for future shows. Covid has unfortunately put a hold on that plan, but I do hope in the coming years to again sit back and soak in the music of some great performers.