Living
a Life in Music
When you hear them sing, it's obvious and clear that Walt
Richards and Paula Strong have spent a great deal of time playing music
together. Walt and Paula are regular people, not a creation of some corporate
music machine or momentary taste sensation. Both have that special gift of
engaging people through their music. For them, life is a journey of musical
discovery through entertaining and teaching others. Walt has been at the
forefront of traditional and acoustic music in San Diego since the early 1960s.
He has reincarnated himself many times over through his students who play a
variety of instruments and musical styles. His teaching continues to enrich the
San Diego community and serves as a lasting tribute to his work. Paula is like
the North Star, a guiding light and compass for all of us who know her. She's
also a fine singer and swinging musician.
Just
Walt
Walt Richards is a native San Diegan. He was bitten by the
folk music bug back in the mid 1950s when he first heard Sam Hinton perform in
his school. He was also influenced by a church youth leader who loved and
collected folk music and introduced him to it. In 1957, the youth leader took
Walt and his friends to see Pete Seeger perform on his long-neck Vega banjo at
Hoover High School. Just getting in to hear the concert was a new experience
for Walt. He had to walk through protesters who opposed Seeger's politics and
who objected to Seeger's right to sing in a public school. It was an
eye-opening experience both musically and politically. As Walt recounted this
story, I felt the excitement of this early experience and how Walt sat in the
front row looking up at the stage and watching Seeger playing this amazing
instrument. It was the banjo and Seeger that changed Walt and shaped the course
of his musical direction.
Walt has
been a part of the San Diego folk music scene since the late 1950s when he put
together his first group, the Kensington 3. As a student at SDSU in the 1960s,
Walt was involved in folk music on campus as well as in the local coffeehouses.
After leaving SDSU, he formed the New Expressions Music School in 1974, which
he originally established as a cooperative with Vickie Cottle. He also briefly
owned the House of Strings in North Park before it was sold. About four years
ago, Walt moved his music school to Acoustic Expressions, the store that bought
out House of Strings. Last year, Acoustic Expressions was sold again and is now
called Old Time Music, a sister store of Buffalo Brothers in Carlsbad. Each
week Walt spends three long, 12-hour days there as a master teacher, teaching
banjo, guitar, and mandolin to students of all ages and backgrounds. He has
taught many of the people who participate in the local folk music community and
beyond. Whether playing or teaching old-time traditional, folk, western, or
bluegrass, Walt continues to leave his stamp on the local music scene.
Over the
years, Walt and his groups have performed for shut-ins as a kind of musical
community service. In addition to his vast knowledge of many songs, folk music
history, and musical styles, he is also skilled in playing a variety of
stringed instruments. Teaching has clearly given Walt the focus to perfect his
skills and transfer them to his many students over the years. In his role as a
teacher, he spends a lot of time designing lessons based on each student's
skill and temperament. However, the best teachers are often performers who
understand what it takes to learn and enjoy their instruments. Walt has infused
his students with his gifts and talents, and the students, in turn, continue to
play, perform, and share their music within the community. Some of his students
are now professional musicians, but all are better musicians for having studied
with Walt.
I spent a
lot of time with Walt discussing his teaching philosophy, his life, his
beliefs, and his need to connect with his audiences and other musicians. Walt
is on a quest, a journey to validate himself and others through his music and
life experiences. As he talked about his lifelong interest in history and all
things spiritual, he said that he loves the art of telling stories through
songs. He said, "Sometimes as you look out at the audience, you see people
reacting, opening up, and letting go of their outside worldly issues, and then
you see yourself more clearly." It's such moments that Walt feels are the most
rewarding and enriching. The connections he makes through performance validate
each of us, both audience and musician.
Over the
years, Walt has had many opportunities to go commercial, but he chose to walk
away. Following his own musical path, Walt has sung in many groups, traveled
many musical roads, won banjo contests, and even received an Emmy together with
Vickie Cottle for the musical arrangement in a TV show. Hollywood music
corporate types once suggested that the women in one of Walt's groups sex it
up. That didn't happen. When offered a position with the New Christy Minstrels,
Walt turned it down, because he felt they were looking for indentured
musicians. Looking back, Walt laughs at all these offers. You realize when
talking to him how much he's always enjoyed his life as an entertainer and
teacher, but it's clear he has a spiritual streak in him. He's on a musical
journey of continuous discovery to satisfy the need to give back.
Multiple
wins at the Topanga Banjo and Fiddle Contest helped send Walt off onto national
tours with the Eddystone Singers and the Appalachians in the 1960s. He toured
with the Eddystone Singers throughout the Southwest on the Hootenanny Tour
(connected to the show of the same name). Walt becomes truly animated when
discussing playing in these groups, which also included Bow Willow, Mandolin
Madness, the Soft Touch Banjo Ensemble, and Trails and Rails. A bluegrass
enthusiast and among the first to play bluegrass in San Diego, he helped create
the San Diego Bluegrass Club, later renamed the San Diego Bluegrass Society,
and was also a founding member the annual Julian Bluegrass Festival. His
efforts contributed to the formation of a vibrant bluegrass community in town.
Although Walt doesn't consider himself a solo performer, he has often taken
gigs as a guitarist, playing chord melody as background music at events or
parties. He is interested in the give-and-take experience of expectation and
chance that is only found when sharing musical performance with other musicians
and audiences. He encourages members of his group to keep an eye on each other
as well as on the audience. According to Walt, connection, interaction,
encouragement, practiced playing, and equality of purpose are all needed for a
group to succeed. Walt sees himself as an entertainer who does something
spiritual and uplifting by touching people's emotions and opening them up to
the experience of new sounds and musical tales. He's a renaissance musical man
but very approachable. He really believes musicians have a special gift as
troubadours, shamans, and healers.
Walt's
current band, Trails and Rails, is deeply committed to education and learning.
After playing a concert at a public school in Arizona last year, the students
eagerly lined up, thanked each band member, shook each band member's hand, and
asked real musical questions. This was an experience that touched Walt deeply,
and he treasured the children's curiosity, gratitude, and wonder. Trails and
Rails always includes stops at schools when they're doing concerts and
festivals in Arizona and New Mexico. Currently performing at the San Diego
County public libraries, the band hopes to bring their programs into San Diego
public schools as well. After each show, Trails and Rails answers questions
from the audience and stick around until everybody has had a chance to talk
with them.
More than
25 years ago Walt started Slo-Jam, a jam session for musicians at the San
Carlos Recreation Center every third Friday of the month. He created Slo-Jam
after noticing that many talented musicians were sitting it out on the
sidelines at the local Bluegrass Society meetings, where the regulars dominated
the musical sessions. Today, Slo-Jam continues to be a noncompetitive jam where
four leaders bring in a song and lead their groups to develop a musical arrangement.
Everyone participates, with finished arrangements that include vocal parts and
instrumental solos performed at the end of the evening for the whole Slo-Jam
group. Members come with a variety of instrumental skills, chord knowledge,
stage fright, singing fears, and the usual performer's jitters. Some very
accomplished musicians participate at Slo-Jam and are willing to help others
learn to gain confidence and enrich their skills. It offers a safe place to
learn, to test out musical ideas, and to develop at one's own pace. After each
song the group makes suggestions and praises the quality of the musicianship.
Walt feels that some of the greatest music he's ever heard has come out of
these evenings. Best of all, each jam session is free, all inclusive, and
friendly; the evening winds up at Round Table for pizza and a social
get-together.
Just
Paula
Paula Strong was probably destined to be involved in music
from the moment a big band drummer swept her mother off her feet in Hot
Springs, Arkansas, and brought her to Los Angeles where his band was playing at
the Biltmore. Life on tour, however, was not the family life Paula's mom
envisioned, so another musician, Ray, became the dad who raised her. Growing up
in northern California, Ray staged Paula's first solo singing performance at a
community holiday program, a rendition of "White Christmas," complete with a
six-year-old lisp that comes from two missing front teeth. Distracted from her
fear of forgetting the words by the Ivory Flake snow falling behind her from
the stage rafters, Paula remembers feeling the audience pulling for her even
though she couldn't see them. As a much more grown-up sixth grader, she would
sing an occasional duet with her dad when his swing band played at a little
resort in the area. Paula still performs "Don't Fence Me In" with Trails and
Rails, one of the songs she and her dad sang together. Paula spent her
childhood dreaming of Palomino horses, cowboys, and trains. She also liked to
dance to swing band and early rock ‘n' roll music. From fourth grade through
junior college, she played clarinet in school and community bands and
orchestras and also played in her high school Dixieland band. She was always
singing in school, church, and community choirs, where she often sang tenor,
because there usually weren't enough men who could (or would) commit the time
to cover that part. "Growing up in small towns seems to give one all sorts of
unexpected opportunities," Paula remembered, laughing. When in high school,
Paula also spent two years as the organist at her small church "not," as she
says, "because I really knew how to do that, but because no one else would
commit to the schedule of weekly practices and services. My technique was full
stop with pedals when I could manage. There certainly are a lot of sharps and
flats in church music!" In the meantime, when she was at home, the radio or the
record player was always playing. Little did Paula realize that all this
experience was excellent training for the lead and harmony singing, arranging, and
guitar playing that she'd later perform with Trails and Rails.
Paula
graduated from college with a minor in music, but the coursework was geared
toward elementary education majors and not very useful for a professional
musician. And, without intercession from another teacher, she would have failed
her required voice class, because she refused to sing above "A." This was
undoubtedly due to the aftereffects of too many years singing tenor parts with
no one to show her how to transition between low and high voice. The teacher's
winning argument with her voice teacher was, "What difference does it make.
She's never going to be a singer, anyway!" Throughout her diverse life, Paula
has been a teacher, a school nurse, a musician and singer, and has also raised
a family. When she returned to singing and playing music 25 years ago, she
discovered that a whole new repertoire of songs called folk music had come on
the scene. It was with a living room group called Saturday Night Music, a
wonderful adult garage band that never played in public, that Paula learned to
play guitar chords and sing at the same time, "a skill not to be
underestimated," she remarks. At one point the group's leader suggested that
she might enjoy taking guitar lessons from Walt Richards. Following up on his
suggestion, Paula changed her life yet again, resulting in a musical legacy for
both Walt and Paula. For the past 20 years, Walt and Paula have performed
together in various groups. Now she plays guitar and mandolin with Trails and
Rails and even drums in a local 15-member swing band, the Brass, Key and Wind,
in which Walt also plays. Her musical journey with Walt also included a
nine-year stint in the group Mandolin Madness.
As a member
of Trails and Rails, Paula honed her computer skills and learned Photoshop so
that she could help design Trails and Rails CD covers. She also handles the
band's business and scheduling. But in the end, Paula's passion is her love of
singing, harmonizing, and encouraging others to sing and play music.
Paula reminds
me of the famous Dorothea Lange Depression Era photo of a woman and her child,
which was taken in a 1930s California labor camp. The woman was a dust bowl
refugee whose eyes looked strong, focused on some distant dream, her intense
gaze looking past the tent city toward a new life. The photo really captured
the woman's strengths and her wish to move ahead. Like the woman in this photo,
Paula seems to have been touched by our soil. She has an earthy accent when she
sings and seems fearless.
The
Music
Together Walt and Paula have traveled many musical miles and
styles. Their music has always combined traditional music and contributed new
additions to the folk music genre. Before Trails and Rails was formed, Walt,
Paula, and Vickie Cottle were members of the group Bow Willow, a vocal harmony
group that played and sang a wide variety of styles. The group's interest in
the music of the American West, including train songs, swing, and folk music,
really started to develop at that time. Eventually they included cowboy poetry
in their repertoire. Thanks to Ken Graydon and Phee Sherline, Bow Willow was
introduced to western and cowboy music. The group also added train songs and
some blues to their repertoire. Paula remembers thinking, "Not only is all this
music wonderful, there are also places to play it!" Ken and Phee's musical gift
to Walt and Paula would bring about their next group: Trails and Rails. But
regardless of the material, Walt and Paula's performances reveal the depth of
practice and research that go into each song and show.
In 2004,
Trails and Rails evolved from a duo to become a quartet or Quatro, as they call
it. A few years ago bassist Bruce Huntington magically appeared at a Slo-Jam.
Walt and Paula needed a bass player who could stand in for a couple of
performances of a play they were providing music for and immediately recognized
that Bruce had the ability to do that. When he came over to rehearse the music,
they were even more impressed with his versatility on stand-up bass, which he was
switching over to after years of playing electric rock ‘n' roll.
At about
the same time, guitarist and autoharpist Ken Wilcox expressed an interest in
the western repertoire, especially the old tunes, and his autoharp became a
wonderful addition to the Quatro. "Little did we know, at the beginning, what a
fortuitous meld this was to be," says Paula. Bruce turned out to be an amazing
songwriter as well as a great bass player, and Ken has the instrumental
wizardry and vocal talents that are a perfect complement to Walt and Paula's
sound. Although they still perform as a duo at times, the Quatro has become
their preferred format for performances. Trails and Rails, the Quatro, released
their first CD, From Way Out West, in 2006. Their song "Night Train Down the
Yellowstone" by Les Buffham and Mike Ley from that album was voted number three
of the 2006 Top Ten Single Western releases as chosen by the Heartland Public
Radio Panel at the Tombstone Western Music Festival in November 2007.
At that
same festival, the Quatro introduced its second CD, Ghosts of Tombstone, by
singing the title track to open both the Friday and Saturday night shows in the
famous Schieffelin Hall in Tombstone. In 2006 and again in 2007, Trails and
Rails placed on the Top Ten Ballot for the Western Music Association Awards in
the following categories: Traditional Duo/Group, Instrumentalist of the Year
(Walt Richards), and the Crescendo Award.
A
Final Word
Last June, I stage managed and performed at the Wieghorst
Western Heritage Days at the Olaf Wieghorst Museum in El Cajon, where I had a
chance to experience Trails and Rails and other western performers up close, in
concert, and in my first jam with musicians who play western music. All the old
stereotypes evaporated as the music expunged my doubts and prejudices. Yes, the
dress was boots and cowboy hats, but the music was southwestern folk music and
western swing, and there was even some cowboy poetry. Trails and Rails fit
right in. There was intensity to the music and wonderful instrumental ability
that I had somehow missed before. As the music filled the stage, I experienced
the depth of storytelling that covered the full human experience as seen
through a southwestern musical lens. By playing with the performers in a jam
and sharing my music with them, I understood what Walt and Paula had found on
their new musical journey. Walt spoke of the friendliness and warmth they
experienced with these western performers and how you were invited into their
homes where you were fed and treated like old friends while on tour. Walt and
Paula have become invigorated by being a part of the western music community.
Western musicians are always mindful of their audience. Trails and Rails is an
urban band, but their cowboy dreams have found common ground with their western
audiences. As a storytelling band, Trails and Rails has many facets. The band
can play western music one day and show up the next day to do train songs at
the Train Song Festival in Old Poway Park. The band has appeared at the San Diego
Folk Heritage/Sam Hinton Festival and can play the American folk song book with
the best of the folk singers.
So what's
next for Walt and Paula? Most likely there will be more touring, more students,
more CDs, and more new audiences waiting to be touched by Walt and Paula's
magic. The band recently went into the studio and recorded a new CD titled
Ghosts of Tombstone. Walt described the recording sessions as difficult but
worth the intensity. Our gift is their new CD, recorded live and analog.
Walt and
Paula have found their own voice without gimmicks and manufactured lyrics.
Their music is like a handshake, a hug, an eye opener, and a spiritual tale
through life's many journeys. So get on board and take a ride on the trails and
rails with Walt and Paula. You'll enjoy yourself, because that's what they want
you to do.