The O-town Scene

A3 CONTENTS March 6 - 31, 2014 3 EDITOR'S NOTE 4 New Music Notes | Laygirl Fashion 5 PURE & SIMPLE — Fire Cider 6 YOGA LIFE — The Science of Meditation, Part II 7 Fresh Air & Sarcasm | The I.T. Guy 8-9 ON THE COVER — 'Cold Mountain,' Catskills Style 10 Laura Jane Grace Bares Soul at SUNY Show 12 ARTIST OF THE MONTH — Dave Kiehm 13-14 Editor's Picks, Coming Events 15 ADVICE GODDESS Editor's Note|By Emily Popek Oh childhood's joys are very great, A-swingin' on his mother's gate, A-eatin' candy till his mouth Is all stuck up from north to south, But though I have to mind the rule, I'd rather go to singing school! — quoted in "These Happy Golden Years" by Laura Ingalls Wilder I've been singing for as long as I can re- member. As a kid, I pestered my mother to teach me "Do, Re, Mi," the song from the musical "The Sound of Music" that spells out the solfege syllables do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. I still remember the words and tunes of the silly songs we learned in elementary school. And when I got to junior high chorus and had my first taste of singing harmony, I was abso- lutely hooked. My tastes in music have changed plenty over the years, but there's always been room for harmony singing. I cut my teeth figuring out the parts to songs by the Beatles, and moved up to the more intri- cate musicality of Simon and Garfunkel. (See Page 7 for columnist Chad Ritchko's paean to the great Paul Simon, who will be performing in Cooperstown as part of the Baseball Hall of Fame's anniver- sary celebration in August.) In college, I heard Bulgarian folk singing for the first time and was passionately moved by its plaintive, forceful harmonies. And within the last few years, I've been discovering Americana, roots country and bluegrass music like the Louvin Brothers and the Blue Sky Boys, whose gospel-inspired melodies owe more than a little to the same American gospel tradition that once encompassed shape note singing. If you haven't heard shape note singing before, do a quick online search and take a listen. It's arresting, alarming even, in its ragged, almost wild, keening force. But the thing is, shape note singing isn't really about the listening — it's about the singing. A series of local singing schools that are going in in Delaware County offer a rare opportunity to, as instructor Ben Bath described it, "inhabit the music." Time was when music was something that people made, rather than listened to; a participatory rather than a spectator ac- tivity. Singing school gives us a chance to recapture some of that past, if only for a little while. You can read all about it on Pages 8-9. I hope this inspires you, if not necessarily to attend the school, to find a way to make a little music of your own. I'd Rather Go To Singing School March 6, 2014 O-Town Scene 3 ARE YOU A BABY BOOMER? ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT RETIREMENT? YOU'RE NOT ALONE. Over the next 19 years, more than 10,000 baby boomers a day will turn 65.* But many pre-retirees haven't saved enough money on their own, and they worry about how they'll bridge the income gap between their Social Security benefits and what they'll actually need to secure their retirement. Are you one of them? *Source: Pew Research Center, pewresearch.org, 2011 YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED Bridging the potential gap between Social Security and retirement security A3

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