Brattleboro's Hooker-Dunham Auditorium hugs a cliffside passageway about a quarter of the way between Main Street and the Connecticut River. It feels funky if you don't dwell on the fact that the rustic stone side wall is the foundation of the building above it, or that the red ceiling tubes are duct work and wiring. It's a warm spring night and the joint is packed for the CD release party for Song, by adopted daughter Lissa Schneckenburger. Over the next hours she, Corey DiMario (double bass) and Keith Murphy (guitar), and special guests treat the near-capacity crowd to dance tunes, ballads, lumberjack songs, and a grab bag ranging from a Richard Thompson cover to a composition for string quartet. The Advocate recently spoke to Schneckenburger.
Valley Advocate: You're from Maine originally. What brings you to Brattleboro?
Lissa Scheneckenburger: I'd been coming out this way for 12 years to play at contra dances in Greenfield called by David Kaynor, and I developed a fabulous relationship with all the great musicians there. I was looking for a place with a small-town atmosphere, and there was no way I could afford Northampton. I'm really happy I ended up in Brattleboro.
You're a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. That's not the obvious choice for the type of music you play.
I went there as part of the contemporary improvisation department, which was small, and I got all kinds of individual attention. The school has alternative music programs thanks to a past president, Gunther Schuler, a composer whose vision was to expose the jazz and classical worlds to each other. By far my most important teacher was Hankus Metsky, a klezmer musician who really understands improv.
Who else has been an important role model?
Greg Boardman, David Kaynor and Alisdair Fraser. Each is grounded in the sense of a musician's duty to the community and to younger musicians. Greg Boardman has been my fiddle teacher since I was a kid, and he invited me to gigs where I got to observe how the musicians interacted and how the dancers responded to the beat.
In his various workshops, Alisdair stresses two common themes. First, there is stylistic integrity—learning something to the fullest and being true to the style. The other half is allowing your own personality to shine through—how to make your own melodic variations of tunes while still being in the context of a style.
David gave me the opportunity to put everything into practice by hiring me for gigs and giving me a network of other musicians. You learn more [by] playing than by observing or practicing. He pushed me to the level of being a working musician.
You call yourself a "New England" musician. What does that mean?
The repertoire is built on all the things immigrants brought. At different times it was influenced by the music of Scotland, Ireland and England; then France and Scandinavia; and more recently by printed sources from Canada and across the U.S. All those different music styles get mixed up in New England. The distinctiveness shows up in elusive things. There's less fancy ornamentation in New England, like the rolls and ornamentation you'd find in Irish music or the bowed triplets in Scottish music. In New England, style developed from dance, not vice versa, so the phrasing has to be clear to dancers who aren't going to hear intricate ornaments. New England fiddlers tend to stick to more basic styles—like using double stops and strong bow strokes.
You're a singer as well as an instrumentalist. Which do you prefer?
Not choosing has been a stand of mine. When I was younger, I'd make mix tapes that would have ripping Alisdair Fraser reels followed by a Joan Baez song. At dances, people want me to lay down strong rhythms, and at performing arts venues they want me to be a vocalist. Sometimes I have to stand my ground not to sing songs or play tunes all night. It's important to me to be both a singer and a musician.
So how did you handle being a guest singer with Solas?
This was a challenge for me musically. I was honored to be their special guest for all their March gigs. They are fantastic musicians and they have Winnie Horan and didn't need me to play fiddle! I was out there with nothing to hold onto! No instrument& no props—just singing.
Reviews sometimes compare you to Alison Krauss and I noticed her name in the "Sounds Like" section of your MySpace page. Is this a good comparison?
I guess it's easy to make because of the fiddle/singing combination. I'm a huge Alison Krauss fan, but the truth is that I'm horrible at filling out forms, so I write down the names of people I admire and hope that somebody out there thinks I sound a bit like that person.
You've played a lot of logging songs from the Phillips Barry collection. What led you to these?
I discovered him through Greg Boardman, who told me "The Irish Girl" came from Barry's [1939] book The Maine Woods Songster. It took me a year to find a copy since it's out of print. This set off a wave of exploration as it simply hadn't occurred to me there was a unique repertoire of ballads from northern New England. That's silly in retrospect, because music happens everywhere, so why not here? Now I try to find time to hit collections like the one at the Ralph Page Library [at the University of New Hampshire], the folk archives at the University of Maine, Brown, Harvard and elsewhere.
When you get hold of older songs like "Fair Maid by the Sea Shore," what do you try to do with them?
I think about tunes that are well traveled. It's important to find material that won't feel redundant to the average listener. My newest CD is an example of what I like to do. Some of the songs are well traveled, but not the versions I'm doing. There have been lots of versions of "Maid on the Shore," but the one I chose is different enough to be interesting. That said, if a well-known song is beautiful, I'll just sing it anyway. Being different shouldn't be the end-all of a repertoire.
Do you have favorites from your repertoire?
I often recycle songs in rotation. Recently, "Haste to the Wedding" and "Off She Goes" became favorites again even though I once played them to death. As for songs, I've been enjoying a long obsession with Richard Thompson's "Waltzing for Dreamers," and I'm still not sick of it. I think it will be one of my favorites for as long as I live. Hopefully audiences won't mind.
Your Website [www.lissafiddle.com] mentions that musicians get sick of answering questions about the difference between a fiddle and a violin. Okay, there isn't any—but is there a difference in mindset between the kind of person who says they play one or the other?
I used to think that popular culture made people think that the only people who played fiddles were on Hee Haw. I use the terms interchangeably because the terms aren't connected to my style of playing. I haven't really switched between classical and folk; I'm a folk musician. But if I'm boarding an airplane and the stewardess asks me what's in the case, I say "violin" because I want the airline to think it's expensive and fragile! It's also a violin when I'm going through customs. If I'm going to a party, it's a fiddle."
