By CAROLYN BROWN
Staff Writer
Celebrated lesbian singer-songwriter Linda Shear will play a benefit show for Straw Dog Writers Guild on Saturday, May 31, at 4 p.m. at Northampton Center for the Arts.
Linda Shear plays the piano at home in Easthampton. She will play a benefit show for Straw Dog Writers Guild on Saturday, May 31, at 4 p.m. at Northampton Center for the Arts. STAFF PHOTO / DANIEL JACOBI II—
Shear founded the band Family of Woman, the first openly lesbian band in the United States, which also played at the first lesbian conference in the country. In the 1970s, she and her band were part of the lesbian separatist movement, which called for lesbians to have their own communities and spaces separate from men and straight women. Though Shear no longer identifies as a separatist, she still has “a lot of respect and love for that time in my life,” and she still appreciates the power of a community space filled with lesbians.
Shear’s career started at the age of 5, she said, when she wrote her first song: she put the words on the Statue of Liberty to music. She also drew a keyboard on a piece of cardboard that the dry cleaning service had sent her father’s shirts back with and “played” it until her parents bought her a piano, when she was 9.
“It was clear to me that music was the language of the heart, and I wanted to know how to express that,” she said.
She started playing guitar at the age of 17, the same age she began singing. Her upcoming show will feature almost all original songs.
“I really, really believe in the power of words,” Linda Shear says. “I have a poster in my studio downstairs that says, ‘Word by word by word by word.’ I believe we can change, and we can change each other, and we can change things with words. STAFF PHOTO / DANIEL JACOBI II
“I really, really believe in the power of words,” Shear said. “I have a poster in my studio downstairs that says, ‘Word by word by word by word.’ I believe we can change, and we can change each other, and we can change things with words. Words touch people, move people, change people.”
Outside of music, Shear also had a long career as a CPA before she retired from the practice. When she graduated from college, she had a degree in English, but she had worked her way through college with music gigs and wanted to keep making a living as a performer.
Easier said than done, though: “I always had to be available to play,” she said. “I had to be available to play in the evenings and wherever I was going to be playing, so I had to do things like drive a taxi, deliver pizzas, erase stray pencil marks on computerized exams, taught driving – anything I could do to make a living while I was trying to be a musician. And at some point, I said, ‘I don’t like being poor. I don’t want to be poor. This is not the future that I had in mind for myself.’”
Shear was a regular performer at the now-defunct Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. At one point in the 1970s, Shear asked a number of women there, “What does your mother do for a living?” The replies she got – homemaker, teacher, nurse – left her disheartened.
Then she changed her strategy and asked a guest what her father did for a living. That guest said her dad worked for H&R Block. His job was seasonal – and apparently very flexible.
That gave Shear an idea.
Linda Shear plays the piano at home in Easthampton. STAFF PHOTO / DANIEL JACOBI II—
She went through training at H&R Block, but the company turned out not to be a good fit. Still, she was fascinated by tax law and decided that she wanted to pursue a career related to it – maybe she’d become a CPA or a lawyer who specialized in tax law.
When she spoke to female lawyers living in the Pioneer Valley at the time to ask for their advice on a career choice, all of them recommended that she get an MBA instead of going into law. Plus, there was another issue: “The final straw for me was, if I become a lawyer, I was going to have to wear a skirt in court. And I said, ‘No, that’s a deal-breaker.’”
Being a CPA still sounded promising, though: “I could compromise as little as possible. It was portable. I could take it to other states if I wanted to … I could have an independent practice, which I ended up doing. I could be my own boss, and I could make a decent living. And it checked off those boxes.”
Shear got her MBA at Western New England College (now called Western New England University). When she worked in Northampton, her CPA practice was in a building near The Iron Horse.
Still, Shear also spent a lot of time away from the Pioneer Valley: she and her wife, windflower Townley (who spells her first name with a small W), lived in northern California for 31 years, the last seven of which were on the Mendocino Coast. Shear called the region “fantastic and magical, and perfect weather. It wasn’t weather that brought us back here!” (What brought them back was a lack of easy-to-get-to healthcare options in that region, a concern brought about by the necessities of aging.)
Shear is retired from her CPA practice now, but she continues to play music: “I’m doing it because I love to perform, because I think I’m a really good performer, and I have something to offer, and my heart requires it.”
“There is something that happens in [a concert venue] that is like nothing else I ever experienced,” singer-songwriter Linda Shear says. “And I need it, and I hope that I give something to some of the other people in the room. It really comes back to that.” STAFF PHOTO / DANIEL JACOBI II
Tickets to the show $10 to $30 via https://givebutter.com/lindashearSDWG.
Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.
