Our Musicians’ Music

This is where you can listen to some of our film’s music and read about our musicians!

The Musicians

A2VT: Three young guys from Africa. When war broke out in our home countries, we were forced to leave. Eventually we arrived in Vermont, where we now live. Now that we are here, we want to show people what we can do. We write songs. We sing. We rap. We dance. We have recorded our first album, “Africa, Vermont” with grant funding from the Vermont Community Foundation. Their music can be heard in Part 1: A Very New Idea, end credits. MP4: Africa I’m Coming Back To You a2vt.com

Trey Anastasio is a member of the Vermont Indy Rock Band Phish. His song, The Inlaw Josie Wales, performed by the Vermont Youth Orchestra, can be heard in The Vermont Movie Part 1, A Very New Idea.

Ethan Azarian/Orange Mothers I was born and raised in Cabot, Vermont where I grew up surrounded by music and art. I began playing guitar when I was about 7 years old, learning from my Dad and family friends. My parents are both artists. My mother Mary has made her living as a woodcut artist. Ethan’s music Orange Mothers can be heard in Part 3: Refuge, Reinvention & Revolution. MP4 Orange Mothers.

Kevin MacNeil Brown makes music inspired by what he calls “depth of place”: the transformative energies of nature, time, and landscape. Also a writer and visual artist, he has composed and recorded music for multi-media performances and film soundtracks. As a steel guitar player and singer/songwriter, he is currently working with Vermont western swing quartet Big Hat, No Cattle. Brown’s music moves through sonic worlds that range from contemplative and textural to country and western roots. Kevin’s music can be heard in Parts 1: A Very New Idea; and Part 2: Under the Surface. KevinMacneilBrown.bandcamp.com

Patty Carpenter grew up singing and playing the piano in a multi-generational household that included goats. She’s studied with musical greats, played on stages, in muddy fields and everywhere in-between. She divides her time between Brooklyn and Vermont, and has several bands, from Jazz Combos to Rock ’n Roll (“Patty and the Cakes”) to the spicy Americana gumbo mix of the Dysfunctional Family Jazz Band. Several CDs are available on I-tunes or Amazon, or at dfjbmusic.com. Along with Verandah Porche, she wrote and sang the song “Waves in the Woods” which can be heard in Part 6: Peoples’ Power.

Michael Chorney is a self-taught composer, instrumentalist and producer and lives in Lincoln Vermont. As collaborator he has worked with Iain morrison, David Moss, Adrian Roye and many many others. His work on Anais Mitchell’s “Hadestown” brought him international recognition. Michael’s own ensembles include viperHouse, Magic City, Orchid and most recently Hollar General. Michael’s music can be heard in Part 2: Under the Surface.
MichaelChorney.com/

Michael Clifford is a composer, performer and proprietor of Elm Audio, a scoring and musical production studio based in Burlington, Vermont (http://www.elmaudio.com). He composes for film, radio and TV ads and performs in the Burlington, Vermont band Lendway. Michael’s music can be heard in Part 5: Ceres’ Children and in Part 6: Peoples’ Power.

The Dawnland Singers are a Native performance group that was founded in 1993 when they were featured at the Abenaki Cultural Heritage Days in Vermont. Their presentations include new and traditional northeastern Native music mixed with Abenaki storytelling. During their first years of performing, they performed at many venues, including the Champlain Valley Festival, the Old Songs Festival, The Eight Step, Caffe Lena, Kanatsiohareke, and as the opening act for the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan concert in Highgate, Vermont, which resulted in a laudatory article about them in the Grateful Dead Newsletter. Their first recording, Alnobak, was released in 1994.

The original four members of The Dawnland Singers are James Bruchac, Jesse Bruchac, the sons of the oldest member of the group Joseph Bruchac and the nephews of the final member, Joe’s sister Marge Bruchac. All four are well-known, respected and much-travelled as traditional storytellers and have hundreds of publications—ranging from books for adults and children to academic essays—between the four of them. The Dawnland Singers and Jesse Bruchac’s flute music can be heard in Part 1: A Very New Idea. JosephBruchac.com

Dan DeWalt is a composer and multi-instrumentalist living in Newfane Vermont. DeWalt performs throughout the northeast playing with latin, world music, and jazz ensembles.
Dan’s music can be heard in Part 6: Peoples’ Power. DeWaltmusic.com

Charles Dodge Best known for his electronic music, specifically his computer music, Dodge is a former student of Darius Milhaud and Gunther Schuller. Dodge created some of the first meritorious works in the field of computer music, including Earth’s Magnetic Field (1970), which mapped magnetic field data to musical sounds, Speech Songs, a 1974 work that used analysis and resynthesis of human voices, The Waves (voice and computer music), Profile, and Any Resemblance is Purely Coincidental (1978), which combines live piano performance with a digitally-manipulated recording of Enrico Caruso singing the aria “Vesti la giubba“. He currently makes Vermont fruit wines from his winery in Putney, Vermont, Putney Mountain Winery. Charles Dodge’s music can be heard in Part 3: Refuge, Reinvention & Revolution, and in Part 6: Peoples’ Power.

David Ferm has been writing and playing songs in the basement for many years. Recently he came upstairs to share his songs. He was selected to be one of 10 singer/songwriters to perform at 2014 Solarfest. He has written songs for the feature film My Mother’s Early Lovers. David’s songs are featured in the end credits of Part 3 “The Hippies Were Right” in Refuge, Reinvention & Revolution, and Part 6: Peoples’ Power Hurry Up; and instrumental versions can be heard in the same parts.

Tyler Gibbons is a composer, musician, and teacher living in Southern Vermont. Gibbons has scored numerous feature films, feature-length documentaries, shorts, art films, and media sites, most recently scoring for the International Labour Organization and the feature-length documentary The Barkley Marathons. Gibbons has taught music seminars at universities, secondary schools, and conferences, and regularly teaches Songwriting and Music Productions classes at the Putney School in Putney, VT.

In addition, Gibbons is co-founder of Red Heart the Ticker, an indie-folk band that tours nationally and has garnered praise from the New York Times, Pitchfork Media, and NPR’s Weekend Edition. Tyler was the music coordinator for The Vermont Movie; you can hear his music throughout the 6 part film series.
Red Heart the Ticker

Mark Greenberg is a musician (guitar, banjo, mandolin), educator, writer, producer, and proprietor of Upstreet Productions, specializing in projects involving traditional folk music and oral history. He has been performing, teaching, composing, and writing about tradition-based American music (including bluegrass, old-time, country, ragtime, blues, folk since the 1960s.

He was a founder of the Philadelphia Folk Workshop and has played with the Original Southside Jug Band and Lake Country String Band in Chicago, Coco & the Lonesome Road Band and Bob Yellin & the Joint Chiefs of Bluegrass in Vermont, and folk music legend Dave Van Ronk’s Paleolithica Pro-Moosica Jug Band at Lincoln Center. He has produced recordings for Van Ronk, Pete Seeger, Doc Watson, Michael Doucet and other well-known artists, Vermont collections including Kitchen Tunks and Parlor Songs and Don Fields & the Pony Boys, and the video/DVD documentary The Unbroken Circle.

He has also produced documentaries for National Public Radio and has served as the text editor and a writer for The JVC-Smithsonian/Folkways Video Anthologies of Music and Dance of The Americas, Europe, and Africa and as Record Review Editor of Sing Out! magazine. He currently performs with Good Old Wagon and Anything Goes and teaches Chasing the Blues and American Sounds at the University of Vermont. Mark’s music can be heard in Part 2: Under the Surface, and in Part 4: Doers and Shapers.
For music clips: Upstreet Productions
For original songs and compositions: http://upstreetproductions.com/UpstreetPublishing.html

Margaret MacArthur was a folklorist and folk musician based in Southern Vermont. She began collecting traditional New England songs in the early 1960s, and her first album, Folksongs of Vermont, was released by Moe Asch’s Folkways in 1962. She released ten additional albums during her career, toured nationally and internationally, and received a Lifetime Achievement in the Arts award from the Vermont Arts Council and was named a New England Living Art Treasure by the University of Massachusetts Art Biennial Committee. In addition, Margaret taught music in schools around Vermont and in Arizona, where she was an artist in residence in the school system for many winters. Margaret’s music can be heard in Part 1: A Very New Idea, and in Part 2: Under the Surface.
MargaretMacarthur.com

Robin MacArthur/Red Heart the Ticker is a writer, editor, educator, singer, and one half of the indie-folk duo Red Heart the Ticker. As a musician, she has performed on Late Night with David Letterman and recorded and toured extensively with Red Heart the Ticker, which she co-founded in 2005. In 2011, she received a National Endowment for the Arts and Vermont Arts Council creation grant to record songs her grandmother, the late folklorist and folk performer Margaret MacArthur, collected in the 1960s. Robin sings the traditional folk song “My Dearest Dear” in the credits of Part 4: Doers and Shapers.
Rhtt.net

The MacArthur Family Dan, Gary, and Megan MacArthur have lived their entire lives on MacArthur Road in Marlboro, Vermont, and grew up listening to the traditional folksongs sung and played by their mother, Margaret MacArthur. This rich background, and their rural lifestyle, influences their music as they continue the traditions of performing ballads, songs of country life, and fiddle tunes. Megan’s voice, called “a clear fluid instrument” in SingOut magazine, is complemented by Dan and Gary’s great singing and stirring harmonies. With Dan’s talented guitar work, home made songs, Gary’s skillful mandolin and fiddle playing, and Megan on bass, the MacArthur Family creates a sound that effortlessly carries the listener deep into the history and culture of traditional Vermont life. Their music can be heard in Part 2: Under the Surface.

Jeremiah McLane Accordionist and pianist Jeremiah McLane has performed throughout the United States and Europe, including such venues as the Royal Festival Hall, the Picolo Spoleto Festival, the Carrefour Mondiale de l’Accordeon, and the Philadelphia Folk Festival. Jeremiah has a Master’s in Contemporary Improvisation from the New England Conservatory of Music and plays a wide variety of musical styles from Northern and Eastern Europe, as well as American idioms including jazz, swing, blues, and Zydeco. In addition to teaching and performing, Jeremiah has also composed numerous pieces for film and theatre. In 2006, he received National Public Radio’s “favorite picks” award for his second solo recording, Smile When You’re Ready, and in 2013 the French music magazine Trad Mag’s “BRAVO” award for his fifth release, Hummingbird. He teaches regularly at summer music programs throughout the U.S. and is on the faculty of the Summit School of Traditional Music in Montpelier, VT and the Upper Valley Music Center in Lebanon, NH. MP4 Hummingbird. His music can be heard in in Part 3: Refuge, Revolution & Reinvention.
JeremiahMcLane.com

Anais Mitchelll is first and foremost a storyteller. As a Vermont-based singer-songwriter, Mitchell recorded for Ani Difranco’s Righteous Babe Records for several years before starting her own Wilderland label in 2012. Among her recorded works are five full-length albums, including 2010’s sensationally-reviewed Hadestown and 2012’s Young Man in America, which was described by the UK’s Independent as ’an epic tale of American becoming.
Mitchell has headlined worldwide as well as opening for Bon Iver, Ani Difranco, The Low Anthem (all of whom appear as guest singers on Hadestown), and Punch Brothers. Her most recent release, Child Ballads, a collaboration with Jefferson Hamer, won a prestigious 2014 BBC Radio Two Folk Award for Best Traditional Song.

If there’s a common thread in Mitchell’s work it’s that she’s as interested in the world around her as the one inside her, tackling big themes with the same emotional intimacy most artists use to describe their inner lives. “That’s why,” as one journalist put it, “even in her most intimate moments, she never sounds like a confessional songwriter.” Her music can be heard in Part 2: Under the Surface and her song “Shenandoah” is featured during the end credits of Part 4: Doers and Shapers.
AnaisMitchell.com

Steph Pappas digs deep into a North America viewed from backroads, back porches, sleeping bags, apple orchards, and cold city streets and comes up with a handful of low-down-and-dirty harmonica blues, a twist of acoustic roots rock and a flip side she just may be Jimi Hendrix’s baby sister. Steph Pappas has also been known as the “psychedelic cowboy chick” and has been compared with the energetic stage performing style of The Boss. Steph’s music can be heard throughout The Vermont Movie and particularly in Part 1: A Very New Idea.
StephPappas.com

Verandah Porche “For forty-five years, based in Vermont, I’ve made a living stringing words together. I wanted my life to be a poem. Later, I wanted yours, as well.” Her recent book of poems Sudden Eden (Verdant Books, 2013), chronicles her shoestring life in the sticks and her work as a writing partner and scribe. A poet-in-residence around New England, she runs Muse for Hire, and writes songs with Patty Carpenter.

About their cd “Come Over,” they write, “We’ve carved these songs out of our 45 year friendship. As traveling artists, we have played the hinterlands, listened to stories, and savored cadences. After decades of frozen life in the sticks, raising the kids, etc., we took the time to write and hone this work.”
Read more: VerandahPorche.com

Along with Patty Carpenter, she wrote and sings Waves in the Woods, which is featured in Part 6: Peoples’ Power. MP4: Waves in the Woods

David Rovics grew up in a family of classical musicians in Wilton, Connecticut, and became a fan of populist regimes early on. By the early 90’s he was a full-time busker in the Boston subways and by the mid-90’s he was traveling the world as a professional flat-picking rabble-rouser. These days David lives in Portland, Oregon and tours regularly on four continents, playing for audiences large and small at cafes, pubs, universities, churches, union halls and protest rallies. He has shared the stage with a veritable who’s who of the left in two dozen countries, and has had his music featured on Democracy Now!, BBC, Al-Jazeera and other networks. David can be heard performing Woodie Guthrie’s song “Two Good Men” in Part 2: Under the Surface, and in the end credits.
DavidRovics.com/

Henry Thomas The American country blues singer Henry Thomas (1874-1930) was born into a family of freed slaves in Big Sandy, Texas. He left home in his teens and earned his way as an itinerant songster, playing for local populaces and railway employees. Thomas played guitar, sang, and accompanied himself on quills, a folk instrument made from cane reeds. Thomas recorded twenty-three sides for Vocalion Records between 1927 and 1929, many of which have been reinterpreted by acts such as Bob Dylan, The Lovin’ Spoonful, and the Grateful Dead. “Bull Doze Blues,” which can be heard in Part 3: Refuge, Reinvention & Revolution, was remade into “Going Up the Country” by Canned Heat and performed live at Woodstock. “Bull Doze Blues” was used by permission by Shanachie Entertainment/Yazoo Records.
MP4: Bull Doze Blues. Yazoo Records

Peg Tassey, our music consultant, helped us find much of the music eventually used in The Vermont Movie. She is a singer/songwriter and photographer. An avid lover of all kinds of music, she and her bands have been part of the music scene in Vermont for many years. Peg’s site is: http://pegtassey.com/

The Vermont Youth Orchestra Association Since 1963, the VYOA has provided young musicians with outstanding music learning opportunities, exciting musical challenges and unique performance experiences. The VYOA offers young musicians four orchestras, two choruses, a beginning string ensemble, a winds program, music theory training, and two summer camps; all are based in the Elley-Long Music Center at Saint Michael’s College. The 500 students who participate in VYOA’s orchestral and choral ensembles range in grades 1 through 12 and hail from eleven Vermont counties and bordering states. The VYOA presents over 30 performances at the Elley-Long Music Center, the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts and in cities and towns throughout the state annually. VYO.org They can be heard playing Trey Anastasio’s song “The Inlaw Josie Wales” in Part 1: A Very New Idea.

Italian Village Music and Dance Band can be heard in Part 2: Under the Surface. They include the following musicians:

    Celest DiPietropaolo and Marie DiCocco
    have been teaching and playing for traditional Italian village dances for over 30 years. They have exhibited traditional music at all of the major festivals of traditional music in the Washington, D.C. area, including Smithsonian Folklife, Folklore Society of Washington, and the Italian Embassy. They have been teaching Italian traditional dances since 1984 all over the United States–27 states, and 50 cities, including 10 major dance camps. Celest and Marie, having lived 10 percent of their lives in Italy and having studied with ethnomusicologists, Alan Lomax and Placida Staro, have studied and recorded several hundred hours of field work of traditional Italian dance and music in Italy. Celest’s masters degrees in Mathematics and in Applied Linguistics have been a significant aid in their field work. The family, whose home is in Middlesex, VT, plays Italian music under the name “Italian Village Music and Dance” (Celest playing accordion and organetto, Marie and their daughter AnnaMaria Rosina singing and playing guitar and percussion instruments). Their web site.
    Tuba: Emerson Hawley began playing the trombone in 6th grade and has been playing brass ever since. In 1983 he segued from Brahms to Balkan as he and several friends founded Zlatne Uste (Golden Lips) Balkan Brass Band, patterned after the brass bands of Serbia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, which don’t use trombone. In short order Emerson switched to tuba. He first played Italian music with Marie and Celest at the annual Zlatne Uste Golden Festival 10 years ago, and he’s played with them on many occasions since.
    Violin: Mary Lea My wide experience in all these areas of music and dance and interest in different styles of music are a great resource for anyone planning a celebration, wedding or dance and music event.
    Carol Hausner started singing and playing guitar with her father when she was seven, in a corner of their New Jersey living room prior to moving to Takoma Park, MD. While working across the river in Greenwich Village, her father was deeply drawn to the dynamic music scene of the Village and at home showed Carol many traditional and new songs. She soon began playing and singing along, and later writing songs of her own. Carol fell in love with bluegrass and eventually found her way into the local bluegrass scene.
    Carol Hausner’s web site

Indigo Ruth-Davis is an accomplished classical and rock cellist. His compositions can be heard in Part 3: Refuge, Reinvention & Revolution; and in Part 4: Doers and Shapers. MP4: A Little Sad.

George Woodard is an actor, singer, performer, filmmaker and farmer from Waterbury Center, Vermont. His recurring show The Woodchuck Opry is a favorite on the musical theater scene in Vermont. He recently directed the feature film “The Summer of Walter Hacks”, a feature film (Pasture Productions) and appeared as Calvin in Nora Jacobson’s feature films, My Mother’s Early Lovers, and as Sonny Gale in “Nothing Like Dreaming” (Off The Grid Productions). George is an accomplished singer/guitarist and organic dairy farmer. George appears in Part 5, Ceres’ Children and performs his song, “Farm Girl” during the end credits.