Transcription of Carol Noonan for the show Entertaining Maine #265
Lisa: It’s always my great pleasure to speak with people whose names I have known for quite a while although they obviously don’t know my name. In this case, this is Carol Noonan who is an American folk singer and songwriter who along with her husband Jeff Flagg, a commercial fishing net builder, runs the Stone Mountain Art Center, which is a music hall behind their house in Brownfield, Maine. Thanks for coming in.
Carol: Thank you for having me.
Lisa: I first heard about you because you were the lead singer and songwriter for the band Knots and Crosses and you were a big deal. You are a big deal still but that, I remember this very vividly.
Carol: I think I was a bigger deal then. I’m just bigger now. It was a great time. We got signed to a big record deal and we had that kind of whirlwind thing that happens to musicians, or what they hope happens to them. It’s been an interesting path to where we are now. They are always short-lived, those label deals and I’m glad I always kept it in perspective and was always looking ahead to the next thing because you need to do that. You’re a musician. Obviously, most musicians know that but it’s … Having a music hall now behind our house is such a funny way to kind of … Probably towards the end of my career, I’m almost 60. I’m not going out on tour. I did still just do a record but I feel like I’m towards the end. I didn’t want to be touring and just doing the same old thing. I’m kind of taking everything I ever did in my life seems to be being used now in this job that I’ve got now which is kinda interesting.
Lisa: You’re from an Irish family. Tell me about that family background. What do you know of your family?
Carol: They’re from the Cork area, County Cork, and my dad was a building wrecker and my mom was a stay-at-home mom, five kids. I went to Catholic school for twelve years and I had that kind of typical upbringing. I always could sing so I went to a [inaudible 00:32:04] conservatory and kind of got that taste of the arts and the city life because I’d never really had that growing up. We really weren’t an artsy family by any means. We were very blue collar but I was always drawn to folk music and my brothers and sisters had those records and I listened to them. That was kind of how I got started in it. I was kind of this normal kid but I could sing. It was kind of a weird start. I quickly decided I wanted to do music in some way.
Lisa: Were your parents from County Cork or their family?
Carol: No, no. No. We’re American-Irish. No, I laugh when you said …
Lisa: You’re from Peabody.
Carol: Yeah, we’re from Peabody. My grandparents came off the boat. It was a very normal kind of Peabody lifestyle. I came to Maine when I was 19 at [inaudible 00:33:10] Resort which is over in center level Maine and fell in love with the area and I ended up working there for ten years and staying in the area and I just fell in love with that part of Maine. It’s a really beautiful part. The lakes and the mountains. It’s kind of my favorite part of Maine. I feel like sometimes it’s the forgotten part. Everything’s so focused on the coast sometimes, especially the arts. It was really important that we opened a place that was year round so that we would have it all the time, not just in the summertime. That was kind of where we ended up.
Lisa: I guess the reason I keep perseverating, if that’s the word, the Irish thing is because that my mom’s side of the family is Irish and I actually have a cousin Kathleen who looks remarkably … There’s a resemblance there. It is her side of the family that really seems to have more of the musicality. I know that the Irish music, it has its own very different and very specific sound to it. I wonder how much of that actually does translate into the music you yourself have performed, written.
Carol: I think it’s definitely in it. My dad listened to Irish music constantly. That’s all we heard in the house. We heard The Irish Hour every Saturday and he had his Irish records down in the basement. We heard that a lot. Of course, I hated it as a kid. You know, I couldn’t stand it. He belonged to the AOH and he was always dragging me down there to sing Danny Boy at some bean supper or corned beef dinner or whatever it was. I kind of hated it then but when I started getting into music and writing my own, all those melodies and that redundant kind of way the music flowed started creeping into my own music too and I had been listening to folk music which has tons of that influence in it. It was definitely a strong influence, whether I liked it or not and the older I got, the more I embrace. You know, you embrace what you hated when you were a kid. You wish you would remember that. You wish you would know that when you’re a kid.
Lisa: We all have to kind of reject where we came from before we could circle back around and kind of be comfortable with it.
Carol: Exactly. Although I don’t think I’m gonna go back to Peabody. I’ll embrace some of it but not too much of it.
Lisa: I was listening to your album before you came in, Raven Girl. The cover art is beautiful and the music itself is sort of … It’s interesting, it’s haunting. There’s something that’s really … It’s very lyrical but there’s something that’s wistful, haunting, there’s something about it that is different than many albums.
Carol: Their music was very haunting, Richard and Mimi Farina wrote most of the songs that are on the album and Tonee Harbert did the cover. He’s a local photographer that I love and he’s done most of my record covers. I really wanted to capture that part of, Mimi especially, I just felt like she was a haunting kind of presence and their story is so tragic and I just loved that. When I was listening to it as a kid, I really never listened to lyrics. I didn’t understand what it was about. I wasn’t really drawn to that part of it, I was drawn to the melodies. It definitely affected how I wrote my own music later on and what I liked. I love dark melodies, I love minor keys and they just had this kind of beautiful original way of doing harmony that nobody else was doing. It was hard to do the record and figure out where the melody was. They always sang together throughout the whole … It was never a backup part or … He would come in on the chorus or anything like that. They sang together throughout the whole song so sometimes it’s really hard to tell what the actual melody was. Maybe there wasn’t, maybe they wrote it together. I just don’t know.
When I did my versions of the songs, I did the best I could to pick out what I felt was the more dominant melody in the songs and changed it a little bit as far as how we approached the arrangements but it would be interesting if somebody knew what it was supposed to be but I guess that’s what’s great about interpreting music. There’s no rules there.
Lisa: You’ve had some pretty big names out in Brownfield. You’ve been doing this for how long now?
Carol: We had our 10th anniversary in August. It’s pretty amazing. If I’d ever thought I would say Lyle Lovett and Aaron Neville would be in my backyard, I would think you were crazy but everybody else thought that we were crazy and we did do it I guess. It’s been great. It’s kind of a rest bit for artists which was a thing I really wanted to do. I wanted it to be special for artists and for the audience. It’s definitely different. It’s a little frozen in time. We’re not on Facebook. We’re not connected socially like everybody else is. We’re just kind of up there in the middle of nowhere and when people drive up, I’m still shocked that they drive up the road and they come and when the room fills up, it is kind of that “Oh my god. What were we thinking and how lucky did we get that they actually did come.” Because this could have been a really stupid idea I guess.
I think the bigger shows, that was always something I wanted to do was bring big artists to a small room so you would get to see them in that original way of seeing them perform, when they used to play small rooms and small clubs. Because you get to see their hands and their face and they talk to the audience in a way they don’t do in a big room because you just can’t. It’s a very different experience to see those kinds of artists up close. It’s been awesome and they really love it and they love the way we’ve made sure that they have what they need and there’s nothing there. We have everything from batteries to … Anything they could need. Any rolaids. Just everywhere they go, there’s baskets of little pockets of things that they might have to stop at a store for but we’ve got for them and we feed them like crazy and they come back. That’s the whole idea.
Lisa: I’ve been out to Brownfield, believe it or not, many times. We used to go regularly to the Sacopee Valley. We used to go on the Saco River. You’re right, there isn’t really a lot out there but it was really very beautiful. I remember, there’s a lot of fields and trees, and then there are these bodies of water that just kind of spring up and there’s something very peaceful about it in a way that doesn’t seem frenetic like the coasts can be sometimes?
Carol: Yeah. I love the coast. It’s not us versus the coast but it has got … I think more people are living there year-round. I think just the economy in those rural towns versus the coastal economy, it’s different. The people that are coming to our place are also working in our hospitals and our stores and I always say there’s a carpenter for every tree in Brownfield. Everybody’s a carpenter. Everybody that works there, that lives there is kind of the same class too. I think financially, people are closer in their income bracket than a lot of towns in Maine. It’s not that extreme like some towns in Maine. There’s a feel there that’s kind of normal, that’s kind of constant. It doesn’t get that changed by the seasons or the tourist seasons. It was really important to me, when I would come off the road, there would be nothing to do in the area unless we came to Portland or traveled. I often would rent …
I used to rent this church nearby and do a Christmas concert and I thought, “You know, I can’t be so great that people are coming to see me every year for this stupid thing. They’re coming because there’s nothing else to do. It’s Saturday night. It’s near their house and they’re coming.” It just made me feel like in rural towns, you have to make your own kind of world and your own entertainment. They do in many ways, that’s what the Grange halls have always done and those kinds of places … I did want to take it a step further. I wanted really great music to come up to our area in a special way. I hope I’ve done that and I think we have. It’s really become a tourist place too. I would say 75% of our audience is coming from outside of Maine which is kind of amazing. Lots of Massachusetts folks coming up for the weekend to see an artist they love in this way. I’m hoping it also helps the local economy. It’s getting people in hotels and restaurants and that kind of thing. Hopefully it’s a trickle-down place too.
Lisa: What type of feedback do you get from the artists who come out and perform with you?
Carol: They really love it. It’s not like any place else and they know everybody. The big artists that have come back remember people’s names. They have a routine. When Bela Fleck comes, he always says, “Did you make the veggie chili?” They remember the food or they remember how they’re taken care of. They say it on stage and I Think they really mean it. Artists always say, “Hey, we love Brownfield.” There’s a way that they speak about our place that’s so moving. When we had our 10th anniversary, lots of them sent us little clips and little photos just saying “We love Brownfield” and “We love Stone Mountain”. They’re more involved with us I think than most venues. When Mavis Staples comes, it’s like our aunt is here to visit. Every time she comes, she calls me up on stage and I end up singing a tune with her which if I died tomorrow, I would have already done such a great thing in my life and that would be it. That would be like the thing you’d just … Okay, I’m good. I can go now because singing with her and being involved with her and she’ll come out on stage and say hi to everybody and thank everybody and remember my mom and remember my sisters that were only there a couple of times when she was there.
It’s a very personal experience for the artist when they come to us and they talk about it a lot. We hear other artists that come see us for the first time say, “We’ve been hearing about this place for a year. We’ve been on the road and that’s all we ever hear about.” That’s great, when they’re talking about you all over the country. That’s pretty cool, when you’re in Brownfield, that’s very cool.
Lisa: Is there something about Maine that brings the music to life?
Carol: I think there’s something about Maine. Certainly we could never have done this anywhere else. We always say that. Only in Maine could you do something like this place because there’s things like this all over in Maine. Unique businesses, unique little spots that are unlikely but I think Maine people are so up for anything and they’re independent and if they decide they want to create something, they just do it. It doesn’t matter where they are. I love that. That’s my favorite thing about Maine. I think that that kind of independent spirit always brings out the best in the arts. It always goes hand in hand and I think musically, when you’re treated well, when you have a good experience, a show is always better. I always say our shows with artists I’ve seen, a lot of the artists that come, I’ve already seen quite a bit or been on tour and seen them on … Been on festivals with them or seen them out.
They do different shows at our place and I don’t think it’s just us. I think coming to this environment and feeling good about where you are just makes you play a great show. If you’re happy, you’re gonna do a great show. If you’re not, the show is gonna be dialed in. No artist ever really does a bad show most of the time I think. It’s a job just like everybody else’s job and sometimes there are good nights and bad nights but generally, I think when they’re inspired, the music shows and they certainly do that in our place and I bet they do it at a lot of places in Maine.
Lisa: In order to do the work that you do, you have to be willing to be really … Everything. You have to be the chief cook and bottle washer as my mom used to say. I’m wondering if as a girl from Peabody who went to the New England Conservatory if you ever had a sense that this would be your lot in life to be a musician, a singer, a songwriter who also took care of all of these other singer-songwriter musician entertainers who came to perform.
Carol: You know, like most musicians, I grew up working restaurants. It was a normal transition. I was lucky enough to be able to have a music career after working restaurants. That’s always what you’re striving for but it never leaves you. I always say I’m so uniquely qualified for the job I’m doing now because it’s taken every single aspect of everything I’ve ever done in my life and put it in one place. It’s where I live, it’s who I married, it’s everything. I do shows there occasionally but most of the time, I’m the chef, I book the acts, I arrange everything. I do pretty much everything. It’s a lot of work. I didn’t probably see myself working so hard at this age. It’s probably the hardest I’ve ever worked in my life. It’s also, it’s so great, I’m in my own bed every night instead of being away from home and I get to hear all this great music and we have the best staff in the world.
Just being around them and having that experience of this family of people that we’ve had for a long time. Most of the staff has been there from the beginning. Just having that relationship has been so great at this point in my life to have all these young people around us that are so dear to us. We don’t have children, maybe that’s the closest thing we will ever experience as far as the children thing goes because they are kind of like kids. It wasn’t what I saw myself doing but it was definitely a natural progression to do it. I was definitely getting tired of playing gigs. I just felt like musically, I wasn’t enjoying it. I didn’t feel like the venues were presenting music well anymore. That was another reason I wanted to do it. I felt like even the big venues weren’t … Nobody was owner operated anymore and that makes a big difference when outside promoters are presenting shows in rooms. It just changes the feel of it. Not that it’s bad, it’s just different and I just felt like I wanted to do it a little off the grid and a little more human, I guess.
Lisa: As I’m listening, I’m really interested in this idea that you happen to be almost in the right place at the right time for this type of venture that I think people have really been hungering and thirsting for these authentic intimate experiences with the people that create music. These promoters and the big acts, those obviously still exist and it’s kind of like the parallel universe but we’ve now come to a place where people want to get their hands in the dirt again. They want to do their own gardening, their own cooking, they really want to live this richer life.
Carol: I think they want that in every kind of business too. I think you’re finding people are more drawn to small businesses and mom and pop places more than ever. The live music scene is really vital right now because performers aren’t selling music like they did. It’s a very crazy time in the music business right now if you’re a recording artist. The younger artists don’t even know the times of selling music but we did selling music. That was how we made our living. Now, it’s just not there. They’re having to get out and play again and oh, I would have hated that. When you put out a record now, it’s almost a narcissistic project to do it because you’re probably not gonna sell a lot of it but you need to do it for yourself. I really wanted to do a project this last couple years and I didn’t have time, I didn’t really need to do it, I’m not out on the road. I don’t have really a good format to sell it, to make it worthwhile to do it but I had to do it just creatively. That musicians will always do that.
If you’re really trying to make a living now, you’ve got to get back out and play live. There’s a lot of music when we opened, there were so many venues not open yet. We opened, The State wasn’t opened, Raul’s which is an old, old place but they were closed. All the places in Portland that when I was coming up where there was a vital music scene were closed. When we opened, it was a good time to start because people were hungry for a venue too, just in our immediate area. Artists were looking for a leg because there really wasn’t one in Portland for those first years. It started happening and then of course, the recession hit. Our timing was good and it was bad but we got through it and we’ve got a lot more competition now because artists are performing so much, there’s a lot more live music happening but people are still coming to us for a special experience. There’s something for everybody everywhere I guess.
Lisa: For people who have been listening, I will refer you to our show notes page. We will direct you towards the website for the Stone Mountain Art Center. I’ve been speaking with Carol Noonan who is an American folk singer-songwriter. She and her husband Jeff Flagg, a commercial fishing net builder, run the Stone Mountain Art Center and Musical Hall behind their house in Brownfield, Maine. Thanks for coming in today.
Carol: Thank you. Thanks for having us in the big city.