Additional
Articles for August 2004 Issue
Castlebay: High Fidelity in Round Pond
Story
and Photos by Willilam Lannon
The bright Maine morning is eclipsed by the eternal now which art creates
as Julia Lane’s fingers pluck the melancholy notes of Yeats’ “Down
by the
Sally Gardens” from the Celtic harp crafted by her husband, Fred Gosbee.
Her music evokes the passion expressed by Wordsworth when he lamented that “the
world is too much with us, late and soon.” Here in Round Pond at Harper’s
Wood, the house that Gosbee has been building for fifteen years now, he and Lane
maintain a lively awareness of traditions which with their devoted ministrations
do a good deal more than survive.
Julia Lane of Castlebay has been playing the Celtic folk
harp
or clarsach for sixteen years and has won international competitions
for
her artistry. Fred Gosbee, her husband, built the instrument for
her.
As Castlebay, the couple perform and record traditional
Celtic music and create their own music as well. The listener is hard
put to tell the difference between the ancient tunes and the new compositions
so faithful is their adherence to the forms and spirit of the earlier
creations. Originally a quartet named for a town on the Hebridean island
of Barra, Castlebay has now become the duo of Lane and Gosbee. For them
the preservation of the music as a living art represents a commitment
to both the future and the past. Lane says, “We’re really
about education and the richness of tradition.”
Their commitment is more than simply a labor of love, however, for it is as
Castlebay that the couple make their living. They see themselves as educators
as much if not more than as entertainers. Certainly the scholarly research
which informs their performances deserves remuneration. Lane chides a contemporary
version of the ballad of “The Mermaid” which contains a lyric referring to
the mermaid holding a comb and a glass of red wine. She explains that in the
context of the song, the “glass” would refer to a mirror. In fact,
she points out, the imagery is that of Goddess lore going back to prehistory.
Julia Lane and Fred Gosbee of Castlebay are pictured here in front of HMS Warrior (the first iron hulled warship) in Portsmouth, England. They were there to perform at an international festival. The photograph was taken by an anonymous Englishman. Photo courtesy of Castlebay Music
She says that people sometimes suggest that her attention
to accurate detail is unnecessary. They ask “What does it matter? Who needs to know that?” Lane
always replies. “It’s about telling the truth.”
Castlebay often works in schools and one of the frequent components of their
presentations is teaching the youthful audience how to create a ballad based
upon local history. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Even if they use a
traditional melody, the exercise still involves teaching the essentials of
balladic form including the quatrain, rhyme scheme, and strategies of story
telling. Many of the oral traditions are as old as the human race and can be
found, for example, in The Iliad. Some truths are much older than others.
Julia Lane’s McFarland side of the family has been a presence in Bristol
for almost 300 years now. Fred Gosbee hails from central Maine, but his family
came to this country from New Brunswick in the 1920s and he learned many of the
songs in his repertoire from his grandfather. History is more than dates and
events to the couple. It’s a way of knowing who you are and how you fit
in to the tapestry of human experience.
Lane is a great devotee of J.R.R. Tolkien though she laments some of the decisions
made by the recent film trilogy’s writers and director. Still she recognizes
that interpretations will vary. “A song,” she believes, “is
like a recipe. Everyone will prepare it differently.” She is not intimidated
by an epic style. She is an erudite scholar whose research is reflected in song
rather than academic tomes. No stranger to academic life, her father, Cabot Lyford,
was chairman of the Art Department at Phillips Exeter Academy and his sculpture
is in the permanent collection of Rockland’s Farnsworth Museum. In fact,
several of his pieces are presently on display at the Harbor Square Gallery
in the Lime City.
Lane became intrigued by Celtic music at Exeter at the same time as she discovered
Tolkien. She credits the two passions for helping her get through her four
year stint at the academy. She had played the guitar since she was twelve years
old studying Elizabethan music with a lutenist. Tolkien inspired her to learn
the lute. The harp came later. She’s been playing that Celtic folk harp,
or clarsach, for about sixteen years now and has won three international competitions
with her virtuoso performances.
Julia
Lane and Fred Gosbee at Harper’s Wood in Round
Pond. They have been building the house for fifteen years now. They call
it “a work in progress.”
Fred Gosbee meanwhile had become a protégé of Sandy Ives at the
Folklore Center of the University of Maine in Orono. Ives is one of the couple’s
heroes. Their other major hero is the late Bill Bonyun of Westport Island, Maine,
who embodied the balladic tradition at both Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts
and Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. With his wife, Gene, he inspired countless
performers and researchers and preserved or reclaimed countless songs from this
country’s past and maritime music and lore worldwide. A state-wide award
is presented to a Maine educator in his honor each year.
Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger are probably more widely known as “folk artists,” but
for traditionalists, following the songs back across the ocean to their roots
preserves a continuity of artistic achievement and human endeavor. “Originality” need
not be the only criterion for art, although it may at the moment be inextricably
linked to popular and commercial success in the mass marketplace.
However, that mass marketplace is not for everybody. Julia Lane remarks, “Music
is not what we do; it’s who we are.” The couple is committed to a
particular kind of traditional music and an adherence to historical truth is
a fundamental necessity. It’s not necessarily easy to sell, but there is
a definite market for the duo has successfully toured the Eastern United States
and the British Isles playing at festivals, museums, and arts centers, as well
as on radio and television. They say, “We have found that people, regardless
of background, respond to the timeless quality of what we do. It is as if it
fills a void somehow.”
In order to live the musical life they way they wished, some years ago they
decided that they had to devote themselves entirely to the music. To do so,
Lane and Gosbee chose to make marketing—”self-promotion”—their “day
job” and forgo the limited income which their conventional labor was earning.
They point out, “You have to promote yourself.” They’ve discovered
that real life teaches effective marketing. As in gardening or fishing, experience,
patience, and persistence are essential. They have learned to advertise extremely
selectively. Right now their sole ad is in a Scottish theme magazine to promote
their latest recording of Scottish Love songs Ae Fond Kiss. They have
cultivated an international network of folklorists and musicians who are willing
to share ideas and resources, both academic and economic.
They have recorded fifteen CDs so far. Julia and Fred have each made a solo
disk and have recorded several together with other contributors as well. More
recently they have created a series of six “Tapestry” recordings
which are primarily instrumental. Like the traditional mediaeval tapestries
these recordings encompass a wide range of human experience. The titles include
Ladies, In
a Garden Green, Cottage & Castle, Gentlemen, Banks & Braes, and Sea & Skye.
The colorful jewel cases were designed by Kristina Sadley and the six cases
when combined do actually form a larger picture.
The couple have become adept enough with audio equipment to do their own recording
and mixing in their studio at Harper’s Wood. The actual production of the
disks is done at Klarity Multimedia in North Vassalboro. Keeping production in-house
and local reduces overhead considerably. The control they can exercise by staying
close to or in charge of the production process also insures that they will be
completely satisfied with the results. One is much more likely to achieve perfection
when one can do a retake in one’s own house rather than have to drive
to Boston, or even Portland, and pay for a studio and attendant personnel.
Distribution of any product is a major undertaking for any purveyor of specialty
products to niche markets. Traditional music recordings are no exception. In
Maine, Castlebay prefers to place the disks in gift shops rather than music
stores where they may get lost among the mass market offerings. They explain
the rationale, “We
see our product as more than just music—it is part of an experience,
enhancing the environment like a painting or other artwork. It needs to be
presented in the environment for which it is intended as art is in a gallery.”
The “Tapestry” recordings with their emphasis on instrumental music
grew out of the awareness that listening to unfamiliar lyrics requires a good
deal of concentration on the part of the listener. Periwinkle, a bakery in Searsport,
plays the “Tapestry” recordings all the time and their customers
love the music to the point of buying it. Castlebay is careful to limit their
outlets so that merchants in the same town will not feel they are competing
with each other.
For national distribution, Gosbee and Lane deal with CDBaby (www.cdbaby.com),
an online company based in Portland, Oregon, that specializes in sales of independent
artists like Castlebay. Interestingly, Castlebay’s recordings rank in the
top 10% of recording sales nationwide. Gosbee reports that of the 35 thousand
titles released each year only 7 thousand sell over a thousand copies. Those
figures do not reflect copies of CDs sold at concerts by artists, but it does
suggest that Castlebay’s following is more extensive than a casual observer
might imagine.
The couple point out that others in the recording industry have taught them
valuable lessons. One Rhode Island producer urged not to make recordings for
other musicians. So they have learned to ask themselves, “What journey are we inviting our
audience to take with us?” The posing of that question led to the decision
to make a theme central in both their concerts and their recordings.
The duo is constantly in demand for summer weddings and festivals. Practically
no open dates were left in the July just past and that is not unusual. They
enjoy the fact that they are able to spend the summer working in Maine and
then get booked to play all over the country during the winter for people who
heard them play here.
And while love of their art and the urge to communicate it may be paramount,
Gosbee and Lane are also in it for the money. Lane says, “I expect to be
paid. There’s nothing wrong with profit.” That may not sound terribly
folksy or sentimentally idealistic, but Lane and Gosbee are entrepreneurs who
respect not only their art but also themselves. They know that their work is
worthy of the hire. They have worked very hard to make it worthy. Their candor
and self-respect are refreshing in an era in which, according to singer Mike
Agranoff, most contemporary folk singers perform “me” and not “us” songs.
Castlebay’s art demonstrates that the “us” of today has a great
deal in common with the “us” of yesterday and their deserved popularity
bears witness to the enduring worth of their endeavors.
FMI: Castlebay Music, P.O. Box 168, Round Pond, Maine 04564. Phone/Fax: 207.529.5438.
Email:<castlebay@castlebay.net>,
Web site: www.castlebay.net.