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KEENE, N.H. – (MyKeeneNow) Three friends-two of them Keene residents-met at arts camp in Massachusetts in the 70s – and the experience shaped who they would all become.
One of the trio, Risa Lavelle, will perform this Saturday, June 8, with her Boston-based band, The Honey Steelers, at Brewbakers Café as part of the Nova Arts live music series.
Lavelle signed up to attend The Charles River Creative Arts in Dover, MA, a summer day program, at the urging of her mother.
“I had never been away from home,” she said. Having played piano since she was 3, she enjoyed being alone.
“I was terrified,” she said of enrolling in camp. “But it turned out to be one of the safest places for me to grow up in in terms of community-the staff and kids there.”
She blossomed there, she went on, because it the program was steeped as much in the creative process as it was in the final product-performance.
“I learned about spontaneity and resilience,” she said. “These were good life skills, I did a lot of improv, being in the moment and allowing it to unfold. It’s such a powerful thing for a young child.”
She recalls her first lead role in a play (produced by campers) when she was in 7th grade in which she first tested her creative freedom.
“I was playing the queen bee; the character was modeled after Mae West,” she recalled. “When I got on-stage and opened my mouth, this whole different person came out. I was singing my heart out and got so lost in the music and the process. I wore this huge wig and I got so caught up in the role it fell off my head. A little girl who was one of the worker bees was running after me with the wig and I couldn’t stop singing. It was a metaphor for life-things happen.”
Lavelle later worked there as a counselor and continued to visit after college.
“It felt like home,” she said. “I could be who I was at camp-not someone else to be accepted.”
Lavelle studied music theory and composition in college and had aspirations to act on Broadway-she was in one off-Broadway show.
She wound up in Boston, where she lives today, with plans to attend Berklee College of Music and pursue songwriting. Within the first year after she started there, she became very sick. She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
“I shut down,” she said. “I stopped performing. I was afraid to get onstage.”
As a result, she started to break ties with the camp that had held such a significant role in her life.
In the meantime, she raised a family.
“I channeled my creative process in my kids,” she said. “I raised them to make a mess, to pretend play and love the process. That fed me for a very long time.”
She started to perform here and there, at parties for a neighbor.
“She was so encouraging,” she said. “She would ask me to close my eyes and she’d close hers so I’d feel comfortable singing for her.”
Later, after her divorce and difficult times that followed, one of the ways she kept calm was by listening to music.
“I’d put on my headphones when the kids were out of the house and listen to harmonies eight to 10 hours a day-Carole King, Crosby, Stills and Nash,” she said. “The music moved through me.”
She began to have dreams about a mandolin.
“I said to myself that I needed to buy one,” she said. She began taking lessons and in a few months was writing music.
“I wrote more in that period during my divorce up to now than in my whole life,” she said. “It was very healing for me.”
After singing some of her songs at a couple open mic events, she began to perform more and more.
“It felt like coming home again,” she said.
She’d never been in a band until she met her pedal steel, guitar and mandolin player, Mickey Roache, at an open mic event.
“I play like I feel,” she said. “He goes with whatever is in the moment.”
The rest of the band evolved into its current configuration: in addition to Lavelle and Roache, there’s Bob Sevigny and Harvey Bagg, both on guitar and bass, and Tom Murray on drums.
Together, they’re bluegrass, folk, western swing, jazz and classical musicians.
“Our music is very eclectic,” she said.
Lavelle had made attempts to make her way “home” to The Charles River Creative Arts community for years-until her fellow campers and friends Eve Alintuck and Marty Hennum “popped” back into her life, she said.
Hennum, artistic director of theater at MoCo Arts in Keene, built and launched the organization’s summer day camp program, Creative Arts at Keene (C.A.K.E.).
She modeled the camp in Keene after The Charles River Creative Arts Program. Camps in 25 other states and four countries outside the U.S. are also modeled after the Dover, MA program.
“We wrote our own plays and performed every day,” said Hennum of her camp experience. “It helped (campers) gain confidence or prepare them for a professional career. Many did go off and do very well and a lot of them give credit to camp. It was a unique model.”
Alintuck, also of Keene (it’s a complete coincidence she and Hennum came to live in the same town) also applied what she learned at camp into her life and professional career. A public relations professional and entrepreneur, she focuses on purpose-driven communication and crisis management leadership that includes messaging, storytelling, brand voice and media training.
“(Camp) was the first place I felt safe to express myself as I was,” she said, “to understand who I was becoming with no judgement and with support and encouragement to try different things.”
All three friends appreciate the level of instruction they received at camp from some of the best professional artists in the Boston area-including guest artists ranging from Yo-Yo Ma to Frances Sterhagen, William Hurt and James Taylor to name a few.
Their love of camp carried down to the next generation: Alintuck’s daughter and Hennum’s children attended C.A.K.E., as well.
Arts programs like C.A.K.E. are also what strengthens the local economy, explained Alintuck, as well as Nova Arts, the organization hosting Lavelle’s performance this Saturday.
“A healthy business environment and a vibrant arts scene go hand-in-hand in cultivating strong communities,” said Alintuck. “The Monadnock Region’s ability to foster a sense of community and connectedness is reflected in Nova Arts’ mission to create space for emerging artists.”
Lavelle will perform with her band, The Honey Steelers, Saturday, June 8, at 8 p.m. at Brewbakers Café, 48 Emerald St., Keene as part of the Nova Arts series. Headlining is HWY 91, a Western swing band. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased at www.novaarts.org.