Sally Rogers
Sally Rogers is a singer/songwriter and educator, who is originally from Beulah, Michigan and now resides in Pomfret, Connecticut. In her youth, Sally lived by the family farm and was exposed to music at an early age, as her mother was a pianist and the organist for the local church. Folk music was very popular in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, and singers like Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and Judy Collins, were dominating the charts. After receiving a guitar for Christmas, Sally began to learn and explore songs from these and other popular artists. During her college years at Michigan State University, she studied Music Education and frequented the legendary coffee house The Ark… which showcased popular touring folk artists of the day. At The Ark, she attended ballad workshops, hoots, guitar and folk gatherings. During this time, she added the dulcimer and banjo to her arsenal and continued to expand her repertoire. After graduating college with a teaching degree, Sally began to perform regularly at local venues and clubs. She met the established Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers and he persuaded her to audition for a booking agency in Toronto. This turned out to be a good move because after passing the audition, she began to perform at major festivals and fine venues throughout Canada and the United States.
Throughout a productive 20 year musical journey of writing, performing and recording, Sally had achieved very high acclaim. She has performed in countries all over the world such as: Canada, United States, China, Scotland, Hungary, Poland, England and more. As a recording artist she had made numerous albums as a soloist. She has also produced four albums with her Michigan friend Claudia Schmidt and two with her husband Howie Bursen.
In 2001, Sally settled into a teaching career in the music department of a community school in Connecticut. She integrated the arts into the everyday curriculum and played an important role in the local community. She wrote children’s music and encouraged the students to do so as well. Today she continues to provide professional education workshops and songwriting residencies. The state of Connecticut had given Sally the honor of being the State Troubadour and she used this to bring exciting new arts programs to multiple schools. Sally still performs today at festivals and concert halls. I recently talked with her about her career.
R.V.B. - Hello Sally… how are you doing on this dreary day?
S.R. – I’m doing fine thank you. I’m making masks.
R.V.B. – What kind of material are you using?
R.S. – I found an old flannel sheet that I’m using for the inside, and I have strawberries and stars for the outside. I’m making them for a friend. She has a store and she sells plants. Their workers need masks.
R.V.B. – How nice of you! You’re very artsy.
S.R. Thanks. I’m a quilter also.
R.V.B. - Let me start off for apologizing for my Long Island accent.
S.R. – Please don’t apologize. My husband is from Brooklyn.
R.V.B. – Oh okay… so he’s worse than I am.
S.R. – (Hahaha)
R.V.B. – In your youth… what were your surroundings like and what was your first exposure to music?
S.R. – I grew up in a very musical home. My mother was a professional pianist. She taught piano and was the organist in our church. She was an accompanist. I used to play under the grand piano as a child. She would play Aaron Copeland Cat and the Mouse, and I would pretend to either be the cat or the mouse under the piano. I used to dance to records. We didn’t have that many records but we had a few. There was a lot of classical music in the house. We also had the Columbia Children’s Library of Folk Music. We also had a lot of musicals. that my mom got at the grocery store. If you bought so much groceries, you got it as a perk.
R.V.B. – I think everyone in America has those albums at that time.
S.R. – I think so. So that was my youth. We grew up out in the woods. We lived on top of a hill, next to the family farm. We had cherries and apples. That was about a mile away from my grandmother.
R.V.B. – I guess your mom made a lot of pies?
S.R. – My mom was a pretty good pie maker and bread maker. So was my grandma.
R.V.B. – What instrument did you start with?
S.R. – I started playing the guitar when I was in high school. Folk music was the popular music of the day. When I was a freshman, I wanted a guitar and my parents got me one for Christmas. It was a classical guitar. I played with my friends in school. We had little folk groups.
R.V.B. – Did you like the Weavers?
S.R. – I was after the Weavers… I was more Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins.
R.V.B. – The big three.
S.R. – I knew of Peter, Paul and Mary. I didn’t have many records so I learned most of the songs out of songbooks.
R.V.B. – Did you take piano lessons from your mom?
S.R. – Nope! My mom was a piano teacher but I didn’t study with her.
R.V.B. – Sometimes it’s better not to take lessons from your mother. Did you know when you started playing the guitar that it would be something that you would want to continue to do in life?
S.R. – I don’t think I did know that. When I was 13, I lived in Brazil. At that time I wanted to be Lani Hall… the girl who was with Sergio Mendez and Brazil 66. I wanted to be a samba singer. That would have been the best. But when I got to high school, it never occurred that I would do that for a living. When I got to college in Ann Arbor, we used to go to The Ark. It’s a legendary coffee house. I heard a lot of folk music there. I heard lots of people who recorded on Fold Legacy records there. I heard Rory Block, Roy Bookbinder, Ed Trickett... lots of English singers. They had a ballad singing workshop every week. You could go and swap songs with people. You sat on the floor in a room upstairs in The Ark. I’m still friends with a lot of the people that I met there. I learned a lot of songs from people there. The other day I sang The Log Drivers Waltz on my “Song a day keeps the virus away.” I learned that one at The Ark from my friend Mary Gick. I learned Black Jack Daisy – that I play on the dulcimer – I played that the other day also.
R.V.B. – I watched you play a few songs on the dulcimer recently. It was very beautiful.
S.R. – Thank you.
R.V.B. – What did you study in college?
S.R. – I started out in Music Therapy. Then I moved to Music Theory and Composition. From that, I finally moved to Music Education. I got a teaching certificate. I graduated in 1978. I didn’t use my teaching certificate until 2001… where I got my teaching job in Pomfret, Connecticut… at the local community school.
R.V.B. – So prior to that point you were touring?
S.R. – In 1979 I had met Stan Rogers from Canada. He’s not related. He became a really good friend… pretty much an advocate. In 1979, he encouraged me to go to Toronto for an audition… only for women. They figured out that they didn’t have enough women on their performance rosters. I borrowed a car so I could go there. I went up there and auditioned. It was an amazing time there. Heather Bishop was there… Connie Kaldor… Cathy Fink… Farron… Lot’s of people who became quite well known. They were all part of that cohort. I got hired for four or five Canadian Festivals… including the Winnipeg Festival. That really started things for me. I got some more gigs from that and more festival gigs. After that – my now friend – Claudia Schmitt learned my song Lovely Agnes, which I had written that year about my grandmother. I sang it for a friend of mine, Lisa Null. Lisa took it to Prairie Home Companion and taught it to Claudia. On that show was Claudia, Lisa Null, Lisa Neustadt, Jean Redpath and Helen Schneyer. After that, I received a letter… Garrison Keillor… inviting me to be on the show. He loved the song and that was nice.
R.V.B. – That was the jump start. Were you playing the dulcimer at this time?
S.R. – Yes… and the banjo.
R.V.B. - Did you just learn the dulcimer by ear as well?
S.R. – In 1972/73, I was an exchange student in Switzerland, for a year. I played at a festival called The Lensburg Festival. I met a whole bunch of cool people there and I saw instruments that I’ve never seen before… including the mountain dulcimer. There was a French guy named Rene Zosso there who played mountain dulcimer and hurdy gurdy. When I saw the dulcimer, I recognized it, because my best friend back in Michigan… her grandmother had one hanging on the wall. I had never heard it played because nobody ever played it. It was just hanging on the wall.
When I got back, I asked my friend’s grandmother if I could borrow her dulcimer to learn how to play it. She was very, very protective of it. It was given to the family by Jethro Amburgey… the guy who made it. I learned how to play it. It was the kind of dulcimer that had frets only under the melody strings. The other strings were drones. At the time I was at the University of Michigan. There was this wonderful music store there… Herb David’s guitar shop. I was working in the cafeteria in the dorm where I lived… washing dishes and cutting onions… doing the things you do in a university dorm. I earned enough money to buy this dulcimer. He had one hanging on the wall. He actually had two hanging on the wall. One was Korean made and the other one was kinda cool… very handmade looking and rustic. It had a pretty fiddle scroll head. It was made by a guy named Thomas Deason in Corydon, Indiana. I paid $10 a month for it for the rest of the school year. It was about $100 for the dulcimer. Some years later, I was able to go to Corydon because I was playing in Louisville. I met Tom Deason and he was a sweet old guy. The dulcimer was beautiful curly maple. He made the dulcimer with an old fencepost. He cut up the fencepost and made it into a dulcimer.
R.V.B. – When you were learning the dulcimer, did you study any of Jean Ritchie’s work?
S.R. – Oh yeah. I was learning to play the dulcimer around 1973. There were almost no recordings available. Jean Ritchie's albums were among the very few dulcimer recordings available at that time. Oddly enough, I knew who Jean was because when I was in High School, we had a substitute one day and he brought a Jean Ritchie record into our music class. I remember listening to it. When I was looking for dulcimer albums there was Jean Ritchie, Howie Mitchell, Lorraine Lee… Rick and Lorraine had an album on Folk Legacy and she played some dulcimer on that… Richard and Mimi Ferina played dulcimer. Again, it was like one or two sings on an album. There were very few all dulcimer albums. A year later Kevin Roth had an album on Folkways. He recorded some of Jean’s songs.
R.V.B. – Did you ever meet Jean?
S.R. – Yeah… she was a good friend actually.
R.V.B. – How about the Paton’s at Folk Legacy?
S.R. – The Paton’s were dear friends. We had our wedding reception at Folk Legacy. Lots of our friends were there… Joe Hickerson and many others. We had another reception in Michigan for our friends there.
R.V.B. – Did you ever record there?
S.R. – I did not. Howie has an album on Folk Legacy. When I started recording, I had my own label. It went on to Flying Fish. Bruce Kaplan – that ran Flying Fish – passed away and the company was purchased by Rounder Records.
R.V.B. – So you decided to get off the road after a long and successful tenure, and go into teaching.
S.R. – I never really got off the road. I changed where the bulk of my work was. I had two kids… they needed me… my husband needed me.
I ended up not getting off the road, just not going away for weeks at a time. I started doing more work in the public schools… doing residencies and assembly programs. I did that for a while and then in 2001, the principal at our local school asked me if I’d be interested in a music position there. They were dividing the music position into two parts. They had an elementary school position and a middle school position. I got the elementary position. I said I’d be interested in doing it only if I had my own room… see the kids twice a week for at least 30 minutes. I had a bunch of things and she said “Okay.” (Hahaha) I had a dream job. It was the best teaching job that anyone could ever have. I loved my job. I had a wonderful principal. She made working there a joy. I did that up until that principal retired and we got a new principal. As good as the first principal was, the new one was just as bad. I stuck by her for three years and I said “I got to do something else.” So I quit and took a job at Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School in Springfield Massachusetts.
R.V.B. – Is this the time period when you were writing children's music?
S.R. – Yeah… I’ve always worked in the schools from 1979 on. If you’re a musician, you gotta go where the work is. You do many different things. Luckily I had a love for kids. So it included writing songs for kids and performing for kids.
R.V.B. – You were making records with your buddy Claudia as well?
S.R. – She and I made two albums in the ‘80s. We were performing together occasionally. We did the annual Mother’s Day concert in Michigan. We also did some small tours together. Our third album wasn’t until 2013. We did these two albums in the ‘80s and had a 22 year hiatus. Then we came out with Evidence of Happiness.
R.V.B. – Your voices blend very well together when she takes the lows and you take the highs.
S.R. – My sister - who is a voice teacher - wrote “One voice” on the song a day comments yesterday. We sang Cool of the Day… Jean’s song. That was a high compliment… especially coming from her. It was wonderful.
R.V.B. – Can you tell me about your trip to China?
S.R. – I went twice. I went in 1999 as a performer at an international festival in Nanning in Guangxi Provence. That’s in the south… very close to Vietnam. It was a wild venue. There were people from all over the word. My take on it was that even though they had people from all over the world, they were trying to showcase the minority groups in China, to show that the minority groups were respected. That was the time when the Uyghur’s of Northwest China were being mistreated significantly. They were trying to make it look like they weren’t, to the world. There were a lot of different ethnicities and it was fun.
R.V.B. – You’ve played a lot of places around the world. Are there any events or performances that were very memorable for you?
S.R. – The most amazing one was, Howie and I were soloists with a community choir from Waterbury. It’s called the Waterbury Chorale.
We went to Hungary and Poland. This was in June 1988. It was six months before the Iron Curtain fell down. It was an incredible time to be there. We ended up accidentally finding the church where the Solidarity Union met with Lech Walesa. We went in and there was a service going on. We snuck up to the choir loft. The organist that was up there was all excited that Americans had come up there. We had to be real quiet. We looked down and there’s Lech Walesa. It was the baptism of his right hand guy's son. We’re sitting there listening to this - and I’m not sure exactly how it transpired but – word got down to the people of the congregation that there were Americans up in the loft. When this news got out, they stood up, turned around and faced the loft, and sang We Shall Overcome.
R.V.B. – That sounds like a special moment.
S.R. – It was absolutely amazing… one of the highlights of my life. It was spine tingling.
R.V.B. – Up to this point of your career, what accomplishments are you proud of?
S.R. – There’s two things that I’m most proud of. One is, starting in 1997, I was invited to write music for four different folk operas, in a Mennonite community in Newport News, Virginia. I worked with play write Jo Carson… who has since passed away. Working with Jo was definitely a highlight. I learned a huge amount from her. I’m very proud of the work that we’ve made together. I’m only sorry that only a few people heard the plays because they were peculiar to that community. They were just wonderful. I got to meet these incredible people. I’m very, very proud about that. The other one that I’m very proud of is, in 1997, I was the State Troubadour here in Connecticut. I used the honor of being a troubadour to get grants to write songs and work with the 4th grade in three different schools. They studied Connecticut history in 4th grade. I had the kids collect oral histories from elders in their community, and then they wrote songs based on the stories they had collected. Then they’ll write songs based on the stories that they get. It was similar to what was done with the Mennonite folk operas. We wrote 26 songs all together. There were 9 classes and each class wrote a song. Then I wrote a bunch of songs. The songs were based on their oral histories or primary source documents. All the songs that I wrote were based on primary source material. That turned out just incredible in all kinds of ways… the community and the teachers got totally on board and were very involved. Everything about it was fabulous. A lot of the songs that I wrote during that time, I rarely performed. I was off the road at the time so I had hardly any time to sing anything. I’m trying to revive those songs. I’m making an album called Old Friends I’ve Never Met. A lot of the people that I ended up writing songs about will be on that album.
R.V.B. – Very nice. Congratulations on your career. You are doing a lot of wonderful work.
S.R. – Thank you.
Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz
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For more information on Sally Rogers visit her website sallyrogers.com/concert-booking
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