Ed Trickett
Ed Trickett is a singer/storyteller, folk musician and professor at the University of Miami. He began his musical adventure at a young age when his family exposed him to piano lessons. From there, he took an interest in stringed instruments and went on to learn the guitar, banjo, autoharp and mountain dulcimer. At this time, Ed also learned the art of singing as he was a member of a local boys choir. After receiving a scholarship to St. Albans preparatory school with his choir singing skills, he went on to study at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut. At Trinity, he majored in Psychology and minored in English. Ed went on to received his P.h. D. in Psychology at Ohio State University.
During the mid 1950s, folk music was very popular and Ed would explore local folk musicians performances around the Washington D.C. area. In the early 1960s, Ed began to perform as a solo artist and also with small ensembles. During his college years in the northeast, the folk revival was in full swing. Ed would perform at local hoots' and coffee houses. It was around this time where he began a long fruitful musical association with folk artists Gordon Bok and Anne Muir. They produced many wonderful albums and the chemistry was magical. Ed has always led a double life as an educator and folk musician and this continues to this day. He has performed at many major festivals and classic coffee house folk venues throughout his music career. I spoke to Ed about his life in music.
R.V.B. - Hello Ed... Rob von Bernewitz from Long Island. How are You?
E.T. - Ok... you?
R.V.B. - I'm doing pretty good. Thank you for taking this time with me. I appreciate it. You've made some great music in your career. Did you grow up in the northeast?
E.T. - Yes. I grew up in Washington D.C. around the time that the Washington Folklore Society was organizing itself. John and Ginny Dildine, Howie Mitchell and Joe Hickerson were all around there. John Shortridge did for a while. We had a place - not too far from my house - called "The Showboat Lounge". They had folk music on Sundays from 1950 to 60.
R.V.B. - You were basically coming of age during the folk revival's full swing.
E.T. - That's right. I really started around 1954. I went to a summer camp in New Mexico where Howie Mitchell was one of the counselors. Later on, he was a teacher at a private school that was started by the camp. He brought me into the folk music scene at The Showboat Lounge. He played there. Paul Clayton, Mike Seeger and a young Bob Coltman played there. From around the mid 50s on, I was heavily involved in learning much as I could about folk music.
R.V.B. - Did you come from a musical family? How did you start with the instrument?
E.T. - During my teenage years I started playing guitar, autoharp, banjo and mountain dulcimer. When Fox Hollow hit in the mid 60s, I got a hammer dulcimer right away. I was forced to play the piano as a child. I started the stringed instruments as a teenager around the age of 13.
R.V.B. - Do you remember the first time that you played out in public?
E.T. - It depends. I did a lot of public performances at summer camp. It was a camp north of Taos New Mexico. We played during the fiesta. In terms of performing, when I was a senior in college I formed a trio with a couple of guys. We had a couple of professional things... I started singing on my own in the early 60's.
R.V.B. - You decided to go to school to be a psychology major. Are you glad that you went that route instead of a life as a musician?
E.T. - I absolutely am happy about it. I've had second thoughts at different points of my life. I've managed to find two kinds of callings. I really love the psychology that I do, and I love the music that I play. One of the factors of the decision when I got out of college was I was chicken to adopt a professional musician lifestyle. It didn't seem easy to me. The people that I knew that did it, were happy at 22 year olds and maybe less happy at 62 year olds.
R.V.B. - It's definitely an unpredictable occupation.
E.T. - The other part of the decision was that I did understand my livelihood didn't depend on it, so I could pick and choose who to sing with, where to sing and what to sing. I didn't feel as much as a performer than as a musician. That's the distinction that makes the difference.
R.V.B. -You're basically a collector of songs. Are these songs that you heard the gradual learning environment with people that you played with or through research?
E.T. - It's a combination of people who I'd gotten to know - folks who themselves dug up a lot of things - like George and Gerry Armstrong and Joe Hickerson. I have a reasonably good collection of old books, that I have gone through. I have hundreds of LP's that I still have. I'm actually in the process of digitizing about 75 to 100 reel to reel tapes that I made in the 1960s. They're of living room experiences with The Paton's, Rosalie Sorrels, Mark Spoelstra, Joe Hickerson, Harry Tuft (with the Denver folk scene), Faith Petric (with the California scene).
R.V.B. - That sounds like some good stuff.
E.T. - It is. The other thing is, in the early 60s, I did do a couple of collection visits. One to Frank Proffit from Reese in North Carolina. I got to know him through the Armstrong's. The Armstrong's, Howie Mitchell and I spent a couple of days with him. Another visit was to Larry Older from upstate New York. Larry was a fiddler who I got to know when he came to the Chicago Folk Festival. George and Gerri Armstrong were hosting him and I. I always loved to go to that festival when I was in my 20's. I've done a little bit of that kind of collecting but mostly it's been some combination of knowing other musicians who were local and played traditional music. Like Bob Coltman who came out of very traditional roots and has written thousands of songs. I've had a potpourri of different sources through the years.
R.V.B. - How long was your tenure at Yale?
E.T. - Eight years.
R.V.B. - Is the northeast a rich area for traditional music?
E.T. - The northeast is the richest area by far. At the time I was there, everything was exploding. Folklore societies were booming and there were a tremendous amount of coffee houses on college campuses. Long Island, New York City, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Upstate New York... Bill Spence and his Old Songs Festival is still going strong. The Paton's lived in northwestern Connecticut and they were about an hour and a half away. I spent a lot of time with them both recording personally but also helping at Folk Legacy. I think I'm on more Folk Legacy recordings than anybody else.
R.V.B. - When you go out and perform as a singer songwriter it can be a solitary world, but you also do get to work with other people. It's not that often that a magical chemistry happens, like the one you had with Gordon Bok and Ann Mayo Muir. There is no formula for this. Are you proud of that music?
E.T. - I couldn't be prouder. We did it publically for about 25 years. I still listen to it and say "Damn, we were pretty good!" I'm very proud of that body of work.
R.V.B. - In some of your performances at the various venues across the northeast, do you have any unusual stories? Did anything ever go wrong?
E.T. - Have you ever talked to anybody where nothing went wrong? There have been times where storms have darkened places and taken away the sound systems. I had some precious times and I've had times where I thought maybe I should have stayed home, where I may not have connected where the music should have connected. There are some places that I've had particularly wonderful experiences at, like The Sounding Board in Hartford, Connecticut. I don't have anything that any other musician would have like showing up at the wrong date... people not being prepared... people not advertising. One time in Hartford, they moved their location and didn't tell me.
R.V.B. - Did you ever go to the Newport Folk Festival?
E.T. - I didn't perform there but I went to it once. It was at the time where I was trying to absorb anything folkie. When I was teaching at Yale, I would spend my weekends not writing scholarly papers like I was supposed to, but traveling around to different folk music clubs. Cafe Lena was another special place for me. The unusual thing for me, is that when I first got to Yale in the fall of 1969, Rosalie Sorrels - who was managed by Al Grossman, who was Dylan's manager at the time - he told Rosalie that he could get her on this minor stage at this festival coming up called "Woodstock". Rosalie asked me and Dave Bromberg to come with her to Woodstock... which we did. We stayed there in the hotel and got flown down to the main site Sunday morning around sunrise, in a helicopter. I will never forget the view of the people. We got back stage and we never got to any other sub-stage because they were rained out. We weren't main stage material. I got to play some with David and Rosalie. Jerry Garcia came over and played with Rosalie and you can see a very young Ed Trickett in a small group around them on a YouTube clip. That was an experience that I'll never forget.
R.V.B. - Did you have any trouble getting to the hotel area? Was there a lot of traffic for you?
E.T. - Yeah there was. The hotels had no phones in the rooms. The way that we would be notified about going to the site was through a phone call to the front desk. They had speakers in the front area, so we had to take turns staying up every night to make sure we would be ready to go. There was a Holiday Inn where you would get the performer badges and I remember someone coming up to me and looked at me and said "Are you somebody?"
R.V.B. - Hahaha.
E.T. - Hahaha. I said "No I'm not." I love that premise "Are you somebody?"
R.V.B. - Do you remember hearing anyone perform?
E.T. - We were only there for a couple of hours on Sunday morning. We were back stage there. All of the toilets were overflowing. It was kind of a gross but really interesting thing.
R.V.B. - Well you were part of it and it was major music history. As a psychologist, do you see the words of songs differently than the average singer/songwriter?
E.T. - I don't know. I think I understand the world of people who haven't had anything given to them. That has drawn me to a lot of the music that I have learned. There's a certain empathy for the human condition that I hope I have reflected in my music. I don't think that there's anything with my psychology training per say. They just sort to fit together very well for me. The psychology that I do is not the kind of psychotherapy psychology. I spend a lot of time trying to understand how public schools affect people... the life chances of adolescents. Particularly among immigrant refugee populations, over the last 20 years. I'm trying to understand what it's like to be marginal and how to retain your own sense of identity - in the face of organizations and policies that might threaten that - what it's like not to have the resources that you need. It's very close to a lot of the folk music that I've been interested in. It's close to my early family history. My grandfather was a coal miner in West Virginia/western Pennsylvania. Our family migrated to Washington D.C. in the 40s. I grew up in a blue collar environment. I was a boy soprano and I got into the Washington Cathedral Choir. That gave me a leg up into St. Albans school. I got a scholarship because of my voice. I had a blue collar home but an elite school environment that I negotiated through high school.
R.V.B. - Did you take any music courses in your college years?
E.T. - Hardly any. I went to Trinity College in Hartford where Anne Muir's husband was the Dean of admissions. I majored in psychology and minored in English. I had a lot of musical training with the choir. I didn't take formal music courses.
R.V.B. - You're probably one of the most well rounded part time musicians out there. Are you happy with this approach?
E.T. - There are a couple of things. One, is that I had a good ability to find songs that I think I can add to... through presentation and accompaniment. That's something that I've really appreciated over time... and have gotten some nice feedback on. The thing that I'm most happy about - and it's reflected in the work with Gordon and Anne - I've been able to understand how to add to what other people are doing without becoming the centerpiece. I have always aspired to be a good musical team player. My son Alex is a wonderful soccer player and has a great sense of the field. You can see that he's trying to get the most out of his teammates. That's what I loved about playing with Gordon and Anne. They've energized me like no other musicians have. The energy is how to make something greater than the sum of its parts.
R.V.B. - That is very important.
E.T. - For me, it's been very key.
R.V.B. - Do you have any other hobbies that you like to do?
E.T. - I like to spend time with my family. The time that I've spent being a musician and psychologist, has left me culturally bereft in other areas. I don't know a lot about art... I don't know a lot about classical music... I don't know a lot about opera.For the last decade, my life has been pretty much has been music, psychology and my family... my wife and my two kids. We take walks and go on trips to different places. My wife is from the former Soviet Union. She's a psychologist also. I've had a chance to visit Russia a few times. My dean and colleague at the University of Miami is trying to work out a collaborative relationship with Tel Aviv University. I was able to go over to Israel in May and spend some time there. I do like to world travel but it's usually paid for by professional responsibilities.
R.V.B. - Do you live in the greater Miami area?
E.T. - Yes. We live about four miles south of Coral Gables.
R.V.B. - Do you miss the northeast at all?
E.T. - Very much. I'm planning on doing a 10 concert tour of the northeast in November... including New York City. We do miss it and try to go back yearly. I had a chance to do some concerts last year which took me to Washington D.C. up to Camden Maine. I had a chance to have breakfast with Gordon... who I hadn't seen for a while. I do miss the northeast. It's been a huge part of my life.
R.V.B. - I thank you very much for taking this time with me. I appreciate it. I love your music and it's good to see that you are still very active with it. I'll catch up with you in New York City.
E.T. - It's been good to talk with you. Thanks for the invitation.
Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz
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