Hi:

Yes, I did found Green Linnet in partnership with Pat Sky. It ran it out of my home for many years, and I gave it my life and much of my money. Pat and I were interested in putting out the most traditional forms of Irish music as well as some British and American musicians we respected, and who we felt deserved label support for interesting projects unlikely to be funded by more commercial labels. We put out Barrack Room Ballads by Peter Bellamy, Debby McClatchy with the Red Clay Ramblers, Rosalie Sorrels' album of Mormon Songs, Margaret McArthur's Vermont Farm Songs, Guy Van Duser and Billy Novick's Penny Whistle album, Roy Berkeley's FDR Songs, Jane Voss and Hoyle Osborne, and some albums of our own music-making. Pat's marvelous work compiling Forty Years of Irish Piping (Seamus Ennis), Peter Bellamy's album of Joe Heaney and "the Gabe," and many other splendid albums came out under our watch. We made some mistakes and ran up some debts. We were both quite inexperienced at the business side of running a company, and we made no compromises in the work we were trying to produce. We brought Wendy on board in the early 1970s because of her new found interest in Irish music and her experience in managing a small business (a book/gift shop as a fund-raiser for the World Affairs Center in Westport, Connecticut). Wendy worked as an employee for the company for several years, developing audiences for the hard driving Irish bands who have been the vanguard of the Celtic music revival and also exploring and documenting Irish-American traditional music, initially with the assistance of folklorist Mick Moloney. She bought out Patrick's share of the company and then took on my share in return for promising to keep the artists we had recorded in print, and assuming outstanding debts. No cash exchanged hands. For several years, the company continued to work out of my home until it had need of larger quarters and moved to Danbury. At that time, i was ready to sell the Connecticut house Green Linnet had shared with me in Connecticut, and I moved to the Washington, DC area.

My relationship with Wendy has always been cordial and though I know little about her business dealings since our business relationship was terminated, I know she has kept her employees medically insured--which to me suggests that her attitudes as a very small business owner have been ethical in intent. She has also told me in our conversations, that she has not profited beyond a reasonable salary from running the company and is passing this company on for enough money to just about cover her debts and the amount she sunk into it.

If I have any quibble with Wendy it is about being written out of the
company's history, but when we have discussed this, she tells me that she considers the period prior to her actual ownership "pre-history." In a way, she has a point as it was never our intention to develop the company on quite the same scale as she designed and achieved. Our musical tastes and objectives were quite different.

I also lament that many of the artists she agreed to keep in "print" ceased to be advertised as available. Nevertheless, she tells me that they remain in catalogue.

These differences between us have always been issues we could discuss, if never resolve to my complete satisfaction. Nevertheless,
we remain close friends, and I have a high regard for what she has accomplished. During my touring years as a musician, she handled all my personal finances and many of my household dilemmas with kindness and honesty--so it is hard for me to think of her as purposefully gypping musicians by intent. I suspect in my heart of hearts that other factors are at play.

I am glad that at least some of the music will have a future and look forward to Wendy's resumption of her progressive, political activities. May she bring to them the same imagination and energy that helped grow the public's interest in Celtic music.

--Lisa Null (Elisabeth Higgins Null)