We learned of the loss this week of two prominent figures in the local folk scene: Scott Alarik, a journalist, musicologist and songwriter; and Bill Staines, a folk singer who wrote many songs about the natural world. Brian O'Donovan, host of GBH's A Celtic Sojourn every Saturday afternoon, joined host Sean Corcoran on Morning Edition to discuss the mens' work and their legacies.
Sean Corcoran: Scott Alarik managed to do something that not a lot of artists can do. He not only covered music for publications like The Boston Globe, the folk publication Sing Out and Billboard magazine, but he also performed — he was a folk singer himself. And I know he was your friend. Tell us about him.
Brian O'Donovan: He was an amazing character. I first met Scott probably back in 1982 or '83. Around a concert at The Idler, which was a famous folk club right in Harvard Square, sadly, not there anymore. And Scott had just arrived here from Minnesota. I remember my conversation with him was just intriguing. And I was fairly new here. And Scott intrigued me through his writing, his performances and his's advocacy. He was a community activist, really around folk music around the benefits of folk music. And he loved to write about that in the Globe and became well known for that advocacy over his whole life. But he was a triple threat, as you said: he was a performer, he was an activist, and he was just a really gifted writer. He had a wonderful compendium called "Deep Community," a book that he published. And, of course, he wrote a novel about the folk scene in Cambridge around the same time I just referenced, the '80s, called "Revival."
Corcoran: Did he have songs that stand out to you?
O'Donovan: Yes, I you know, I think Scott was a kind of a comforting force for me generally, and I love the song "Carolina Moon" that he wrote himself. It's just a classic kind of '80s folk style. And as I said, it kind of comes at you almost like a cup of hot cocoa.
Corcoran: He was a familiar voice on the radio. Not only did he host his own show on WUMB, he was also a guest on your show quite often. He also appeared on A Prairie Home Companion. And as a journalist, one of the people Scott would certainly have written about would have been Bill Staines, one of the greatest folk singers to ever come out of Massachusetts, born in Lexington. He also came up in that Cambridge folk scene, which was so huge during the '60s and '70s.
O'Donovan: He did and we lost battle stains again this week as well. It was tough to contemplate the loss of both of those giants of the folk world. But Bill also was that great force or kind of just so American to me, he just captured it and he is very popular in Europe, as well, for that reason. So he kind of captured that folksy, kind of traveling-style, easy. He had a great rapport with audiences and got them very much into the songs and his performances. And he really did a lot for bringing people into folk music and continuing what had happened in the '60s, morphed into something quite different: more acoustic, more earthy, perhaps, in line with what was happening in the '80s.
Corcoran: And Bill Staines seemed he had really strong melodies, of course, the backbone of folk music, but he paints a picture with his music. He was a very descriptive writer in his lyrics. He's a naturalist in verse, it seems to me. The song "River" is another one of his most-requested songs.
O'Donovan: He was a naturalist. He talked about the seasons and New Hampshire, and he could just paint a picture of the changing seasons here in New England. He was very New England to me, even though he wrote about other parts of the U.S. There was a New England flavor to them, and he adored how rivers would would look different at different times of the year and capture that perfectly in verse.
Corcoran: And he would connect that natural world to something larger. I expect many of his songs might end up in churches. I'm thinking of songs like "All Things Bright and Beautiful."
O'Donovan: Which is a church song itself. You know, "all creatures great and small" comes from, you know, good old Protestant hymnal, but he was kind of like a revival. as well and I think he kind of brought that almost like a traveling preacher. Not in an evangelical way, strictly speaking, but just got people into the idea that that there maybe was a larger force — it could be nature — and he was going to sing about it unabashedly and get the audience to participate, like his congregation.
Corcoran: I come from a folk family, and I remember my father teaching us All God's Critters, we called it, but I guess it's really called "A Place in the Quiet."
O'Donovan: It just has such a great sentiment: all God's creatures have a place. There's room for diversity in there, and he goes in and names all of the creatures.
Corcoran: One of his most popular songs is "My Sweet Wyoming Home." I expect that maybe music teachers use that to teach the alternating finger style on guitar.
O'Donovan: Well that was a another stock and trade, was his ability to have the finger style guitar. I sent it to somebody yesterday — somebody way younger than me who had recently moved to Wyoming — and I said, "You got to listen to the song." They said, "Listen to this song? That's already the state national anthem."
Scott Alarik and Bill Staines have left behind a legacy of a gentle approach to music.
Sean Corcoran is GBH’s Senior Managing Editor for News. He grew up north of Boston, and he is a graduate of The George Washington University and the Columbia University School of Journalism. For the first nine years of his career, he worked at various New England newspapers, doing some of the earliest reporting into what is now known as the “opioid crisis.” Sean joined WCAI-FM in 2005 as a senior reporter and later news director. He moved to GBH News in 2017. Sean has been recognized with a DuPont-Columbia Award, two Gabriel Awards and a national Edward R. Murrow Award. He can be reached at sean_corcoran@wgbh.org
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