cellio | interviewed by thatcrazycajun

1. Are you married? How long and to whom?

Yes. Dani Zweig and I were married in April 2000.

2. Any kids? How many, what gender and how old?

Cats, not kids. :-) Erik the Redhead and Baldur the Fairly Slow are littermates and are 13.5 years old. (I actually know what day they were born; Mom-cat was already pregnant when a friend took her in.) Embla came to me as an adult stray and is estimated to be 10 or 11.

3. How long have you been performing musically, and what got you into it?

I think I started singing at newcomer-receptive bardic circles (SCA and cons) around 1985. (I went to my first con in 84 and had previously heard a little recorded filk, most notably the "Minus Ten and Counting" tape, but didn't actually know any relevant songs then.) I don't remember how many cons passed before I tried to sing something.

The first time I sang in the SCA was around the same time, in a local bardic competition. Let's just say that the first time is all about building confidence, rather than being about skill. :-) I liked singing; I just didn't have any practical experience, and went for years thinking I had a range of about 6 notes. (Then I learned that that transitional range between chest voice and head voice is normal, and things got better. :-) )

I was also learning to play dulcimer around the same time -- first mountain dulcimer and then hammered dulcimer. I started playing in the SCA. Soon thereafter, the local SCA group formed first a choir and then a consort, and I joined both.

The (few) cons I was going to at the time seemed receptive to a broader range of music than just standard filk -- there were more than a few harps, dulcimers, recorders, and whatnot showing up, and folk music wasn't considered abnormal. I wanted to do more of that (and not just on the fly), so I talked to three other local musicians (all also in the SCA) and we formed On the Mark. Our first performance was Darkover in 1991.

4. What artists (or authors, or others) most inspire and inform your music?

I try for variety, but that said, Fred Small and Eric Bogle as authors and singers, and Clam Chowder as performers. Performance is a separate skill from making music; it's about interplay with the audience, stagecraft, and physical placement, and it's also about developing sequences of songs that flow and are balanced -- knowing when to change the mood, tempo, instrument/voice balance, participation level, etc.

5. What's most exciting in your life right now?

Probably synagogue opportunities. I recently got to conduct a bar mitzvah -- my first, and I think the first by a layperson at this congregation. My rabbi is open to giving me more opportunities to be a leader in our community, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that plays out. We have a new associate rabbi, who also has to be integrated, and we've never really gotten clear the divisions of labor between the chair of the worship committee (someone else) and the sh'lichat k'hilah (para-rabbi) (me, new position), so there may be bumps. But we're all trying to be careful, so I have high hopes that I'll get to do nifty stuff without upsetting anyone. (Well, ok, there's always someone who objects to any change, but I mean besides that.)