Blog
Carlos Fetterolf
by Sandor Slomovits
January 30, 2012
Carlos Fetterolf holding the lyrics to
"These Lakes are Your Lakes"
Earlier this month we played in the Silver Maples Retirement Community's Kaleidoscope concert series in Chelsea. The day of our concert I got a phone call from Carlos Fetterolf, a resident at Silver Maples who I'd met last year at a concert my daughter Emily and I had played in Ann Arbor. Emily and I had ended that concert with This Land Is Your Land. After the show, Carlos had introduced himself, said he had some new verses for that song and that he'd send them to us. He soon did just that and now Carlos was calling to suggest that he join us at Silver Maples and sing those new verses with us. I agreed immediately and enthusiastically.
Carlos Fetterolf is now 85 years old. He says about himself, "As a kid I played with water and the things that lived in it. Then, armed with degrees from the University of Connecticut and Michigan State, I discovered that folks would pay me to do the same thing, using sophisticated words instead of "play." (For Carlos' full professional bio, see below.) In 1972, as a fishery and water quality scientist, he was appointed to the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board of the I.J.C. the Canada/US International Joint Commission which is charged by treaty to assure that actions within either country did not adversely affect the other's water quality or quantity agreements. After serving on that Board for eleven years his work was celebrated at a dinner in Indianapolis in 1983. He concluded his comments that night by urging people to "develop that Woody Guthrie feeling that not enough scientists, administrators, and legislators have. If you start thinking that These lakes are your lakes, these lakes are my lakes, these lakes were made for you and me' you'll start acting that way very quickly. This thinking translates easily into actions resulting in better management. Not only will the lakes be better off, we'll have a better feeling about ourselvesand so will future generations. Wouldn't we be proud to leave a legacy based on preventive programs rather than remedial ones."
Jack Vallentyne, a senior scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada was in the audience that night and, inspired by Carlos' remarks, penned some new verses to Woody Guthrie's song. These were the lyrics that Carlos proposed singing with us.
At Silver Maples that night, after a brief rehearsal with Carlos before the show, we invited him up on stage to sing the last song of our concert with us. Carlos opened his remarks by saying he'd never met a microphone he didn't like and, that at age 85 he was making his professional singing debut. (I interrupted him with an incredulous, "Professional? You didn't tell us we'd have to pay you!") Then, after Carlos told the audience the story of how the new verses to Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land came to be written, we all three sang Woody's great chorus and then Carlos sang the new chorus and verses. His voice, an octave below ours, was in fine form and he sang flawlessly. The full house gave him a great whole-hearted ovation. Thank you, Carlos!
Here are the new verses that Jack Vallentyne, (Johnny Biosphere) wrote.
Carlos Fetterolf's professional bio:
Carlos Fetterolf researched, managed, initiated, developed, resolved or administered fishery and water quality issues/programs for the Tennessee DNR, the Michigan Water Resources Commission, the National Academy of Sciences, the Michigan DNRE, the Canada-US Great Lakes Fishery Commission and the NOAA National Sea Grant College Program. Before he retired twenty years ago he was the CEO of the Canada/US Great Lakes Fishery Commission, an organization that is charged by treaty to revitalize the fishery which had been devastated by over fishing and the invading predaceous sea lamprey.
I Like Chocolate
©2011 Sandor and Laszlo Slomovits ASCAP
November 25, 2011
This Sunday, we'll play one of our favorites — the Thanksgiving Weekend Family Concert at the Ark Coffeehouse in Ann Arbor — an annual tradition for us for more than 25 years! If you are anywhere near here we'd love to see you at this show. And to whet your appetite for the show, here are the lyrics to a brand new song we've co-written (San wrote the lyrics, Laz wrote the music) which will receive its world premiere at the Ark:
I like chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, I like chocolate a lot
Fruits and lots of vegetables I know are good for me So I’ve heard, and so I’ve learned, I’d never disagree But the best research does not besmirch chocolate’s fame for sure Scientists say, in their scientific way, that cocoa might even cure.
Chocolate’s antioxidants have healthy benefits Eaten dark, it hits the mark, so everyone admits It’s good for your heart and every other part, with its bioflavonoids, I just say, please pass it my way, I don’t need no big woids.
Milky chocolate, though so fine, is not so good for you and me Too many treats, too many sweets, and dentists we’ll need to see So a word of caution, to balance devotion, to chocolate overdone Too much of a good thing, can and often does bring, bellyaches not so much fun.
Playing By Ear
by Laszlo Slomovits
October 28, 2011
My mother's father, Gersten Samuel, was a handsome man, a slender, dashing figure with a large handlebar mustache, penetrating dark brown eyes, and a classic strong chin. My mother, Blanka, adored him. He smoked cigars, wore a silver watch fob, and dressed as a bit of a dandy. He was not, however, finicky. My mother often related how, whenever her mother tried to clear the plates from one course, before serving the next one, he would say, "I don't need a new plate, Karolina. Just put the next course right on this one — it's all going in the same stomach!"
He was an illegitimate child and bore the stigma all his life. Abandoned by his father, given away by his mother to an older, married, but childless sister, he was raised in a wealthy home and inherited a large house and enough money to live on comfortably. By day he was an accountant, but he spent his nights playing boogie-woogie piano in the smokey, racy nightclubs of Budapest. (One of the other stories my mother told about him was of the night, when she was two or three years old, when her father and mother were arguing, as they often did, about him going out again for the evening. She remembers standing up in her crib, saying to her mother, "He'll stay here for me." He didn't.)
He did, however, have extraordinary musical gifts. He was not only an excellent pianist; he had an uncanny ability to hear a piece of music once — sit down at the piano, and play it back from memory. If you hummed him a tune he could instantly play it, and then improvise variations on it.
He was much better at playing piano than he was at gambling, which is the other thing he did during those late nights in the clubs. He died of throat cancer when my mother was twelve, and the family was devastated to find out that he had squandered all his fortune. The house was all that was left, and my grandmother had to take in boarders to make ends meet.
He passed on his musical gifts to his only son, Nandor, who became a very fine classical pianist by his early teens, though he did not inherit the ability to play by ear. My mother, on the other hand, was not only unmusical — she was profoundly tone deaf. And yet, in the mysterious way that life and destiny unfold through time, my mother passed on her father's gift to me.
Though the image is vague, with hardly any details, I can still see the room where I first discovered this. I was about 10 years old. We were living in a tiny, ninety-family mosav (cooperative farm) called Ein Ayala, some forty miles south of Haifa, in Israel. We'd left Budapest two years before, in the wake of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. I had been playing violin for three years by then — not very well, and not enjoying it particularly, but in those days, playing an instrument was considered a basic part of a well-rounded education. I took weekly lessons and was "encouraged" by my parents to practice every day.
It was late afternoon, I was alone in the house, and getting bored with practicing. As twilight approached, I started not being able to see the music on my music stand. Whatever I was working on had a D minor scale in it, starting on the open D string of the violin, and going up to the open A string. As I played these five notes in order — re, mi fa sol la — it struck me that this was the beginning of the melody of the Hatikvah, the Israeli National Anthem. (I later found out it was also a theme in The Moldau, a symphonic poem by the 19th Century Czech composer, Bedrich Smetana.) So when I got to the A string, I abandoned the notes on the sheet music in front of me, and continued playing the melody of the Hatikvah by ear — and was delighted and amazed to find that I could do it! Re mi fa sol la, la ti la ti re la, sol sol sol fa fa, mi re mi fa re. My fingers seemed to be magically, intimately and inevitably connected to my inner ear and to my memory of the melody, and I could no more play a wrong note on the violin, than I could sing a wrong one. I kept playing and finished the song, and tried a couple of others — with the same thrilling result.
I tried playing it in another key. Easy. I tried turning the melody from D minor to D major. Nothing to it. I tried making up simple melodies — hearing something inside, and simultaneously duplicating it on the violin — and this too was immediately available. It felt so simple and natural — I assumed everybody could do it, and I had just discovered that I too could do it. Like I'd lived in this house of music for three years, and just noticed that there was a door I'd never opened before — and I opened it, and found a fascinating, wondrous chamber on the other side.
That small room in the twilight, and me alone in the house, and the silence after I stopped playing, and the utter stillness, fullness, sense of satisfaction and happiness — I've never forgotten it. And yet, strangely, when my parents and brother came home, I didn't tell them about it. It had felt so natural that I was sure everyone could do it — and yet, at the same time, it felt like a secret I had stumbled on. And in order to protect its preciousness I needed to keep it a secret — not so much to hide it from others, but to keep it treasured inside.
I don't know if my mother had already told me about my grandfather Shamu, and his wonderful ability to play by ear, but in that moment of discovery, I'm sure I didn't think, "Oh, this is something I inherited from Grandpa Shamu." But now, looking back, I'm sure there is a connection — and I'm very grateful. Grateful that he developed this talent, and in some mysterious way, passed it on to me. And grateful to all those unknown ancestors, some of whom undoubtedly had this ability, each of whom developed it to some degree, and passed it on to the next ones in the line.
Bo Schembechler
By Sandor Slomovits
September 22, 2011
It's Go Blue time again. There's a new coach in town, he's doing well, and I have a memory of another Michigan coach.
I remember exactly where I was when President Kennedy was shot, when I heard about the Challenger explosion, and of course how I first heard about 9/11. To balance those, I remember, just as well, where I proposed, and my daughter's birth.
I also remember where I was when I heard that Bo Schembechler had died. Which is interesting, because I'm not that much of a football fan. I've lived in Ann Arbor since 1973 and have only been to two games. But I love the drama of all sports and so I check in on Michigan regularly on radio and TV and I'm always happy to hear when they win.
The closest I came to caring about one of Bo's victories was one Sunday in the Eighties, when my brother and I played a concert in Columbus the day after Bo's Wolverines upset the heavily favored Buckeyes. During that concert, unlike at most shows, we did not announce where we lived!
Here's what I remember about the day Bo died.
My wife and I were standing in our driveway that Friday afternoon in November of 2006, about to get in our car to go to an early movie, when one of our neighbors, a rabid Maize and Blue fan who got season tickets every year, walked up, face noticeably white, and asked us, "Did you hear that Bo died?" We hugged each other and I found my eyes welling up. After our neighbor left, my wife and I reminisced about meeting Bo once.
We were strolling on a quiet side street near campus one early August night in 1989 when we ran into Bo. Of course we recognized him. You couldn't live in Ann Arbor in the Seventies and Eighties and not be thoroughly familiar with that face and voice. He was alone and we stopped and made small talk for a couple of minutes. He didn't seem in a hurry, remarkable considering the Wolverines would open their season in a month. I don't recall what any of us said. I wish I did. Nothing noteworthy I'm sure, maybe something about the weather, or about some flowers in a nearby yard. I know we didn't talk football.
What struck me was the obvious interest he took in us. I don't think it was just because my wife is beautiful. She is, but he wasn't hitting on her. He also clearly wasn't sizing me up as a potential walkon prospect. I'm five foot nine and 135 pounds. I wouldn't have made the cut as a third string water boy on one of his teams. He just seemed to genuinely enjoy sharing a simple human contact with us. Our interaction was remarkably normal. He was completely without any of the mannerisms or shielding that might be expected in one so famous.
Throughout our conversation we didn't acknowledge who he was or address him by name. To have called him Bo, despite his ease and naturalness, would have been unthinkable. Mr. Schembechler didn't seem right either. But when we parted I said, "Good luck in the fall, Coach." And he said, "Thank you."
Easy for Who?
By Sandor Slomovits
August 17, 2011
During the recent hot spell in Ann Arbor in July, we had a tree trimmed in our back yard. A huge black walnut had a dead limb hanging over our newly finished, and newly inhabited chicken coop. We called an arborist who's done tree work for us before. She and her assistant expertly cut off the branch in short order. Afterward, I asked her how she was doing in the unusual heat. She said they'd been working shorter hours to ensure her own and her workers' safety. I said I wasn't surprised; that Laz and I had played a number of outdoor concerts during the heat wave, that it had been hard to keep our instruments in tune, that we drank copiously to try to keep hydrated, and that we'd wrung a lot of sweat out of our t-shirts after each concert. "But," I added, "Our work was nowhere near as hard as what you do." She disagreed. This woman who routinely climbs tall trees, carrying a chainsaw that weighs considerably more than my guitar, said, "If I had to stand up in front of a bunch of people and sing, I'd be sweating bullets for a week before!"
Brought to mind a wonderful Sesame Street skit. A little girl skips up a few stairs and sits in a chair on a small stage. Next, the famed violinist, Itzhak Perlman, who had polio as a child, struggles up the same stairs with his crutches and leg braces, sits down next to the little girl and says, "You know, some things that are real easy for you are real hard for me." Then he picks up his violin and plays a few spectacular phrases. The little girl says, "Yeah, but some things are easy for you that are hard for me," and proceeds to play the beginning of Bach's Gavotte in G Minor—sounding like the beginning violinist that she is. Here's the link to this segment, which you might enjoy watching with your children or grandchildren.
Our First Gig
By Laszlo Slomovits
July 27, 2011
It was 38 years ago earlier this month that we moved to Ann Arbor. Although we had played two "concerts" (euphemism for a University of Rochester cocktail hour, and a fraternity house party) in Rochester, NY, where we moved from, our very first appearance before sober people was at the Ann Arbor Art Fair in July of 1973.
Things were much looser in those days when it came to scheduling music at the Fair. We showed up with our guitars on Wednesday afternoon at the Graceful Arch Stage on East University and there was nobody playing. With the chutzpah of youth, we told Lois Lintner, the kind lady who seemed to be in charge, that we were professional musicians (well we did get paid for those two parties!) and asked if could we play a set. She said, "Sure. Nobody’s scheduled for the next hour." We had just about enough material for that, and played our first real (non-paying) concert.
We were not even thinking about children’s music at the time — we were singing and playing an eclectic (read "random") mix of traditional folk music from different parts of the world, the songs of Bob Dylan and other folk heroes of the 60’s, and our own original songs for adults. A few people walking by the stage stopped and listened, stayed for a song or two, applauded politely, and continued browsing at the Art Fair booths. But Lois Lintner liked our music and invited us to come back the next day — and for many years after that.
Of course, we had no idea when we played that first set at the Art Fair, that we would be lucky enough to still be making our living playing music 38 years later.
Stage Fright
By Laszlo Slomovits
March 2, 2011
The world-famous actress, Sarah Bernhardt, was pacing up and down in the wings, waiting for her cue to go on, obviously quite nervous. Seeing this, a young actress came up to her and said, "Miss Bernhardt, after all these years, and with all your fame, you still get nervous?" Bernhardt replied, "Why, yes, of course." The astonished young actress exclaimed, "I'm in my very first role, and I'm not nervous at all!" Sarah Bernhardt didn't miss a beat in her response: "Don't worry, my dear, it comes with talent."
I take that as reassurance that I must have some modicum of talent since, after nearly forty years, I still get nervous before gigs. But I've learned not to call it nervousness, with its negative connotations, but excitement or enthusiasm, and to recognize it as the energy needed to bring out my best. And if it doesn't come up on its own, I've learned, at least to some degree, to generate it—by making an effort to become as focused and as present as possible—and then the interaction with the audience and the power of music enter in to increase it.
But it wasn't always that way. When San and I first started playing concerts in 1973, what I felt was not nervousness, but fear. Partly it came from being worried about not being prepared enough to be doing what I was doing. After all, I'd started playing guitar just a little more than two years before. I was still looking at my hands to make sure I was putting my fingers in the right place—and there were plenty of times when I didn't! San and I barely had enough repertoire of folk songs for one night of music, and I wasn't completely sure I'd remember all the words to all the songs, especially when I was focused so intently on my hands. I'd also just recently started writing original songs, and I really didn't know if an audience would like them. So, there was plenty to be scared about!
And my mind was quite capable of taking those somewhat reasonable fears and expressing them in pessimistic, defeatist inner voices that said things like, "Who are you kidding? You know you're really not very good at this. You should have listened to your parents and gotten a real job."
Over the years these critical inner voices have diminished, and I've also learned a bit about how to respond to them when they do come up. These days, if a cynical voice comes up before a concert, I look at it the way I look at the Caller ID on my phone; if it's a telemarketer, (and whatever they're trying to sell me, I don't want it!) I simply don't pick up the phone, and after four rings they hang up. Or, sometimes I pick up the phone and say, "Please take me off your list, I'm not interested." In other words, I say to these killjoy voices in my head, "Thanks for sharing."
But in the early days of playing music, it was not so easy to do this with these inner voices. And, in fact, years after we started playing concerts, I was still "picking up the phone" and getting out my credit card to buy the nasty, gloomy products these voices were selling.
It all came to a head in January of 1979, when we played the first concert where we did it all—rented the hall, (the Pendleton Room on the second floor of the University of Michigan Student Union) made up fliers and put them up all over town, printed tickets, sent hand-addressed (!) post cards to the relatively few people whose addresses we had collected at our gigs, and mailed or hand-delivered press releases, calendar announcements and PSA's to the media contacts we'd compiled. Remember, this was way before e-mail, Internet, Facebook, etc. (maybe even before fax machines?) and we were still pretty new at this; we knew even less about marketing than we knew about music.
The concert was scheduled for 2:00pm on a Sunday afternoon, and we set up the room and tuned up our instruments well before. There was no PA system. We didn't own one, and could not afford to rent one. Besides, we'd grown up singing un-amplified with our Dad in the synagogue, and the Pendleton Room was not that large, had decent acoustics, and, of course, we expected people to be listening to us—not like in the bars where we had first started performing, and where we still played from time to time.
After setting up, we went out into the lobby to greet the people we were hoping would come. At 1:30, people started arriving, and by 1:40 there were more than 50 people in the room—and they kept coming. At quarter to two, when there were more than 100 people in the room (50 more than we expected!) I went around the corner to a hallway off the lobby and hid. I was scared stiff! It had suddenly hit me—all these people were here just to hear us! They'd be doing nothing but sitting quietly, in neat rows, all facing us, and listening to us sing and play. If we invited them to sing, they'd do that, and at the end of songs they'd applaud, but otherwise they'd sit quietly, and focus totally on us!
I'd been nervous, even scared before concerts plenty of times, but somehow this was different. This was fear bordering on terror. They say that for many people the fear of public speaking ranks number one among fears—ahead of the fear of death! That was what I was experiencing at 1:50. And the feeling was growing as I heard more and more people coming up the stairs.
At five minutes to the hour, San found me. "Where have you been? I've been looking for you. We've got a great crowd." I quavered, "I know. And I'm not going out there." San looked at me like I'd just said something in Swahili. "What do you mean, you're not going out there? Don't be ridiculous!" I repeated my fear-soaked refrain, "I'm not going out there."
San became reasonable. "Look, it'll be fine. They're all here to listen to us. Nobody is drinking, they'll stop talking as soon as we come in, and besides, they're all fans or friends." I told him I knew all that, and that's why I was not going out there.
I don't remember whether he pulled me by the arm, or got behind me and pushed, but the next thing I knew we were by the door of the Pendleton Room, and people started applauding as soon as they saw us. We walked in singing an unaccompanied welcome song I'd written, and stepped up onto the two risers that had been set up as our stage. I looked out at a capacity crowd of nearly two hundred smiling, encouraging faces. San was right. It was fine!
And it's been fine, happily ever since!
Update From San 01/2011
January 20, 2011
We hope your new year is getting off to a great start. I am very happy to let you know that I feel great and back to doing everything I was able to before my bypass surgery in October. I’ve been cross country skiing, swimming, even shoveling snow! More importantly, Laz and I played our first concert since the surgery on January 17th, when we played at the Discovery Center here in Ann Arbor. It was great fun to sing for and with people again. It was our first time back together on stage in just over three months, our longest hiatus since we began playing in public in 1973. Of course, in the interim Laz played a number of shows alone and with other musicians, and I played my guitar and piano a great deal at home, so we weren’t rusty. In the interval I also got to play a few concerts with my daughter, Emily, beginning with a show for seniors on December 31st. It was a great way to end the old year and begin the new.
She and I also played a concert at the Chelsea Retirement Community in honor of my long-time friend, Ray Schairer’s 89th birthday. Ray, a retired farmer and woodworker, is the man who crafted the wooden bones that my bones teacher, Percy Danforth, played. Since 1976 Ray has made upwards of 30,000 pairs of bones that have been sold all over the United States and even overseas. In 2002, I began apprenticing with Ray, learning to make the bones, and last year he very generously gave me all his tools and turned over the bones-making business to me. In the past few years, I also helped Ray write a book of his memories growing up as a Michigan farm boy in the 1920s and 30s. It’s a wonderful record of a way of life that has all but disappeared. You can read excerpts from Ray’s book at BarefootBoyBook.com.)
Playing music these last few months, both at home and now back on stage, has been incredibly healing and invigorating for me. Through all my years of music making I’ve had frequent magical/whimsical moments, on stage and off. The recent enforced vacation allowed me to practice more than our usual busy schedule allows and refreshed my love of music making and my gratitude for what it brings to my life, and, it seems, to others. On Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday Emily and I played at a senior center here in Ann Arbor. Before we began, the seniors, many with Alzheimer’s and other limitations, sat withdrawn, with blank, sad expressions on their faces. By the time we ended, most were smiling, animated and talkative.
The other day I played for toddlers at the Towsley Children's House, here in Ann Arbor. Laz and I alternate going there every month. I’d not been there since September, but the staff and children welcomed me warmly and remembered the songs I bring, many of them different from the ones Laz brings to them. We were singing my Pizza song together in the front lobby around 11:30 when a man delivered two huge bags of pizzas for lunch. We all laughed with delight.
Thank you again to all of you who sent cards, emails and good wishes in the past few months. Laz and I also thank all of you who ordered our music recently. We are grateful to all of you for supporting our music all these years. We send you our best wishes for a great new year and look forward to seeing you at one of our concerts soon.
Be Well,
San
Trip to Ecuador
January 20, 2011
Over the winter break, Laz, Helen and Daniel were in Ecuador, working on a land reclamation project in a deforested area. They helped plant nine native Molle trees (pronounced Mojay) and started a terraced garden up the hillside. In all the planting, they were working around native grasses and flowers that are coming up through the rock-hard ground, starting to help with the eroded soil. They were last there in August 2010, and were delighted to see the area coming alive with birds (especially hummingbirds), butterflies, and bees that had not been much in the area for many years. Laz also got to write and play music, inspired by the magnificent vistas of the Andes mountains. For more information about the project see HillsideOfDreams.org.
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Mt. Cotopaxi, nearly 20,000 ft. high, greeted us many a morning
The view to the South
The loma (hillside) on which we lived and worked
Another view of the Loma
One of a number of amazing rainbows we saw
The valley below
Helen shopping at the daily fruit and vegetable market in nearby Salcedo
One of the Molle trees we planted
Update from San
December 1, 2010
We hope you had a restful, enjoyable Thanksgiving break. This year, more than ever, we have much for which we are thankful. I continue to recover well from my surgery and by now can tell that I’ll be ready to get back on stage in January. I didn’t play in our annual Mott Children's Hospital benefit concert at the Ark— the first one I’ve missed it since we started doing those concerts 16 years ago. However, I couldn’t resist sneaking in the back door of the Ark and watching the concert from the hallway. Laz led a wonderful show, aided by our good friends in the Good Mischief Band, (Brian Brill on piano, Aron Kaufman on drums and Eric Fitihian on guitar) and of course, my daughter Emily. I was mostly undetected in the back, but one little boy walked by me, did a little double take and said, pointing to Laz, "Are you his cousin?"
I want to thank you all from the bottom of my newly refurbished heart for the many, many good wishes I’ve received via cards, emails and phone calls. Not to be flippant about it, it’s been truly heart warming and healing.
Laz and I and our families also want to thank you for your support of our music in the past few weeks. Many of you have ordered our recordings, videos, songbooks and instruments and we very much appreciate your generosity. We’ll continue to offer our products here at the same reduced prices ($10 for any CD or video) through December 14th and thank you again for your support.
We send all of you our best wishes for a happy Chanukah, merry Christmas and a very happy, healthy New Year. We look forward to seeing you soon.
San
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