My Dad and his friend Gus Cooper played for dances in Minnesota. This one was taken in about 1937.

The Heritage

Mom was born and raised in Cleethorpes, England to a father of Irish heritage and a mother of Romany Gypsy extraction. She grew up very poor and went into the Royal Air Force during World War II to escape the grinding poverty of industrial England.

Dad was born in Sault Saint Marie, Ontario. His family emigrated to Minneapolis for work when he was young. He studied violin with the concert master of the Minneapolis Symphony until the Great Depression. He was drafted into the US Air Force and stationed in Stornoway, Lewis and later in England. I suppose if some Lewis woman had caught his eye this might have been a very different story. I might have grown up speaking Gaelic in the home. Fate is a funny thing.

Mom and Dad met in a bar, shortly after her fiancé was shot down while in on a bombing mission. The usual story followed. They were married in Colcester, and settled on Bainbridge Island, Washington where my Dad's parents had moved while he was away at the war.

Playing my first rental harp circa 1981.

Growing Up in Little Norway

My childhood in Poulsbo was about as exciting as you might imagine. The town's (then) vibrant Norwegian cultural heritage was interesting and engaging and I came close to joining Leikarringen, the local Scandinavian youth dance group, which is a contrast, I think, to the wealth of online education sources that now teach young Scandinavians about their heritage. I left just before making the final commitment of having a bunad sewn for me by the ladies of Fun With Fabrics just down the street from the Sons of Norway.

I hesitated because I knew that I was destined to play the Celtic harp. I first asked my parents for one on my fifth birthday, but the gods didn't see fit to get my feet on the path until I was 15. My sister took me to the Puyallup Fair that year, and I saw Phillip and Pam Boulding playing Irish harp and hammered dulcimer. I was completely transfixed the first moment I saw and heard the instrument that would define my life.

Within a few months I found a harp teacher in nearby Suquamish and rented a small instrument.

I played my first gig at the opening of The Emerald Cottage on Bainbridge Island six weeks after my first lesson. I learned the kind of generic British folk repertoire that is easily available to the uninitiated and earned my pocket money throughout high school playing at restaurants and weddings.

Doing my best to be Gothic in 1987.

Cornish College of the Arts

At the end of high school, I was faced with a difficult choice. Do I just try to get a job? Get a college degree in some marketable area? Both thoughts made me queasy, so with encouragement from my peers and family, I decided to get a degree in music.

Back in the last century, there was no such thing as getting a degree in traditional music, so I went to Cornish in Seattle and studied classical harp performance, with a bit of composition and voice on the side.

Life at Cornish was pretty dreamy for me once I smartened up to the pace of life in the big city. I was surrounded by smart, creative, progressive people and I flourished.

After graduation, I considered trying to have a career as a classical harpist, but my heart really wasn't in it. The repertoire was dry and the competition fierce. I decided to go work at a the student lending agency where I had been temping on summer breaks while my head and heart caught up with all the experiences of college.

Wicked Celts at the recording studio where we made our CD in 1997. Photo by Judy Webster.

Wicked Celts

After a lengthy break from music spent trying to fit in to the non-profit corporate culture of the student lending world, I was pulled back into the traditional music scene when my dear friend Síle Harris lent me her Jack Yule clársach for a couple of years.

During that time, I tried to find a Celtic band to join, but none of them wanted a harp player. Never being one to be held back by others' lack of vision, I started one myself. Wicked Celts went through several painful transitions before settling into a configuration that could work and play well together. Some ex-members even still speak to each other!

We made a CD called Prophecy and Blessing and even managed to sell enough copies to pay off the loan we took out to make it. I call that a success.

During the heyday of the band, two extremely significant things happened. First, my Dad (gods rest his soul) passed away and Mom gave me his violin, which had been sitting unused in its case for sixty years. Second I decided to take a couple lessons in Scottish Gaelic from Richard Hill. You know, just enough so I could pronounce the words of songs correctly. I didn't want to have to learn the language!

story continues after the guffawing stops