A conversation with Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer

Transcript from episode 19 of the Good Folk Podcast.

SPENCER GEORGE: I can say with confidence that today’s guests are some of the most fun and joyous I have had the privilege to cross paths with. Described by the Boston Globe as “spellbinding acoustic musicians with a rare master of American roots styles” and by Billboard Magazine as “as close to flawless folk/bluegrass as it gets,” they truly need no introduction. 

TWO-TIME GRAMMY® Award Winners, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer are an eclectic folk festival on their own terms. They have entertained the Queen of Thailand, been keynote singers for the AFL-CIO, performed at hundreds of folk festivals, appeared on the "Today Show" and on National Public Radio.

Their superb harmonies are backed by instrumental virtuosity on the guitar, five-string banjo, ukulele, mandolin, cello-banjo, and many other instruments. Their eclectic repertoire includes classic country to western swing, Django style jazz to old-time stringband and bluegrass, contemporary folk and original gems. While their versatility defies a brief description, perhaps “well rounded Americana” does it best. 

The duo has released 52 recordings, including  “GET UP AND DO RIGHT”, which features duets of songs by other writers such as Alice Gerrard, Tom Paxton, Ola Belle Reed and David Francey, along with a few originals. Other recent recordings include the uke-centric collection, “WAHOO!” and “SHOUT AND SHINE” with Appalachian tradition bearer and songwriter, Sam Gleaves. The latest, “ALL NEW” is a double CD collaboration with friend, Tom Paxton, of 28 original songs written by Cathy & Tom, performed live in studio. 

Cathy & Marcy have achieved the status of master musicians, but are also happily known as “social music conductors”, ready to start a jam session, mentor an up and coming artist or create an entire music camp to help others learn to play and sing. At past music camps they have taught Kaki King and Rhiannon Giddens banjo and through their long relationship with the Music Center at Strathmore’s Artist in Residence program they have collaborated with and helped the next generation navigate the professional music world. 

They’ve earned two Grammy® Awards, in 2004 and 2005 for “cELLAbration: a Tribute to Ella Jenkins” and for “ Bon Appétit!" In 2003, they were GRAMMY® nominated for their CD, “Postcards” in the Best Traditional Folk Album category. They received another GRAMMY® nomination in that category for “Banjo Talkin’”.  

In 2004 the Martin Guitar Company honored the duo with their own signature Martin Guitars, the MCH-Cathy Fink Model and the MC3H-Marcy Marxer model. Influenced by Mike Seeger, Marcy re-discovered the four-string cello banjo inspiring the Gold Tone Company to make the Marcy Marxer model cello banjo, now played by Tim O'Brien, Ricky Skaggs and many others. She also designed her signature Kala Ukulele, now played by hundreds of uke lovers. Cathy is a three-time winner of the West Virginia State Banjo Contest, the first woman to take first place in 1980,  and in 2018 she became the first woman to win the Clifftop Appalachian Music Festival Banjo Competition. 

Cathy & Marcy have performed at hundreds of bluegrass and folk festivals, taught at 100+ music camps, appeared on the  “CBS Early Show”, National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered”. They have advocated in Washington for unions, health care for children and the rights and livelihoods of artists. 

In their 40 years performing together, the Washington Area Music Association has recognized Cathy & Marcy with over 60 WAMMY Awards for folk, bluegrass and children’s music. They have performed with Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel, Tom Paxton, Patsy Montana, Riders in the Sky and a wide range of musical luminaries. As curators, performers and hosts, Cathy & Marcy have MC’d festivals, curated concert series and collaborated with a wide variety of musicians. 

Cathy & Marcy have toured worldwide from Japan to New Zealand, Vancouver to New York and everywhere in between.  Shows include the The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum (OH), Smithsonian Institution, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. American Voices Abroad chose Cathy & Marcy with fiddler Barbara Lamb to perform in China, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu (Van-you-at-too) in 2013 for the U.S. Department of State. 

They are not only wildly impressive, but full of joy, hope, and love, both for one another and for artistry as a whole. I hope you enjoy this conversation. 

Photo credit: Irene Young.

SPENCER GEORGE: Well, Cathy and Marcy, I'm so excited to get to talk to you guys. I'm very thankful for Justin for putting us in touch and sharing your work with me. I think there's a lot of similarity here, and I know you'll have to hop off at six, so if it's cool with you, we'll just jump right into it. 

I think I would love to start— I know a little bit about kind of your experience in North Carolina, but both of us [myself and Vic, our podcast producer] are also in North Carolina. This is home for us. And I think I'd love to start with hearing in your own words what North Carolina means to you and how you would describe home or the feeling of home. 

CATHY FINK: Well, we share our time—this is Cathy speaking— we share our time between Lansing, North Carolina, and Silver Spring, Maryland. And our connection to Lansing, North Carolina, is through the music of Ola Belle Reed. Ola Belle was a dear friend of ours. She was a mentor. We performed with her. We visited her frequently in her home. We took Patsy Montana to go visit her in her home. Patsy being the first woman in country music to sell a million records. We were dear friends with her husband, Bud.

So, I don't know, maybe about fifteen years ago, I got a call from somebody in Lansing, North Carolina, who said, we're going to start an Ola Belle Reed Homecoming Festival and everybody tells us not to do it without talking to you all. So I got on board helping them kind of organize that for a couple of years. And during the process, Marcy and I became very good friends with some people down in Lansing. And then we lost our minds and bought 48 acres and built a house and have sort of two home bases. 

We do a lot of work with the Ashe County Arts Council, which is in that area in West Jefferson. And in fact, when the Ola Belle Reed Festival kind of fizzled out, the Ashe County Arts Council approached me about what we could do to keep Ola Belle's legacy going. We started a songwriting retreat that's been going on for… I think this is our sixth year, but it might be our fifth year because I can't remember. And we've got Chris Matthews, a North Carolina native, coming along with Tom Paxton, who's a longtime dear friend and co-writer of ours, Marcy and myself. 

So that's kind of our big connection. We've made many trips and done many tours through North Carolina through the years, but it's a lot deeper now. 

MARCY MARXER: I feel my blood pressure lower when I get to North Carolina, I really do. We get out into the mountains and into just the beautiful grassy areas, and I just relax. That's the part of it that feels like home to me. 

SG: I would describe it the exact same way. And I grew up in North and South Carolina and then left for college, and I always remember the feeling of coming back to the mountains, which is where my family is from, and it's like an exhale of you get there and you just feel like you can breathe again. 

CF: Totally. 

SG: I love the way you describe that. 

CF: Well, and you know, Ola Belle's most famous song is High on a Mountain. And we built our house on top of the mountain, and it's got fifteen eight-foot sides, so it's kind of circular. And we have a 360-view and a porch all around. And it's that big exhale. Sunset is sacred time. 

SG: It's the best time of the day in the mountains, right? I'm so glad to hear you bring up Ola Belle Reed. I grew up on her music, and I am a huge fan of Ola Belle Reed. I didn't even know you knew her. Could you tell us, for anyone who's listening, who doesn't know anything about Ola Belle Reed, a little bit about her music and that musical tradition and how you got involved with it? 

CF: Sure. Ola Belle grew up in Grassy Creek, which is essentially this point Lansing, North Carolina. But I don't know, maybe in the 40s or 50s, her family gravitated up North, like lots of Southerners for the purpose of finding work. 

She grew up playing music. She grew up playing old time music, square dance music, guitar and banjo, learned the old ballads, the whole thing. But someplace along the line, Ola Belle, who was quite an independent thinker, just realized, oh, I got my own things to say, and started writing her own songs. It was long before the moniker of singer-songwriter came along. In old time and bluegrass style, she started writing her own songs. And they're quite poignant, they're quite smart, they're quite passionate. 

She was a humanist. She was really just a beautiful person who loved helping people. She took in so many kids and she took in so many people, and nobody was going to go hungry in her house, and nobody was going to need something if she could provide it for them. 

She and her brother Alex and her husband Bud had two different country music parks, as they call it, Sunset Park and there was another one. For many years, on the weekends, every country music artist and band came through and performed. And Ola Belle would do the opening set and be the emcee and be the hospitality. It was incredibly formulative for a lot of people in both playing music and in enjoying music. 

So that's some of her background. She was a National Heritage Fellowship Award winner for her contributions to bluegrass and old time music, and that's a pretty big deal. She was also an early person inducted into the IBMA Hall of Fame, and I was lucky enough to be the person to present that award. And in our many trips to her house, there was always soup on the stove, there was always great hospitality, a nice visit, and lots of music. 

I would say her two most famous songs are High on a Mountain, which has been recorded by everyone, but was for the first time recorded by Del McCorry in 1962. And then the next famous song is probably I've Endured. And to this day, every youth bluegrass band that we come across is singing I've endured along with lots of other people because Ola Belle songs endure. They stand the test of time. 

And we, from time to time, do entire concerts of just her songs. We're doing one for— what is it? The online classes that we're doing. 

MM: Oh, Fiddle Hell.

CF: Fiddlehell.org. Yeah. Middle of April, we've got a whole concert of Ola Belle songs. We're going to be doing one for Baltimore County Community College, which is where her archives are. And every time we do that, we dig into songs that go far beyond I've Endured and High On a Mountain. There's so many of them. 

We're also very lucky because there's a song that she actually gave us. We were leaving her house one day and she said, you know, I have a song that I've never recorded, and I think you girls would do a good job of it. And it's called I'm Hopelessly in Love With You. Beautiful song. Clearly influenced by Hank Williams and clearly influenced by her knowledge of more contemporary country music at the time. And we recorded it. Plus we had the honor of singing it for Ola Belle and Bud on their 50th wedding anniversary at the VFW Hall in Rising Sun, Maryland. 

SG: That's just incredible. What a story and what a connection. I feel like we have to backtrack here and hear a little bit more about who you two are. Who are Kathy and Marcy and how did you two get involved with all of this incredible arts work that you're doing? 

CF: Who the heck are we? 

MM: Oh, my gosh.

SG: It's the big question, right, you know, who are you?

MML It’s a big question, it is. We started out in the scene, in the traditional music scene, folk scene and old time scene in bluegrass when we were really young, both of us. And we met when we were in our twenties. But we were on a similar path of learning from our elders and people we really admired. 

I mean, at that point as a guitar player, for me if I walked up to somebody who was a hero of mine, say, Norman Blake or something, and I was a young girl and would say, is there any chance you can show me that? And they always would. People were very generous, took us under their wing. 

We did a lot of work with Pete Seeger. We had a band with Mary Chapin Carpenter for a while. Eva Cassidy, if you know her stuff, we worked with her. But it was really just cutting our teeth, gig to gig, really, in my opinion. I mean, Cathy may have seen a full career out in front of her, but I didn't. I was just in the music and took gigs when they came in. And we met in 1980. 

Photo credit: Irene Young.

CF: We met in July of 1980 at a folk festival in Toronto. Marcy was there with an all female string band called the Bosom Buddies String Band, which formed around a group of friends who all worked at Elderly Instruments in Lansing, Michigan. I was actually doing my very first year of solo work after five years of being in a sort of bluegrass old time duet. 

So the Bosom Buddies and I were in several workshops together, but we ended up in a lot of workshops together at that festival. And that festival was— its goal was to replace the Mariposa Festival, which had taken a break, which was one of the early, really wonderful folk festivals. And in those days, you'd go do your workshops and your concerts during the day, and you'd go back to the hotel at night and jam until three or four in the morning and get up early and get back there for those workshops the next day. We had the boundless energy of 20-somethings, and now we still have boundless energy. 

But one night, Marcy and I just happened to be in a room with Norman and Nancy Blake and Robin and Linda Williams and Gamble Rogers. A few other people were sitting there playing old time tunes. And around 2 o’clock in the morning, whoseever room it was said, okay, get out of here, I'm going to bed. And Marcy and I thought, well, we're not quite done playing old time tunes. So we just went to another part of the hotel, and it was a little dilapidated and under construction, and we looked at it, we said, there's no way they've got anybody staying in this area. It's too disgusting. 

So we just kept on playing tunes. And after about twenty minutes, You could hear this door creak open and we were about to meet one of our musical heroines that we wanted to meet, but not in this particular way. It turned out to be Elizabeth Cotten who opened the door. Apparently, we had been waking her up, and she had infamous words for us, which were…

MM: She said, I prayed to the Lord to make you children a little less happy. [Laughs] And then she said, but it looks like he ain't going to do it. Where's the food?

CF: So that was sort of the moment where we clicked and that festival went bankrupt before it was over. And the duo of Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer is thought of as the one good thing to come of the Toronto Folk Festival. 

But then for the next two years, we managed to play at a lot of the same festivals, do some gigs together, and that's about how long it took us to realize, oh, this is what we want to be doing for the rest of our lives. 

Marcy moved down to the DC area where I was, and that's more than 40 years ago. There you go. 

SG: I mean, these are all just such incredible stories. And I live in Durham, so I love Elizabeth Cotten, very familiar with all of her music. So amazing. We've talked to, on this podcast, quite a few modern day musicians who are very inspired by the old time style, but I wouldn't say necessarily are making music in the old time style. Have plenty of thoughts on it. I would love to hear from you two. 

How would you describe old time music and how have you seen it change from when you first began making music in that style to where it is today? Because I feel like it is a genre in so many ways that has come back around and it's changing quite a bit and has changed quite a bit over the years. 

CF: Well, you've asked a very hard question. I'm on a team of people who created the exhibit that just opened at the birthplace of country music in Bristol, Tennessee, and the exhibit is called I’ve Endured: Women in Old Time Music. And the first question this team asked was, what is old time music? What we found out is that, you ask 20 people, you have 20 definitions. 

I think for Marcy and I, it's an organic style of music that came from a pretty diverse set of people in the Southern United States. It's got its African American roots, it's got its European roots, it's got its Native American roots in some places, where these roots all kind of merged around and traded around and so it turned into square dance tunes and jigs and fiddle tunes and banjos ballads, all of that, and kept emerging. It is not a stagnant type of music. Old time music is not stagnant. 

For us, we love playing a good square dance. Played one about a week ago. But we also love the song repertoire in old time music. I think of all the old time duets that I learned back in the seventies. I think of the instrumentation, you know, the banjo, the fiddle, the guitar, the mandolin. There's a bunch of ukulele in old time music. But these days you go to an old time jam and somebody might show up with the saxophone and if they can play the tunes, they are more than welcome.

I think that old time music has slowly embraced the diversity that it came from. And I think that's one of the places where Ola Belle was ahead of the curve at all times.  But a simple definition, I can't quite give it to you. I do feel like old time music evolves, and therefore I would say there's traditional old time music and there's contemporary old time music. And when I say contemporary old time music, we're drawing on tradition, but we're the roots and branches. We're moving it forward, and it's always moved, so there's no reason not to let that continue. You want to add anything to that? 

MM: Well, I think when I first started listening to old time music as a kid in Michigan, it wasn't really necessarily talked about as old time music, it was talked about as fiddle tunes— fiddle and banjo music. And the feeling up there was a little more straight ahead, probably closer to Canadian influence, where it didn't have that big wide swing that some bands have now, which I love. But the Southern music didn't really have that same kind of big fat swing either. It had a different feel to it, but used to be able to tell where players were from by the way they played the tunes they chose, and the way they played the tunes. you could tell what region they were from.

And now there's so much influence from all the different regions. I love it. YouTube is a blessing when you're trying to learn old music, trying to go back and see what happened in the history since it's been recorded. But the big old time swing, that is the big wide swing that is referred to now in a lot of old time music really comes from New York, comes from the Henry Brothers and the Horse Flies, bands like that. And there are people now who are carrying that on.

CF: I'd call that one genre. Yeah, that's one slice.

MM: Separate slice of old time music. 

CF: Because we've also got that Durham group that started with Alan Jabbour and Tommy Thompson. I feel like there were multiple pockets of people who learned from the older masters and created groups and perpetuated the music. 

But take the Red Clay Ramblers, for example. I mean, they took old time music to new places and that's a great thing. Jake Blunt's a great example of somebody who's doing that now. And so I think trying to define a moving target is a tricky thing, but it embraces all those things. 

MM: I was going to add— if you take those old tunes and the different methods of playing and the new people, add their personalities to them, they have to change. They have to live and breathe. We can always go back and study and we can always create. But it's an amazing thing to watch, how this old time music scene has flourished and flowered. 

SG: It's like we can't think of it as a monolith, which is something I rant about, about the south all the time, that nobody would assume New York City and Boston to ever be the same. And yet when you speak about the South, most of the time people will assume North Carolina is the same as Georgia, which is the same as Alabama. And they're all so different, right? 

CF & MM: They are.

SG: They’re so different. I'm a folklorist and I teach a folklore class here at UNC. And I asked my students on the first day of class, we were talking about music, and I was like, what does folk music mean to you? Like, who is someone who makes folk music? 

And unanimously—and these are students who are from the South—almost all of them were like, yeah, it's an old guy with a banjo on a porch, he's probably barefoot and he has a long beard, right? 

And we can't think of this as a monolith. And it's not to say that there aren't people who look like that making old time music, but it's a genre that is changing and shifting so much and everyone brings their own style to it, which I think is so important to recognize within not just this style of music, but any kind of music across the South— with country music, with folk music, with I mean, there's so much cool stuff happening now with country pop. Not a lot of the modern stuff, I have hot takes on some modern country music, but I think in general, there are some really cool things that people are bringing their own histories and backgrounds absolutely to the art that they make. In a very cool way. 

CF: Yeah, absolutely. 

SG: One question that I have for you all that's coming to mind is, with this kind of style of music, it does contribute to a lot of stereotypes of the way that people view the South and view this region. I would be really interested to hear your thoughts in how the art that we make can both kind of reinforce stereotypes but also holds the potential to break outside of them, and if you've seen that be done in any really exciting ways.

CF: Well, of course we've seen a lot of both of that, but I feel like that kind of parallels what goes on in the music industry everywhere, right?

So, you know, Marcy and I are a couple. We've toured together for 40 years. We don't stand on stage and say, hey, folks, we're lesbians. Which is one reason why a lot of women's music festivals didn't want to have us, because that's what they wanted people to do. They weren't interested in our interests of the history of women in country music or some of the other things that we were interested in. They wanted people who sang songs with the L word. We wanted to just highlight some great things that women have done in music. 

But in the meantime, just the fact of us playing together and being out there and doing what we want to do sets its example. It opened doors for people. It gave people permission they didn't know they had. We spent years and years and years playing in elementary schools. Even being a couple wasn't relevant there. But what was relevant is that when else is an elementary school kid going to see a show with two women who play fifteen instruments and sing? It makes the girls feel like, I could do this. It makes the boys understand that a girl could do this.

Again, that's not our purpose. It's kind of a bonus to what we're doing. So I think I agree with you, you're right. Those stereotypes are there. Luckily, even some stereotypes change around. But as somebody who's been very involved for five years in trying to pull the extremely slow train of the International Bluegrass Music Association into the world of diversity, equity, inclusion, I'm going to say that we're pulling a real slow train, and it's real heavy. 

And again, that's about a combination of stereotypes on multiple sides. And people misunderstanding and not being willing to sit down, one person to another, and say, let's have a chat about this. It's about people who hold up things from long ago who haven't even looked at the realities. It's about so many things. And as activists and change makers, I think we want to be great role models and great examples and gracious and do the important work and hope that people come along for the ride. 

SG: Do you feel the challenge that when you are making art that kind of exists outside of what we assume to be the popular stereotypical thing, kind of like the white man playing banjo, that you have to become an activist because you exist outside of kind of like the popular mode? We were just talking about this in a class of mine. 

CF: I don't feel that you have to. It just happens to be natural. But our roles as activists fall into lots of different categories. I mean, it's not just music. I've been an activist and an advocate in the music industry for 35 years. I've testified on Capitol Hill on behalf of the music industry. I testified before a panel of judges about streaming royalties before the Copyright Royalty Board. I do a lot of advocacy work with different organizations. I mentor artists at a local performing arts center, which is something I've been doing for 18 years. 

So advocacy isn't always political. It's sometimes political. Do you have to become an advocate and activist? No, but we are activists anyway, and there is a great activist history in old time music. I would say that Ola Belle Reed was an activist. I would say that Alice Gerrard is an activist. I would say that Sarah Ogan Gunning was an activist. Anne Romaine, who I'm sure you're familiar with, who ran those Southern cultural tours with Bernice Johnson Reagan, they did something amazing. They took multiracial groups of musicians out into performances in the South for the purpose of letting everybody see that people are people. 

And so I feel like Marcy and I, naturally that's just something we want to do. We're also activists when it comes to cancer support. We're activists when it comes to health care. We're activists when it comes to a lot of different children's issues. That's just part of our DNA. But I don't feel that being a female playing the banjo forces me to be an activist. I am who I am, and if I can use that banjo as well as Pete Seeger to get people on board, I'm going to do it. 

MM: It's closely related to diplomacy. Part of my personal agenda is that I want to encourage girls to play music, but notes don't have gender, and so I want both girls and boys to think that this doesn't have a gender. You express yourself. You can play however you want to. 

We've done a lot of international touring and cultural diplomacy through the State Department. And in a way, it's a similar feeling as breaking ground or breaking some ice in this country, where you just walk in and you are friendly and happy and you play and you treat everyone as total equals, and they see that there are no lines between us. It's just so important. But it applies to everything. It applies to civil rights and gender, international diplomacy, cultural diplomacy.

One thing that I really appreciate about the South is the community organization that has had to grow up out of necessity around the coal mines and coal mining and the smaller towns, where people know that if they pull together, their town will do better than if they don't. That's not an attitude that everybody shares when you're in bigger cities, when you're in larger areas. So that really has a flavor in making the world better. 

SG: It feels to me, especially in the rural South, there's this sense of community that even if we disagree, we all call this town home, and therefore we can come together. It's still a challenge. But I do think you see art acting as a bridge in that. And it sounds like you both have had a lot of experience using art as a bridge, as have so many of these folk musicians throughout history of bringing these communities together, of saying, this is all our home, and we should all want to make it better equally. 

CF: Well, we've had some good mentors, one of them being one of your North Carolina folks. Si Kahn is one of our very dearest friends, and he taught me a lot of what I know about organizing. I was on the board of his organization, Grassroots Leadership, for seven years. Marcy and I have produced multiple albums of Si’s. We're the closest of friends. We're as close as you can get without being officially related.

First of all, he's a brilliant strategist, a very good organizer, and an extremely generous person. And I would say that more than 50% of what I know about organizing comes from having worked with him. He’s also an amazing songwriter and a North Carolinian. 

SG: It's the place to be. I might be a little biased, but do you feel afraid in this current moment? Because there's so much in North Carolina and in the South right now that feels really at risk and really at stake. How do you navigate your own role as artist and as activist? 

CF: I'm terrified not just for North Carolina, but for the entire United States and the world. I have to say it's hard. It's discouraging. And what I've really come to believe there's that great song: step by step, the longest march will be one, will be one, many stones can form an arch singly none, singly none and by union what we will can be accomplished still… I forget the very last line, but you get the point— the step by step part. 

I think about an album that my friend Sally Rogers made thirty years ago called What Can One Little Person Do? Rather than get up and think I'm going to change the whole damn world, I get up and try and think about, what's the thing that I can do today that's going to make somebody's day better? What am I going to offer in this workshop that I'm giving that is a real take home piece so people can make their lives better?

I think we have to do things in manageable bites and realize that if every single person got up and said, what can I do to help somebody else today? That's a lot of good will and it goes a long way. 

And then as Marcy talked about and as you talked about, we need to be in union about these things. We need to get together with other people. And sadly, we're at a stage in this country where I'm not even going to talk about it very much. We have some past leadership and current leadership who are all about dividing and greed and us against them.

I'm going to be 70 years old in August. I feel like the last time that we had a congress that was actually willing to step towards the middle together for important issues was when Ted Kennedy was alive. And are we going to see it again? I have no clue. I really have no clue. But I don't believe that. In the past, we had people who are as blatant wack jobs as Marjorie Taylor Green and some of these other people who I just feel like… how did they get into office? How did they gain power? 

And that's why when the elections come around, Marcy and I do things that we don't enjoy doing. Phone Banks. No, I don't want to call for three hours, but if Jamie Raskin, somebody I dearly love and think is waking up every day trying to make other people's lives better, calls me and says, will you please make phone calls? I'm going to make phone calls. 

I think the bottom line is, and sometimes for us, make people's day better. I mean, we had an hour and a half long workshop today for an organization called Inspired Child, and we had 30 preschool teachers in Nap Time University, and it was our job. Their kids are in Nap Time and they're on—

SG: I want to come to Nap Time University!

MM: [Laughs]

CF: Their kids are in nap time and we're giving a workshop on easy songs to facilitate their day and particularly trying to empower them to feel like even if they don't feel like they're musicians, they can make music with these kids. Well, that's a good vibe for the day. 

SG: To me, it feels like the most radical thing in a lot of ways right now is to actually believe that people are good, which is where we get the name Good Folk from, and that this country has the capability for change, which feels really hard to admit that I think we can do better. I don't know what that looks like, but I feel like the only way forward for me is to hold on to that belief.

CF: Totally. Totally believe that. And I'm going to twist what you said and say there are good people. There are good people, and good people are going to do good things. And hopefully it'll rub off on some of the people who need a little more help. 

SG: There's good folks everywhere. That's our belief around here. 

CF: Absolutely. 

SG: When you think about the work that you want to play, both with the workshops that you lead and your own role as artists—and I do want to talk about the documentary that you all are working on—what role do you see that being? 

You mentioned earlier that maybe the advocacy isn't your sole purpose. So I'm interested in what you think that purpose is? 

CF: I don't know that advocacy is our sole purpose. It just seems to fit like a glove with everything else we do. What do you think that looks like?

MM: Good question.

CF: Okay, then I'll talk. [Laughs]. I feel like— we work a lot of ten hour days, and a lot of it is behind the scenes organizing. A lot of it for me is mentoring up and coming artists, helping them figure out how do you navigate this, how do you make a living doing this and how do you make a living doing this and support things that you believe in? 

For instance, I'm working right now with a drummer, really fabulous young drummer, and in addition to music, his passion is food insecurity. And I've been working with him to try to figure out how he can use his music somehow to impact issues of food insecurity. What's the first thing we did together? We went to a food bank. We've been volunteering at a food bank and doing what people do. Some truck drops off millions of pounds of groceries, and then fifteen people sort them into bags that other people are going to take home. And you see by virtue of having bent over these bags for three hours and sorted it, what people need, what they don't have. 

We went from that to having conversations about what he could do. And we're still working on that. There are some organizations there's an organization called Music to Life that is specifically helping artists merge their desire to do good with their musical passions. And I'm in the middle of a proposal now hoping that we can add some workshops to Folk Alliance next year on other ways to use your music besides playing in coffee houses and concert halls and all of that. 

I mean, I think that's one of the things for us is we have this crazy, diverse career where we play for kids, we play for seniors, we play in concert halls, we do workshops, we do workshops for musicians, we do workshops for preschool teachers. Right now—and this is related to the documentary—we are on a very interesting…I hate the word journey, but I'm going to have to use it on this one moment of merging our music and our talents with the world of cancer support organizations. I have to tell you that through this documentary, which I'm sure we'll be talking about in a second, every single day, a new contact gets in touch with me. How can we do something together to either raise money, raise awareness, support our organization? And it's pretty amazing. It's pretty fun.

So I feel like that's the job. And when we can mentor other people and how they can use their talent, their artistic talent, and help something else out, that's a purpose right there. 

MM: I think that's the core, really, feeling like you're building something that's bigger than yourself.

CF: There she is. Look at her for a while.

MM: I think they could see me. 

CF: Oh, you could see her, right? Okay, never mind. Don't look at her.

MM: [Laughs]. Well, when I was a little—

SG: I'm happy to look at you both. 

MM: When I was a little kid, just feeling the power of unity in going on marches with my parents, civil rights marches, where everyone would march and sing. And we just did feel larger than ourselves, larger than our particular group, larger than our families. We felt like we were one huge group, and I love that. 

So when we're working with an audience, we really want to feel like we're all on the same page. Even if we have to kind of open the door to a page that we're on to let people see it, they can be on that page or not. But doing work with cancer organizations, like we said before, touring, international touring— they all have a focus of pulling people together and showing our common sides. 

I started out trying to be a songwriter for a while, and it just didn't work out for me. I love to write songs, but the songs I'm most interested are really songs that bring people together. I can do that some. I'm more of an instrumentalist, but Cathy is brilliant at coming up with songs that are immediately singable, understandable, breaking down barriers. It's something I really respect. 

CF: She's a great songwriter. She's not a prolific songwriter. She's a prolific instrumentalist. And when Marcy writes a song, it's a piece of brilliance. And there's several pieces of her brilliance in the documentary.

SG: Well, that's a great transition to talk about that, which, of course, we have to get to. Both my mother and my stepmom are breast cancer survivors, so it's something that is very important to me. I grew up kind of for the first ten years of my life, very much in that world. So I want to thank you first for all the work you're doing, which is amazing, and then for anyone who's not familiar with it, because we've talked a little bit offline about it, could you tell us about the project and the documentary and what that has looked like and what it is?

CF: Sure. Marcy went through a very intense breast cancer treatment that over the course of time, took about five years start to finish. She's a graduate now, and as you can see, spoiler alert, here she is. 

And she, throughout the whole thing, had an enormously good sense of humor and goodwill, and she was quite an amazing patient. I mean, this is somebody who never, ever, ever complained. But throughout it, she was also creating these really interesting pieces of art on her iPad. She'd sit there in the chemo chair and make a piece of art or whatever, or a cartoon. She was posting that stuff on Facebook, and it was really bringing a lot of people to that experience. And she sort of developed a whole following of people who were just connecting through that. 

So many things that she said and did were so brilliant that along the line, maybe her fourth year or something, I said, you know, this is a theater piece. This is a one woman show. We need to write this show, and we need to do something with it.  We also brought into the picture a dear friend of ours, Andy Offut Irwin, who is a phenomenal storyteller and comedian. Andy's one of our very close friends. This was an experience that we shared with him. He came in, we did multiple writing sessions around the seeds that Marcy had started, and then we did a bunch of readings. In fact, Si Kahn hosted the first two readings at his place in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

We did a couple of readings in Lansing, North Carolina, up in Toronto, a few other places. And we got into a fringe theater festival. And by the way, I should mention that this documentary is called All Wigged Out. You can watch the trailer and read about it and find out about the release and all of that. 

So basically, we were set to do Capital Fringe Festival here in Washington. And then the pandemic came along. And in the beginning, nobody thought the pandemic was going to be more than a couple of weeks. But what do you know, it became a couple of years. And someplace along the line I realized, you know, by the time theaters will consider this, after they do their pandemic backlog and the other things they'd promised, we're going to be onto other projects. Let's figure something else out. At which point I said, I think we need to film this. And we can reach more people and et cetera. 

Now, we call it a documentary because it's a true story, but it's not the kind of documentary where you're documenting how people were mistreated at a factory or documenting it's a musical comedy theater piece. When we got together with HMS Productions, who are an Emmy-award winning company in Chicago that have filmed tons of Broadway shows, they did us the good turn of introducing us to a fabulous director, Tracy Walsh. And Marcy and Tracy and I worked for a couple of months on Zoom, us from North Carolina and Tracy from Chicago. We rewrote the whole thing. It stopped being a one woman show. It started being a show with a four piece band, being Marcy, Cathy, Stacey McMichael on bass, fabulous, fabulous bass player, and a woman named Janet Kramer on drums. And it stopped being a one woman show. And I play some of the characters that Marcy previously was playing on her own, but we also play ourselves. We play ourselves as a couple. We play ourselves with me as her advocate.

Marcy is nothing less than brilliant and hilarious, but honest in this piece. And what we've found is—we've been screening at film festivals, we've gotten about 25 awards from film festivals, and we've been doing performances around the country. We were at the North Carolina Museum of Art, and with each performance— the film is 58 minutes long, so we follow an appearance with a Q&A discussion and then some live music. And the Q&A discussion is usually the two of us, a moderator, plus someone from a hospital, a cancer support community, some organization that will also benefit by bringing people together to talk about this. 

MM: There's usually someone there who talks about free services that are available to cancer patients and caregivers, which, as cancer patients and caregivers, we don't hear about. They're at the hospital, they're busy saving your life, and you're trying to figure out how to live your life, and that's not really what they do.So I'm really thrilled with that. And it's a form of activism. 

CF: Yeah. And I mean, by good example, on April 27th here in Maryland, we're doing the first theatrical premiere in Maryland. Now, we could have gone into the DC Film Festival, DC Independent Film Festival, but to do our premiere with Hope Connections for Cancer support, because we're going to get some media for—I mean, we're kind of known in the area, and we've got a couple of Grammys and we've won a lot of awards for the film. We're going to get some media. And our goal with the Premier is to generate $10,000 for Hope Connections for Cancer Support, whose motto is no one should go through cancer alone and who doesn't charge for their services. 

And so at this point, let's see, April 27th is about three weeks away, and we've helped them raise about $5,000 already through sponsorships. But we're hoping to have a couple hundred people at the event. And I believe that even people who buy their $25 tickets are going to drop off a check at the front desk after they see this. And we have a post film panel, Q&A, which is going to include Marcy’s Surgeon, ie Marcy's lifesaver, and we'll play a couple of songs. 

That's one of those ways where we can merge our talents with another organization and everybody wins.

SG: I always describe the best type of art as this kind of act of mutual reciprocity, which is really dependent on community and that it's something that you're doing, but it's bringing all of these people together. And it goes back to what you all were saying earlier, which is that really good art goes beyond yourself. It's kind of this project in purpose—

CF: I love that!

SG: Community as mutual reciprocity? That's like our tagline here for Good Folk, is how are we using art to build that community but doing it in a way that.. Well, my personal belief is that I think you do owe something to— we talk a lot about the places that raise you, but I think in y'all's case, it also is about the people who've raised you and uplifted you and who've brought you to where you are now, whether that's a life saving surgeon or it's someone who's just really inspired you. And then I think, again, it's recognizing those people who did that for you, but also passing it on to other people. 

It's amazing to hear how you all have done that in your work, and it's very inspiring. I also want to say one thing I love is that you keep the joy in this film. So often when you see stories of any kind of traumatic event in life, especially with healthcare events, it is so focused on the hardship and not on the joy in the community that can often be built out of it. And I think you all have done an incredible job keeping that community piece and trying to showcase that in a way that, this is a hard thing to go through, but look at all these new people and organizations, stations it's brought us into contact with, which I think is just amazing. 

CF: Thank you. We didn't want to make a film that was going to bum people out. And in fact, when we screened it at the New Haven, Connecticut Documentary Festival, we did Q&A afterwards and there were a couple of women in the back row and they said, you know, we're cancer survivors and we didn't really know if we wanted to see this film, and we are so glad we came. 

There is a lot of information for caregivers. There's a lot of information for the advocate, there's a lot of information for patients. We're hoping that doctors will watch this. We actually in the fall, the American Nurses Association rented the film during Breast Cancer Awareness Month and made it available to their home membership and did two online Q&A's with us because they felt like especially now—I'm loosely using the term post pandemic because we believe the pandemic is still going on— but especially now, I mean, nurses have to work twice as hard. They lost a lot of nurses during the pandemic to illness, to burnout, to whatever it may have been, and they're working really hard. And this is I have to say that we know some amazing nurses. I mean, almost every nurse we have ever met just comes in with a smile on their face and wants to do something that makes it easier for you to do what you need to be there for. So it was a real honor that the American Nurses Association felt like our film was valuable to their population. 

SG: I could just talk to you both all day about this, but I know I promised you only an hour. So before we get into our final question, which I will tell you about in just a minute, one thing I would love is when you think about the future and what you want that to look like, what does that look like for you all? Both in regards to kind of your work and your art, but also the world that we would like to maybe be in one day. 

MM:I think we need wisdom in the media. I hope that there's still a world where children won't be bombarded with craziness that they don't need to experience. They're being raised to respect each other, and then they see adults really mess that up. But I'm concerned in having faith in other people and faith in our government. I really hope all the crazy stuff that's going on right now just settles down and people put children and other people on their priority list other than just themselves. And I know there are a lot of people who do that, but there are just enough people who don't that really mess things up for the rest of us. 

CF: Yeah, I feel like we are always in the process of thinking about what we want to do and how we want to do it. It's always going to involve music, it's always going to involve activism, and it's always going to involve those opportunities where we can merge them. And right now, I think there's about five different primary paths that we're on in terms of music and activism. The film being one of them, and others will pop up, and we're willing to kind of grow with them, see what we can learn.

We do a lot of teaching between us. We've got twenty different online— maybe fifty different online courses. I misspoke there. Between Peghead Nation and TrueFire and Homespun Tapes. And Marcy has a new app that she created, teaching Ukulele. We're going into the 15th year of our Ukulele festival here in Maryland at the music center at Strathmore. And we're bringing back some of the people who came to the very first one. 

And a uke fest? That's a joy fest. That's a total joy fest. We do a lot of that. And so, you know, I feel like the future continues to be a curated version of more of the same, how’s that?

MM: I hope that everybody has the experience of going to a traditional music festival. And one of the things I love most about it is walking around the parking lot and you see bumper stickers from everywhere and you see bumper stickers from every persuasion, every belief system, and you know that all those cars are empty and all the people are in the center at the jam. It's just so important to remember that the things that connect us are so strong that we can't let the little things get in the way. 

CF: Absolutely. And I feel like shows like this are great. They're great conversations to have that plant seeds. One seed I want to plant for the listeners is one way or another, find ways to support your local musicians. Either come to their shows or their online things. Buy their merch. It helps them. If you don't need a CD and you're listening to their music on Spotify, then send them the cost of the CD. Do what you can to help keep the music alive. It's tough on up and coming younger musicians.

And I would not be doing my job as a folk singer if I didn't do my own shameless self promotion. So I'm just going to say that most of our 52 albums are available at cathymarcy.com. We also have a bandcamp site that has lots of downloads, including the preorder for All Wigged Out, on both the music songs from the show and the DVD itself. And if you go there, you'll find the Amazon link for where you can preorder the DVD. And if anybody's out there working for an organization that wants to screen All Wigged Out and do a Q&A and have one of these great events, then please contact us through the website. 

SG: I just want to back all of that. As a folklorist, I have to also say please go to folk festivals. They're what keep me employed. They're what keep y’all employed. And buy tickets, support your friends, go to their shows. But buying tickets is also so important because so many people— a show might get canceled if enough people don't buy it on time, even if you're planning to go. So I want to back all of that. And I was going to ask where we can find you, so that's perfect. 

We do have one final question, which is what we end all of our podcasts with. And I'm going to leave it up to interpretation for how you would like to take it. But that question is what do you believe in?

CF: Did you hear the silence?

MM: [Laughs].

SG: It stumps everybody. So take a moment. 

CF: I believe in trying. When my time is done— and I am not planning on being buried underground in a casket with a gravestone, but if I had one, here's what I have decided. I would want it to say, you're either trying or you're not trying. And underneath it would say, she tried.

[To Marcy] What do you believe in? 

MM: I believe in the power of music to build connections between family members and other people and groups of people. And I believe that there is goodness in all people. And my hope is that all children feel that they're respected and listened to and heard as they're growing up. And then that— I'm not being very eloquent now, but I do believe in the basic goodness of most of the people in the world. But it's music that can really save us, bring us together. It's music, art and dance. That's how cultures are preserved and that expresses our individual humanity along with our our group identities. 

SG: It's what we study as folklorists, how we use these things we make, say, do and believe to interpret our lives and prove that we existed, which I think is a nice summary of both of your answers in some ways. Cathay, Marcy, thank you so much for being here. It's such a joy and pleasure to talk to you both. Please let me know when you're back in North Carolina. We'd love to try to meet up somewhere and do something. And we've heard now where everyone can find your work, but is there anything else you would like to add or anything upcoming that you would like to promote other than the film, which we will definitely link to? I'm very excited to watch it. 

CF: Well, speaking of North Carolina, our upcoming things in North Carolina include the Ola Belle Reed Songwriting Retreat. I think it's the 21st to 23rd of April in West Jefferson, North Carolina, through the Ashe County Arts Council. And then the first weekend of May, we are helping kick off the very first North Carolina Ukulele Festival through Burke Arts in Watauga County. I'm excited to be part of those kinds of things. 

SG: I definitely want to try to come to the Ukulele festival. I'm with you. I think that just sounds like an amazing expression of joy. 

CF: Well, sign up soon because they might be close to selling out.

SG: I will get those tickets and we will link to all of it. And thank you both so much for being here. It's always a pleasure to talk to everyone on this podcast, but you both especially. To anyone listening, have a good day. Good night. Wherever you are, be good. Stay good.

---