Peter and Keith first met in the spring of 1988 as brand new employees of Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc. in Waterbury, Vermont. We found that we had some similarities (some might call them quirks or personality defects) as well as a love of music. We've been playing music together off and on since then, mostly in living rooms and more recently performing in public. We love the music and neither of us wants to be limited to any one specific style. That's why you'll find us playing blues, folk, jazz, country, even an Irish waltz hidden in the set list.
Peter Lind, Harmonica Player
(alias Q, Peetie Wheatstraw and Spider Roulette)
Some people have a seminal moment which so significantly influenced them that they started playing music as a result of that first experience. That never happened to me, but my father was a big whistler. Most of his songs were kind of schmaltzy, but I found myself whistling them anyway. When I was about 11 years old, I tried cutting a rough reed out of a drinking straw and when it made noise, I considered a career as a straw player. Fortunately there is no music written for the straw. I have to say that I have no idea why I wanted to play harmonica. It seemed cool at the time, and I was 15 when I bought my first one. Like most beginners I floundered for a while listening to Bob Dylan and Neil Young, neither of whom are exactly virtuosos on the instrument. Eventually I found some harp players like Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson that influenced my style.
Learning any instrument has its challenges. Unlike most other instruments it is almost impossible to see what you are doing on the harmonica, unless you have eyes on the inside of your mouth! From the beginning there have always been missing notes that are not quite resolved by bending notes and tongue blocking. Hoping it would be easier I studied chromatic harmonica with Mike Turk because I wanted to sound like Toots Thielemans. I returned to the diatonic harmonica for its expressive qualities only to run back into those places in songs that seemed to have no notes on the harmonica. In my continuing quest to find those missing notes on the harmonica and to expand my ability to be fluid and spontaneous, I am now studying music theory and over blow techniques with Jason Curran.
While playing a lot of harmonica over the years, there have been opportunities to sit in with some great musicians like Big Joe Burrell, Sandra Wright and Carl Dimow. Most recently I have played with the likes of Red Hot Juba, Dave Keller and the band Borealis Blues. Harp players that I am listening to today are Howard Levy, Big Walter Horton and Wade Shuman. May there always be new places to explore in music.
Carrie Cook, Upright Bass, Washtub Bass, Kazoo and Vocals
(alias Cookie, Flossie & Schlep)
Well, I was luckily born into a quirky musical and aesthetic family. My dad was a jazz musician with an incredible Duke Ellington touch on piano and also played a bunch of other instruments—among them, bass, bassoon and baritone sax, which he played for a while in Woody Herman’s orchestra. My mom, a talented pianist who also played clarinet, made me take piano lessons at a very young age but I liked hanging out with my three Swedish uncles better on the front porch of my grandparents farm in Indiana. One played guitar, another, banjo and the last, dobro. Occasionally my grandpa, an accomplished organist, would get down the ‘ol Stainer fiddle from the shelf (passed down from at least 2 generations from the old country) to play a couple of tunes. I cut my teeth on jazz… I mean that for real. As a baby I can remember listening to Fats Waller and I can still hear him rattling around in the oldest back corridors of my brain cells. BUT, I gotta say, my uncles had a huge influence on me with their old time country and bluegrass tunes.
Ended up moving to Croton-on-Hudson, New York with my family when I was about 10. My dad was a New Yorker and he wanted to go back East… so I went from the surreal land of flat cornfields for as far as the eye could see to the magic of rolling hills and mountains covered in deep green forests, laced with jewel-like rivers and lakes… in other words—I was enchanted by it all. I could even swing on the giant concord grape vines in the woods—just like in the old Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller, which were filmed on the Croton River. It was here that I met new breed of wild and crazy friends… and a special select few formed the:"New & Improved Lassitudinal Slump Jug Band & Quartet”. I figured out how to build my first wash tub bass from a galvanized steel tub, broom handle and clothesline. I played banjo too sometimes and I always played kazoo. It was the 60’s… and we were heavily influenced with the music of the times, especially Jim Kweskin, Maria Muldaur and The Holy Modal Rounders. At this same time I was also playing upright bass in the school orchestra, jazz dance band and flute in the marching band. I even made it to the New York All State Orchestra playing classical bass.
Anyway, I was having fun. I especially loved playing the bluesy, jazzy stuff…
But then I got myself into a job situation and where I couldn’t play any music. That lasted for 30 years. Can you believe? Then to make a very long story short, I ended up here in Cambridge, Vermont with my husband of 34 years, (a native from Johnson and a bass player as well) and found that I now had the time again to play! I began with wash tub (as they're easy to build) with a couple of local bands and still play with the “Old Dirty String Band” when ever I can. Then I got a beautiful new ½ size upright bass, lovingly named Grizelda, that fits in my little Suzuki Samurai. After that, opportunities arose for bass playing… among them “Slick Martha’s Hot Club” a gypsy jazz band featuring the music of Django Reinhardt. I also found myself playing in a few country and front porch music bands… and it’s all been a blast.
THEN… last Halloween, I happened to be at an open mike at the Bee’s Knees in Morrisville, VT. As chance w
ould have it, there were two suspicious guys there dressed as Used Car Salesman, shuckin’ and jivein’… and they played AWESOME blues. Who were these masked bandits? They called themselves SPIDER ROULETTE. Whoa. And who knows how the future would have turned out if I hadn’t been wearing an electric blue wig that night while I played a few numbers on bass with my friend Jay? One of the Spiders, named Keith, put some big black glasses with a moustache attached on my nose and we butted our heads together for a camera click! This concluded in an iconic photograph where Keith and I truly look related! The other Spider, Peter, who played incredible mouth harp couldn’t have been more natty in his B&W checkered sports coat. Well, you could say I was smitten… or better yet, bitten by the Spider and the poison has cast a spell over me. They soon wrapped their web around me and adopted me as their very own.
It’s funny how one's life takes shape as one goes along… influenced by people and circumstances.
Who knows what will happen next?
Keith Williams, Guitar and Vocals
(alias PapaGreyBeard)
I’ve been told that when I was two years old, while in the car with my parents, I would say to my mother “you sing Old MacDonald”, to my father “you sing ABC Horsey” and then “I sing This Old Man”. We would ride the roads of Vermont to the cacophony of three different songs being sung at the same time. Apparently it didn’t bother my musical ear in the least.
I started playing the Alto Saxophone in about fourth grade. I played Alto and Tenor Sax and Clarinet in school marching and jazz bands into high school. Sometime in 1966 I got my first guitar. I have no memory of where it came from or how I got it, but I can remember teaching myself to play the chords. My sister Lynn and I would harmonize on the songs of the 60s – like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Cruel War is Raging”. I continued to play and teach myself the guitar and eventually picked up an old Kay electric bass. I began my performing career playing bass in the local rock bands of the time. I liked the bass because I could hide in the shadows towards the back of the band and not be the center of attention.
The first strong musical influences for me were the rock bands of the late ‘60s…The Rolling Stones, Cream, The Allman Brothers Band and others. When listening to and learning their music I began to research the origins of songs like “Crossroads”, “Love in Vain” and “Statesboro Blues”. I found myself learning about and listening to the likes of Robert Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Willie Johnson, Rev. Robert Wilkins, Muddy Waters, Elmore James and others. That was the beginning of my deep love of the blues.
After graduating from high school, getting married and having kids my guitar found a comfortable corner and I didn’t play a lot for about 20 years. Occasionally I would pick it up and play with a friend but my skill level remained about the same as it was when I left high school. In the early 1990s I purchased my first resonator guitar and began to learn the slide guitar of the delta blues. I’ve been through lots of resonators since then – some say that my buying and selling of guitars is a sickness – but I have learned a lot. There’s still so much more to learn and I plan on learning all I can.
Musically, my first love is still the Delta Blues followed closely by Chicago Blues and other electric blues styles. I also really enjoy Jazz, Dixieland Jazz, Bluegrass, Folk and many, many other styles of music. I decided a number of years ago that since I can’t learn to play all of those styles well, I would concentrate on the Blues and only play around with other styles. I wish I had the raw talent to learn it all but I’ll just have to be content with what I have and keep improving little by little.
