women musicians Archives - Alice Bulmer: music, ecology and living well in challenging times

Strumbling in: music and friendship

Alice Bulmer — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 06:00:09 +0000

On Saturday afternoons, you’ll find me making music with my friends.

Our group is collectively known as the Strumbles.

The group has been going for more than ten years.

Most of us play ukulele and sing, with the addition of various other instruments: double bass, cajon, guitar, fiddle, piano, accordion, kazoo…

It’s much more than a ukulele group. It’s musical play, friendship, a chance to use our voices collaboratively. Just for a start.

This is my version of the Strumbles story.

It started almost accidentally.

Three ukuleles and a bottle of wine

One Friday evening my friends Jane and Paula said, “Let’s play ukulele!”

I said, “Okay, sure!”

We had three ukuleles and a bottle of wine.

We asked my husband Matthew (who’s a multi-skilled musician) to stay away until we’d learned three chords. We didn’t want to feel too self-conscious about being beginners.

Jane had some songs she’d photocopied from a book.

By the time Matthew showed up, an hour later, the bottle was empty and we could play three songs.

We had fun. So the next week we did it again. We hadn’t touched our ukuleles during the week, so we had to learn everything again from scratch.

Matthew joined us, playing upside down left-handed ukulele.

It was still lots of fun. It was way better than just drinking wine on a Friday evening.

After a few weeks, we could remember the chords.

We all started finding more songs to play. And more people came to join us.

After six months there were eight or nine of us regularly meeting on Saturday afternoon to play ukulele. That was about as many as could fit in a living room.

That’s how the Strumbles got started.

This is where it all began. From left to right: Alice Bulmer, Paula Law, Jane Carmichael. The painting in the background is by Anna Fairley, another Strumble member.

The sweetness of jamming

The name showed up after a couple of years.

We were invited to play at an Environment Centre pot-luck. We called ourselves the Apple Strumbles for this food-related occasion. The name stuck, long after the delicious desserts had been consumed

To me, this feels like musical play.

Our sweet spot is jamming together, in someone’s living room, on the back porch or at a party.

It’s not the same as a singalong.

We can try out different strums, vocal harmonies, picking patterns, instrumental breaks.

Sonya sometimes plays accordion or piano. I play fiddle. Matthew sometimes plays guitar, but more often he plays bass and cajon.

Anna is a creatively soulful kazoo player. I love her instrumental break on our Strumbles version of “Silly Love Songs”!

Gradually over time, a song settles into a unique arrangement, which sometimes bears little resemblance to the original recording. This has become known as “strumbling” a song.

One of our earliest performances, at the Waikato Waldorf School fair. From left to right: Tangi, Melissa, Bethwyn, Jane, Suzanne, Anna, Alice, Sonya, Matthew.

Strumbling Downtown

We perform occasionally when we’re invited.

I think our first official gig was at an exhibition of Anna’s paintings.

Since then, we’ve played at birthday parties, weddings, memorials, book launches, record releases, climate change events and more.

In 2020 the Strumbles supported New Zealand band Sneaky Feelings at the release of their last CD. The Waikato Times gave us a great review. (Thanks, Richard Swainson.)

We’re at our best completely acoustic, without having to worry about microphones or amplifiers or sound engineers. Okay, that is my personal opinion. Others may disagree.

A few years ago we got ourself a Myrtle Eartrumpet condenser microphone.

Myrtle looks very cool, but she didn’t solve all our amplification requirements.

We’ve sung on the Waikato riverbank, at the zoo, in Hamilton Gardens, at the public library, school fairs and in downtown Hamilton.

We played “Downtown” for that occasion: “Downtown, Things will be great when you’re downtown, No finer place for sure, downtown…” etc, etc. (If you know Hamilton, this makes sense.)

One of our dreams is to play on Te Huia, the commuter train between Hamilton and Auckland.

If you know who we should talk to, please let me know. We have plenty of train-themed songs.

Strumbles at the Nivara Lounge with Myrtle, our charismatic microphone. From left: Anna, Jane, Bethwyn, Melissa, Suzanne, Tangi, Matthew, Alice, Sonya.

Learning song by song

None of the Strumbles were current ukulele players when the group started. We were all learning, song by song.

Some of us (including me) can play many instruments.

Others had some musical background, e.g. Jane learned guitar at teachers’ college. Melissa started from scratch, never having played an instrument – and discovered in midlife that she has a gift for music.

I came to the Strumbles after spending many decades playing in a wide range of musical groups, from symphony orchestras to rock bands to folk dance combos to a capella singing groups.

This is the musical form that best feeds my musical heart and soul.

Making music with people I love is the most fun thing in the world for me.

We didn’t have a bass player at the beginning. That all changed when I brought home a double bass (also called an upright bass) for Matthew on his birthday.

Having a bass makes a huge difference to our group sound. Everyone can hear the rhythm much better.

Matthew is a skilled guitarist who plays many instruments, including bass guitar. He’d never played an upright bass before. But he had a lot of fun learning. He combines the bass with a cajon box drum for a stronger beat.

In ten years we’ve had a few members come and go, and occasional drop-ins.

We lost one of our beloved ukulele sisters, Suzanne Weiss, to cancer in 2021, during a national Covid lockdown. Other members have lost loved ones. Children have grown up, health challenges have been faced, marriages and partnerships have ended and started and ended…

Musical play: Christmas party with dress-ups, on Suzanne’s trampoline. From front, clockwise: Jane, Bethwyn, Tangi, Suzanne, Anna, Alice, Matthew (on mandolin).

The songs you love

Playing ukulele is the easiest happy high I’ve ever found.

When we make music together, we get in sync with the other musicians. This is called entrainment, and it’s one of the great pleasures of group music making.

It’s exponentially better when it’s music you love.

We take turns bringing music to the group.

Sometimes a new song turns out to be surprisingly easy – three chords and a simple strum.

Sometimes it might be trickier. Like “Peace Train”, by Cat Stevens. That one took us a couple of years, but we got there.

“Life on Mars”, by David Bowie, has so many chords that we won’t be performing it any time soon. But it’s fun to play.

It’s such joy to be able to play a song that lights you up.

I love playing Beatles. “Drive My Car”, “We Can Work It Out”, “Here Comes The Sun” and much more.

I‘ve come to appreciate Abba through playing “Fernando” and “Waterloo” on ukulele.

I love Gillian Welch’s “Miss Ohio”, a deadpan ballad about a badly behaved woman. “She says ‘I wanna do right, but not right now.’ ”

And David Bowie’s “Heroes”.

But the song that’s been giving me a buzz recently is “Closer to Fine”, by the Indigo Girls. (It’s in the Barbie movie.)

At Solscape, near Raglan, for Emily Maia Weiss’s 21st birthday. From left: Matthew, Melissa, Tangi, Suzanne, Alice, Anna, Jane, Bethwyn. Photo credit Stuart Yokozeki.

The sound of my voice

Another blessing I’ve received from the Strumbles has been singing regularly, which has helped me get into better relationship with my voice.

I’ve always loved singing. But it’s been a long journey for me to get used to singing in front of people. There has been so much judgement and shame; critics inside and out.

The ukulele has been an important part of this process for me.

While I’m playing, there are so many other things to think about that my inner critic gets distracted.

For me, the ukulele works better than the guitar for learning to sing. A guitar is louder, so it’s more likely to drown my voice out. And, with a guitar there’s more external expectation that you will be at a particular level of skill.

Whereas the ukulele is so small and not-serious that it slips under the ego radar for me. I can lose my self-consciousness.

This is where the name came from. The Apple Strumbles, playing at the Plastic Free Potluck Tea at Waikato Environment Centre (it's now called Go Eco).

Worlds of songs

There’s no end to the music. Every couple of weeks someone will bring along a great new song or two.

We don’t know what will work until we try it.

Early in the first year, Jane brought along “Teardrops”, by Womack & Womack. On paper it seems like a most unlikely song for a ukulele group, but it’s become one of our favourites.

That’s when I knew we really had something special going on.

We have a tendency towards 1980s music, but that’s not a hard and fast rule.

Organising the music is an art form. Everyone has a different way of doing this. But we’re all currently using paper and folders.

I spend enough of my life on screen; I appreciate a space where I’m offline.

I have five ring binders full of songs. One is for Beatles, one is New Zealand songs, and two are A-Z general folders.

The fifth folder is the current playlist. It includes “Tuesday Afternoon” by the Moody Blues, “The Be All and End All” by Bic Runga (both contributed by Tangi), “Body Below” by Emily Fairlight and “Halo” by Beyonce (from Matthew), “Across the Borderline”, by Ry Cooder, “Blue”, by Lucinda Williams (both from Jane), the Mingulay Boat Song (from Melissa), “If I Fell”, by The Beatles (Sonya), and a beautiful Tongan song, “Katinia” (from Elly).

And that’s just the first few pages.

Coming back home

Last year we had fun and challenge learning songs by New Zealand 1980s music/ comedy group The Front Lawn, to celebrate the release of Matthew’s book Songs From The Front Lawn (Bloomsbury, 2023. You can buy it from most booksellers).

“When they all want to turn you down
Like the sound on their TV set
There’s one place that you’re welcome to
Where everything you say, well, it’s all up to you…”

“When You Come Back Home,” The Front Lawn

A few weeks ago Melissa brought along “Stumblin’ In”, with Suzi Quatro and Chris Norman.

Bullseye. Our theme song!

“Our love is alive

And so we begin

Foolishly laying our hearts on the table

Strumbling in…”

“The life I love is making music with my friends.” – Willie Nelson

In gratitude to all Strumbles, past and present:

Jane Carmichael Matthew Bannister Tangi Habib Anna Fairley Melissa Hackell Elly Latu Sonya Mitchell Alice Bulmer Bethwyn Littler, Paula Law

and Suzanne Weiss RIP

Hamilton Gardens Scarecrow Festival 2020. From left: Jane, Alice, Elly, Melissa (at back), Suzanne, Tangi, Matthew.

Musical foremothers

Alice Bulmer — Sat, 20 Aug 2016 17:41:45 +0000

This is a post celebrating some of the women who have inspired me to make music. Growing up, I didn’t see many women musicians. I spent a lot of time looking for role models and people to play with.

Plenty of men have inspired me as well. But, identifying as a musician is still fairly unusual for a woman. It’s not a feminine thing to play in a band. Mostly the guys play guitars and drums, and a woman stands up front and sings. But I always wanted to play in the band!

There are no female equivalents to the Beatles. Only a handful of well-known bands (notably Fleetwood Mac) have included more than one female member.

This isn’t a list of every cool woman musician I’ve ever enjoyed – just a handful who have been significant musical reference points.

Sue: the singer/ guitarist

Music was an important part of my mother’s life, until she discovered archaeology, married my father, and had three children. Those three factors combined to bring her music making to a standstill.

As a teenager Sue sang solos in the youth choir at the local Pasadena Presbyterian Church. As a graduate student at the University of Hawaii she learned to play guitar and ukulele.

Above: Sue with her guitar

Sue loved the blues and mid-century American folk music: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, Hedy West, Judy Collins. She continued making music when she came to New Zealand in 1957, joining the local folk club, singing on radio broadcasts and around the evening campfire on archaeological digs. She also wrote songs. We have a couple recorded for posterity on an old LP.

Sue taught me to play ukulele when I was aged six, and soon after that she gave up making music herself. I was disappointed and frustrated, but maybe she felt she’d handed on the torch.

Aunt Mary: the violinist

Sue’s older sister Mary is the reason I became a fiddler. I never saw Aunt Mary play violin, but she must have been a pretty good musician, probably much better than me in classical music terms. She led youth orchestras when she was in high school.

Mary gave up playing the violin in her twenties, when she went to medical school. She said to me that she was dissatisfied with the standard of playing in amateur orchestras. (I had that problem myself.)

Aunt Mary in her early 20s: I don’t have any photos of her playing violin, but she must have been pretty good at it.

Aunt Mary came to visit us in Papua New Guinea in 1969, and she brought her old half-sized violin with her. Soon after that I started having violin lessons. I’d never seen anyone playing the violin, and I don’t remember having any great interest in it, but I wouldn’t turn down a musical opportunity.

At the age of eight I was already too tall for Aunt Mary’s tiny violin. When we went back to Auckland for Christmas my parents paid $100 for a full-sized violin from a violin shop in Karangahape Road. I know in retrospect that they were ripped off – it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t a good quality instrument. My parents didn’t know anything about violins.

The half-sized violin was passed on to a neighbour’s son. Shortly after that, his father backed over it in his Landrover. I think my dad probably wanted to do this too. He had very little tolerance for a beginner violinist.

I owe Aunt Mary another huge piece of musical gratitude and appreciation. In 1985, when I went travelling across the United States, I left my violin behind in New Zealand. I took a summer job in a hotel in Glacier National Park in the mountains of Montana, where music-making opportunities abounded.

Aunt Mary generously lent me her violin, a rather good 20th century American-made instrument. I spent the season playing bluegrass in a bar band, and discovered that I had a knack for playing fiddle, after being a misfit for so many years in the classical world.

Jacqueline du Pre

When I was learning classical violin, cellist Jacqueline du Pre was the only woman musician on record covers. She was my inspiration.

Jacqueline du Pre breathed life into classical music performance.

Jacqueline was beautiful and passionate and a terrific musician. I spent many hours listening to her fabulous playing on the Schubert Piano Trios – a 1960s Dream Team of du Pre, violinist Pinchas Zuckerman, and on piano Daniel Barenboim, who was Jacqueline’s husband. Then I learned that she’d succumbed to multiple sclerosis.

As a role model Jacqueline du Pre had the same tragic aura as Janis Joplin or Amy Winehouse. Behind the glorious music was a runaway train about to go off the rails.

Miriam Makeba

I know Miriam Makeba from a couple of my mother’s old LPs. I used to sit and listen, and wonder how to start learning to play the amazing polyrhythms of “Pata Pata”.

Miriam Makeba in concert with Dizzy Gillespie. Photo by Roland Godefroy. CC BY SA 3.0

Miriam is one of the people who connected up South African township music with the western music world. When WOMAD arrived in New Zealand I discovered where she was coming from.

Loretta Lynn

Loretta is definitely not one of life’s tragic heroines. The country music icon with the image of a powerful survivor, and a down-home attitude. An inspiration to any girl with a guitar, who wants to write songs. (I’m not sure about those frocks though!)

Joni Mitchell

Out on her own, one of a kind.

Joni Mitchell in 1974. Photograph by Asylum Records (Billboard page 2) Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I heard Joni play in Wellington in 1983. She’s so distinctive that I find it’s almost impossible to cover her songs (with the notable exception of “Big Yellow Taxi”). And another musician with something of a tragic backstory.

OLDER SISTERS

Chrissie Hynde

I’d like to think Chrissie is a role model, but actually I’m too much in awe of her.

In her autobiography Reckless: My life as a Pretender (Penguin Random House, 2015), she describes how she went to incredible lengths to be one of the band, and not just the soloist with a backing band.

Chrissie Hynde in 2013. Photo by Harmony Gerber. CC BY-SA 2.0

Cath Newhook

Cath was a few years ahead of me when I was a teenage musician in Auckland. She was the “properly trained” violinist who was always doing interesting things, at a time when studying classical music was supposed to be all or nothing.

Cath played in an early music consort called Digorie. And then she played fiddle in a folk/country outfit called Gentle Annie. I didn’t know anyone else who was playing fiddle in New Zealand in the late 1970s.

Cath Newhook (at right) in the 1980s, with New Zealand country-folk band Gentle Annie. Photo used with Cath’s permission.

Much later I worked for Cath at her violin workshop, the Stringed Instrument Company. These days she’s on yet another interesting tack, as the author of lively young adult novels set in ancient Greece – Murder At Mykenai was her first.

Nanci Griffith

Smart, clever, exquisitely individual country/folk singer – a forerunner of Americana. I first heard Nanci’s music in 1985 when I was in the USA. Once in a Very Blue Moon had just been released. Here’s a link to the title track.

Nanci Griffith. NC-SA

Music writer Stuart Henderson says: “Griffith has always been a little too country for many fans of the former and a little too folky for many fans of the latter (and sometimes a little too pop for everyone).” Just how I like it. Here’s a link to his full article.

Nanci’s also in the territory where “art and politics go hand in hand”. Here’s a punchy live version of “Outbound Plane“.

The Topp Twins

I remember when Lynda and Jools Topp were beautiful young activists/folksingers/ comedians.

I first encountered them in the pages of Broadsheet, a New Zealand feminist magazine in the 1970s. My mother had a subscription. The editor was Sandra Coney, who later spent many years on the Auckland Regional Council.

The Topp Twins in all their glory at the Nambassa Festival in 1981. Yodelling lesbian twins from New Zealand…!! Photo Nambassa Trust and Peter Terry. CC-BY-2.5http://www.nambassa.com

Jools and Lynda have always been funny and dynamic and brave and lively and inspiring and hand-on-heart political. Off-centre and heartland, both at the same time. They’ve had shows on prime-time television and they’ve been on the cover of the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly.

They remind me how amazing New Zealand can be.

SISTERS

Amanda Palmer

A North Star for anyone who wants to make a difference in the world while making music and having fun – all three at once.

Amanda Palmer. Photo by Joi. CC BY-SA 2.0

Kathryn Tyrie

I’ve never met Kat in person, but I know her from her powerful, propulsive bass playing on the early recordings of Sneaky Feelings (who by the way, are by far the best band ever to release records on NZ indie label Flying Nun).

Sadly, Kat’s energetic playing took a toll. She got RSI and ended up playing the bass parts on a keyboard, before leaving the band.

Kat, second from right, with the boys in the band. I don’t know who took the photo.

Paula Law

An intuitive, superbly talented musician. Paula and I started making music while our sons were playing with diggers in the sandpit. We played together in a band (The Weather), on and off for more than a decade. Great times!

Here’s a link to our recording of Aroha Ave. Nothing much happens in the video, but that’s kind of the point of the song. Aroha Avenue is a road in Sandringham, near where we used to live.

The Weather, circa 2000. From left to right: Mike Beck (drums), Paula Law (vocals, flute), me (bass guitar), Matthew Bannister (vocals, guitar and main songwriter). Photo by Roger Mortimer

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