Beverly Ketch - Stella Kola Interview

Tell me about growing up in Goshen, MA. What was your childhood like growing up? When did you first begin to fall in love with music, more specifically singing and writing? Was this something that was relevant around your household growing up?

Growing up in Goshen I came from a family of eight, one of five sisters and a brother. We were so deep in country life, big weedy gardens, old rusty tractors, cows, dogs, cats, oxen and the forest. This was the setting and I was the youngest in a very fun family. Even church was fun because I had dear friends there and I was inclined toward all that. School I hated. I did like kindergarten. I sang all the time and I remember the teacher laughing with my mom about that. To sum up my early years, I narrated my life in sing/song and I often wandered off. I managed to wander miles as a tiny child. I remember my mom getting right down with me and saying with utmost earnestness that she was so afraid when I wandered away and that I was unsafe when I did that. I then made up this song: “The girl went into the forest where she died and her mother cried so much.” Music in Goshen was in a country time warp. When I got older I was the owner of the world's smallest record collection which was Magical Mystery Tour, the red and blue albums, an E.L.O. album, a collection of silly songs, a mixed hit record with “Leader of the Pack”, “All I Have to Do is Dream” and “Crimson and Clover”. I also had two cassettes of Cat Stevens. (My house burned down when I was 8, before that we had a lot more records.) I don't know how much that explains about my musical life, but maybe the important part is that I really studied and memorized the lyric sheets and acclimated to hearing the same thing over and over, which is a big part of writing and performing songs. I appreciate your question about Goshen, because even though I was already 32 when I first joined a band and maybe 42 when I made a record, a lot in my first songs came from that source, my feelings about my parents, family and country life. Even though I'd had an epic amount of experience since then.

You’ve played in a couple of groups prior to your more recent outfits Stella Kola and WBB. Tell me about Jow Jow, Viewer and Bunwinkies that all three featured you and your husband, Shannon. What were some of those experiences like participating in these bands and what are some highlights, or memories you still reflect back on?

Being in the Bunwinkies was utterly perfect for me in terms of creative growth. For all the intervening years between the age of 14 and 32 I was a poet and I didn't sing. I did learn one song, “East Virginia” and I would sing that for people sometimes. Then my husband invited me to be the singer for a band he was forming with new friends. It is a funny story how that happened because we each remember it the opposite of each other. My recollection is that he gave me no choice and insisted I join and his is that I told him I'd leave him if he didn't let me sing! It's a wonderful mix up and somehow all true. He was in 5 bands and I guess I had had it with being left out. I was used to a very dynamic creative life because of the community of poets I was in. The first time I sang I was walking the couple of blocks to the home of these new friends and I thought, when you make up a song you have to sing it many times so I should sing words with messages to myself worth engraving on my mind. I thought of the words, “beauty is many things”, because that line came to me in a vision once and how the spoiled child suffers. I had just thought about how so often when people were suffering they were being like spoiled children, but imagining their agony was so precious! Anyways something like that. There is more to it than that, but that's what I liked about the line. It could start a deep conversation. I guess my dearest dream is that my poetry and lyrics would start deep conversations, but none that I was in on yet! Funny how the world of poets and the world of musicians really function differently in terms of artistic conversation. When I read my poems to my poet friends we would really analyze them, but lyrics seem to be respected with silent honor, which is nice too. The conversation in creating music is actually music and it falters when spoken in words. The Bunwinkies a very deep musical conversation and many of the members of the group are fused together forever by the connection that happened there.

Jow Jow was a very different thing. Sometimes I felt that the jams were powerful psychic battles, other times they were the most enticing invitations. We had a giant hang out every week and people rotated in and out of the music room. If some wonderful sounds were coming out of the room people would gravitate in there. I had a harder time finding my place in Jow Jow, but the song “Remember Mother” I am very proud of my part on that. I curated an art show for Ted Lee and my friend who had died, Joe Ben Plummer in an amazing space overlooking downtown Greenfield. I called the show The Gilded Instant and the Lost Forever because Ted's work is created so fast and Joe Ben was lost to us when we loved him so much. The Supreme Dicks played in the room with Ted's artwork, a lovely raggedy set. I had collected the leftover debris his creative process made and gave bags of it to other artists and asked them to make art out of it. It was really very engaging and people did beautiful things. I also had him paint dresses for people to wear. In another room, which must have been the fancy office of the bank president back when the building was a bank, I hung Joe Ben's art, which is the most magical stuff. All the woodburnings, his charisma and vision just pour out of them while giving life.

Jumping ahead to WBB, how did you guys initially meet? Tell me about writing and recording the band’s debut album and what that experience was like for you. The band would go on to release one more album before the pandemic, but out of that came the incredible MA supergroup, Stella Kola. How did you initially meet everyone and what led to forming this unit? Tell me about writing and recording the group’s 2023 debut on Fountain Flight?

The original W.B.B. set was in that room and I remember I sat on a grand chair that was like a throne right in front of them as they played. I suggested they collaborate so they included me as an honorary member! I'm not on the album at all! So that's the story there. I read one short poem on their second album. All of us are very close friends. Our lives are knitted very closely together by the community we're in. Rob Thomas and I formed Stella Kola and that did come a bit out of the blue because even though Rob and I are part of the same tight knit community, I don't think anyone including ourselves was expecting us to collaborate. Even though at the time we didn't talk much when I did see him I wasn't shy to say how much I loved his bass playing and wanting to convey that it was something I truly loved musically. He was at a wild party at my house and making up ridiculously funny songs and we were all in those wonderful hysterics that feel like total freedom. He is often making everyone laugh. Sort of right in the middle of all that he suggested we make music together. I was floored really because I guess I felt a bit fallen by the wayside musically at that moment of life and I had such perfect confidence in him. It took some time before we got together. I think because it was a step outside our usual circles. When we finally did have a plan I remember thinking I didn't want to arrive empty handed and I wrote the words for “First Fret” to bring to our first get together. Both of us had a lot of time to work on songs and we got together once a week, so the songs emerged very quickly.

The pandemic happened and we started to send the songs to our friends inviting them to collaborate by recording parts and I hope you can imagine how thrilling it was to hear those parts as they were invented! Although I do remember both Rob and I were very protective of the songs too. Well, we had placed them in loving hands! The combination of being totally musical and having endless time on their hands allowed all of our requested collaborators to dazzle us. When the world opened back up and we began playing shows as a duet for a while, which I loved, but over time as we invited our collaborators to sit in when they could, we formed the band. Meanwhile all the time in our lives slipped away! Now we are waiting for a phase of life to come when we will have time again to write. Funny how the nuts and bolts of life are such a factor, because I had a job that allowed me to write songs as I worked and Rob's baby was small and took lots of naps!

As the year comes to an end, what are you most looking forward to? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?

This coming year we will be coming back from a break to play at a Valentines day party at Epsilon Spires, complete with cocktail punch bowls, lacy decorations and dancing after our set! It will be in the beautiful back area which has a grand piano and all my favorite sets have piano!