So I got my pencil,

Then I wrote this song.

The night of the blizzard

The night of the storm.

—Antonia Apodaca, friend and singer of traditional New Mexico music

Snowbird ironies

After the irony last week that Peninsula temperatures have been higher than days down in the “sunny Southwest” — today another indignity. Silver City winter is having its last hurrah. We’ve had snow in big fluffy flakes and hail in stinging little peppercorn-sized bombshells all day. Now, after a short sun window, floofy flakes are whirling around in the wind again and catching in the junipers as I sit down to write about two amazing sisters with remarkable synchronistic lives though miles apart.

Genetic harmony

I happen to know a couple things about sister-singers and what someone has called genetic harmony. My sis Starla and I sat together at the piano when I was one and a half and she was a mere babe in mom’s arms. While I sang “Jesus Loves Me,” Starla plinked away on the white keys. We grew up in a home with music everywhere, always, either dad’s barbershop quartet practicing for nationals, our church choir rehearsing Verdi, or one of our various folk singing groups gathered in the living room.

So I was not surprised, though it took me awhile to figure out, that our very own KMUN music master and Astorian Susie McLerie was the sis of the acclaimed songster and fiddler Jeanie McLerie of Silver City, New Mexico — who with husband of 40-plus years Ken Keppeler, is Bayou Seco (bayouseco.com).They continue to have a magical musical connection that collapses the miles between the Pacific Northwest and the New Mexican Southwest.

Susie

These two talented musicians and community leaders grew up on the East Coast and at their parents vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard (before it became ritzy). Between them they knew an assortment of other top-tier talents including James Taylor, Tom Rush, the Weavers, Maria and Geoff Muldar and others. As Susie says, “Tom Rush and Jamie Taylor were down there at the shore — nobody was famous. We were just playing music.”

She continues, “Music has always been my biggest love.” In her early days in Astoria and environs, Susie played with all our well-known local musicians: Spud Siegel, Kid Siegel, Polly Norris, David Quinton, David Crabtree, Jim Fink and others. “We used to get together every Sunday at Joseph Stevenson’s A-Frame and jam for hours. Then we’d have a potluck. We were called the Green Country Dance Band and we played once a month at the Netel Grange. I played autoharp and mandolin, we didn’t need another guitar.” Her group of musician friends, in different combinations, had gigs at the Ark Restaurant and Bakery, the Jewel Harvest Festival, and at fundraisers for the station. In 1984 it was this group of musicians that founding KMUN director Harriet Baskas called on to host some of the early radio shows.

Susie’s first show was Gospel. “At first I was scared to be in the studio by myself with all these knobs and switches — it was a learning experience. Later I did a Folk Show, and I was always a sub. We were jacks-of-all trades then — for jazz or classics or the kids shows or whatever was needed. I think KMUN and its hosts became the center of the community.” (For more on the pioneer KMUN years, listen to Jan Johnson’s October 2023 interview with Susie, here: tinyurl.com/3wx6jtwt).

Jeanie

Meanwhile, Jeanie was making a name for herself in venues, cabarets, and even busking on street corners all around the world in Paris, London, Germany, Amsterdam, Greece, even China! — and occasionally touching down in Astoria to collaborate with Susie. I caught up with Jeanie and husband Ken in their art-filled home tucked up against the Boston Hill open space in Silver City. We sat at the kitchen table over cups of ginger tea and I heard about Jeanie’s global musical adventures.

For Jeanie it all started at a girls’ camp when a couple older counselors taught her five or six chords on the ukulele. “My birthday was coming up Aug. 25 and I remember writing my parents a note, ‘I want a uke, please not plastic. I want a ‘woodin’ one.’”

“I still remember hearing those strings — my dog has fleas — [this is a little sing-song tune that helps you tune a ukulele] and thinking, ‘This is magic!’ I knew from then on music was what I wanted to do. Later I played a baritone uke and a real guitar, and now the fiddle.”

“When I was 19 in my third year of college I went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne and I became a street singer. Finally, I got a small apartment on rue des Ursulines.” Jeanie teamed up with musician Sandy Darlington and they played folk clubs, and discovered “maybe it was at the American Center in Paris… they had all these archived recordings of American folk tunes. We listened to all of them.” Sandy and Jeanie got married, made a CD together, had a daughter Nelly, and eventually divorced.

Ken and Jeanie found each other in Louisiana. (Ken called a mutual friend, “Is that girl with the frizzy hair down there?” She was!) Together, as Bayou Seco, they have revived the traditional music of the Southwest, with a little Cajun in the mix, and won themselves many awards along the way. (In June 2017, Bayou Seco won the highest artistic honor in New Mexico, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.)

Parallel lives

Jeanie says, “I remember driving to Seattle. We stayed from October to December and I only saw the mountain once!” For health reasons, Jeanie is happiest in dry desert air. But whatever the climate, both Susie and Jeanie love to have their hands in the dirt. The McLeries’ parents were organic gardeners before the term existed. As Jeanie Darlington, Jeanie even wrote a book called “Grow Your Own, An Introduction to Organic Gardening” published by Bookworks in 1971, long before that form of gardening became a thing.

The sisters have so much in common. They each live at the ends of a road: Susie with a spectacular view across the Columbia River to Washington; Jeanie with huge windows opening onto what looks like a desert park. They have both sung with so many others over the years — forming, unforming, and reforming singing groups. And they have both started community radio stations in their chosen homes. Ken and Jeanie have an 8-10 a.m. Saturday folk show called “Roots and Branches” on KURU 89.1 FM, a station founded in December 2013. Ken also hosts a news and interview show a couple days a week. (You can find the station here and listen to archived shows at gmcr.org).

The other similarity in their lives is their commitment to community and right action. Money has never been the defining factor for either Susie, Jeanie, or Ken. They’ve truly followed their passions, and the world has provided a path forward for them. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been lean times, but it means they’ve always used their talents to make the world a better place. Susie has been dedicated to KMUN. Jeanie has spent years teaching young fiddle players. Ken is truly a mister-does-it-all; he plays the accordion, makes violins, can build a house or landscape a yard. (In Germany when they discovered their presumed booking agent had no gigs for them, Ken stepped in and had their calendar filled in a couple days.)

When asked about advice, Jeanie cuts to the chase, “Do what you want to do and figure out how to do it!” Their goals all along have been to share music with others, “We want people, especially kids, to understand how music works. You don’t have to have talent. You learn it like anything else.” And then Ken adds, “Then you give it away.”

Their time on earth has been filled with joy, and their homes reflect that: photos of family and friends singing together line the walls, art work and instruments are everywhere, and everything around them — even outside their windows — is spectacular, quirky, and full of life.