North Country Music Project documenting a legacy, beginning with rock

Apr. 20—WATERTOWN — The producer of the North Country Music Project's July 31 concert is gratified that the event at the Clayton Opera House sold out within days after it was announced last year.

"This project has really touched people," Carol B. Hills said. "They are very emotional about it. People are flying their families in."

Hills and fellow volunteers have larger plans for the project, and it's about much more than one sold-out concert, dubbed "Rockin' the North Country: The Bands, The Music, Our Story."

"The idea is to preserve, document and make available, through a multimedia archive, the music of Northern New York," Hills, a Watertown native who lives in Boston, said over coffee at CaffeineHolic in the Paddock Arcade. "We're starting with rock 'n' roll."

The North Country Music Project is the brainchild of Watertown expats Tom Walker Jr. and Larry Gordon. The concert, modeled after Kennedy Center Honors, is the kickoff to an oral history project, which is well underway. Volunteers have recorded more than 60 interviews with north country musicians from the era when rock was new, motivating scores of young people. Many of those youngsters went on to very successful musical careers.

A multimedia archive being produced with Watertown's Flower Memorial Library will document, preserve and make available the music of the north country, starting with rock 'n' roll. And rock had quite the start in the city and surrounding areas, seeding a musical legacy that continues to resonate today.

Those involved in the North Country Music Project are local natives who initially came together around the oral history project. The focus: the region's music scene in the 1960s and 1970s, years that produced some extraordinary musicians whose impact reverberated far beyond the boundaries of Northern New York.

In the early 1960s in the north country, local musicians like brothers "Tiny" and "Big Man" Trahan and Ray John already had a following. But after the 1964 appearance of the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show," rock 'n' roll exploded across the country. Watertown was awash in the music.

Local bands like Ed Wool and the Nomads and the South Shore Road Band packed high school dances, bars and clubs across the region and eventually all over the Northeast. They in turn influenced other Northern New York bands including Dancing Bare, Moondance, Contraband, Crystal, Highlife and the John Michael Band.

This explosion of talent meant that in the 1960s and '70s, young people in the north country could listen and dance to a great live band any night of the week.

"For me, it's been really instructive," said Hills, a Watertown native who was part of the original team that created and launched "The World," public radio's longest-running daily global news program, in 1996. She has reported from Cuba, Nigeria and Vietnam and was a Knight Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001-2002. She has a master's degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Medford, Massachusetts.

"I'm not a musician," Hills, daughter of the late William P. and Marion Jones Hills, said. "I was a fan. But what I've been so struck with by working on this project is how much the music means to people, not only in a nostalgic way, but in the present."

More than music

"It was a period in which the music gave us opportunity, things to do and really sort of shaped our youth culture," Walker said.

Walker attended Watertown High School but left to attend a private school for his last two years, graduating in 1975. He is a former faculty and academic director at Goucher College, Baltimore, and is semi-retired from the college. He will soon be teaching a course on environmental justice at the institution.

Walker and Gordon, who lives in San Francisco, initiators of the NCMP, were classmates at Watertown.

"We rediscovered our friendship a couple of years ago during the pandemic and came up with a couple of ideas of things we'd like to do in Watertown," Walker said. "Much of it was a common experience for us."

The two are also members of the five-member group, the Watertown Islands Project, which is dedicated to seeing that Sewall's Island and other properties along the Black River are redeveloped.

"Those are two projects that have preoccupied us for the last three years," said Walker, son of longtime city mayor T. Urling "Tom" Walker (1925-2023). "The oral history project started as a way to think about how we might capture, through interviews, the experiences of musicians, fans and participants in some way. So we started that and partnered with Flower Memorial Library as a permanent host for what will be a large digital collection."

On the evening of Monday, July 29, two days before the concert, Walker will lead a panel discussion at the library. The names of the panelists are being finalized.

"This is an opportunity to introduce the library as our partner and to focus more on the oral history project, Walker said. "It's about some of the individuals. But it's also about the community, the time period and it's also about the music scene and what we want to do going forward in terms of being able, as a nonprofit, to support musicians in doing what they're doing."

Those related tasks, Walker said, could include funding the remastering of old tapes and hosting workshops. "Or to do more oral histories covering different periods."

"We're treating this project as a cultural legacy that continues to the present," Hills said. "We're not just looking back, but we're looking forward, trying to promote and celebrate this legacy."

Hills said that organizers are gathering old recording tapes from many of the project's honorees, with a plan to have them restored and transferred to a digital source.

She said that a couple of weeks ago, she received a box of one-quarter-inch, reel-to-reel audio tapes from Ed Wool, who now lives in the Albany area.

Wool is a 1962 graduate of WHS. Ed Wool and the Nomads got their start in 1963 and soon developed a fan base that followed them across the region. The group made several records with RCA and then went on to record with other labels under other names — the Sure Cure and later the Pineapple Heard.

In 2006, the band's 1969 album "Wool," originally recorded on the ABC Records label with some production help from Neil Diamond, had a resurgence in popularity. A record label in England, Delay 68, remastered and rereleased the album.

There were five incarnations of Wool. On the 1969 album were Tom Haskell on rhythm guitar and vocals, Eddie Barrella on bass guitar, Peter Lulis on drums, Ed's sister, Claudia Wool, on vocals and Ed on guitars and vocals.

Hills said she has been in contact with a music producer and preservationist, Noel Webster, who was associated with Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama.

"He has a special way to deal with quarter-inch tapes so they won't dissolve when you play them," Hills said. "He's going to help restore and transfer these, which will be a permanent part of our archive."

Hills said that the North Country Music Project is finalizing its status as a nonprofit.

In the meantime, it has developed a partnership with the Northern New York Community Foundation, where people can make donations (wdt.me/NCMPFund) to the North Country Music Project Fund.

Flower Memorial Library will serve as the permanent home for the project's related archive of digital recordings accompanied by text transcripts and podcasts, which will all be available online.

"We are thrilled to be home to this local oral history project," said Suzie Renzi-Falge, the library's executive director. "We've never had the history of music in the north country documented in any way. I have no doubt this project will have a lasting impact on the community."

Sponsors, willing to donate $2,500 and $5,000, are also sought for the July 31 concert.

"We sold out very quickly, which delighted us," Hills said. "But the cost of this production exceeds what we'll make in ticket sales."

Concert proceeds will also support the archive project.

"The direct costs include the Clayton Opera House rental, paying the musicians, the music director, the technical director, stage personnel, travel expenses, a rented AV system and photographer," Hills said. "Other costs include hiring videographers and to shoot original interviews with our honorees, film the July 31 event, transferring and restoring archival sound/music/video of our North Country rock 'n' roll musicians and recording original audio interviews. All of these elements will become part of the permanent archive."

Walker said it's been "an exciting and satisfying time" to be involved in the NCMP and to "valorize" a part of youth culture and expression.

"I think we're in a better place to appreciate it now," he said. "We're trying to recover, through the oral histories, what it was like back then — what people were trying to say, trying to do and the challenges that they faced."

The concert

Hills has brought on Watertown native and Grammy award-winning producer and bass player Mark Prentice as music director of the "Rockin' the North Country: The Bands, The Music, Our Story" concert.

Prentice is a 1971 graduate of Watertown High School and lives in Nashville. He won a Grammy for producing the 1997 Warner Bros. release, "I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray" by the Fairfield Four, featuring guest performances by Elvis Costello and Garrison Keillor.

In 2012-13, Prentice was music director and bass player for "The Rascals: Once Upon a Dream" tour. Produced and directed by Steven Van Zandt, the show was a "bioconcert," a hybrid of a rock concert and a Broadway show. He has performed with such greats as Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty, Vince Gill and Johnny Cash.

"It's thrilling to me that there's so much interest in this," Prentice said of the concert. "I think that they have a brilliant concept. I don't think anyone has seen or done anything like this up there and it's going to be quite a standout event."

Prentice, who will also join the panel at the library on July 29, was deeply involved in the early rock 'n' roll days of the north country. In February of 1967, he saw the Young Rascals at Watertown High School, which changed his life. He was 13 at the time and was in a band.

"I knew four chords or something," he said. "After seeing the Rascals that night, and whatever that was, which I couldn't put into words as a 13-year-old kid, it was 'I want that!'"

Prentice said a north country music legend who influenced him and many others and who will be honored posthumously at the concert is Raymond A. John (professionally Ray John), who died in 2018 at the age of 77.

John started his first band in 1957 and a year later began playing in area bars with his Rockin' Angels band. He told the Times in 2013 that it was the first rock 'n' roll band in the north country. He was in other bands before forming the Ray John Band, which performed for decades at north country venues. He played the guitar, keyboard and sang.

"He brought it right to the very end," Prentice said. "He was the big inspiration for the Bouchard brothers and I've talked to them moving toward the concert event. He was their Rascals — the reason they got bit by the bug."

Albert T. and Joseph J. Bouchard were members of the rock band Blue Oyster Cult. Albert, who co-founded the band, played drums and Joseph played guitar for it. Both men are still involved in music but also found careers in education. Albert graduated from Thousand Islands Central in 1965 and Joseph graduated from the school in 1966.

"The Bouchard brothers are going to allow us to honor them and they're going to participate in honoring Ray John," Prentice said.

The "house band" for the concert will be Prentice on bass; Alex Vangellow, keyboards; Bruce Fowler, lead guitar and Sean Paddock, drums. There will also be featured north country musicians playing throughout the evening on various songs.

The emcee for "Rockin' the North Country: The Bands, The Music, Our Story" will be Steve Behm, former DJ, program director and music director at WOTT "Fun Radio" in Watertown from 1969 to 1977.

He played a key role in promoting rock music in the north country and was also a huge help to local bands, providing them with advance copies of the latest hits so they could be ready to play them at their next gig.

"Music is the star of the evening, but Steve will be the emcee who knows all these people and will interact with the audience," Hills said.

The evening's honors will include an audio/video element. A film crew will record the event.

"The level of this concert will be very high — production-wise and everything else," Prentice said. "I've never met Carol in person, but I want an autographed 8-by-10 of her. She's carrying this thing on her shoulders pretty well. I feel great about the people involved in it. I'm excited to be part of it. I haven't been up there in two or three years. When I go back there still, the degree to which they support live music isn't like that in the rest of the country. There's a legacy up there, for sure. I see some of these younger cats being mentored and brought along by the guys who are the next click up, as we were."

Hills said the legacy of top-quality musicianship continues today. "The level, the quality here, in even just an average bar is better than most other places in the country," she said. "Part of our ongoing project is to kind of figure out why."

"The guys I know who went on to bigger things all share the sentiment: that we cut our teeth there and the bar was very high," Prentice said.

Tuning in theories

Hills has a few theories as to why the north country was such a hotbed for rock 'n' roll talent. They range from the influence of SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music, the strength of music education in our schools, to the former 18-year-old legal drinking age, which brought youth out to bars to see bands.

In 1982, due to a high number of drunk-driving fatalities, New York raised its drinking age from 18 to 19. In 1984, Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act that required states to increase their drinking age to 21, or risk losing 10% of federal highway aid.

Hills said there were also several music stores in Watertown in the early rock era.

"Martuzas was the first kind of rock 'n' roll band store," Hills said. "It was like a living room for aspiring musicians. People helped you and there was a real collegial atmosphere. People helped each other out."

"It was a happy accident that Chuck Martuzas and I started that store," Prentice said. "I think I was 17 or something. When I say, 'We started it?' — We both worked for nothing. It was a very social thing."

He said they had ties with a downstate music dealer who was able to bring them top-quality equipment to get the store off the ground.

"In this world, every piece of gear is available to you online or through a catalog," Prentice said. "But for us, that was a social thing and the gear, the equipment that you made your living with sort of took on these epic proportions. Like nobody in Watertown had sold Marshall amps. The music was what brought everybody together. It was a shared experience. It wasn't just a weekend thing."

As the North Country Music Project progresses, Hills is looking forward to documenting similar stories and experiences related to other genres of music, from country to classical and to the present.

"We're trying to treat this as something that's a cultural asset that we want Northern New York to feel proud of and to promote something that not every region has," Hills said. "It's a lot of fun. I'm from here and come here in the summers. It's an honor to be able to contribute to the history of Northern New York. It's something really valuable that will live and breathe."

The details — WHAT: The North Country Music Project, which is documenting and archiving the music of Northern New York, starting with rock 'n' roll. The Project kicks off July 31 with a concert at the Clayton Opera House. Project officials are working with Flower Memorial Library, where the archive will be based and available online. Interviews will be supplemented and illustrated with a collection of representative physical artifacts from the era or early rock 'n'roll in the north country, such as photographs, scrapbooks, videos, analog recordings, artwork/posters, sheet music and writing. The archive will expand to other musical formats. —PANEL: On the evening of July 29 at Flower Memorial Library in Watertown, a panel will discuss the project. The public is invited. — SPONSORSHIPS: Organizers are seeking $2,500 and $5,000 sponsors to help pay for the production costs related to the July 31 Rockin' the North Country event, which will also feed the larger, enduring multi-media archive project. Sponsor benefits of 5K: Four tickets; name mentioned by emcee (Steve Behm) at the event; name permanently displayed on the North Country Music Project's multimedia archive produced with the Flower Memorial Library; name in all promotional material (print, digital, broadcast, social media) for July 31 event; meet-and-greet with honorees and musicians before the show; T-shirt; video of event. Sponsor benefits of 2.5K: Two tickets with the benefits of above. — TO DONATE: The Project is working on nonprofit status. In the meantime, it has developed a partnership with the Northern New York Community Foundation, where people can make donations (wdt.me/NCMPFund) to it. It welcomes donations of any size. — MORE INFO: Facebook/North Country Music Project