The Stray Birds Scary Good by Richard Cuccaro
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JUNE 2013 Volume 13 Issue 1 LISTINGS GUIDE with Feature Articles IN NEW YORK CIT Y The Stray Birds Scary Good by Richard Cuccaro Photo: Monica de Vitry. It’s fun to take a flight of fancy and imagine Oliver Craven, Maya I watched my young friend rock back and forth in ecstasy, a wide grin de Vitry and Charles Muench of The Stray Birds as young wizards, spreading over his face as their music coursed through him. Three straight out of Hogwarts, armed with wooden instruments instead wizards wielding two fiddles and an upright bass cast a spell that day. of magic wands. There’s certainly an aura of something magical that I know, because I felt it. happens when they play and sing in harmony. Their stories The truth is just as much fun. All three are classically trained and have Oliver, Maya and Charles grew up within 10 miles of each other in a long and deep connection with American old-time and bluegrass Lancaster County, Pa. However, it took a few years into their adult music. lives before all three discovered each other as professionals. Maya and Before we delve into the actual source of their wizardry, I’ll present Charles had grown up in the same town, Landisville, and played in the a case in point regarding that magical aura. Not long ago I took a same middle and high school orchestras. young co-worker to lunch who happens to be one of those different Charles Muench, bass | As Charles described it in another interview: people often termed developmentally disabled. While noticeably “I started playing music because I saw my dad playing the bass, both rigid in his verbal expression, he is nonetheless, heavily steeped in upright and electric. I was also tall for the fourth grade and went to a an appreciation of classical music. After we ate, I shared with him school with an excellent string music program. There were something a video I had made of the three playing their instrumental medley, like 8 violins, 4 violas, 3 celli, and me on the upright bass playing “Give That Wildman a Knife/ Bellows Falls/ Waitin’ on a Hannah,” ‘classical music’ in the large group room at Landisville Intermediate using a laptop and a headphone splitter for privacy. us. We were at some kind of gathering where later appreciated playing violin in the school everyone had instruments. Oliver is a great orchestra and fiddle in the family band. player and he also writes great songs. We During high school, Oliver picked up the played together on some bluegrass standards, guitar and mandolin and started writing his but when he played me some of his own own songs. After high school, he went to music, that’s when I knew I really wanted to Temple University for three years. He had collaborate with him.” little academic ambition and left, heading River Wheel came about through a for Nashville. Oliver was there for one week continuation of the first meeting. Charles said, when he met Adrienne Young and joined her “We decided to make a record with my friend band. He remained with her band as a backup Nick DiSebastian. Nick was going to Berklee fiddler for two and a half years, then got tired in Boston and had met a great banjo player of playing other people’s compositions and named Kyle Tuttle. Nick, Oliver, Kyle and I left. Back in Pennsylvania, he reconnected recorded The Sound We Made in early 2010. with Joe Hillman and met Charles. As he While they were recording that album, Maya explained it, when he worked with the deVitry showed up to connect with her old River Wheel band project/album, the other acquaintance Charles. She met Oliver and musicians were college students while he Photo: Richard Cuccaro another musical connection was made. More was already a professional. The River Wheel on that in a bit. recording was comprised largely of Oliver’s Center. We had a holiday concert and a compositions. Oliver met Maya when she string concert for the entire school, parents, came to a River Wheel recording session and siblings, etc. It’s funny to think of it now … they connected musically, personally and that’s my first experience playing though, in through their love of travel. One description ensemble.” of their first meeting has them sitting together His mother loved listening to “oldies” in the with maps spread out between them. car – The Everly Brothers, Aretha Franklin, Oliver was impressed with Maya’s voice The Temptations, Janis Joplin, The Beatles and musicianship and decided to help her and The Grateful Dead. It was then that record some of her songs She wanted a demo Charles started to sing music mostly because to take with her when she went to Berklee his mother sang so loudly along with the College in Boston. During the initial period radio and records. when Oliver and Maya began collaborating, Charles has said elsewhere that he connected they’d team up at an area open mic and busk to Led Zeppelin IV and Houses of the Holy in at Lancaster’s Central Market, often making middle school. He loved Robert Plant’s voice and more money in tips than some vendors. John Paul Jones’ feel on bass. His grandmother Through this process, they worked out the gave him Beatles 1 and he liked the back half bulk of the songs for the demo, including of that album, especially “Lady Madonna.” one of his songs and a co-write. Charles was “Anything by CSNY or The Grateful Dead was invited to join in where bass was needed. Photo: Richard Cuccaro also on my radar,” he has said. Later, when the three made a commitment In live performance, Béla Fleck and the Oliver Craven, fiddle, guitars, mandolin | to join forces as a group, this recording, a Flecktones were a huge influence. His family About a half-hour drive from Landisville, Pa., seven-song EP, became Borderland, their first would see them anytime they came within over winding roads, we arrive in Ephrata, Pa., album. three hours of Lancaster. Victor Wooten, where Oliver grew up, smack in the middle Before Borderland was completely finished, the bass player in that band was a huge of the Craven Family Band. While they were inspiration rhythmically. (and still are) folk musicians, they insisted Charles went to a Grey Fox Bluegrass that Oliver study classical violin from the Festival in upstate New York in his senior age of 5. Although he hated it for the first year of high school and was instantly smitten, five to six years, he is thankful today. During not only with the music, but by the ensemble that first period, one incident epitomized playing he saw. He told me, “The scene there his frustration. As he described it in an Photo: Richard Cuccaro blew me away — all the people pickin’ and interview with Jim Blum of Folk Alley, he playing and having a ton of fun. I knew I was traveling with his parents in the family wanted more and kept going to festivals and Volvo to a Saturday group practice session playing on my own.” when he spied some of his friends having a home run derby in a ball field. As they passed After high school, Charles attended West by in the car, one of Oliver’s friends hit a Chester University in West Chester, Pa., dinger that struck the Volvo. Oliver, jealous getting a degree in music education. He met that he wasn’t playing baseball with them and bluegrass musician Joe Hillman, and through mortified at being recognized while headed Joe, he met Oliver. As he relates it: “We met to a violin session, shrank in his seat, burying through a mutual friend named Joe Hillman. his head in his hands. It took a long while I was playing in Joe’s band while I was in for that to become just a humorous story. He West Chester University and he introduced Maya took her demo and 2011 Northeast Regional Folk headed to Boston to attend Alliance (NERFA) Conference, Berklee and Charles went which is where we first saw back to West Chester them. They made an immediate University to finish getting impact and were given a main his degree. Oliver finished stage showcase the following working on Borderland in the year, having released their studio and then went back to eponymous album in 2012. being a full-time professional In comparison to many acts musician. He spent a year showcasing at NERFA, their with The Steel Wheels, rise has been meteoric. a Virginia Blue Ridge The Composers Mountain roots band. One of the signature features Maya de Vitry, fiddle, of this group is their ability guitar, banjo | Maya started to create original work that taking piano lessons with her sounds timelessly traditional. Photo: Richard Cuccaro grandmother when she was The instrumental medley 7. She chose to take violin Some time later, Maya spent a joyous week mentioned earlier, “Give That lessons in school because her Wildman a Knife/ Bellows Falls/ Waitin’ on father, an architect, played fiddle (and other at a Swannanoa Gathering in North Carolina. Whereas Clifftop was attended primarily by a Hannah,” sounds like a combination of jigs instruments) as a folk musician on weekends or reels that a Cape Breton fiddler might play, with other visiting family members. players returning to their day jobs afterward, Swannanoa offered the opportunity to rub taken from a canon of tunes passed down As soon as she started playing violin, in elbows with professional musicians.