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© Joyscream.com Joyce Andersen has made a name for herself as a fiddler and session player in the Northeast for the last 10 years, playing bluegrass, country, rock, jazz, and celtic music. Listeners may remember her from the Morning Show Evening Concert on May 31, 2002.

When first listening to Joyce Andersen play the fiddle, you can picture her—98 years old, toothless, sitting on the cabin porch up in the mountains, serenading chickens. Nobody's been down the road for 10 years. She's been working on old tunes all the while and is happy to play some for a stranger. That's what you think, anyway. That's how good she sounds.

The truth is a bit more startling. Joyce Andersen is quite young; too young to worry about archiving lost traditions and certainly not interested in limiting her repertoire.

A woman of curiosity and ambition, Joyce left a world she knew on the New England seacoast to run off to play country in Nashville and then jazz in New York City. She worked with different bands on varied music, and must have picked up a lot of confidence along the way. When she sings, you get the full picture. Youth and strength flow through her voice. She's got power and conviction. She's writing new songs and retelling old stories, and there's still something mysterious in her music that sounds like it comes from an ancient and pure source.

Joyce Andersen's newest recording, Right Where I Should Be, is a sparkling addition to the Morning Show play list.

We were delighted to talk with Joyce about her life, her music, and the songs on this new disc.

—Dale Connelly

	The "Music Scene" Joyce Andersen says living in big music cities, like New York and Nashville, isn't always the key to success in the music industry. Listen

Dale Connelly: Tell us the outline of your story as a musician in terms of how you got started and what paths you took to get where you are.

Joyce Anderson: I started out as a child, playing violin. I was kind of a normal kid, taking violin lessons and listening to the pop music of my day, which was nothing inspiring and I don't hear how it effected my music today, but when I got back from college and to my hometown area on the seacoast in New Hampshire, which has a very rich music scene that I hadn't noticed as a kid, I was itching to play violin in a different way. I found out about an Irish jam session in a pub that had been going on for many years. That was the door that opened up a whole world of non-classical idioms to me and it's been a journey ever since.

I started learning tunes there and met Harvey Reid a few nights later. He was upstairs playing a show with Pat Donohue, who many of your listeners know. That was a step towards folk music. And then I went to Berkeley College of Music because I was also getting into swing music. Then I moved to Nashville because it seemed like a better place to make a living as a fiddler and played country music there with a "hat act," did the tour-bus circuit out of Nashville for about a year, and then moved to New York City, another musical melting pot, as a side-gal fiddler and learned a lot of stuff being a freelance fiddler there. That's where I also started singing more and writing songs.

After about 5-6 years in New York I came back to my hometown area where I've been focusing on myself as a solo musician rather than a side-gal, which has been an exciting, change.

Jim Ed Poole: Do you feel more pressure now that you're THE act?

JA: Well, yeah. The phone doesn't ring for side gigs anymore, and that's not my focus, so the pressure is go get work, you know? The pressure of being on stage alone is ... yeah, that is more pressure, but it's fun. It's inspiring. I'm getting used to that feeling of being alone on stage, and I like it. There's no one on stage to say "You can't sing that song" or "Move over, it's my turn in the limelight." It's less frustrating. Sometimes, being in bands, you can get into frustrating situations that you don't have control over. So this way it's always your own fault if you're not having a good time.

DC: Right, well that's my definition of having a good time. When it's your own fault and there's nobody else to blame.

JA: Right. It's a good thing, I think.

DC: The stops in Nashville and New York ... I mean, there are two cities where, in the past, a person, you would think, who would want to be a musician would have to go to one of those places, or Los Angeles, and stay there for a long time and get discovered to get their name in the music business. It doesn't seem to be that way anymore.

	Starting a Song Andersen's music is influenced by a number of different things in her life. We asked how some of the songs on her CD Right Where I Should Be came about. Listen

JA: Well, the number of people who actually get discovered is so slight ... you can spend your whole life waiting for that star-driving society dream to become your reality. Getting out of those music towns was very empowering for me, because now that I'm in the seacoast area, it's really a community that's rich in music, but it's invisible as far as the music industry stands. Boston is nearby, so it's a very rich singer-songwriter area.

But I don't have that feeling that I want to fit into the big music industry scene. Now I'm just doing music that moves me, and there is a smaller scene, the singer-songwriter and the folk scene, that I can fit into just by playing the music that I wanna play. I don't have to think, "Oh, now I have to get commercial radio play." I've discovered the world of folk music, of non-commercial radio, and it's just keeps unfolding, layer after layer, in a way that is much more real than getting swept up in the industry towns ... and I was.

DC: It's interesting you didn't even know about that scene growing up there.

JA: I know. It's tragic really. Although who knows ... if I would have learned about it earlier, I probably wouldn't have appreciated it as much ... I can't know. So I can only be grateful that I discovered it.

JEP: Well, by traveling, you were able to play with other greats and pick up a lot of fantastic music.

JA: Yeah. I can't fault the journey. It's been neat the way it's unfolded. I've met a lot of people coming back to this area. Harvey Reid has probably been my biggest inspiration and mentor for making this career happen.

DC: I noticed on this new recording that you've written a lot of these songs.

JA: I have. Eleven, I guess.

DC: How does that process work for you?

JA: Oh, it's different every time. I can remember how the germs of some of the songs started. I like it when some of the lyrics and the melody come to me at the same time. It's almost like you snatch them out of the air. You just have to have a space in your life, or something. Even a car trip sometimes is where some things come to me. And if you get that excited feeling in your heart ... you just have to pay attention to it. And then you have to hang on to it.

Sometimes things just start writing themselves. You just have to follow the music. It has like a certain feel and oftentimes it seems like I'm drawn to rootsier, old-time feels, and I have to just stay true to that and not sing about cell phones and minivans. Its like I'm connecting to some kind of music that's been sung before. And I like to write things that sound a little timeless.

And then other times, some of them do sound a bit more contemporary, but I don't need to fit into some type of genre ... No one's telling me what to do. I just follow my nose. My repertoire is just coming together one song at a time, really. There's no huge plan, I'm just trying to be open to what comes my way.

DC: I did notice there's sort of an Appalachian feel to what you're doing, but you don't really have that in your background, do you?

JA: No, the mountains in my background are the White Mountains of New Hampshire. So I have mountains in my background, but not southern mountains.

DC: Didn't grow up in a cabin ...

JA: No. My pedigree is not the thing that's going to clue you in to why I sound the way I do. It's mysterious. I don't really understand where the music comes from. I'm just grateful when it comes my way.

One of the songs on this CD is a traditional song, "Pretty Sylvia." The two songs I didn't write are traditional, and one of them came from a woman in New Hampshire, Lena Borne Fish. And that was really exciting for me, because so much of this music comes from Appalachia, and you think of it as a southern music.

Boy, I've been reading The Illustrated History of Country Music ... a lot of pictures, but a lot of great text. I don't understand how it all got attributed to the South. A lot of it was from the Midwest, the North ... it was all over the country that people were listening to the barn dance shows. It was just farmers and rural people all across this country. And then the focus ended up down south. That's just partly because the Grand Ole Opry ... that's the one that won out.

I have to keep reading to figure out why that happened.

JEP: You also went to Sweden and picked up some of that Swedish fiddle music ...

JA: Yes, I'm playing Swedish tunes in my concerts these days, and I love them. I'd be a little nervous to play them in Minnesota ... I don't know that I play them exactly like the Swedes do ... there may be a little bluegrass influence in there.

DC: You talked a little bit about country music and as I look at the disc, the song "There He Goes, Coming Back" strikes me as the most country-sounding tune.

JA: Oh yeah, you hit it. That's exactly right.

DC: And I like the way that twists ... the play on words. How did that song come about?

JA: I made them mistake of telling the audience at my CD release concert and they chuckled as they listened to the song. I had to tell them it wasn't funny. But since you guys are so rich in great cultural accents in your area, I'll tell you. It was a French-Canadian phrase, "there he goes, comin' back" and "throw me up the stairs, the broom you" or, "there it was, up on the wall, gone." We have all these funny French-Canadian phrases and someone told me this one, "there he goes, comin' back." And I thought, wow ... that's a great line! In my liner notes I gave Pete Suchas some credit on that one.

JEP: It sounds like some of the manuals I get ... the translation into English is always fascinating.

DC: So for your French-Canadian audience, that song makes perfect sense.

JA: Yeah, well I haven't gotten any feedback from a French-Canadian audience. We'll see ... I may not even tell them.

	Powerful and Strong A common thread that runs through some of Andersen's songs is the presence of a woman, a choice, strength, and freedom. Listen

DC: Tell me a little bit about the women in your songs. Obviously we're not just talking about one character here. But it seems to me from listening in each of these songs, when the character is a woman, there's some choice involved. Either a choice she's made or a choice she's about to make ... but she's always got a choice.

JA: Hmm ... it's interesting to hear what other people have said about the record. I don't really analyze my own work too much. That's other people's job. But I like the choice a woman whose feeling empowered would make. I like to see women feeling powerful and strong.

DC: Tell us about "I Just Wanna Dance." How did that song come about?

JA: That's one of the older ones. Um ... I think it kind of speaks for itself. But someone said about my songwriting that a lot of people just dwell on "the fall" ... "Oh, I'm miserable" ... they talk about the angst and very self-absorbed. The whole singer-songwriter scene just accepts that style of songwriting.

A guy from the Boston Globe said (about my writing) " ... it sounds like you pick up right after the fall as you're heading back up feeling ... empowered." So it's that feeling that life is filled with sorrow and pain, but hey, we have a choice to make the best of it and to gain strength out of the sadness and connect to our sadness, also to the joy of life, and use that as a springboard to get back on track.

DC: So what's next for you?

JA: Well, I just need to translate the success I'm having with this record, on one level, into getting more gigs. I mean, it's easy to send your CDs out to non-commercial radio stations and if they like it, they can play it. It's not quite as easy to send the CDs out to the gigs and people will say, "Oh ... we'll book ya," because if people don't know who you are, it's challenging. So I'm in that sort of "Catch 22" situation that we all know and love. We have them in every aspect of whatever career we're in.

I'm starting to do some concerts. I'm graduating from opening for people to, uh, playing some concerts myself, and that's exciting. And I travel a lot with Harvey Reid, who you guys know as we were just out playing for you last year, which was a blast, and we're going strong with our music as well.

The next thing might even be a record with him. Either that or I'll do another solo record. I'm in it for the long haul, as far as I can tell, and I feel like I've got a pretty realistic game plan as far as getting (my music) out to the people.

JEP: Have you learned how to make any demands as far as ... green M&Ms and stuff like that ... mangoes in every dressing room?

JA: Oh ... good idea, yeah ... it's a hard line. I'm a little too girl-next-door and need to get a little more diva-like. Then people will take me more seriously if I only ask for, like, lavender-colored paint in my dressing room.

DC: Now you traveled to Japan, right? Any thought about going back there or to Sweden or any international travel?

JA: I'll take it if it comes my way. As far as pursuing it, it's not on my mind at this point. It sure would be fun to play in the Tonder Festival in Denmark. That's where my family is from. It's one of those big festivals that's hard to get in, but I'd love to play in Scandinavia and play my music rather than being a side-gal. That would be exciting.

And they might even spell my name right. Except, when I went to Norway, I got my name on a T-shirt ... I was in the Vikedal Roots Festival with Harvey, and they spelled my name, S-O-N ... what are ya gonna do with those people?

Joyce Andersen Discography
1999	Joyce Andersen EP	Joyscream Music
2000	The Girl I Left Behind	Joyscream Music
2001	The Great Sad River (with Harvey Reid)	Woodpecker Records
2001	Seacoast Songwriters Vol. I	Seacoast Guitar Society
2003	Right Where I Should Be	Joyscream Music