Evie's Musical Background


A self-taught guitarist, Evie got her first guitar at 10. By age 15 she was playing with some seriousness. "I took a couple of classes when I was older, but in the beginning it was just me." She grins. "That's why I have so many bad habits." Now, in her 40's, she feels she is beginning to develop some small proficiency. "There's still so much to learn," she comments. "It's an on-going process."

"I've loved the Brit Trad folk music since I was first introduced to it back in 1980," she says about her musical roots. "It's there I found my voice." She and Trapper formed the band Coventry, and they played their first gig at the Northwest Folklife Festival in 1982. "Trapper was an old hand by then," she jokes. "But I had a terrifying moment of 'what am I doing!'" She laughs. "I got over it."

 [Evie with Gibson]
Evie's favorite guitar, a Gibson 1917 army-navy special - a sweet little parlor guitar. (Photo from a Coventry performance at Folklife, 1989.)

Coventry played the Northwest folk pubs for 2 years, at which point Evie left to go back to school. She returned to the band in 1986 and has been playing with Coventry ever since. "I feel like I learned a lot during my time off," she says. "I worked with some other musicians, played in a different band (Seilidhe Court) and generally got a much better musical education than I had before." It was at the UW that she had the fortunate experience of studying with Joe Heaney and Gayathri Rajapur Kassabaum, Irish and South Indian visiting guest artists in the UW Ethnomusicology department. "It was a wonderful time, an incredible learning experience. Then I had to move on."

 [Evie with Fender]

Evie and her Fender Strat. Photo by Trapper, 1997.
What she moved on to was another band. Her time with Seilidhe Court was short but sweet. "I loved working with the different sounds, playing around with rhythms and instruments. We didn't care if we were proficient, we just loved what we were doing!" Her favorite piece from that album? "Hal-An-Tow. Bruce Rosen (the harper) came up with this calypso harp thing, and we just took it to it's logical extreme."

After Seilidhe Court dissolved in 1989, she returned to Coventry, pursuing more electric avenues. "I got this Fender Strat from my brother and started playing around with it," she explains. "I discovered that electric and accoustic guitars play *very* differently. It took some getting used to, but I really liked the sounds I was getting."

Now, as she has found a career in technical writing, the question is: where to from here? "Well, I've been doing some writing - songs and stories," she responds. "And I've got an opera that's been half-finished for several years now. I'd like to see that produced eventually." As for Coventry, "I love what I'm doing now," she says of the recording project. "And that's my goal. Love what I do. Do what I love."

 [EVIE AT FOLKLIFE]

Evie at Folklife, 2001. Photo by Kevin.

You can contact Evie by E-Mail

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