From Peter, Paul and Mary on, folk roots held firm

Noel Paul Stookey at a recent concert. (Sally Farr photo)

"The heart is a capricious bird
She wanders where she will
And if the soul were not her home
She would be wandering still"

BLUE HILL, Maine - Noel Paul Stookey may have written those words for his song "Capricious Bird" a few years ago, but in fact, they mirror the essence of his creativity - wandering, ever pushing, ever striving - from the heady days of Peter, Paul and Mary to now as he travels the country singing about and celebrating causes near to his heart.

Why? Because that's what folk singers are supposed to do, he says.

"I'm one of those unrepentant folkies who believes people still want folk music," he said. "People want to have their current hopes and dreams articulated."

So when the 76-year-old Stookey brings his precise, pristine tenor voice to the Rochester Opera House on Friday, he will be playing songs from the Peter, Paul and Mary days, but also more recent, even lighthearted songs like "Cabin Fever Waltz," inspired by long Northern New England winters and the inevitable solitude they bring with them.

Stookey's career spans six decades of political awareness and activism spun into many of the songs he has written.

Publicity shot for Peter, Paul and Mary from 1960s.

In 1963 activism and song melded into one as Peter, Paul and Mary were with Martin Luther King when he made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

"When we sang `Blowin' in the Wind' and `If I Had a Hammer' that day, it changed the way we saw the world ... and our role in it," they said in a book recently released about the group titled Peter, Paul and Mary: Fifty Years in Music and Life (Imagine/Charlesbridge, $29.95).

Mary Travers died in 2009, but much of her is also in the book, Stookey along with Peter Yarrow said in recent interviews.

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Stookey's creative force, like that capricious bird, has rested little since it came upon the music scene more than 50 years ago.

After moving to Blue Hill in 1975 he set up a record and animation studio in a renovated chicken coop and produced records for both renowned Downeast comedian Tim Sample and Maine singer/songwriter/troubadour David Mallett, who will both be part of Friday's unique show.

The studio became a hub of creativity and camaraderie for artists around the region.

Stookey, who enjoyed a successful solo musical career alongside his performing with Peter, Paul and Mary, also emerged as a forerunner of the Jesus music movement.

His website, http://noelpaulstookey.com, ripples with spiritualism readily evidenced in his "Time Machine" dropdown, in which he - in true storyteller fashion - relates anecdotes that give testimony to his beliefs in Jesus and the presence he has felt and witnessed.

With all the recordings Stookey made with Peter, Paul and Mary, his most popular song was a solo single, "The Wedding Song," (1971) which has become a standard at nuptials worldwide.

After being in the nexus of popular music for six decades, The Lebanon Voice had to ask Stookey to try to explain the transition of music from the early 1960s to now.

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Here's his take:

"It's really easy to understand. With folk music you have three chords. In a traditional ballad it goes verse, verse, verse. Then you add a chord so it's C, A minor, f and g; now you have a dew-wop.

"Then you add a chorus, which interrupted the flow but it gave people an opportunity to sing along (because the chorus was easy to remember).

"Then came the bridge, which is like a third eye - First I talked about it, second I celebrated it - and did you notice that?

"By the time the bridge arrived, you had it. Now we're used to popular music."

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Today, Stookey splits his time between doing shows and visiting his children and grandchildren around the country. His daughters live in Massachusetts, Vermont and Los Angeles.

If he's not on the road, you'll find him spending time up in Blue Hill, with his wife, Betty, whom he married in 1963.

A hugely prolific writer of deep and spiritual lyrics, he prefers to relax at home to baroque composers like Johann David Heinichen, Haydn and Bach.

"I get lyric fatigue," he admits.