Somewhere back in the mid 90's, I went fishing through a pile of cds sent to the Fast Folk Cafe for
gig consideration. Dumped ignominiously into a box, unattended, I found one called Live Bait and
put it into the cafe's house player. Caroline Aiken's wind-sighing, gale-blowing heart-aching,
foot-stomping voice filled the room and I was hooked.
When the opportunity presented itself to bring her in and make some new fans, we did. And, long
overdue, we're doing it again, here.Caroline writes articulate and powerful songs. She can also cover
a good song and make it better. Some day she is going to grant me a wish. She's going to play
James Taylor's, "Steamroller Blues" the way only she can.
"I'm a steamroller, babe … I'm bound to roll all over you…"
The heat in the room will rise and the paint on the walls and ceiling will bubble, blister and burst.
We'll look up and see sky overhead, because everything above will be blown away. A frustrated voice
(God… bless her-- or Mother Nature) full of embarrassed pique
will speak from the heavens…"All right, Caroline! You want this job?!! It's yours! I'm outta here!
Okay… so I have an overactive imagination when it comes to strong, force-of-nature, beautiful
women with brains and talent.
Beginnings
Where did this power come from? It started with classical piano lessons from the age of 6. She says that
"later, it saved me inside."
Then there were the Episcopal Latin Gregorian Chants, in the choir sitting next to her mom, who was the
star vocalist (a Hallellujah Chorus soloist). Caroline was fond of show tunes, like those in My Fair Lady,
Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas (Later, as a teenager, she portrayed Ruth in Pirates of Penzance, and Katishaw
in The Mikado). She spent her earliest years living on the artistically and historically steeped Saint Simons Island,
Georgia.
Her first memories are of her nanny, Emma Lee Ramsey, singing… singing her to sleep, singing as she cleaned
and cooked and as she walked with her on the beach. Emma Lee had sung with Bessie Jones and the Sea Island
Singers who were recorded by Alan Lomax in the 60's and are on Rounder Records.
She recalled listening to her brother's band playing Rolling Stones covers such as "Paint It Black" and As Tears Go By,
and listening to Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and albums by Traffic, The James Gang, The Who,
Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, CSNY, and Ellen McIlwaine [
Ellen's name doesn't come up often enough these days]. At the impressionable age of eleven, she saw
Jimi Hendrix open for The Monkees.
The Rebellious Years
When her mother remarried, the family moved to Long Island, New York. There she sang with a band and
gained valuable performing experience through acting. She remembers: "At 14, I was in a rock band on Long Island,
called Father Time and the guys in the band were my saving grace... they also paid me to sing, and at 14, that sealed it.
" She'd been watching them rehearse and, listening to what they were doing, boldly told them how a particular part
should be sung. According to band member Richard L'Hommedieu, who interviewed Caroline for Long Island Entertainment
this past June, "One day while we were trying to get some harmonies right, up jumps Caroline to set us straight.
'OK, You sing this part, and you sing this and I'll do this,' and before the day ended, Caroline was our new front girl!
" At age 14!
Characterizing parts of her life as marred by "family unrest," she had had run away at one point and then was "shipped"
to California to live with her dad. He planned to be a strict disciplinarian, but he bought her a 12-string guitar, and
she ended up playing that for hours rather than caring about (or going to) school. She states: "Against all odds, I got
out of a very closed minded Southern provincial family, that did not support the music dream of mine. 'Good girls don't
stay out and play music at night.'"
Caroline had begun playing the guitar at the age of ten. She became a songwriter in earnest once she started playing
the 12-string. An early harbinger of her power is contained in a chilling story of an incident that occurred when three
young men from a motorcycle gang approached her while she played on a deserted part of Carlsbad Beach in California
at age 15. They asked her to play a song, "and it better be about us!" She remembers what she sang then, right on the spot:
"Ride -- You Can't Do Nothing Wrong" (and can still perform it). The leader sent the other two men away
and then sat with her while she kept playing, trying to seem unconcerned. She has said that she connected with their
wandering street personas. A week later they were arrested for murdering a young woman on that same beach.
Caroline's song, "My There For Me Guitar," (on her album Live Bait) deals with this incident.
Long before terrorism thundered to the forefront of society's consciousness, Caroline learned firsthand about religious
fundamentalism when she spent a year (1973) in South America living with a cult. She'd gone to Central America to
join friends and was singing in a nightclub when members of The Children of God asked her to listen to their music.
She was inspired by what she heard and joined them, becoming affected by their doctrines.
While assisting them in recording their music, the group was raided by "special" police and Caroline was detained and
told she might never go home again. She challenged a CIA agent who'd threatened her and then managed to get back
to the United States. The songs "Ground Zero," "Tower of Babel," "Up Until Now," and "Train Ride" from her most
recent release, Unshaken, deal with this experience. She's worried that she will "be seen as making a buck from
September 11th," but "Ground Zero" predates those events by many years.
Upon returning to the States in 1974, she first found work as a maid in Yosemite, California for about 6 months, in the
process, began healing herself of the previous emotional trauma. She then made her way to Seattle, where she began
street singing. After participating in the very earliest Folk Life Festival at the Seattle Center, she began travelling the country,
"tearing her 12-string a whole new consciousness." She worked the road, using the west coast her home base.
Back East
In the early 80's she came back to the east coast. For a brief period, she returned to.Long Island and began playing around
New York City. She recalls: "I played all over the place, one-nighters, it was brutal." She performed at My Father's Place
on Long Island, had gigs at The Bitter End in Greenwich Village, sandwiched in between dates featuring Suzanne Vega and
Shawn Colvin, and opened for David Bromberg -- as his special invited guest -- at The Bottom Line
Shortly after that, she moved back to Georgia, and has remained to this day. It was still early in the 80's when she met
Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of the Indigo girls while running showcases. She's very proud that she made an important
contribution to their early progress. She recounts: "when they were just babies. They cut their teeth on my stage. I gave
them their first real gigs where they were able to really make a stand and gain a lot of followers. They did all the work
on their own, I just gave them gigs and encouraged them. we did a lot of playing together, three-part harmonies and such. they have
been real good to me, taking me on tour with them. I also recoded with them on their very first album. Stylistically, she's been
compared to Bonnie Raitt. In the Mid-80's she and Bonnie met and hit it off. Bonnie has recorded with her and shared live
performances with Caroline.
A Multitude of Talents
Caroline is the entertainment coordinator for the Atlanta Dogwood Festival. April 12-14th, 2002 was its 66th year.
Since '94, she has brought talent to the Atlanta festival to raise money for the charity Camp Sunshine, a camp for kids
with cancer. In June 2001, the festival gave the camp $30,000. and sent 60 kids to camp for a week.
Caroline gives afternoon or week-long workshops around the country in "Zen and the Art of Performance,"
"Songwriting in Your Sleep," and "Unorthodox Guitarwork."
Some Questions, Some Answers
I asked her if there any challenges specific to her as a woman, that a man might've not felt or faced? She replied:
"Heck yea...I've walked into clubs, and they ask if I'm with the band...when I say 'I AM the band.' I get a look like
'Oh boy, tonight's gonna suck' from the workers. My greatest victory is when at the end of the night, the workers
come up to me and say they enjoyed it, and that they made money (that's bar life) After 'bar life', it's the festival
producers that don't think one woman can generate enough sound, energy to excite their audience on the
main stage, and I am usually relegated to the side stages until I am heard live. I love it when people say to me
they can 'hear' the drums, bass, et al, when I play solo... then I know I'm doing my job right."
In response to what advice she'd offer to young artists starting out, specifically young women, she responded:
"Play as hard and as well as you can, do as much of the promotion, booking, etc, that you can do yourself,
and learn to discern what people MEAN inside what they SAY."
Caroline will be playing in the New York Metropolitan area in November. Watch these pages for specific dates.
You can also check her web site at: www.carolineaiken.com
As respected songwriter Pierce Pettis has said, "She's dangerous. She'll blow the doors off the place."
Go see her. You'll be glad you did.
John Platt… Radio Free New York by Richard Cuccaro
The sound, his voice, comes pouring out of the speakers like some kind of liquid silk. Not much boom, like
the big guys on commercial radio. However, a constant wisdom pervades every sentence, maybe like your
favorite uncle when you were a kid. When he speaks, his grace and wisdom makes an impact. It's John Platt,
working the City Folk Sunday Morning Breakfast show, on WFUV FM radio.
Beginnings
There were no learning experiences from playing instruments and no great inspirations to be had in the
big-band records his parents owned. The march toward a career in radio was an evolution that grew out of a
continuing fascination with the variety of musical sounds riding the ariwaves
An early fan of the Beatles, he remembers the first time he heard "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
As a fourteen-year-old living near Philadelphia, he lay awake and listened to far-off radio signals as they
bounced off of a cooled-off ionosphere and streaked through the night air: WCFL in Chicago, WINS
in New York, and WBZ in Boston. Boston's Dick Sommers would tell shaggy dog stories where the climactic
final words would lead into a song.
Making His Own Mark
In the late 60's as a college student at Princeton University, he was a program director and had his own
progressive rock program. He states: "Everything was changing -- the old rules didn't apply -- there was
a place for those of us who could put a set of music together, but did not necessarily have a classic radio voice.
"He'd listen to Roscoe, Scott Muni, Jonathan Schwartz and Pete Fornatale on WNEW in New York.
He was also a regular listener to Dave Herman's innovative program "The Marconi Experiment"
on WMMR in Philadelphia. He took the bold move of calling the station's management to propose that
he be considered as a replacement for Herman should they need a vacation replacement.
As luck would have it, they did. He put together a demo tape and got the job.
Stepping Out
He continued to get work at WMMR until 1970 when he headed to Chicago, first at WGLD, where he had
to submit a demo tape. After that, he became a known quantity and was able to find work without an audition.
At WXRT, as a full-time DJ and program director, he helped in its transformation toward an eclectic music format,
seeing the influences and bridging the gap between musical icons such as Bach and Procol Harum,
Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton, Pat Metheny and Santana.
Back to the East Coast
He stayed in Chicago until 1979, when he headed to New York. One of the finer hours in New York radio
history was in existence at the time, WRVR. "RVR" was breaking boundaries, mixing jazz fusion such as
Weather Report with jazz-inflected rock such as Steely Dan, Phoebe Snow, Jeff Beck and Santana. Not long
after John was hired as program director, the station was sold to Viacom. Two men from Houston were brought
in to run the radio station. Their familiarity was not with jazz, but with country music. So, one day,
devout listeners [like myself] tuned in to discover that a station which had been playing their favorite music,
had suddenly been transplanted to cow country. John was asked to remain at the station
and acquiesced at first, but left after three months, when he realized he was being used to quell employee unrest.
In 1985, he began a professional relationship of eleven years, working with Pete Fornatale as producer of
"Mixed Bag" and "Saturday Morning Sixties." at WNEW and then, later at K-Rock. One of the more rewarding
aspects of working with Pete involved conducting interviews. When Pete wasn't around, he trusted John, as a
substitute host of the Sunday morning show at K-Rock, to handle them. John was thrilled to have the
opportunity to sit down and talk with people like Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, Tom Waits and John Hiatt.
In 1996 Pete made an appearance at WFUV during a fund drive and it motivated John to join the station.
In 1997, he was asked to step in for Christine Lavin as host of the Sunday Breakfast show. In addition,
he has joined the staff as Development and Marketing Director.
A Question of Balance
As host of the Sunday morning show , he works to strike a balance between playing the more established
artists and the newer, talented singer/songwriters. He likes going out to venues to hear artists and talk to
audience members, learning about their favorites and learning about new discoveries.
When I asked him to assess the factors beneath the bland sameness of most commercial radio formats,
he stated that commercially owned stations operate under a huge debt and need to go with music that
reaches the most people the fastest. The difference for WFUV is that, "public radio does not involve the profit imperative."
Elaborating on WFUV and his role there, he states: There is no other progressive radio station in New York.
The mix has evolved and the listenership of WFUV has grown from 90,000 to 300,000 over the last 10 years.
In listening to newer artists, he explains "It's a gut check."
Also, in creating a mix between the newer artists and the established, "It's a process."
Left, John with the twins, Chris and Meredith Thompson.right, with Linda Thompson
John hosts City Folk Sunday Breakfast, 8 to 11am on WFUV at 90.7 FM. Live interviews and performances are
an important part of his show. Among the favorites he's conducted are: Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Dar Williams,
Tony Bennett, and Jean Ritchie. They can produce some poignant memories. He was the last person to interview
Dave Carter and Tracy Grammar last July, just a few days before Dave's tragic and untimely fatal
heart attack. Upcoming live appearances will feature the twins, Chris and Meredith Thompson on October 13th
and Linda Thompson on October 20th.
John loves coming to work every day at WFUV. As he states in the article "The Platt Experiment" by Miriam Kadar
on the WFUV web site, "I can start each day knowing I'm going to work at a station where the airstaff and the
audience share a passion for the music." We suggest that our readers dare to set their alarms early on Sunday and tune in.
You can get some more rest later, while you read the Sunday New York Times.