Faire Folk at Work

Laura Gregory

Laura has sung with Mark Sellin and Wren of Iniquity and Heather Green and Clair Brodich and Merry Wives of Windsor. She sings on the Spotify song list Laura Gregory Sings.

Duration:: 50m
Broadcast on:: 28 Jun 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Welcome to another episode of Fair Folk at Work. You know, if you like to sing with people, you could find an awful lot of people to sing with at the Renaissance Fair. My guest today, Laura Gregory, learned a whole lot of singing with a whole lot of friends and she's here to talk about them here with me today. So hey Laura, how's it going? Hey Dan. But before we get to all of that, let me give you the traditional Fair Folk at Work first question, which is, who is the person who said to you there was this thing called fair and how did they get you out there? Okay, so it was Joseph Jerry, the magician at fair, who is still working fair to this day. I was 19 and I had gotten a job as a singing, serving winch at a weird little dinner theater called 1520 AD and it was like this tiny little space and we served bread and barley soup and big hunks of meat and then we had like a King Henry VIII and his jester and his court magician, and this was the whole show. The court magician was Joseph Jerry. I'd been doing this job for a couple of months and Joseph and I had just barely started going out and then he said to me he's like you know, it's coming on spring and there's this thing I do on the weekends in the spring so if you want to still you know hang out with me, you probably have to do this thing on the weekend and I said okay what is this thing in tail? He's like well it's kind of like what we do at work but totally different and outside and during the day and it's hot so I just showed up on the opening day and my little homemade costume that I had been wearing at my job which I had taken an old kink top and cut it down the front and then poked holes in it and tied it back together with a shoelace to make it look like it was a bodice. It was opening day of the brand new fair at Devore. It was the first day of Devore so I never made it to a girl and I walked in that day and I just kind of looked around and I went well this is this is it. I'm home. I belong here and I looked down at what I was wearing and I high-tailed it over to the dye spot and I said fix me and from bloomers to hat I put down my credit card and here we go we're just starting over. So bloomers, twoskirts, chemise, bodice, muffin cap and I was out the door and I never looked back. 1989 my first year of fair. What is this body memory sense you first recall experience at fair? A body memory sense? Yeah. Well aside from it being bloody hot I remember I have a very distinct memory of sitting in the dirt kind of got a crossroads and this was you know early early early that same season just sitting in the dirt and was eating a one of the the cold ice things they've made them in a orange so you'd have the shell of an orange and it was either ice cream or maybe shave ice or something cold and I was sitting there just eating it my hand you know I wasn't using any kind of spoon or anything and so I had the heat of the the hot ground under my butt and my leg eating this freezing cold thing on my face and you know kind of trying to make a mess of myself and of course make a spectacle of myself because you know then people would come by and take a picture of that crazy girl in the dirt and so yeah that is a definite like body sense memory of that early early season. I remember sitting under burlap and looking up at the and I was nearsighted and not wearing glasses and it just gave me this brown and orange and red sort of haze and then with all the dust and he just around you. Okay that brown and orange haze that you just described is is so real that is such a real feeling and that the dust coming up and then the burlap kind of the light filtering down through I can I can absolutely feel that like just that that haze of the sunlight and the dust and the late afternoon and the smell of the hay bales and I'd like to go back to your waitressing career at 1620 did you get the job at 1620 because you had waitressing experience or it was 1520 one five no it was a singing gig like we had to show up and sing and it was the weirdest thing because the singing wenches you know we all kind of did like a big opening number we did that from Oliver the Kun City yourself at home Kun City yourself because that makes perfect sense in the in the Court of King Henry VIII and then every night a different one of us would get up and just do a random solo at some point in the night like while people were eating their dinner and I sang a song from the musical chess as my solo and my friend Nancy sang a song from Jesus Christ Superstar as her solo and then there was another girl there who just would like choose just a random pop song get up and sing you know like Whitney Houston or something it was it made very little sense in terms of the theming of the restaurant it was my first big ever serving or being a waitress what was your previous theatrical slash singing experience so that's all I had ever done was theater and singing I grew up doing musicals I did my first musical performance at six years old you know for the the Long Beach Civic Light Opera and I just kind of never stopped you know I was a musical theater major in college and I did every show that I could get you know an audition for from the time that I was I don't know seven eight years old did mom or dad work in the industry and get you on stage no strangely enough mom and dad were both in the medical industry my mom was a nurse and my dad was a doctor and they also had both been in Vietnam my dad was a doctor in Vietnam my mom was an Army nurse in Vietnam and when my mom was over there and just hated the whole war thing she was like this is horrible this is depressing I hate all of this and she said you know what this war could use is a musical and so she like walked into the USO office and just went hi my name is Lieutenant CP and I want to put on a show and they went okay and so she somehow pulled together the rights to do South Pacific the musical South Pacific in Vietnam and my dad who was an Army doctor at a different hospital in Saigon heard about it and showed up and auditioned and the two of them did South Pacific as a meal to back and Nellie Forbish in Vietnam you like literally would have to stop their show because you know wounded would come in and everybody would have to go off and do surgeries and things and then you know four hours later they come back and finish the show my dad always wanted to be an opera singer but his parents thought that was not a good choice and so he became a doctor my mom grew up in a very musical family but also a very medical family and she wanted to take after her dad who was a doctor so she became a nurse but my whole life the whole family was always singing it was there was never a stop of a never a moment that there was not music in the house have you ever seen a review of South Pacific as performed by the USO from what we can figure out there's barely any record of it there was like one or two photographs that I have of my mom and dad at that time but there's no recordings there's no you know home movies there's no newspaper articles nothing do you have any memory of sort of the first time you performed and thought I can do this this is what I want to do oh yeah it was that thing I did when I was six so mom and dad were both involved with this local theater group the Long Beach Civic Light Opera and it was a fundraising event and they were performing songs from upcoming shows in the season and one of the shows that was coming up that season was the music man and of course the music man was going to feature a lot of children so maybe four or five of us kids that were kids of adults who were involved on the board or however got to be a part of this fundraising gala evening and I got to go on stage and sing the Wells Fargo wagon with like four or five other kids and I basically felt like a star I pretty much felt like the entire audience was clapping for me and me I was like oh yeah I'm hooked this is it did you inform your parents that opera or stage singing was going to be your career oh yeah one hundred percent no that there was never a question that I was going to be a musical theater that was that was all there was to that that was it there was never any other choice before you came to fair did you say have a lane or a type of character you played in all your productions because I was always the tall one so therefore I was the old one I was sixteen years old I played the mother Abbiss in Sound of Music so like I played a lot of moms which was just annoying because I would have liked to have played Maria in Sound of Music and I actually had a really good audition for Maria in Sound of Music but no I was tall also therefore I had to play the old person yeah it was what it was finally once I got into college went on to to other theater outside of just you know high school and children theater I could play roles that were a little bit more appropriate for a long time I got cast as the you know because I not only am I tall but I'm also very hourglass very curvy so I always kind of got the vava boom sort of like hey come on up and see me sometime kind of roles the saloon keepers Mae West type I guess which is kind of what I ended up doing a dick and spare for a decade when I played Mad Sel because she's the same kind of thing where she was the proprietress of the denizens of the docks and she had her saloon and her music hall and her can-can dancers so she was very much that the hostess with the mostest and I've talked to a couple of bad selves in the course of this interview well I'm sure that yeah I'm sure you talked to Judy Corey yes and did you talk to Robin Driscoll not yet oh then who else did you talk to besides me and Judy who else oh god I have to think of that for a second because I think there's another living one oh okay Linda Underhill it was Judy Corey and there was one in between Judy and Linda and then it was Linda Underhill then it was Robin Driscoll then it was me and now it's a performer by the name of Chris Steele what do you is sort of the core of being a Mad Sal so Mad Sal at her heart while she is mad as a hatter and definitely not you know a same cookie I think at her heart she wants to welcome people into her space she wants to have a reputation of being a place and a person who is warm and inviting even though at the same time if you piss her off or you cross her she has no problem in making sure that your body is never found at the bottom of the 10 so she's this very complex person very fiercely loyal to her people and she expects that same loyalty she would have protected Bill Sykes if she thought that he was innocent and the fact that she knew that he really did kill Nancy you know she would have done anything for him Nash is gonna turn him in so it's kind of fun though because Sal is a fictional a fictional character they're all fictional characters Sal is not a Dickens character Sal is a made-up character made up by Phyllis Ron and Judy the three of them came up with Mad Sal she was not from the Dickens canon and so it's kind of fun to get to take a character you know I mean if you're playing Little Dorit or you're playing Nancy or you're playing the ghost of Christmas present there are things that are specific that Dickens wrote about you that you know that you have to portray whereas in Sal it was all up for interpretation anyway we wanted it to be and that's why my Sal was so different than Robins and Robins was so different from Linda's and Linda's was so different from Judy's when I talk to Judy's she's sort of like when Mad Sal had quiet moments oh she talked a lot about the quiet moment she actually gave me a song Judy gave me a song my first year as Sal and it took until my fourth or maybe fifth year before I was finally able to work that song into the shows because the people who were directing at that point they didn't have the benefit of having that conversation with Judy Corey where she was talking about Sal's quiet moments and Sal's reflective moments and this song was called for somebody and it was a song about this girl who was so downtrodden and she tried so hard to you know to rise above but every time that she would something else would happen and somewhere I have a recording of us singing it but anyway Judy gave it to me and said you know I would love for this song to make it back to the Sal stage it hasn't been there in 30 years and I finally was able to get it into the show for I think two seasons before the directors went it's too sad and quiet and boring and we want up temple things with people kicking their legs okay I'm gonna back up to your first couple of years at fair do you remember who were your mentors who kind of pulled you aside and said this is what fair is and this is how you survive and perform in this environment so that first year I worked with Joseph on his magic show and I was just in awe of everything I saw as many shows as I could I would go see my merchants with Linda Underhill I would go see good company I would go see anything dogs and doublets was putting onstage I would go see the jugglers not me I was in every audience when I wasn't on stage and then my second year at fair I auditioned for one Dan Briggs and got cast as to Tonya in Midsummer Night's Dream and that was the same year I met you and Mark and Sarah Kleinberg and Dan and Margaret and I mean the whole gamut Tisha and Jeanette that whole group of people that have still to this day you know been my fair family what do you remember specific directions they gave you just before they shoved you on stage yeah kind of I do remember rehearsals for Midsummer Night's Dream and I was trying to take it so seriously you know I was trying to be this very serious Shakespearean actress and Dan trying to explain that you know we were taking a two and a half hour Shakespearean play and throwing it on stage in 27 and a half minutes and we were milking every single ridiculous pun and laugh that we could and I remember the first couple of shows I didn't get any laughs because I was so intent on my art and after seeing kind of the insanity that was going on around me and I remember being backstage at Drury Creek and Dan and Margaret going okay do you get it now do you get it now and when I came out for that final show on opening day and I just went for it like you know with the whole thing with the we had an audience volunteer who became my ass and I would make him fall asleep on stage and I just went for it in just making crude and lewd gestures and doing the whole silly fair thing and all of a sudden there it was and it was that moment you know where I think I looked at Margaret on stage and kind of went like I get it you know but I think that after that one year in dogs and doublets I really realized that what I wanted to do at Fair was seeing and I was completely intimidated by Linda Underhill like I just thought she was like some kind of a little goddess you know because she looked like this little goddess of Will and Dark she was four feet tall and and four feet wide and just this halo of hair and these eyes that pierce through and I was terrified of her and then she was holding auditions from Mary Merchants and I went I'm gonna go sing for Linda Underhill and I did it and she was like oh you're fabulous you're in and all of a sudden my whole fair will just changed and I became a fair musician and a fair singer that was the path that I continued on. Do you remember if Linda Underhill had a specific performance philosophy that she wanted her group to exhibit? Yes drink heavily and throw a lot of water at each other and were you able to? No I can't drink and sing I had never been able to and so even in those days you know Linda would pass around a bottle of something or a flask of something and I'd be like yes then you know pass it on without actually drinking from it the sillier the better with Linda and then there were moments that we would sing something in perfect five-part harmony acapella and you could hear a pin drop that it came out of something so raucous and ridiculous and people flinging water and mud all over the stage and then she would just look and say planetary packed and we would all just go into this song that would make people weep and it was a hugely powerful feeling to know that you know we could get people from laughing and cheering and stomping on their haybells to just fleet silence and listening to every note and I think that that was something Linda had that I don't even know if anybody if anybody could teach that if anybody can ever recreate that woman with a fourth. Did she have a set set list or would she just sort of make up these? No we never had a set set list we would just sing whatever the hell Linda felt like that day later on when we became siren song after she kicked all the men out of Mary Murchin and then we were a five-woman singing group called siren song and I think our second year of siren song we beat her into the idea of having set lists because this is insanity and we don't know what we're singing from minute to minute so we would actually like we put together three set shows like this is our ten o'clock show this is our twelve o'clock show this is our three o'clock show whatever it was we finally had set lists but even still if she didn't feel like singing a song she'd just skip it and throw something else in and we'd be like well all right it was close we were close to our set list Linda was marvelous chaos marvelous marvelous chaos I'm going to ask this question several times okay when you were singing with Linda Underhill what songs that you sung gave you the greatest joy bells of Norwich yeah um bells of Norwich still to this day is a song that if I need comforting if I need solace the chorus of the song you know is all shall be well again I know and that that sometimes you just need that all shall be well and I still to this day you know my mom recently passed away and at her memorial the very last thing that we all did a bunch of the fair folk we were just sort of standing around in the bar area and we just sang bells of Norwich and there was like 30 of us that just sort of all went that's what needs to happen and we all just kind of fell into this song together that's a song that will always be very very dear to me and Linda introduced me to that song and gave me the lead in that song which was a huge honor I think some of the most fun songs that we sang we had a whole slew of may songs you know we have been traveling all of the night in the best part of the day and we'd have all these different running around the maypole song so those were always just a hoot and a blast and then I think that my very favorite song that we ever sang was planetary packed which was I guess written in the 70s by some hippie folk group it wasn't a fair song at all but it definitely lent itself very well to fair and it was beautiful and we sang in perfect harmony and we never were allowed to record it because it was not in public domain so we don't have a recording of it it's just you know in our memories of that's how we sound I've talked to a lot of dancers and I originally got this question from Mark how did you balance sort of being period versus being entertaining to a 1990 audience I think that we did a pretty good job Linda was pretty strict with our music and she was extremely strict with anything an actor in this we never had watches on stage we never had non-period shoes nobody had you know a nose piercing or a visible tattoo or you know we were very very strict about that kind of stuff in those days and our music was always even though it may not have been perfectly period it always sounded perfectly period but Linda was brilliant at these little zingers that she would toss out out there and they were usually like kind of in between lines of a verse you know like we'd be singing some I can't think of something up the top of my head you know but it's like maybe you know we're singing a song about basale basale it is all of delight you know the foam it is brown and the ale it is white or whatever and then she would just toss something out like a yeah except you know like not like Budweiser you know and then come right back in you know the rest of us are like did she just say Budweiser you know we're so the audience is like but at the same time she would toss it out and then come right back into being in period character but yeah she had as I recall great diction I mean when she said an aside she could say it loud and clear and distinct I've heard Louisa Pweig described as just somebody who could stand there and sound would just come out of and you'd look at and go good lord I can hear her and I'm in the back of the main stage you know and Linda had that same there's nothing mushy about her mouth when she wanted to say a word very true so you sang with Linda and then from there to Mary Wives well no so I was with siren song for you know five or six years when I got pregnant with Cameron was my was my final season with siren song and then it kind of just sort of filled out at that point so Cameron was born in 99 and that was my final season with sirens for 98 I guess because he was born at the beginning of 99 and then after he was born Devin and I kind of just took some time off there it was like we had this young baby and we were both working full time and all of a sudden we just sort of stopped my singing group had ended and his guild that he was guildmaster of had been canceled because it was after the pattersons had sold the fair and all the changes happened and we just kind of disappeared for a while and then I came back when Cameron was seven or eight years old it was about 2007 I think we came back to fair and it had moved over to the Urwindale Dam and I reconnected with Mark and Shauna and that whole Saline gang and Mark and I started singing together every afternoon at the Helena's Guild Yard and I said about halfway through the fair I said we should make a group we should do this this is we sound good together let's see if we can get a couple more people and and make this an actual group for next year and so myself and Mark Saline and Joyce Nanamaker and Vicki Bodelson the four of us started just kind of workshopping music and by the beginning of the next year we were run of iniquity and so that was I think 2008 when we started run and I'm playing with them for a bunch of years and then I remember when I joined Mary Wives of Windsor but after that I don't know and then I was with wives for maybe three or four years and then I moved up to Northern California and after Cameron graduated high school in 2017 and so that was that so can I back up a bit yeah what was your career in your seven years interim of so I owned a dance studio called the dance factory and it was a wonderful and fabulous and heartbreaking you know owning a business is not for the faint of heart and I sucked at it I was a great teacher and I put on a really good show but I didn't know anything about running a business but I did learn a lot and what did you learn I learned that I never wanted to own a business again thank you very much I love teaching I love producing shows I love directing I love writing shows I love putting kids on stage and making them feel amazing but like payroll was I wasn't good at that taxes I didn't do well insurance oh those are things you have to do and you know you have to there was so many business parts of it that were just I didn't like that I don't like it maybe if I had had like a business manager and then I could just do all the artistic stuff it would have been better but I didn't have that but anyway yeah so that's what I was doing Devon was the director of technical theater at the Orange County high school the arts and so that's you know we had this amazing child and we were both working all the time and fair kind of became something that we would go out and visit our friends a couple times a season when you were working with children outside of the fair did you ever use sort of fair street techniques or performance techniques as part of your curriculum yes yes yes yes yes yes I I loved incorporating fair technique into my musical theater kids in fact so much so my sister who also was in siren song and was in a bunch of the dogs and doublets shows and etc she and I would often co-direct things together and co-chore grafting together we were doing this crazy production of the Wizard of Oz that we had written and at the end of act one all of the different denizens of Oz came out to dance and we taught them we taught 50 musical theater little dance kids how to English country dance and we had them doing and up but doubling back and up but doubling back and around and around we go and then we all turn around and get you know like whatever and all these kids on stage and we had them in little bodices and skirts and ribbons flying and we literally taught them English country dancing from Renaissance fair years every single class we would start the first five ten minutes with improv stuff that we would learn it there improv games that we did you know bunny bunny and we would um you know pass the sound ball and we would all these things that you know we would do at fairs warmups and I'd have my kids doing them improv games and technique and projection and breathing and all the stuff that like when I was doing storytelling at the library with little kids we did big face little face right his like to do big face little face it's so much fun and then we'd climb an imaginary rope ladder oh that's a good one and I would often do the you know that kind of thing now I'm gonna make a little transition here one of my premises of this podcast is that there are people who are doing fair now that never heard of Phyllis Patterson and never heard of Agora but are still doing and as part of the genius of the pattersons that's they set something up 60 years ago that people are still doing it's fair day the queen's coming you're here to buy stuff and just have fun right and there are variations on how period you want to be with your costume and your entertainment but basically they got some things really right and so the fair is sort of replicating itself sort of each generation I think in a lot of ways that's true I think there are people still out there doing the work and doing the magic and making things truly beautiful and making things that are truly period and that are you know yeah a lot of it is a fantasy fair a pop-up tent selling stuff from Amazon like I get it like it's out there but there are there are those little pockets that are still the people who want to make Phyllis in the streams reality still you know and that I think that's important for us to continue to still look for those people and look for those moments and to me the fact that this little thing that Phyllis and Ron started has created so many thousands of copycat fairs across the world you know that's a huge testament to the fact that they were on to something amazing and magical and perfect and like I said I didn't ever get to do Agora but I did know Phyllis you know and I did actually get to work with her and near her and around her and when Devin and I were first together he actually was working during the week as Phyllis's assistant during Southern Fair so you know I would be up there at the house in San Bernardino where Phyllis was you know a little like home of operations during the run did she ever talk to you that you remember about why I'm doing this or no it was never like that like I never got sit down and have a glass of wine with her and just have a quiet personal time when I was there if I was there with Devin it was because he was working and I was like oh I'm gonna help because he was doing a lot of like the cooking and that I'm gonna go do all the shopping at Costco this week and so I mean I was more just like a person who was there but I did spend a lot of time in her presence and hear her run meetings and hear her talk to people and you know make phone calls and you know oh I'm getting ready for this radio interviewers oh these people are coming this weekend are one of the years that I did Northern Fair I had had knee surgery and so I couldn't easily make it up to the end of the world or to any of the stages so Catherine Zapata had me work as the hostess of the royal pavilion which was the kind of like VIP area at horse turning right at the beginning of fair before you have to go through the serpentine and all the way up to the top and so I just sort of like lived there in that VIP area and again Phyllis was in there daily so I would be the one you know making Phyllis's tea in the morning and getting her croissants and her muffins and you know really getting to kind of be a fly on the wall with her and her VIP guests that year that was fun but yeah I think I've worn a lot of different hats at the fair but 90% of them have been in the performing world with it then this very last year of Dickens last year Mark Celine and I wrote a show together and put it up on a VNA stage at Dickens fair that was a crazy fun thing to do I co-directed a show with Mark like what how full circle could that be that was pretty amazing I know Mark likes songs that tell a story mm-hmm talk to me about how you can sort of sell songs that tell a story in an environment that is not conducive to right convey in words um I think that somehow with rent of iniquity and now they're called the story runs we hit a sweet spot I don't know quite how Mark made this happen but people would actually sit and listen to a whole set of songs that were narrative and weren't just jokes or puns or you know pretty sounds and I am a musical theater performer at heart like I am going to I'm going to get on a stage and I am going to tell you the story of what I'm singing first and foremost I consider myself a storyteller and so if I'm singing a song I tend to sing from lyrics and then think about it musically because I'm much more of a writer and a poet and a storyteller I think than I ever consider myself to be a musician so I think that singing a song from the lyrical standpoint and really acting that out and really telling that story and really you know getting to the bottom of of you know what happened with Captain Weatherburn and and if why did he have this bed and why was it pushed against the wall and oh well let us tell a story of you know it gets that audience to go oh wait now I want to know words are super important if you can't understand what the person is singing you're never going to care you know if you're up there going hey what I love and my love was a boy and my love seemed to me she was beautiful okay I have no idea what the heck you're singing but something was beautiful so Mark and I were sticklers about education and diction and making sure that all of the bunches of words in our songs were you know legible legible that's not the word I like that's when you're writing you're writing is legible audible audible yeah I think that's a big part of it and I think also singing on smaller stages helps that kind of an act we would sing on like the royal music stage which would have 20 hay bales as opposed to the rogues reef stage which has 400 hay bales and getting a smaller more intimate crowd who really wants to listen to what you're singing and what you're telling in the story that you are giving to the world and yeah we weren't raking the money hand over fist like you know the poxy boggards and the mary wives do because they have these huge shows that are crowd pleasing and funny and not he and you know etc and the end of those shows those baskets are overflowing with money we'd be really excited if we got off stage and we're like oh my gosh someone gave us a five what oh my god that's amazing you know like we could split a single cup of coffee but it was never about the money when you know when singing with Mark Mark is so so brilliant I mean you know Dan my god you know this man's brain it's unthinkably brilliant and it was always about the storytelling and always about the music and he could find chords that the rest of the world would never have thought to put those notes together and make them sound that way and he'd be like this is gonna be good and it would somehow work and his musicianship is these unparalleled to anyone I've ever known it was always a treat and an honor singing with him what were your favorite Ren's songs my very very very very favorite Ren of Antiquity song ever it was a song called The Healer in the Wood and it was a song that our friend Amy actually kind of wrote for us she put these lyrics to a tune that I guess has been around I wasn't familiar with the tune but she wrote an entire story about this soldier who's wandering on his horse he's wounded and he's probably going to die and then he sees this light in the forest and he stumbles up to this light and he realizes that it's this magical healer and she takes him in and she heals him overnight and he falls in love with her and she's like my dear you know I am just the healer in the wood you have a long journey to go on you can't stay here I love you and I'm so happy that you know we had this night together and I healed you of all your wounds but your horse is there go on go on keep going and every time we would sing it I would just get just chills up and down my body it was so beautiful and the story was so just gorgeous and it's still honestly to this day one of my favorite songs to sing and like if I'm up at up and up accidental at Marc and Shana's house and Vicki's home and like nine times out of time we'll be like let's sing healer not sing healer and we'll just Marc will just pull out a mandolin and we'll just start singing and there's Shana pull out a harp and she did not play harp on that song because she sang harmony on that song but yes there there are many nights in the Celine household where it's just people just have instruments Shana's harp is always right there so it's never more than you know a few feet away from her at any given time so she can always just start playing harp and there's I mean you've been there there's instruments on all walls at all given points there was one night I remember Jeanette and I just sat there counting how many instruments were in the room and we came up with like 47 or something ridiculous but I think that there's nothing better than a night of music at the Celine house it's very music that makes me feel good music that makes me happy is sitting in the living room at Marc and Shana's and just singing whatever comes to mind and playing whatever comes to mind and then that's I think the music of my life that has made me the happiest and Marc and Shana have become you know two of the dearest most most treasured people in my entire life and to think that I first met these people in what 1990 in San Bernardino at the Renaissance Fair and here we are 2024 and they're still my heart and soul like that's a that's a pretty good run I'm kind of running out of things to say when you are kind enough to say yes I'll talk to you yes Dan was your next thought I got to be sure to mention so-and-so or such and such and so this is your time to well my first thought was why would Dan want to talk to me and why would anybody want to listen to me talk because that's just generally how I look at myself and I think nobody nobody wants to hear me but then once I got past that you know I really I knew that I wanted to talk about Linda and I did that I knew I wanted to talk about Phyllis and I did that Marc and Shana have been some of the biggest influences in my musical career throughout everything all my fair years they've been to support me and things I've done outside of fair they've they've always been there for me and yes I did I sang with the Mary Wives and I love love those women I think Heather Green is a genius she and Claire Broderick as well that the two of them are again musical geniuses I have people around me that are insanely brilliant my early years at fair were surrounded with storytellers and magicians and artists of every kind I look back at at the people that I knew then that I still to this day consider friends and even just like family of the heart and I just feel so so blessed my god the Cadel family Sandra Cadel and I we go back to that crazy 1989 1990 times and I got to watch little baby Hana grow up from being a little fair brat and turn into our queen what an amazing life we've all lived through these fairs I got to have my own kid grow up on a fair site he got to be a fair brat and grow up with just getting filthy dirty by the end of the day and come home with hay in his hair and dirt and you can jump his nose and be like mom I found a snake it was the best just fair brats are the best every meaningful relationship I think I've ever had in my life that's come from the fair one thing and maybe I should have made this observation earlier is that you have excellent work habits okay because you seem to be able to listen very well to what the director is asking of you you internalize it and then you offer suggestions that are very helpful and are in keeping with the spirit in which it was presented to you first of all do you think that's true and second of all do you think that attitude comes from working on a lot of fair shows that are I'm not going to say directorless but require the energy of everybody to be on the same wavelength um I know yeah I I think I have good work habits sort of I've fought against my ADD my whole life so I'm always a little scattered but I know that I take direction well I know I listen to my director as well I know that I take what a director gives me and try to give it back to what they're looking for and I think that comes from my theatrical training I know that people like Judy Corey have been massively influential in my being able to take something like you were saying where everybody on the stage kind of needs to be able to give the same energy and and create this thing together it's not necessarily that we don't have a director but you don't want the audience to look at this piece and go oh there's that one person in charge and everybody else is following them and I learned a lot of that from Judy Judy is the ultimate um why she may be the the lead and the and the director and everything else but she is going to give and take on stage to the point where she's giving back to all of her fellow performers the way that you want to be given to and I think that I was able to take stuff that I've gleaned from her and her brilliance and her mastery and take that like into my mad cell role because yes mad cell has to be in charge of that stage but every other person on that stage has to have the same level of commitment and energy or else the whole show falls apart and so I think that's a really interesting observation Dan and I love that you that you brought that up yeah and I do I do I think that you know having great directors who are also willing to take a back seat Dan was like that uh Mark is like that um you know like I said Judy was like that it's incredible to see uh James Hendrick who sort of struck me the same way with the britain ensemble in that he got everybody on the same page so that you had a sound coming that was really unified and he just did great shows it wasn't like James Hendrick and his backup band right and so easily could have been right so easily could have been and it wasn't same thing with him and quartermaster and I think quartermaster was divine in we were talking earlier about being having to understand every word quartermaster is has a master in that they all their addiction is brilliant you could understand their larry um I had the incredible incredible honor and good fortune in the last year and a half to be invited by James to join the tiki lulu's and every rehearsal with James Hendrick was like that yes he was the director and yes he was in charge and yes he made sure that the rehearsal was you know but we weren't wasting time but he listened to every other person and he listened to our input and he he always wanted to make sure that there was a give-and-take on stage and that there was a give-and-take in rehearsal and that you know every time that we came together that I always felt loved and appreciated and cherished in every one of those rehearsals and I'm heartbroken that I only got to sing with him for a year and a half and that we actually had just maybe a week before he passed we had had a text exchange about my my show Sweeney Todd was closing soon and I was going to be able to start heading back up to LA for those weekly tiki lulu rehearsals and I was like I can't wait to pull out my ukulele and sing with you again and he's like oh you have been so missed and you know your voice will be so welcomed and it just it came as such a surprise and a shock and he um he is missed very very much and I'm just so glad that I had this last year and a half to really get to know him because he'd always just been you know James Hendrick that guy on stage with you know Britain Ensemble or quartermaster and now I can call him my friend I never had that opportunity but I I admired the work that he did um so I think I am going to ask you my last question which is sort of a role play all right congratulations you have just been awarded the highly coveted Phyllis Patterson Award for lifetime achievement and fair skills applied to life the band has been told to sit on its hands and you have as much time as you like give me your acceptance speech wow this is an honor and I am I am blown away and I'm thrilled um thank you for this award I would like to thank Phyllis for creating the sandbox that we all get to play in and Ron of course I would like to thank Joseph Derry for very first bringing me to fair I would like to thank my sister for coming along with me at the very beginning and sticking by my side all those years my son for being a fair brat and embracing the fair life I am thankful for every person that has ever walked on one of these rickety wooden stages or hooked their heads out of a balcony above us or put on a doublet or an uncomfortable bodice in the heat and who came before us and made this happen um and to all of the fair brats and all of the upcoming performers just keep the magic going guys you know keep it going don't let the don't let the naysayers say nay because fair is worth it you know we're all worth it all of us fair folk oh and that's another thing we are fair folk people who are like ready I'm like this that's a strange word I mean I'm sure it means something to somebody but it's not my word anyway that's my thank you speech and I'd like to thank Dan McLaughlin for having me on his podcast and I'd like to thank Mark Celine for being amazing and Shawna Celine for being the person I want to be when I grow up well I look forward to seeing what you will be producing and directing in the years to come well I think I'll stop recording now this has been a joy thank you for having me it's been my pleasure stop recording well that's it for this episode of fair folk at work recorded June 2024 it's my interview with Laura Gregory you know if you want to listen to Laura Singh just go to Spotify find a playlist called Laura Gregory Sings and you can hear Laura Gregory Singing if you'd like me to forward a message on to Laura you can email me at djng@earthlink.net if you have a question or comment for me Dan McLaughlin you can email me at djng@earthlink.net or if you or somebody you know would like to be a guest on fair folk at work contact me at djng@earthlink.net that's enough for this time thanks for listening so long and bye bye