Jean Eberhardt: I interviewed Carol Elwood about her engagement with music in Olympia and she briefly exposed some raw feelings about her time in our community. In reference to political or sexual orientation, we would perhaps call it political correctness now. Carol’s comments gave me pause about how some of us treated others who didn’t know yet where they stood on different issues. Personally, I am grateful to have mellowed over time, and in hindsight I sure wish I had been more compassionate. Carol and I lived together during my first year in Olympia and we worked in construction for a couple of years. Together we also drove giant, lumbering, pea-harvesting combines for General Foods in Walla Walla, Washington. I am happy about reconnecting with my friend who lives in Bend, Oregon with her husband Perry in a cohousing community. She’s still making music.

Carol Elwood: I grew up in relatively conservative Pullman and had what I consider a “normal” straight-laced background. I had no concept of who I was as a person, except that I believed in following rules and doing my best to get good grades and trying to avoid bullying. Contrasting all of that was this new college in Olympia that gave me, or us, a new identity. We were called hippies. I felt a very welcoming sense of comfort, that I belonged at Evergreen and people accepted me.

I played violin from fourth grade on. I played briefly with the chamber orchestra at The Evergreen State College when I was a student there. I had a lot of friends in the early ’70s who were in the Evergreen academic program called American Music. Tom Foote was one of the profs. My friend Karen England was taking fiddle lessons from an old-time fiddler in Tenino and she practiced so diligently, more than I ever had. I’d never played anything by ear before but I tried a tune and just wow! It surprised me that it went well. So I got to hang out with those guys and they would play live music for square dances at Evergreen or at the grange halls. And there’s always a time when the caller is teaching the dancers what the steps are, while the band would be hanging back talking about what tunes that we’re going to play for this dance or this next dance and it would be a combination of three or four tunes. And they’d ask me, “Do you know this tune?” I’d say, “No,” and they’d say, “Well, here’s how it goes.” They would let me kind of stand behind them as they played things over and over and over, and I would learn the tunes. So that’s how I learned to play fiddle music, lucky that there was a strong leader and I could be a backup fiddler. And that gave me some confidence that I could play music that’s not just black dots on a page.

I recall starting a group called the New Women’s Poverty Band. I am going to guess that it was Anna Schlecht playing guitar, me playing fiddle, and maybe Grace Cox singing. Grace also played stand-up bass. I don’t know if I knew Grace yet. I mean, how could I not? I don’t remember how I met Anna.

Jean Eberhardt: Construction?
Carol: Did she work with Nozama or Artemis Construction?

Jean: Both!
Carol: Maybe I knew Anna because of the bisexual women’s support group [at that time, Anna identified as bisexual, but doesn’t anymore]. Or maybe I already knew her before that. So, I’m unclear exactly who was in it, but we all came from working-class families and we performed songs of struggle. I’m unclear exactly when we started the band . . . I remember one song:

We thought that was a great, sarcastic song challenging sexism. I don’t remember other specifics about what we sang or how long the group lasted. I can see a poster in my mind of a cowboy hat hanging on a mic stand and our name: New Women’s Poverty Band. Yeah, Don Martin from Hard Rain Printing Collective probably created the poster.

You know, another kind of music I was doing earlier than that was Balkan music with Scott Rhode. He lived in my house and was lovers with Ken Schulman and they sang Balkan songs and needed another part. So, they taught me some songs and eventually a group started, you know, people from Olympia went to a Balkan singing workshop in Seattle and started learning songs and teaching them to each other and teaching them to our friends and then performing and teaching at the Folklife Festival in Seattle.

Jean: And that was happening while you were still living in Olympia?
Carol: Oh, yeah. In my junior year at Evergreen, I was in Chautauqua, which was a year-long performing arts program. I was singing Balkan music. And then in my last year I did an individual learning contract in which I patched together teaching Balkan songs, learning Balkan songs, learning Balkan fiddle, and I was doing a lot of that in Seattle with friends I knew there and making a costume with intricate Bulgarian designs. What I remember performing at Apple Jam at the Oly YWCA was Balkan music. I think that music gave me the idea that I could actually sing because it was a very different vocal style than what I considered sweet Western singing. I felt successful at it, partly because there was not a lot of judgment. You know, when you’re doing music that nobody else knows about, they’re not going to criticize you!

I think the Citizens Band must have started in 1981. I’m gonna guess it started with Harry Levine and Grace Cox. I remember Sean Sinclair and Sarah Meardon jamming on Redemption Song. I think I got invited because Grace knew me through the New Women’s Poverty Band. I did start playing my fiddle there and everyone had different contributions.

Jean: Were you involved in Citizens Band’s first first album?\
Carol: Yes! Pocket Full of Rocks. I can remember a lot of the songs. That was the basic crew for a while I think. A few people dropped out but we didn’t have a lot of newcomers until Sarah moved out of town and had a head injury and she wasn’t playing. I believe I quit before leaving Olympia. So, I’m not sure, but I think I was in the band for nearly 10 years. But I think it did get down to Harry and Grace. And then they recruited Jim Cubbage and whoever played fiddle, Eliza Welch or somebody I don’t really know. They would perform at Folklife and, after I moved to Seattle, I’d see them there and they’d say, “Come on up on the stage and sing Red Emma with us.”

Jean: Did you ever go to the country fair outside of Eugene with the band?
Carol: Yeah, it was my one and only time at the Oregon Country Fair. That was grand! To be there as a performer, in my mind, is the only way to be there. Otherwise, it’s really a zoo but, no, you get to camp on the grounds and you get your own private space. You get to stay after they close the fair and they sweep the entire grounds of all the public visitors. There’s a midnight show of all the performers performing for each other! I’m not sure but I think we performed on multiple stages. We had our work cut out for us, but it wasn’t hard. It was a blast.

We also had a band trip to Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon, which I think was my first time at Breitenbush. We performed there at an Earth First! event and we got invited to play music there. We had a lot of the equipment in my truck and we were driving it into Breitenbush, and people came running out waving their arms and yelling, “You can’t have vehicles in here! We can’t have vehicles around the people.” And we all started kind of laughing about that. I understand it. So, we didn’t know that we were supposed to park in the parking lot and use carts to move everything. I mean it was several trips—“You want to help us haul this stuff with amplifiers and who knows what else?” You know, that’s where I finally went to a lecture on old growth forests. And really finally understood what an ecosystem is.

My tenure in Citizens Band would have been 1981 through the late ’80s. I don’t know how long before leaving Oly I quit the band. I was unfamiliar with some of the anarchist politics of other band members and didn’t know myself well enough or have the confidence to have a discussion with them about it. Pocket Full of Rocks, that first album cover that I’m on, has a photoshopped (before there was such a thing) image of a state patrol vehicle with a smashed windshield. Band members stand defiantly on the back cover. I was uncomfortable with that smashed windshield but wanted to be part of the band so I didn’t say anything. It struck me there were things we were singing and saying on stage that felt performative. Like, here were strong messages and I didn’t object to the messages being put out there but they didn’t really feel honest to me. I didn’t really support anarchy either, but I didn’t know why not, so I couldn’t have debated it with them. So, in a way, I think I had to leave that group to start identifying what did matter to me.

In the same way, backing out of the radical lesbian community in Olympia was necessary for me to decide what was really going on with me. I had felt pressure to conform in order to belong and I didn’t want to lose that sense of community, but I didn’t feel like I had permission to express myself. I know I was a follower. I used to worry in high school that I was a conformist. Like, that was a bad thing. You know? I thought it was a bad thing, and maybe it is, but I didn’t know how to evaluate issues and decide for myself what was important, to know exactly where did I stand? Right? I was just this wallflower. I went through 12 years of public school bullying and I blamed myself. I always thought that if I could correct the right thing about myself, it would stop. It was my clothing. It was my shoes. It was my hair. The pressure to feel I belonged was intense.

So, I left my childhood in Pullman and then I left my young adult life in Olympia, and continue to discover who I am.

I still play music, am active in progressive politics, and I volunteer in my community in Bend. I don’t regret any of the musical “hats” I’ve worn, and have learned that playing music with others is critical for me to continue this hobby, which gives me so much pleasure.