Our troupe came together organically and by serendipity during a time of economic recession and political and cultural turmoil. We were an unusual, evolving group of mostly white, creative, working-class, young adults who wanted our perspectives to be heard. Our hard-working collective created or produced 17 plays on a shoestring from 1975 until 1981.

I arrived in the spring [of 1981] and didn’t really have a plan, just hoped the universe would take care of me. I had my guitar and my flute, headed to Percival Landing, and put out a hat. usking was slow that time of year, but a wonderful woman came by and offered to let me play in her coffee shop for tips and snacks: first gig, Café Intermezzo.

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.

This was not a small project. The wall was over 15 feet tall by 15 feet wide. “I sketched out the image to create an outline,” said Joe, “and then I created a color chart showing where the various blues, grays and whites would go.” This made it easier to paint, and easier to get other folks to help him. “I would recruit passersby to come pick up a brush and help me paint,” said Joe. “The entire mural took about a week and a half to finish.”

“Jingle Coins,” “O Con All the Faithful,” “Clanging Bells.” These were the titles of some of the anti-Christmas carols ten or more of us sang in 1977. The venue was a huge new shopping mall that opened that year in Olympia. We drew in holiday shoppers with our familiar harmonies, and ever so slowly they understood these weren’t quite the same Christmas carols they remembered. New lyrics to “Jingle Bells,” “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “Silver Bells,” and several others were borrowed from the Fallen Angel Choir and Family Circus Theatre in Portland with whom several of us were good friends. We also wrote a few new lyrics ourselves.

Olympia has a history not just of supporting roots music but also of being a Mecca for jazz artists, a petri dish for punk and garage, and a rich soil for the growth of Latin influenced bands.

I think the state’s capital is a treasure—beautiful, less crowded, economically accessible, friendly, it had great schools for my kids, and it was a convenient commute to my day gig as Director of Jazz at Pacific Lutheran University in south Tacoma. To my delight, I also discovered a vibrant community of musicians in Olympia, some of international repute and stature.  Unfettered by the lack of local gigs, these wonderful artists’ activities have flourished, and they welcomed me into the fold with the same small-town warmth possessed by the city in general.

In 1983, Lynn Patterson (aka LLyn De Danaan, photographer and cultural anthropologist), Marilyn Frasca (visual artist and Evergreen faculty), Shannon Osborne (owner of Smithfield Café), Mary Fitzgerald (photographer), Candy Street, Cappy Thompson (glass artist) and Carolyn McIntyre (the founder of Radiance) created an arts feast to demonstrate that artists were at the core of a new Olympia. They organized a month-long “Celebration of Olympia Artists” and, in the spirit of inclusivity and collaboration, invited the community to submit information about their own events and to participate in a variety of shows.