The Carla Sciaky Interview

When and where were you born? What was your childhood like growing up? When did you first begin to fall in love with music, more specifically the guitar? Was this something that was relevant growing up in your household?

I was born in Brooklyn, New York. When I was five years old and my brother was almost two, we moved to Colorado, where we settled in Boulder. I moved to Denver in 1978. I don’t know how to describe it haha – too big a question! I grew up in the late 1950s and 60s. My parents were very liberal politically, which wasn’t true for many of my friends. I went through the public school system in Boulder, which meant elementary school K-6, junior high was 7-9 and high school would have been 10- 12, but I took extra classes and graduated at the end of the summer following my junior year. My mother grew up in New York City in the 1930s and 40s and during her teens she fell into a wonderful community through Margot Mayo and the American Square Dance Group. Margot was friends with the likes of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, so my mother met them both, among others. She is one of the square dancers in the Pete Seeger movie “To Hear Your Banjo Play”. By the time she and my father got married, she was a camp counselor and a few years later, a nursery school teacher, playing guitar and piano and singing with her students while I was in her belly. I was singing whole songs with multiple verses before the age of two. My mother taught me how to play the piano starting at age 7. I learned violin starting age 9 through the public school system in Boulder. And my grandmother bought me my first guitar when I was 14. Music was always an intrinsic and organic part of my life.

What would you and your friends do for fun growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years?

My family home in Boulder had an enormous backyard that faced several other backyards in the neighborhood and almost everyone in those houses had children. In the back part of our lot, an enormous old cottonwood tree had had to be felled when our house was built. My parents cleared off all the branches and left it lying on its side. All the neighborhood kids would come over and we would play on it for hours every day. It was our boat out in the ocean, or our rocket ship that landed on a strange planet. We also played badminton, practiced long jump and rode our bikes around the vacant lots behind our back yard. I grew up listening to both classical and folk music on our record player (you couldn’t even call it a stereo – we only had one big speaker.) My mother loved Mozart and Beethoven and my father loved baroque music. My mother also listened to Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Jean Redpath, Jean Ritchie and Joan Baez. My father listened to the New Lost City Ramblers, Earl Scruggs, Bill Monroe and some more of the original old timey and bluegrass recording artists. Later I started buying albums by the Beatles – I bought my first album in 1966 for $2.87 and it took me weeks to save the money for it. And later, I bought Simon and Garfunkel and Joni Mitchell albums. And my father began to bring home Folk Legacy records, like the Golden Ring, Ed Trickett and Gordon Bok that he bought in a folk music store in Denver, near where he worked.

When and where did you see your very first concert? When did you realize you wanted to spend your time pursuing music and art?

I actually don’t know, I do not even remember what concert it might have been. When I was 10, I began to take piano lessons from a real teacher and started playing in piano recitals. My teacher then suggested to my father that he start taking me to faculty concerts at the University of Colorado, which is in Boulder. So periodically he and I would go to those. And then in 1969 my father discovered a house band called “The Lovin’ Sound” playing at a family restaurant and bar in Boulder called The Hungry Farmer. He and my mother went every weekend and took me with them occasionally – and by then, the leader of the band, Joe Jackson, was my guitar teacher. Joe would sometimes invite me up on stage to sing with the band. Sometime in there my father took me to a Peter, Paul and Mary concert. And at CU, I attended a Phil Ochs concert and later a Joni Mitchell concert. But I don’t know the chronology of it all – and in my mind it was all performance – I didn’t distinguish between a recital, a house band on stage and a concert. In a way, I never really made that decision, it just kind of happened that way. When I was in high school I was asked to play for a political rally and I asked a friend to sing with me and after that, we continued to play together. A few months later we added a third person and then a fourth and fifth and we became a band called Propinquity. By then I had graduated from high school and my band was touring all over Colorado and later the Midwest and east coast and we recorded an album. So that was what I did. But my plan was still what it had always been – to be an elementary school teacher. So in 1973 when my band broke up, I went back to college. I graduated in 1977 and tried to find a “real job”, but nothing came through. In the meantime I had begun playing folk music as a solo act and also was playing medieval and renaissance music – which I was introduced to in college – with a quartet and that was becoming pretty successful too. We played Carnegie Recital Hall as a New York debut in 1980.

When and where did you play your very first gig and what was that experience like for you? Tell me about writing and recording your debut album “To Meet You” back in ‘82. What was the overall vision and approach to those tunes and the deal with Propinquity Records come about?

My very first gig, the one at the political rally with my friend when I was 16, was both terrifying and exciting. We sang exactly three songs together and then one solo each. That was the fall of 1970. My first solo gig was in 1978. I was nervous-to-death all day, nauseously nervous, but the moment I stepped into the hall that night, it was magical and perfect. I was a born a performer and I loved it, in some ways even more than playing with my band, since I now was my own voice. That’s a great question! I knew I wanted to play folk festivals and I understood that having a solo album would be a great asset. After that awareness, I ran into the Diane Sward Rapaport book “How to Make and Sell Your Own Record,” which I promptly bought. I studied every chapter and followed it to the best of my ability. I had to find a music lawyer – there was only one in Denver – and he helped me create a limited partnership for Propinquity Records. I created a budget and found investors to fund my first record. Through my medieval/renaissance ensemble, I had met a recording engineer that I really liked, so I went to his studio and he helped educate me as we went, even stepping in as co-producer with me. I had already written and collected the songs – they were an active part of my performing repertoire. For a few of the songs I brought in some Denver musicians who were friends of mine and I recorded a couple of tracks and songs out in Los Angeles with friends there. The manufacturing process was a very steep learning curve, but thanks to Rapaport’s book, I just did the research and made it happen!

‘85 saw the release of “In Between”. Can you tell me about that project and how you wanted to approach this album that differs from your previous work? You would go on to release works such as “Under the Quarter Moon”, “The Undertow” and a handful of other works. What have been some of your fondest memories of your career?

This, being my second solo album, felt to me like simply “the next one.” Again, I selected songs from my current performing repertoire and this time I added more musician friends to more tracks. I didn’t think of it as much different, rather it was just about putting more repertoire out there and continuing to present myself as a professional songwriter/folksinger who was serious about her career. I think I am proudest of my two albums “Spin the Weaver’s Song” and “Awakening”, as I feel they represent the highest level of both my writing and my researching (up until then). The thing I loved most about my career was all the people I got to meet and many of those encounters led to long-standing friendships. My husband toured with me until our older daughter turned 2, so because of my music career, the two – and then three – of us travelled to all, but three, or four of the states in the US. We loved seeing parts of the country that we might never have gone to otherwise. And of course being immersed in music was an amazing way to live! Writing my own songs was part of the healing process of my life, as well as learning songs by many of my contemporaries, songs that I resonated with on some level. And researching traditional repertoire and bringing those pieces to life was a connecHon to my parents. Both of my two children, now grown, are professional musicians, so obviously music has been central for our family.

When you reflect back on those early days what makes you most happy and fulfilled both as an artist and person?

I am quite proud of myself for all the brave steps I took to launch my career, particularly in both recording and touring, as I really did them on my own. Most of my Denver friends either didn’t have an album, or were lucky enough to be picked up by a label – and many of those labels did not last long. And almost none of them were touring yet. Looking back, it kind of amazes me that I had that much drive and courage! For me, seeing myself as an artist and person was kind of intertwined and in a sense, that is part of why I left touring behind in 1995. I felt like I had lost myself a little. My whole identity was wrapped around being a “successful” musician and I knew underneath that I was more than that. So I stepped back, basically I quit music. I put my focus on raising my kids, hoping to stumble on what I was really meant to be, or do. Finally, after a few years, I had an epiphany. It came to me like a bolt of lightning – I am a musician! It sounds obvious, but it’s like I had to discover it in a new way, not by default like the first time around. In the very early days of my career, it was a new frontier and I was a pioneer and that felt exciting, even thrilling! One of my first gigs on the east coast was a commemorative anniversary concert at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY and Pete Seeger was also in the line-up. My mother was so happy that I was looping back to her old stomping grounds, both geographically and personally. And at the same time, I was carving my own path forward, which was deeply gratifying.

And of course, being exposed to so much great music, created and performed by so many amazing artists across the decades has been an honor for me and a source of incredible joy. I feel very fortunate. But by the last few years, starting in 1989, I was dealing with depression and some health problems. I continued to tour, record, perform, everything I had been doing, but it was way harder. My energy was low, I didn’t feel well, I pushed myself very hard, while doing my best to hide it. That tough period was necessary, though. It finally became clear to me that my body was giving me a message from my heart and soul. I really had some growing and healing to do and I couldn’t do it with the pace of life I was trying to maintain, especially being out in front of other people all the time. In addition, once my older daughter had turned 2, she and my husband started staying home, so for over a year I was back to traveling all by myself. I was going on the road every other week for about 5 days. It was hard on all of us – my husband, our daughter and me. And one day, on a two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere in southern Idaho, I realized I was experiencing no joy from performing anymore. If there was no joy, it was not worth all the effort it was taking and certainly not worth the time I was missing with my daughter.

What have you been up to as of recently? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?

I am presently (November 2023) in the final months of recording my first solo album in almost thirty years! My life, post-touring, took me onto a deep and rich path, weaving threads learning and expanding, not only musically, but also in terms of healing – both myself and learning ways to help others heal – and spirituality, as I spent several decades in 12- step rooms and am now also trained as a spiritually-based life coach. Culling from all the wisdom that these traditions and teachers brought me, I now work with clients to assist their own development and healing. (doorwaytohealing.com) The songs on my upcoming release (not yet titled, but I’ll let you know when I know it) were written throughout the time when I was endeavoring to uncover who I was underneath the performing musician, up until the present. This time around, both of my grown kids are on some of the songs, which is a thrill! I have also brought in some of my Denver musician friends to add some tracks, vocally and instrumentally. I feel I have expanded stylistically a little bit, though I am sure my trademark sound is recognizable in there. For the past 18 years, I have been playing baroque violin with a professional chamber orchestra, a musical highlight of my career for sure. I had never before played with such accomplished musicians, guided by amazing directors and a highly supportive board. (bcocolorado.org) And together with a group I played with in the 1980s and ‘90s, the Mother Folkers, we were inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in November 2019. One of our members died a few years ago and her daughter sang with us in her stead, sweet and bittersweet. My daughter, who lives in Europe, actually flew in for the event. She said it felt like she had been born into the nest of the Mother Folkers, which was true. Way back in our day, we performed every year in March and April and then again some years in August. Our final spring concert in 1992 was on Sunday, April 12 and my daughter was born on Wednesday, April 15. Life does go on, doesn’t it?