Artists:Lafe

I’m Lafe (short for Lafayette; rhymes with “waif”), born on a Vermont farm and raised on jacked deer and food stamps. I picked up the guitar at 13 and soon hit the road, sleeping under a set of stairs at Goddard College and crisscrossing the United States by thumb and boxcar. I managed to finish high school at an alternative school, mostly for street kids, and became lead singer in Chesterfield, a country rock band. Soon we changed the band’s name to the Harbour Hidaways to accommodate a restaurant that offered us a steady gig if we’d adopt its name. Given the artistic principals we held at the time, we immediately agreed. Before long, the band was playing 4 and 5 nights a week. In the summer of 1980, the city of Burlington hired me to play while walking up and down Church Street every Saturday. Nobody listened for more than a minute or two, so I made up words constantly. Bob Dylan would shoot me if he knew what I did to "Blowing in the Wind." I’ve been writing songs ever since. I met Mark Greenberg (Grammy nominated producer and owner of Upstreet Productions) in 1972, when he was the director of the alternative high school. He converted me from a guitar "banger" to a finger- and flat-picker by showing me Reverend Gary Davis songs, Doc Watson tunes, and other tradition-based goodies. I became a "dropped D tuning" addict. Eventually, Mark and I became "Blue Moon," playing weddings, coffee houses, restaurants—anywhere people would listen. Once we even waded through a river to get to a gig. We've been playing off and on for 30 years now, much of it in our living rooms until recently. Mark now tells people we've just “come out of retirement. I've just finished my first recording—the CD “Am I Gone” (all originals), which Mark produced as well as played a bunch of instruments on. Our friend Coco Kallis (of Lonesome Road Band fame) sings on it too. I never took the plunge to play full-time, so making an album seemed like a "wannabe" thing. Now it seems strange I didn't do it 30 years ago.