Search - Patty Carpenter, Melissa Shetler, Scott Shetler :: Under My Hat

(From the Album Notes by Verandah Porche) The morning after Valentine?s, my red wagon, frost-shelled, is gritted with salt like a wintry heart. Most days, I peel out of the dooryard Instead, I slip in Under My Hat, scrape ice and let music unwind our lives. "Music was my earliest memory," Patty says. "In the parlor, I made my mother put on Grieg?s ?The Hall of the Mountain King.? I did my own little sufi dance on the oriental rug until I dropped." By the time she and Scott became teen sweethearts, Patty had "a ton of songs." She lent dropped-out Scott her Martin guitar. "He would play all day, pick me up at school on my bicycle and I would ride home on the back." They balanced like that, close and precarious, "did the folk thing and landed in Vermont?s commune country, where we lived and improvised. By the early seventies, we were barnyard madonnas Music underscored our saga; Patty, Scott and their kid Melissa made the best of it. Born in ?72, Missy sang before she spoke and danced to Coltrane every morning. At UMass, Patty studied jazz with Reggie, Max, and Archie. At their handmade home, she studied the blues: hauled water from a frozen stream- after Scott blew South. "When I dropped him off at the train, Lester Young and Billy Holiday were playing ?Lover Man? on the radio. At the time, I knew it meant something, and it wasn?t good. Music fused and confused their lives. They moved on to new mates and material. At 4, Missy played kazoo with The Tin Band, By 12, she sang ?Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?? with Patty?s all-women rock group No Regrets, and ?Iko-Iko? with The Prime Rib Band, where Scott played reeds. Under My Hat is a jazz family album. The jewel case could be tooled leather. Inside, Patty and Melissa harmonize, croon, coax, chat and scat about love and survival. Sometimes you can?t tell who?s carrying the tune: Patty is satin, Melissa is smoke Around and between lyrics and cadences, Scott holds court on assorted horns. The Dysfunctional Family Jazz Band fleshes out the sound. New Orleans funk, Baltimore jazz, New York R & B, Irish fire, Hendrix meets Zollar, with the Carpenter-Shetler postnuclear trio. Together, they span distances and traditions, take turns and liberties, spar and groove in a show place like home.