By Jim Bloch
Claudia Schmidt, the folk and jazz artist, was born and raised in New Baltimore, Michigan. Her very first gig — as a teenager too young to drive — took place at the NCO Club at Selfridge Field, sitting in with the band in her royal blue double-knit dress, chauffeured to the base and chaperoned by her parents.
Even though she has played music around the world, the home of her heart may Beaver Island, the remote outpost in northern Lake Michigan where she has not lived for almost a quarter century. Her roots on the island run deeper than dune grass.
Already an established mid-career folk musician, Schmidt and her partner at the time opened The Rectory, a fine dining restaurant and bar featuring live music, on the island in the fall of 1996 and operated it until 2001.
“About five years,” she said after her Aug. 14 show at the Beaver Island Community Center, backed by bassist Andy Evans and pianist Steve Stargardt.
The restaurant, a former rectory, sits just outside of town on a hill next to the Catholic cemetery. It was called the Circle M before Schmidt took it over, and it’s called the Circle M now.
Running the Rectory was not always her favorite thing to do.
“Opening a restaurant was a great way to jump-stop my (musical) career,” she said during a folk concert on the island about a decade ago.
But it led to her first jazz CD in 2001, “Live at the Old Rectory Pub” with her jazz band the Jump Boys. The trumpet player in that band had walked into an open mic night at the Rectory and planted a musical seed that is still growing; Stargardt was the piano player in the group.
The main link to the island from the mainland is the Beaver Island Ferry, a two-and-a-half-hour trip out of Charlevoix to the tiny port of St. James on Paradise Bay.
“Coming on the boat this morning, seeing the beautiful skyline of St. James – wow,” she said. The skyline is made up of trees, a smattering of two-story clapboard storefronts and a collage of cottages.
“My parents are both in eternal rest on the island,” Schmidt said. She sang their favorite song, the Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald tune “Love is Here to Stay.”
Her older brother died a year ago and is also buried on the island. She sang his favorite song, too – “Shenandoah.”
Schmidt mixed her highly emotional songs with lighter, sometimes funny fare, including one of her so-called Covid hits, written early in the pandemic when everyone was washing their groceries and trying not to put their hands on their lips or in their eyes.
“I didn’t know my hands could consume more alcohol than my mouth,” she said. “So, I wrote a tango.”
The lyric runs: “I reach for my beloved, and he says/You can touch me almost anyplace/But don’t touch my face.”
BI jazz
The Beaver Island Jazz Series is sponsored by Beaver Island Performing Arts Alliance, the Beaver Island Community Center and the island’s radio station WVBI, which features jazz music daily on Jazz Night Watch 10 p.m.-6 a.m., Cool Jazz Countdown, Wednesdays at 10 p.m., and on Full Moon Hacksaw, Sundays at 10 p.m.
The next opportunity to hear jazz at the BIC is Oct. 11 at 7:30 p.m., when the Caffeine Patrol presents an evening of Western swing and hillbilly jazz.
Poetry and jazz
Now and then between songs, Schmidt shifted to spoken word poetry.
Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day” struck an especially resonant chord on an island that is comprised largely of woods, wetlands, beaches and old Mormon farm fields.
“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is,” recited Schmidt. “I do know how to pay attention,/how to fall down/into the grass, how to kneel down/in the grass,/how to be idle and blessed, how to/stroll through the fields,/which is what I’ve been doing all day./Tell me, what else should I have done?/Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?/Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Jim Bloch is a freelance writer based in St. Clair, Michigan. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.
