Stephen Fredette

http://www.myspace.com/thepony
http://www.myspace.com/stephen_fredette

http://www.jimsullivanink.com/content/view/1621/1/

From Third Annual Stephen Fredette Benefit

Stephen Fredette - you may remember him from Scruffy the Cat, a roots-rocking '80s Boston band - has played a lot of benefits in his day. Musicians get sick, musicians lack proper insurace; musicians depend on a little help from their friends. That's the way it goes in this NO SOCIALIST MEDICINE FOR US! (WELL EXCEPT MEDICARE) country. But Fredette, who had a bone marrow transplant last winter, is battling lymphoma and it ain't cheap. He has insurance, yes, but, he says "there's a lot of out-of-pocket expenses and co-pays." Fredette's pal, longtime promoter-Boston music booster Billy Ruane, is putting on another benefit for his bud, this time Saturday Nov. 7 at the Lizard Lounge. Billy does not just put one a couple of acts. Nope, he packs the house and here we have Drug Rug, at the top of the bill, playing around 1 a.m. Before them: Morgan Nagler (in photo) and Vanesa Corbala (both from The Whispertown 2000), Nina Violet, Lady Lamb The Beekeeper, The Chris Brokaw Twelve Sring Guitar Trio, the Jimmy Ryan Hayride, Kelsey Bennett, Seana Carmondy (ex-Swirlies) and Dave Norton, Sway, The Sheraton Commanders (featuring Stephen's brother David on guitar) and the New Black Magic Rainbow Quartet. Each act will play about a half hour and a wide range of sound is promised. Some particulars: Doors are at 6 and free food will be offered between 6:30 and 7:30, which will probably include fried chicken and fish tacos. Now, there are no advance tickets. It's all walk-up and it costs $10 before 9 and $12 (both cheap) afterwards. For a profile of Morgan Nagler and what she and her band are up to - and a chat with Fredette about his life - click "read more." (The URL at the end of this piecee will link you to the acts' websites.)

One of the key acts is Morgan Nagler and Vanessa Corbala, the female and singing half of alt-country/folk/indy rock band The Whispertown 2000. Q calls Whispertown 2000’s music equal parts “wonder and darkness.” Uncut wrote of Whispertown 2000’s last disc: “Swim is the kind of record you wish people made more often: rural music played by suburban kids with an intuitive feel for the unruly punk heart of old-time country. Nagler’s expressive voice has a baleful twang that shunts these songs - some with the most minimal of arrangements, some like ragged revivalist hoedowns – into the same lugubrious territory as Bonnie Billy or Oberst himself. It’s a ploy that cleverly subverts itself on “Lock And Key” and “From The Start Jamboree”, where their own communal folk shanty is appended by a foggy mountain breakdown that’s part Bill Monroe, part Silver Jews. They’re experimental too, prone to sudden squalls of guitar, weird electronic bits and even weirder whistling noises that sound like some spectral tribe hooting an advance across the Virginia hills. In the case of “Erase The Lines”, all within the same song.”
We spoke with Nagler - who came to a measure of fame as a child actress back in the '80s - about what she and her band have been up to, its evolution and about this acosutic Cambridge gig.
Nagler started off playing solo, just acoustic guitar and voice. She called the project Vagtown 2000. Um …. “The whole Vag thing was really a terrible joke,” says Nagler. “At some point, when I heard the Whisper 2000 ad from the late-‘80s - it was something designed to overhear other people’s conversations …” Well, Nagler moved from Vagtown became Whispertown. “I was happy not to say the word ‘vag’ all the time,” she says. “This is perfect.”
“The band grew bit by bit. I started by myself and then Tod [Adrian Wisenbacker, guitar] and I started playing as an acoustic duo. Colt [Maloney, bass, no longer with them] came in in 2004 and in 2006 ‘Livin’ In A Dream’ came out, when Vanessa joined on drums. And then Tod’s brother Casey [Holden Wisenbaker, guitar] joined.”
It’s that group that made “Swim” and the new EP, “Done With Love,” out on vinyl in the UK and soon to be an iTunes download.” Whispertown 2000 is signed to Gillian Welch’s label, Acony.
What does she prefer? A semi-rocking band or solo acoustic? “It’s fun to play with a punch of people and rock out,” she says. “But acoustic is also great. We don’t normally do it, but Billy wanted a more broken down set. A totally acoustic show. We’ll do old material and new.”
Whispertown 2000’s songs are often somber, displaying various shades of sadness and emotional strife. “I feel songwriting for me is the best outlet for all of that stuff,” says Nagler. “A lot of people don’t know what to do with it. I like to think of it as a conscious thought-out process, but I like to think it’s closer to tapping into the subconscious, without being filtered. Those are the things that need to come, the pain and sadness. That’s not to say my life is full of pain and sadness. My songwriting is really about hope, acknowledging the pain and sadness.” Yes, she says, “people do get this impression” that she’s that woman singing the songs.
Whispertown 2000, she says, has been on tour in the US, UK and Europe constantly over the past eight months. She’s on a mini-break now where she’s writing songs. Which are coming from where? “The songwriting thing come in phases and right now I feel like coming from a viewpoint, I recently haven’t described yet. I believe in a soul. But I started to question the magic, and the idea that science is less amazing even if it’s not crazy supernatural. I’m looking at life from a different stand point in my mind Science used to be separate form spirituality. Recently, I’ve been looking at it as one
thing. … It may not be so obvious in the songs.”
Stephen Fredette, now 53, was diagonsed with mantle cell non-Hodgkins lymphoma in August of 2007. He's being treated at the Dana Farber Cancer Institue. He has undergone six rounds of chemotherapy and had a bone marrow transplant in April - the donor being, he believes, "a 20-year-old woman from Europe,
probably German, meaning I'm genetically female as my blood has XX chromosomes. I'm a chimera ... One good thing about chemotherapy, you have a clean slate. You can read things you read two months before" and not remember them. "One small boon." Fredette, who used to work in a book store, has thousands of books as companions.
"The bone marrow transplant was succesful and anti-climactic at the same time," he says. "I'm considered a whiz kid by my doctors. In a normal transplant, the body may reject the organs. In a bone marrow transplant, the transplant can reject you and there are horrible ways it manifests itself. And I have not had have a trace of that. It occurs in 80 percent of the cases, but I'm OK." He immediately jokes that now that's he's stated that, he's opened the door to a world of bad, coming any moment now.
"It's an incredibly rare form of cancer," Fredette continues. "They can rid of it, but it tends to come back right away. About 3000 people a year get it in this country. It's pesky. I came in on this cusp where a lot of work had been done [treating it] so I'm sort of breaking ground."
As you might be able to tell, the rocker has not lost his sense of humor. It's a coping mechanism, of course, but it's always been part of Fredette's life, so he's basically applied it to a situation he describes as being "inconvienced and annoyed."
How so? Well, he's on these immuno-supressant drugs until next April and until then he's essentially quarrantined to his Hull home. He doesn't even go to the attic or basement. Too much dust, dirt or mildew potential and a possibility of contracting a disease he can't fight off.
"I'm under restrictions," he says. "I have a far more effective bracelet than most crimials do. If I were to go out and pick up a stray virus, I would die. I can go our for a nice walk on the beach or in the woods, but I can't go shopping or to a club."
And that makes him feel ... "All cancer and no play makes Jack a dull boy," he says paraphrasing Stephen King's famous line from "The Shining," as memorably typed out by psychotic novelist Jack Nicholson in the movie.
This means that Fredette's band, the Ponys, won't be playing at the Lizard Lounge benefit Saturday. "I can honestly say that I can't be there, but I really would like to be there and see people and say hi and thank people." He recommends people greet him through his brother, guitarist Dave Fredette, who will be there.
As to Billy Ruane, the guy who's organized this cavalcade of acts for the third straight year, Fredette says, "Billy has been such a huge help. There is insurance paying for it, but the way insurance goes, there's a large out-of-pocket thing, and I've been unemployed for three years. ..."
How does he feel? "When I was first diagnosed there was a lot of pain. At the worst, I had my spleen removed a year ago - it had become really cancerous - and I was not feeling really good and lost tons of weight. Now, physically, I feel absolutely normal. I feel great."

http://fredettebenefit3.blogspot.com/2009/10/fredette-benefit-2009-lineup.html

http://fredettebenefit3.blogspot.com/2009/10/fredette-benefit-2009-lineup.html
1667 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, 617-547-0759 www.lizardloungeclub.com