A Higher Love

The Spinning Leaves march on the Folk Festival.

by John Vettese

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Published: Aug 18, 2010

Neal Santos IN THE STARS: "A lot of things with our band have been cosmically aligned," says Michael Baker, above with Barbara Gettes.

[ folk/pop ]

Four years ago, freshly relocated to an apartment above the Italian Market, Barbara Gettes befriended a neighborhood woman named Tracey.

She was homeless, and spent her days walking up and down Ninth Street, humming along to the crackling sounds of her transistor radio.

"It was the one thing that made her happy. Well, that or a 40," Gettes remembers. "But it was stolen."

This was Thanksgiving weekend 2006; Gettes had just begun making music with Michael Baker. While Gettes' family dined downstairs in her parents' Plymouth Meeting home, she shut herself in an upstairs room with her acoustic guitar, a Nashville chord progression and a story to tell.

All she needed was her radio, but where is it now, oh where did it go?

"It was stolen, so I wrote this song for her to have."

Gettes and Baker look at the music they make as The Spinning Leaves the same way. They mean for their music to build community, to make a positive impact on those they share it with.

This is the unifying aspiration of The Spinning Leaves, who play the Folk Fest this week, though the group's songs are the work of two very distinct personalities.

Before he came to Philadelphia, Baker lived in Henderson, Ky. His parents hail from South Carolina, and he grew up surrounded by bluegrass and Appalachian folk music.

"I grew up 30 minutes from where Bill Munroe grew up," he says.

But the influence lay dormant. When he studied history at Central Kentucky's Transylvania University, he played in a band that did "mood music" and "soundscapes." He lived in Europe for a year before resettling in Philadelphia where, inspired by the active roots scene, he gave folk a go. Baker reasons that he needed to get away from home before it could inform his work.

"The music I play now, I could not have played while I lived in Kentucky," Baker figures. "I hadn't owned it yet, I hadn't come into it."

Gettes also arrived circuitously. The Lafayette Hill native's background is in education and nonprofits, including a stint volunteering for Project Avary (funded by the Grateful Dead's Rex Foundation), which aids the children of incarcerated parents. For Gettes, music was a form of outreach. It was also a personal hurdle.

"I was never scared to teach a child to read," she says. "But I was petrified to get behind the microphone."

The two met at Gettes' 29th birthday party in 2006. Baker describes how Gettes was flabbergasted; that day she'd told a friend she wanted to meet somebody from Kentucky. "A lot of things with our band have been cosmically aligned like that," says Baker.

They got together the following day to play songs at Gettes' apartment. "Oh, Sister," from Bob Dylan's Desire, was their first duet. When they next met, they took Baker's backpacker guitar to the Wissahickon Creek and wrote a song called "A Walk in the Woods." The music flowed effortlessly, and culminated in the album Love, released earlier this year on Ropeadope Records.

It's easy to mistake Love, with its warm harmonies and lush arrangements, for a simple romantic treatise. It certainly has moments of longing ("Fire") and desire ("Lonely Firefly"). But it's more than just two googly-eyed folkie kids.

See the jazzy bop of "Try, Try, Try, Try, Try, Try"; the characters in its verses are destitute and frustrated, a man on a shooting spree, a woman starving in an alleyway. The chorus is a call to overcome ("let's get together and try"). Or Gettes' "Transistor Radio," for Tracey.

"Love is a complete smorgasbord," says Baker. "It drives people to do good stuff and bad stuff, but it drives people."

The gorgeous "Blowin' in the Wind"-esque centerpiece, "Bridges for Free," locks in on this. Amid echoing slide guitar and lyrical talk of "recovery and destruction," it drops this couplet:

Love landed somewhere in Philadelphia

And sat with a movement — a movement for change.

Gettes says the album's thesis wasn't planned. It grew from the powerful connection she and Baker share. "From the beginning, it felt like we were a vehicle to convey this love."

"There are so many ways to be disconnected from everything around you in the 21st century," Baker says, his cell phone crackling on a long tour drive to Cleveland. "Music can bring people out of that."

For example, The Spinning Leaves perform with as few as two members and as many as 20, but they recorded Love with over 50 musicians from the Philadelphia folk scene.

And last summer, the Leaves founded the Philadelphia Folk Parade, a rotating-venue showcase of the city's musicians. This spring, 11 Parade regulars packed a van and a car and, minstrel-style, took the variety show on the road.

Gettes says this affects more than just musicians, pointing out showcases — like the Kennett Square Farmers Market, or the Sept. 12 Bike Philly after-party at Johnny Brenda's — which reach broader, more disparate crowds.

The Spinning Leaves view their Folk Parade as a model to be replicated elsewhere. In an era where music is becoming less viable as an industry, Baker talks of artists making a veritable co-op where the power of many can defray costs of things small (posters, guitar strings) and large (tour vans, studio time).

"It comes down to mutual empowerment," says Baker. "We can all do bigger things together."

To wit: At Folk Fest, Baker says, their band will be 12 members strong, making a joyful spectacle.

"We're nothing short of trying to create a revolution."

(john.vettese@citypaper.net)

Spinning Leaves will play Fri., Aug. 20, 4 p.m., and Sat., Aug. 21, noon. For more Folk Fest coverage, see our best-bet picks and Mary Armstrong's feature on Amelia Curran.

Flight of the Barfly
Folk Fest Bets
Conversations with Enemies
The Quickness
Trey Songz
Bells Bells Bells/Acres of Diamonds