Truth be told, Claudia Schmidt was a bit skeptical the last time she played Boulder. The strip mall location of the venue, Caffè Sole, which Schmidt will return to on Friday, Sept. 12, didn’t really inspire confidence from the outside.
But…
“What an incredible night that was,” Schmidt says. “The atmosphere is so thoughtful and intentional and warm. It seemed like everybody that came picked up on it. It was a packed house and a big love fest.”
But there has been a lot that caught Schmidt by surprise since “the last century.” The Michigan-based folkstress built a strong following, regularly filling theaters with her Joni Mitchell-esque voice layered over softly-strummed strings. But then she went on hiatus. Sort of.
“The thing is, I never really took a break,” says Schmidt. “I moved to an island, which was rather remote. My ex-husband and I were running a bed and breakfast there. I never stopped performing. I just had to stay closer to home because of the intensive, hands-on business.”
But semantics aside, Schmidt dropped off the touring circuit for a decade. And when she was ready to return, well…
“It was a lot harder than I thought it would be,” she says. “It was like having to go to the back of the line. I was pretty discouraged at many points in the whole process. And I don’t know that I’ve ever really caught up. It’s a different time now. I’m considered an old woman by musical standards. It was always somewhat youth-oriented, but even more so now. Fortunately, I’m a very tenacious person. And I don’t have any other job skills, so I had to hang in there.”
That struggle was a big part of what made her last performance at Caffè Sole so memorable for Schmidt.
“It’s been a process of re-finding my people,” she says. “I felt like that really happened at Caffè Sole last year. It was joyous, like a reunion.”
Schmidt’s weapon of choice to re-find those people is her old favorite: the dulcimer.
“The 12-string [guitar] has that fullness, that full-range fullness,” she says. “The dulcimer in contrast is austere, just four strings. It’s very modal. It stands in a stark contrast to the 12-string guitar. … It’s taught me a lot because of its limitations, taught me a lot harmonically.”
Schmidt plays the dulcimer in an unusual manner, with more chords than the typical approach.
But the thing that most sets her brand of folk and jazz apart is her smooth vocal tone, completely free of rural grit or twang.
“I grew up singing in choirs, which explains the clarity of my voice,” says Schmidt. “It’s drilled into you to sing clearly, and to not garble your words.”
But despite her choir background, when Schmidt was younger and looking to make her way in the music world, folk seemed the way to go.
“It was accessible to me, seeing as how I had a guitar and a dulcimer and I was writing songs,” she says. “It was more about what was available.”
Once she had established herself, she began to work in more elements of jazz.
“All that really develops the voice in a different way,” she says. “I think of it like playing an instrument in terms of finding nuance and color.”
Another element of nuance Schmidt has been able to develop was writing songs for stage and film, something Schmidt says requires accessing a different part of one’s “creative juju.”
“You’re not just sitting around and waiting for something to happen,” says Schmidt. “I heard an artist quoted not too long ago, an interviewer asked, ‘What inspires you?’ And he said, ‘Inspiration is for amateurs.’ Composing is the job at that point, not the eventual performance or the evolution of the piece. You just have to produce something in a given amount of time.”
Schmidt says those experiences made her more efficient as a composer, which then bled into her other work as well.
And in the end, that’s the part that she has taken the most pleasure in during her “comeback.”
“I’ve been doing this for 40 years and I feel like I’m doing it better than ever,” she says. “I understand the process more. And it’s really exciting.”
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