Magpie's Greg Artzner and Terry Leonino: singing of the unsung

BY MITCHELL TROPIN

Listening to Greg Artzner and Terry Leonino is like heading through a familiar neighborhood. As you walk, you discover a beautiful house that somehow you never noticed before. Or you encounter someone with a fascinating story that you hear for the first time.

Artzner and Leonino, better known as Magpie, have been performing overlooked songs for 30 years, providing audiences unexpected treats. Similarly, their songs highlight people whose accomplishments have been overlooked, again giving an audience something new to enjoy.

An illustration of Magpie's approach to music is the duo's 25th anniversary CD. They avoided the usual greatest hits or "best of" album, and instead created a collection that honors Ella Baker, an overlooked hero of the civil rights moment, and an organizer of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

The CD's title song, "Give Light," is written by Artzner with Baker's words as lyrics.

"I knew of Ella Baker from my youth in the '60s, when my father worked for the Urban League and my family was involved in the movement," Artzner says. "We learned more about her over the years as we learned more of the details of the history of the movement."

Artzner and Leonino came across a poster of Baker in Philadelphia. Underneath her face was a quote: "Give light and people will find the way."

"We just knew there was a song there," Artzner says.

A few years back, Magpie discovered a forgotten song that Pete Seeger had written in the 1950s about Sacco and Vanzetti, Italian immigrants falsely executed for murder. Seeger wrote the song based on Sacco's poignant prison cell letters to his son. Decades later, Magpie performed the song at a festival. After they played, Seeger came up to them, saying, "That's my song. I wrote that song 30 years ago." They noticed there were tears on Seeger's cheeks.

Magpie chooses songs for an album according to which songs the couple has available and wants to use at the time.

"If there's a song that has not received proper attention, that's a plus for using it," Artzner says.

Leonino and Artzner are "researchers and archivists," Leonino says. "As musical historians, we look for the esoteric and look for things people forget about, and then present them."

Even their latest CD, Last Month of the Year, a combination Christmas-Hannukah-Kwanzaa-winter solstice album, contains something unexpected: a rare Hannukah song written by Woody Guthrie.

"We were going through an old copy of Sing Out! Magazine from the fall of 1967," Artzner says. "It was published right after Woody died, and it was supposed to have been an obituary issue for him. But instead there was an article about how [Folkways Records founder] Moses Asch challenged Guthrie to write a Hannukah song. We took the song right from the magazine."

Sitting in Mark's Kitchen, while eating steamed dumplings and sautéed vegetables, the duo talked about their three decades in music and how their musical and personal union started in their own home state of Ohio. Leonino is a native of Akron and Cuyahoga Falls, where her father worked for the Firestone Rubber Co. as a shop steward.

"As a union man, my father believed you were no good unless you worked with your hands. He was working class all the way," Leonino says.

Artzner grew up in Canton, a steel town, where his father took a job with the Urban League.

"I played my first gig at the age of 11, performing ‘Blowing in the Wind' for a jobs rally that the Urban League was sponsoring," he says. "Here was this 11-year-old white kid playing for all the black folks in Canton."

Artzner had dreams of becoming either a professional musician or an actor. But it wasn't until he met Leonino that he was convinced he could succeed as a performer.

"After meeting Terry, I found the mutual support I needed to really make a career in music possible," he says.

Their paths first crossed in the summer of 1973, when Leonino was working her way through Kent State University by playing music. Artzner was a townie, who performed at a local pub. One evening, while Greg was on a break, Terry got on stage and started playing.

"She was trying to steal my gig," Artzner says. "She even stacked the audience with her friends."

After the incident, she approached the young guitarist, and they have been a couple ever since–married for over two decades.

The name Magpie comes from the time Artzner and Leonino performed in a trio with bassist Mark Cozy, who had long, curly black hair. One day the three musicians were rehearsing in their apartment kitchen. A close friend walked in and noticed Cozy's thick black ringlets cascading down to his shoulder. The friend commented, "You know, Mark, you look like Farmer Cozy's banjo-playing magpie." Since the folk group needed a name, Magpie stuck.

Artzner and Leonino's career, however, did not take off until they traveled from Ohio to visit the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, held each summer on the National Mall in Washington. While touring the mall, the duo decided to earn some money by "busking"–playing for the crowds. Their singing caught the attention of Patty Glazer, daughter of "Labor's Troubadour" Joe Glazer. Patty approached them and offered to introduce them to her father.

After hearing Magpie perform, Glazer, a musician and former labor advisor to the U.S. Information Agency, arranged for the duo to do a State Department tour of Mexico. He later signed them to his record label, Collector Records. Magpie's first album was released in 1974. They have continued a close relationship with Glazer, performing on over two dozen of his albums.

Working with Glazer was something special–especially for Leonino, who grew up listening to Glazer's labor songs.

"My father had all of Joe's albums and actually knew him very well, since they were both with the United Rubber Workers," Leonino says. "I was validated in my father's eyes when I started singing with Joe Glazer."

A few years later, another trip produced a big change in Magpie's lives. The duo would often travel to Berkeley Springs. W.Va., to perform. The couple would stay with David Eisner, who had just opened the original House of Musical Traditions (HMT) there.

Artzner told Eisner that he would attract more business with a store in Takoma Park. Eisner agreed to open a branch of HMT if Artzner and Leonino would be the mana-gers. A deal was struck, and the couple found themselves in Takoma Park, where they have been residents for 25 years.

Artzner and Leonino's skills as historians and archivists led them recently to a project that combines music and drama. The duo was approached by U.S. Park Rangers at Harper's Ferry (W.Va.) National Park, the site of abolitionist John Brown's raid. The park was planning to commemorate him with a celebration called John Brown 2000, and the rangers asked Magpie to create some music for the event. Artzner saw a rare chance to do a dramatic performance that honored Brown.

"I thought, ‘This could be my vehicle for getting back on the boards by doing a one-man play,'" he says.

Artzner considered creating a play based on Brown's speaking to reporters from his jail cell. An extended monologue, it would be similar to Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain Tonight.

But Leonino spoke up, asking, "Hey, what about me?" Their theme then became clear: they would create a play that reflected the relationship between John Brown and his wife, Mary, who also was an active participant in the abolitionist movement, continuing Brown's work long after his death.

"We decided we had to make a conscious decision to commit to this project," Leonino says.

"We had been musicians for 25 years and suddenly we were going to shift gears," Artzner says.

They began collecting documents, spending three years researching the lives of John and Mary Brown. Traveling across the country to sites where Brown lived, the couple collected letters and books, reading them to each other as they drove for hours.

Finding quotes from John Brown was not difficult. His letters had been collected, edited, and published in several books. Finding quotes from Mary proved more difficult. But they persisted, finding interviews with Mary's children and stepchildren, and eventually, they found enough of her writing to fashion it into dialogue. In the process, Leonino and Artzner developed a deep appreciation for Mary Brown.

"We found a remarkable person almost completely unknown in American history. Here was a woman who lived almost entirely in the shadow of her famous husband, but whose dedication and sacrifice to the cause of abolition was every bit as great as his, and perhaps even more so. Very few people in this country even know Brown had a wife, let alone what kind of person she was. We immediately were drawn into a sort of a ‘mission' to tell her untold story," Artzner says.

After writing the play, Artzner and Leonino created a song cycle as a companion to the drama.

"The Harper's Ferry rangers suggested we add music, asking, ‘Hey, aren't you guys musicians?'" Artzner says.

The song cycle includes original compositions by Artzner and Leonino as well songs by Si Kahn, Reggie and Kim Harris, and Woody Guthrie.

The John and Mary Brown project, entitled Spirit of the Sword, premiered in 2000, featuring Artzner as Brown and Terry as Mary Brown. The play was presented at the Old Opera House in Charles Town, across the street from the old courthouse where John Brown was tried and convicted in 1859.

Artzner and Leonino continue to perform Spirit of the Sword in locations all across the country. They also are using the drama-music project as a vehicle to discuss racial issues. The play was presented in Benton Harbor, Mich., the scene of recent racial strife.

"We want to make the connection between violence and non-violence, and correct the misimpression that John Brown was an unmitigated terrorist," Artzner says.

They hope to stage the production in Takoma Park someday

One of Leonino's and Artzner's fondest memories are of recording their Ella Baker song, "Give Light," with Pete Seeger in New York. After the song was completed, Seeger sat down and pulled out a sheet of blank paper. Using the back of his banjo as a desk, Seeger started writing down the lyrics to the duo's song they had just finished. He looked up and said he was going to teach the song to others.

In an acknowledgement of Magpie's continuing contributions to folk music and human rights, Seeger said: "How lucky I am to have lived to see and hear more links in the chain."

Last July, the couple became recipients of a musical archivist's dream–a substantial portion of Joe Glazer's massive collection of music memorabilia and items, including virtually every issue of Broadside and Sing Out!, the Bibles of folk music. It is quite an honor considering the fact that Glazer, who is retiring, plans to donate the rest of his collection to the Library of Congress, which is creating a wing in his honor.

In September, Artzner and Leonino will be touring England, Wales, and Scotland. They also continue to perform with longtime friends, Kim and Reggie Harris, with whom they have appeared at many Phil Ochs' song nights. Magpie's interest in the environment continues as well. They are overseeing production of a compilation album of songs about Rachel Carson, performed by various artists. The CD is a project of Musicians United for Sustaining the Environment.

Looking back at their 30 years of performing, Artzner and Leonino see Seeger's praise a reminder to them to "remember our connection to the continuum," as Leonino puts it. "What is really important for us is what we leave behind, not about becoming famous."

To find out more about Magpie's concert dates and recordings, visit www.magpiemusic.com.