Jonah Powell’s love of music

By Kathleen Stocking
Sun contributor

His hair. Even as a child, Jonah Powell, who was in my youngest daughter’s class at Leland, had this nimbus of curls that one could see from a long ways away and, of course, admire.

We would all see him from time to time, in the halls at school or in the grocery store or in the library. He was instantly recognizable as: Jonah. As the years went by, sometimes we would see him playing his fiddle at various community events, up on the bandstand, a little tyke, but transcending age with his music. We all loved Jonah, even those of us who didn’t know him but only knew of him.

The next time I saw Jonah he was an adult in his mid-thirties. He was helping to host a community potluck and benefit for John Rutherford, another musician, much older, a man who’d had a stroke. Jonah was waiting to go on and play, along with some of his friends. It was a benefit put on by all the area musicians. Jonah’s wife, the beautiful Carrie Hanson, was there helping with getting the food out and making people feel welcome. Jonah’s parents, Kathy and Clayton Powell, an elegant couple, as elegant in late middle age as they had been as young parents, strolled onto the gleaming hardwood floors of the old V.F.W. Hall and — gliding and graceful, seemingly effortlessly so, like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in an old time movie — danced the evening’s first dance together.

Now Jonah is sitting across from me at Kejara’s Bridge in Lake Leelanau, talking about how he became a full-fledged musician. It started early. He says he was very young, maybe two years old, when he told his father that he wanted to play guitar. “My dad said, ‘You don’t want to do that. Everyone does that.” Shortly after that, Jonah says he saw Itzhak Perlman on Sesame Street and told his mom, “I want to do that!”

Jonah comes from a family of musicians. His father plays the guitar. His uncle, George Powell, a boat builder, plays the mandolin. Victor McManemy, a cousin, plays the guitar. Both his parents sing. Family friends, the Evans, are musicians. Jo Ellen Evans directed the choir at the Methodist Church where Jonah sang when he was growing up; and Jeremy Evans, who is the music and theater director at the Leland Public School, used to be the director of the Leelanau Community Choir that Jonah now directs.

Jonah’s parents, who met while in the choir together at Grand Valley State College, love music themselves and when Jonah was about four years old went out and bought him his first of many violins. Initially Jonah studied violin with Ellen Boyer, using the Suzuki method, and when she got a regular teaching job, he began to study fiddle with Fred Johnson in Kinsley, an excellent fiddler who played by ear. After that he studied for several years with Judy Gienow, the principal violinist at the Traverse Symphony Orchestra.

“The difference between a fiddle and a violin,” Jonah explains, “is how it’s played.” The fiddle came with the first settlers from Ireland and Scotland and the music and the playing became part of America’s backwoods heritage. There’s a characteristic sense of humor in many of the American folk tunes. The song, “Bought Me a Cat,” which goes through all the animal sounds is a classic example. I once heard Jonah sing it all the way through in his excellent baritone, acapella and alone, at a concert.

Jonah left the Leelanau Peninsula to study voice at Alma College and went from there to Ohio University in Athens where he received a Master’s in Vocal Performance. While in Athens he also studied instrument repair with Dan Erlewine.

He says he supported himself during those college years with some music work, some family help, and also by painting houses. “I was lucky in my parents,” he says. “They weren’t concerned with practicalities. There was a lot of positive reinforcement.” Now Jonah supports himself with a combination of music-related activities, including directing two choirs, repairing instruments, and giving music lessons. He’s in four bands: K. Jones and the Benzie Playboyz, Cabin Fever, Hot Biscuits, and Runaway Mules.

“The two choirs fill in in the off-season,” Jonah says. “People say, ‘You guys look like you’re having a great time’ and that’s because we are.”

Teddy (Schleuter) Page, one of the women in Jonah’s choir says, “I can’t say enough good things about Jonah. He always has a smile. He’s easy to work with. He’s uplifting. Even if he wasn’t the choir director, I see him in the community, and he’s just a wonderful person.”

Tricia Denton joined the Leelanau Community Choir for this year’s spring concert and says, “As a very shy, first-time-ever member of a choir at the age of 45, with no previous singing experience save around the campfire, Jonah was incredibly encouraging and supportive in an absolutely genuine way. Jonah loves what he’s doing, loves being part of making us all feel successful, even a rookie like me. He’s playful, hard-working, dedicated, supportive, and caring.”

Denton goes on to say that she has been friends with Jonah’s longtime companion and now wife, Carrie, for a number of years but never really knew Jonah. “Probably the thing that impresses me most about Jonah is the way he is with my friend. To see them dance together at their wedding reception, really, they danced together. This partnership is something they have both worked toward . . . like a lovely piece of music all on its own. And to hear him perform music in her honor, something truly intimate and passionate, it was beautiful to behold.”

Jonah says his relationship with Carrie is important. “We have breakfast together. If I work late, I still get up to eat with her. Then maybe take a nap later.” He’s not one of those musicians who gets home in the wee hours, gets up in the afternoon, eats everything in the house, and then goes out to play music all night. He says, “Nothing good happens after midnight.” His life is calm and orderly. He and Carrie have a vegetable garden they work in together. They have pets. They live next to his parents.

Playing in four bands [in the summer] gives me enough variety to keep me interested, yet I don’t have to learn all new tunes.” Two or three years ago K. Jones and the Benzie Playboyz played with the Cajun band, Beau Soleil, form Louisiana. “It was a double bill,” Jonah says. “We weren’t covering for them. They weren’t covering for us. It was a moment of achievement.”

Sometimes the various bands play for family gatherings, weddings, social events. “We played a wedding rehearsal dinner recently,” Jonah says. “It started raining as soon as we set up. We played during the cocktail hour – really high energy – then for the second set we had to tone it down, and we did it all really well, and it was a blast.”

What motivates him?

He doesn’t hesitate. “The joy of music,” he says. “I’m happy when I’m playing.”

The night I hear Jonah playing it’s when he’s performing with the Cabin Fever Band at Boonedocks in Glen Arbor with fellow musicians Tom Fordyce, Jim Curtis, Mark McManus and Joe Wilson. Words of an Eric Clapton song float out across the deck, “I’ve been tryin’ all night long, just to talk to you . . . don’t you need . . .someone . . .to talk to . . .”

The audience is families, people celebrating a birthday, people on vacation, or simply out for the evening with friends. There are children down front by the band, moving to the music. A grandmother gets up and dances with her grandson.

Someone says, “Music, the universal language.”

The musicians are all wearing sunglasses, like those raffia replicas you see being sold on the streets in the Caribbean. Musician Tom Fordyce, an older, stocky man with a huge, almost comical moustache, smiles at a toddler and pantomimes a few moves in time to the music, dancing along with the child.

It’s June 21, the day after the summer solstice. The sun doesn’t officially go down until about 9:30 and, since this is northern Michigan, it will be twilight for quite a long time after that.

It’s summer and the music is playing.