PLAIN FOLK

by Les Pearson
Music is First Nature to Manitoba’s Moody Family

Every folk festival has its surprises. At Canmore, it was the Moody family. Ruth Moody is one of the Wailin’ Jennys. It was Ruth who composed the award-winning song, One Voice that appears on the 40 Days CD.

An interview with Ruth should have focused on how the Jennys have changed since Cara Luft’s departure. But Big Brother intervened!

That’s Richard Moody, elder brother of Ruth, and newest member of another favourite folk group, The Bills. Both The Bills and the Jennys were featured performers at Canmore this summer.

Richard joined The Bills just over two months ago. Prior to that, he was a studio violist in Winnipeg. He met Mark Atkinson and Chris Frye of The Bills at Saskatoon’s Jazz Festival. The Mark Atkinson Jazz Trio was performing while Richard was doing a gig with Swing Soniq. The two groups were “double billing” as Richard puns it.

Richard jumped at the opportunity to become a touring road warrior when fiddler, Jeremy Penner, left The Bills for marriage in Montreal.

With two family members in pre-eminent Canadian folk groups, I was curious about the Moody household. Richard spoke candidly. His mother is a thirty-year music teacher and Orff specialist.

Of this influence Richard said, “There was quite a lot of music going on in the house. She played guitar and violin and she got us singing multi-part harmony….”

Ruth elaborated. “Because we all grew up with music, it was a normal thing for me. It was just the way we did things.” For Ruth, there were no childhood sports, only voice and music lessons. She remembers music students as the only children who came to her house. She could barely wait to join them. It was what everyone in her world did.

Now came my biggest surprise. Mom and Dad Moody were also at Canmore! Even more exciting, they were willing to talk about music and their children. All four of them. But more of that later.

Father, Charles Moody, sings in the Winnipeg Opera Chorus. Mrs. Moody still teaches music half time in a French Immersion school. Summers, she teaches teachers the Orff method at the University of Manitoba. She gives private lessons and coaches youth performers with the Winnipeg Symphony and Chamber Orchestra.

I ask Mom Moody if she plans to write a book on how to encourage a child’s musical instincts. She replies, “Don’t have time.” And then she muses that her children did have “…very strong instincts. I think they really do have the genes.” Who can argue!

All four children are musicians. Three of them are professionals. Besides Ruth and Richard, another daughter is a violinist with the Winnipeg Symphony. The fourth is a cellist. She, too, was about to become a professional. Then she changed her mind…and became a doctor.

A momentary shadow of whimsy fleetingly crosses both parents’ faces.

And I am left to conclude that a child’s success is purely relative.