NANCE Brody, Mountain Rebel
-Fox Ravenheart



NANCE Brody loves a good thunderstorm:
“It shakes things up.”
You like things getting shaken up?
“Dull is not in my vocabulary, lol,” she tells me.
What needs to be shaken up more in the world?
“The fun light side needs a shake.”


Do you have a mission for your music?

“Not really,” she said. “Just a small town girl enjoying being able to be a musician and have fun with it.”

NANCE invited me to her venue, NANCE Brody's Paradise, this afternoon for our causerie. She’s a simple gal, sans pretension or plans to change the world with her music. Her guitar simply calls her to play. Her venue reflects this: the stage a giant guitar case, based on the worn case of her own instrument—a 12 String Takamine, an old friend she’s had for seventeen years. She tells me they belong together, a gift from a new love in her life, a love that has grown and blossomed like her music, the wind beneath her wings.

And you can hear the love in her music. NANCE composes all her own songs, working prolifically. She’s not sure how the inspiration works:

“Just that when something hits the spot inside my soul, I start writing, can’t really describe it. It’s a process. Usually it’s a strong feeling that something wants my attention to write, then the pen is in hand and the words start coming. The tune is the last thing that comes. Once the words and the tune joins, the magic happens.”

Then she picks up her guitar and finds a nice space where she can pluck it out, letting the music just come.

“I allow the music to tell me where it wants to be, not the other way around,” NANCE tells me.

NANCE describes the flavor of her music as folksy rockin’ blues, her favourite and most fun song being Sweet Evelyn. The song is about a couple NANCE saw while she camped sometime ago on a northern lake in Canada: Vic was Evelyn’s husband—a character who loved to trade things—and the myriad junk of his trades cluttered his trailer site. The song tells the tale of his junk trading ways, the moral being that he traded everything but his wife.

I asked her to describe herself in three adjectives:

“Fun. Lovable. Sexy.”

This also describes her music. Her songs are spirited, joyful, possessing feet to tap and listeners to dance. They can’t cure you of woe, but they make it easier to carry it.

Music’s been with NANCE all her life. She picked up the guitar when she was thirteen, taught herself how to play.

“Yes. I wouldn’t know a note if I fell over it.”

She was born among sibling mountains, her spirit of the northern earth, Ontario, Canada—a wilderness that left its mark of magic on her heart. In her song, one can hear the soar of the eagle on wing, and of course the mischievous fox. She grew up listening to John Denver, Cat Stevens, Anne Murray, those types. She doesn’t talk much about her past, likes to live in the present; she moves constant to the future like mountain winds, her spirit as her music—of fathomed soul on wing.

NANCE is emancipated from vanity, from ego, having struggled through a life of adversity, seeking the pure spirit of her gift and muse; an ego would just anchor her to the earth anyway, slow down her flight.

She came to Second Life in 2007. A decade ago, NANCE wrote a book about online performing and predicted that Second Life would become the primary forum for online performances. Here NANCE has been an inspiration to incipient SL performers; though humble always, she denies credit for the motivation of new artists, who all speak of her with love and admiration. She opened NANCE Brody’s Paradise to have a venue of her own and a place for new Second Life performers to play. She wanted a venue with a magical feel to it.

I asked NANCE what advice she’d give new performers here:

“I probably wouldn’t give them any advice. My experiences might steer them wrong but if they ask and are specific in what they are asking I might share what I have gone though.”

I told NANCE I thought she had the spirit of an eagle.

“Life needs the magical,” she said.

What sort of magic do you see in life?

“I see the magic when I perform especially. I hear people’s spirits lift. I see it in the way they act in the audience. It is pure magic when a room can turn into a happy place.”

NANCE Brody plays weekly at KatRose’s Secret Garden of Live Music, Thursday at 8PM.

Her venue:
* NANCE Brody, NANCE Brody's Paradise , NEW YORK HARBOR (94, 166, 21)

12 April 2010 - Rose Budding

12 APRIL 2010

Rose Budding

In early April, KatRose Serendipity invited me to keep chronicle of her venue, KatRose’s Secret Garden of Live Music. My name is Fox Ravenheart, and she honored me.

In these articles, I will record for your enjoyment the people of the Kat Rose’s Secret Garden of Live Music--their music and lives. I will not always be able to write as much as I’d like to—so many talented performers—but anon I will eventually cover you.

In this article, I will be talking about Caoltie Skytower, whom is just one of the myriad performers of both talent and soul performing at Kat Rose’s Secret Garden of Live Music, the nascent venue opened by the artist, KatRose Serendipity. Katrose is an old friend to the music community here in SL, one of the many talented performers we are privileged to celebrate.

KatRose creates like a natural force, in her music and her mission. In quick time, she founded a setting to manifest her quest:

“My goal is to move people with my venue to support each other, to action, to learn more, to continue their own education. To be a community. To have a fellowship. To of share what we have. Let’s support each other. Let’s teach them. Like the old native American tribes.”

Music is a sacred art to KatRose. Patrons visiting the garden can expect live performances, without tracks or previous recorded songs. This infuses the venue with vivacious energy—a vitality also sown into the setting.

Employing her symbol, the rose, KatRose has painted a setting for her venue germane to the beauty and quality of the musicians she summons to her twin stages. When I first teleported to the venue, a Shinto gateway greeted me. One passes through this portal to enter the secret garden, stepping into a twin spirit world. Any burden of stress mollifies from the salubrious splashing from the fountain—the mother water that satiates the thirst of the verdant garden. In the grasses, cicadas join choir with sparrow song. One can nearly feel the frisson of a cool spring breeze on your face and the tickle of spray from the fountains. KatRose built her wooden stage—a circle as the living world—on the shore. Waves crash the beach boulders at the backs of performers on stage.

A trio of roses—tall and divine in visage—grows over the stage, a symbol of the passion of the woman who sculpted this Arcadian plane. This place like Kat’s music is her truth. As she said:

“The symbol of the roses and thorns—If you can handle the thorns. Many facets. Many layers. If you can’t handle the thorns, you’re not going to get to the roses.”

* * *

Caotlie, pronounced quillcha in Irish and keelcha in welsh as he tells us during his performance, has been performing in SL since December 2009. His name is Irish for forest. Caoltie performed at the Kat Rose Secret Garden on April 8^th to an enthusiastic crowd. Caotlie, plucking on his guitar, describes his style traditional folk/rocksy with some classical. Caoltie’s blood is steeped in music: his mother of Northern Belfast sang, tickled the ivories of a piano, and his father, a hillbilly of Missouri sings country music. They met while his father was stationed overseas during World War II. This blend of musical traditions creates a smooth, somber melody in Caoltie’s playing, a style many have called unique—that he switches from strumming to finger style quickly.

Caoltie began playing at age fifteen, joining his family’s tradition. He learned the guitar and picked up the bagpipes—what he calls, a workout. He’s been playing at various venues in real life—cafes, pubs, renaissance faires—for the last thirty-five years. While attending a pagan wedding with friends he learned about the musical life of Second Life in a conversation with friends. He joined Second Life the following with no idea how to apply his talent in the online milieu. For a year no one was interested in having him perform, and finally a friend brought him to The Wild Rose for a concert. “I started to sing for friends on voice.” Finally luck brought him his future manager, Laz Dressler, who taught him the ways of live performing on SL. The Wild Rose was his first gig, soon followed by performances at Guthrie’s, The Drunken Drow, and his online career launched.

On Thursday night, Caoltie’s mood mellowed, performing for us a line up of old Celtic numbers, many dear to his heart: ‘I Live Not Where I Love’ and ‘Black Is The Color’. These songs evoke somber emotion for him and memories of a lost lover who broke his heart. This sentiment reflects in music, and soon we were all remembering our own lost loves. Deftly he plucked his guitar, ringing with a harp quality, the clarion tones bringing the audience to chills—the sound of silvery icicles tapping like bell clappers in a wind. He continued his set with some English folk songs, then finishing the night on high note, playing The Moody Blues.

* * *

NANCE Brody returns to the KatRose Garden on Thursday night, April 15^th. NANCE is the owner of NANCE Brody’s Live Music venue and has been singing and plucking her mean twelve-string in Second Life for over three years. She performs original songs in the flavor of folksy rockin’ blues, her favorite being Sweet Evelyn—described by NANCE as her “most fun song”. The song is about a couple NANCE saw while she camped sometime ago on a northern lake in Canada: Vic was Evelyn’s husband—a character who loved to trade things—and the myriad junk of his trades cluttered his trailer site. The song tells the tale of his junk trading ways, the moral being that he traded everything but his wife.

Please come out on Thursday to enjoy NANCE Brody at Kat Rose’s Secret Garden of Live Music.

See you next week with an interview with NANCE Brody.