New songs from an old island favorite

Published 10:00 am Wednesday, October 5, 2005

Susan Welch opens this year’s First Friday Concert Series.

Singer/songwriter Susan Welch is back on the musical track with a CD born from the inspiration of solitude.

“Into the Midnight Waltz” is a sweet, lonesome album, “kind of that place you find alone, inspired when working the graveyard shift,” she said. “It’s a concept album, mostly live. There are some songs that have a country kind of feel to them.

“You can put it on before you go to bed.”

Welch strove for continuity with her latest collection, which she’ll play when she kicks off the First Friday Concert Series.

Long a favorite on the Kitsap and Bainbridge music circuit, Welch grew up in Sequim, surrounded by music recorded by relatives and lots of singing.

“My mom used to sing all the time,” Welch said. “She sang in church. I sang in church. I must have been 10 or 11 when I learned to harmonize. That was a great, real gift.”

In junior high, Welch and another girl formed a duo. She learned to play mandolin and guitar and sang all through high school, finding her voice through an exploration of musical genres, including operetta, gospel and a cappella.

Welch favors playing the mandola – an eight-string instrument that resembles the mandolin, but is a bit larger and tuned lower – because it has unique voicing.

“It’s in the mid-range of the guitar. I can play guitar, but I can always find guitar players who are so much better,” she said. “I’m better as an accompanist.”

Welch moved closer to the music scene in North Kitsap in the late ’80s. She, Billy Forrester and Tania Opland are known as the founding parents of the Suquamish acoustic jam.

Welch lived in Suquamish for 10 years.

“There are a lot of funky little places there,” she said. With its diversity and urban influences, “it has a different feel altogether.”

In 2000, Welch and Forrester released “Eleven Eleven” under the name Dusty Rose. When she started a family, music became more of a hobby, “a big social thing” for Welch.

“I can’t support myself doing music alone and put shoes on the kids’ feet,” she said. “You have to just be in the right place at the right time.

“I’m not a big name,” she said. “It’s a joy (and) I get a lot of emotional support from it. I feel special that I can do this.”

Welch performs solo and with folk groups in such venues as Pegasus Coffee House and Winslow Way Café, as well in Port Townsend and Seattle.

Welch also is a member of Bella, an a cappella group that includes islanders Emily Groff and Georgia Browne.

“I prefer harmonies to singing solo. I love the sound of another voice in my ear,” Welch said. “I can sing by myself any old time.”

Now that her three children are teens, Welch is focusing on recording “and enjoying that place of laying down the sound in a realistic format. Something for the grandchildren to listen to,” she said.

This Friday, Welch will be joined on stage by the musicians who appear on her CD: Larry Johnson, Carol Anspach, Art Hanlon, Billy Forrester and Liam Graham.

She’s happy to be playing on the island, where she has lived for three years.

“I like Bainbridge and the people here,” she said. “There are good musicians and they’re fun to be with.”

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Friday night live

Susan Welch and Friends kicks off the First Friday Concert Series at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 7 at Island Center Hall on Fletcher Bay Road. Tickets will be sold at the door: $8 for adults and $5 for ages 6-18.