Campus Character: Natty Smith

Natty Smith  ’10.5 had just returned from a weekend camping trip in the Green Mountains’ Bristol Cliffs when I interviewed him on Sunday. With three of his friends, Smith had snow-shoed up and skied back down, having carried their skis on their packs. But while Smith describes himself as “on the periphery of the Mountain Club” and he lives in a house (Brooker) filled with skis, bikes, camping gear and with a full-sized canoe hanging from the ceiling, our conversation revolved almost entirely around something quite different: folk music.

Smith started playing the violin when he was five years old, and he picked up the fiddle when he was in eighth grade. Smith’s family had, “always been really into traditional music and dance,” Smith said — his parents met contra dancing, his mother played early medieval and renaissance music and his dad sang — so the fiddle proved to be the ideal instrument. Smith and his sister attended traditional music summer camps throughout their childhood, and Smith gained vocal training as part of a choir at the New England Conservatory.

When Smith arrived at Middlebury, he already knew a lot of people in Vermont because “Vermont tends to attract traditional music people a little bit.” Smith continued to play folk music, jamming with two other students who played the fiddle.

It did not matter that none of them had played together before since in the world of folk music “there are a countless number of tunes,” according to Smith, and they found that they knew many of the same ones.

Unfortunately, Smith’s Jam partners eventually graduated.

“There was kind of an empty space,” Smith said.

That’s when Smith met Elias Alexander ’12, who is probably best known on campus for his bagpipe playing. Since there are a lot of similarities between Scottish and English traditional music, Smith and Alexander found their music tastes were compatible. Soon, with Parker Woodworth ’13 on guitar and mandolin, Chloe Dautch ’13 on cello and now with Matthew Ball ’14 on Irish drum, they had assembled a band called the Brooker Liquor Cooperative.

“Bagpipes are kind of difficult to work into a band,” but with the addition of the cello, “all the music kind of took off,” said Smith.

The Brooker Liquor Cooperative has since performed on three occasions, the most recent performance being a Tuesday night show at 51 Main.

Probably in part because he has strengthened so many of his closest friendships through a shared love of traditional music, Smith sees folk music as the type of music that he will be most likely to continue his entire life.

“It’s interesting because I love being in SIM [Stuck in the Middle], it’s a great group of guys, but it’s such a very college thing,” Smith said. “And it’s sort of going to come to an end when we graduate. It’s a hard thing to replicate and to know if you even want to replicate five years out. But the band — that kind of music and that kind of performance — can continue for a long time.”

Smith has found other ways to bring traditional music to Middlebury: he and friend Ben Meader ’10.5 have lead Songs and Poems, a group singing session at Brooker every week for a year and a half. The group sings traditional folk songs by the fire, utilizing Smith’s vast knowledge of folk songs and sea shanties as well as other members’ individual folk song repertoires.

The group also welcomes poetry because Smith aims to create an environment in which “anyone who comes brings something to share,” even if they are not comfortable with singing.

They do not use instruments in the group because Smith feels an instrument shifts the power dynamic.

“When you have a guitar, the person with guitar becomes the leader and they have control … but if there’s no instruments involved, then the balance of power is a little more even,” said Smith.

Smith hopes this balance allows newer folk singers to explore the genre in the most laid-back setting possible.

“[The group] encourages other people who wouldn’t have had that background to learn songs, and it’s different when you sing it with a group of people without instruments,” Smith said. “It’s a safe space for people to try out new songs without having to perform.”

When Smith and Meader started the group the fall of their senior year, there were only six or seven participants. The next spring, the group attracted 20-25 people at each meeting, and it continued this fall.

Songs and Poems invites usually go out by word of mouth or to an e-mail list called “Folk Warriors,” but the time and place are rarely announced more than a few days in advance.

“We don’t want it to get very big … so it’s very under-publicized,” Smith said.

Although the singing session at Brooker may be scheduled, the bulk of Smith’s folk singing is informal; when back home for breaks, he often gathers with other folk-singing friends at bars and breaks into spontaneous song.

So for Smith, starting a group that allows him to share this particular passion and replicate for others what he has at home has been one of his greatest accomplishments at Middlebury.

“It’s one of the things I’m proudest of,” Smith said.

Now, in his final two weeks at Middlebury, Smith has a lot to look forward to. He is confident that the weekly singing sessions will continue without him, and many of his folk music friends will also be living in Boston when he moves back for his internship in Bedford this February, ready to rock. He looks forward to graduation, where he hopes to utilize his newfound telemark skiing skills to ski down Allen. But what he will miss most about Midlebury is the size.

“The atmosphere is such that if you’re walking around campus and have to walk by friend’s dorm, you can just knock on door and walk in and that’s not weird at all,” Smith said. “I think I’ll miss that aspect — being around other students so much and having so many conversations about so many different things. It’s a community here; you’re not really supposed to be alone ... Maybe this is the scale at which human beings are supposed to exist.”