Red Molly

Like all good roots bands, Red Molly makes music that is both modern and timeless, making old songs sparkle with new life and new ones sound like they were seasoned through generations. Whether sweetly harmonizing on traditional songs like "Darlin' Corey" or "Wayfaring Stranger," framing songs by contemporary writers like Gillian Welch and Susan Werner in creative new arrangements, or offering tuneful originals from all three members of the group, these women are first-rate musicians who also have a lot of fun onstage. Through steady touring around the Northeast and beyond, they have built a growing community of enthusiastic fans known as Red Heads, and they talked about their music last July before a well-received set at the New Bedford [Massachusetts] Summerfest.

The three members of Red Molly brought diverse musical interests and performing backgrounds to the group when they came together five years ago. Gardner grew up in a musical household in a suburb north of New York City as the daughter of noted jazz trombonist and pianist Herb Gardner. Through his work she discovered the music of people like Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, and then much more beyond the world of jazz. "I listened to a lot of Ray Charles, Bonnie Raitt, and then Led Zeppelin," she recalled, "singing along to that. What brought me to folk music is more my mom's side. She brought me to bluegrass festivals at a very early age, so I had the sound of harmony in my head for a very long time. It wasn't until college, when I started singing Indigo Girls songs with my friends, that I really got into folk music, and then when I joined this band I got to know the modern folk scene with people like John Gorka and Richard Shindell."

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Staten Island native Solebello grew up with pop music and discovered folk in college. "I grew up listening to Top 40 radio in the 1970s," she said. "The Carpenters were on back then, and lots of Motown. My parents were really into the doo-wop of the 60s and the harmony groups of the 50s, so I think that's where the harmony sound got into my head. My dad listened to the oldies radio station nonstop. Nobody's a performer in the family, but music was always in the house. Like Abbie, the first time I really got into folk music was in college. I went to Fordham University in New York, and there's a fantastic radio station there called WFUV. And they exploded my head by playing things like the Indigo Girls, Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, and Shawn Colvin! Plus they had traditional shows, too. I was into musical theater, and I had never heard folksinging."

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MacAllister is the one non-native New Yorker in the trio, having grown up in Nashua, New Hampshire. "I also loved Top 40 radio when I was young," she said. "My parents had a good record collection of folk music. They had Peter, Paul and Mary records that I listened to over and over and figured out all three parts and sang along, and they had a bunch of Simon & Garfunkel records, too. I just got really into harmony that way. Then in college I started playing guitar, and everyone would sit around and sing together. I figured out that I had a knack for hearing harmonies and singing them. Most people