| Roger Penney | |
|---|---|
Roger Penney 2009 |
|
| Background information | |
| Also known as | Roger Becket |
| Origin | Greenwich Village New York, USA |
| Genres | Psych folk Folk rock American Folk Country Folk |
| Occupations | Singer Songwriter Instrumentalist |
| Instruments | Vocal Autoharp Keyboards |
| Years active | 1966 – present |
| Labels | MGM Heritage Winter Solstice Acme Records |
| Associated acts | Bermuda Triangle Band Roger and Wendy Euphoria |
| Website | www.bermudatriangleband.net |
| Notable instruments | |
| Electric Autoharp Autoharp |
|
Roger Penney is an innovative singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He pioneered a style of American psychedelic folk music in the late 60s, early 70s and is known for his inventive performances and recordings as Bermuda Triangle Band as well as ROGER AND WENDY and EUPHORIA.
Contents |
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, his first public performance was singing "Don't Fence Me In" at the age of five on WORC (AM). Several preteen summers were spent in his cousin's Anchor Cafe, a honkytonk at a port on Lake Erie filled with stevedores and merchant mariners. In the late hours of the night he would fall asleep on the bench seats as the couples danced to Hank Williams and Hank Snow on the jukebox.
In 1959 while at an engineering college he bought his first autoharp from the Sears-Roebuck catalog and began experimenting with various electric pickups. After graduating with honors at the top of his class, he moved into a folk music communal house in Cambridge Mass. aptly named Old Joe Clark's for the folk /dance tune. He was instrumental in the design and construction of the first electromechanical harpsichord which came to be known as the Baldwin Combo Harpsichord, see Electric Piano
In 1966 he moved to Greenwich Village, New York City, where he formed the band Roger and Wendy with his partner, Wendy Penney. Performing 364 nights a year in Village coffeehouses and clubs, such as Gerde's Folk City, the Cafe Wha? The Bitter End and the Cafe Au Go Go, they broke ground in what has come to be known as the Psych folk genre. They were one of the very few American innovators to play in this style as it was primarily a British movement. Characterized as having strong roots in folk music, it has electric and often complex or unconventional arrangements, with liberal use of effects such as phasing, wah wah or fuzz.
In 1969 Roger and Wendy formed the Sunshine Pop group EUPHORIA with two other musicians and released an album on the MGM/Heritage label titled "Euphoria" and a single "You Must Forget".[1] Then the group disbanded. Roger and Wendy moved up from playing in clubs to touring and became the top act on the national college concert tours.[2] They released
a folk album "Roger and Wendy" in 1971.[3]
Renaming the band as Bermuda Triangle in 1975, they released the psych folk, folk rock albums Bermuda Triangle in 1977 and Bermudas II in 1984.[4] College concert tours continued with more than 3000 performances from the 70's thru the 90's.[5]
Due to the success in Europe the US and Asia in 2006 of a British bootlegged reissued CD of the Bermuda Triangle's 1977 vinyl album,[6] Roger and Wendy in 2007 officially reissued the album on the Winter Solstice label. 2007 also saw the release of their psych folk The Missing Tapes cd on Winter Solstice Records.[7] A number of songs on this disc were thought to be completely lost, with no known existing copies, until tapes were unearthed in collectors' archives.
Roger Penney is regarded as the originator and developer of psychedelic folk autoharp, as well as the first person to play electric autoharp.[8][9] His style was completely unprecedented. He used his electrified harp as the lead instrument on all recordings. What is often mistaken for electric guitar is actually the sound of his autoharp. The result of his innovations is a spatially complex and dynamic quality, at times spare and delicate, then, on other songs, musically and rhythmically dense.
In the early 60's there were no pickups to amplify the autoharp other than a contact mic, which had a tinny sound. Eventually, bar magnetic pickups designed specifically for autoharp by Harry DeArmond became available and Roger bought the first two. He ran two channels, one for each pickup, either as a straight amplified channel or to effects units.
Among the effects units he used were two Gibson Maestro G2's (the same model that reputedly Jimi Hendrix used on several recordings) which triggered wah-wah, fuzz or distortion, percussion etc. an Eventide Clockworks phase shifter, a Lexicon Primetime digital delay. An additional effect came from five 25 cent transducers that were surplus from a pinball machine mounted on the autoharp and wired into a Linndrum sound module which allowed him the option of playing percussion/drum rhythms simultaneously with finger-picking the strings.