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By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON
Rappahannock News Contributing Writer
Traditional music boasts many a master musician who can toss off a one-liner or tell a tall tale that leaves listeners laughing - but no one loves the laugh like Claudia Schmidt loves the laugh.
She cherishes the chuckle, guards the guffaw and holds dear the hee-haw. She refines humor to an art form, and like the record producer skillfully mixing instruments and voices in the studio, she mixes humor and music on stage.
Yes, she plays the guitar, the dulcimer and the deluxe pianola. Yes, she writes gentle songs of mother love, heart-wrenching laments oflove lost and upbeat, fingersnapping toe-tappers of love found that set a bam full of folks to dancing. And, oh yes, she can sing.
But it’s the laughter more than anything else that sets her apart form the rest of today’s top acoustical musicians.
No one can write about Claudia Schmidt without mentioning her infectious humor; and no one can pass up the perfect description of her singing style. It comes from Garrison Keillor, creator and host of public radio’s Prairie Home Companion (and print journalists everwhere wish they’d thought of it first): “When Claudia sings a song, it stays sung.”
While it’s not bluegrass, or even country music, much of Ms. Schmidt’s repertoire, particularly the original songs, is music of the country. “I’ve lived in the country a lot,” she acknowledged. “I require the country a lot - the natural environment, the outdoors.
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