The WALKING WILLOWS are the new band of acoustic guitarist, vocalist,
award winning songwriter and composer Stephen Cohen and double bass
player, pianist, vocalist and arranger Rich Hinrichsen. They perform
melodic, “emotionally gripping”, creative acoustic music. The two
started playing together in 2007, when Rich joined Stephen's legendary
ensemble, the Tree People. The WALKING WILLOWS also feature a rotating
roster of guest musicians on cello, voice, percussion, mandolin and
other instruments.
The Tree People were a creative acoustic music ensemble
originally formed in the late 1970’s in Eugene, Oregon. Founding
members are composer, songwriter, acoustic guitarist and vocalist
Stephen Cohen, and Jeff Stier, who plays recorders, flute and
percussion. They performed, at times with third and forth band members,
at concerts and festivals in the Eugene area for 7 years. They recorded
two albums, The Tree People, in 1979, (which was recorded at Rocking A
Ranch, a studio in the woods near Eugene), and Human Voices in 1984.
After the Tree People disbanded in the mid 1980’s, founding
member Stephen Cohen continued his music career, moving to Portland,
Oregon in the mid 1990’s, composing music, writing songs, and performing
at concerts and festivals across the United States, including the
Philadelphia Folk Festival, the Long Island Children's Museum and the
Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas (where he was an award winner for
songwriting in 2000). He recorded three albums during that period,
including his nationally acclaimed 2006 album Here Comes the Band, a
children's album, which includes a 20 page illustrated booklet with
paintings and drawings by Christopher Shotola-Hardt and lyrics and
activities.
Stephen also released "real life and fiction" in 2000 and
"Stephen and the Talk Talk Band", an album in which he asked each guest
musician to tell a story before leaving the studio and layered some of
the stories they told into the music, in 2004.
Stephen all the while was creating visual art and original
sculptural percussion instruments using used guitar strings and other
found objects, along with woods and metals.
He was featured in a story on Oregon Public Broadcasting's Art
Beat show in 2002 about his residency at Wilsonville High School, where
he worked with a special education class and several music and art
students to produce a CD, Junk Jam and a performance at the Wilsonville
Festival of Arts. (He is artist in residency once again at Wilsonville
High School this spring of 2012).
Meanwhile, the first Tree People album, originally released in vinyl
and sold only in Eugene, Oregon, somehow appeared across the ocean, and
was discovered worldwide by record collectors twenty five years after
it was first recorded. Stephen was contacted by several record
companies, leading to CD and vinyl reissues of the first two Tree People
albums by record companies in Japan, Tiliqua,and Spain, Guerssen
Records, and Stephen’s solo acoustic guitar piece from the first album,
The Tree People, "No More School", was included in an acoustic guitar
collection, Wayfaring Strangers, Guitar Soli, by the Chicago record
company The Numero Group. The Tree People, whose original music was hard
to classify the first time around, were now being called “Fathers of
Freak Folk” and “Psych Folk Pioneers”.
And then the second life of the Tree People began. Stephen
and Jeff, with new Tree People member, Seattle double bass player Rich
Hinrichsen, (Rich is not only a talented and creative double bass
player, but is also a wonderful piano player, arranger, and composer
himself, he is also a mathematician, and on top of that he produces a
Beatles night every year as a benefit for the Elizabeth Gregory Home)
began rehearsing, making new arrangements old material, creating and
recording new music, and performing in concerts and festivals throughout
the Pacific Northwest, including performances at the Mississippi
Studios, the White Eagle and Performance Works Northwest in Portland,
the Matrix in Chehalis, Washington, the Upstage in Port Townsend,
Washington, and the Arts in Nature Festival and Northwest Folklife
Festival in Seattle. They have done two Creative Residencies at Centrum,
an art organization in Port Townsend, Washington where Stephen and Rich
have started work on the Cistern Symphony, a symphony being created
deep underground in the Dan Harpole Cistern in Fort Worden, where
Centrum is located. Guerssen Records, of Spain released CD and vinyl
editions of a 3rd, new and last Tree People album, It's My Story. Jeff
Stier retired from the group after playing on the new album and taking
part in his last Tree People performance at the It's My Story release
concert at the Old Church in Portland on November of 2010.
Stephen and Rich, with two wonderful Spanish musicians, Jordi Gallen
on cello and Hector Beberide Farrus on mandolin, did their last
performance under the Tree People name on March 12th, 2011 at the
Musiques Disperses Festival in Spain. But the music of the Tree People
will live on through their recordings, and with their new band, the
WALKING WILLOWS, (you might say an offshoot of the Tree People) Stephen
Cohen and Rich Hinrichsen are creating, performing and recording new
music-listen to "the Movie Lot" and "Mathematics", with many Tree People
songs thrown in for good measure- listen to Stephen and Rich perform
"Sliding", "Pot of Gold", and "Space Heater", along with "Hearing Test"
live at the Matrix in Chehalis, Washington in April of 2011 in the audio
section of this site, and adding new musicians along the way. The story
continues!
