Date: Sunday, December 27, 1998
Page: F01 
Edition: FIRST
Section: ARTS & TRAVEL

PRESENTATION IS EVERYTHING -
L.V. SAW `FAKESTERS,'  FOLK MUSIC ACTIVISM,
OPERA, RAVI SHANKAR, BACKSTREET BOYS,
BENET FETE AND A CANTOR'S MOTOWN
DREAM COME TRUE

by GEOFF GEHMAN, The Morning Call

Postcards from an arts writer's labyrinthine year:
February, Easton: Do fans really care if they hear faithful
versions of '50s and '60s songs that made them dance and
romance, performed by singers unborn when the tunes became
hits? The question hangs over a State Theatre bill of four acts,
none with charter members of the Coasters, Drifters, et al. In the
spring Fred Wilhelms, an entertainment lawyer who graduated
from Lafayette College, begins lobbying his bill that would
empower listeners to sue "fakesters" for consumer fraud.

February, Manhattan: As production coordinator for Simon &
Schuster Audio, Honour Kane budgeted a recording session for
Hillary Rodham Clinton's "It Takes a Village" and found a tea set
for Fergie's reading of her autobiography. Besides savoring juicy
stories, the Allentown native gets tips on performing and
marketing her solo plays. It's an ideal job for someone who once
spread out on a bed with her siblings to listen to an LP of
"Medea," and howled in delight as the queen's kids howled in
terror.

April, West Chester, Chester County: Jim Musselman fertilizes
his folk-music activism by producing "Where Have All the
Flowers Gone?," a two-disc salute to that Johnny Appleseed, Pete
Seeger. The Allentown native, who once assisted Ralph Nader,
invites the likes of Odetta and Bruce Springsteen to record an
aural biography that's reverential, respectful and radical. Thanks
largely to Musselman's promotions, the title song serenades the
Irish-Anglo peace conference.

April, Bethlehem: Ravi Shankar transforms a concert into a
master class. The frail 78-year-old communes so intimately with
his sitar, simple scales seem a stairway to the spheres. He smiles
at the spry, fun courtship of sitarist Anoushka Shankar, his
16-year-old daughter, and tabla player Bikram Ghosh. For an
Indian classical musician, there is no better honor than helping
disciples blossom.

April, Beacon, N.Y.: In a foundry crammed with monumental art,
officials of a sculpture/botanical center in Grand Rapids, Mich.,
agree to pay a Fogelsville organization $2.3 million for two smaller
bronzes of "Il Cavallo (The Horse)," a 24-foot-high equestrian
statue based on Leonardo da Vinci's designs. As part of the
contract, the Frederik Meijer Gardens will unveil its statues after
Leonardo da Vinci's Horse Inc. dedicates the 24-footer in Milan,
where Leonardo intended to install his bronze beast. It's an
eventful year for LVHI, which underwrites the monument's major
redesign and books a celebratory concert to be conducted by
Riccardo Muti in La Scala.

May, Springfield Township, Bucks County: Steve Tobin describes
being molded by tribal customs while molding termite hills. In a
Ghanan jungle the adventurous sculptor and his crew suffered
heatstroke, diarrhea and a machete attack on a scaffold by a
family patriarch upset by lack of involvement. A wristwatch
brokered the peace, and Tobin returned home with rubber casts
for natural, fanciful bronzes. He calls them "cathedrals,
monuments to the insect gods."

May, Easton: Faced with a disastrous turnout for "Romeo et
Juliette," the State Theatre offers a novel plan: Pay only if you
like the show. The suggestion quintuples attendance to 1,125 and
helps the organization lose $12,000 less. A rare gathering of opera
veterans and novices, jeans and evening gowns, provide the
splendid buzz of a Saturday movie matinee. The response is so
hearty, the State signs "The Barber of Seville" for 1999, adding
half-price tickets.

June, Bethlehem: Bonnie O'Donnell's disc, "You Come Walking
In," is a patchwork quilt of her many lives. She comes to terms
with an alcoholic brother, scarred children in a psychiatric
hospital, Victorian-lace love and cold-wet-afternoon lust. The
recording is a gift for her daughters, who let Mom vacation at
songwriting workshops.

July, Bethlehem: "Benet's Brigade" leads the charge to celebrate
Stephen Vincent Benet 100 years after the writer's birth in
Fountain Hill. With doggedness and vision, Pat McAndrew, Joan
Campion and Tanja Fetzer Howard coordinate a festival featuring
a new documentary, a new solo play and a new commemorative
stamp. They polish the once-sterling reputation of a folklorist,
political fabulist and famous friend.

August, Salisbury Township: Samuel Land, a forensic pathologist
at Lehigh Valley Hospital, advises and becomes a composite
character in "Point of Origin," the latest best-selling murder
mystery by his friend, Patricia Cornwell. "We are the ultimate
voyeurs," he says of partnering with cops and lawyers. "We are
not only looking into elements of a person, we're looking into the
people themselves." Land admits that Kay Scarpetta, Cornwell's
chief medical examiner, has taught him about basic doctoring, but
resists Cornwell's suggestion to write about death's details.

August, Allentown: Bonnie Brosious basks as the Backstreet
Boys sell out the Allentown Fair Grandstand. After proposing that
the popular quintet play fairs, the marketing director nearly lost
her date because of regional competition. The Boys' booking
agent praises Brosious' tenacity: "She told me all the reasons they
should play Allentown after I told her all the reasons they
shouldn't."

August, Austin, Texas: During the National Poetry Slam, Alix
Olson is accused by a poet of biasing judges; surprises herself by
scoring big points for a bold poem concerning gays in the military,
and is grilled by a television reporter: "What do you say to people
who say you're an angry girl, Alix?" Olson wins the Slam for the
New York team with a sizzling performance of a typically
in-your-face statement: "our ethic inventory's low/cause moral
business has been slow/yes, the value company is moving to
mexico/-- and ALL ETHICS MUST GO!"

October, Allentown: A festive Latin concert reopens a newly
festive Symphony Hall. Plush seats, roomy aisles and vibrant
paint make spectators consider dancing rather than snoozing.
During the finale, trumpet soloist Gary Guthman tours the
mezzanine to experience the improvement from arthritic lady to
buff dowager.

October, Manhattan: John Clem Clarke, subject of an Allentown
Art Museum retrospective, summarizes his charming, disarming,
meticulously engineered cartoon paintings thusly: "They have that
printed mechanical quality that I love that's also very American.
That Pinto quality."

October, Allentown: Three of the surviving Four Tops fulfill a
cantor's dream, singing "Baby, I Need Your Loving" with their old
pal on Symphony Hall's stage. Kevin Wartell, fellow Detroit
native and spiritual vocalist, can officially change his minivan
license plate from "MOTOWN" to "5TH TOP."

December, Bethlehem: With memorable stories and bedrock
songs, a full-house crowd at Gerry Bastoni's memorial service
essentially places the 47-year-old curator, industrial historian and
genuine good guy in a jug band on a barge to a heavenly corridor
of canals.

PHOTO by DON FISHER, The Morning Call

CAPTION: Bonnie Brosious, the Allentown Fair's marketing
director, won, lost, and re-won a coveted date with the
Backstreet Boys.

PHOTO by HARRY FISHER, The Morning Call

CAPTION: Cantor Kevin Wartell fulfilled a dream by singing
`Baby, I Need Your Loving' onstage at Symphony Hall,
Allentown, with his friends, the Four Tops.

Date: Saturday, June 27, 1998
Page: A46
Edition: THIRD
Section: ENTERTAINMENT

BONNIE O'DONNELL WALKS THE WALK
AT GODFREY'S

by DAVE HOWELL (A free-lance story for The Morning Call)

The recent glut of female singer-songwriters makes it easy to
overlook the special contributions many have made -- and
continue to make -- to music. Sixty-five people saw a unique
contribution Thursday night as Bonnie O'Donnell of Bethlehem
presented her new self-released compact disc, "You Come
Walking In," at -- where else? -- Godfrey Daniels on Bethlehem
South Side.

Although the Easton native seemed slightly nervous as she started
her one-hour-and-45-minute show, her voice and guitar playing
were perfectly assured as she launched into the disc's lively title
tune.

O'Donnell sang with a perfect soprano that was arresting but
never obscured her lyrics. Like all good songwriters, her topics
varied. There were love songs, a heartfelt tune about her brother
("Hand on the Bottle"), and a fantasy about living on an island
written from a horse's point of view ("Horses of Chincoteague").

She even added a bit of whimsy with "Why Can't Girls Marry
Girls?," based on the musings of her then-5-year-old daughter,
rather than an attempt to be trendy.

O'Donnell was completely relaxed by the time her friend, Bill
Hall, joined her to sing harmony on the gentle "Name and Form."

In the second half of the show, Hall returned to sing "Your Song"
(not the Elton John song) alone.

A pleasant surprise was the addition of frequent Godfrey's
headliner Bob Franke, who joined O'Donnell for vocal harmonies
and both acoustic and National Steel guitar accompaniment. Both
Franke's voice and his compositions, which included the lovely
"Healing in This Night," blended in well with O'Donnell's. Both
performers' work had a spiritual component, which added an
uplifting feeling to the show.

Date: Saturday, June 20, 1998
Page: A43
Edition: THIRD
Section: ENTERTAINMENT

L.V. SINGER-SONGWRITER
SAMPLES HER LIFE ON CD

by GEOFF GEHMAN, The Morning Call

Bonnie O'Donnell and her daughter, Rachel, were watching a fire
from their apartment when the 5-year-old, still groggy after
awakening to Easton's evening sirens, asked out of the blue:

"Why can't girls marry girls?"

"I was totally mortified," says O'Donnell a decade later. "I figure
we'll get a question about the fire, but no, we get this. I remember
thinking: `I'm not ready; I haven't thought this through yet!' It was
one of those particularly lovely parent moments."

One of the beauties of being a musical parent is that children
always heat the creative boiler. O'Donnell eventually made
Rachel's question the spur of a song calling for tolerance. A
daughter's disarming inquiry leads her mother to wonder, like a
child: "Why can't we love whom we please?"

"Why Can't Girls Marry Girls?" appears on O'Donnell's first
compact disc, a sort of patchwork quilt of autobiographical
fantasy. "You Come Walking In," which O'Donnell will release
Thursday night at Godfrey Daniels in Bethlehem, portrays a child
therapist, a humanist, a folk realist who can masquerade as a
female Fats Waller. Produced sparely yet vividly by Scott Petito
and Anne Hills, O'Donnell's Bethlehem neighbor, mentor and
fellow child-sitter, the recording samples the selves O'Donnell
presents at coffeehouses and songwriting workshops.

And interviews. Asked if her three daughters have influenced her
writing, O'Donnell answers, quickly, "big time. There's this whole
other world available to me. They carry what's up with them all
over the place. They can be falling apart and look quite normal.
They keep me grounded. When I get too esoteric, they want
lunch money."

Shortly after this statement, 15-year-old Rachel and 13-year-old
Hannah breeze through O'Donnell's living room. They ask, they
comment, they implore. Their sister, Maggie Rose, weasels her
way into Mom's lap. It's the privilege of a 5-year-old who
happens to be cute.

O'Donnell rides this emotional seesaw in concert, too. The
41-year-old performs "Hand on the Bottle," written for her
adopted brother, Jonathan Tama, a member of Wisconsin's
Menominee tribe and an alcoholic. She discusses her feelings
about his dilemma, which she expresses in the lyrics "the call of
the eagle cannot stir his blood" and "the wind holds his tears."
Jonathan's disease is "hard for me, and that's what I bring to the
stage," explains O'Donnell, quietly, calmly. "I'm very up front
about myself, about who I am and what I do. I don't become
someone else. I would not want to hurt anybody. I want them to
think; I wouldn't mind making them cry."

O'Donnell has similar goals for another humanitarian plea. "Child
of the Night" was inspired by youngsters she met in her job as a
therapist for a children's psychiatric hospital. "So young to be so
old," she sings, "she's carrying the sins of the world."

"Children can seem quite normal, but there will always be a scar
that stays there," claims O'Donnell. "The best we can do is get
them going in the right direction. Which is a small thing, but at
least it's something."

O'Donnell wrote "Child of the Night" as an outlet for herself and
her stressed colleagues. Only one peer has heard the song; on
Thursday night, others will witness how O'Donnell refills a cup
drained by helping kids in crisis.

Making that one lasting connection keeps O'Donnell hopeful
during dues-paying, dispiriting three-hour coffeehouse gigs, the
kind where after two hours "you realize not a soul has been
listening." She's cheered, too, by welcoming coffeehouse owners
in Easton, and by the support of other performing mothers.

O'Donnell and Hills have a kinship beyond singing that glides and
spins. A Hills performance introduced O'Donnell to Godfrey
Daniels, which became a second home. Hills, a musical veteran,
gives O'Donnell, a live performer for a handful of years, valuable
advice about the road, the studio, the business. Hills' child-sitting
and friendship are invaluable to a single mother with two difficult
careers.

For "You Come Walking In" Hills coaxed producing partner
Michael Smith to play guitar and singing partner Cindy Mangsen
to play concertina. According to O'Donnell, Hills and Petito have
groomed her to write for instruments other than voice and guitar.
A wider palette, in turn, nudges her to improve her guitar work, so
that her fingers rival what she hears in her head.

Like Hills, O'Donnell considers the Internet a godsend, a
marketing and creative tool allowing her to stay home and tend
her flock. It was by computer, in fact, that she wrote her
teen-agers' favorite tune. For O'Donnell, "On My Mind" is a rare,
unadulterated, no-holds-barred heart song. Written with friend Bill
Hall, it's not to be confused with O'Donnell's "If I Were Your
Lover," a piece of Victorian lace -- the narrator imagines dolphins
carrying a love bouquet -- dreamed up while reading Alice
Hoffman's novel "Practical Magic."

"They're teen-agers: they like mushy love songs," says O'Donnell
of Rachel and Hannah. "They were surprised their mom could
write one."

O'Donnell's friends were surprised she could write a ballad of
lust. On "Move My Heart Around," her breezy soprano turns
slightly humid. A hazy National Steel guitar, played by
song-writing mentor Bob Franke, helps her steam such sentiments
as: "That man can move my heart around/Sing my soul without a
sound/Keep me longing for a cold wet afternoon." It's what
O'Donnell calls her "shower" song, one she'd normally belt
privately.

"Move My Heart Around" began as an assignment to borrow
another style in a songwriting workshop called "Tuesday Night
Brew." Named for the tea that's served, the session features five
musicians who meet monthly. The penalty for failing to brew a
new song is bringing two infant tunes the next time.

Workshops have nourished O'Donnell during her folk-circuit
apprenticeship. So have two years of promoting concerts by the
likes of Franke and Greg Greenway at Touchstone Theatre in
Bethlehem. The series allows her to spread the folk gospel she
heard growing up in Waynesburg, Green County, listening to
Simon & Garfunkel, absorbing '60s causes in her parents'
meeting/coffeehouse. It also enables her to thank Godfrey's, the
Swannanoa Gathering in Asheville, N.C., and other idea
incubators. Next year she'll have another outlet: Franke's song
component for the Steel Festival in Bethlehem.

O'Donnell dedicates her CD to another supportive bunch: her
daughters. She praises them for patiently sharing her with two
demanding audiences. "I know I am different from their friends'
moms," she points out. "Their mom has gigs on Friday nights.
Their mom is going to vacation this summer at Swannanoa. Their
mom even looks different."

Thankfully, Rachel considers her counseling, song-writing,
work-shopping, concert-promoting, van-driving mother normal. "I
still think I have that cool status," notes O'Donnell. She pauses,
then qualifies: "For just a little while longer."

Bonnie O'Donnell will mark the release of her disc, "You Come
Walking In," with a performance at 8 p.m. Thursday at Godfrey
Daniels, 7 E. 4th St., Bethlehem. Tickets: $9.50. 867-2390.

PHOTO by DOUG BENEDICT, The Morning Call

CAPTION: Bonnie O'Donnell will mark the release of her disc,
`You Come Walking In,' with a performance at 8 p.m. Thursday
at Godfrey Daniels, Bethlehem.

Date: Friday, February 13, 1998
Page: D07
Edition: FIFTH
Section: WEEKEND MAGAZINE

SINGER-SONGWRITER'S JOB
IS `TO REPEAT THE TRUTH'

by GEOFF GEHMAN, The Morning Call

"I'm a conduit for ideas that are larger and more powerful than
me," explains Greg Greenway, musical activist and humanist. "I
stand up there, and these songs just pass through me. I go on a
ride."

From a motel room in Mount Sterling, Ky., Greenway remembers
40 years of soul stirrers. One is Richie Havens, whose percussive
guitar, boiling passion and global concerns will be filtered into
Greenway's concert Tuesday night at Touchstone Theatre in
Bethlehem. It was Havens' album "Mixed Bag" that made a
white teen in Virginia understand better a black adult's view of
prejudice.

"His voice let me into his soul, and don'tcha think that with all the
messages coming at me down there, I had an armor ready to not
hear him," Greenway once said of Havens. "So I can tell you
songs can change people. I am one of those people."

Greenway grew up to share bills with Havens, whom he
considers a "shaman." His songs that have rippled the longest are,
like Havens' touchstones, intimate and transcendent.
According to Greenway, male strangers have thanked him for
writing "Don't Go," a tale of losing one of his beacons, his father.

"Mussolini's Head" combines the story of a Munich skinhead who
firebombed a Turkish family, then admitted he joined the neo-Nazi
clan for the free beer, with Greenway's passing observance of
Cape Cod skinheads practicing at looking like skinheads.

"Where does it go from being a fashion statement to throwing a
Molotov cocktail through someone's window to being a major
movement?" asks Greenway, who lives in Brewster, Mass. A
demagogue's "job is to repeat the lie; my job is to repeat what I
believe is the truth."

In "Free at Last" Greenway portrays Nelson Mandela, who
graduated from prisoner to liberator of South African blacks. In
"One Man, One Woman, One Vote," a semi-sequel on the 1995
recording "Singing For The Landlord" (Eastern Front), he covers
South Africa's first truly democratic elections. It was written in a
white heat for a special occasion.

That evening Greenway was scheduled to perform for an event
hosted by the editor of a book of Robert Kennedy's speeches.
Four of those speeches, the musician learned, got Kennedy
banned from South Africa. Greenway also learned he would be
singing for Kennedy's widow, Ethel, who met black leaders her
husband couldn't. He finished "One Man" in three hours.

Ordinary entwines with extraordinary in Greenway's "Into the
Wild Why Not," a song destined for his next recording. It's a
tribute to his wife's brother, a model/photographer/filmmaker who
died from AIDS at age 33. The way Greenway tells it, Don could
turn a couch potato into a bungee jumper.

A fellow model who had a wild European vacation with Don put
it this way: "I didn't know whether I was going to be in a prison,
or a castle." Greenway writes it this way: "You want to make him
king, you want to wring his neck."

With verses shifting from major to minor, and an optimistic
chorus, "Into the Wild Why Not" is a "celebration, in context."
"Don was The Event; he was a boat to catch," claims Greenway.
"It may have cost him his life, early. On the other hand, the life he
led was remarkably packed."

Sounds like a profile of Phil Ochs, another Greenway lightning
rod. After admiring Ochs' material without knowing the author,
after touring in Ochs Song Nights, Greenway finally realized
Ochs' influence while climbing a hill above the Falcon Ridge Folk
Festival. A rendition of an Ochs activist anthem somehow
transformed a city of tents into a farm-labor camp, with Woody
Guthrie strumming to improve workers' rights.

"That song kept coming up the hill with me. I felt honored, really
connected to that tradition," recalls Greenway. "It reminded me of
the power to change lives. Our job as musicians is to remind
people of our own humanity, and bring it up with perspective."

Greenway's goals include more flexibility, in singing and schedule,
and greater notoriety. A stronger reputation, he points out, would
allow him to support causes actively. A favorite charity is The
Clothesline Project, where high-school women hang T-shirts
inscribed with details of, and feelings about, their violent abuse.

A gentler objective is to tone down his onstage mannerisms.
Greenway admits a friend lampoons his juking by announcing,
"Greg Greenway soundcheck," then stomping. By marching
softer, he could have avoided a recent near-disaster in a New
Jersey church.

Greenway just couldn't understand why front-row listeners looked
horrified. Then he saw the source of their dismay. His stomping
had caused a four-foot-high metal cross to vibrate perilously close
to table's edge.

Greg Greenway will perform at 8 p.m. Tuesday in the
Touchstone Theatre Cafe, 321 E. 4th St., Bethlehem. The
concert is promoted by area musician Bonnie O'Donnell. Tickets:

$10. 868-4785.

* Benefit at Meadows: MAPPS: Musicians, Artists, Poets,

Performers & Songwriters will hold a Sadie Hawkins Dance and
fund-raiser at 7 p.m. today at The Meadows, Hellertown.
The evening will begin with a cocktail hour and hors d'oeuvre,
followed by dinner catered by Kasey Lynn's with an open bar.

Dance music will be provided by Paragon. Admission: $25, to
benefit the poetry and spoken-word recording project scheduled
for April 5 at Godfrey Daniels, Bethlehem. 867-5703.

* Now on sale: Tickets are available for two March concerts at
Stabler Arena, Bethlehem.

Those for The Regimental Band of the Scots Guards and The
Pipes and Drums of the Black Watch, scheduled for 8 p.m.
March 9, range from $15.50 to $24.

Those for Matchbox 20, at 8 p.m. March 18, are $22.50; $17.50
for students with valid identification (student-price tickets are
available at the Lehigh University Bookstore and Stabler box
office only). 758-6611.

Matchbox 20's previous appearance in the Lehigh Valley was at
Lupo's in Bethlehem, where the Florida alternative rock group
was paired with The Gufs for a gig that drew 110 people in late
January 1997. Since then, the band's 1996 debut disc, "Yourself
Or Someone Like You" (Lava/Atlantic), has sold more than four
million copies and has produced two hit singles, the
Grammy-nominated (for best rock performance by a duo or
group) "Push" and "3 am."

To submit Nightlife news and club information, write to Nightlife,
c/o Len Righi or Pat Bosha, The Morning Call, 101 N. 6th St.,
Allentown 18105-1260. Information also can be faxed to (610)
820-6693, or dropped off during business hours at The Morning

Call editorial offices at 6th and Linden streets, Allentown.
Deadline for items is noon Tuesday. 820-6626.

PHOTO by SUSAN WILSON

CAPTION: Greg Greenway will perform Tuesday night at
Touchstone Theatre in Bethlehem.