Roger Penney

Infobox Musical artist
Name = Roger Penney


Img_capt = Roger Penney 2007
Img_size =
Landscape =
Background = solo_singer
Birth_name =
Alias = Roger Becket
Born =
Died =
Origin = Greenwich Village New York,USA
Instrument = Vocal Autoharp Keyboards guitar
Voice_type =
Genre = Psych folk Folk rock American Folk Country Folk
Occupation = Singer Songwriter Instrumentalist
Years_active = 1967 - present
Label = MGM Heritage Winter Solstice
Associated_acts = Bermuda Triangle Band Roger and Wendy Euphoria
URL = http://www.bermudatriangleband.net
Current_members =
Past_members =
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 60's, early 70's and is known for his inventive performances and recordings as Bermuda Triangle Band as well as Roger and Wendy and EUPHORIA (American Band).

History

Early life

Born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, his first public performance was singing "Don't Fence Me In" at the age of five on WORC (AM), the Worcester AM radio station. Several preteen summers were spent in his cousin's Anchor Cafe, a gritty 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. The traditional songs left their footprint on his young sensibilities.

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, took post grad. courses at Harvard U. and did research for NASA. 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

But the love of music insistently pulled him away from this scientific life. He once again immersed himself in traditional music at picking roundtables at the Silver Vanity folk club in Amherst Mass. People who occasionally joined in were Taj Mahal, and Buffy Saint Marie.

Roger and Wendy

In 1966 he moved to Greenwich Village, New York City, the hotbed of folk music, where he formed the band "Roger and Wendy" with his partner, Wendy Penney. Performing 364 nights a year in Village coffeehouses and clubs, 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". ["Record World"magazine,Pick Hit,September 27,1969] 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. [National Association of Campus Activities magazine's tour schedules and artist performance reports, 1970 through 1992] They released

a folk album "Roger and Wendy" in 1971. ["Dickensonian Press", March 1971.]

Bermuda Triangle

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. ["Shindig!"magazine, review by Paul Martin, October 2006] College concert tours continued with more than 3000 performances in the 70's and 80's. [National Association of Campus Activities]

Rediscovery

Due to the success in Europe the US and Asia in 2006 of a British reissued CD of the Bermuda Triangle's 1977 vinyl album, ["Shindig!"] 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. ["Velvet"magazine, The Netherlands, article by Erwin Zijleman, October 8, 2007] 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.

Style

Roger Penney is regarded as the originator and developer of psychedelic folk autoharp, as well as the first person to play electric autoharp. [Lysergia/Acid archives, December 26,2006] ["Velvet"] His style was completely unprecedented. He uses his electrified harp as the lead instrument on all his recordings. He also shapes the notes with effects and his own covert technology. 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.

Autoharp

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, tone, percussion etc. His favorite unit in the 70's was the Eventide Clockworks phase shifter. Next was a Lexicon Primetime digital delay. An additional effect came from five 25 cent transducers that were surplus from a pinball machine. He mounted them on the autoharp and ran a line into a Linndrum sound module which allowed him the option of playing percussion/drum rhythms simultaneously with finger-picking the strings.

DISCOGRAPHY

EUPHORIA

*"Euphoria" MGM/Heritage Records (1969), vinyl LP
*"Euphoria" Heritage/Beatball Records (2007), reissued as a CD

Roger and Wendy

*"Roger and Wendy" Horny Records (1971)
*"Roger Penney: The Electric Autoharpist" Winter Solstice Records (2008)

Bermuda Triangle Band

*"Bermuda Triangle" Winter Solstice Records (1977)
*"Bermudas ll" Winter Solstice Records (1984)
*"Bermuda Triangle" unofficial reissue on Radioactive UK Records (2006)
*"Bermuda Triangle" Winter Solstice Records (2007), reissued as a CD
*"The Missing Tapes" Winter Solstice Records (2007)
*"Bermuda Triangle" Reissued 12 inch vinyl LP on Anazitisi Records (2008)

References

External links

* [http://www.bermudatriangleband.net bermudatriangleband.net]