A couple of weeks ago, I chatted with Heather Pierson regarding her Charlie Brown Christmas tour and shows in Maine. During our conversation, she mentioned yet another aspect of her musical career — her team-up with Leah Boyd, a certified trainer of Nonviolent Communication; that act goes by the name of Peaceful Means. They are holding a workshop from 2-5 p.m. on Jan. 6 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brunswick (1 Middle St.) titled “The Greatest Gift: Listening and reflecting with care and curiosity.” I was intrigued by the whole concept of the program and the two artists involved, so I requested a phone interview with Boyd and called her in Buckfield late last month. After introductions, I posed my first inquiry:

Q: I would like to talk a bit about this thing that’s happening in Brunswick — is this going to be a concert or a workshop or a combination of both?
Boyd: It’s going to be a combination of teaching and singing in community with the participants, and a little bit of performance of a few pieces; so it’s heavily focused on involving the participants.

Q: Now what is the term for this procedure?
Boyd: It’s nonviolent communication, so besides the music, I make a livelihood by helping people communicate using nonviolent communication as the basis for that. This is the first time that Heather and I combine those teachings, that information, with music. Heather and I came together to do this “peaceful means” work coming from the nonviolent communication background wanting to express that through music.

Q: I understand — having talked to Heather a few weeks ago — that you two are getting close to releasing your first-ever album as the Peaceful Means duo, correct?
Boyd: Yes, I’m hoping we’ll have a single out soon and that we’ll put the album out in the new year.

Q: Have you done recordings on your own?
Boyd: Yeah, years ago. I guess between the early 90s through the early 2000s, I released four different solo, singer-songwriter CDs myself, and then I kind of shifted into really going heavily into the nonviolent communication path and music became more of a hobby for me for a number of years. So getting back into it in a bigger way feels good (chuckle) after several years not being fully immersed in music.

Q: Well, it must be nice and feel like coming home again, in a way.
Boyd: Mm, yeah.

Q: No matter how you look at it, music is a universal language … it’ll just get the point across.
Boyd: Yeah, so true. The longing to be together in a way that kind of transcends the regional differences, the political differences, the philosophical differences because, as you said, music kind of goes to the heart of a deeper message — humans are made to be together and support each other in community, I think music gives us that opportunity.

Q: I have been to concerts where the performers were giving it out to the audience and the more they gave, the more the folks gave back, and the artists responded with even more energy — it was a really neat thing to see.
Boyd: Yeah, and be in the middle of it, right? And be swept up into it?

Q: Oh, yes!
Boyd: Yeah, so that’s what we want to do: really create those experiences with our music — that transcendent experience, that sense of being in a warm connection with other people being immersed in the music. What we hope to offer is a healing, soothing sort of balm for all the anxiety and jitteriness that we’re all kind of tip-toeing around these days.

Q: I’ve heard the term “circle singing” and this sounds like something you might be incorporating, right?
Boyd: Well, the idea of a circle being an inclusive gathering of people — sitting evenly across from each other — goes way back in a lot of different traditions, and singing in circles is pretty popular now. People are wanting to be together — you can hear each other really well when you sit in a circle and it’s not made for a performance; a circle is more for people to join together in musical expression. So singing in circle is community-building with a real intention of connection with each other in the music, I think.

Q: And facing each other you can make eye contact and are immersed in the music rather than being entertained by it.
Boyd: (Chuckle) Yeah, and there is usually a ton of sharing in circles because people come in with songs they know, so people come together and teach each other songs, and so what ends up happening is songs start to pass from circle to circle.

Q: Did you introduce Heather to this concept?
Boyd: I think maybe I introduced it to her — it would be fun to hear her take on it. When I met her she was a teenager, she was playing in an all-original rock band — I auditioned to be lead singer for that band and got the job, and that’s how she and I first met a long time ago (laughter); like 30 years ago. I eventually left the band and started moving more towards this more indigenously influenced circle music, and then I ultimately formed a trio with other women to perform and also bring people into circles of doing that kind of music. When one of the members was leaving, I asked Heather if she’d like to join the trio. I think that may have been her introduction to this kind of music.

Q: Well, it’s kind of serendipitous that you are now rejoined and the experiences that you both have had can really go to augment this concept even closer.
Boyd: Yeah, and in between the trio work and present day, our musical paths have kept intertwining — at times, overlapping — and this element that we share in this almost spiritual sense of wanting to have music to be transcendent, wanting music to uplift and like that, that has continued to be a common thread for each of us, so Peaceful Means is aligned in our mission, and that makes it nice.

Q: And it’s an aptly named duo, I must say. Is there anything, Leah that you’d like me to pass on to the folks reading this article, especially about this gathering in Brunswick on the 6th?
Boyd: I think it’s important for people to know that no one needs to have any musical aptitude or experience to participate in this workshop — it’s going to be playful and experiential. Those are some of the things I’d like people to know.

Lucky Clark, a 2018 “Keeping the Blues Alive” Award winner, has spent more than 50 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

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