Editor’s note: This story is an excerpt from WBUR’s weekly arts and culture newsletter, The ARTery. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here.
Singer-songwriters Mason Daring and Jeanie Stahl made names for themselves in the golden era of Cambridge’s coffeehouse music scene.
Charmed by the coastal mystique of his on-and-off childhood home of Marblehead, in the early 1970s Daring said he wrote a sea shanty meant for a male voice. But then he met Stahl at a coffeehouse in Central Square. She’d forgotten her guitar and asked to borrow his. He reluctantly agreed. Then he heard her sing.
“He liked my voice and that was it,” Stahl recalled of their first meeting.
Stahl’s voice gave Daring an idea for the shanty. He changed the gender and moved one part up an octave. As a result, he said “Marblehead Morning” became a better song. They recorded the hypnotic, intertwining call and response as a duet. It launched their career, getting airplay all around the United States and into Canada.
Daring recalled how regional radio hosts would tell listeners, “We’re going to play ‘Marblehead Morning’ in half an hour. So call your friends.” He said he still can’t account for the song’s success.
But with the hit of “Marblehead Morning” on their hands, the pair (then a couple) made a home of the tight-knit spit of land north of Boston, known for its safe harbor and narrow streets lined with Revolutionary-era houses.
“You could just walk to your friends, you could drop in,” explained Stahl about establishing a group of friends who are still connected to this day. In Daring’s words, they became ensconced in the town. “We married other people, became friends with each other’s spouses forever, and continued to play.”
Around that time, they began performing regularly at Cambridge’s Club Passim. Along with Billy Novick, Stuart Schulman, Bill Staines, and Guy Van Duser, they formed the Club Passim All Stars, playing gigs nearly every year until Staines passed away in late 2021.
Meanwhile, as Daring and Stahl, they recorded two albums and over the ensuing decades launched independent careers — Stahl as a songwriter and solo artist and, among other things, the co-producer of an Academy Award-nominated IMAX movie, “The Living Sea.”
Daring practiced entertainment law and started directing commercials, producing music, and composing for film and television. He wrote the themes for PBS shows “Frontline” and “NOVA” and original music for 17 films by acclaimed American film director and novelist John Sayles.
For Sayles’ mythical Irish Selkie tale, “The Secret of Roan Innish,” Daring wrote half the score in a Marblehead clapboard cottage, the other half in Dublin.
Even with separate successes, Daring and Stahl kept seeking each other out. They’d make annual stops to hometown crowds at Marblehead’s Me & Thee acoustic music series, ongoing since Anthony Silva began it in 1970.
When Daring and Stahl hit 50 years of collaboration in 2023, they decided to return to the recording studio to film and re-release some of their favorite songs, performed with musicians they’ve known as long as they’ve known each other: Richard Gates on bass, Tim Jackson on drums, Duke Levine on guitar, Kenny White on keyboards, Suzanne Boucher on background vocals, Billy Novick on clarinet, and Richard “Gus” Sebebring on French Horn. They also recorded a heartfelt ode Stahl wrote about their Marblehead neighbors, “Circle of Friends,” which she performed live at Me & Thee.
Until that point, the plan had been to make a CD and release clips on YouTube. But Daring said he was gobsmacked by how good the recordings sounded. He said he thought, “‘My God, we’re better than we ever were,’ and figured why not put all these songs together in a movie?”
He mentioned the idea to Sayles, who told him Tim Jackson should direct.
Because Jackson goes way back with the duo (he met Daring in eighth grade) and he performed on some of the scores from Sayles’ movies, he described making the film as “a beautiful full circle moment.” It helps that he’s also made five previous documentaries — films that focus broadly on the arts and especially on other musicians.
For this project, Jackson said he worked closely with producer, cinematographer and editor Bill Aydelott to develop a film that works against the music documentary cliché of “you tell a lot of story, interrupt with a song, then tell more story.”
Jackson explained that’s why the recording sessions take center stage. “When you see the film, you’re gonna see some of the best musicians in Boston playing at their best and some of the best songwriting in the folk scene.”
“Marblehead Morning: 50 Years in Harmony with Daring and Stahl” makes its world premiere at the Independent Film Festival Boston on Sunday, April 26, at noon. Daring and Stahl will be there, with their guitars.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.wbur.org ’
