In episode 12 of Hooked on Creek, I interview musicians Kate Whelan and Moriah Ramos from In Harmony, a piano and flute duo covering Max Creek, Phish and more.
During this episode, I explore Kate and Moriah’s deep interest in Max Creek, their approach for choosing and arranging Max Creek songs and what inspired them to pursue the formation of In Harmony. Moriah also talks about her personal memories of Rob Fried, the late percussionist who performed in Max Creek from 1979 to 2004. All of this, and a lot of great music from In Harmony, is packed into this episode.
Songs featured in this episode:
- Love Makes You Lose Your Mind Medley
- Said and Done > Squirming Coil > Said and Done
- Fluffhead > You Let Me Down Again
Connect with In Harmony on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
Episode 12 transcription
You’re listening to Hooked on Creek, a podcast celebrating the music of Max Creek. I’m your host, Korre Johnson and you’re listening to episode 12. Thank you for joining me on episode 12 of Hooked on Creek. I think you’re really going to enjoy this episode because it features an interview with musicians Kate Whelan and Moriah Ramos. Inspired by their love of Max Creek, Kate and Moriah formed a piano and flute duo called In Harmony that performs songs by Max Creek, Phish and the Grateful Dead, among others.
During this episode, I explore Kate and Moriah’s deep interest in Max Creek, discuss their approach for choosing and arranging Max Creek songs and learn what inspired them to pursue the formation of In Harmony. We also talk about Moriah’s personal memories of Rob Fried, the late percussionist who performed in Max Creek from 1979 to 2004. All of this, and a lot of great music from In Harmony, is packed into this episode.
You can find links to the songs featured in this episode in the show notes or simply head over to hookedoncreak.com. And while you’re there, click the contact link and let me know what you think. I’m always looking for recommendations on topics to cover or Max Creek shows to feature in this podcast. All right, now let’s get started.
Korre: I’m excited to have Kate Whelan and Moriah Ramos from the musical group In Harmony joining me on the podcast today. Kate and Moriah, welcome to Hooked on Creek.
Kate: Thanks for having us.
Korre: To begin with, Kate, what is In Harmony?
Kate: In Harmony is a duo. I play piano. Moriah plays flute. We mostly try to cover Creek, but we kind of go outside of the box with Creek related bands — just instrumental, the two of us.
Korre: Moriah, how long have you been playing flute?
Moriah: I just had a student of mine asked me this the other day and it was actually over 20 years, so yes, it’s awhile.
Korre: And Kate, how long have you been playing piano?
Kate: For 37 years.
Korre: The two of you are taking this musical experience you have in piano and flute and you’re bringing it to this jam-band scene. Can you talk a little bit about the songs that you play and the bands that inspire your music?
Moriah: Katie and I are both Phish fans and I’m a huge Phish fan actually, so we’ve been doing a lot of songs, especially Creek going into little interludes or doing a little tease into some Phish songs — which is great because a lot of Phish fans, especially now that Scott is playing in Mike Gordon Band for past years. So now it’s kind of bridging the Max Creek and Phish scene a little bit more, which is really cool. So we’re both on a lot of Phish groups where we can post the Max Creek things and people know who Max Creek is because of that. And if they don’t, now maybe they’ll get into it a little bit more.
Korre: And some of them include Said and Done into Squirming Coil back into Said and Done. So that’s a Max Creek and Phish combo. Another Max Creek/Phish combo includes Fluffhead into You Let Me Down Again. There’s a lot of Phish. There’s a lot of Max Creek, but also Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen and others, right?
Kate: Yeah, if we like a song we’ll just be like, “Hey, try this one.” If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. There’s different things to think about when you don’t have different parts of a band. So it’s just piano and flute. So there’s certain songs that we would maybe needs something a little more full or I will try to make it more full with Moriah’s effects or something different on the piano.
Korre: Kate, tell me more about that. I would imagine it can be difficult to find the right songs where a piano and a flute work well together to fill out the song and maybe, speak to all the parts of the music. Tell me more about how you identify the right songs.
Kate: We have a silent partner named Rob Mederios who has a really good ear. He’s kind of like a really good source. He will be like, “Try this one.” And, you’d never think of that. But he just has a great ear and mind for that. So either Moriah and I will just come up with a song that we just happen to be listening to and then we are like, “Oh that would be cool to try.” Or Rob will come in and he will have the year of the show and the version he’s thinking of and he’s kind of a Creek geek.
Korre: And what’s the most recent song that you guys have worked on?
Kate: Said and Done.
Korre: Moriah, tell me more Said and Done and the work that went into composing that piece.
Moriah: That was actually a lot. I think this was the hardest one we’ve had to do. And I kept telling Katie, “Katie, sit and learn Said and Done.” Like every time, me and Rob would be like, “Hurry up. Did you learn Said and Done yet?”
Kate: I learned the melody and then she’s like, “You haven’t learned that 39-chord song yet.” I’m like, “Can you give me a minute? Like it’s kind of a lot of parts.” So I figured out the Said and Done chords just by listening to the same part over and over and over, like in the old days before everything was online, because a lot of time Creek songs aren’t online. And so really messily, I put it together in magic marker. I don’t know why I didn’t use pencil. And so kind of as a joke, I sent a picture of it to Mark Mercier. “Like did I get it right?” And he responds with, “I just sent you an email.” So I go into my email and then he sent me the whole chart for Said and Done. And I’m like, “Oh, I’m learning it now.”
Moriah: And I was like, “I hope you’re were at least close.”
Kate: Yeah, and that’s what I said to him too. I’m like, “Oh glad I was at least close.” It’d be really embarrassing if he was like, “Oh, that’s way off. Here you go.”
Korre: I think that added a little more pressure to your work. Right?
Kate: Especially, because Moriah was pressuring me and Rob for like two months. I’m like, “All right, I have to do it now.”
Moriah: And now it’s like it has to be really good. So it was a lot. So on the flute, I do all the verses and the lyrics. So sitting and listening and stopping Mark singing every time it was a different verse, which was a very — there’s a lot. But he’d do different notes on different ones, so I was trying to mimic that. So like my notes that have, okay, now this verse, it’s like a different note. It was a lot. And writing out the whole thing. And we only cut out like one, maybe one verse or so.
Kate: Yeah. There’s a lot of verses. So we didn’t want people to get bored with no lyrics happening. So that’s why we put the Squirming Coil in there too, because it kind of changed it up a little bit and gave it something different.
Korre: I’m going to take a break from my interview with Kate and Moriah to play some of their music, but be sure to stay tuned because there’s a lot more of my interview still to come. All the songs featured in this episode were performed live by In Harmony and published on their YouTube channel. Now you may have recognized the song I featured during the introduction of this episode, that was In Harmony performing one of my favorite Max Creek songs, Love Makes You Lose Your Mind. Now, you’re going to hear In Harmony perform Said and Done by Max Creek, which includes a transition into Squirming Coil by Phish.
Korre: Moriah, talk to me about how this partnership formed between you and Kate.
Moriah: So we met probably when I was about 16 years old, the first meeting. I was pretty young in high school. From being mutual friends in my hometown and I think Kate was living there at the time in Bristol, Rhode Island.
Kate: I went to college there and Moriah lived in the town, so I lived there when I was in college.
Moriah: So we met then. And then we knew each other a little bit just through friends. And then years later she was playing in a band and with friends of mine. And one time they were like, “Oh, hey, you can come jam.” So I went to go. This is before I started improvising. I am classically trained. I have a master’s degree in the flute and flute performance. So at that time, I was not used to improvising and not reading music and just playing from my head. Yeah, around 2002. So I went. I was like, “Yeah, I’ll go jam.” So I go there where Katie lived, it was like maybe a 45 minute drive from me. I drive there, I get to a rotary. I freak out and that I turn around.
Kate: And she lies to us and says she got lost, that’s why she couldn’t come.
Moriah: So that never happened. But then recently at Stafford, the Creek anniversary shows that they had this past year, we met and we were like talking and we’re like, “We should do a flute and piano, like Holly Bowling style/type thing, but Creek. So that’s how that ended up happening, really. And we’re like, “We’re going to do it.” And then we did.
Korre: Kate, can you tell me about the beginning of your awareness of Max Creek? When and where did that occur for you?
Kate: It was kind of baptism by fire from my band in college, Fat Thomas. I join their band and pretty much the first week I was in the band, they’re like, “So one thing that we all love is Max Creek. So we are going to a Max Creek show.” And that was it. Like I went. It was February 21, 1997, at the Living Room and I was hooked like ever since.
Korre: Tell me more about the bands you were playing in during your college years.
Kate: Okay. So Fat Thomas — we played a lot of the Living Room and actually we got to open up for Scottness, Jiggle the Creek, so these Max Creek side projects that were happening. We were kind of like the local college band. So Randy who owned the Living Room, who I miss dearly, he was a really nice guy who passed away. But he just loved helping us out. He knew that if different acts were coming through. He would kinda throw us a bone. But yeah, a couple times opening for Scott. So that was fun for us, being all like early twenties Creek Freeks.
Kate: Moriah. I understand when you were a child, you were exposed to the jam-band scene or this music relatively early, is that correct?
Moriah: Correct. So my mom dated Rob Fried, the late percussionist of Max Creek. I’m sure most people know that. So my mom dated him. They were together for a long time, pretty much almost got married. He was like a stepdad to me. So I grew up with that. One of my first shows, I remember going to as a kid and I remember going to Rocky Point in Rhode Island and going on one of those little like airplane rocket ship rides and Creek was playing in the background. And I heard, I think it was Willow Tree, and this is probably still one of my favorite songs. And my mom’s like, “You just loved it and you were hooked ever since then.” So, I was like, “Going to do it again.” And it was, “Only if Creek is playing.” So I became hooked on Creek since a little kid because my mom exposed me to it.
But I also found tapes recently, like cassette tapes that had my name on them, and they were Creek tapes, Dead tapes and like Flying Ditch Diggers, some random tapes that people around the scene would probably know. So I found my name on them. I’m like, “Mom, why is my name on all these cassette tapes? She just like, “You don’t remember, honey? You used to bring them to kindergarten for show and tell.” So I was hooked at a young age and just Rob playing and my mom bringing me to shows since I was a kid. Which actually when I got older I started like, “Mom, I want to go to a festival?” And she’s like, “No, no, no.”
So I actually snuck away to StrangeCreek was my first festival that I went to without my mom. I lied. I hopped in my friend’s van and said I was going somewhere else. And then I called her later, “I’m actually on my way to StrangeCreek.” Then Rob met me there and he drove me around on the golf cart and stuff. That was my life as a child growing up with Creek.
Korre: Can you describe Rob Fried for our audience who might not have ever known him like you got to know him?
Moriah: He’s just an amazing person, amazing musician. Like I will hear recordings from when he was in the band. The percussion — like you’ll hear a little things. Like we were listening to Said and Done and I’m like, “We need that bird thing. He has that bird sounds that he had.” He’d have all these little things, like the egg shakers – little shaker things. He was just so into music and loved music and loved playing percussion. He was so nice. I’ve heard stories about times when friends were in need and he helped them out, like couldn’t get into the show and he helped them get in. So he was just such a good person and really influenced my playing and my musical career.
Korre: Kate, have you had an opportunity to interact or meet with members of the band. And if so, what has that been like?
Kate: My first time playing music on stage with any member of Max Creek was at my friend Glen and Jill’s party, Cinco de Mayo — my house, and Flipper Dave was playing. And it turned into like a friend jam by the end of the evening. And so I’m sharing a keyboard with Glen Nelson who is Flipper Dave’s keyboard player, and he’s like, “Look who’s playing bass.” And Scott Murawski is behind me playing bass. So the first time I actually played with any member, it was Scott on bass. And then I think my next encounter was — I sat in with Pete Scheips at the Powder Mill Barn with Scott Guberman on organ. And Mark was playing and I sat in on Mark’s keyboards for that. And I was like so scared to be touching them. I felt like it was like the Holy Grail. I was really nervous.
Korre: Now, in addition to the videos on YouTube, the two of you have been performing your music live for audiences. Is that correct? I’ve noticed that you were recently at the Wormtown music festival. Moriah, can you tell me more about that experience?
Moriah: Sure. So we got the chance to play as the roaming band at Wormtown this year, which was fun. We came a little late, but I had to work. like I had to go for a school camping trip. So I came back and got there in time and it started raining like all day Saturday. So trying to be the roaming bands with a flute and piano in the rain. Katie actually, one of her keys broke and she decided to superglue it and the rains getting the keyboard all wet. Then they’re starting to stick. It’s like rubbing off on it. So we had a rough start to Wormtown, but we had a strong finish. We did a nice set by the river, which was really cool with a little photo shoot by Jackie from JMS photography. So that was really cool. But just being able to go and play for people that are usually not used to seeing a flute, just walking around and hearing us play a Creek, which was really cool. And especially a lot of like Phishheads, they were really excited too. So it was fun.
Korre: I’m going to take another break from my interview with Kate and Moriah to play more of their music, but please stay tuned because there’s a lot more of my interviews still to come. Right now, I’m going to play in Harmony’s version of Fluffhead by Phish into You Let Me Down Again by Max Creek.
Korre: Moriah, what do you think is so special about Max Creek?
Moriah: It’s just there so different. I mean there’s a lot of bands that have the same instrumentation that don’t have that same feel and vibe and they really do have like a Max Creek vibe. Which actually, a friend commented on one of our last video that we posted, our Said and Done into Squirming Coil video, that it had that Creek vibe. And I was like, “That’s what I was going for.” While playing it, I had chills. I’ve been at so many shows where I cry and I am not like a crier. It just hits you in such an emotional way. And I think most Creek Freeks, that’s what it is. It’s like an emotional thing. And that’s how I connect to a lot of music that I love. It’s more of an emotional connection.
Korre: You’ve each decided to make music a big part of your lives. What is so important about music to each of you that has led you down this path? Kate, maybe you can start.
Kate: I think a lot of things inspired me in every step of the way with music. My mom started me when I was 4 and then basically she taught me until 6 or 7 and then signed me up for lessons at a conservatory. I took classical lessons. I didn’t like my piano teacher at one point. My mom’s like, “Just try this other piano teacher. If you don’t like him then you can quit. But give it one more try because we think it’s a personality conflict.” And she was totally right. I started getting bored with piano in general, like when I got to be 11, 12, because I was 11 or 12.
And then I started hearing Mötley Crüe and Van Halen and Aerosmith and I was trying to learn like these little piano parts that were on the radio. And then in high school I discovered jazz band and that just kind of blew up everything. I started taking jazz lessons on top of the classical, and fell in love with blues in general, and jazz — Billy Holiday, Ray Charles, Jimmy Smith, Chick Corea. And that just kind of led to like classical rock and Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers. So I think along the way, like different things kicked me along.
And then in college, joining my first real band, I was hooked on playing live in front of people because it’s fun. Besides just kind of sitting in here and there and doing the In Harmony thing right now, I’ve had to cut back just because I’m a single mom and it’s really hard being in a full-time band and being a full-time mom and full-time working. Typically, I usually teach piano lessons. I’ve been doing that for years. I’ve taught in two schools. I’m a teacher. I’ve taught in two schools that didn’t have a music program, so I started a music program, like a School of Rock in one of the schools. And then the other school we did a chorus and we did a competition. So I tried to spread it that way. I think it’s important that kids grow up with music or at least the option.
Korre: And Moriah?
Moriah: So I grew up knowing that I was going to go to school for music. I knew as a child, as I see kids in the marching band come by and I’m like, “Yep, I’m going to do that. I’m going to be in a marching band. I’m gonna go on and do something with music.” Well, when I was a kid, I was like, “I’m going to go teach music.” So I knew I was going to do that, but I didn’t know how I was gonna get there. And when it started happening, going to school for it and realizing it was a little harder than I thought doing the music ed path, music education. So I’ve been playing the flute since I was in fifth grade. Actually, my first instrument was the saxophone and then my mom had a flute at home she used to play. And she’s like, “How about you bring the flute to school today?” So I bring the flute to school and my band teacher was like, “You’re not playing the saxophone anymore.” And I’m like, “Okay.” And then ever since then, I was just really good at the flute.
So I went to school for music education and got my master’s degree in flute performance instead. And I’m now teaching at the college level at Roger Williams University and I’m now also teaching middle school band. So without getting a degree, I’ve found a loophole and I’m actually doing both the things I wanted to do — teaching the older at a more advanced level at college and also teaching younger kids. So music is all around me.
And then playing, I’ve been doing assisted living gigs for like dementia patients, which was great. It was probably one of my favorites. I’ve heard like best pickup lines from a 90-year-old man that I’ve ever heard in my life. He told me I was GL. I was like, “What is that?” He’s like, “You’re good looking.” I was like, “That is the best. You’re my new boyfriend, 93 years old.” So I do that, assisted living gigs. I do any like wedding gigs. I actually just came from a mass. I had to play a mass for friends. So I’ll play at church. My uncle was a priest, so I played many of those. So it’s all around me. I feel like music, especially now teaching middle school, it’s everyday. And I also have my own flute studio where I teach flute lessons.
Korre: Kate, what does the future hold for In Harmony?
Kate: Let me get my crystal ball. I don’t know. We just want to make music and have fun doing it. Whatever path that leads us on is the path that we’re on. We both have lives. We’re both busy, both work. And then we both love to play music, so we make sure that we get together on a fairly regular basis. And if we have something planned, we get together more up to that to practice for a specific event. I like to just keep it moving forward in the direction it’s going. I like what’s happening. You know, we’re not looking to be rock stars, but we’re looking at rock.
Korre: Kate Whelan and Moriah Ramos, thank you so much for your time today on the podcast. I really appreciate everything you’re doing and I’m just excited to see what comes next for In Harmony.
Kate: Thank you. Thanks for having us.
Moriah: Thank you.
And that concludes my interview with Kate Whelan and Moriah Ramos from In Harmony. If you love In Harmony as much as I do, be sure to check the show notes for links to connect with In Harmony on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
And if you enjoyed listening to this episode of Hooked on Creek, you can help me reach more Max Creek fans by telling your friends about this podcast. You can also join discussions about the podcast and get a behind-the-scenes view of this podcast by following Hooked on Creek on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Just search for Hooked on Creek to get connected. And of course you can always visit hookedoncreek.com and click the contact link to send me a message. Thanks for tuning in.