The Lecturing Songwriter

Not all Wellesley students are aware that one of Wellesley's professors is also an acclaimed folk musician. On Nov. 21, Professor Beth DeSombre of the environmental studies program celebrated the release of her second CD, "At Home in this Town," at the Multifaith Center, to an audience of family, friends, colleagues and students. She opened her concert by playing a couple of songs from her previous album, "Crooked Highways." "It's like giving an older sibling a gift at a baby shower so they don't feel forgotten," she joked.

DeSombre has been involved with music her whole life. She grew up listening to folk music in her Chicago home and recalls saving her allowance to buy Peter, Paul and Mary records. Eventually, she taught herself how to play the guitar. In high school,  DeSombre began writing and performing music at local open mikes in the Chicago area. As president of Oberlin College's folk music club, DeSombre had the freedom to practice writing and performing folk music while receiving her Bachelor's Degree in political science.

When DeSombre moved to Boston to pursue her graduate degree at Harvard, she stopped writing and performing publicly, but continued to perform recreationally and to attend concerts, which she credits with keeping her "sane in graduate school." One of the reasons DeSombre applied to Wellesley was because of the folk scene in the Boston area. "There is no better place for the kind of music that I do than the Boston area," she said. "It's just amazing how much there is here."

After coming to Wellesley in 2001, DeSombre returned to writing music and performing publically, and released "Crooked Highways" in 2007. A couple of events motivated DeSombre's reentrance to the public folk scene: her promotion to full professor, an accomplishment that gave her more security in her career, and the death of her favorite songwriter, Dave Carter. After his death, DeSombre explained, "I found myself performing publicly in memorial song circles. That really launched me more than anything else into playing in public."  

Having two jobs is definitely a challenge. "I'm taking an already fairly intense job, and then I'm adding something else on top of it," she said. "I think Wellesley students know something about over-commitment, and I am always over-committed!" However, DeSombre knows that balancing two careers also has its rewards. "It's always helped me to have some other creative outlet in my life," she said. DeSombre described both jobs as "intense in a different set of ways." Academic writing and songwriting "use really different parts of my brain, and so, in a way, it leaves me a little bit more refreshed for the stuff I do during the day," she explained.

DeSombre also finds that teaching and songwriting complement each other. DeSombre performs mostly in New England, but academic trips have given her the opportunity to take her concerts as far as Portland, Oregon and Italy. As a professor, her summertime flexibility lets her focus on producing her CDs at a faster pace than most artists, which is just what she did with "At Home in this Town," starting the production process in late May and releasing the CD at the end of fall semester. Wellesley College also provides a unique fan base that most folk musicians don't have. Although DeSombre wishes Wellesley had a better local music scene, she appreciates venues like WZLY, Punch's Alley and El Table that have featured her music. "There are these pockets of people on campus who know my music who I don't know, and that's kind of neat," she said. DeSombre also has free advertising. She uses Community, the campus's common forum, to publicize her events.  

Although the inspiration for DeSombre's music does not come from her own life, aspects of her life tend to "sneak in." A line from one track on the new CD, "Resolutions," is about answering email faster. DeSombre's real inspiration is her passion; "my songwriting is informed by my political science background," she explained. The title, "At Home in this Town," comes from a line in the second track, "Crawfordsville, Indiana," which depicts the different stages of the life of a black woman from a racially complicated town. The song is very political, but the political tone remains in the background of the story she is telling.

The last song DeSombre played at her concert was "Bigger, Faster, and More," a song that she plans to put on her next CD, and the first song she has written that unites her political and environmental interests. But before concluding, she noted that she needed to wrap the concert up because she had to teach an 8:30 class the next morning.