Relaxed Woman Uses Spoons To Create Music While Sitting On Her Front Porch

Jan 11, 2023 by apost team

Abby Roach was born on Oct. 29, 1981, in Wichita, Kansas. Better known by her stage name, the Spoon Lady, Roach became a musician, radio personality, and activist, best known for her unlikely choice of instrument. 

Roach plays the spoons. Considered a "makeshift percussion instrument," spoons are cutlery turned music makers, which some compare in use to castanets. This unique instrument can be played in a similar fashion, known as "castanet style," or held in various other positions ("drum stick style," "salad serving style," "fire tong style") to produce a characteristic metallic sound. The spoons are implemented in American, British, Canadian, Greek, Russian, Turkish, and other cultural branches of music. 

In popular culture, the spoons are perhaps most often seen employed by "jug bands," which employ other similarly unusual instruments such as the tissue and comb, the washtub bass, the washboard, and the stovepipe. 

Roach primarily played the spoons as a busker and street performer while traveling around the United States in order to make money. After hitchhiking and riding the rail cards, she ended up in Asheville, North Carolina, one of the hubs of folk and country music. 

The city brought Roach a degree of exposure, which exploded once this talented musician was finally captured by social media and beamed out to the entire world. During an August 2017 performance of "Angels in Heaven" for "National Play on the Porch Day," the barefoot, humbly dressed Roach thrilled viewers with her skill and prowess. The quick rhythms and variety of sounds she managed to produce with something most of us keep in the kitchen drawer, are truly amazing. 

Roach played alongside Chris Rodrigues, a musician she'd paired with for years in order to support the little-known holiday. The combination of Roach's spoon, which she expertly greased before playing, and Rodrigues' resonator guitar is utterly charming.

It's unlike the average video of a teenager on guitar or a pianist playing pop covers. Something about the music, the setting, and perhaps the sincerity with which the two play truly communicates their talent and love of music. The intimacy of the porch made the performance seem deeply personal, and yet both musicians still radiated that welcoming air of buskers. 

In her more formal role back in town, Roach acts as the president of the Asheville Buskers Collective. While street performers may seem random to the average passerby, the collective ensures that the ones in Asheville at least all have a fair shot. They work to promote a practice that encourages musicians and other performers to "rotate to another location every two hours, allowing the waiting busker to take over." Speaking to the Washington Post about this structure, Roach said, “Everybody follows it … it kind of perpetuates itself. … But the best part about it is, it gives our performers out here a chance to listen to each other and get to know each other.”

With Roach's porch songs having gone viral, audiences now flock to the sidewalks hoping to witness such a performance. Having been locally a success, Roach is accustomed to the attention. “Our crowds were spilling into the street long before (the viral video) … we were used to having large crowds,” she said matter-of-factly. It's heartwarming to see such a talented musician receive so much attention. 

apost.com

Can you play any unusual instruments? Let us know — and be sure to pass this article on to friends, family, as well as any Spoon Lady fans!