Actress Winningham brings singing talent to bluegrass festival
Posted on Sunday, August 19, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Style/198996/
Mare Winningham came to Arkansas for the first time last summer to make a movie. She left inspired to make a CD of new music.
Yes, Mare Winningham sings.
The 48-year-old actress has always made music a part of her life and has recorded three CDs. The latest is Refuge Rock Sublime, released this year on Craig ’N Co., a Los Angeles label that specializes in Jewish records. She’ll perform at 2 p. m. Aug. 26 during the fifth annual Eureka Springs Bluegrass Festival. She’ll also participate in preshow performances Friday and Saturday at The Auditorium.
Earlier this summer, she performed six roles in an off-Broadway musical, 10 Million Miles, which is set to the songs of Patty Griffin.
“Almost everyone afterward said, ‘We knew you could act, but who knew you could sing ?’ How would anybody know ?” she says.
Winningham combined acting and singing in Georgia (1995 ), a movie in which she played a folk singer and mother. The role earned her an Academy Award nomination, although the movie wasn’t a box office smash.
That’s also her voice narrating the audio books for Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story (2006 ) and Alice Hoffman’s Skylight Confessions (2007 ).
For the 13 songs on Refuge Rock Sublime, Winningham performs Jewish folk music with a country and bluegrass flair. More information is available at www. ref ugerocksublime. com.
But she is best known as an actress. She went to high school in California with Kevin Spacey, and they performed together their senior year in a production of The Sound of Music.
When television movies were popular in the 1980 s, “I sort of made my name doing those,” she says. They offered quality roles with very little preparation time.
“It was kind of exciting to see if you could make something special within those confines,” she says. “I really liked the acting challenges, but I would get frustrated with how quickly they turned them out.”
She has made roughly 60 television movies and about 15 films, and has also appeared on several television series, including ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Six Feet Under and Mad About You.
Among those films were Turner & Hooch and Wyatt Earp, although she might be best known for her role in St. Elmo’s Fire (1985 ). She starred with other rising actors such as Rob Lowe and Demi Moore.
Also in 1985, she made the ABC After School Special “One Too Many,” with Val Kilmer and Michelle Pfeiffer, about drinking and driving. Later, her own children grumbled to her about being shown that movie in middle school.
Winningham liked reaching millions of people with television movies, like the miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983 ).
“Television is much more powerful that way,” she says. “I felt more connected to the general public via TV movies.”
As a youngster, Winningham developed an affinity for folk music. It helped that her mother, a “folkie,” won an eight-track player and 50 tapes as a contestant on Hollywood Squares. Winningham soaked up that music. She started taking guitar lessons in a park. She has always played music and sung and even had a couple of bands. She previously released the CDs What Might Be (1992 ) and Lonesomers (1998 ).
The faith that is evident with her new CD came later.
Her mom is Catholic and has a “strong, deep, beautiful faith” that Winningham didn’t have herself. She came to religion late in life.
During her spiritual search, she studied at the University of Judaism for several months. She appreciated the religion’s emphasis on education and taking care of people here and now — “sort of the emphasis on this world.”
“I was drawn to a more involved and complex understanding of the religion,” she says.
After about a year, she realized she was becoming committed to Jewish ideals. She converted to Judaism five years ago.
“I didn’t rush into it,” she says.
Along the way, she was introduced to the Hebrew language and Israeli and Hebrew folk songs. She learned that many prayers are sung.
“Since I’ve been a folkie from way back,” she applied that touch to Hebrew and Jewish folk songs. She also wrote some songs, which naturally have a “country flavor.”
Her idea was to combine Jewish songs and country music.
“I thought, ‘That’ll be fun.’ Then, it deepened,” she says.
While making the movie War Eagle in Eureka Springs last summer, Winningham stayed in the same hotel as musicians from the town’s annual bluegrass festival.
“I just met these amazing bluegrass musicians,” Winningham says. She performed at the gospel show at the Auditorium and flew her dad into town. She jammed with musicians in informal sessions in the lobby and by the swimming pool.
“I made some fast friends and really felt like it was just an unusual blast of creativity,” she says.
She got invited up to the stage to sing and was introduced as a cousin of Joe McClung, who established the festival in 2003.
Winningham also wanted to make a record of her original songs, as well as Hebrew holy songs and Jewish folk songs.
Last year, she met Tim Crouch, a renowned fiddler who’ll also play this year’s festival. He and two other musicians played on the CD, recorded in Drasco, Ark.
Even though she made many of those TV movies in southern states, she just discovered Arkansas last year. She also plays dulcimer and visited the dulcimer factory in Mountain View last summer. She has been back to that quaint Stone County town a few times since.
“It’s going to be really fun to go back and see people. Especially because I was so influenced by everyone who was there,” she says.
MUSIC Fifth annual Eureka Springs Bluegrass Festival Featured performers: Sam Bush, Marty Stuart, Mare Winningham, The Tennessee Gentlemen, Old School, Ozark Alliance, Ronnie Reno and the Reno Tradition, Irl Hess, the Nelson Family, the Williams Family, the Buffalo City Ramblers Friday-Aug. 26, The Auditorium, 36 S. Main St., Eureka Springs Admission: $ 10- $ 48 for individual shows; $ 95 for packages (888 ) 855-7823 www. eurekaspringsbluegrassfesti val. com