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It’s obvious Jeremy Strater belongs in a coffee house. So, he brought one to him, and the rest of us have benefitted ever since. Once a month, the Last Friday Coffee House features the best desserts around and folk music that fills Hammond Hall to the balcony. Jeremy Strater has seen to the programming of the Coffee House since its inception nine years ago. He introduces each act, walks musicians out the door after the performance and bids them to come back real soon. And he never stops smiling when in the company of Michael Cooney or Paul Gerimiah or other blues and blue grass musicians.
Years ago Michael Cooney confided in Jeremy after a concert in Bar Harbor that there simply were not enough places to play his kind of music. A lightbulb went on in Jeremy’s head, and by the time he met with Doris Combs and Pastor Steve Loan, the idea was hatched to provide a monthly Coffee House at the Prospect Harbor Methodist Church. In February 2000, the first event featured the Grist Mill Boys (featuring Sepp Huber and Curtis Russett) and Last Fair Deal (Carl Karush and the late Susie Springer). “The medium of folk music is direct, intellectual and immediate, more than rock, which is visceral,” says Jeremy, who plays and performs guitar blues and folk music as a volunteer around the area. He has always loved music, singing while he pushed the lawn mower as a young boy or sneaking into the closet to listen to Leadbelly after lights out at boarding school. Later on in Philadelphia, Jeremy was active in many open stage folk clubs such as the Philadelphia Folk Society and Cherry Tree at the University of PA—the very best folk concert series in Philadelphia—where he met many of the national acts that he has since brought to Hammond Hall in Winter Harbor. The Last Friday Coffee House has been held in Hammond Hall since 2003 and is one of Schoodic Arts for All's most popular programs. It all began with Doris Combs running the kitchen and serving up scrumptious cheese cake and Daroll Whitney’s hand behind the plow, helping in so many ways. It all began with Jeremy Strater’s love of music. |
