Tell Us, Gerry, Tell Us

As a little girl in the Detroit area, Gerry Armstrong dogged her parents with questions about why evergreens and Christmas went together, or why we color Easter eggs. That interest in cultural tradition did much to shape her life. In the 1950s in Chicago, she met a guy on a radio show who was wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes. "The music didn't sound right unless you were in costume," George told her as she identified a kindred spirit. The Armstrongs have remained a focal point of the Chicago folk scene even now, after George's death, with two more generations of the family singing, playing and telling. They made collecting trips to Scotland and Appalachia, they gave birth to a musical sharing tradition known as "the Golden Ring." They carried on a deep tradition in song and tune. Most recently, Gerry has focused on storytelling, expressing her passion for mythology and folk tale and finding that people "have become aware of a hunger for the basic truths that live in old stories. It will be an intimate set of song and story.