Cheryl Arena just got back from one of her teaching camps and was in a very good mood during this interview. “I think too many people in this world spend a lot of their time complaining about things they don’t have or they don’t get or bitching about something somebody didn’t do,” Arena said. “I like to appreciate the good things in life and look on the bright side and give credit and thanks where it’s due. Where people have helped me, I’d like to acknowledge that.”
Arena has a lot to be thankful for. Her career has spanned a few decades, and she’s been successful at it. Currently, Arena plays out with her blues outfit The Cheryl Arena Band. “I’m always plugging away. I’m always playing gigs with my band. I don’t do as many gigs. I probably do maybe four to eight gigs a month where I used to do four to five gigs a week but I’m always doing gigs with my band.”
Her regular band includes guitarist Pete Henderson, bassist Brad Hallen, and drummer Forest Padgett, all very recognizable names in the greater-Boston area. Arena takes her own band as far as Laconia, Worcester, South Shore and beyond. She also goes as far as New York, Florida, Texas, and California with pick up bands. “Most of the time I fly, I use bands where I go,” she said.
Arena has also been gigging with Boston’s hugely popular singer-songwriter Danielle Miraglia. While not playing strictly blues with Miraglia, the two have toured as far as Pennsylvania. “I love Danielle. She’s an awesome person and she’s an amazing talent,” Arena said. “She’s got a great voice, great guitar player, and an incredible songwriter. Her songwriting is some of the best. I love her songs.”
After 28 years making her living strictly from music, she recently became an Uber driver, as she can work hours when she’s not playing. She uses the extra income to compensate for the difficulty blues musicians can find getting gigs at this time. Her new job with Uber brings her full circle back to her original day job, a limo driver. “I learned how to play harmonica by practicing when I was in my limo waiting for people,” she said. “I loved the limo job. It was fun, and I made really good money.”
Arena also teaches harmonica four times a year at music camps, three times at the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale, Mississippi and one at the Piermont Pond Inn at Ventura, California. Arena travels to these camps four different times of year. She got involved with this music education through her friend Jason Ricci who has been involved with the camps for some time. Ricci introduced her to camp director John Gindick who wrote a best selling harmonica book in the 1970s. Arena gets to teach in the Delta, with its beautiful sunsets and sunrises.
“It’s just amazing,” Arena said. “It’s one of the most fun things I do in my life. It’s so rewarding to watch people progress. A lot of people are repeats who come back, and I end up teaching a bunch of them on Skype because they come from all over the world.”
Teaching for 15 years has made Arena a better player, and she recently began teaching singing lessons at the Mississippi camp. “You have to think about what you’re doing,” she said. “Teaching singing will make me a better singer. The vocal exercises, posture. It’s great.” Arena, who recently got the vocal teacher slot, has been less clinical and more fun in her approach to her lessons, becoming a very popular voice teacher there. “I made it fun for everybody,” she said.
Arena gets excited every single time she goes to the camps. “How can you not get excited about going to a place where there’s at least 30 people watching you practice. It’s true to because they look to me for questions to play this little instrument. When I teach them things and they have a moment of ’Oh my God, I got it.’ Just watching that happen is so satisfying. I really love teaching. I love it.”
Arena would like to eventually make another CD but she needs to come up with new material. Her last CD, Blue Got Me,” released in 2003, still makes a fine calling card for her. Produced by Duke Robillard, the variety of original material and standards and the production values are outstanding. “Blow My Blues Away” is a breezy, modern blues. “Love Gone Wrong” is an edgier modern blues. “Shave It” is an oldies blues with a 1920s feel. “Listen To What I Say” is a New Orleans flavored blues. Making her own album was a huge step forward for the harmonica player-vocalist.
“Prior to that I was a sideman in my previous band,” she said. “’Blues Got Me,’ the title cut, was inspired by going to see Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint. I ended up going down there a bunch more times before it burned down. All I knew of it was I saw it in the movie Mississippi Blues. I had no idea it still existed.”
Arena is mostly a self-taught musician. She got a harmonica when she was 15 years old because it was the only instrument she could afford to buy. “I played it for about a year but I was frustrated with harmonica because I didn’t know you needed all the different keys.”
Arena recently joined a three piece girl vocal band with Judy Tao and Chanel and a third Arena replaced. The trio debuted singing doowop and Motown material at Roslindale’s Birch Street Bistro during Bill Walsh‘s Thursday night jam.
“I think we’re going to do it again at Birch Street in November,” she said. “It’s just fun. It also helps my singing because I get to sing harmony.” It also fits with Arena’s concept that music is a place where people can continue to grow.
“I’m never bored with music,” she said. “I’m grateful that I get to do it, and I love it. It’s great for the soul. There’s nothing I like better than making other people happy with music, like driving their blues away.”
During a tour of Italy, Arena played one town in which an old lady came up to her after the gig. Crying, the woman hugged Arena because she love her music. “I’ll never forget that,” Arena said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had situations like that, where I touched someone.”
Pete Henderson, Cheryl Arena
Arena has grown and evolved since her early days in the greater-Boston blues scene when she played out in Kat In The Hat. She hardly sang at all in that band but now is know for her singing, songwriting, and being a band leader. “I was just a sideman and didn’t know how to lead a band,” she said. “All those skills have gotten better from doing. It’s like getting thrown off a boat to learn how to swim.”
Arena’s next steps will be taken by instinct. “Maybe I would get further if I had a plan,” she said. “I just don’t, really. I just fly by the seat of my pants. It’s so weird nowadays. It’s not like it used to be when your goal was to be to get on a record label. Nowadays, it’s not really necessary. I want to get back into playing guitar again. I want to write more. I want to put out a new CD. I want to keep playing. I’m going to play music until the day I die. I’d like to be buried with my harmonica.”
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