Life is what's a-changin’
Monica LaBonte, a Boulder alumnus and prominent Colorado musician, visitsThe Ampersand to discuss ski bumming, teaching, gigging to sometimes-small audiences and always finding joy in the music
There are certain people who pick up a guitar or sit at a piano or stand at a microphone and you think, “Yes. That’s right. That’s where they belong.”
That’s Monica LaBonte. Her path has been winding, but the road has always been music—writing it, performing it, hearing it in the rhythms of words and speech and the cadences of life. She is at home behind a microphone in a way that lets you know she doesn't just love to sing, isn't just good at it, but was born to breathe deep and bring audiences to tears.
A 2011 University of Colorado Boulder graduate in speech, language and hearing sciences and a well-known Colorado musician and performer, LaBontehostErika Randall, Boulder interim dean of undergraduate education and professor of dance, onthe College of Arts and Sciences podcast. Randall and guests explore stories about “پԲ”as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.
Monica LaBonte, a 2011 Boulder graduate in speech, language and hearing sciences, is a well-known Colorado musician and performer.
For the record, no banjo-playing children were harmed during this conversation.
MONICA LABONTE: Before my son was born, I was a full-time working musician. I was still playing five gigs a week, and I think by the time my son came, I was ready for a break. Then the pandemic just changed the industry so much, so I think there was this natural pause in music for me at that time anyway.
It was kind of already happening, or it was about to happen. And then motherhood is just—I mean, it really turns your world upside down. So, I was ready to put my focus and energy into my son, because I discovered quickly that it was just too hard to put all the love and the time and the energy into both. I couldn't do both for some time.
ERIKA RANDALL: What did your schedule look like as a professional musician? What was touring like? What was the gigging like? What was the writing and recording like?
LABONTE: It was just all over the place. I was just a yes person for 10, 15 years, just saying yes to every gig, to every recording. I didn't do a whole lot of touring but I was part of a band for 10 years, and we did multiple recordings, and we played festivals all over the state. We did just a little bit of touring up to Oregon. We went to Wyoming one time.
RANDALL: But there was enough of a scene here in Colorado.
LABONTE: Oh, for sure. And then I've been teaching music along the way, so that's kind of—
RANDALL: Painful.
LABONTE: Kept me afloat.
RANDALL: Is it torture to teach little people how to play the banjo? I mean, that sounds like the worst job ever.
LABONTE: Well, I will say this: I really appreciate people who can teach children and do it for their whole lives. I discovered over many years of different kinds of teaching—and teaching mostly kids, I've worked with kids in lots of different ways—but I've really come to realize that I love teaching adults. And I do not teach banjo.
RANDALL: OK. Because that just isn't going to go well.
LABONTE: Yeah, I do not teach banjo. I mostly teach voice.
RANDALL: And do you ever audition them and then say no? Like if I auditioned, you wouldn't—
LABONTE: No.
RANDALL: But there's no guarantee, right? You wouldn't be like, ‘Yes, Randall, I got you. You're going to come out of here doing all the musical theater or all the gentle, angry folk that you want.’
LABONTE: I really just meet people where they are, and I don't make any promises, because it's not my work, it's their work. So, I can show them the tools, but I can't promise that anything is going to happen.
RANDALL: And we all have the tools in our bodies to do this?
Monica LaBonte (right) performs with former bandmate Bill Huston at a Mixtape event. (Photo: Monica LaBonte)
LABONTE: For sure, yeah. It's just like Ratatouille:. Anyone can cook. Anyone can sing, but it's hard work. And singing is so intertwined with the heart and the soul and past experiences. This choir teacher told me, ‘Everyone got into the choir except for me, always.’ Or, ‘My mother told me I couldn't sing.’ A lot of people have these stories. So, it's interesting because I almost have to feel—I almost have to hold a space of a caretaker or—
RANDALL: Therapist.
LABONTE: A bit of a therapist.
RANDALL: I would cry in a lesson with you.
LABONTE: I've cried so many times. It's very vulnerable. So, I will say, I have, over the years of teaching, the people who come and are willing to at least let go a little bit of their story or those walls—have their walls come down—and let go of excuses and are just willing to try, those are the most successful people.
LABONTE: Yeah. It's cool. It's such fun work. And then I have a background in speech therapy, so I have this knowledge of the actual system.
RANDALL: Is that how your degree from serves you, do you think?
LABONTE: Oh, yeah.
RANDALL: The systems learning, the anatomical, the somatic. Tell me about that, because that's something that's so interesting to me. And also because I wrote about a character who was a folk singer who then becomes a speech therapist, so the character of my novel is the opposite of you.
LABONTE: Interesting
RANDALL: And the book is called Music for Leaving, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. I cannot wait to give it to Monica.’
LABONTE: Cool.
RANDALL: Because it's like you, but Benjamin Buttoned. And so often when we get a major, we don't know where it's going to land us. For you, did you think that these worlds were connected, that you always wanted to be a singer and a singer-songwriter, and you were studying this in college? Or how did that work for you? Tell me about that path.
LABONTE: The path was just so messy. I took seven years to graduate college with my bachelor's because I couldn't land on one thing. And I did some world traveling in there, and I was a ski bum one winter up in Beaver Creek, and I met one of my dear friends, her name is Abby.
She brought me to a camp called Camp ASCCA in Alabama, and I became the music and arts and crafts director for this camp. It's for children and adults with disabilities, and from that job I just really fostered a love of taking care of people and being in a therapeutic role.
So, from there—and I had never had an opportunity to work with people with disabilities, so that was my first—that experience just changed my course.
RANDALL: And there were generations at this camp, they were all ages.
LABONTE: Yeah, all ages. I think it's 6 to, I don't know, 70-something. And every week is like a different age group and a different—
RANDALL: That's huge to just walk into—
LABONTE: It was wild.
RANDALL: —without prep.
LABONTE: Yeah. Oh, it was wild. And going from a ski bum to—
RANDALL: Hyper able community to a different community that has different requirements. What was the biggest thing that that job, that position, asked of you that you had to find or tap into that you didn't maybe necessarily resource yourself with before?
LABONTE: I would say it was the first time that I couldn't be selfish. And I was young.
RANDALL: Which is the perfect time to be selfish.
LABONTE: Exactly. So, I had to learn to not be selfish, and it required me to be very humble and just be so present because this population is so vulnerable, but they're so loving and so kind, and so there's a lot of magic. And it really, truly changed the course of my life.
RANDALL: So, from there you went back to school with a new focus?
LABONTE: Yeah. I declared music therapy, actually. I went to CSU, which is where I reconnected with my husband, and music therapy just didn't feel—I was like, I don't know if I want to marry these two worlds in such a direct way.
RANDALL: It's really specific.
LABONTE: It just felt too direct. I love music so much, and I loved working with people with disabilities, but I didn't want to marry the two. It didn't feel like the right fit. So, then I found the speech therapy program at .
RANDALL: I love that you had to go further outside. It was too close here when they were nesting organically. You're like, ‘No, no, no. I got to mix it up with my own and put a little tension between the two.’
LABONTE: Yes, add some space. A lot of people ask me, not knowing my past, ‘Why don't you do music therapy? It just seems like the obvious choice.’
RANDALL: You're like, I don't want to do the obvious choice.
LABONTE: Yeah, totally. So, I went to for speech therapy, and I loved studying all the things speech. But at the same time, I was also cutting my teeth as a songwriter in Boulder. All that to say, I wasn't maybe the best student, because my passions were so divided at that point. And I was having so much fun playing music.
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