June 6, 2003

Princeton Packet

Deeper Well

Ken Lelen's vintage music harkens back to an era when the pace
was slower and when music could be heard without distraction.

                                                                                          PHOTO: Mark Czajkowski
Ken Lelen and his vintage guitars

By Susan Van Dongen — Arts Reporter

The instruments are old, the songs even older, but the singer is anything but old-fashioned.

     Ken Lelen is no misty-eyed, free-spirited troubadour when it comes to his Vintage Music Concerts. Besides being a skilled musician with fine taste in choosing the songs he performs, he's a savvy businessman who planned his career's trajectory. Mr. Lelen has built up his audience slowly but steadily and calculated the best way to get in front of as many people as possible.

     Friends joke he took Vintage Music Concerts to vintage audiences, playing often for senior citizens, who may remember the songs along with their first smooch in a rumble seat. However, Mr. Lelen says the subtlety of the lyrics and the charm of the melodies appeals to a growing number of younger people as well.

     "I started playing for senior citizens, but found the venues and events that hire me are expanding. I'm delighted, since the songs whet the interests of a variety of audiences," Mr. Lelen says.

     His concerts are for people whose tastes are maturing, growing away from the heavy-beat rock and rhythmic dance music that Mr. Lelen says detract from the aesthetics and complexities of songwriting. "With these songs, the feelings and thoughts are expressed in a way people don't hear on the radio, or with Muzak or with music you hear on television or in film," Mr. Lelen says. "For people not familiar with the music, it touches something evocative - something they didn't know they were missing.

     On June 14, Mr. Lelen will revive another old-time form of entertainment — playing a live radio broadcast. Mr. Lelen will appear live on WDVR-FM's Heartlands Hayride program, broadcast from Brethren Church in Sergeantsville from 6-8 p.m. The show can be heard in Hunterdon County on 89.7 FM and in the Princeton-Trenton area on 91.9 FM. In addition, the public is invited to attend the broadcast and take part in something you don't see everyday. "I've done this now quite a few times," says the Titusville resident. "It's a great experience."

     Mr. Lelen will perform a trunkful of classic tunes — ragtime, blues and swing — on his collection of 20 guitars built from 1900 to 1948 by such noteworthy manufacturers as Epiphone, Gibson, Gretsch, Martin and Haynes. All produce music that is striking for its authentic sound without the assistance of electronic gadgetry. "They're all acoustic instruments," Mr. Lelen says, "and they're matched with music of the same period." His antique axes include a 1900 Bay State parlor guitar, 1932 mahogany-bodied Gibson L-00 and 1943 Martin 000-18 which, due to wartime shortages, was built with an ebony neck shaft instead of conventional steel bar.

     A successful journalist for 30 years, Mr. Lelen arrived in Central Jersey 15 years ago after helping launch several magazines, including Fine Homebuilding and Home Again. He also developed newsletters for various Manhattan publishers, freelanced business articles for newspapers and magazines in the tri-state region, and was a business news columnist for the Trenton Times. In 1997 he started the Apartment Section of the Washington Post and left full-time journalism a few years ago to pursue his dream.

     Mr. Lelen says he's always had an affinity for this kind of music, perhaps thanks in part to his bobby-soxer mother who owned a collection of jazz, swing and blues records. Raised on Long Island, Mr. Lelen's first instrument was flute. But, like many young musicians of his generation, the folk bug bit him and he picked up the guitar after hearing the Kingston Trio, Peter Paul and Mary and other folkies mix classic melodies with thoughtful lyrics.

     Mr. Lelen started playing vintage guitars ten years ago because he found "the guitars didn't 'want' to play rock'n'roll — they wanted to play ragtime and jazz standards," he says. In addition to material from the 1920s and 1930s, he writes and performs original songs with the same kind of wry wit, good humor and double entendres as songs by Dorothy Fields and Irving Berlin.

     His real passion is in delivering the honesty of the emotions expressed in these old songs, much of which is lost to the cacophony of over-produced recordings. Mr. Lelen says vintage songs also evoke a period in time when things could be savored more, when the pace of life in general was slower.

     "Entertainment today is taken on the run," he says. "When people listen to music, it's often turned on and off according to busy schedules. Those are just some of the factors that contribute to the public's tendency to listen to musical fragments, not complete thoughts."

     He also notes people read less and don't listen or talk in full sentences. Consequently, contemporary song lyrics also don't express complete thoughts. "With old songs — of which there's a bottomless well — there's a more complicated emotional content," Mr. Lelen says.

     "Sure, they appeal to older folks who remember them from their day. But I think younger people reach a point when they have to consider the emotional content of their lives and more deeply examine their culture. There's a whole other element of this vintage music. It speaks to us all, generation after generation."

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© 2003 — Princeton Packet