My Story: Mark Lavoie Falls in Love with the Harmonica
An interview with Bristol native Mark Lavoie, who hardly ever isn't playing his harmonica, blues notes between words.
(Editor’s note: This feature is intended to provide readers with an audio story; we encourage you to play the audio above, edited excerpts of Mark’s while he talks and plays his harmonica.)
By Claire MacDonald
Hinesburg Record Staff Reporter
I met harmonica player Mark Lavoie at his Bristol home on a perfect Vermont summer afternoon – barely any clouds, the sky washed clear from the rain the day before, a slight breeze stirring the air. He walked me through the screened front porch, where several taxidermy deer heads – shot by his father, he informed me – gazed down at us, through the kitchen adorned with landscape scenes painted by his mother, and out into the backyard. Birds trilled from the trees enclosing the rolling, grassy lawn.
Lavoie has been playing harmonica for more than 50 years, ever since he began teaching himself at 21. He’s done shows with Fingers Taylor, produced an album with blues musician Bill Sims Jr., and been featured on B.B. King’s Bluesville. In the summer of 1976, he was harmonica-world legend Sonny Terry’s driver. He’s designed two unique types of harmonica and taught lessons at Middlebury College. What drives him to play, though, is something much less business-oriented.
“You’ve got to have representation, and the business of music, I’m just not good at it,” he said. “I’m a free soul.”
Lavoie grew up in this house, with his family of nine. He went to a one-room schoolhouse in East Monkton, where he remembers he had his first experience with music – his teacher, Mrs. Pierce, played the piano and would put on school shows where the kids would sing and perform.
However, it wasn’t until 1971 that he picked up the harmonica.
“We closed down this bar on Main Street,” he said. “Jeremy pulls out this harmonica and plays this two-draw … it was echoing off the walls, and I got snake-bit. I went down to the Midway shop in Middlebury … and I bought four harmonicas that day.”
Harmonica is a notoriously hard instrument to learn, he said. The sound captivated him, and he stuck with it.
In 1993, he met Bill Sims Jr. at Amigos Cantina in Middlebury.
“It was magic,” he said. “You know when you have a connection with somebody, you can’t explain it. There’s just something that’s there.”
They did a few shows together, and then met back up about a decade later to create their album, “American Blues Roots Duo.” They recorded the album’s 13 songs at Lavoie’s friend’s studio in Starksboro – back-to-back, in one take.
As we spoke, Lavoie sat with a box of at least 30 harmonicas open in front of him. He’d pull out different ones, demonstrating chords and riffing tunes.
“This is a piano in a box right here,” he said.
Lavoie is known for his big, resonant tone. He couldn’t find exactly what he was seeking on the market, leading him to design two types of harmonicas: the Lavoie Vermont maplewood harmonica comb and the Lavoie titanium harmonica comb.
He worked with Michael Rainville of Maple Landmark Woodcraft in Middlebury to design the maplewood harmonica comb. When he brought his titanium comb to the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of Harmonica Convention in 2007, Jerry Portnoy of Muddy Waters’ band bought one.
Though he didn’t make money off of his creations, Lavoie said he got what he wanted as an artist – harmonicas with lower octaves and bigger chambers, allowing him to create that sound he was searching for.
His style is something he’s honed over the years, something that he said has come naturally to him.
“There’s a certain blues progression, which I don’t think about,” he said. “I don’t read music. They put charts in front of me, I say, ‘Just get that out of here.’ I hear it, and it comes to me.”
Even with this unconventional, free-form approach to playing, Lavoie taught harmonica lessons at Middlebury College for 11 years.
“It was a prestigious role for me,” he said. “I’m teaching at Middlebury College; the guy who’s a self-taught harmonica player, who’s never had any schooling other than graduating high school.”
To Lavoie, the harmonica is an essential part of his life.
“The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is open my box up and do a little riff.”
Every now and then, between speaking, Lavoie would pick up a harmonica and deftly play an improvised tune with the ease and fluency that only comes from a true lover of their craft.
“This is my spiritual guide,” he said. “For me, when I’m playing, I feel like there’s a presence. There’s something going on.”
Claire MacDonald is this year’s recipient of the Hinesburg Record Journalism Fellowship. In June she graduated from the University of Vermont with a degree in political science.
If the harmonica is so hard to play, how come 🫴 Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen can play it with no hands 👋👋❓❓‼️