In the summer of 1963, rock 'n' roll was in.
The Rolling Stones had played their first show that previous July at London’s Marquee Club on their way to worldwide fame; The Beatles had just released their debut single that January. "Love Me Do" by The Beatles peaked at the top 20 charts in Britain. By the next year, it’d be the number one hit in America.
Amidst the rock 'n' roll takeover, folk music was on its way out, along with the hard-charging banjos and Depression-era laments that came with it. But, in coffeehouses and college campuses around America, students were trying to keep the genre alive.
At the University of Cincinnati that August, seven students came together to do just that. They called themselves the Queen City Balladeers.
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By the end of the decade, the Balladeers were struggling to find an outdoor venue large enough to host the thousands who showed up to their Friday night shows at Ault Park. Dive into their past performances, and you'll get everything from jam sessions with John Denver and Utah Phillips to hourlong set lists about sharecropping farmers and the working wage.
When they weren't singing about politics, the Balladeers were participating in it: protesting the Vietnam War, for civil rights, in the heat of the anti-war churn of the '60s and '70s. Over the coming decades, they would change names and locations — from the basement of a YMCA to the mansion-turned-church in Norwood.
By their 40th anniversary in 2003, the Balladeers were throwing a full-on gala. "The Queen City Balladeers will celebrate 40 years nurturing the area folk scene with a dinner and hootenanny," read the night’s program. Like their previous brush with celebrity, the lineup of performers included everyone from Grammy-winning artists to local folk stars.
Twenty years later, they’re getting ready to celebrate again.
Inside the 'listening room'
Ed and Sharon Riegler can't remember a life without a guitar in the backseat.
"Yes, we don't leave home without it," Sharon chuckles. Ed chimes in. "I like to … pretty much treat it like a person in terms of heat and humidity."
The Rieglers sing about all things: politics, social change, late nights, full moons. Over the years, they've taken their music to stages across the Tri-State. Coffee shops, family homes, memory care facilities, even to YouTube — where they steal glances at each other as they play, sharing smiles between lines.
But there's one stage that's their favorite. Most Sunday nights, they pull up to a mansion-turned-church in Norwood. Inside, a long hallway opens into a carpeted parlor lined with wood paneling, fireplaces, and stained glass. There are usually a few dozen musicians seated around.
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At sixty, the Queen City Balladeers is one of the oldest folk music groups in the Tri-State. Sharon is their secretary, Ed their historian and guitarist. Most Sunday nights, the Balladeers gather for workshops, open mics, and music nights with a rotating lineup of performers.
At the Balladeers today, you'll always hear clapping at the end of each song. But otherwise, the room is silent. Musicians aren't competing with restaurant chatter or the whistle of a coffee machine. The Balladeers call this the listening room. Their president, Neil Harrell, says it's a rare treat.
"Musicians are a little bit unnerved when they're up there on stage," he says. "They'll often say, 'Well, I'm not used to people listening to me,' " he adds with a laugh. "So it's pretty special."
And, in a call back to their Vietnam-era roots, Harrel says that one thing has stayed the same: they're musicians first, but they've always tackled politics head-on.
"We have that same type of thing now," he says. "We have members who are involved with pushing for people to vote no on Issue 1. We have one member who is protesting the park boards... So there's quite a bit of that still."
At the end of a night with the Balladeers, it’s not uncommon for a performer to encourage donations to the Democratic party or crack jokes about the border wall. Harrell says that sometimes rubs people the wrong way.
"We have had, once or twice, people walk out on us," he says with a chuckle.
'The Woodie Guthrie of Cincinnati'
Harrell shared five recordings with WVXU as research for this story. One that stood out was Jake Speed. He's been performing with the Balladeers for nearly two decades.
To some, Speed is known as the Woodie Guthrie of Cincinnati. He knows just about everything about the real Guthrie: his biography, his repertoire, his politics. Over the years, he’s studied and replicated Guthrie down to which notes the singer tended to miss and when the star tended to bump the mic stand on stage. Following Guthrie’s example, he’s even been photographed playing a guitar with a sticker on the body: "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS," the "KILLS" in bubble letters, shaded in.
CityBeat described Speed as "Greater Cincinnati’s foremost torchbearer" of "Guthrie's lyrical mix of passion, humor, and social justice." On one night at the Balladeers in February 2020, he was trying to deliver on all three.
In an audio recording of that night, Speed set out to convince the audience that Guthrie’s "This Land Is Your Land" was more than a tune students sang off of old songbooks — that, over half a century after Guthrie's death, the folk giant still had something to offer our current moment.
When Speed took to the stage with a fedora and guitar, he found himself before a crowd of seasoned musicians, the youngest north of 50.
"I want to take today to just get in the mindset of a 27-year-old who had just been traveling the country," Speed said to the hushed audience. "This is a guy who came out of Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl… hard hit by the drought and the high winds."
He launched into "Blowin’ Down The Dusty Road" and "I Ain’t Got no Home in this World Anymore," two early Guthrie hits that bemoan the plight of dustbowl refugees and sharecropping farmers struggling for stable income.
"I'm lookin' for a job at honest pay, Lord, Lord / And I ain't gonna be treated this way."
Speed went on singing and strumming, his band backing him up on stage. At one point, he even breaks out the harmonica.
"Rich man took my home and drove me from my door / And I ain't got no home in this world anymore."
In 1940, Guthrie was writing for survivors of the Great Depression; 60 years later, Speed’s audiences had lived the Great Recession. In February 2020, Speed's performance came just weeks before the pandemic drove unemployment through the roof and turned labor markets upside down. There was no way he would know it, but when Speed sang "Now I worry all the time like I never did before," he wasn't just being observant. He almost seemed clairvoyant.
What it means to be a member today
Moments like these get at what the Balladeers are really about, even 60 years later. Folk music, they say, still has something for today's generation. The genre has always understood that times are changing.
So whether the Balladeers are singing about science or politics, Ed Riegler says, it's about something deeper than partisan lines.
"I think that element of social conscience and awareness — and just the world at large — is brought into the room in the form of songs. And most of the time, it's very, very listenable and understandable and relatable.
"Those are the connections that I feel tie me a little bit closer to the emotion of what it is to be a member of the organization."
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Balladeers say the listening room asks them to listen for a few hours on Sunday nights, yes, but it also is something more expansive than that. The group has survived decades of social upheaval and dissent. In a world bent on shouting over each other, they say, sometimes it helps to listen.
The Queen City Balladeers celebrate their 60th anniversary Aug. 4 at their current location, the Zion United Church of Christ in Norwood. Find more details here.
