A Final Refrain -- These Folk Singers Have Left Their Mark On The Northwest

``Now they say that you are gone

I feel that they must be wrong

You're somewhere inside of me.''

``Mrs. Steele's Song''

- by Ginny Reilly

While truly great music appeals to everyone, every once in a while a song comes along that seems written to everyone in general but you in particular. The first time I heard ``Mrs. Steele's Song,'' it stopped me in my tracks. I don't recall the occasion, just the feeling: My mother had died a few years earlier, just when I had graduated from college. Coming at age 22, it was a loss that would take years to confront and resolve: But there it was, embodied in the haunting soprano of a wispy redheaded nightingale named Ginny Reilly. To this day I have to sit down when I hear it.

Reilly & Maloney, the soothing folk duo who will perform their 20th anniversary/

farewell concert Saturday night in the 5th Avenue Theatre, have always had that peculiarly personal impact on their fans and listeners. It may help explain why they have been so popular in the Pacific Northwest, a place where someone could be known without being famous. If there is a Northwest sound, any discussion of its definition would have to consider elements of Reilly & Maloney's laid-back satin harmony.

``I can remember times when I'd be working 12-hour days and things would be crazy and what I needed most in my life was a drink, an affair, a shrink,'' says Tom Evered, a Bellevue car dealer and longtime fan. He ``discovered'' Reilly & Maloney performing in Tahoe nearly two decades ago, before they'd ever been to the Northwest. ``And all I've had to do was go to one of their concerts. Whatever was wrong with me, they would fix.''

Talk to other fans and they'll mention words such as ``relaxing,'' ``comforting,'' ``intimate.'' No one who has lived in the Northwest for any length of time escaped the Reilly & Maloney presence: Whether at the record store, on the radio or in one of their countless appearances, they became musical emblems for many of this region's post-war Baby Boom Generation.

There were the early days, at places like the Northgate Hindquarter, where the audience was a mixture of post-hippie, Me Generation, college-grad folkies. Then the late and often-lamented Silver Spoon era in Duvall, where neo-professionals, young singles and '60s holdouts gathered in a roomy but never quite big enough hall on sweaty summer nights in homage to a folk-and-protest consciousness increasingly slipping from their universe.

In recent years, they flooded the Woodland Park Zoo with a sea of humanity during its annual summer-concert series. There they were, the same fans, their friends and newcomers as well, this time with sparser hair, thicker features and a toddler or two in tow. It seemed cosmically constructed: A picnic basket, a blanket on the lawn, and Reilly & Maloney wafting along the gentle evening breeze. Other groups such as Uncle Bonsai drew well, but Reilly & Maloney were the series' cornerstone.

And all along there have been the gigs at the Backstage in Ballard, Tacoma's Antique Sandwich, Brusseau's in Edmonds, the Blue Heron on Vashon and occasionally a bigger room such as the Opera House or Paramount - all part block party, part class reunion and part celebration of an era of music-making, togetherness and feeling good.

Always there's been one song, their current hit, that has brought the house down: Buddy Holly's ``Everyday,'' Ginny's ``I Ain't Gettin' It Blues,'' David's ``Palo Alto Cowboy,'' and unlikely but unforgettable covers of Joni Mitchell's ``River,'' John Prine's ``That's the Way the World Goes 'Round'' and Bruce Springsteen's ``Dancing in the Dark.'' Most are included on the duo's recently released, and presumably final, compact disc.

``At Brusseau's they can cram 65 sardines or so inside,'' says Jack Burg, Reilly's husband and, not coincidentally, the group's promoter. ``With that kind of closeness and no sound system, people who have been there speak of it like some sort of religious experience.''

``Now they say that you are gone.''

For the past year or so Reilly & Maloney have been talking about splitting up, going their own ways, pursuing independent careers, identities and lives. Their fans haven't necessarily bought it. Reilly & Maloney are like wine and brie, Standard & Poor's, yin and yang. You don't break up a winning combination: As a fan letter recently put it: Where will I go to get my Reilly & Maloney fix?

But for Ginny Reilly, dressed in a sweater and blue jeans as early-afternoon sunlight floods her Montlake living room, the separation is real. Although Reilly has always radiated more strength and vitality than her frail-looking frame would suggest, today her blue-green eyes look bloodshot and tired. ``Since having the kids, I've been burning the candle at both ends,'' she says, referring to Emily, 8, and Charlie, 6.

For the 43-year-old Reilly, the constant travel, the difficulties of rehearsing with a partner 750 miles away in San Francisco (where Maloney lives) and the inability to maintain a life of her own forced her to the precipice. ``I got an invitation to a Christmas party the other day, and once again, I couldn't go,'' she says, making no attempt to hide her frustration. ``I've had 20 years of being weird, where all my friends are at work while I'm home doing nothing, and when they're ready to go out to dinner, I have to be working.''

Reilly, who grew up in a Chicago suburb, recalls her parents' being frequently gone on leisure trips while she was growing up. ``Mrs. Steele's Song,'' in fact, refers to a woman who helped raise Reilly. Although daddy Jack takes care of the kids while Ginny is on the road, ``I've come to realize that even though it's work when I'm gone, it makes no difference to the kids. And I think they miss me.''

Reilly, who is as relaxed and mellow in person as onstage, does not give the impression of complaining. Nor does she want to accentuate the negative: ``I look at us as very fortunate people who were able to do exactly what we wanted and get away with it,'' she says. ``We never had to make any compromises artistically, and we were able to know - more than a lot of entertainers ever are - how personally our music has affected people.''

Nevertheless, she shows obvious relief that the worst is over: ``We realized we didn't want to keep living with the uncertainties of where's the next place we were playing, and how many people will come.''

For Maloney, her velvet-toned partner with the arid sense of humor and affable manner, the breakup was more for career reasons. ``Reilly & Maloney has been our whole lives, but at this stage I feel a bit frustrated with our career,'' he says. ``I wish we'd been able to make the jump to national recognition.''

Maloney, 46, wants to see what he can do as a songwriter. ``I feel good about it, and Gin with her beautiful children will have a chance to have some normalcy in her life,'' Maloney says. And although he says he hasn't had time to really think about the breakup, ``there is a sadness beginning to creep in for both of us as the final show approaches.''

Maloney met Reilly after her first paid gig at the Drinking Gourd in San Francisco in the summer of 1969. It was a rocky introduction: He asked her how to get onstage, and Reilly, who had been paying her dues at weekly ``hoot'' nights, told him, ``You have to come every Monday night for six months and then maybe if you're good enough they'll give you a job.'' Fortunately, she says today, someone else talked to him and was more encouraging.

A few months later a mutual friend, Jay Kellum, a onetime bass player for Fred Neil (of ``Everybody's Talkin' '' and ``Midnight Cowboy'' fame), suggested that they get together. ``He said people like harmony and maybe we'd last a few months,'' Maloney recalls, laughing. Instead they clicked - onstage, and with the audience - and, backed by the likes of Kellum, Billy Roberts (``Hey Joe'') on harmonica and Rik Elswit, later with Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, soon had a steadfast following in the Bay Area.

Reilly, who never had any voice training and had come within a day of leaving for Micronesia and the Peace Corps after graduating from Trinity College in Washington, D.C., was never romantically involved with Maloney. When they met ``he mentioned he was married, and that did it. I didn't want to have to deal with that possibility.'' Maloney, a schoolteacher from New York with a fraternity-boy's charm, had been married for only three months to Tebby George, a sculptor.

``We knew we had our own sound,'' Maloney says, ``but that chemistry has always been a mystery to us.'' Reilly uses the word ``magic'' reluctantly ``because it sounds like such a cliche.''

Whatever it was, it caught on like espresso in the Northwest. Throughout the early '70s the duo made periodic pilgrimages here, gaining a cult following along the coffeehouse-and-lounge circuit. Then, in the mid-'70s, a kooky-looking fan with a flaming Tolstoyesque beard showed up at a month-long gig in Bellevue, every night, staying for every song.

``We were used to weird fans,'' Reilly recalls. ``But not like him.''

Jack Burg was drawn to the duo's music by its ``relaxing quality. I was going through a divorce and bankruptcy at the time, and it seemed like just what I needed.'' Despite his nightly presence, nothing happened initially between him and Reilly. One night Maloney asked Burg if he could drop her off on his way home. To make conversation Burg asked Reilly about a song she had written: ``I was just trying to find out if as a songwriter she dreamed it all up or it reflected some personal experience,'' he says. ``But it was too invasive for Ginny. She shut me down real quick.''

Nevertheless, the two stayed in touch, with Burg frequently walking Reilly to her car after a performance. One night he brought her a dozen roses and, at a party at his house, they stayed up until 4 a.m. talking on his front porch. But when it came time for her to return to San Francisco, where she lived in a small apartment, Burg showed little emotion.

``I thought, `Oh well, I guess he doesn't care as much as I care,' '' Reilly recalls.

The next night, during her opening set in San Francisco, Burg walked through the door with a dozen yellow roses. Fueled by half a gallon of chocolate milk, a batch of marijuana cookies and a handful of poppers, he had driven nonstop with headphones playing Reilly & Maloney glued to his ears.

Stunned, Reilly muffed the song.

Although they had a stormy first year - both have Irish tempers and were private people used to their ``own space,'' as Burg puts it - they were married in November 1978. With a household full of fair skin and red hair, it was only fitting that Burg founded a recording company called Freckle Records, which has issued a dozen albums by the artists together and solo.

Ginny Reilly has a fantasy. She is onstage, backed by three or four musicians so she doesn't have to accompany herself, singing songs she or others have written, and the stage isn't some grange hall or night club. It's Arsenio Hall, or Carnegie Hall, or the Johnny Carson show. ``I'd like to see what I could do on my own,'' she says. ``Although even that kind of success involves a lot of compromises.''

Neither she nor Maloney rule out the possibility of occasional reunions, although they leave the impression it will not happen soon. Maloney is busy promoting his own music - he's trying to work a deal with Starbuck's to use his new song, ``First Cup of Coffee,'' for instance - and Reilly wants to take some time off. After that, ``I might get together with other musicians, I might go back to school, I might do laundry and sit around eating bon bons,'' she says.

Burg doubts she'll stay out of music too long: ``She likes the sound of her own voice too much,'' he kids. But he acknowledges that ``right now, more than anything, Reilly & Maloney is just kind of tired. I think they both want to discover what life has for them when they're no longer tied to each other.''

Whatever the reasons, when it happens ``there will be hearts breaking all over town,'' says Charles R. Cross, editor/publisher of The Rocket, a Seattle music monthly. Cross, who calls Reilly & Maloney ``one of the most talented acts around, as folk groups go,'' feels they were within a roll of the dice of national stardom.

``A lot of it is timing,'' Cross says, noting the irony of Reilly & Maloney breaking up just as a ``new folk'' sound triggered by artists such as Tracy Chapman and Suzanne Vega is ushering in the '90s:

``Reilly & Maloney belong in the `New Folk' category, but they've been doing it so long people feel they're old folk. If they were new, they'd be called innovators. As it is, people connect them too much to the decade past rather than the decade coming.''

Cross cites a statistic to put Reilly & Maloney's career in perspective: Of groups that make it to national recording labels, less than 5 percent make any money for the label.

``We may think of Reilly & Maloney as failures because they never made it to the top,'' Cross says. ``But within the music industry, they're one of the phenomena out of the past decade.''

``I feel they must be wrong.''

Just a few weeks before their final concert, the reality of a 20-year set coming to a wrap had yet to sink in for Ginny Reilly. On tour in Austin, Texas, she and Maloney popped into one of those pay photo booths for some last pictures together.

``I looked at it and I thought, `This is David and me, two months before we end our relationship forever.' And I wondered, `Why don't I feel more? Why aren't I sad?' '' she recalls. ``I guess the reason was, it isn't dead yet. Maybe I have to wait 'til it dies before I can grieve.''

But there are fans all over the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere for whom it might be said that Reilly & Maloney will never die. They've given us too many memories, left us with too many songs, brought us too much joy, for it all to fade into the distance like a passing train in the night.

``You're somewhere inside of me.''

CUTLINE: BETTY UDESEN: EARLY PHOTOS OF GINNY REILLY'S SCRAPBOOK REVEAL '60S ROOTS AND HAPY TIMES.