By JODEE TAYLOR
TRAVERSE CITY -- Claudia Schmidt's recording career has spanned vinyl to digital.
One album, "Big Earful" in 1987, came out during such an awkward phase it was released on vinyl, cassette and CD.
Schmidt is celebrating the 30th anniversary of her first record -- a real record, on vinyl -- with a concert May 14 at InsideOut Gallery in Traverse City's Warehouse District (see sidebar, Page 9A). She's collaborating with local musicians Don Julin, Ron Getz, Jack Dryden and Randy Marsh with a focus on her original music. "I wanted to to something different than my solo thing, which I do every night on the road," she said.
Schmidt, 55, is the first to admit her music is hard to categorize.
"I've always been a marketing problem," she said at a local coffee shop while her car was being serviced before she headed out on a 10-day tour. "I like so many different kinds of music."
Her recordings include jazz, folk, swing, torch songs, gospel, pop and more. Including 1979's "Claudia Schmidt," she's recorded 14 albums. She's been on the road, performing at everything from intimate clubs to national radio shows, for 35 years.
But around 1980, she unintentionally put the brakes on her skyrocketing career and moved to Beaver Island.
"I wasn't thinking, 'I'm going to deconstruct my career.' I was just anxious," she said. "I was on this kind of folk star trajectory. I'd had a couple stalker incidents. I dumped my agent and pulled the rug out from under my career. I was still gigging, but everything kind of shifted then.
"I didn't want to be a folk star. I didn't want to be an oxymoron.
"I wasn't quite famous enough to make it work," she said. "'Not Famous Enough' -- maybe that should be the name of my next CD."
She had become enraptured with the island while visiting friends, but wasn't thinking about making a living there until she got married.
"That was a conscious shift," she said. "Being married to a person instead of the road."
She and her parents bought an old farmstead that needed massive amounts of work, from installing indoor plumbing to rechinking logs. She opened it as a bed and breakfast, The Bluebird, in 1993. Because business was so seasonal and she wasn't pulling in enough money to make it work, she also opened a restaurant on the island, The Old Rectory.
"It got to the point where we thought we might have to get a fourth job to pay for the other three," she said. For two years, she did both the restaurant and the inn, as well as continuing with her music.
Burnout occurred. "We OD'd on service," she said. "We were spiraling downward into this black hole and had to get off the island."
She moved to Traverse City in 2000 and "started trying seriously to reconstruct my career."
"I found out what I'd missed those 10 years on the island," she said. "The entertainment business is very unforgiving."
Now divorced, she says she's stronger artistically than she ever has been and continues to play upwards of 200 gigs a year. But she's gone from selling out the 4,000-seat Ordway theater in St. Paul, Minn., and having the likes of Susan Vega, John Gorka and Shawn Colvin open for her, to playing 50- to 100-seat coffeehouses.
Any regrets?
"I don't know if I'd call it regrets, because I wasn't happy with what I was doing," she said. "It's more like, 'Oh well.'"
And she's still having a blast.
"I love live performance so much," she said. "I have a core group of fans that have been with me all along. It's like we all grew up together."
Full Circle with Claudia Schmidt
-- InsideOut Gallery, 229 Garland St., Traverse City
-- Thursday, May 14, 7:30 p.m.
-- Tickets are $12 advance, $15 door, $10 student
-- Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
-- Buy tickets online at www.insideoutgallery.com.
-- Tickets also available at Borders Books, Oryana, Cuppa Joe, Patisserie Amie and Insideout Gallery.
-- For more information, call 929-3254.
