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Eugene And Judy Charlebois Celebrate Family Farm And Music

photo by provided

photo by provided

photo by provided

photo by provided

photo by provided Judy& Eugene Charlebois were joined in song by grandson Mason proving that music has not time limit and that a love of music is forever at Red Rock Farm.

Tuesday November 28, 2017

By Cookie Steponaitis

The kitchen of Red Rock Farm has held more dancers and musicians than perhaps any other in the county. It has been the home of the Charlebois family for over seventy years and has not gone a day without the sound of a guitar, fiddle, bass and accordion, voices raised in song or the tapping of heavy clogging of feet. Music is more than the spring in their step; for Eugene and Judi Charlebois it is their joy and a legacy from generations before.
    Eugene Charlebois was born in same house in 1944 that he still calls home today. Charlebois is the youngest of eleven children and upon reflection cannot remember his life without music. His father was a fiddler and his older sisters Anita and Rena both played the piano and sister Rita played the guitar and fiddle. Week nights included music and weekends were a never-ending of fun as his father’s fiddle was front and center at weddings and square and round dances. Raised in a tradition of celebrating gatherings with food and song, Eugene Charlebois plays with his wife and family and is a part of a group of people in Addison County of all ages who gather regularly to sing, play and dance. These ‘jam sessions’ as Eugene and Judi refer to them take place almost every Friday night and weekend. While the official reason for the gathering might be an aunt’s 80th birthday or a changing of the seasons, the reality is they are a reason to eat, laugh, play, sing and dance.
    The lifestyle of farming and hard work is as close to his heart as music is. When Eugene’s father bought the home and 102 acres of the farm in 1936, they had to dig out the cellar with a horse and scraper. The floors were wooden, the facade stone and the heart of the house the kitchen which is where the family gathered and the music was played and still is. Partner to Eugene for the past fifty-two years has been his wife Judy, whom he met when working for her father at his Bridport farm. Charlebois knew of Judy Durfee and had seen her at church functions at Saint Bernadette’s in Bridport. However, it was not until while working for his brother-in-law Bub that Eugene was told of a job with Glenn Durfee. Charlebois completed the 8,000 hours of apprenticeship in four years and took Judy out on the weekends for square dancing. “Praiso’s Hall and the New Haven Grange were really great places to go,” shared Charlebois. Chuckling he reminisced, “We would dance upstairs in the hayloft of a place that is now Paquin’s farm with all of the people and the cows would be downstairs. Sometimes there would be 80-100 people.” While Judy had noticed Eugene several years earlier, it was his ability to play music and his love of dancing that captured her heart first and foremost. “I loved to dance then and still do now,” shared Judy. “He was one mighty fine dancer and musician.”
    The couple married in 1965 at St. Bernadette’s church and moved to an apartment in Burlington. Judy started school to become an Operating Room Technician and Eugene worked as an electrician. While the couple liked where they were, both wanted to be back in Addison County and within a few months moved back to a house on Route 22A that was a renovated one room school. In his heart Eugene was a farmer and at the death of his father in 1967, the couple moved back to area and the Red Rock Farm homestead on March 10, 1970 where they raised their four children Patrick, Eugene, Marcel and Michelle. In 1992 the couple bought the farm adjoining their property and increased the homestead to 183 acres. The couple splits their time between playing music all around the area and spending time with family including their nine grandchildren to date.
    While the cows left the farm in 1992, the responsibility of owning and keeping up a home built in the early 1800’s has become a full-time job for the couple. Just recently Eugene and Judy brought in a mason who worked alongside Eugene on tall scaffolding as the pair re-grouted the entire structure. When asked if she ever would have wanted to live anywhere else, Judy quickly set the record straight. “I absolutely love this house and what goes on in it. I feel a great sense of responsibility to keep it up for the next generation and to preserve the home that contains so many memories. One night we had so many people in here clogging that the kitchen floor was actually bouncing with the rhythm of the shoes. Eugene went down into the basement and shoved another support beam up just to make sure no one fell through. You have a certain way of life living and raising children on a farm. You learn something new every day and experience life, animals, the land and how to work, how to take responsibility and how to appreciate a tightknit family. I would not do it any other way.”
    While both Eugene and Judy come from musical families, with Eugene’s father playing a mean fiddle and others in the family playing piano, guitar and singing and Judy’s mother playing the accordion and piano, it is Judy that brings to the mix an intense passion for dance. She simply cannot keep her feet still and was a member of award winning clogging groups and can square and round dance with the best. Eugene is on his fifth or sixth guitar at this point and between the two of them the couple plays guitar, electric bass, fiddle, and more. Starting off the interview with an impromptu concert in the kitchen treated the reporter to a mixture of County, Blue Grass, Traditional Dancing tunes and classics from artists including Elvis, the Beatles, Hank Williams, Sr. and Jr, and an eclectic mixture of pieces. The couples’ entire repertoire is held together with the common thread of personal choice. Eugene explained, “I like songs with meaning and broke into a rendition of the couple’s special song Can I Have This Dance?” There was not a dry eye in the place including Eugene and Judy when the song’s last note resonated in the kitchen.
    Besides the fact that both of the couple are self-taught musicians and passionate about what they play and sing, there is a heartfelt quality to their voices that catches and breaks on the lyrics close to their hearts and bounces with a lilt on the inspirational words that still have meaning generations later. When asked to explain how these groups of people get together to play and eat, the couple excitedly lists off people who play guitar, fiddle, mandolin, bass and guitar. Whether it is a home gathering of twenty-thirty or the Brandon Blue Grass Festival where a couple of hundred showed up, the order of business is play, sing and celebrate. Each song performed is not rehearsed but live with the musicians present and voices joined in harmony. Currently, Eugene has a list of over thirty pieces he can play from memory and a more he is learning to add.
    With Eugene’s assertion that he is not happy unless he is performing music and Judy’s statement about life is a dance and ‘we had best get busy’ it is easy to see how the couple is out three-four nights a week playing music and spreading joy. While work is still a necessity and jobs take up their time, their smiles are the biggest and their hearts the fullest when they are at home on the Red Rock Farm, playing music or in the barns or kitchens of other places making music that fills the heart and speaks of the lives of people who work hard and value family above all else. On this one occasion a grandson even joined in as music filled the kitchen. For just a minute there seemed to be a lot more voices that joined in and it is possible that the floor bounced once or twice as the sounds of a French Canadian clogger kept time to a beat as old as the house itself. Music is the soundtrack of their life and the generations that came before them at Eugene and Judy Charlebois’s home. As soon as the interview was over and the grandson hugged, the guitar was back in its case, the bags and home cook meal packed and Eugene placed on his head his well-known fedora hat for the evening music jamming gathering. It was about to start just down the road a piece.

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