Molly Farley traces her love of music to her parents.
The quiet sound of her father’s saxophone and the gentle voice of her mother filled the family home in Mound, Minnesota, where Farley and her five siblings gathered after dinner to sing and play.
“The town I grew up in did not have much culture,” said Farley, who will turn 70 in April. “My parents were determined to give us culture and they didn’t have, as my mom would say, a pot to piss in.”
Her parents, both jazz musicians, taught her to sing and to play the piano and cello from a young age. Music shaped everyday life.
Longtime friends and newly appointed managers of White Feather Farm, Chris Anderson and Kris Garnier, invited Pep and Molly, Farley’s duo, to perform at Broken Wing Barn on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14. The barn, built in 1750 and later renovated, offers an intimate setting suited to the pair’s close harmonies. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and tickets are $20.
“You could say with Molly she was like a sponge that soaked up all this music 24 hours a day as a kid,” said Pep, Farley’s 73-year-old duo partner and a full-time musician who performs under a stage name. “It’s just part of her bones and her bloodstream.”
Farley and Pep have made music together on and off for nearly 40 years, beginning not long after she moved to Woodstock in 1986. Pep studied the stylings of Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle, shaping arrangements that echo the classic American songbook. Together, they use close harmonies, vocal mimicry of band instruments and a form of vocal improvisation called scat to recreate the feel of a full ensemble.
“It’s wanting people to not forget this music. My mom was a jazz singer, she begged me to keep this light going, keep the flame burning for this music,” Farley said.
In the 1990s, the Pep and Molly Show featured a five-piece jazz ensemble. Band members shifted over time. Pep moved to Florida, then returned to New York more than a year ago. The two reunited soon after.
“They really make magic when they sing together,” Garnier said.
The duo describe their bond as a “musical romance.”
“Every time, any time I’ve heard them play in years past, they love what they’re doing so much that it oozes out of their music, it just flows,” Garnier said.
A Fixture on Rock City Road
Farley has spent her life trying to fix people. Now she fixes clothing.
She pursued sewing with the same intensity she brought to her bands. After marrying a man from Woodstock and moving there to raise their children, who are also jazz lovers, she began working at Bard College’s costume shop.
Not long after, the owner of Sew Woodstock, which later became Farley’s Rock City Vintage, hired her to teach sewing. When that owner relocated to Florida, Farley was offered the business. Despite having no experience running a shop, she accepted.
As rents rose and a sewing-only model proved unsustainable, Farley blended her interests. She began selling and creating garments from vintage fabrics just as interest in vintage clothing surged around 2012. The store evolved into Rock City Vintage, a fixture on Rock City Road.
Farley said she treasures the shop and the steady flow of customers who pass through its doors. Still, she is uncertain about its future.
“If I have to move from where I am, there are no other places to rent. And rent has gone up so much, I might have to retire,” she said. “I hate that word. It’s like going to sleep.”
For years, the building housing Rock City Vintage was owned by a local couple who regularly maintained it. In recent years, hedge fund investors purchased the property, Farley said.
“These new guys,” she said, “aren’t around and don’t keep up with repairs.”
She has one year left on her lease. A clause allowing the landlord to terminate the agreement with six months’ notice worries her most.
“What’s the point of a lease if you can tell me to leave?” she said.
When she isn’t at the shop or repairing garments, Farley returns to music. She and Pep can spend hours refining a few measures, repeating them until the phrasing feels right.
For Farley, the work, whether stitching seams or sustaining a jazz standard, is less about nostalgia than preservation. It is about keeping something alive.
Mia Quick is an editorial assistant at The Overlook. Send correspondence to mia@theoverlooknews.com.