Esther and Fred Stover and Pearl and Roy Pennell sit in front of Esther’s keyboard in the Stover’s living room. Off camera are fiddles, banjoes, steel guitars, harmonicas, spoons and other instruments, which the family uses to create and perform their signature traditional tunes.
LOUNT — Their family history resounds with the voice of the fiddle, the twang of the steel guitar, the strains of a harmonica and the bright pulse of piano chords.
This musical past stretches generations before Fred and Esther Stover and Pearl and Roy Pennell —known to many as the Stover Family Band — and generations after them.
A discussion about the Stover family history takes place in the Stovers’ Lount Township living room. Against one wall sits a piano. In a corner is stacked a large collection of all kinds of stringed instruments. Others decorate the wall.
In front of the piano, Esther’s keyboard is set up. Facing the keyboard is Fred’s steel guitar. Pearl sits on the couch, banjo in hand. Roy’s on a chair, harmonica and spoons at the ready.
Because there’s no telling this family’s history without a bit of a hoedown to help the story along the way.
They start out with “Honeymoon Waltz.”
Fred wrote it right after he and Esther were married.
Fred and Esther Stover met in Otterville, in southwestern Ontario, during the Second World War, when both were involved in a community marching band.
There, Esther played the E Flat Alto and trumpet and “anything really,” she remembers. Her young future husband played the bass. Fred definitely struck a chord with the teen at their first meeting.
“I was 15 at the time,” Esther said, “and when I got home (from band practice) I told my mother ‘I met the man I’m going to marry, Mom!’
“She asked his last name and I said, ‘I don’t know but I’ll find out at band practice next week.’”
Fred was 19 at the time. They both came from very musical families, and their courting often revolved around making music together.
They “went together” for about three years before they were married, Esther explained, since she had to be 18 to do so.
Their dates were well-chaperoned, since Esther said she always had to have one or more siblings — she had nine of them — with her when she went out with Fred.
“Fred was allowed to come to my home and play music,” she said, “and we met every week for band practice.”
A special moment of the couple’s courtship came on May 8, 1945 — VE Day.
It was Fred’s birthday, Esther explained, and he had never had a birthday party before, so her mother had a big celebration planned.
Esther’s mother roasted a turkey and all were about to sit down to a big birthday dinner when they got word that the war was over.
Their marching band was recruited to go and spread the news.
“We went from town to town playing music and shouting to people ‘The war is over! The war is over!’” Esther remembers. Afterwards, she was ill for four or five days after from inhaling fumes from a sulfur flare — the only light she had to read her music from that night.
They were out proclaiming the war’s end until two or three in the morning, she said. “That was the latest I had ever stayed up in my life!”
Nobody ended up eating the birthday turkey until the next day.
The end of the war also marked the time that Fred and Esther were allowed to wed, since she was turning 18.
They were married at home in Ottersville on Thanksgiving Day, 1945.
There was a good frost the night before, Esther said. It ruined all the flowers in the garden that were supposed to be decorations for the wedding.
Instead, neighbours donated their blooms, and the living room was transformed into a beautiful setting for the wedding.
Included in the ceremony, of course, was plenty of music.
Years later, their daughter, Pearl wrote lyrics to go with “Honeymoon Waltz.”
The first verse goes:
“They met playing music in the Otterville band.
It was love at first sight, so they say.
She told her mother that very same night,
‘I’ve met the man I will marry some day.’”
Three years after they were wed, Pearl was born.
And, of course, it wasn’t long until Pearl began participating in the family tradition.
“I remember going to Grandma’s and being in a room…that would have musicians all around. I used to get a quarter for every fiddle song I played. I’d come out with two or three dollars,” she said.
Pearl began playing the fiddle at age four and the guitar and trumpet at around 10 or 11.
She remembers, in her early years, many instances of watching family and friends make music together.
“We used to play in one-room school houses,” Esther remembers. “All the desks would be shoved back. People would be square dancing, playing euchre…And the kids would be sleeping on their parent’s coats under tables…Pearl was.”
It wasn’t long until the youngest Stovers, Bradley and John, joined the family tradition.
They would play at garden parties and other community events, Pearl said.
Bradley and John joined the family band at legion functions, where they weren’t allowed to leave the stage because they weren’t of age.
The boys were also in a competitive square dance group.
“They were the champions of Middlesex County,” Esther remembers.
“I remember one time we played when they did an exhibition dance at St. Mary’s,” Pearl said. “It was unusual to have two boys from one family (dancing) and then to have the same family supply the music.”
And when it came time for Pearl to marry, it was no surprise that her husband would beup drawn into the Stover family’s music.
Roy Pennell is now a long-standing member of the family band, but he didn’t exactly have the broad musical past his wife and her kin enjoyed.
“Back in the 50s, when I was 19 or 20, I played some harmonica,” he said. “My first wife didn’t like it. She threw all my harmonicas in the garbage.”
But Pearl eventually convinced him to take it back up. She wrote a song, he said, that they wanted to add harmonica to.
“I just picked up the harmonica and tried and it worked, I guess,” Roy said. “A guy once told me that if you can play “Pop Goes the Weasel” you can play anything. I can’t play “Pop Goes the Weasel.””
“But you can play anything else,” Pearl interjected.
Roy and Pearl made their way to the Almaguin Highlands in 1972. They lived in Bummer’s Roost in Lount Township for eight years before buying property just down the road.
In 1975, Esther and Fred bought property across the street.
The family was once again in one place, and so was their collective musical talent.
They began to share it with their new community.
They brought their love of square dancing to the Almaguin Highlands.
“We started off when they wanted to teach the kids square dancing at South River Public School,” Pearl said. “It blossomed from there. Some folks from North Bay and Chisholm came…We filled up the auditorium at South River Public School…When it was over for the school, everyone wanted to square dance.”
So the Stover Family Band began their monthly square dances, where they’d be accompanied by callers like Elgin Schneider, Bill Earl and Murray Rose.
They’re still doing it.
The Stover Family Band can be seen at fall fairs, at weddings and even funerals. They are all around Almaguin spreading the traditional songs they’ve played for years.
Those tunes are timeless, Pearl said. “People like the old-fashioned kind of music. It’s not too loud so you can converse at the table.”
“There’s no boomity-boom,” Esther adds.
“And the thing about square dancing is it’s so laid-back and easy going,” Pearl said. “There’s never a sour face...Never a fight. Everyone’s having such a good time. There are three or four generations of families coming out to the dances.”
The band’s repertoire includes hundreds of songs, many of which they wrote themselves.
“We try to write our stuff for the area, naming it for our visitors and neighbours,” Esther said.
Back in their living room, the family starts up their next number, “Charcoal Town.”
Pearl wrote it about South River. Nicole Edwards, now a performing artist herself, was part of an arts group who were producing a play about the railroad in South River, and she asked Pearl to pen a song.
Pearl sings:
“In the early years of Charcoal Town
The train stopped every day.
You can get fine food at the Queen’s Hotel
And then be on your way…”
The Queen’s Hotel is a long-gone feature of South River.
Next on their impromptu set list is a tune they created for their friends when they purchased the then-neighbouring Bummer’s Roost.
Bummer’s Roost burned down this past summer.
The family comments they’ll have to compose a song about that.
Next they break into a tune Pearl calls “their speciality.”
“When we’re doing a program, rather than a square dance, when we’re doing senior’s clubs or various shows, we say we’re impatient fiddlers and can’t wait for each other to finish, so we play them at the same time,” Esther said.
Pearl and her father share the lead fiddle part, playing their own tunes that seem to intertwine perfectly.
When the song wraps, Esther explains, “He was playing “Silver Bells.” She was playing “There’s No Place Like Home.
“Guess what I was playing?....The keyboard! And Roy,” Esther quips, “he was playing the spoons.”
The family’s humour shows. They play the “Plagarism Blues” where they combine themes from old-time TV shows like I Dream of Jeannie and the Andy Griffith Show to the tune of “Land of the Silver Birch.” They have a holiday ditty called “Dollarama Christmas.”
The enjoyment they get from music in apparent. Esther smiles as she plays the keyboard. The living room floor vibrates with four sets of toes tapping.
But there was a point recently that the enjoyment of performing was in jeopardy for one member of the family.
Last year, Fred has some health problems that required him to have heart surgery.
“We didn’t think he’d play any music again,” Pearl said. “We were afraid he wouldn’t.”
But as soon he was able to stand up, she explained, he was back at it.
There are members of the Stover family that have been lost: John in 1990 and Bradley just months ago.
But the younger generations of the family look to be carrying on the musical genes.
Pearl and Roy’s grandchildren certainly have. Harland, 11, has been playing the fiddle since he was five.
His younger sister, Emma, sings and gets guitar lesson from her grandma.
They get it honestly.
The family is rooted in music. Their songs explore their relationships, their past and their surroundings. The notes are ones that bind and keep them close-knit.
Asked if they could imagine the family not being involved in music, they all laugh.
“No,” Pearl said. “Not this family.”
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