Laurie Schaeffer, Sonoma County concert promoter and champion of music, dies

Laurie Schaeffer could barely plink on a piano, but she was renowned to an entire genre of Sonoma County music lovers who value sitting in an intimate venue and listening closely to a musician’s words.

Schaeffer and longtime friend and fellow Sonoma State University alumnus Greg Abel brought in hundreds of singer/songwriters for concerts and conversation at homes, grange halls and acoustic-friendly rooms such as those at Sebastopol’s Studio E recording studio and former Powerhouse Brewing Co.

A performance by Kinky Friedman at the Sebastopol Grange on Friday was to have doubled as a celebration of Schaeffer’s 60th birthday. Instead, the show will be part memorial and will serve as a warm-up to a May 31 celebration of Schaeffer’s life and its rich contributions to Sonoma County’s music scene.

Schaeffer died April 24 from complications of a long battle with an intestinal disorder. She would have turned 60 on Saturday.

Tragically, a brother she was close to, Gary Schaeffer, died the same day in Pebble Beach. Gary Schaeffer, 63, had cancer.

“I know they had talked right before Gary lost his ability to speak,” said the pair’s one surviving sibling, Bobby Schaeffer of Silver Spring, Md.

Though heartbroken, she said it is solace to her that both her sister and brother died peacefully.

She added, “They both were surrounded by people they love. And it was time for both of them.”

Laurie Schaeffer, who grew up in San Fernando Valley and fell in love with the North Bay while attending what was then Sonoma State College, had endured several bouts of hospitalization and surgery in recent years.

Throughout, she continued to organize concerts with Abel, her friend since 1975 and her partner in Schaef-Abel Productions.

“I wanted to call the company Laurie Listens,” said Abel, a musician and former Sonoma County Courts executive officer living in Forestville. He said he shared the delight that Schaeffer found in bringing talented musicians to the area to sing their own songs - generally in the folk and/or country stream, and generally acoustic - before people eager to hear each word.

“The whole idea was to give them a listening room,” Abel said.

He and Schaeffer met as students at Sonoma State 40 years ago. Abel recalls that both were living in the Jung House apartments and that he would rise early to go to a common room to write or practice music.

“About the time I was done, Laurie was getting up and I’d ask, ‘What do you think of this?’” He’s pretty sure that was Schaeffer’s introduction to the phenomenon of the singer-songwriter.

They subsequently went together to hundreds of concerts. Sonoma County writer Gabe Meline chronicled that it was the late Kate Wolf, one of the area’s most beloved musicians, who told Schaeffer in 1976 that the music world needs good organizers.

Schaeffer never forgot that encouragement. But it wasn’t until 1997 that she and musician friend Abel began putting together concerts in private homes, often at a house on Lake Sonoma owned by Robin Pressman, the former longtime program director at public radio station KRCB.

Schaeffer found she loved organizing small-venue concerts, meeting the songwriters and taking in the scene of dozens of people sitting and listening rapt to each word and chord.

“She liked the words,” said her sister in Maryland. “Words and melodies would take her into fantasyland. She also really liked the people who followed this type of music. It was a real community.”

Over the past 18 years, Schaeffer and Abel promoted intimate concerts starring the likes of Nina Gerber, Cheryl Wheeler, Slaid Cleaves, Todd Snyder, Jimmy LaFave, Mary Gauthier, John Gorka, Sam Baker, Bill Joe Shaver, Dave Alvin and Lucy Kaplansky.

Abel and Stephen Tamborski will open the show by Kinky Friedman in Sebastopol on Friday. That show has sold out.

Abel and other friends of Schaeffer now plan a celebration of her life for May 31, also at the Sebastopol Grange. The starting time hasn’t been set, but Abel expects it will begin in the early afternoon. Details will appear at northbaylive.com.

“There will be a lot of musicians playing,” Abel said. “We need to celebrate her life with music.”

As much as Laurie Schaeffer loved music and musicians and the sort of people they attracted, she also embraced other passions. Sister Bobby Schaeffer said she savored time in the garden of her Santa Rosa home, with its koi pond.

And she was crazy about the San Francisco Giants.