CLARKSBURG – Fall doesn’t have to be fleeting.
Autumn can be wondrously eternal, in fact, if you let it.
On a sun-dappled day back in October 2023, in the polished, wood-accented library of Waldomore, the celebrated antebellum mansion in Clarksburg, Meredith Dean Augustin and Bob Thompson … did.
“ …Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song
But I miss you most of all, my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall… ”
That’s the lyric that closes “Autumn Leaves,” the 1947 standard that can either be a reflective ballad or swinging jazz – depending upon who is doing the telling.
The golden, mid-morning sun and wafting leaves on the other side of the window called the arrangement on this one.
Augustin sang that lyric like a mom’s lullaby and Thompson gently coaxed a cascade of notes, just like those leaves, from the fine Steinway grand that graced the room.
With the ambient signature of it all still in the air, both looked up and smiled.
“Mr. Thompson, I do believe that’s a keeper.”
“I do believe you are correct, Miss Meredith.”
The occasion was the recording of Augustin’s album, “Just Me and Bob,” and like the title says, it’s a collection of jazz standards, featuring vocals and Thompson’s piano, which is now out on West Virginia University’s Mon Hills Music Group label.
Said label is part of the Music Business and Industry Bachelor of Arts program through WVU’s School of Music.
Yes, it is a working label, and yes, it is pushing for a national, and even international audience, for this latest offering. “Just Me and Bob” dropped Friday.
Meanwhile, if the names of Augustin and Thompson sound familiar to your ears – that’s because they are.
My mom, the nun
Augustin, who grew up in Morgantown, is known just as much for liturgical music as she is for jazz and pop.
Now residing in Brooklyn, N.Y., she’s the music director of St. Francis of Assisi, the Roman Catholic parish in midtown Manhattan with a choir boasting performers from the Metropolitan Opera among its ranks.
Music of faith is part of her sonic life and times. Her mother is a former nun with the Sisters of St. Joseph who renounced her vows – but not the Church.
Augustin, who also plays piano, did musical theater at Morgantown High School and with local troupes in the University City as a kid.
She let it ride in New York to give music a shot after earning degrees in psychology and rehabilitative counseling from WVU and the former Wheeling Jesuit University.
While the church is her full-time gig, she also sings bebop in Brooklyn while doing session work with Patti LaBelle and other pop luminaries.
Her music has taken her from Star City to Singapore.
Along the way, there were all those gigs in Charleston as a member of Thompson’s jazz combo when she was just starting out.
“I’m lucky to have Bob as both my friend and musical mentor,” Augustin said.
“He can play anything out there, and I mean anything. He’s just such a warm, generous spirit. And with this album, you just had all these moments.”
Making a real acquaintance with those 88s
“Playing anything out there,” is a chief talking point on Thompson’s musical resume these days.
If you’re a fan of Mountain Stage, the performance show and public radio mainstay produced in Charleston, you know that’s his piano you’re hearing in the house band.
Thompson regularly backs up the diverse musicians – everyone from blues-shouters to bluegrass pickers – who are on the bill every week.
He’s a New York City kid.
Jamaica-Queens.
Doo-wop caught his ear initially, but jazz was always there. He was a serious trumpet player who occasionally tried to pick out tunes on piano.
The trumpet was his ticket to West Virginia State University, in Institute.
As one of America’s original historically black colleges and universities founded after the Civil War, State had a vibrant alumni network in New York.
“So I got a one-year scholarship,” Thompson remembered, “and I said, ‘Well, let’s get away from home for a while. ’”
It was the early 1960s. His getaway from home ended up becoming his home.
He arrived in the state and on the campus, both sight unseen to that point, and found he actually liked living here.
And the trumpet, as it happened to be, changed his trajectory.
That’s because the campus jazz band he tried to audition for already had a trumpet player.
“And the guy was good. So I started circling back to piano.”
Not long after, he was playing gigs in Charleston, sharing bandstands with musicians whose pedigrees astounded him.
“These were people who played with Count Basie, Billy Eckstine, people like that, and they all happened to end up here. They just all took me in, and really taught me. I’m not sure I couldn’t have gotten that, at that level, in New York.”
Now, he’s one of them. He makes it a point to mentor young musicians. And his annual “Joy to the World” Christmas concerts are a holiday tradition in Charleston.
Recording with his old friend Augustin for “Just Me and Bob” was a joy unto itself, he said.
“Meredith truly is a musician,” he said.
“It’s her nuance and phrasing. And we both have our inspirations and journeys. I love it when we’re on the bandstand together.”
‘I wanted to let the room breathe’
Josh Swiger was just glad he was hearing what he was hearing during that autumn afternoon at Waldomore.
Swiger, who directs the Music Business and Industry Program at WVU engineered the session with Augustin and Thompson.
“By ‘engineering,’ I mean I put five microphones in the room,” he said, chuckling. “You had vocals and piano. It was intimate. I wanted to let the room breathe, you know?”
Swiger’s a working musician himself. He’s a bassist who plays classic rock and boot-scooting country. Give him a chart of an old Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys tune, with a boogie-woogie walking bass line, and he’s a happy man.
“I’m from the ‘School of Honky-Tonk,’” he’s fond of saying.
He also gigs with local Americana mavens, The New Relics, while running his Blues Alley Studios and Records enterprise in Morgantown.
Swiger, too, has performed with the people he recorded at Waldomore.
With “Just Me and Bob,” Mon Hills Music Group, Swiger said, does want to cast a wide net.
Visit experiencemeredith.com and all streaming platforms to learn more about the album, with snippets of songs and behind-the-scenes interviews.
Four students in the program – Matteo Pandolfi, Diamond Mars, Veronica Casey and Tara McGiveny – have been tasked with marketing and promotion for the project.
“With Meredith, she’s known for her music in the church and the jazz things she does,” Swiger said. “With Bob, you have Mountain Stage and jazz. I said to the team, ‘Guys, I think we can go places with this one.’”
