Jennifer:  When I think of influences, I think first of my parents. I remember my mother listening to Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, the Mamas and the Papas, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Barbra Streisand, Peter Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, and Bob Dylan. My father played Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Bill Monroe, Willie Nelson, the Oak Ridge Boys, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Beethoven, Odetta, Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris, and Waylon Jennings. My stepmother played the radio station which had the Andrews Sisters and Glenn Miller and other big band music. My uncle played much of all of the above, with Leadbelly and Tom Paxton and the Easy Rider soundtrack as well. The fellas I dated played Santana, John Lennon, David Bowie, the Clash, the Pretenders, the Ramones, Neil Young, the Eagles . . . Folk, rock, folk-rock, bluegrass, country, classical, pop -- I think listening to all of those facets of American music contributed to whatever style I may reflect in Hot Soup.

Christina:  "What are my musical influences?", you ask. Hmm . . . influence . . . to flow in? To alter or have an effect? To identify my musical influences is both simple and difficult. My mother's music and love flowed into me so early and shaped me so profoundly that everything since has been colored by it. My mother is Ann Mayo Muir. As a young child, it was with her and through her that I learned harmony and the exhilarating, free feeling of skiing a fabulous vocal path down the mountain that is a song, full of turns and jumps, fast and slow. Harmony is all about contact, connection, leaning into and being met. A weaving and blending of eyes, breath, shape and tone. It is heaven! My mother made harmonizing a game, and we sang together because it was fun. As a result I think it is what I do most naturally both with other voices and with my instruments, weaving harmonies with the strings.

We both took up the harp when I was six, she on a grand concert harp and I on a small student harp. One of my favorite things to do with the harp was to put my ear to a sound hole at the back, pluck a string and let the rich round tone wash over me, vibrating slowly like a pulse. I resisted learning to read music since my ear was so much quicker. It took my teacher a year or more before she realized that I wasn't reading but was watching her fingers and memorizing what I heard. Even later in college, when I was learning the names and theory for what I already knew by ear, I still did not take hold of reading. It is hard to let go of such a strength in order to let another weaker skill develop. I like what I hear Pete Seeger says in response to "Do you read music?". He says he can, but he doesn't let it hold him back.

My mother also introduced me to musicals and the wonder of characters set in story and revealed in song. I'll never forget seeing her play the part of Adelaid in Guys and Dolls and hearing her sing the witty song "A Person Can Develop a Cold" in a wonderful Brooklyn-type accent. These songs were personal, revealing and entertaining -- different from the more removed quality of the traditional folk songs I'd heard. For my part, I've played Bernardo in West Side Story, Linus in You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, Sonia in Godspell and most memorably, Marion the Librarian in The Music Man. That last was directed by the amazing satirist, Tom Lehrer, in a college course called "The American Musical." I think it was this experience with musicals that helped shape the desire to write my own songs.

Around the time I was born, my mother met and began working with Gordon Bok. He is a powerful, deep voiced lover of sailing and the sea who plays guitar with the touch of the wind rippling on the waves. Hearing his haunting melodies and their voices (Ed Trickett joined them in 1975) and instruments weaving together in our living room, all through my growing up, have no doubt contoured the inner land that is my musical world. They were known as Bok, Muir and Trickett and when the "founding" members of Hot Soup first came together in 1996, we playfully called ourselves, Ribaudo, Muir and Trainor, echoing the sounds of their names and acknowledging the heritage from which we came.

We also had some touring folk performers stay at our house: Kate Wolf, Archie Fisher, Marshall Dodge. Meeting and hearing these folks in such an intimate context was very powerful. Later, in the early 80's, I worked for half a year at The Town Crier Cafe in NY, where I was exposed to many folks. Most memorable were Claudia Schmidt, Pierre Bensusan, Suzanne Vega and The Roaches.

Interestingly, in all these wonderful experiences I focused more on the music and words, harmony and blend, but not so much on rhythm. It was there all the time but it is only in the last decade that I've awakened to the power and pull of the beat and I'm finding it much more challenging to get a hold of, or better yet, to let it get a hold of me. I'm amazed, frankly, that I've missed feeling its engaging thrill all these years. As a dancer I know it's in me somewhere but it has been challenging to get it into my fingers and out of the guitar. The mountain dulcimer on the other hand has been a little more natural as a rhythm instrument, but I'm still looking for those pushier, foot stomping, head bobbing, body moving sounds.

As a result of this awakening I find myself drawn to contemporary artists who have this rhythmic play down. My current favorite is Peter Mayer. I also love David Wilcox, Beth Neilsen-Chapman, Tom Prasada-Rao, Tom Kimmel, Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter. Favorite instrumentalists include Al Petteway and Amy White, Alasdair Fraser, Martin Hayes, George Winston, Michael Hedges and Nightnoise. And for a long time I've loved the music of James Taylor, The Beatles and Dougie McLean, though I was not exposed to these until I left home in my late teens.

While it is clear to me that my mother has been a profound shaper of my music, I know that those I have named here and others as well have contributed richly. But only in that I have loved their music. I haven't analyzed or copied them purposefully until more recently when I set myself the task of learning some of their songs. More often than not, though, I find myself unable to reproduce their instrumental magic and I simply reinterpret their songs using the same tools that I developed with my mother. Alas, it is the same story as when I was child playing the harp. It is very hard to set aside what I know to make room for learning something new. And yet, that is also what makes my style what it is . . . whatever it is. At its core is simply what my mother taught me, summed up in her words, "Do it for the love of the music."