Photos by Arleen Ng - Staff Photographer

Sound-surround

By Alex Horvath
Special to The Examiner

Tuesday, November 27, 2001

Like a dog to a siren, Lee Ellen Shoemaker can't help but break into tune anytime she's in the vicinity of a reverberating sound. "My mother used to say that when I was a baby, any time she would turn on the vacuum cleaner, I would start singing," Shoemaker says. "There was a copy machine at an office where I worked that would make a lovely sound," recalls Shoemaker, humming. "And MUNI turn signals make a lovely noise. They have a little Irish sound to them."

Also known as The Tunnel Singer, the 65-year-old artist has gained notoriety for nearly two decades by singing inside tunnels and caverns around The City and the North Bay. Sipping a latte at a table inside a Sunset area coffee shop recently, she tells the story of how she almost moved from her Taraval Street flat to an apartment near Port Townsend, Wash., and of a career change that has her promoting her music and selling her CDs more than singing inside cold, dank spaces.

Whether you've spotted her walking through about pillars near the sound column at the Palace of Fine Arts or lurking around tunnels near the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, the former hospital administrator has an extraordinary presence. Her music is a kind of aural experience that might make good background noise for daily meditations or an episode of "Star Trek." You might even have listened to one of The Tunnel Singer CDs. Shoemaker has self-produced four of them. All are available at 200 independent music stores around the country, or can be ordered from her Web site: www.tunnelsinger.com.

Her first CD, "Inner Runes," which was recorded live at the Palace of Fine Arts, utilizes, at times, a Tibetan Singing Bowl, she says. Her third CD, "Water Birth" -- recorded inside of a 2 million-gallon cistern in Port Townsend that is known for its 45-second reverberations -- has garnered critical acclaim from the alternative music press. Her newest release, “Night Skies” is recorded in a U-shaped WW One mortar magazine tunnel. She has also been featured on Evening Magazine and interviewed on alternative music radio stations around the country.

Shoemaker, who calls herself a performance artist, got her start singing in the resonant stairwells back at the University of California at Davis in the early 1980s. But her fondness for noises started long before that, as a girl growing up in Kokomo, Ind. "For my 11th birthday, my mother gave me a choice. I could either have a birthday party or get a tour of radio station, WLW in Cincinnati. We went to see Ruth Lyons, who at the time was considered to be the Arthur Godfrey of the Midwest. It was really cool. They showed me how to make sounds like the ones used on 'Fibber McGee and Molly.' The engineers took me into their inner sanctum,"' she recalls. She was hooked.

"I am absolutely incapable of singing the same thing twice. I improvise with my improvisations. For thousands of years, people have searched for reverberating spaces to chant or sound their music," says Shoemaker, whose automobile is decorated with the words, "www.tunnelsinger.com." "People stop and ask me about that all of the time. That's when I hand them one of my fliers. I even sell CDs right out of my car because of it," she adds. Shoemaker's performances consist of long, improvised tones and made-up phrases. Critics have dubbed her atmospheric sounds as both "chant" and "astral music." In the past 11 years, Shoemaker had developed a local following of folks who would traipse up into the Marin Headlands Saturday afternoons, sometimes when the temperature would be near freezing, to see her show. Decked out in a poncho, leather gloves and a fedora, Shoemaker would pace 140 steps both ways through an abandoned military tunnel as fog would blow from her mouth. The music sounded like she was trying out for the part of a Gregorian Monk. But lately, keeping the regular gig had become tedious. She says she no longer felt like making it to the headlands or some of her other regular haunts the way she once did. "I used to go to the Palace of Fine Arts to sing every weekend," says Shoemaker. "But things have changed. A chunk fell out of the ceiling after the Bolinas earthquake a few years back. Now there is a big, black web of netting up to protect the public. The problem is, the acoustics are different.

"In the headlands, the rangers looked at my fliers as being 'advertisements.' They told me I couldn't distribute them there any more. They were really nice about it. But I started feeling like singing in the tunnel had become more like a 'job.' " Coincidentally, Shoemaker was retiring from her job in public relations at California Pacific Medical Center. She had already recorded in the cavernous water cistern in Port Townsend, and had become enamored with the quaint charm of the rustic community. "San Francisco was becoming a little bit too fast for me," Shoemaker says. "I went to Port Townsend and stayed at a youth hostel, picking blackberries during the day and cooking at the hostel at night. I would get up each morning and sing to the beautiful sunrise. I found some affordable housing and decided that this would be my next step." But before deciding to give up her 600-square-foot flat, on the urgings of a friend she made arrangement to visit the Northwest once more, in early spring. The result was a case of seasonal allergies made her eyes burn. She hightailed it back to San Francisco after only 48 hours in Washington. This time, she says, for good. "If San Francisco was too fast for me then, I was going to have to speed up," she says.

Over the past year, The Tunnel Singer's career has taken a different direction, moving from performance to entrepreneur and CD promoter. "I'm not trying to become the next 'Enya,' " Shoemaker says. "I think I have some new music inside of me. I am very powerfully moved by the kindness I see in people. Lately, though, I have had to do vocal gymnastics just to keep my chops."

For the first time, she is experimenting with synthesized music, adding keyboards and a beat to her effect. Her efforts have drawn the attention of Jay Leno and the "Tonight Show," who contacted her after viewing a segment a Washington area television program, had done about her. Shoemaker said the "Tonight Show" ultimately turned her down, but she has now set her sights on bigger game, Oprah Winfrey. She also gets occasional requests from people wanting training in her style of "music." Some from some who have already had professional voice training. "It's not that difficult to learn," Shoemaker notes. "There are no words to learn and no music."