Friday, January 25, 2008 - Mt. Desert Islander

You may not recognize Liza Rey’s name, but chances are you’ve heard her music. Perhaps it was on records by singers such as Doris Day and Frank Sinatra, on which she sang backup in a children’s chorus. Maybe you saw and heard her on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” performing with her family the week after the Beatles made their American debut on the show.

In her late teens, she regularly appeared on “The King Family Show” that aired on ABC. Later, she performed with a CBS studio orchestra, playing music for television shows including “Tony Orlando and Dawn” and “The Carol Burnett Show.”

More recently, she can be heard playing concert harp on albums by Arcade Fire, the critically acclaimed rock band headed by her two sons, Win and Will.
Now, after putting her music career on hold while raising a family, Ms. Rey is ready to step back into the spotlight.
“I’ve never stopped playing music,” she said. “I just didn’t put myself first.”

A classically trained harpist and pianist, Ms. Rey has begun to perform locally. She will bring her jazzy blend of upbeat, original music to Sips in Southwest Harbor on Wednesday, Feb. 13, where she will be accompanied by Phil Kell on bass. She also is scheduled to perform for the Jesup Memorial Library concert series in Bar Harbor on March 9, and at the Northeast Harbor Library on April 4.
Born in Los Angeles to bandleader and guitarist Alvino Rey and singer Luise King, Ms. Rey grew up surrounded by music. She began piano lessons at the age of 4, taught by her grandfather. In her household, she said, “Music was like breathing.”

Her mother was one of the four King Sisters, a swing-era vocal group. The King Sisters first began recording with the Alvino Rey Orchestra in 1939, on the Bluebird subsidiary of RCA Records. They all settled in the Los Angeles area.
“I had all these cousins,” Ms. Rey said. “We made music all the time.”
Show business was an obsession.

“My dream was to be on Broadway,” she said. “I used to dress up in my mother’s nightgown and put on shows.”
She entered the professional world when she was 8 as a studio singer in a children’s choir. Many of her fellow singers were the children of musicians in her father’s band.

“I just did a ton of them,” she said of the recording sessions. “We loved it because we got out of school.”
When Ms. Rey became a teenager, her mother, who also played harp, began teaching her to play that instrument. It was something that Ms. King had preordained.

“She said, ‘Liza is a harpist,’” Ms. Rey recalls her mother saying. “As soon as your feet can reach the pedals you’re going to play harp.”
Ms. Rey admits she has mixed feelings about the instrument.

“It’s kind of a love-hate thing,” she said. “I really love the piano. That’s my first love.”

Ms. Rey began performing from time to time with her parents. An appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” soon led to an offer from ABC for the King family to host their own weekly variety show. “The King Family Show” debuted in early 1965, replacing the science fiction series, “The Outer Limits.”
Ms. Rey, who was 18 then, describes the show as “really intense.” Thirty or more members of the King family were involved in the production. She wasn’t disappointed when the network cancelled the show nearly a year later.

“I always wanted to do my own thing,” she said. Faced with the choice of staying in Los Angeles and working as a musician or going to college, she chose the latter, attending Brigham Young University. She began school as a music major but soon switched to Spanish because she found music classes “boring.”
She met her future husband, Ned Butler, while staying at a hunting and fishing camp on the Salmon River in Idaho when she was 22. Mr. Butler, who grew up on Mount Desert Island, was working as a geologist. The pair married after Ms. Rey’s graduation. They soon moved to Tucson, where Mr. Butler studied for his master’s degree at the University of Arizona. That’s when Ms. Rey received a call from CBS, asking her to perform alongside musicians including saxophonists Tom Scott and Ernie Watts and trumpeter Bobby Shew in a band playing for the Tony Orlando and Carol Burnett shows.
“In a way, this was my first real job as a musician,” she said. “It was completely at the very top.”

Ms. Rey would travel weekly from Tucson to Hollywood to rehearse and perform with the band. She also attracted the attention of record producer Henry Lewy, who worked with Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Van Morrision and others.

“During this time I was trying to make it as a singer-songwriter,” she said. “I was trying to be Joni Mitchell with a harp.”
Working with Mr. Lewy, she made a demo recording for A&M Records. The recording never went beyond that stage. About the same time, Ms. Rey and her husband moved to the Lake Tahoe area, where Mr. Butler had accepted a job, and she became pregnant with their first child. Ms. Rey began playing in clubs in the area, backing musicians such as Sammy Davis, Jr., Tony Bennett and Sarah Vaughn. She also formed the Liza Rey Quintet, a jazz group in which she sang and played harp and piano.

“We had more work than we could do,” she said. “Life was really full and good.”

Again, Ms. Rey was forced to put her career on the back burner, as her husband accepted a job in Argentina and the family followed.
“Every time it got out of balance, I was the one who pulled back,” Ms. Rey said of balancing her music career and motherhood.
After returning to the United States, Ms. Rey began to perform again, this time in Texas, where she developed an educational program called “The Harp for Kids’ Sake.”

“I ended up working in the schools,” she said. “I played for 1,000 kids a day.”
She organized a group of neighborhood children, which included her two sons, into a horn section that accompanied her on many of the school programs.
“That, I believe, was the real start of Arcade Fire,” she said, acknowledging her role in the rock star success of her sons.
In 1990, Ms. Rey landed a record deal with the independent label Aubergine Records. She recorded “Noel Nouveau,” a collection of Christmas music for the label and a second album that was not released because the label folded.

In 2003, Ms. Rey and Mr. Butler moved permanently to Mount Desert Island, a move, she said, she knew they eventually would make.
“I knew Maine would be our final destination,” she said. She said the Maine coast has helped unlock her songwriting muse.
“It’s very beautiful,” she said. “It’s a very inspirational place.”
Soon after the move, Ms. Rey recorded a self-produced album called “Can’t Go Back.” She is working on songs for a second album and plans to build a recording studio in the basement of the home the couple is restoring in Mount Desert. Whether recording or playing live, Ms. Rey is always the consummate professional.

“I learned that perfection is the only way to perform,” she said. “It’s always a big show. I prepare for Sips like I would prepare for Carnegie Hall.”