Village Voices

is a Booking Agent for local Ruidoso performers. Below is information about these performers. To book Susan L. Kolb, Jim Dunleavy or Doug Fuqua for your event call The Boss at 575-802-0273 or 575-927-7618 or click here to email.

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Susan L. Kolb

With experience behind the microphone on radio, television and many live events you would expect Susan Landers Kolb to be very comfortable there. She wasn’t comfortable behind the microphone about this time last year.

“I really was scared to death,” Kolb said. “I just knew everyone could see my knees knocking and I was glad I wore extra clothing to hopefully hide it. Most of my friends had been alerted to the fact that I was doing this for the first time and they were all out on the patio waiting for us to begin. I saw a few smiling faces and I drew some peace of mind from that. Wow, that seems like a long time ago.“

The ever adventurous Susan re-launched a singing career at the top. The top of Ski Apache. Was it all down hill from there?

Susan began singing in high school and kept singing competitively through college, but after graduation other things took up her time. Twenty or so years later on a whim, music changed her life.

“After a few more gigs on the mountain, I realized singing was adding some much needed value to my every day existence,” she said. “I began singing and working on folk songs and did a few performances at Hennington’s Restaurant. It has been an incredible learning experience.

“I thought I knew a lot of songs, but learning the folk songs made me realize there is a whole world of music out there that I am unfamiliar with,” she said.

Like the microphone, she was very familiar with another instrument, but it too was scary, but for a different reason.

“I took some great advice from Pete Davis, who plays just about every instrument under the sun. He told me I really needed to begin playing keyboard again if I wanted to seriously pursue music,” Kolb said. “He had no I idea how much fear that brought up.”

 Piano lessons took up much of Susan’s life during school, but the experience wasn’t all that pleasant. Going through a rebellious period she quit and didn’t touch the keys for 27 years.

“When Pete explained why I needed to play keyboards, I understood, but that brought up more anxiety and I knew how hard I would have to work to catch up,” she said. “I wasn’t sure I was ready to tackle it, until my husband showed up at the back door of our house with a beautiful brand new keyboard. That made the decision for me. To get back into this I purposely chose two of the hardest pieces of sheet music I could find to punish myself for quitting. My brain was rusty at reading the music and my fingers couldn’t seem to find the right keys. Things didn’t sound too good at our house for a while, both from the keyboard and my figures of speech. It was very frustrating, but I kept plowing through it because I knew eventually I would be playing for audiences and I had to get over my fear of the whole process.”

A few months later, Susan picked up a few gigs and put together some solo sets.

“In the early days my goal was to just get through the songs,” she said. “My musical taste was expanding, and I wanted to choose a wide variety of songs that would appeal to most audiences. That was a challenge but I enjoyed going from one musical era to another and it was definitely improving my ear and my keyboard playing was becoming easier.”

Another step in the musical journey was working with a local band during the summer, playing at several different venues and for private parties.

“That was a great experience and once again, I was learning music that I wasn’t familiar with, which helped me vocally,” Kolb said. “I learned several Patsy Cline songs that became crowd favorites. Those were tough, but I was determined to do them well or not do them at all.

“We were also doing some old blues standards and even some country and classic rock,” she said. “I had a moment where I realized the more I was learning, the more I knew I was going to have to learn in the future to compete and survive.”

Underestimating her ability to compete and survive would be a mistake. She is a West Texas girl. She decided she needed a mentor to help guide her through the process. So she got with Doug Fuqua.

“Doug, the piano player and entertainer in Wendell’s at the Inn of the Mountain Gods, has been awesome,” she said. “Doug has encouraged me to keep working, keep practicing, and turn a deaf ear to anyone who tries to discourage me. Doug is a keyboard player who reads sheet music like a champ, but also plays by ear at any given moment. He can transpose a song into a different key on the fly and that completely boggles my mind. If I can play half as good as Doug within the next 10 years, I would be proud of my progress.”

As a mentor Fuqua not only provides guidance, he opens doors.

“A while back, Doug asked me to sing one Sunday at the Community United Methodist Church ,” Kolb said. “That was one of the most rewarding experiences yet. Once again I was really nervous but once I finished, almost every person in the congregation came up and spoke to me with positive comments. I am now singing with the choir there and that is an entirely new musical journey for me.”

After practicing a few more times with Fuqua, he suggested that Susan investigate yet another musical genre.

“Doug says to me, you know you really have the voice for doing torch songs,” Kolb said. “I wasn’t even sure what he meant. After some investigation, I realized these songs are very special. The chord progressions and melodies are fantastic.

“While some of them are extremely difficult, they are rewarding to perform,” she said. “We started off with a few like “Black Coffee” and “P.S. I love you” which was written during the war. I am also working on “At Last” which was featured during the recent Presidential inauguration. After that broadcast, about three or four people came up to me all of the sudden and said you have to do ‘At Last’. I said I’ll get back to you on that, because it is an extremely difficult song to do well. I hope to have it ready for debut around Valentines Day. I will be playing in Capitan at Emily’s Southern Accent that evening.

With guidance from other musicians and countless hours of practice the music is coming along. The live performances are getting her comfortable behind the microphone singing instead of talking.

“I am extremely grateful to places like Lucy’s, Lucy and Ethel’s, Alto Mountain Village , Pinecliff Village and to all the people who have hired me for private parties,” she said. “It has been a challenge, but I try to take any setbacks and use them for fuel to move ahead.

She may have started at the top, but it has been up hill from there. Ruidoso is a very competitive market for entertainers with lots of talent and limited venues. Even the best can struggle here. It seems even tougher for the female performers. They have to be West Texas tough.

“I heard a great quote the other day and it meant something to me,” Kolb said. “A restaurant owner in town made a comment about her situation. She said I am here, I am here to stay, and you are just going to have to live with me.”  

Jim Dunleavy

When you see Jim you might think he just drifted into town from out on the ranch. When you hear Jim talk you immediately know that ranch he drifted in from must be pretty far east of here. Like so many transplants Jim visited Ruidoso, fell in love with the area and came back to become part of the community. For years he performed his unique brand of folk-blues-rock music around Lowell, Massachusetts. Jim has been playing folk, rock, and blues for many years. He's played guitar and harmonica with some big names, but he's not the type to mention them here. For a sample of Jim's music from his CD Steady Rollin' on Tech Records click here.