Duo rocks Web with smashing pumpkins

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on October 19, 2007

Pumpkin-carving and songwriting: It's a match made in heaven, if you ask Richard and Floralee Newman.

Their "Bush Bashing Pumpkin Contest 2004" drew national attention and 100,000 hits that October to their Web site, TagYerit.com.

Now, the self-described "affirmed tree-hugging musicians" have put their passion for pumpkin carving into service illustrating and promoting their music.

Fans can see videos of the Newmans' pumpkins, which depict characters from their songs, while listening to the songs at their Web site and on YouTube.

The videos use stop-action photography. In the pieces, viewers watch scenes unfold on the surface of a pumpkin, as if it were a TV screen.

The 50-something musicians met at the University of Massachusetts in 1971 and have been recording music as TagYerit since 1995. They live on Pelham Road in Amherst.

But their three CDs, which they have advertised on their Web site, never attracted the wide audience drawn to the pictures of pumpkins they posted.

They are constantly getting invited to pumpkin-carving contests, but they don't like to travel much. Last year, ESPN asked them to carve a pumpkin for one of its TV shows, "Pardon the Interruption." They had to send it by overnight mail to Washington so the pumpkin wouldn't rot.

In July, they got the idea to combine pumpkin carving and songwriting, and voila - they got "songcarving."

"We write about kind of unusual subjects, kind of storytelling music," Flo Newman said. "That's why it works on pumpkins."

The song "Deranged," for instance, is about a "brokenhearted cowgirl who endlessly roams zombie-like across the plains," as it says on the Web site.

The video begins with a drawing of the slump-shouldered cowgirl and follows the evolution of the drawing into a fully carved pumpkin. Just when the song reaches an emotional climax, the carved pumpkin dramatically lights up.

Carpentry is the Newmans' day job. They started carving pumpkins several years ago for their nieces and nephews. "It's so much faster to carve pumpkins. Even though it takes hours to carve these pumpkins, in wood it would be even longer," Flo Newman said.

"In a way, it's like being a cartoonist, but you have a different medium," Rich Newman said.

Rich Newman produces the videos. Photographing the pumpkins is something he's been experimenting with for years. "The basic thing you have to know is to turn the flash off and only use the light from the pumpkins. It certainly helps to have digital cameras now, so you can take hundreds of pictures," he said.

There are three videos, so far, "Deranged Cowgirl," "Tubeman" and "Aly's Song."

"I'm kind of pooped out on carving right now," Flo Newman said. "It's so much work and it actually takes longer to do it in this form, because I have to keep stopping so Rich can take photographs, so you can see the progression of the pumpkins. We want it to be magical, to all of a sudden go from the beginning to the lit-up moment."

Pumpkins have been great to them, but the Newmans have a lot of other things to do.

Rich Newman is still working on a video - and he still has to carve a pumpkin for a niece.

"You're running from one project to another," Flo Newman said. "We were in the middle of a major carpentry project, and I said, I have to carve these pumpkins right now.' "

And, of course, there's the music.

"We never get anywhere near (putting) the song ideas we have into song form," Flo said. "There are so many other subjects besides love out there. Love is great, but it's done a lot."

Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.