Music Therapy Brings Collinsville Couple Together

Joe Burcaw and Emily Bevelaqua at Emily's studio in the Collinsville Axe Factory. Joe was in the band Black 47. credit: April Perkins

By Carl Wiser

Staff Writer

 When they met, they bonded over Rush.

"We were talking about the time signature of 'Tom Sawyer,'" says Joe Burcaw, the former Black 47 bassist who now lives in Collinsville with his wife Emily Bevelaqua, a music therapist in town. "We were trying to figure out if it's 7/8 or 6/8."

Emily had been using the song in a therapy session. "It was a pre-teenage boy with a lot of emotional behavioral problems in a foster care situation," she says. "His foster father was really into classic rock, so I was trying to tie into his musical interests. I was teaching him that part on the keyboard and talking about how it made him feel, doing all the social-emotional music therapy work."

Black 47 was one of the most popular Celtic rock bands in America when Joe joined the group in 2005. They named him "Bearclaw" in deference to - and I'm quoting here from his feature in Bass Player magazine - "his muscular, lockdown lines." In 2014 they broke up after a year-long farewell tour that included a St. Patrick's Day performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and four days later, a show at Bridge Street Live in Collinsville. Joe worked as an instructor at the School Of Rock in Boston, then in 2015 started Bearclaw's Academy of Music in New Milford. He was looking to add music therapy when he found Emily in a Google search. They met that December to talk business, but it turned into something more.

"The meeting went from a half hour of professional talk to, 'I actually really like you and it feels like we've known each other forever,'" Emily says.

Joe was also pleasantly surprised. "Here's this pretty lady who's into Rush and knows their catalog. I was pretty impressed."

Emily discovered music therapy after her junior year at UHart. "I thought, this is exactly what I am supposed to be doing." credit: Allie Fackler

Music Therapy

Music therapists have to understand concepts of psychology and special education, and also be proficient in guitar, piano, and voice. Emily holds a degree in classical voice performance from the University of Hartford and a master's in music therapy from Temple University. She also completed about 1,200 hours of fieldwork in various clinical settings, working with children with autism, older adults with Alzheimer's or dementia, and people with brain injuries and other medical conditions.

"We use person-centered music experiences like singing, songwriting, playing instruments, dance and body movement - really any way you can incorporate music through assessment," she says. "With any kind of therapy you're forming a relationship with the client and creating a safe, contained space where we can be open, creative, express ourselves and work on any number of goal areas."

Many of her clients are autistic, with speech and language delays. "These kids are in so many therapies and there's so much expected of them," she says. "It can feel like a weight. But with music, it's so self-engaging, non-anxiety-provoking. It doesn't feel like therapy - it feels like they're just in play. They're just in this creative moment with a trusted person."

"Music is one of the only things that impacts all parts of the brain at the same time," she adds. "There's a lot of brain science behind what we do."

Emily does a lot of her work in schools, group homes and hospitals, but she also has a studio in the Axe Factory (the only one with baseboard heat!) where she does sessions.

Joe performing with Black 47 in 2009 at The Stone Pony in New Jersey.credit: Tom Spader

"I Had the Rock Star Dream of Making It"

Joe grew up in Ohio and went to Salve Regina University in Newport, where he earned a degree in American studies with a minor in music performance. After college, he formed a band called Azurtech ("a mix between INXS, Bauhaus and The Police") and moved to Boston. "I had the rock star dream of making it," he says.

In 1998 he was in line at Mama Kin - Aerosmith's bar near Fenway Park - to see John Taylor of Duran Duran perform.

"My friends and I were waiting in line and I had to relieve myself, so I went down behind the club and John was hanging out by himself," Joe said. "We started talking music, and I brought up one of the basses that he had used back in the '80s - he had an Aria Pro II that he used on their arena tour in 1984. We were rapping for a couple minutes and I said, 'Hey listen, I have a band. Is there any way I could give you my card and maybe send a demo.' He said, 'Absolutely.'"

Taylor signed Azurtech to a spec deal and brought them to London. "When we got there we had some great gigs and we had some record label interest, but we split up six months later," Joe says. "It was a wonderful experience but unfortunately the other two guys in the band were not 100% on board as far as wanting to make this a career."

Joe moved to New York City a month after 9/11, filling a room vacated by one of the many people who bailed on the city around that time. "I worked at Banana Republic just to get the bills paid," he says. "But I was networking all the time. I was going out to clubs in the Lower East Side, West Village, staying out till 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning and then I'm going back to work at 8 a.m. I didn't care - I was young."

Black 47

Joe got the gig with Black 47 by answering an anonymous Craigslist ad, realizing only later that he'd be auditioning for one of his favorite bands. When he was in college he saw them perform in Cambridge.

"Watching that live show, I said to myself, 'This is what I want to do. This is the type of band I want to be in,'" he says.

Joe's time with Black 47 was a dream come true. "It was a band of brothers. I was accepted from day one."

Black 47 had six members and incorporated horns, flutes and various Irish instruments into the mix. Joe held down the low end. "I completed the circle between the guitar and drums. I truly loved what I was doing."

The gig was very demanding. "It's not just laying down root notes to the bar," Joe says. "With Irish music, it's a wall of sound and it's a lot of rhythm that's moving very, very quickly and you have to keep up with it. With Black 47, Larry, the leader, taught me that no matter what happens in the show - if somebody breaks a string, if somebody misses a beat or misses a chord - never stop. Don't let the bottom end become silence, because if you do that, people are going to pick up that there's a problem.

"We were all improvisers. We were all into Coltrane and Miles Davis. Every single one of us were jazzheads. You wouldn't think that with an Irish rock band, but I think that's why we were a step above most of the bands in our circuit. The setlist was always different. We never played the same song the same way twice, and we'd play off the vibe of the fans."

If the vibe was right, Joe would jump into the crowd, which caused a problem when his cord would pop out of the amp and he'd go silent.

Black 47 came to an end in 2014 when their leader, frontman Larry Kirwan, decided they should go out on top. "We were the best band to come out of that Irish circuit," Joe says. "I commend Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys. They're great bands, but at the end of the day, Black 47 was the top dog, by far."

Emily, though, had never heard of them. "I fell in love with him for Joe, not for 'Bearclaw,'" she says.

"I Didn't Want to Live in a Cockroach-Infested Apartment"

Emily grew up on the North Shore of Massachusetts and started playing violin when she was five. "I would get hired for gigs playing weddings and as background music for different kinds of cocktail hour functions," she says. "Then I discovered my singing voice in late elementary school, and that became my passion. I started learning how to play guitar, self-taught. And then I thought, Why haven't I been playing guitar my whole life? Because I love writing songs. I love singing. You can't really sing and play violin, but you can sing and play guitar."

When she studied at UHart, Emily found out pretty quickly that she didn't want a career as a performer. "I didn't want to live in a cockroach-infested apartment in Brooklyn with 17 roommates and eat tuna out of a can," she says. "That's kind of what Joe did, and I love him for it, but it's not what I wanted to do."

She learned about the field of music therapy after her junior year, and she was hooked. "It's a field where I can have a steady income and build something that's going to help a lot of people and also help myself. When I was a voice major, there was a perfectionism to it that was just too much. Music therapy is not about perfection. It's not about being polished or singing on pitch. It's about listening to the inner music we all have and expressing yourself through that. It's about connecting in this beautiful, very humanistic way within this medium that is just so natural for all of us if we let it in."

Emily and Joe got married in 2019 and had their daughter, June, in February 2020, just weeks before the pandemic. Joe still runs Bearclaw's Academy of Music, where he teaches virtually and at his studio in New Milford. In 2023 he released an EP called Four On The Floor with vocals by Living Colour frontman Corey Glover. Emily is starting to do some performing - she'll be playing The Sounding Board in West Hartford on November 29 as part of a Bob Dylan tribute Joe is organizing (he'll be in the house band).

They're enjoying life in Collinsville and take advantage of what it has to offer. Emily is an "antiquing nerd," and they both like walking the trail and eating at The Crown and Hammer and LaSalle. "The beauty of living in this little village is, it feels remote and it's very artsy, but we can be at three different grocery stores within five minutes," Emily says. "There are a lot of artsy types in Collinsville, and we're all of the same ilk. I think we get each other."

Nurturing Music in a Child

A tip from Emily for raising a child to love music: Turn the TV off and put the radio on.

"There's something so beautiful about just taking in music auditorily and not always having a visual," she says. "I think that's really important for early childhood development."

And even if you have no musical talent, you can still make music with your kids. "Get some egg shakers, get a little ukulele, get something for them to strum," she says. "Sit on the floor with them and do some of the classic children's songs with body movement."

"I think it's vitally important for younger kids to see and hear their parents playing," says Joe. "I think when a child sees that and hears that at a young age, it gets into their DNA."

And go beyond pop music. "When Emily was pregnant I used to play Miles Davis and Frank Zappa and The Police so June could hear that in the womb," he says. "When she gets older I want to see if she recognizes any of these songs."

Emily is on the web at ebmusictherapy.com; Joe at bearclawsacademyofmusic.com

Joe and Emily performing at The Sounding Board in West Hartford with drummer Rob Walbourne. credit: Lauren Taylor

Emily's Desert Island Playlist:

1) "Down the Road Tonight" - Bruce Hornsby and the Range 

2) "Guilty" - Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb 

3) "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues" - Elton John 

4) "If You Could Read My Mind" - Gordon Lightfoot 

5) "Fill It Up Again" - Indigo Girls 

6) "Power of Love" - Luther Vandross 

7) "Nanci" - Toad The Wet Sprocket 

8) "Shotgun Down The Avalanche" - Shawn Colvin 

9) "Constant Craving" - k.d. Lang 

10) "Hummingbird" - The Weepies 

11) "Smoke and Ashes" - Tracy Chapman 

12) "Belief" - John Mayer 

13) "Coyote" - Joni Mitchell 

14) "Cry for Help" - Rick Astley 

15) "Word on Fire" - Sarah McLachlan 

16) "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" - Paula Cole

And Joe's:

1) "Spirits In The Material World" by The Police

2) "Good Times" by Chic

3) "Seven Steps To Heaven" by Miles Davis

4) "Stink-Foot" by Frank Zappa

5) "The Wind Cries Mary" by Jimi Hendrix

6) "A Letter To Elise" by The Cure

7) "Love In A Vacuum" by Til' Tuesday

8) "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side" by The Smiths

9) "Serious" or "Planet Earth" by Duran Duran

10) "The Magnificent Seven" by The Clash

11) "The Everlasting Now" by Prince

12) Any dub reggae by The Scientist, King Tubby or Lee Scratch Perry