Dawn Indermuehle and Rick Spencer
Summer Concert Series at the CT Old State House
Hartford
July 3, 2026
It is hot with a capital T outside, so I was grateful to find that the weekly Summer Concert series at the Old State House in downtown Hartford had been moved into the air conditioned building. There, listeners were treated to the duo/couple of Dawn Indermuehle and Rick Spencer performing music from the Colonial period through the early part of American history, up to the 1830s.
Indermuehle and Spencer are both performers and historians of American music, which turns their show into part concert, part history lesson. The duo split their songs into three categories: early Colonial songs that built support for independence, fight songs to rally and recruit both American and British troops to the cause, and post-Colonial music that provided the soundtrack for the young new nation. Throughout, they explained the context and history of the tunes they played.
(Note: Apologies, but due to an unfortunate accident with my phone, I don’t have recordings of the performance.)
For example, I learned a lot about the song "Yankee Doodle." I didn’t know that it’s the official song of Connecticut, and that it was written by a British soldier (the lyrics, at least) named Richard Shuckburgh. Apparently, the song was written to be derisive of Americans: “Doodles” referred to Yankees as country hicks. “Dandy” was another way to call us conceited jerks. But the American troops who were the target of the lyrics loved the song, and made it a patriotic anthem.
It’s nothing new to point out the hypocrisy of the Founding Fathers and Revolutionary soldiers singing songs about liberty and freedom while maintaining the system of slavery. However, I was genuinely surprised by how many of the songs performed made explicit reference to the enslavement of white people by the crown as a melodramatic way to describe the government. To be clear: they were not referencing actual enslavement or indentured servitude. They were saying that taxation without representation is akin to slavery, which of course it isn’t, but still.
Despite the continuance of slavery, Africans and their descendants made huge contributions to American music. Indermuehle and Spencer performed "Lynchburg Town," the first song recorded from African American performers. "Lynchburg Town" was sung by African Americans, both enslaved and free, as they traveled down the James River to sell their wares in the eponymous town. According to Spencer, the song was so popular that it formed the basis for American popular music for decades afterwards.
Indermuehle and Spencer revealed the musicality of a song like "Yankee Doodle" thanks to their harmonies. The couple are probably the best example I’ve seen of using pitch and harmony. I don’t imagine some poor farmer out in the field during the Revolutionary War could sound half as good as these two.
Every song has a story, and Indermuehle and Spencer make sure their audiences know the history behind the music. It was a fun and informative concert to start America’s 250th birthday weekend.
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Jamil goes to Bushnell Park to check out the Hartford Bonanza.
