What happened to you, man? What happened to that passion?

Harvey Cohen, 42-year-old mortgage specialist, teetotaler, New Rochelle commuter, dominated the room. There wasn’t a song he didn’t know, a key he couldn’t transpose. He switched effortlessly between guitar and banjo. Jake Raskinov was a no-show but Elliot Grossman noticed Harvey, how could he not?

LAMPLICKER BY ROBERT MORGAN FISHER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 35

It all started with an invitation to Elliot Grossman’s party. Harvey knew Elliot peripherally, the strapping standup bass player was well-known in the folk world. To be invited to his annual shindig was a big deal. There would be all kinds of folkies there singing into the wee hours. For Harvey, who resided in New Rochelle and took the train in every morning to work at a failing mortgage firm but who ate, slept, and breathed traditional folk music, it was a major coup. Elliot had joined the latest incarnation of the legendary Lamplighters, an iconic folk group. Recently, Jake Raskinov, the last surviving founding member of the…