On a 17-acre farm of tall trees and horse pasture somewhere between Fairhope and Foley, a longtime Baldwin County horsewoman has spent years building one of the coast’s most distinctive music communities. Cathe Steele, owner of Blue Moon Farm in Silverhill, calls it The Frog Pond Sunday Social, a series of house concerts that bring touring songwriters and serious listeners together in an informal, homey setting.
When she shared her story in the fall of 2023, Steele had been hosting the gatherings every other Sunday in the spring and fall for 14 years. Her path to becoming a house concert host wound through California, the mountains of Wyoming, three decades of shoeing horses and a lifelong love of music.
What Makes a House Concert Different
House concerts have become a popular way to hear live music across the country. A private home hosts a musical artist, and invited guests help cover the performer’s expenses with a suggested donation. The shows are small and intimate, and they are not designed to make money. Their purpose is to introduce people to new music and to the artists who make it.
At many house concerts, guests bring a covered dish, a chair and whatever they would like to drink. The result is part concert, part potluck and part neighborhood gathering, built around the idea of community through music. For touring songwriters, these shows can be a valuable source of income and a chance to play for audiences who are there specifically to listen, rather than to talk over the music at a bar.
A Fairhope Childhood and a Road West
Steele moved to Fairhope in 1960, when she was 4 years old. Her father worked as a truck driver for Mercury Freight Lines in Mobile, but she grew up on the Eastern Shore. “We ran amuck all day, every day. We swam in Mobile Bay when it was clean and clear, and played in the gullies. Our parents’ only rule was to be home by dark. It was an idyllic life growing up,” she said.
At 18, she left home for California, living in Auburn, California, for a year or so while attending college. She rented a studio apartment in a home called The House of Norad. “It was like a real castle, and my place had windows like a Spanish Galleon,” she recalled.
She worked at a restaurant on Interstate 80 between Reno and Sacramento and sometimes wrote and played music. “Each evening the family I rented from asked me to play a John Denver song for my supper,” she said. “The Norads, who were perfect strangers to me when I arrived, fed and took care of my 18-year-old self while I was there, and I’m grateful to them for that help and the experience.”
Mountains, Horses and Music
In 1978, Steele enrolled in a three-and-a-half-month semester course with the National Outdoor Leadership School in Wyoming’s Wind River Range. The school, founded in Lander, Wyoming, in the 1960s, is known for teaching wilderness skills and leadership through extended backcountry expeditions. Steele went on to become a NOLS instructor, leading groups in Wyoming, Alaska, Baja, Washington State and Utah.
After 15 years in Wyoming, she returned to the Eastern Shore to help care for her parents.
Steele had always been good with horses, and she attended a top-ranked farrier school to become a professional blacksmith and farrier. For 30 years, she worked locally and at veterinary clinics shoeing horses. “Shoeing horses was all I did for a long, long time. I didn’t plan any of it, I just fell into it,” she said. By 2023, she had been retired from shoeing for about 14 years.
She bought Blue Moon Farm in 1988 and for many years trained, bred and raised horses there. “I had 22 head of Paint Horses, stood a stallion, and was training and shoeing horses every day. That was my life then, and I was really good at it.”
The farm sits in Silverhill, a small town in central Baldwin County founded in the 1890s by Swedish immigrants, whose agricultural roots are still visible in the surrounding fields and pastures. The farmhouse, Steele’s home, was built in 1909.
Music ran alongside everything else in Steele’s life. She helped Jimmy Louis at Joe Gilchrist’s Silvermoon and volunteered for the Frank Brown International Songwriters’ Festival, the long-running event that brings songwriters from around the world to venues along the Alabama and Florida coast each November.
In 2004, after Hurricane Ivan destroyed the Flora-Bama’s bar and stage, she brought music to Pirates Cove full time and built a songwriters’ music platform there. Pirates Cove, the laid-back waterfront bar in the Josephine area of south Baldwin County, became known as a spot where songwriters could play for appreciative crowds.
Steele also worked with John Thompson of Callahan’s in Mobile to give visiting artists more than one gig while they were in the area. “I would bring Grayson Capps in on a Saturday night to Pirates Cove, and John would do Hangover Sundays with Grayson at Callahan’s,” she said. “I’d bring someone to Pirates Cove from New Orleans and they’d play at John’s bar on Sundays. It was a nice way to give the artists more than one gig while they were in the area, and we were far enough apart to not affect the numbers of people attending in each other’s venue.”
How The Frog Pond Began
The idea for The Frog Pond grew out of conversations with close friends. Songwriter Grayson Capps and his wife, Trina Shoemaker, rented the “Tree House” on Steele’s property after moving from Nashville. “We brainstormed a lot about building a community around music,” Steele said. “I didn’t want to sell alcohol and I wanted to personalize the experience, so we took the platform that Levon Helm was using with his Midnight Rambles, and it all began.”
Helm, the drummer and singer for The Band, hosted his famous Midnight Ramble concerts in his barn studio in Woodstock, New York, creating an intimate setting where fans could hear great musicians up close. That spirit of music in a personal space became the model for Blue Moon Farm.
Steele found a framework in Folk Alliance International, the nonprofit organization that supports folk music and its presenters, and joined as a Pro House Concert member. “They have strict guidelines that work for me,” she said. Under those guidelines, the music is performed at a private home, all money goes to the artists, and the events cannot be open to the public or promoted through public advertising.
“You can put up posters or use Facebook which offers a friends-of-friends platform. So that, and word of mouth, is basically how we have gotten the word out over the years,” Steele said. “We have people come here from all over the country and the world, who’ve simply heard about it through a friend of a friend.”
House Rules and a Community Affair
The goal of The Frog Pond Sunday Social is to bring musicians, songwriters and serious listeners together, and Steele expects guests to follow her rules. “The rules are, simply put, act like a decent human being. Be considerate of others, and my home, and no overindulgence of alcohol,” she said. Breaking the rules means being asked to leave and being banned from the farm.
“Everybody brings a smile, a dish, a cooler, and a chair,” Steele said. A seat donation is collected at the gate, with all proceeds going to the artists, and every guest must sign the house rules and a release form before entering.
The results have gone well beyond music. “We want to bring people together in a positive way,” Steele said. “There’s lots of good that happens at The Frog Pond. People come from all walks of life. Many folks have found their soul mates here, some have started bands from their collaborations on stage, and some have started magazines and developed lifelong friendships and community.” She added, “I even had one couple tell me it saved their marriage. We try to expose people to a wide variety of music in the round, and send them home with a smile having had a positive experience to take them through their week.”
Though the setting is rustic, the operation is sophisticated and professional. Each building on the property is “circled up” to buffer sound from the neighbors, and Steele’s large barn serves as a workshop where she can build almost anything herself. “Many people have come together over the years to make it all happen,” she said. “The Frog Pond is a community affair, and I sure could not have done it without them and our volunteers.”
Summers on the Colorado River
In the summer months, Steele heads to Rancho Del Rio, a rafting, fishing and music community in Bond, Colorado, on the Colorado River. She has been going there since 1994, living in a small cabin above the river all summer and hosting much the same kind of musical gathering she holds at The Frog Pond.
“Rancho is not your usual resort,” she said. “It’s a bit like Pirates Cove was in the old days, but out in the middle of nowhere off Hwy 131, in the back range of Colorado. Music brings people together in a positive way. Serious thoughts and troubles get set aside, and our goal is to bring joy, connection, and consideration to each other. It tends to just happen. We just provide the environment, the music, and let it all flow.”
Asked about the state of the coastal music scene, Steele was enthusiastic. “It’s fabulous!” she said. “The music scene has really developed down here over the years. There are so many more great venues that now bring in some incredible talent from both songwriters and bands. I’m just happy to be here and be a part of it all.”
Standing near the stage and looking out over the pastoral setting, she summed up her philosophy. “Everybody is in the same Frog Pond together. Every ripple you make, everything you do affects someone else. I breathe out, you breathe in.”
Because Folk Alliance house concerts are invitation-based rather than public events, people interested in attending typically learn about them through friends or the host’s own channels. Music lovers curious about The Frog Pond can check its website or social media for information on upcoming seasons.