‘Margaret’ tour kicks off at the Moore Friday night

As a little girl, Sarah Schmidt would trick-or-treat at Rucker Mansion and wonder what was behind that large front door. Years later she remembers visiting Rucker’s Tomb as a teenager growing up in Everett. Now she lives in a house on Rucker Hill.

So when Jason Webley asked her last year to take part in a project bringing to life a scrapbook of the late Margaret Rucker she jumped at the chance.

“Jason knew this was pretty close to me,” Schmidt said recently. “He called me and said I have something crazy to tell you. He told me the whole story. We were both like, ‘We have to do something with this, right?’ ”

What Webley did was create a magical night this past April revolving around the life of Margaret Rucker Armstrong, a daughter of one of the city’s first families.

Joined by nearly a dozen of his musician friends, including Schmidt, Webley brought to life in song Margaret’s scrapbook — found in a San Francisco Dumpster by his friend “Chicken” John Rinaldi — in front of a sold-out crowd at the Historic Everett Theatre. The night culminated in a procession from the theatre to Rucker’s Tomb in Evergreen’s Cemetery.

Now comes the encore. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, Webley, who moved back home to Everett three years ago, has recorded an album of many of the songs performed that night and created a 90-page hardcover book containing images from the scrapbook and more. Webley is releasing the “Margaret” album Dec. 12 — Margaret’s birthday — and is bringing together many of the same musicians from the April concert for an album-release concert Friday, Dec. 12 at the Moore Theatre. It will be the first of five “Margaret” shows Webley and his friends will put on down the west coast.

“(The April show) was going to be the end of it,” Webley said. “Simply it was that the songs were just so good”

Webley admits the first concert came together quickly and had an element of surprise. “I was hearing those songs for the first time,” Webley said.

Inspired by elements of Margaret’s scrapbook from her poetry to pictures, the musicians wrote songs and performed that night in front of an audience made up of the musicians’ fans and local Everett people interested in the project and Margaret’s story.

“It was amazing that all these people came together to honor a woman none of us knew,” said Eliza Rickman, who performed two songs that night: “Lark of My Heart,” based on one of Margaret’s wedding photos, and “Maker of My Sorrow,” written about Margaret’s husband’s suicide.

Webley said Friday’s show will be missing some of the elements — including one performer — of April’s show while new elements will be added. He said he knows more about Margaret’s story than he did back in April and will bring some of that in as well.

“This time will be different,” Webley said of Friday’s show. “I have no idea how this show will be and I like that.”

One difference is the venue. The Historic Everett Theatre was booked for Dec. 12 so Webley decided to move it to the Moore Theatre. The Moore holds significance to Webley — his last solo show was at the Moore on Nov. 11, 2011 — and Margaret, who was born the same month the Moore was opened in 1907.

The tour is also significant as it travels from Seattle to San Francisco, where the scrapbook was found, and ultimately to Los Angeles, close to where Margaret and her husband, Justus Roger Armstrong, died.

Webley has worked tirelessly over the past seven months to put the album and tour together. Since the April show, he started the Kickstarter campaign to raise money, recorded and mixed much of the album at his home studio off the Snoqualmie River near Monroe and booked the venues for the tour.

“I’m honored to work with Jason,” Schmidt said of her longtime friend. “He is working so hard behind the scenes. This isn’t his grandma. This is someone who is very separate from all of us. The fact he’s doing it just because it needs to be done with one human being’s story and how we can all come together and create and touch people’s hearts is amazing.”

For Webley, who joked that 2014 was the year of Margaret Rucker for him, the upcoming tour is the closing of a chapter.

“I definitely see this as being over,” said Webley. “After that I guess I’m open again. I like not quite knowing what I’m going to be doing next. I hope it’s something I can’t even imagine.”

The project holds special significance for Schmidt, who lost her father, Richard Schmidt, soon after learning about Margaret’s life from Webley. While writing the song “Dear Margaret,” which is based on a telegram Margaret’s husband-to-be sent her about a rendezvous in Port Townsend, Schmidt said she felt her life swirling together with Margaret’s.

“Writing about her and her dad and how she would ride up and down (Rucker) hill, I feel like in some ways I blended myself with her while I was writing the songs,” Schmidt said. “I felt like I was in a cloud of death and grief, and the only thing I could do out of that was create and honor the past.”

“Margaret”

The album: The “Margaret” album is a full-length 15-song CD featuring music by Jason Webley, Led to Sea, Jherek Bischoff, Eliza Rickman, Shenandoah Davis, Lonesome Leash, Zac Pennington and Mts. &Tunnels. It’s housed in a 90-page hard-cover book that includes the images and clippings from the scrapbook and an essay by Chicken John Rinaldi, who found the scrapbook in San Francisco dumpster. “Margaret” can be purchased for $25 at any of the concerts or at jasonwebley.com. Here’s the track listing: “My Love Left Me in April,” Jason Webley; “Lark of My Heart,” Eliza Rickman; “Spring And Fall,” Shenandoah Davis; “Old Haunts,” Led to Sea; “Dear Margaret,” Mts. &Tunnels; “Night,” Jherek Bischoff; “Sonnet,” Shenandoah Davis; “Patches,” Led to Sea; “Maker of My Sorrow,” Eliza Rickman; “First Day,” Lonesome Leash; “Firefly,” Lonesome Leash; “Possession Sound,” Zac Pennington; “Pyramid,” Jason Webley; “My Love Left Me in April,” Jason Webley and Friends; “Eyes of Margaret,” Jason Webley and Friends.

The tour: The “Margaret” tour kicks off Friday night at the Moore Theatre in Seattle before traveling to Portland (Dec. 18, Wonder Ballroom), Eugene (Dec. 19, Wow Hall), San Francisco (Dec. 20, Castro Theater) and Los Angeles (Dec. 21, Bootleg Theater). For tickets to Friday night’s show, visit www.stgpresents.org. For more information on the tour, visit jasonwebley.com/events.

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