By Chris Nafekh, Staff Writer

Published in print Jan. 21, 2015

This past Saturday, The Crown at the Carolina Theatre looked classy with purple lighting and café style seating. At each round table sat fans of Phoebe Snow, eager to hear sounds of the ‘70s.

Snow was an award-winning folk artist best known for her song “Poetry Man,” a song about a love affair with a married man, which hit platinum. She made it onto the covers of “Rolling Stone” and “People” magazine. She was featured on “Saturday Night Live,” singing duets with Paul Simon and Linda Ronstadt. She sang on Broadway and at Camp David for former president Bill Clinton. Listening through her legacy, one can hear her music evolve from Americana-folk into a deep, soulful blues, often accompanied with smooth jazz sax.

Phoebe passed away in April of 2011. Her husband, musician and human rights activist Philip Kearns, decided to put her music on tour once again to honor her memory.

“I thought it would be good to show people that her music, it’s really something to treasure,” Philip said, as he approached the stage. Throughout the night, Philip played Phoebe’s most celebrated songs, including “Poetry Man,” “Either or Both,” “Easy Street” and “San Francisco Bay Blues.”

Their story is one of young love, struggle and commitment. Phoebe and Philip grew up in New Jersey where they attended the same grammar school. Although they knew of each other, the two did not become acquainted until adulthood.

Philip remembers the first night they met.

“It was at a club in New Jersey,” he said. “She came over with her girlfriends, and I was on stage playing some Elton John song – she loved Elton John. Well, I was drunk as a skunk and invited her on stage to sing… she blew me out of the water. We stayed up all night drinking beer and laughing our asses off. The next morning she knocked on my door. She came into my room and saw this guitar.” Kearns gently lifted his guitar, an antiquated Martin that shined slightly in the purple light. “When she came to my room and sang ‘Either or Both’, something happened. She glowed, like she was leaving her body.”

Phoebe and Philip became close after that, sharing memories from school and writing music together. “One of the first questions she asked me,” Kearns remembered, “was, ‘Are you gay?’ I said no. But that was me saying ‘I don’t want to believe I am.’”

The two were married for five years. Together, they had a daughter named Valarie, who was born with severe brain damage due to medical malpractice. In a heartening display of love and commitment, Phoebe refused to institutionalize her daughter.  In an interview with Randal Pinkston of CBS Sunday Morning, Phoebe said “I was advised not to take her home.” The doctors recommended putting Valerie in an institution, to which Phoebe replied “Out of the question. I wouldn’t dare. All I knew was, from the moment I saw Valarie, I was in love.”

Putting her musical career aside, Snow spent as much time as possible caring for her child. When Phoebe did sing a concert, she would pause and say, “Tonight, and every night, for the rest of my life, I will dedicate every show to my daughter, Valarie Rose.”

“Our daughter Valarie,” said Kearns, “passed away in March 2007, and Phoebe found it really difficult to keep going. She was her best friend.”

Valarie, who wasn’t supposed to make it past her first birthday, lived to be thirty-one years old. It was this sacrifice, an expression of true love and good will that Philip Kearns commemorated. His ambient voice, singing his wife’s Americana folk music, touched the hearts of her fans.

“She spoke to her fans,” he said, “like they were her best friends. You can hear it in her songs.”  Good people sometimes go unrecognized. But that Saturday night at the Crown, the memory of a beautiful family was celebrated. True self-sacrifice should never be forgotten.