8 minute read
Featured Pro: Cary Appel’s Artistic
BY ILONA SAARI
CAREY
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APPEL A OUTSIDE THE BOX
Some may know Carey Appel through her work with the Ojai Women’s Fund, some from the Ojai Women’s Festival Committee or, perhaps, when she was captain of an Ojai League tennis team. Yet others may know Carey through her whimsical shadowboxes. As an entrepreneur, singer, artist and doer-of-good-works, Carey checks all the boxes.
Born in Los Angeles to real estate developer Don Appel and mom, Judy, Carey was a mere toddler and an only child when her parents divorced. A few years later, she was immersed in siblings … a stepsister and brother from stepdad, Dick Carroll, and two stepsisters from her stepmother, Chickie Bristin. Not the typical Brady Bunch blended family, but a rambling, robust family unit.
Early on, Carey dreamed of singing on Broadway. She wasn’t too sure what that entailed, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her. At age 7 or 8, she read an article about a young girl who had been cast in “Fiddler on the Roof.” She crossed out the girl’s name and inked in her own. From the balcony outside her bedroom, she’d often belt out show tunes from movies such as “My Fair Lady,” (starring Julie Andrews) giving free concerts to her neighbors. “Years later I met Julie
LIFE
Andrews when she became a customer of mine – handled her holiday gifts for years,” Carey states. “I was able to tell her what a role model she was.”
Carey sang in her Temple (solos for Shabbat services), leads in grammar school plays, and chorale in Beverly Hills High School. She tried out for a high school production of “Fiddler…” but didn’t make the cut. Disappointed, she let go of her musical theater dreams, learned guitar and played and sang Joni Mitchell and Cat Stevens songs. At nineteen, she met Tracy Albert, whose parents owned a store on Rodeo Drive. They dated, but when Carey went off to college and jumped into campus life, the relationship ended.
After graduating from U.C. Berkeley with an art history degree, Carey moved to Manhattan and worked as an assistant buyer for Bloomingdale’s. She returned to California to open the women’s collection for Carroll & Co., her stepfather’s “clothing store-to-the-stars” in the heart of Beverly Hills. She and her mom did the buying and Carey was the manager. When a friend who owned a card and needlepoint shop across the street asked if she knew anyone who’d want to buy it, she jumped at the chance to be an independent entrepreneur. Her stepfather understood her maverick streak and loaned Carey the seed money. It was 1984, and owning and operating a specialty business was tough going; when the property went into probate, she was paid to vacate. But the valuable business lessons she had learned helped immensely when she opened Salutations Home, a home furnishings and gift store in the tony town of Brentwood. After a brief first marriage, Carey met Dan Pearlman who owned an advertising firm. They married and had two children… (Erin now 29, a wedding photographer in Brooklyn, N.Y. and Katie, 27, a singer-songwriter under contract to Warner Chappel Music Publishing). Carey and Dan opened a second Salutations Home in Pasadena and purchased Shaxted, a well-known Beverly Hills linen store to add to their “brand.” Eventually, they sold Shaxted and closed the Brentwood store, but kept the one in Pasadena.
But, some dreams never die. After Carey and Dan’s marriage ended, she ran into Sandy Avchen, an old friend and musical director. They started to work together as Carey performed in her country club shows and began doing solo concerts at various Hollywood venues — jazz, pop, country.
During this time her old beau, Tracy, ended his long-term marriage. He, too, had two children (daughter Haley sets up Covid-19 testing sites in major U.S. cities — son Aaron has a web-based wellness website). Carey hosted a dinner party and invited Tracy. Both single again, they each offered to fix the other up, but when she asked him what kind of woman he would like to meet, he said “someone like you.” They’ve been together ever since, forming a new blended family for Carey. After they were reunited Tracy asked her what she wanted to do the rest of her life. “Sing!” she answered with-
CAREY AT POPPIES ART & GIFT CAREY AND HER DAUGHTER KATIE PERFORMING AT THE UNDERGROUND ARTS EXCHANGE
out hesitation. But, life interrupted when Carey was stricken with breast cancer.
After radiation, Tracy, a successful investment banker and financial advisor, helped Carey find a producer at Universal Music Publishing. She cut her first album, largely jazz, with a little bit pop and a little bit country. She refined her style, influenced by Patty Griffin, Cheryl Wheeler and Alison Krauss, and recut the album.
She began writing her own songs and when she was ready to record her third album, Carey went to Nashville.
One of the songs from that album was #1 for a year on a folk music station. She hired new management, put together a group of musicians and began performing around L.A. at such venues as Genghis Cohen, Room 5 and The Mint. Paying musicians proved expensive, so Carey focused on becoming more proficient on guitar, taking lessons from Severin Browne (Jackson Brown’s brother) and became involved in Folk Alliance Region West, a division of Folk Alliance Int’l, performing at annual conferences, networking with other artists, attending writing workshops, and practicing, practicing, practicing guitar.
In 2007, Carey’s mom bought a home in Ojai once owned by Loretta Young.
Carey and Tracy would come up on weekends and never wanted to leave. By 2015, they sold their home in Cheviot Hills, Carey sold her Pasadena store, and they bought Ojai’s Historic Landmark #28, a Tudor-style home surrounded by heritage oaks and decades-old rock walls, built in 1925 by Denny Miller who once played “Tarzan.” Carey decided she wanted to raise chickens, so they installed a chicken coop where she breeds more than a dozen varieties that lay an array of colored eggs – pink, blue, green, brown and olive. The chickens get along famously with Tracy and Carey’s other beloved animals: three dogs, a bunny, and a cordon bleu finch. Next, they added an art studio in one of the out-buildings for Tracy’s passion as a photographer, and where Carey creates shadowboxes containing sophisticated, yet whimsical, miniature life scenes. Proudly displayed within each box is her signature chicken. These “story boxes,” (many
of which incorporate Tracy’s photographs), are sold at Poppies gift store.
A member of the Ojai Women’s Fund since its inception, Carey served on the Grants Committee for three years and was recently co-chair of the Membership Committee. She also wrote the newsletter for the Ojai Festival Women’s Committee benefitting BRAVO (a community education program bringing music into local schools) for four years. Tracy, while serving on the philanthropic boards at Cedars Sinai and LA Center for Photography, is also on the board of the Ojai Museum.
In 2017, Tracy and Carey started the FAR-West Musicians Relief Fund which assists and helps those in need who have given so much to the folk music community worldwide.
Which brings us back to Carey’s love of singing. Since moving to Ojai she’s performed at the Ojai Underground Arts Exchange with musicians Alan Thornhill and Martin Young, and was a guest artist with them at the Topa Mountain Winery. She was also in the ensemble of the Ojai Art Center Theater’s productions of “Anything Goes” and “Mama Mia.”
Carey Appel’s love for Ojai has been demonstrated again and again with her civic pride, her volunteerism, and her musical dreams. A life definitely lived outside the box.
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