Lindsey Bark
Cherokee Phoenix
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – Cherokee Nation citizen Karen Woody was recently inducted into the Oklahoma Blues Hall of Fame for her contributions to music in Washington state and Oklahoma.
Woody has been playing music since she was in grade school and received her first guitar when she was 12 years old.
“I taught myself how to play. That’s how it all got started,” she said. “As time went on, I started getting connected with other people who were really interested in music.”
Growing up in Washington, and after graduating high school, she took music more seriously, switching from guitar to bass.
“I played rhythm guitar in some of the bands I was in. Then I got to the point where I wanted to be more a part of the band and just decided I wanted to become a bass player,” she said.
For fun, she named her bass “Iba,” because it was an Ibanez brand bass, and introduced it as her “very bass friend.” She still plays “Iba” to this day.
After getting a crash course on the bass guitar, she and a friend started playing in an all-girl band and from there was been in a multitude of bands and duos playing throughout the Seattle area. She was also hired if bands needed a temporary bass player.
“I did a lot of that for a long time. I was just kind of a hired gun,” she said. “But my last full time band (in Washington) was with my good friend Joyce, who was my lead guitarist. We called the band Pink Slip. The reason we called it Pink Slip was because Joyce was fired from her band. I was fired from my band just for who knows what reason; they didn’t have to have a reason. So, we decided to put a band together, and we called it Pink Slip.”
After moving to Oklahoma in 2007, Woody, 70, continued to play music whenever she could. She joined a band out of Stilwell called Mojo Sonata.
“I wound up joining a band with a couple a couple of other girls and they were they were pretty much songwriters, really good songwriters,” she said. “We wound up playing at the Dusk Til Dawn Blues Festival. We played there for 10 years in a row.”
After Mojo Sonata, Woody ended up living in Texas with her daughter for a couple of years, following the passing of her sister. She did not play music during that time.
“It was too traumatic for me. So, I wound up moving in with my daughter for a couple of years. Then when the trauma had passed, I decided I needed to come back to Oklahoma and try to get involved in the music again. So, when I came here I wound up with a tumor in my head,” she said.
After needed brain surgery, Woody said it has taken her a few years to start feeling better, as the tumor affected her memory, voice and balance.
“It was just really hard for a little while. But that was like two years ago, and I’m starting to feel a whole lot better because I’m going to (the) gym every week. I just started getting my balance back from doing all the exercises,” she said.
Woody said her last performance was at the Dusk Til Dawn Blues Festival in September in 2023 after being encouraged by a friend to play music again.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do it. But he encouraged me and I started doing a lot of rehearsing, and I felt like I was getting better and feeling better,” she said.
It was also during that time she was told she was selected as an inductee in the Oklahoma Blues Hall of Fame.
“I just started crying because it was just dramatic. I couldn’t believe I was going to be one of those people,” Woody said. “I’m so proud that they would recognize me for all of my accomplishments over the years because I put a lot of time and then a lot of energy and just a lot of heart into what I did. The thing that I loved about all the times I’ve played is that I would have people come up to me and say you’ve touched my heart and that meant so much to me. It was just really something that I can’t explain.”
Woody has since joined a new band that is set to play their first performance on Feb. 20 at The Branch in Tahlequah. She said her family continues to be supportive of her music career.
“They’re really supportive to me,” she said. “They just make me feel proud to be who I am and I just feel so fortunate.”
