Beci Coffey’s Marvelous, Magical Woodland Life

Story by Deb Peterson | Photographed by Carlos Hernandez and Deb Peterson. M! Jun/Jul 2011.

Imagine winding down a mountainside into a hollow in the dense Ozarks forest. It’s springtime. Dogwood blossoms peek through the undercarriage. Columbine hangs from the nearly vertical hillside. A vine with small yellow flowers climbs a tree. You lean over to smell it—native honeysuckle.

You reach a clear stream and there, on the other side, rises a home straight out of a fairytale.

Did something dart past? You turn suddenly and freeze, a smile in your eyes. Could it be? You hold still, delighting in the possibilities…

If you don’t believe in fairies, elves, or Hobbits, you might after visiting the magical woodland home Beci Coffey shares with her husband, Kent, near Maumee.

You may know the Coffeys best for their performances in three bands—Carnes and the Heaters (blues), Swing Shift (jazz), and Buffalo City Swingers (bluegrass)—but here, in this magical wood, is where the music is born.

It almost didn’t happen.

The House
“I had totally given up,” Beci says of building her dream home. “Friends told me never to build under 2,000 square feet, and I couldn’t afford that, so I didn’t build. We’re just musicians and teachers and country people.”

Her brother, Byron, is a builder.

“He sat me down and asked me what I wanted,” Beci says. “I can’t do without music, I told him, but I can have a small bedroom.”

Byron knew of 40 acres for sale in the forest. He drew Beci’s ideas on graph paper. There was no blueprint.

Family and friends pulled rock from the creek and wood from the land, and together, they built Beci’s house.

“We brought together our talented friends and family,” she says. “This was my one chance. I hired my friends and then shut up and let them do their stuff.”

Magic happened.

So did mistakes.

“The bathroom faucet was a mistake we fixed with a rock,” Beci says. “When things go wrong, creative juices flow up to the top and problems get solved. We piled stones from the creek to set the faucet on. Mistakes can turn into the coolest things, the things people love most in the house.”

When they ran out of long cherry boards for trimming doors and windows, they used shorter boards and pieced them together in a jigsaw pattern that adds to the charm in the home.

A counter in the kitchen is a natural wood slab, and the bark remains on trim over a window in the stairway.

“When things went wrong, we went out in the woods,” Beci says. “You can gather from the woods everything you need.”

She laughs when she says most problems can be solved with baling twine and a rock, “or manure!,” but she means it.

“Solve your problems by looking in your environment,” she says. “Find local solutions.”

Even her landscaping is local.

“I just moved what was here into different spots,” Beci says.

The Music
The first priority in the design of Beci’s house was music.

“The piano was coming,” she says.

Period.

The grand piano took up half the living room. Beci’s bass claimed the corner. The rest of the furniture fit where it could.

“She almost tried to put a second piano in here,” says Beci’s son, Adam.

There’s no television.

“We play music, read, or garden,” Beci says.

Her family is rooted in music.

“My mother never put the piano lid down,” she says. “I could read music before I could read words and was attracted to classical piano when I was 3.”

Beci’s mother, Doretha Shipman, still plays concerts at 85.

“She’s a boogie woogie player,” Beci says.

Beci went to Henderson College on a classical piano scholarship. She found the bass she plays today, an instrument she estimates is from the 40s, in pieces in a closet there.

“They were cleaning out and I asked if I could have it,” she says. “I never would have had one otherwise.”

Although Beci has a master’s degree in counseling, she prefers to teach music.

“I asked myself one question: how do I want to spend my day,” she says.

The answer: with children.

She teaches music at all levels—kindergarten through 12th grade—at Yellville/Summit Public Schools, plus college-level sociology and psychology for seniors in the concurrent college credit program.

When she’s not teaching and Kent’s not at work with Arkansas Game & Fish, they’re playing music together.

“The best music in my life is the music I play with the talented, local people here,” she says.

The Magic
Quiet confidence exudes from the woman who plays her music in this magical woodland home.  Marvelous! asked Beci to dress for a portrait with her bass, which she obligingly did, and true to her natural self, she posed barefoot.

With her family gathered around for the Easter holiday, she took a few minutes away from them to share with us some of the wisdom she’s gleaned from living in the woods.

“Here in the Ozarks, you can gather a meal from the woods,” she says, “and the dogwoods are beautiful whether you’re rich or poor.”

She wants women to know they don’t have to let limited resources limit their dreams.

“Find a different way to solve your problems,” she says. “I grew up on a dairy farm an hour’s drive from town. I helped my Dad [Leon Shipman] fix fences and we didn’t have time to go into town. We looked around to find solutions. That’s where I learned to do that.”

What are her dreams for the future?

“I want to keep making music with Kent, spend more time with our kids [daughter Adelia and her husband, Cesar, and son Adam] who are now grown and live in Little Rock, and take time to enjoy my family. The highlight of every week is going to church with  my momma and having Sunday dinner with my momma. It’s free and it’s priceless.”

And she wants to expand her woodland gardens. Who knows? She might have a little magical help out there.

Beci Coffey’s woodland life is a perfect reflection of the magic she finds in life wherever she chooses to find it.

“I feel beautiful outside,” she says.

And, indeed, she is.

M!

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