In the small, sleepy town of Avoca, Nebraska, a soprano recorder crooned a clear note that drifted out the first-floor window of a schoolhouse. A jeep, painted like a school bus, was perched in the yard. Children bicycled past the old brick building and tapped their brakes, pausing to listen, possibly wondering at the oddity of not hearing the shrill tone of a bell. The bravest boy rode to the tall window, peeking inside to watch a woman breathe into the wooden body to produce flute-like sweet sounds.
“Oh, we thought it was the ice cream man,” the boy said, wheeling back to his friends and leaving a puff of dust behind.
“I thought they came to hear me play,” Debby Greenblatt said, laughing at the memory.
Chalk’s dusty perfume hangs heavy in a room inside the schoolhouse where Greenblatt lives with her husband, David Seay. A cornucopia of instruments leans against the blackboard, waiting to make music. Some, like the banjo and fiddle, bear worn marks of continuous play while the Swedish 16-string nyckelharpa and Ukrainian 56-string bandura shine with the promise of future fingers roaming over the guts and metal.
Greenblatt, 72, and Seay, 71, amassed dozens of different instruments, honed their craft, and bonded over their love of music.
“We’ve been playing since the night we met,” Seay said.
Music brought the two together that auspicious night 46 years ago. Seay, a property evaluator from Alabama, saw a listing for banjo lessons while in Omaha, Nebraska. He started a new-blue grass band called Whole Wheat with a few others, but the trio needed additional strings.
Seay found the woman who answered an advertisement to join their band immediately interesting.
“Well, it was a violin, but I called it a fiddle so they didn’t think I was stuck up,” Greenblatt explained.
Greenblatt fiddled her way into Seay’s heart with an Alabamian tune, not knowing his home state, and landed the gig. No one wanted a rocky relationship to develop like Fleetwood Mac’s singer Stevie Nicks and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham that ultimately broke up the band, so the two resisted romance. Greenblatt started to fall for Seay after hearing his siren song “Okie Dokie,” but didn’t believe he wrote it at first. The poetic words of the 1930s swing tune moved her, and the fact that Seay also had a hot new “Dixie car,” a 1977 Ford Futura, made him irresistible. Just months later, the whirlwind relationship spurred a proposal in March of 1978.
“Let me think about it,” Greenblatt replied, knowing they just met and how rushed it sounded.
The player pulled Seay aside between the third and fourth set, accepting his proposal in an alley during a concert at a bar in Columbus, Nebraska, on June 27th. Seay calls it the “night we got married” since the rest just meant paperwork. The couple officially exchanged vows in their living room in front of 17 people a month later. The newlyweds spent their honeymoon entertaining prisoners with a show at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln that weekend.
“I have shocked my parents before, so it’s not the first time,” she said.
Greenblatt stunned her Massachusetts family after telling them she wanted to major in music at the Boston University College of Fine Arts. The aspiring musician promised her mother she would teach instead if she couldn’t find a paying career after graduation. Luckily, the violinist landed several orchestra opportunities in several states, eventually landing in Nebraska to join the Omaha Symphony as principal second for a few years and 20 years with the Metropolitan String Quartet. After putting away the classical gigs, Greenblatt became the first woman to win the Nebraska State Fiddling Championship in 1978, plus the Mid-America Fiddle Championship in 1979. Greenblatt would later be inducted into the Mid-America Old-Time Fiddler’s Hall of Fame in 1995.
Seay’s musical journey, meanwhile, took longer, first dabbling in the fifth grade.
“I was the worst trumpet player ever,” Seay recalled.
But when the 21-year-old picked up a harmonica, he couldn’t put it down and played every day for three and a half years.
“The doctor said to get rid of my chapped lips, I had to stop for two or three weeks,” Seay said. “I guess you could say I was ‘drawn’ to it.”
Seay laughed at the pun while Greenblatt rolled her hazel eyes.
“The jokes are terrible. He did not do this when we dated,” she quipped.
Seay reached into an overall jean pocket, produced a harmonica, and pushed his thick lips onto the silver instrument. He closed his blue eyes behind black-rimmed glasses, sliding the instrument back and forth, inhaling and exhaling to vibrate the reeds inside to produce a twangy note. His full salt-and-pepper beard swayed with the tempo. Seay’s childlike enthusiasm makes him want to explain how it all works with patience and kindness.
The passion translated to Seay quitting his computer programming job to pursue music full-time with his wife. The duo showcased their craft as artists to students through the Nebraska Arts Council Touring Program and Artists in the Schools/Communities Program. In the earlier years, Greenblatt and Seay homeschooled their boys, Wilson and Django, teaching them guitar, mandolin, and violin mixed in with the regular curriculum in a small house in North Omaha.
Greenblatt realized the need for a bigger space, and it took nine months to convince her husband that an old schoolhouse in Avoca would fit the bill as a birthday gift in 1990. Seay brought his “mouth organ” to check out the acoustics, realizing any instrument sounded phenomenal with the warm woods and chalkboards. He demonstrated with his 10-hole diatonic harmonica in the tiny gymnasium where the 1934 Avoca basketball team defeated Syracuse 100-0, earning a “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” mention. His blue-stockinged foot tapped along to the rhythm of the folksy bluesy beat in the cold arena, professionally hitting the straight harp followed by the cross harp. The couple only heats certain rooms due to cost, so winter mornings mean walking through icy hallways to practice, while summer days cook certain areas to a balmy temperature. Seay prefers the banjo, guitar, or ukulele, and his wife picks up the five-string viola most days. But both continue to add unique instruments to their repertoire.
Greenblatt, dressed in a plum long-sleeved thermal under her blue-jean overalls with a colorful knitted stocking hat over her gray frizzy locks, sat down to pluck at a dark-stained mandolin. The distinct metallic melody “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” drifted into the room on a silent, cloudy afternoon.
“I’m still in love,” Seay said in a voice thick with emotion when discussing his wife.
When not singing upbeat harmonies at performances, developing over 100 original tunes in different traditions, or teaching private lessons and workshops, the multi-instrumental duet publishes purchasable collectible books.
“They developed quite a following, generations of people that have learned music with them,” said Mike Markey, the executive director of the Nebraska Arts Council. “I appreciate the grassroots music that we associate with our history and historical background.”
Markey recalled watching them at the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival in front of an audience of thousands and providing a folky background ambiance throughout the night.
Seay and Greenblatt’s commitment to shaping the cultural and artistic landscape earned them the 2023 Heritage Award at the biennial State Arts Awards (formerly known as the Governor’s Arts Awards), receiving an art piece by Amy Haney titled “The Heartland.”
“They are just great people, too, wonderful educators and ambassadors for the arts. We are so lucky to have them,” Markey added.
The married couple believes music is like air or water. They need it to live.
Greenblatt lifted a 1976 Martin D18 guitar, her unpainted nails strumming expertly over the strings, while Seay’s cross harp, on a Lee Oskar in the key of C major, drifted into the rhythm. She glanced up, her face devoid of makeup, and sang in a G major cadence: “If your dog locks you out/if your soul is cold and empty/then you know without a doubt…You’ve got ta wade in the waters of Bitch Creek.”
For lesson information, both remotely and in person, publication information, and performances, visit greenblattandseay.com.
This article originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
