DUNGENESS — When little Cornelia Sheridan was 6 weeks old, her dad nicknamed her Cosy.
“He said I had a lot of body heat,” says Sheridan, who’s gone by Cosy ever since.
She’s been building her own brand of campfire since then too. Her babysitter taught her to play guitar when she was just 9 years old.
She went to the Berklee College of Music for a year, won awards for her songs at the Kerrville Folk Festival and other gatherings, and founded the Moab Folk Camp in the red rock country of Utah, where she still lives.
Sheridan, a longtime friend of open-mic host Kelly Thomas of Sequim, will give a concert and a songwriting workshop here this Sunday and Monday.
To reserve a seat at Sunday’s 7 p.m. concert at the Dungeness Schoolhouse, 2781 Towne Road, or at the 6:30 p.m. Monday workshop at the Sequim Senior Activity Center, 921 E. Hammond St., Thomas is the one to contact.
She can be reached via live.edge.concerts@gmail.com and 360-461-3255.
While concert admission is $10 — and tickets will be available at the schoolhouse door Sunday — the workshop cost is $25, and participants are urged to sign up in advance.
In her lighthearted tone, Sheridan beckoned to those who might consider folk music old hat, and those who are thirsty for some creative time.
She’ll mix together songs satirical and mythological. She’ll sing about the Greek goddess Persephone, about being a woman in her 50s, and of course about love. Sheridan has 10 albums under her belt, and in an interview last week she quickly mapped out the first three.
Album one for a folksinger can be “all your adolescent issues.”
Album two, your family issues.
And for album three, “you have a relationship by that time, so you have those relationship issues to write about.”
Sheridan is known, too, for song characters such as Hades the Biker, and for an eye cocked at beauty treatments like Botox.
Oh, and she has a new sweetheart, so when she answered a phone call from a reporter last Friday, she was just finishing up “a little love song.”
Sheridan has been a full-time folk singer since she was 19. She dropped out of college, and declares that “if you’re industrious and you shop at thrift stores,” you can make music your life.
“I have a mission,” she added, “to make folk music not boring.”
After all these years, she flat-out loves to entertain people, loves to say, “Hey, let’s have a good time.”
So there will be some singing along Sunday night, in that communal tradition. In our digitized world, there’s still something about live music, Sheridan added.
“The singing along, or listening along . . . will get you through the winter. It’s a tribal event,” she said. Music shared face to face feeds a basic need; “you come home,” she said, “feeling better.”
On Monday, Sheridan’s songwriting workshop from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. will be open to beginners.
The session will explore how to take time, she said, “for your creativity to talk to you.”
Being quiet for a while lets that happen.
“I’ll show some quick ways to say, ‘Hello, I’m here,’” to your artistic spirit.
“It doesn’t take a week-long retreat,” and many of us don’t have that kind of time anyhow.
Sheridan hopes her workshop will open a door to self-expression through music.
“That’s how we feel alive,” she said, “when we can say, ‘I made that.
“That beautiful thing, that’s me.’”
