Halfway through a 2023 performance in his hometown of Blue Hill, Maine, 85-year-old Noel Paul Stookey, of Peter, Paul and Mary fame, reached for the case behind him to show the crowd his latest project, the Manulenjo. Sitting on a stool at the microphone, he pointed out the instrument’s unique features: a round body like the African banjo, a short neck and eight paired steel strings like the Italian mandolin,and tuning like that of the Portuguese ukulele. Crediting master guitar-maker David LaPlante for its beautiful construction and sweet sound, Noel described its conception as a celebration of America’s ethnic and musical diversity and then began strumming “Dance to the Manulenjo,” his story song about a fractured House of Congress and a musician arriving there with his Manulenjo and calling the people to dance.

Noel is a familiar friend in the Downeast community where he and his wife, Betty, have lived since the early seventies. He has sung in the church choir and with pros and amateurs alike in countless local fundraisers. Even while Peter, Paul and Mary were on tour extensively, Noel would return to Blue Hill with a youthful exuberance for whatever was next, and frankly no one is surprised that his joyful creativity is still at play.

His performing career began in Birmingham, Michigan, where, as a lover of jazz, pop, and standup comedy, he formed his award-winning high-school R & B band called “The Birds of Paradise.” At Michigan State University he was a popular emcee at campus events before heading to New York City in 1959. Soon he discovered Greenwich Village, started hanging out to play chess and then landed a steady gig as singer and master of ceremonies at the Gaslight Cafe. It was there he caught the attention of Albert Grossman, who was manager at the time of activist Peter Yarrow and was looking for two more singers to complete his vision of a trio.

Noel agreed to take on ‘Paul’ as his middle name and ‘Peter, Paul and Mary’ soon became a popular music phenomenon.  Releasing their first album in 1962 and with two more hit releases the following year, they energized the folk revival of the 1960s and brought songs of peace and social justice to a whole generation of rock ‘n rollers. Barely two years after their debut performance at the Village’s Bitter End, they were singing in front of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of 250,000 people, joining Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the historic March on Washington. When asked in a 2020 interview what his most memorable time was in his five decades with the trio, Noel cited that day in Washington all those years ago. “It awakened me,” he said. “It awakened all of us.”

Noel, Peter and Mary became an iconic ‘family’ both on and off stage; the affection between the three of them palpable and present.  Performing over 200 concerts a year, they brought both traditional and newly written songs of justice and peace to a global audience.  During its now legendary career, the trio won five Grammy’s, produced 13 Top 40 hits, of which 6 ascended into the Top 10 – as well as eight gold and five platinum albums.

In 1969, after nearly a decade of constant travel and performing, Noel had an even deeper calling, this one of the spirit, reawakening his Christian faith and shifting his focus from the world stage to matters closer to home. “My perspective on everything changed,” he recalls, “and I am immensely grateful for it.”

The following year, as the trio began what they later referred to as their “seven years off for good behavior,” he released his first solo album. It included the widely popular “Wedding Song,” penned for the occasion of Peter’s marriage to Marybeth McCarthy. Believing that he was merely the steward of a song that had been given to him for the occasion, Noel created and assigned royalties to the Public Domain Foundation (PDF), which, at this writing, has raised more than $2 million supporting social and charitable causes around the world.

By 1974, inspired by Helen and Scott Nearing’s book Living the Good Life, Noel and Betty had left New York City and the suburbs to settle with their young family into rural life in Blue Hill, Maine. Noel oversaw the renovation of a four-story henhouse on his property and installed a recording studio on the fourth floor, establishing Neworld Media. He encouraged and recorded up-and-coming Maine artists like David Mallett and Noel’s own Bodyworks band, a dynamic group of musicians AND rare theological liberals in the Christian Music genre, with whom he produced three albums between 1979 and 1985.  Also at the henhouse, on a rainy May 1st in 1988, PDF funds helped launch WERU-FM, a non-profit community-supported radio station, a “voice of many voices” broadcasting from Blue Hill Mountain and still thriving today.

Taking to heart the belief in the power of music to create social change, Noel and his daughter Liz Stookey Sunde co-founded, in the year 2000, Music To Life, a non-profit organization that supports an ever-expanding number of new artists from a variety of musical genres committed to addressing social and environmental problems and furthering the cause of civil and human rights.

Since 1978, (following PP&M’s reunion concert and nearly 5 decades of trio performances prior to Mary’s death in 2009 and most recently Peter’s passing in January of 2025) Noel’s own songwriting style has addressed world issues straight on: as in “El Salvador” and “In These Times,” and often more intimately, in “Jean Claude,” and “The Connection.” These songs are included in “Just Causes,” his 2020 CD in which each of fifteen songs on the recording address a global issue that is matched with an organization earmarked for its share of the album’s profits.

The 87 year old ‘folkie’ (as he often refers to himself), continues to live in Blue Hill with his wife Betty Bannard Stookey, an ordained Congregational minister, former chaplain at the Northfield Mt. Hermon School and co-creator with Noel of “One Light Many Candles,” a multi-faith presentation of readings and songs. “To sing folk music is, ultimately, to live its ethic,“ Noel has stated often in interviews, “and, whether in the context of my family, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Bodyworks band, or my long and abiding respect for my friends and fellow folkies, I am continually amazed and thankful for all of the often surprising circumstances that continue to make up my life.”