HEALING MUSIC, SUSTAINING LOVE.

Byline: Paul Denison The Register-Guard

Anyone who sees Misty River in concert might notice something special going on between two of the four women in this popular Northwest folk group: the older woman who plays guitar and the petite bass player who is young enough to be her daughter.

That's because Carol Harley, 55, and Laura Quigley, 28, are mother and daughter. It's also because they've been through a lot together.

Laura was just a toddler 26 years ago when her mother survived melanoma that was supposed to kill her.

She was not yet a teenager when an out-of-control downhill skier at Mount Bachelor swerved to avoid her and slammed into her mother instead, crushing her spine. The pain was so intense, even with painkillers, that Harley had to give up her job as a teacher at River Road Elementary School.

Four years later, while still in high school, Laura was a 24/7 home caregiver for an entire summer as her mother painfully recuperated from surgery to fuse several vertebrae in her back.

And now, she's at her mother's side, on the road and on stage, as they confront the third major medical crisis of their lives: chronic myelogenous leukemia, or CML.

"The ante's been upped a little on this one," Quigley says of her mother's illness. "It scares me pretty good."

Harley got the diagnosis in March of this year. The band was then recording its third album, "Willow," and had just been selected to represent Americana music at the Shanghai International Music Festival in China.

The go or no-go decision was pretty much up to Harley. "I knew I wanted to go," she says. She got her doctors' blessings and agreed to start oral chemotherapy before she left, with the understanding that she could stop if the medicine made her sick (which it did).

Unable to sit because of her chronic back pain, Harley bought three economy-class seats for less than a single first-class or business-class ticket for the China trip so she could lie down.

"It was awesome," she says. "I slept all the way over and all the way back."

In Shanghai, where Misty River performed briefly three times a day for seven days, she enjoyed evenings out in a wheelchair, pushed by one of the others, with orthopedic pads to help take the pressure off her lower back.

"The entire experience was just fabulous," she says. "The Chinese people are wonderful."

Back in Oregon, Misty River released "Willow" and promptly went on a Northwest tour to promote the album. After that, they went back into the studio and recorded "Midwinter," a Christmas album, which their fans had been requesting for years. Now they're on tour to promote that album.

Starting with an appearance on Oregon Public Broadcasting, the group did 11 performances in a row before taking a brief break earlier this week. The band performed in Corvallis on Friday, will do two shows in Florence today and will do two more Sunday in the Hult Center's Soreng Theatre.

On Monday, they will perform for residents of Spring Valley Assisted Living in Springfield and then climb back into their minivan for a trip to Madras and yet another concert.

This is a tough schedule for any band, but even more so for Harley. She has to ride in a reclining position and has to be helped into and out of the van (into a recliner they carry with them) and on and off stage. It's also demanding for Quigley, accordionist Dana Abel of Eugene and fiddler Chris Kokesh of Portland, who do all of the driving, lifting and other physical work of touring.

"I get so much help from these hard-working, talented, intelligent young women I'm with," Harley says. "I'm just astounded as to the help I have. It gives me a lot of energy. Misty River has been a great therapy for me. I'm lucky."

She also gets support from Misty River fans.

Harley can't afford a bone marrow transplant, the only cure for her type of leukemia, because Medicare doesn't cover it. She's now in a one-year clinical trial at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. The program pays for the relatively new "miracle drug" Gleevec but not for Interferon, an older medicine that's also part of her treatment. She has no prescription coverage.

The Interferon initially cost about $1,000 a month out of pocket, she says, but she's now taking a lower dose and her costs have dropped to $300 or $400 a month. When the clinical trial ends next May, she will have to find about $8,000 a month to pay for Gleevec.

"I get overwhelmed about that," she says. "You get wiped out pretty quickly."

Abel, who serves as Misty River's de facto CEO, says she would like to "go public" with Harley's story as an example of how people can fall between the cracks in today's health insurance system.

Misty River at first decided not to make a fuss about Harley's illness. "We didn't want our fans to get depressed about this," Abel says. "We didn't want them to come to our shows and feel sad."

But now the band puts out a can at each show to collect contributions to the Carol Harley Leukemia Treatment Fund.

"We get several hundred dollars a show," she says. The fund is now up to more than $20,000. Others in the Northwest music community are organizing 2005 benefit shows for the fund, including one set for April 9 at the Shedd Concert Hall.

Harley says she draws strength and energy from the audience reaction to Misty River's music and group chemistry. Although she has to take a painkiller before each concert, she believes that on-stage adrenalin rush stimulates the production of endorfins, which are natural painkillers. And she says she knows that sound waves are healing, especially the "big, booming upright bass" played by her daughter.

"Sometimes I'll be in the middle of a song or a banjo song, and I'll feel like hurling," Harley says. "My daughter knows when this is happening, and she just comes out of her body and hugs me and says, `Keep going mom, you can do it.' '

If the time ever comes when she does have to leave the stage to throw up, Harley says, her daughter intends to tell the audience that the truth has finally come out: "My mother is allergic to the banjo."

Quigley says she has "always been my mom's companion in life and survival," through two divorces, health crises, starting and building a band. She says she relates to her mother on many levels: as daughter, co-worker, de facto sibling, adult companion, even tenant (she rents a Portland house from Harley). And definitely as a caregiver.

For more than a year before Harley was diagnosed with CML, both women sensed that something was seriously wrong.

"I could feel it deep inside me, at a deep cellular level," Harley says, "and it was." When her mother broke the news, Quigley says, "I just said `Aha,' and asked her to tell me the name of it again. Then I sat down, held her arms and told her this was no big deal: `You're the same, I'm the same, and we can deal with this.' '

But it's not always easy, for either of them.

After a show one night, Quigley was guiding her adrenalized and neurologically wobbly mother offstage through a mess of cords on the floor when her heel caught on one of them and she couldn't free herself.

"She had a miniature meltdown," Quigley says. "She said, `My shoe is stuck! I'm such a mess! I'm a total mess! I'm so sorry!' She almost totally lost it. She was mad about that shoe. I was steady as a rock. She took a deep breath, put her stage face on and did a 180. `OK. I'm ready for the encore.' All this took only a few seconds. It was extremely dynamic of her to be able to oscillate that far. I said to myself, `Go, mom! That's an incredible display.'

"My mom's incredible. She's absolutely incredible. She's really strong, and she's really dedicated to her fans."

Quigley admits to being irritated with her mother sometimes - `Why does she have to freak out?' - and to being fearful about her long-range prospects.

"I'm holding it at bay," she says. "It is what it is. If I think of it too much, I often get a little scared about the span-of-life thing."

Having related to her mom in so many different ways in varying circumstances over the years, Quigley wishes they had more time now to be just mother and daughter.

"We kind of fit it in now and then," she says.

PREVIEW

Misty River CD release concerts for "Midwinter - Songs of Christmas"

When and where: 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. today at North Fork Grange, North Fork Siuslaw Road, Florence; 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday (with guitarist Doug Smith and the Oregon Junior Girlchoir) in the Soreng Theatre, Hult Center, Seventh Avenue and Willamette Street, Eugene

How much: $12 general admission in Florence; $12 and $16 in Eugene

Tickets: For the Florence show, Old Town Books or at the door; for Eugene, 682-5000 or www.hult center.org

CAPTION(S):

Carol Harley (right) has had to lean on daughter and band mate Laura Quigley as she goes on playing in their band, Misty River, while being treated for leukemia. "The ante's been upped a little on this one," Quigley says of her mother's illness.