Known as “Mom” at Mom & Pop’s Coffeehouse (run by an all-volunteer staff of “Mamas and Papas”), Sue Deckhart has been involved with folk music since the early 1960s. Raised in a home where classical music was often played and with parents who played piano and violin, she learned to read music before learning to read (at age 4). She studied classical piano and sang in church choirs all through childhood. It was her neighbor’s Kingston Trio album that acquainted her with folk music at the age of 12; she asked to hear it so much that they finally gave her a copy of the album as a birthday present. She began playing guitar at age 15 and has been playing off and on ever since.

The great folk revival of the 1960s drew her to the Philadelphia Folk Festival and the music of the singer-songwriters of that era as well as traditional folk music. It was during that time she started to write songs and perform in local coffeehouses and also began the study of Eastern philosophy and the practice of Ashtanga Yoga.

In the early 1980s, she became a volunteer at the Troubadour Folk Club and also became a volunteer for the Philadelphia Folk Festival, where she is now a stage manager on the Program and Production Committee. These experiences inspired her to start Mom & Pop’s Coffeehouse (a folk music concert series) in 1994 at United Christian Church in Levittown, PA, discovering the church after singer-songwriter Bob Franke appeared there at a church function.

Also in 1994, Sue was chosen to record on the Fast Folk Musical Magazine's “Philadelphia Phast Pholks” compilation CD. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she appeared at many of the major folk venues in the Delaware Valley area. Presently she serves on the Administrative Board of United Christian Church where she is coordinator of the Communications Committee as well as Program Director of Mom & Pop’s Coffeehouse.

More information regarding Mom & Pop’s can be found at www.momandpops.org.