May 14—For almost three decades, Ernest "Ernie" Palmer was best known throughout the Niagara Region as Niagara Falls' police superintendent and longtime detective chief.
But the cop, known for locking up bad guys, was much more than a cop.
"I was a musician before I was a cop," said the artist also known as E.C. Palmer. "It was never my calling to be a police officer. My passion has always been music."
Yet when you're young, and starting a family, no matter how talented you are as a musician, a police officer's regular paycheck can prompt you to consider a career change. So Palmer picked up a gun and a badge and arrived as a cop on the beat in the Falls after what he called "a wild ride" through the world of music.
A Falls native, Palmer, at the age of 18, had been a folk singer, crooning with an acoustic guitar in a smoky Buffalo coffee house.
Not long after that, he struck out for Music City, Nashville, and set up a studio where he taught guitar and performed as an opening act for big-time country and western music stars at the Tennessee state fair.
From there, the bassist who billed himself then as E.C. Palmer, changed his style again and became a self-described "wild man" playing cutting-edge punk and progressive rock at clubs like the Continental in Buffalo and the legendary CBGB in the Bowery in Manhattan.
Today, he plays with three Western New York bands, but that's not all. After retiring from police work, Palmer has thrown himself back into the world of music with a singleminded purposefulness.
"I have a home studio," he said. "And I enjoy writing and recording music."
Returning to his folk, country and rock roots, Palmer reunited with longtime friend and fellow musician and songwriter Jim Neyerlin. The pair recorded an album that received critical praise.
That success sent Palmer spinning into a new project, fueled by both his love of music and local history. It began with the discovery of some abandoned railroad tracks at the back of his property in Lewiston.
"I knew there was a right of way back there, but I didn't know there'd been a railroad back there," he said. "The trains used to take people to the beaches on Lake Ontario."
Intrigued by his discovery, Palmer began to research the history of the trains that traveled on those tracks. He found that the Lewiston Youngstown Frontier Railway Line (operated from 1896 to 1950) was used for troop transport to Fort Niagara during the Spanish American War and to bring food and mail to area, along with locals and tourists to the picnic groves of Lake Ontario.