What a fabulous line up of musicians! Ben Sollee makes joyous music with a cello, his voice and a drummer! They made more noise and more complex rhythms than many much bigger groups! I got one of his albums and three other fabulous groups!
This is lovely:
All things shall perish from under the sky, music alone shall live never to die.
This tent looks like it has a flounce along the upper edge. I spent the weekend at the Nowhereelse Festival, camping in Ohio. The music is fabulous, hosted by Over the Rhine, and the Ohio rain was very impressive. I took the lightest camping gear I could, since I arrived by plane and rental car. My tent and sleeping bag stayed dry inside. Outside everything was sopping. I went barefoot for most of the three days except in the pokey field bits, and then I wore water slippers. None of my shoes would have stayed dry. I bought the slippers for indoors, but they are great in heavy rain and easy to take off when I was back on the grass.
Here is the tent in the evening, with clouds piling up.
Another fabulous Voiceworks class, this with Anna and Elizabeth. As the week progressed and we ate lunch and dinner with the instructors at the tables as well as each other, I felt more and more blessed and impressed. These teachers said, “Come talk to us. We have time. We are here and you can talk to us between classes.” What generosity and blessing.
This is Ruth Merenda, one of the many brilliant faculty, from a Centrum Voiceworks class this week.
Ruthie was at Voiceworks with her husband Mike and two children. I got to trade jokes with their son William at lunch one day. I am listening to their newest album as I write this, Sunshiner. It’s good that only really hear the faculty near the end of the week, because we would be WAY too intimidated if they did the concerts at the start! William has an album too, Piano Nerd, that I have not tracked down yet. He was seven when he made it.
I took the first class of the week with Michael, his Song Doctor class. We each brought a song with problems to the class and sang it to the class. I did that class first because it was hands down no holds barred the scariest, so I thought best to get it over with. I sang Tree Boat a capella. The feedback I got makes me very happy, but the assignment is hard: now I have to learn guitar. Or mandolin. Or something. Accompaniment. Also it’s not my song alone: I wrote the poem but not the melody.
I took two classes with Ruthie. One was on music theory and chords. The other was a performance feedback class.
I had a rather surreal moment in that class. Ruthie has us close our eyes and visualize a protective sphere of energy around us. Now, I’ve been writing about trying to lose my armor suit. So WHAT am I to do with a protective sphere of energy? I thought of my story Good Girl and that gave me my answer. My protective sphere moved outwards, the entire universe. I visualize that protection as holding everyone in the room, gently, lovingly. My protective sphere is my connection to the Beloved and the Beloved’s entire universe and anything beyond that. And then I could do the visualization.
Blessings on Mike and Ruth and their children and on all of the teachers at Voiceworks. The week brought me tears of joy over and over and over: and tears of grief and tears of hope.
This and The Fox are what I think of as the two core family songs. We sang this from as early as I can remember and my father played the Band’s version on the record player all the time. I taped his records to take to college…
This is the song my parents chose to raise girls on? Oh, and I do have it memorized….
Ten years ago on a cool dark night
There was someone killed ‘neath the town hall light
There were few at the scene and they all did agree
That the man who ran looked a lot like me
Ok, it starts with a murder. Someone is killed, in the town, at night. Be careful, little girls, bad things can happen at night.
The judge said “Son, what is your alibi?
If you were somewhere else then you won’t have to die”
I spoke not a word although it meant my life
I had been in the arms of my best friend’s wife
It is about infidelity and not only infidelity, but infidelity with his best friend’s wife. This song is a morality play. He doesn’t speak. I see the magazines at the counters in the grocery store and think about how different this song is from our current culture. Divorce and splashed all over the papers, that’s what the celebrities do today.
She walks these hills in a long black veil
She visits my grave where the night winds wail
Nobody knows, no, and nobody sees
Nobody knows but me
So she doesn’t speak either. She remains faithful to him in visiting his grave, but the marriage must continue, because she only goes at night.
The scaffold was high and eternity neared
She stood in the crowd and shed not a tear
But sometimes at night when the cold wind moans
In a long black veil she cries over my bones
She watches him die for what they considered a sin. This song is about ethics, really. The two of them had broken their code of honor and paid the price, which was that he died for a different crime. And did the man who really killed the person in the first stanza then go free?
Why wouldn’t they speak up? Perhaps she had children and he couldn’t support them. Perhaps they truly considered it a sin, a dishonor, a horrible mistake. Perhaps honor and honoring his best friend was more important than love…. Our current culture seems to think that love conquers all, but it doesn’t in this song. Did they do the right thing? This is a song to discuss and to think about and yes, a song to raise girls.
Though I think the husband and any children would know that there was something…. a parent and partner can’t really hide that deep sorrow….
It was written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin in 1959 and originally recorded by Lefty Frizzell.
This song interests me. It is the fourth in my series about the songs that my sister and I learned growing up.
When we recorded our family songs, my sister said she liked it. I said, I think it is creepy, with that juxtaposition of a sweet tune and then words that are not so sweet.
No use cryin’
Talking to a stranger
Namin’ the sorrows you’ve seen
Oh, ’cause there are
Too many bad times
Too many sad times
Nobody knows what you mean
If somehow
You could pack up your sorrows
And give them all to me
You would lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me
The line that bothered me was “I know how to use them”. What does that mean? Use them for what?
No use ramblin’
Walkin’ in the shadows
Trailin’ a wanderin’ star
No one beside you
No one to hide you
An’ nobody knows where you are
Ah, if somehow
You could pack up your sorrows
And give them all to me
You would lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me
And how could you give your sorrows to someone else? The singer is offering to listen to sorrows but also take them away. “You would lose them.” And then the singer “knows how to use them”.
No use roamin’
Walking by the roadside
Seekin’ a satisfied mind
Ah, ’cause there are
Too many highways
Too many byways
Nobody’s walkin’ behind
Ah, if somehow
You could pack up your sorrows
And give them all to me
You would lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me
I never got around to asking my sister if it was the tune she liked or the words or what it meant to her. I chose to play that recording at her Washington memorial. I could not go to her California memorial because I was too ill. My father had terrible emphysema and was on oxygen. I thought I had pertussis but it turned out to be systemic strep A, which hurts. At any rate, I was too sick to travel. Her Washington Memorial was a month or two later, when I was well enough to organize it…..
You would lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me
It is by Pauline Baez. The version by Richard and Mimi Farina is the one I’m familiar with, so my parents probably had the record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4LbU8w7Th4.
I knew the song “Billy Barlow” as “Let’s go hunting”. It was one of the silly songs that we recorded. I adored this song when I was little for two reasons. One was that it was funny. The other was that I interpreted it as a song that could be changed and sung about more than one animal. I can remember when I realized that no, the adults sang it the same way each time and they would not change the animal. I was disappointed but I still loved the song. And I could change the animal on my own.
It’s a good song to raise girls: an illustration of a group of guys….
Let’s go hunting, says Risky Rob
Let’s go hunting, says Robin to Bob
Let’s go hunting, says Dan’l and Joe
Let’s go hunting, says Billy Barlow
When my son was a teen, another parent commented that the IQ dropped in half for each teen added to a group. Two boys cut the IQ in half, three had it to one quarter and four was trouble.
What’ll we hunt for, says Risky Rob
What’ll we hunt for,
What’ll we hunt for,
Let’s hunt rats, says Billy Barlow
How’ll we catch them,
How’ll we catch them,
How’ll we catch them,
Let’s borrow a shotgun, says Billy Barlow
How’ll we divide them,
How’ll we divide them,
How’ll we divide them,
How’ll we divide them, says Billy Barlow
I also loved this song because the last line changed. Sometimes Billy Barlow said the same thing and sometimes he said something different. When I was very small and still learning the song, that was part of the joy of it, to see what Billy Barlow would do. And clearly he was wicked, like Coyote or Pan or Loki and going to lead the group to trouble if he could….
I’ll take shoulders,
I’ll take sides,
I’ll take hams
Tailbone mine, says Billy Barlow
How’ll we cook them,
How’ll we cook them,
How’ll we cook them,
How’ll we cook them,
Oh, delicious ickiness, raw rat tailbone… It would give my sister and me shivers….
Let’s go hunting, says Risky Rob
Let’s go hunting, says Robin to Bob
Let’s go hunting, says Dan’l and Joe
Let’s stay home, says Billy Barlow
And relief. Billy was messing with them all the time and he doesn’t want to go and he never did, which is why he suggested a shotgun to hunt rats…. I like this Billy.
When I search on Billy Barlow, here is an entirely different song, a civil war marching song for Company B from New York City that marched into Maryland in 1863 and had a 63% loss. My sister had a civil war marching band play at her rehearsal dinner and we ended up marching in pea gravel for a couple hours. It turns out that my oldest cousin had ambitions to be a marching band drum leader. The band thought we were so funny that they offered to return. But the civil war fighters on both sides had marching bands with them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1ZlfsP7dZA
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - Flüchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflüchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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