July: Money For Floods

Joan Baez: Money For Floods

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Richard Shindell: Money For Floods

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We’re About 9: Money For Floods

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“My name is Eliza I live by the river My daughter Louise will be three in July…” A little digging uncovers a large number of songs to choose from for our new theme. However, I love a challenge, so I wanted one that did not reference the fourth of July. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great fourth of July songs that I hope we get to over the next two weeks. But there is also Money For Floods.

It wasn’t a hit, but Joan Baez has recorded the most popular version of the song to date. I often find that people who don’t like Joan Baez object to the sound of her early recordings. These were pure folk, and Baez’ voice at the time was admittedly an acquired taste. She had a high soprano voice that could sound shrill to some, and with only her guitar playing as accompaniment, you could not miss that voice. But two things happened as time went on. First, Baez began to experiment with fuller arrangements of her music. Some of these experiments, to my tastes, served her poorly, but she was certainly one of the most innovative folk artists of her day, and the best of this music still sounds fresh today. Second, Joan Baez was very young when she started, and her voice had changed noticeably by the time her career was ten years in. By the time she recorded Money For Floods, Baez was singing in an alto to low soprano range. This mature voice is capable of emotional depths that Baez could not achieve in the same way in her youth. The early shrillness, which I never minded, is a distant memory on this recording. Money For Floods is a song that gains a great deal by being sung by a woman, and Joan Baez delivers.

Baez has a few songwriting credits sprinkled throughout her career, but she is best known as an interpreter of traditional songs and the work of other writers. Such is the case here. Money For Floods was written by Richard Shindell. Shindell can write and sing a song from a woman’s point of view and make us believe in the song, because he is just that good. His arrangement of the song dictates that the sound begins intimately, and then swells at the first chorus, and the other versions I present here each follow this pattern in their own way. It is a musical metaphor that is fully explained in the lyrics by the end of the song, and it is a brilliant device.

Finally, I have included a version of the song in an a capella arrangement. We’re About 9 finds a way to make this work in a minimal arrangement that derives its power from its sparseness.

I found one more version of Money For Floods that I chose not to include, by Rob Rowe. Rowe has a voice that I find to be overly dramatic for the song, and his band doesn’t find the emotion of the song, to my ear. Also, Rowe changes the lyric so that the point of view is male, and that just doesn’t work for me on this song.

Listen: Are You Out There

Dar Williams: Are You Out There
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Dar Williams is about 6 years younger than me, and grew up about 12 miles as the crow flies from me (or about 25 miles driving, on a route that takes you virtually past where I am writing this). Which is a long way of saying that we both lived in the New York area, at roughly the same time. Meaning that we had pretty much the same choices of radio stations to listen to, growing up.

I’ve written ad nauseam about how I became a music fan, and how important for me it was to listen to the radio as a teenager—mostly WNEW-FM—until I headed off to college and WPRB. That was how you learned about music then, for the most part, and where the DJs were people like you who really cared about the minutiae, about the trivia, about the connections, about good segues, about the music. And also, in those days, the DJs, and musicians, were not reticent about talking about politics and other issues, because the radio stations weren’t run and programmed by some conglomerate devoted to creating a uniform, sellable product that sounded the same wherever you happened to be.

So, when I heard this Dar Williams song, about the importance that listening to the radio had to her, it clearly resonated with me. In preparing to write this piece, I found a bunch of live videos of Dar performing this song, often with her introductions included. She sometimes talks generally about the power of radio to introduce listeners to music, and always mentions that the song was inspired by her listening, in her teenage years, to WBAI, a radical, left wing station probably best known for having played George Carlin’s Filthy Words routine in 1973, which resulted in an iconic Supreme Court case that defined the government’s ability to regulate obscene and indecent material on the airwaves. Williams talks about how the station’s discussion of all sorts of conspiracy theories made her think, and the music opened her mind. In addition, there are references in the song to WRSI, 93.9 “The River,” a station in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she was living when she wrote the song (and which is also, I must add, the home of Smith College, the alma mater of my wife and daughter, where I was last week to attend the groundbreaking for the school’s library renovation).

For me, WBAI was something that I respected, but never listened to—too much talking, not enough music for me, but the song is really universal, at least for those of us who grew up obsessed with radio (and are still obsessed). I’ve long been a fan of Williams as both a songwriter and singer—she was probably one of the first artists that WFUV got me hooked on, her appearance at the Clearwater Festival in the 90s was the main lure for my family to attend our first one, and her song, “When I Was A Boy,” was a family favorite, reminding us of our daughter as a child, around the time the song was released.

Dar, and Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell, joined together in Cry, Cry, Cry a few years back, but after one album and some touring, they went their separate ways, for the most part, reuniting last summer at Clearwater for a fun, if sloppy and under rehearsed set. They are back now on the road for a mini-tour, which will be stopping in Tarrytown this weekend, and my wife and I will be there, despite having to fight our way through the Halloween parade and block party right by the Music Hall.

Fireworks: Green Eyes and a Heart of Gold

The Lone Bellow: Green Eyes and a Heart of Gold
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Most of the time, I’ve been posting at least twice to each theme, in part because I enjoy writing these things, and in part because the blog needs content. After my first post on the Reunion theme, I decided to wait until after I attended the Clearwater Festival to see whether something would spark a second post on that theme (like when Patterson Hood and Jason Isbell played together a couple of years ago). Unfortunately, I miscalculated, the theme ended between the two days of the festival, and here we are in the Fireworks theme. Which is kind of too bad, because, as it turns out, I actually found a few Reunion ideas over the weekend, starting with the fact that I spent Saturday listening to music with my wife, my sister and a cousin, sort of a reunion in and of itself, and Sunday, I got to hear old friends Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell, who recently had a bit of a reunion themselves with their recent cover album as The Pine Hill Project. And after a crazy rain squall interrupted their set, on a stage hard by the Hudson River, they returned to play some of their solo work, including Kaplansky’s great, personal song entitled, yes, “Reunion.”

But I blew it, and now I have to write about Fireworks. I like fireworks. But they have to be serious fireworks—not the small town, shoot off a few blasts before ending with a nice finale type that they had for many years where I live (although they have been improving lately). No, I’m talking about the kind of fireworks that fill the sky with colored lights and make your stomach hurt from the booms.

I have a few fireworks memories, and at the risk of leaving myself without a second post subject, here are some of them, in rough chronological order.

After my junior year in college, my roommates Neal and Jon and I went to Europe. We were in Paris one evening, in Montmartre, when a crowd started to gather in front of the Sacré-Coeur Basilica. We had no idea what was going on, and since none of us spoke French, if there were any posted signs, we were clueless. Eventually, someone told us that there would be fireworks that evening, for a midsummer celebration. They were pretty great fireworks, especially because they were set off directly over the crowd. The consequences of that decision were apparently not considered, because flaming paper and debris began to fall over us, which was kind of scary. I don’t think they do it that way anymore.

I remember going to Shea Stadium in the 1980s, when the Mets were, as usual, bad, and Fireworks Night meant a rare full house. (Now, they do more than one, which just seems excessive). I remember sitting way up in the upper deck a few times for the excellent pyrotechnics. There was this guy who sat up there, a heavy guy with a thick beard known as “Fuzzy,” who insisted that the airplanes that flew over Shea were “taking a big risk” flying over the stadium as the fireworks were exploding. Fuzzy was, clearly, an idiot. However, to this day, I insist on repeating “They’re taking a big risk” every time I see a plane fly overhead during a fireworks display.

Also Mets related is my third story--I was going to watch the Fourth of July fireworks on the East River from the roof of my friend Joe’s apartment building in 1985. I remember it being quite a wild party, but even more memorable than the fine display in the sky were the fireworks at the Mets/Braves game that night in Atlanta, which we followed during the night and into the early morning. Often considered one of the craziest games ever, it went 19 innings and ended at 4 a.m. The Mets were winning 7-4 going into the 8th inning. The Braves went up 8-7 in the bottom of the 8th, and due to two long rain delays, it was near midnight when the 9th inning started. It was Fireworks Night in Atlanta, but most of the fans left, assuming that they would be cancelled due to the length of the game. The Mets tied the game up in the 9th, and it went to extra innings. The Mets scored 2 in the 13th, and the Braves tied it up again. It dragged on the 18th, and the Mets took the lead. The Braves were down to their last player, Rick Camp, a relief pitcher who was an awful hitter. Of course, he hit the only home run of his career to tie it. But in the top of the 19th, the Mets plated 5. The Braves answered back with 2 more, and the tying run at the plate was Camp. He struck out to end the game, and at 4 a.m., the Braves shot off their fireworks, scaring their neighbors.

The following year, 1986, was the centennial celebration of the Statue of Liberty, and New York threw an enormous party. There were speeches, concerts, Tall Ships, and what was, until that time, the largest fireworks display ever in the world. I remember that it was hot, crowded, and that the fireworks were spectacular. I also remember that somehow, no one seemed to realize that the subway would be mobbed immediately after the fireworks ended, and we all moved slowly, trying to stay together, as we were herded toward the few open entrances. I remember that the train thankfully was air conditioned, and that it was so crowded on the trains that strangers sat on people’s laps to squeeze more bodies onto the cars.

My son was born in April, 1990, and I think that it was in 1991 that my wife and I thought that it would be a good idea to take him to the Fourth of July fireworks. We started by going to a barbecue restaurant on the Upper West Side, then took the subway, with Adam in his stroller, downtown, then walked over to the East River to watch. Almost immediately after they started, the kid understandably got scared and started to cry. We decided to leave and take a cab home. Of course, the traffic was crazy, and we were stopping and starting all the way home. As we got sort of close to our apartment, Adam threw up in the cab, which did not make us popular with the driver. We finally got home, threw the kid in the bath to clean of the vomit, then cleaned ourselves off. My wife still, nearly a quarter of a century later, wrongly believes that this incident demonstrated bad parenting. I think it was just a well-intentioned mistake that had no lasting negative effect on the boy, who seems to like fireworks just fine.

Finally, starting in 1996, to celebrate the university’s 250th anniversary, Princeton began to have a fireworks show during Reunions (yep, I came back to that theme anyway). The following year, at my 15th Reunion, we saw the display, which was pretty incredible. In a flashback to my Montmartre experience, flaming debris landed in some dry grass and a brush fire started, which was quickly extinguished. The Reunions fireworks continue to impress (we saw it again at the 20th, 25th and 30th). The picture above, though, is by my friend and classmate Noel Valero, from this year’s show, and it won the reader photography competition sponsored by the Princeton Alumni Weekly. (One of my wife’s pictures from Reunions, of a little baby, was chosen as an editor’s favorite.)

And while we are bringing things full circle, back to Clearwater. On Sunday, I arrived late after coaching a youth soccer game (my boys scored three at the end to win 3-2, a heck of a way to end a season), and was confronted with a choice. Toshi Reagon, who in some ways embodies the festival as much as anyone—the daughter of Freedom Singers and civil rights activists Bernice Johnson Reagon and Cordell Hull Reagon, the goddaughter of festival founder Pete Seeger and named after Pete’s wife, she is also a political and lesbian activist and a kick-ass performer. Or The Lone Bellow, one of my favorite new Americana bands. My wife chose Toshi, and I went for the Lone Bellow, on the theory that Toshi is likely to be there next year, but I wasn’t sure that The Lone Bellow would. They really put on a great set, although it was distractingly hot. And they sang this song, which mentions New York Fourth of July fireworks, and the subway. If it only mentioned Reunions, Paris and the Mets, it really would have tied everything together, but you can’t have everything.

Disasters: Money For Floods

Richard Shindell: Money For Floods

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We're About 9: Money For Floods (Richard Shindell cover)

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Sandy is barreling down upon us here in the upper East Coast, and our home is quite rural, with a fragile power grid presence; as such, I may not have much time before the lights go out. But after a major post on songs that use the metaphor of the storm over at Cover Lay Down yesterday, I find myself left with a long list of "other" disaster songs just waiting to be shared. And a quick dip into the archives reveals one of my favorites has never been posted here, though its emotional potency easily rivals the more than a dozen songs we've previously shared from its creator.

Richard Shindell's original version of Money For Floods, recorded and released in 1997 on Reunion Hill, may be couched in the floodwaters, but it isn't so much a natural disaster song as it is a rich, layered tale of poverty and underclass desperation, really - a nuanced complaint about how the obvious and media-ready environmental disaster brings a kind of politicized attention to its victims that others desperately need in their daily lives, but never seem to garner. The fluid bass and guitar run through it like the river of its lyrics, smothering the voice of its narrator as she drowns; the combined effect of instrumentation, arrangement, and narrative is powerful, indeed, and it demonstrates aptly just why we post Shindell's work so much here at SMM.

But We're About 9's a capella take is stark and eerie, stripping away that river, and replacing it with the echoing silences of the deserted soul. Its hopelessness and exhaustion may be framed differently, but they are no less real.

And so I pass along Shindell's sentiment in both forms, as a reminder to us all: disaster comes in all types, to all people; those that watch silently when the trucks pass by their houses are no less needy, and no less ours. May those who weather the storm find community and support, in all cases. And may we remember them, when the storm has passed.

Conversations: Fishing

Richard Shindell: Fishing
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There’s something about Richard Shindell’s voice that just grabs me. I’m not sure where or when I first heard him, but WFUV is probably a pretty good bet. And it isn’t only the voice, it is the quality of the songwriting—deeply personal and complex songs, often written from unusual perspectives, like truck drivers, or kids who ran away to fight in the Civil War.

It turns out that Shindell and my good friend David went to college together. I don’t remember whether they knew each other personally, but I know that David was a big fan. A few years ago, when my friend turned 40, his wife Melissa decided to surprise him with a private concert by Shindell at a bar in New York. But because of his touring schedule, he wasn’t available near David’s birthday, so she tentatively booked the party for January 28, 2001. Melissa asked me whether it would be a problem, because it was Super Bowl Sunday. When she called, my team, the Giants, were fading, and Jim Fassel had made what we all thought was a ridiculous “guarantee” that they would make the playoffs. I told Melissa not to worry, and plan the party.

Of course, the Giants caught fire, and not only made the playoffs, but the Super Bowl. So, I was looking forward to seeing Richard Shindell up close and personal, but kind of annoyed that I was going to miss the Giants in the Super Bowl. The bar, though, had TVs, and the game was showing before the music started. Unfortunately for me, and my fellow Giants fans, the Ravens blew us out, and I was ultimately very glad not to have to watch the game and instead see a great show from Shindell, who was friendly, and, not surprisingly, wonderful.

None of which has anything to do with today’s theme, but I like the story. And I really like this song. There are some songs that are like perfect short stories in miniature. The songwriter quickly outlines the characters, the plot and the resolution, all in a few minutes. Richard Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” is an example. Jason Isbell’s “Dress Blues,” is another. And “Fishing” is in this class.

It starts out as a very one-sided conversation, between an immigration agent and a Latino immigrant. The agent is trying to get the immigrant to turn on others—maybe the people who brought him to the country, or other undocumented immigrants. The agent uses the fact that his prisoner is a fisherman to try to forge common ground by sharing (symbolically loaded) fishing stories, while, at the same time trying to get him to “bite” on the bait that the agent has cast—the ability to stay in the country and protection for his “next of kin”—in exchange for cooperation.

Finally, the agent says, ostensibly talking about fishing, but really not:

Anyway, it's easy to bite.
You just take the bait
Can't snap the line
Don’t fight the hook
Hurts less if you don't try to dive.

In the last stanza, the fisherman finally responds, deciding to take his punishment rather than be a rat:

Señor, as you know I was a fisherman
And how full the nets came in
We hauled them up by hand
But when we fled, I left them just out past the coral reefs
They're waiting there for me
Running deep

The fisherman’s nobility contrasts with the agent’s manipulativeness, and leaves little doubt where Shindell’s sympathies lie. This song gives me chills every time I hear it. Joan Baez does a good cover, too, on her Gone From Danger album.

Getting There: The Kenworth of my Dreams

Richard Shindell: The Kenworth Of My Dreams

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Nominally, this twangy countrified folk song is about a truck, and its new owner, who purchases and fixes up the titular Kenworth with the help of his brother-in-law, and settles into the life of a long-haul trucker despite the ridicule of his friends and family. But like all Richard Shindell songs, there's hints of the confessional around the edges of our narrative voice, and the upbeat bounce of the production is a ruse, designed to strain and pull at deliberate odds with the subtext. And these textual cues call his honesty into question, pushing us to dig deeper.

But this way lies despair. Why did the narrator sell his fishing boat, and his Camaro? Why does he turn the radio off, late at night, when those sad country songs hit the airwaves? What is he running from? We can ask, but we will not find the answers: Shindell has withheld them, so that we may live in the mind of the narrator, and experience his emotional state through sharing his avoidance. And so, in the end, like all great folk songs, this song is really about us: how pride can haunt us, how our dreams live and die through our actions and inactions, the lengths to which we are willing to change our lives in order to escape and pursue, the ways in which the engines of the past linger in our hearts and minds, no matter how hard or fast we run.

Song Chain => War and Memory: Born in the USA

Richard Shindell: Born in the USA

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From transformative covers of songs with California in the titles, it’s not hard to get to another transformative cover. This one also kicks off a week of songs about people affected by wars, both soldiers and those who waited for them at home. It’s all in honor of Memorial Day, but I hope this theme resonates for our readers in countries other than the United States as well.

Here then, is Richard Shindell’s version of Bruce Springstein’s Born in the USA. The lyric presents a portrait of a man who served in Vietnam, and now he is trying to make it as a civilian, while still holding on to the memories of the men he served with. Springstein’s original recording was a rock anthem, and people latched onto it as a patriotic song. But for me, Shindell’s version does a better job of focusing on the lyric, and therefore brings the protagonist to life more vividly. Springstein is an artist I have a great admiration for, but this is one time when his performance did not best serve his lyric. I’m sure any number of Springstein fans will disagree with me in the comments; I would ask that you do so respectfully.

Magic: On A Sea of Fleur De Lis

Richard Shindell: On A Sea of Fleur De Lis

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Richard Shindell: On A Sea of Fleur De Lis [live]

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Solas: On A Sea of Fleur De Lis

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Solas: On A Sea of Fleur De Lis [live]

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One of the best-known songs in ex-pat Fast Folk-era singer-songwriter Richard Shindell's catalog, and one of the most cryptic, this song appears as the centerpiece to his 1992 debut album Sparrows Point, and - in its original form - it features the appalachian dulcimer, on which it was composed.

Like so much of Shindell's songs, On A Sea Of Fleur De Lis tells its tale in first person; as near as I can tell, the narrator is a nun, though it could merely be an autobiographical echo of Shindell's own time in the seminary before he set out to become a songcrafter. But truly, there are layers upon layers here. Perhaps it is enough to say that the narrator, seemingly caught in a web of religious trappings, longs to be a witch again, naked and cradled in the arms of the sacred elm or willow, and the song is her prayer.

But like a spell, an ex-witches prayer can take many forms. The vast difference in tone and mood between the hollow, ringing original and the rich, joyous celtic-tinged cover Solas brings forth in live performance is an exercise in transformation, turning pensiveness into celebration, completing the circle that four versions lay out for us, setting free the trapped soul of the tale.

There's Something About Mary: The Ballad of Mary Magdalen

Richard Shindell: The Ballad of Mary Magdalen

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Cry Cry Cry: The Ballad of Mary Magdalen

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This tale of Jesus' girlfriend's inner life after the ascension is one of my favorite songs from Richard Shindells' canon, and it's not hard to see why: the song offers a perfect set of all the things the ex-seminarian does best, from the fully humanized religious setting to the heartbreaking first-person portrayal of broken dreams framed in wistful imagery.

Shindell clearly likes it, too, as he has recorded this song three times: once on his sophomore release Sparrow's Point, again with folk supergroup Cry Cry Cry, with fellow coffeehouse circuit artist Dar Williams singing lead, and finally on his live album Courier in 2001. I actually posted the live version back in June for our Gender Benders theme, but since it's so apropos, here's his other two takes as a continued study in song evolution.

Ghosts and Zombies: Haunted Hearts Edition

I share with you now the Ghosts of Past, Present and Future - whether inhabiting a shadowed room, a relationship-in-flux (stalker?) or a smoky bar, the spirits (and demons) of love can be haunting... and daunting...

Richard Shindell:Memory of You

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"Why did you leave
Your will so vague?
Just three blue lines
Across the page:
You take the vase
I'll keep the rose
And the memory of you "

Lynn Miles: The Ghost of Deadlock

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"But the ghost of deadlock rides this train
And she takes it out of town
It's way past last call
It's way past the point of giving us new ground
To stand on. . . then hold on"


Christine Albert: Haunt Your Heart

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"Haunt your heart 'til you overcome your fear of love
Haunt your heart until you see what you've given up
So until that day I'll give us time apart
but the love we made is gonna haunt your heart"

Cry Cry Cry: Cry Cry Cry

Johnny Cash: Cry Cry Cry

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Cry Cry Cry: By Way of Sorrow (written by Julie Miller)

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I batted around a few different ideas for my contribution this week, but kept coming back to the phrasing of the theme... and couldn't resist my need to tie together the two incarnations of Cry Cry Cry of which I'm aware:

~ the title of Johnny Cash's song (released in June 1955, it reached number 14 on the Billboard country charts)...

Cash wasn't used to writing on demand, but back at the house on Tutweiler with Vivian's due date approaching, Cash labored at the kitchen table. He chugged his coffee and burned down cigarette after cigarette as if he were back at the radio intercept controls. Inspired by Memphis disc jockey Eddie Hill's trademark "we're gonna squall and ball and climb the walls", recalled Cash, he came up with Cry Cry Cry in two weeks... Cash enhanced the recording with a chucka-chucka percussive effect that he produced by threading a folded sheet of paper between the strings up around the neck frets...

~ the name of the 1999 folk supergroup (comprised of Dar Williams, Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky)...

"The name comes from "three things," Shindell says, speaking softly by phone from his "quiet house in the woods" of Valhalla, N.Y.

"It's the threeness of it all, obviously, but it's also the sound of the voice, the way a singing voice can often sound like it's crying at the simplest of times. And there's a melancholy to the whole thing, in that most of the songs on the album are pretty damned depressing."

There's also the matter of his newborn son. "The sessions were interrupted by his birth, and a few of the arrangements were inspired by him. And he was around a lot . . . crying."

As a synchronistic sidenote, I actually did witness the trio performing the Cash tune... in February 1999 at the Centro Astureano in Tampa, Florida - sigh sigh sigh...

Gender Benders: The Ballad of Mary Magdalen

Richard Shindell: The Ballad of Mary Magdalen

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American expat singer-songwriter and ex-seminarian Richard Shindell is known for his ability to give poignant and poetic first-person voice to a wide variety of otherwise-unheard members of society and history -- the immigrant, the cab driver, the civil war widow. He is willing to take on female voices more than most, in fact; off the top of our heads, fellow SMM contributor Susan and I were able to come up with no less than four female-voiced gender benders in the Shindell canon, from the aforementioned war widow to the grandmother-voiced Abuelita to Money For Floods, a gorgeous lamentation from the perspective of a woman who thought she was living okay on the edge until she lost it all to tragedy.

Of the four, I like this one best -- it's straightforward, philosophical, and eminently feminist without losing its perfectly melancholy core, and the live version beats the early original by a hair. But the others are all amazing in their own powerful way.

Oh Mama: Arrowhead

Richard Shindell: Arrowhead

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Okay, it's Saturday afternoon... at what has become an acceptable time to stretch the boundaries of each week's theme before we move on to the next - admittedly, Arrowhead does not contain the word Mama in the title... yet the maternal moniker appears at the beginning of the first and last line of each of the 6 verses, 12 times in all...

“The narrator of that song is a child-soldier in the Civil War who is addressing his mother (perhaps in a letter, perhaps just in his mind),” explains Shindell.

To me, it's always been a musical retelling of the first few chapters of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage - I've chosen to include the version from Courier rather than the produced track from Blue Divide, mainly because the driving rhythm on the live CD mirrors the drumbeat of the young "mascot of the Third Brigade", as excitement about the fantasies of war soon segue to the realities of actual battle, in which men are forever changed... whether killed, wounded or emotionally scarred...

Drugs: Willin'

Little Feat: Willin'
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Linda Ronstadt: Willin'
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Richard Shindell: Willin'
[purchase] (scroll down to Courier)

"And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine
and you show me a sign
I'll be willin', to be movin'..."

Written in 1970, "Willin' " was a mainstay of Little Feat, the band Lowell George had helped to found in 1970 and was a leading member of until his death on June 29, 1979. The song, John Tobler contends in the liner notes of As Time Goes By. The Very Best of Little Feat (1993), "quickly became a favorite among America’s truckdrivers, many of whom continue to regard it as the anthem of their profession . . . although absurdly it never has been a hit."

In George's lifetime, "Willin' " was recorded in three different versions (though more and more have surfaced). On the band’s debut album, Little Feat (1971), George made do with his own raspy voice and guitar, and the sparse accompaniment of Ry Cooder’s terse steel guitar. On Sailin’ Shoes (1972), the song was done by the whole band, the chorus harmonized by four voices, and the piano solo was added by Bill Payne — "eh bill o' pain," as pronounced by George six years later, on the spectacularly successful live double album, Waiting for Columbus (1978). There, "Willin’" became hymnic, and was followed without interruption by "Don’t Bogart That Joint," another classic tune George had a hand in (he was briefly a member of Fraternity of Man, too).

More here...

I just realized/remembered that Don't Bogart That Joint does *not* appear on my Waiting for Columbus CD... and, upon reading the liner notes, discovered this:

The tracks "Don't Bogart That Joint" and "Apolitical Blues" which appear on the double album and cassette have been omitted so as to facilitate a single specially-priced compact disc" - d*mmit!

Hmmm... I just thought of something - wondering if we can have a Truck Driving Songs theme one of these weeks?... :-)

Leftovers: Leftover Edition

When I was growing up, we would, of course, have turkey for Thanksgiving. In the week that followed, much of the meat that remained on the bird would be stripped off and made into something else, usually in some kind of creamy sauce, and usually served over rice. The carcass, with a fair amount of meat still on it, would be frozen for later use. At about this point in the week following Thanksgiving, we would get the turkey carcass out of the freezer, and I would have one of my favorite tasks of the year: making turkey soup. So, in our house, even the leftovers from the feast had leftovers, and the soup making was a true labor of love. It is in that spirit that I present this post.


Clothes: A Summer Wind, A Cotton Dress

Richard Shindell: A Summer Wind, A Cotton Dress

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Half way through Clothes week, we lost our internet service for what turned out to be two and a half weeks. I had two posts planned for the remainder of the week, which never saw the light of day until now.

I wanted to do a two-song post of Richard Shindell songs. The first song was “Che Guevara Tee Shirt”, which wound up be handled quite well by Boyhowdy, (thanks again). The second song was “A Summer Wind, A Cotton Dress”. This song comes from earlier in Shindell’s career, and is not as lyrical complex as “Che...”. But here, Shindell captures perfectly the curiosity we all sometimes feel: what would have happened if that one relationship so long ago had worked out?


Clothes: The Sweater

Meryn Caddell: The Sweater

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I mentioned that there were two posts I planned for Clothes week; this was going to be the other one.

Meryn Caddell is a musician and performance artist based in Canada. Here, she captures perfectly, (so I’m told by my consultant on matters feminine), the “drama” of high school girls and dating. With a considerable wink.



The Music Biz: The Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man

The Rolling Stones: The Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man

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During our internet outage, I completely missed the week devoted to The Music Biz. Once I found out about it, I looked through the posts to see if anyone thought of this one. Most of the essentials got covered, but this was nowhere to be seen.

The Rolling Stones had for their original inspiration the blues music of the American South. When they used this musical of the downtrodden to tell the tale of a low level music industry worker who seeks to advance his career by exploiting the musical talent of others, I’m sure the Stones were well aware of the irony.


The Moon: Kiko and the Lavender Moon

Los Lobos: Kiko and the Lavender Moon

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Finally, I was around for our week of songs inspired by The Moon. This was just one more time when I had more material than time. That said, I can’t remember how I decided to leave out my favorite Los Lobos song.

Clothes: Che Guevara T-Shirt

Richard Shindell: Che Guevara T-Shirt

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A song of immigration and racial inequality from Richard Shindell, one of my favorite still-standing Fast Folk-era folksingers, who has a way with the words of the downtrodden and their confrontations with the trappings of so-called justice which in his best moments transcends even the crushed hopes and longing of Springsteen or Joan Baez on similar topics. Here, our titular shirt is worn by the narrator's young love, a girl for whom he has embarked upon a dangerous journey to the land of milk and honey, only to be stymied by terrorist-dream-driven border patrol assumptions about the iconic portrayal which she sports on her chest in the photograph he carries.

It's like I tell my media students: never forget the power of the iconographic to be misunderstood. What you wear speaks volumes, and though it may have a particular meaning to you, its message is hardly ever clear.

The Moon: Calling The Moon

Dar Williams: Calling The Moon

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I saw singer-songwriter Dar Williams on the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival mainstage just a few nights ago, and to be honest, the stage lights kind of swallowed her up, there in the darkened cowfield. Maybe it's just my preference for smaller venues and closer seating, and I will admit that the majestic annual tradition of bringing her friends and family on stage to see the thousands of lit, waving audience lightsources during her encore was as powerful as always. I just think the intimacy which Dar brings to her live one-voice-one-guitar performance doesn't translate to such a huge crowd.

This is nothing against Dar, mind you. As I discussed in a more substantive post on Dar Williams over at Cover Lay Down way back in December, though it took me a while to warm to her feathery voice with its unique break, I've fallen in love with her work over time, and consider her one of my favorite singer-songwriters. Though she got her start in the coffeehouse scene, these days, Dar Williams' feet are firmly planted in the same worldchanging folkpop soil as Shawn Colvin, Ani DiFranco and Jonatha Brooke, and she shines in her element. She writes a mean hook, and deserves more radioplay than she gets for it.

Still, in my quietest moments I prefer her earlier, more introspective ballads, and this is one of the best of 'em, thick with empathy and attuned to the natural world as a reflection of the internal self, a perfect introduction to that which makes Dar's fanbase so strong and cool and committed, all at once. Here's hoping this timely track makes you a believer in Dar, and in the power of the moon, as well.

Want more? Today's bonus coversong comes from Dar's fellow musician and Cover Lay Down fave artist Richard Shindell, a great performer who is never afraid to tackle a song with strong feminine and pagan overtones.

Richard Shindell: Calling the Moon (orig. Dar Williams)

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