Tag Archives: lyrics

There Once Was a Union Maid Who Never Was Afraid

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“Then more settlers trickled West, they said in search of elbow room on the ground, room to farm the rich topsoil; but, hushed and quiet, they dug into the private heart of the earth to find the lead, the soft coal, the good zinc. While the town of people only seventeen miles east of us danced on their roped-off streets and held solid weeks of loud celebrating called the King Koal Karnival, only the early roadrunners, the smart oil men, knew that in a year or two King Koal would die and his body would be burned to ashes and his long twisting grave would be left dank and dark and empty under the ground – that a new King would be dancing into the sky, gushing and spraying the entire country around with the slick black blood of the industry’s veins, the oil – King Oil – a hundred times more powerful and wild and rich and fiery than King Timber, King Steel, King Cotton, or even King Koal. – “Empty Snuff Cans” from “Bound for Glory”

(Since this week marks the 100th anniversary of Mother Jones being hauled to jail at age 86 for protesting mining conditions in West Virginia, seems like a good time to finally write about visiting her grave in Mt. Olive, Illinois, last July.)

July 3, 2012 On the eve of our nation’s birthday, I did the most American thing I could find: I drove by myself through rural Illinois to Davenport, Iowa, in search of Woody Guthrie at a Wilco concert with my friends Sam, Brianne, and Paul. I’ve made lots of drives north on I-55 through the sprawl of crops and wind farms. It’s necessary to get to Chicago, and to my in-laws in Michigan, friends in Peoria. And this time, a town on the Illinois-Iowa border. In nearly 15 years of making these drives, I’ve never followed the signs near Mt. Olive, indicating the Mother Jones memorial. Mostly because I had no idea what it meant or who she was beyond the brief biographies in my feminism books – badass old lady who gave what-for to people who needed it. Which, really, should be enough for me. Hell, Congress called her “the grandmother of all agitators,” so I have no excuse for slacking on my Mother Jones learning.

By this point in the Guthrie project, I knew enough to realize that Mother Jones was the original union maid, fighting for the same workers rights years before Woody was even born. Without Mother Jones, there might not have been a Woody Guthrie. And there would have been fewer miners and workers; her fight for safer, humane working conditions saved more lives than we can begin to fathom.  Continue reading →

I Stand Alone in My Back Door and That’s Something I Never Did Before.

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“She’d come to the office where Papa was, and she’d set down and turn through the magazines and papers, looking at all of the pictures. She liked to look at pictures of the mountains. Sometimes she’d look at a picture for two or three minutes. And then she’d say, “I’d like to be there.” – “Boy in Search of Something” from “Bound for Glory”

I have no idea how to be alone.

This is a relatively new development. Growing up without siblings, I never felt like I was missing anything, content to spend my time alone in my room with my books and records. The characters I met in songs and books, or concocted in my head, interested me far more than anyone I’d ever met. I was an unshy introvert – personable and friendly, but requiring my solo time, which people didn’t seem to understand.

Now, I consider myself a forced extrovert – an introvert by nature who contorted to extrovertism long enough to perfect it. It’s worked well for me. No doubt by ability to talk to anyone about damn near anything has served me well in this project, and in my life in general. But after all these months of crowds and events, coupled with having lived with my family since 1999, I’m ready for some alone time.

My friend Kate’s mother splits her time between St. Louis and a cottage in the Catskills a few miles from Woodstock, New York. When she’s in St. Louis, she lets artists and writers use her Woodstock house as a retreat. Months ago Kate brokered the details for a week-long stay for me at her mother’s. By myself. In the dead of winter.

It sounded like the most wonderful and terrible thing, being alone on a mountain for a week, finishing this project. So of course, I did it.

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The Radio Reported, We Listened With Alarm, the Wild and Windy Actions of This Great Mysterious Storm.

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Men fighting against men. Color against color. Kin against kin. Race pushing against race. And all of us battling against the wind and the rain and that bright crackling lightning that booms and zooms, that bathes his eyes in the white sky, wrestles a river to a standstill, and spends the night drunk in a whorehouse. – “Soldiers in the Dust” from “Bound for Glory.”

 

I was four and a half on May 4, 1977. A rather boring day, I built a blanket and pillow fort on the couch where I watched game shows all morning. It was laundry day, with my mother going up and down the steep stairs to our concrete slab basement with heaped plastic baskets.

The biggest excitement of the day? Waiting for her to invite me to join her for a little laundry bonding. So when she told me to hurry up and get to the basement, I thought the time had finally come for me to tip-toe peer into the sudsy drum that churned my muddy duds clean again.

Instead of going to the washing machine, she hustled me to the other side of the basement, a dark, webby storage corner. We huddled under a tent of blankets while my mother cried, asking me to pray with her for my dad, who was running his rural milk delivery route, to come home safely.

In the cold dankness, hearing my mother pray for my father, her sobs, and the howl and roar above us not five minutes after Bob Barker instructed his contestants to spin the big wheel for a chance at the Showcase Showdown, was when I learned just how fast a tornado can gnash large portions of my hometown. One minute it’s laundry and Barker’s beauties. The next, we’re praying for our lives.

The tornado was just shy of an F4, with winds over 200 miles per hour. One dead, thirty injured, 150 homes destroyed. 300 damaged in an eleven-mile path. In a town with 20,000 people. Two schools were so wrecked they had to close for the last month of classes.

We drove through town with my grandmother in her yellow VW wagon, and the wailed at the destruction. Under a bright blue sky with sun reflecting the flooded puddles, the new May verdant leaves from trees upended, sharing the ground with balls of pink fluff. Fresh green and cotton candy looks like a wonderland until you realize the pink fluff is the guts of fiberglass insulation, ripped from the soul of the homes when the storm turned them inside-out.

Three years later, it happened again. Once again, we huddled in the basement, our home and family spared. And again in 1982. Twice. The week of Thanksgiving in 1990.

Six years ago a wall of wind descended on St. Louis, leaving us and a million others without power during the hottest week of July. It happened so fast that the windows on the east side of our house were sunny while the ones to the west went black. That one happened so fast there wasn’t time to sound the alarms.

Hurricane Sandy didn’t scare me, because I’ve seen death drop from the sky with no notice. I knew Sandy was likely to hit New York nearly a week before my trip.

Not that this completely prepared me.

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I Fully Aim to Get My Soul Known Again as the Maniac, the Saint, the Sinner, the Drinker, the Thinker, the Queer.

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 I don’t know why I didn’t tell them I had a guitar up yonder hanging on that tree. I just reared back and soaked in every note and every word of their singing. It was so clear and honest sounding, no Hollywood put-on, no fake wiggling. It was better to me than the loud squalling and bawling you’ve got to do to make yourself heard in the old mobbed saloons. And instead of getting you all riled up mentally, morally and sexually  - no, it done something a lot better, something that’s harder to do, something you need ten times more. It cleared your head up, that’s what it done, caused you to fall back and let your draggy bones rest and your muscles go limber like a cat’s. – “The Telegram that Never Came” – from “Bound for Glory”

 

My husband knows everything I do, and he doesn’t mind.

He doesn’t mind that I’ve run around the country, chasing Woody Guthrie.

If he traveled for his work, would you tell him what a good, patient, loving, generous wife he had for letting him do his job? Probably not.

I get told that all the time. I do agree that he’s all those things, but it bothers me that men with those traits are still considered “special” when they should be considered “normal.”

He doesn’t mind that I’m fat.

Do I get pitying looks for having a spouse he’s chubbier, grayer, and sleepier than he was in 1998 when we met? No. So why should he?

He doesn’t mind that I’m a social butterfly, gregarious, and tend to fall into flirtation without even realizing it. When he does the, he’s considered charming.

He doesn’t mind that I have parts of my life that have nothing to do with him or our daughter.

How lucky am I to have such an understanding husband?

That’s not luck; that’s the way it should be. From both sides.

He doesn’t mind that I took a Saturday to indulge in the offerings of the West Village.

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Got No Fear in Life. Got No Fear in Death.

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I walked along, the day just leaving out over the tops of the tall buildings, and sifting through the old scarred chimneys sticking up. Thank the good Lord, everybody, everything ain’t all afraid. Afraid in the skyscrapers, and afraid in the red tape offices, and afraid in the tick of the little machine that never explodes, stock market tickers, that scare how many to death, ticking off deaths, marriages and divorces, friends and enemies; tickers connected and plugged in like juke boxes, playing the false and corny lies that are sung in the wild canyons of Wall Street; songs wept by the families that lose, songs jingled on the silver spurs of the men that win. Here on the slummy edges, people are crammed down on the curbs, the sidewalks and the fireplugs, and cars and trucks and kids and rubber balls are bouncing through the streets. I was thinking, “This is what I call bein’ burned an’ a-livin’; I don’t know what I call that big high building back yonder that I left.” – “Crossroads” from “Bound for Glory”

 

New York City’s not nearly as intimidating the second time, especially when taking the same flight as before and staying in the same hotel, knowing how to go about getting a cab with a driver who knows how to get to said hotel. It lowers the adventure factor, but after seven months of traveling, I’m nearing my adventure quota.

It’s the last weekend in October, and this trip should be simple. Two concerts in the same location - Pace University on the Lower East Side – on two different nights. Plenty of time to travel, get lost, get found, explore, and sleep, when I’m not immersed in Justin Townes Earle and Joe Pug.

My mother wasn’t quite as convinced that I was going to be murdered to death this time in New York. I’d like to think it’s because I turned 40 a week earlier and in that time have kept myself and the person I made with my body alive and well.

No, that wasn’t it. This time, she was convinced I was going to be decimated by the hurricane slowly climbing the eastern seaboard in a grim race with the blizzard creeping east over Ohio.

“Please tell me you’re going to cancel this trip,” she sighed into the phone the day before I left.

I’m no fool, Mama,

I know the difference

Between tempting

And choosing my fate.

Of course I’m not canceling. Not even an option. I grew up in Tornado Alley. With my mother. Fleeing for cover with a few seconds notice? Second-nature. The hurricane and blizzard are days away and trackable.

Woody Guthrie arrived in New York City during one of the worst blizzards in the city’s history. He did just fine.

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Maybe We’ll Have All the Fascists Out of the Way by Then. Maybe So.

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“I’m not personally in the money-lending business. It would be against the law for me to lend you money without letting the governor know.”

 

“Th’ gov’ner? Shucks, me ‘n’ th’ gov’ner’s always goin’ aroun’ with our hands in each other’s pockits. Big friends.” – from “A Fast-Running Train Whistles Down” from “Bound for Glory”

 

Among other things you can’t do in the Kennedy Center: you can’t take pictures.

I wasn’t even trying to take a picture during the show. I’d arrived at my seat, after finally meeting Andie, my contact at the Grammy Museum who helped get me into so many events for this project. So many that upon meeting, we hugged like old pals.

But even that connection didn’t spare me from getting a tap on the shoulder as I raised my phone to take a photo of the auditorium as people filed in.

“No photography in the Kennedy Center,” the usher sneered.

I hate arbitrary rules.

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Some Rob You With a Six-Gun, Some With a Fountain Pen

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If you think of something new to say, if a cyclone comes, or a flood wrecks the country, or a bus load of school children freeze to death along the road, if a big ship goes down, and an airplane falls in your neighborhood, an outlaw shoots it out with the deputies, or the working people go out and win a war, yes, you’ll find a train load of things you can set down and make up a song about. You’ll hear people singing your words around over the country, and you’ll sing their songs everywhere you travel or everywhere you live; and these are the only kind of songs my head or my memory or my guitar has got room for. – “The Telegram That Never Came” from “Bound for Glory”

 

Robert Santelli has this panel discussion business down-pat: prompt musicians to tell their stories both in words and music. After he made me shrivel in my seat, he moved on to introducing the panel, who all told their stories of how they became familiar with Woody Guthrie’s music. For Noel Stookey, he was a part of the Beat scene at Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, where he learned about Woody from Ramblin’ Jack and Bob Dylan.

Ramblin’ Jack learned about Woody by calling him repeatedly while Guthrie was hospitalized with appendicitis in 1951, eventually showing up at his house and not leaving for a few years.

LaFave grew up in Oklahoma with the Guthrie lore, which he passed on to accordion player Radoslav Lorković, who joined the musicians on stage, giving extra spring to LaFave’s soft-sung take on “Oklahoma Hills.”

At the beginning of the program the audience was told that, because the discussion was being recorded for the library’s archives, we needed to be quiet. But I love to sing along to “Oklahoma Hills”! Ask Aimee. Folk music isn’t meant to be quietly enjoyed while ensconced in your seat. With everyone conscious of every move and noise they make, the song’s spark gets extinguished.

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I Shook a Lot of Hands, Poor Boys, Along in the Sun and the Rain

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I let my ears bend away from her talking and I let my eyes drift out the window and down sixty-five stories where the town of Old New York was standing up living and breathing and cussing and laughing down yonder acrost that long island. – “Crossroads” from “Bound for Glory”

When we last saw our heroine, she was on a busy Brooklyn street being hollered at by a local woman who seemed like she might steal the glasses off my face.

“So, I saw you talking to Billy,’”she said.”What’s that all about?”

I gave her the fast version – Chicago, Okemah, book hopes – in breakneck speed. I can’t tell anything briefly, so I just cram as much in as fast as I can talk. How do I narrow this down for a stranger on the street? Especially one who might be using Billy as a diversion while her quiet friend pickpockets the glasses off my face.

“I got to meet him at Coney Island on Woody’s birthday,” she said.

That was the day after I saw him in Okemah. He flew out the next morning to attend the Guthrie family’s centennial party by showing “The Man in the Sand” and doing a tribute show with Steve Earle.

“Hey – we’re gonna grab dinner before the show. You should join us. What’s good around here?” my spectacles-theif asked.

“I have no idea. I’ve never been here.”

So she asked some guy on the street. He didn’t have any suggestions. “Let’s just go to Applebee’s.”

I don’t even go to Applebee’s at home. Couldn’t tell you how to find the closest one to my house. But given the option of having a local, interesting dinner by myself or a corporate dinner with someone interesting … fuck being a food snob; I’m going to Applebee’s with Foofie!

Yes, her name’s Foofie.

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Ain’t Nobody That Can Sing Like Me

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“I’m with yuh, brother!” A lady walked up with a big black purse and a gallon jug of wine, ready to be broke over somebody’s head.

 

“I ain’t a-movin’, neither!” A little old skinny man was flipping his belt buckle. “Let ‘em come!”

 

“As the last two or three flat cars of men rolled down the street and kept the wild mob back for a minute, I grabbed my guitar up and started singing:

 

“We will fight together

We shall not be moved

We will fight together

We shall not be moved

Just like a tree

That’s planted by the water

We

Shall not

Be moved.

 

“Everybody sing!” Cisco grabbed his guitar and hollered out. “Stormy Night” from “Bound for Glory”

Even though I haven’t written about the Billy Bragg concert in Chicago last month, I covered his songwriting workshop. And I’ll get around to writing about the Chicago concert, because I have a lot to say about that night.

I’ll refrain from posting the photo of me in full-on jackass bray from my Billy Bragg meeting in Chiago. But I’ll continue to post this one all over the internet until I’m at 93 years old, because I love it.

My cousin-in-law commented that I look like a little girl on Christmas. I had some pretty great holidays as a kid, but I never got a five minute conversation with one of my favorite musicians. So this was Christmas morning times a thousand in terms of excitement.

I was most impressed that Bragg had taken the time to have actual conversations with the fans who hung out after the workshop that day, asking what brought each of us to see him. I told him a little bit about my project and he asked if he’d see me in Okemah. I was still trying to pull together the details of the trip at the time.

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Beer to Beer and Ale to Ale

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Others came down with the beer head. That’s where your head starts swelling up and it just don’t quit. Usually you take the beer head from drinking home brew that ain’t made right, or is fermented in old rusty cans, oil drums, gasoline barrels, and slop buckets. It caused some of the people to die. They even had a kind of beer called Old Chock that was made by throwing everything under the sun into an old barrel, adding the yeast and sugar and water to it, and letting her go. Biscuit heels, corn-bread scraps, potato leavings, and all sorts of table scraps went into this beer. It is a whitish, milky, slicky-looking bunch of crap. But especially down in Oklahoma I’ve seen men drive fifteen miles out in the country just to get a hold of a few bottles of it.  “Boy in Search of Something” from “Bound for Glory”

 

Oklahoma hasn’t changed much. It’s not the place for a spoiled craft beer snob like me to be cavorting. Still, I think the table scrap brew would have gotten my interest before the mass-market brews that originated in my home base of St. Louis. When I hit Lou’s Rocky Road Tavern for a celebratory beer after my crime spree, a settled for a can of Busch.

If I’m going to drink cheap beer, you better believe it’s gonna be the cheapest. I’m fine with that. Because as much as I love good beer, I love good people more. To find good people, go to the worst-looking bar. If the clientele’s right, the Old Chock will go down like something brewed from a 600-year-old secret Trappist monk recipe.

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