Multi-instrumentalist extraordinarie David Bromberg burst into my consciousness the first time needle hit vinyl on the 1975 album Midnight on the Water. Here was a guy who had been on the road as the guitar player for Jerry Jeff Walker, produced John Hartford’s seminal Aereo Plane album, and played with artists from Bob Dylan to George Harrison. But my real introduction came as he put out one amazing album after another in the early-to-mid-1970s. His musicianship and ability to play multiple styles, all while singing quirky lyrics with the straightest of faces and most distinctive of voices, hooked me from the beginning. We’ll take a look at his music and legacy in today’s Saturday Soundtrack.
Many people first heard Bromberg with Jerry Jeff Walker in his Mr. Bojangles heyday. Decades later, Bromberg has played the song thousands of times, and still makes the music — and his monologue in the middle at the 2:50 mark about Jerry Jeff’s “not-quite a research project” visit to the drunk tank — seem fresh.
From early in his career, this video is of Bromberg performing Yankee’s Revenge — a medley of Irish fiddle tunes from the Midnight on the Water album — at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, NJ. Here you can see him as the young guitar slinger at the peak of his talents, flatpicking fiddle tunes and then setting down the guitar to join in on the triple-fiddle ending. This medley originally made me want to hear more from Bromberg, and this video from the era is a wonderful find.
The demands of touring led Bromberg to leave the road in the early 1980s and take time off to study violin making, opening his own violin shop in Wilmington, Delaware. During that time he became one of the most respected experts anywhere on pre-1950 American violins and he and his wife became the owners of a stunning collection of historical violins.
The twenty-two year performing drought ended in 2006 with the release of the Grammy-nominated solo effort Try Me One More Time. The title tune features Bromberg playing acoustic slide on his beautiful signature Martin guitar. That signature guitar is also featured on my favorite song on the album, the cover of Bob Dylan’s It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.
Bromberg has always had an affinity for the blues, and 2017’s The Blues, the Whole Blues, and Nothing But the Blues — with one of the great album covers of all time — upheld Texas fiddler Johnny Gimbel’s claim that:
“‘There are only two songs — the Star-Spangled Banner and the Blues.’ The band skipped over the ‘Banner’ and headed straight for the blues, winning the 2017 Downbeat Critic’s Poll for Best Blues Album.“
Here’s a wonderful version of Dr. John’s classic How Come My Dog Don’t Bark When You Come ‘Round? from the Whole Blues album.
Now you say you never met my wife, you ain’t never seen her befo’ Say you ain’t been hangin’ roun’ my crib;
well here’s somethin’ I wanna know… I wanna know what in the worl’ is goin’ down
How come my dog don’t bark when you come around?
I featured a couple of David’s drinking tunes on the New Year’s Eve Soundtrack: Songs for Jack, Jim, and all of their friends. Drink is a subject that returns frequently in his sets, such as in this concert at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, NJ, where he performs Sloppy Drunk.
We will end this celebration of the music of David Bromberg with another favorite, I’ll Take You Back. As in…
“I’ll take you back…
When water ain’t wet / And Congress pays off the national debt.
When James Brown ain’t funky / And King Kong ain’t a monkey!
When the preachers on TV / Start sending cash to me!!
I’ll take you back“
Pour yourself a bourbon and enjoy!
More to come…
DJB
Image: David Bromberg plays eTown with host Nick Forster (Credit: eTown)
My taste in monster movies tends to run toward the Young Frankenstein end of the genre. In other words, comedy. But it has been impossible to watch sports television during March Madness and miss the fact that the “greatest monster battle of them all” — the Battle of the Titans, if you will — has been made into a new movie. When an article about the movie included the words “functional morphologist” in the headline, along with promises to use science to pick a winner, I took the (click)bait.
As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.
Kiersten Formoso is a vertebrate paleontologist and functional morphologist at USC studying the land-to-sea evolutionary transition — where land vertebrates evolved to go back into aquatic environments. This includes living groups like whales, seals, manatees, and numerous extinct groups like mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and ichthyosaurs. In The Conversation, Formoso, who also self-identifies as a “huge fan of monster movies,” uses her science smarts and love of the genre to write Godzilla vs. Kong: A functional morphologist uses science to pick a winner.
“Even the most fantastical creatures have some basis in scientific reality, so the natural world is a good place to look to better understand movie monsters. I study functional morphology – how skeletal and tissue traits allow animals to move – and evolution in extinct animals. I am also a huge fan of monster movies. Ultimately, this is a fight between a giant reptile and a giant primate, and there are relative biological advantages and disadvantages that each would have. The research I do on morphology and biomechanics can tell us a lot about this battle and might help you decide – #TeamGodzilla or #TeamKong?
Before she delves into the advantages and disadvantages of each monster, Formoso does want the reader to know that she’s not wacko.
“First it’s important to acknowledge that both Kong and Godzilla are definitely far beyond the realms of biological possibility. This is due to sheer size and the laws of physics. Their hearts couldn’t pump blood to their heads, they would have temperature regulation problems and it would take too long for nerve signals from the brain to reach distant parts of the body – to name just a few issues.
However, let’s assume that somehow Godzilla and Kong are able to overcome these size limitations – perhaps because of their radiation exposure they have distinctive mutations and characteristics. Based on how they look on the big screen, let’s explore the observable differences that might prove useful in a fight.“
It is a fun read, and she doesn’t let the movie ending affect her analysis. So, no spoilers here. You’ll have to read the whole article.
If you lead with Godzilla vs. Kong, one can’t get too serious with the other articles in this weekly collection. We’ll ditch the (serious) politics and look on the lighter side, beginning with the always clever Andy Borowitz. Writing for TheNew Yorker, Borowitz has figured out what’s behind Brian Kemp’s support for a new voter law in Georgia Governor Declares Water a Gateway Drug That Leads to Voting.
“’We’ve consulted a lot of studies on this,’ (Kemp) said. ‘People are much more likely to vote if they are under the influence of water.’”
“Let us be clear. We condemn racism. We extend sympathies to our former colonies, where we hear racism and humidity both occur with disgusting regularity. Here at home, we don’t see racial differences. That’s because there are none – not in elite schools, large corporations, the tabloid press corps, and certainly not the monarchy. Only racist people see race, and we simply cannot envision ourselves seeing it.
We stand by our journalistic integrity. We have plumbed the depths to identify why the divorced, American commoner who married into the curated gene pool of our ceremonial oligarchy is so “grating.” Thus far, our reporting suggests that the Duchess of Sussex is “not the right sort,” which is a character flaw and unrelated to our selective breeding program that involves a handful of church-sanctioned, aristocratic, Northern European families.“
There are memoirs where one is quickly reminded that not everyone shares the same experiences. When well told, moving through these new worlds can be enlightening, jarring, and often gripping. Then again, there is the occasional book where the reader finds a story that mirrors one’s own experience in astonishing detail.
Ty Seidule‘s fearless and direct Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause — part memoir, part history, part call-to-action — was that reflection for me. In his skillful hands, the story is also enlightening, jarring, and gripping. The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Ron Chernow may have captured it best when he wrote, “Ty Seidule scorches us with the truth and rivets us with his fierce sense of moral urgency.”
The author’s bio is important in understanding the accuracy of Chernow’s description. Seidule grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, where his father taught at Episcopal High School. Historian Charles Reagan Wilson has called Episcopal a “Lost Cause denominational secondary school.” Seidule then moved with his family to Monroe, Georgia, where he completed his high school studies, graduating from a whites-only “segregation academy” in 1980. Monroe was the site of the only mass lynching to occur in the United States after World War II, yet Seidule knew nothing of that history when he lived in the community. After high school he moved to Lexington, Virginia, where he attended and graduated from Washington and Lee University (W&L). Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horowitz has called Lexington “the second city of Confederate remembrance: Medina to Richmond’s Mecca.” Seidule holds a Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University and is professor emeritus of history at West Point, where he taught for two decades. He served in the U.S. Army for thirty-six years, retiring as a brigadier general. His books include The West Point History of the Civil War.
To write such an honest and direct case against all that he had been taught, Seidule brings his professional understanding of history; a long reverence for Robert E. Lee; deep indoctrination into what was expected of a white, Southern male; and a belief that an oath to defend the United States should not be broken. Seidule calls for nothing less than a total reckoning with American history to set the record straight. And he does so by laying out the path to his own personal reckoning with riveting detail, great attention to the facts, and a blunt directness that one would expect from a brigadier general who also happens to be a historian.
Seidule walks the reader through each step of his youthful indoctrination of the myth of Robert E. Lee as the greatest man who ever lived, and who led the Confederate army in a just cause for states rights. Lee, according to the myth, only lost the Civil War due to the overwhelming resources of the North. One learns of the lessons Seidule absorbed in 1960s Alexandria during the Civil War centennial and the civil rights era. Those lessons were heavily imbued with the Lost Cause myth, with Lee’s greatness central to that story. He learned them thanks, in no small part, to the history books the state of Virginia gave him to read in school. Seidule includes deeply personal chapters about his time in Monroe, and in Lexington, and then as a rising young army officer at bases named for Confederate generals who were traitors against the United States. It is at West Point, however, where he had his “a-ha” moment, and recognized that what he learned his entire life was a lie. Throughout he uses the historian’s tools to deconstruct the myth, lie-by-lie, with facts and straight talk.
It is the directness of the language, the refusal to sugar-coat the facts or his own personal failings, that brings the reader to see the righteousness of his work. He admits an adoration for the myth of Robert E. Lee that is a religion. Seidule was in awe when he first walked into Lee Chapel at W&L.
“I saw the altar, the Holy Table. Except that on top of the table lay Robert E. Lee’s statue. My school worshipped Robert E. Lee, literally…At Lee Chapel, we had a church dedicated to the southern saint…Traveller’s bones (from Lee’s faithful horse) became another relic for pilgrims and Lee Chapel became the St. Peter’s Basilica of the Lost Cause religion.”
Seidule doesn’t mince words. Slavery was THE cause of the war as explained before in this blog. How can we be so certain? The leaders of the Confederate states told us so at the time. Use of the word “plantation” sugar coats the reality, so Seidule calls these sites that were central to the southern economy by a more accurate name — enslaved labor farms. He explains that the earliest official name for the war is the “War of the Rebellion” which suits him just fine, because that’s what it was. Civil War is okay as well. But when “War Between the States” or “The War of Northern Aggression” is used, he knows that a Lost Cause myth is behind it.
Then he moves into discussing the two armies who fought in the War of the Rebellion, and how they came to be misnamed (thanks in part to a years-long campaign by the United Daughters of the Confederacy). We usually reference the Union army…
“as though they belonged to an organization that fought only one war. An army relegated to the dustbin of history, as Karl Marx would say. No, the boys in blue fought in the U.S. Army for the United States of America. The names we use matter. By saying Union and Confederate, Blue and Gray, North and South, we lose the fundamental difference between the two sides. The United States fought against a rebel force that would not accept the results of a democratic election and chose armed rebellion.” (emphasis added)
In his final chapter entitled “My verdict: Robert E. Lee committed treason,” the myths about Lee the man are similarly laid bare for the lies they are. Southerners heard that Lee was the only student ever at West Point to go four years without receiving a demerit. In fact, five other students in his class achieved the same honor. Contrary to myth, Lee was not kind to the enslaved persons he owned, received primarily through his wife’s inheritance. He split up families through the sale and the rental of those individuals, and did all in his power to try and ignore the provision in his father-in-law’s will that all the enslaved individuals under his ownership would be emancipated five years after his death. Another part of the myth is that Lee “had” to resign from the U.S. Army because he was a Virginian, and all sons of Virginia put their state above country. In fact, Lee was one of eight U.S. Army Colonelsfrom Virginia at the time of secession. Seven of them remained loyal to their solemn oath to the U.S. Constitution. Only Robert E. Lee resigned and broke his oath. Lee said he was fighting for Virginia, but he quickly resigned his commission leading the State of Virginia’s forces to accept a role in the Confederate States of America’s army. He did so because he profited from slavery.
Robert E. Lee was the only senior officer who was actually in charge of hundreds of enslaved workers and in the U.S. Army in 1861. His views — before, during, and after the war — were much more closely aligned with the large slaveowners of the South than with his fellow Army officers. In 256 hard-hitting pages, Seidule refutes the myth-making around Robert E. Lee point-by-point, and reminds the reader on multiple occasions that the myth was constructed to win the narrative for slave-owners who had lost the war.
Lee’s decision to fight against the United States was not just wrong; it was treasonous. Even worse, he committed treason to perpetuate slavery.
Seidule, a fellow Southerner, is seven years my junior. I was drawn in to the Civil War centennial from 1961-1965 and hiked battlefields with my father from Shiloh to Nashville. While my university years were not spent at one of those colleges that were attracting the “status-seeking white Southern high schooler” (e.g., Sewanee, Duke, Davidson, Vanderbilt, W&L), my friends were there. I lived in Americus, Georgia, during the time that Seidule was in Monroe. Americus has a very complicated history when it comes to civil rights: a few years before I moved to Americus, the deacons of the First Baptist Church stood outside the front doors to keep Blacks from attending, and lynchings were a part of the city’s history. We moved to Staunton, Virginia, in 1983 while Seidule was less than 50 miles away in Lexington. Most importantly, my beloved grandmother was a life-long member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and a proponent of the myth of the Lost Cause. I read her UDC magazines as well as the works of Douglas Southall Freeman — Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer who helped solidify the myth as much as anyone.
Seeing the myth we both were raised on as just that — a myth — has taken time. The truth continues to unfold. Ty Seidule has helped all Americans who wish to know more of that truth understand the facts, and their own personal histories, in a much deeper and richer way with this highly recommended book. As he notes at the end:
Racism is the virus in the American dirt, infecting everything and everyone. To combat racism, we must do more than acknowledge the long history of white supremacy. Policies must change. Yet, an understanding of history remains the foundation. The only way to prevent a racist future is to first understand our racist past.
In our second year of a Holy Week overlaid with the heartache of a worldwide pandemic which is exacerbating the social and economic injustice of our times, a Saturday Soundtrack with lamentations feels right for the season. As was the case in 2020, my son, Andrew Bearden Brown, plays a role in this post. As one of the singers, Andrew is part of the program Lamentations: Music and Reflections for Holy Week from St. John’s Lafayette Square in Washington, DC.
This posting comes early, on Maundy Thursday, to give readers the chance to enjoy the music throughout the weekend.
The 38-minute program alternates between reflections by priests in the church on life in a year in quarantine and beautiful music by Tallis, Tomkins, and other beloved composers and arrangers.
Members of the St. John’s choir provide the music: Tory Wood and Samantha Scheff (sopranos), Charlotte Stewart (alto), Andrew Brown (tenor), and Christopher Jones (bass). The quintet is under the direction of Brent Erstad.
You are encouraged to listen to the entire program, as the reflections are thoughtful and provide context. However, if your focus is solely on the music, you can find the beginnings of each piece in the video by going to the time markings below.
The program includes:
Reflection | Rev. Robert W. Fisher
The Lamentations of Jeremiah I — Thomas Tallis (5:34)
Reflection | Rev. Savannah Ponder
When David Heard — Thomas Tomkins (18:49)*
Reflection | Rev. William Morris
There is a Balm in Gilead — arr. William Dawson (26:40)**
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Chile — arr. Carl Haywood (31:14)
This Little Light of Mine — arr. William Bradley Roberts (33:53)
Whatever your religious tradition or beliefs, Andrew and I hope in this year of lamentations for our broken world, you can find solace in the beautiful choral music of Holy Week.
*I sang this piece with Canticum Novum in the 1980s and 1990s in the Shenandoah Valley. It is one of the most heart-wrenching musical cries of despair imaginable.
**If you are having trouble picking him out under the masks, Andrew begins this piece with the tenor solo.
Upon passage of the American Rescue Plan, President Joe Biden asked us to remember that “the government isn’t some foreign force in a distant capital. No, it’s us, all of us, we the people.” Since 1981 and the Reagan revolution to undermine democracy for the benefit of the oligarchs in the private sector, “we the people” as the basis for our government has been a radical concept. It is time to end that long discredited campaign.
As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.
“Forty Januaries ago, Ronald Reagan, upon assuming the most powerful governmental office in the history of civilization, declared in his inaugural address that “in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
There was faulty reasoning with Reagan’s pronouncement then, and — after 40 years — we’ve seen all too well the harmful impact of work to undermine our democracy for personal gain. Giridharadas makes the case that Biden is just the right person to begin to unwind that selfish and destructive belief system.
“We don’t yet know if Biden has the stomach to make as strident a case for government-as-solution as Reagan made against the state. But it would be foolish not to observe that, thanks in part to the agitations of those who have shown the war on government to be an epic disaster (and who have fought Biden oftentimes), something new is happening. The proof that it is happening is that a moderate like Biden is on board.
At this point, Giridharadas includes the best short description of the intersecting crises of the past year — tied to their long-term impacts — that has come across my computer screen this year.
“I don’t think Biden had a religious awakening. I think the five intersecting crises of the past year made it impossible for anyone in his position to attempt to be anything but transformational and go down in history as a serious person. There was Covid, of course, and the more chronically unhealthy country it found. There was the economic crisis it unleashed, and, again, the more chronically precarious and hard-up economy that crisis exacerbated. There was the racial crisis put front and center by Black Lives Matter and, more generally, a growing recognition of the need to reckon with things long overdue and make the society safe and healthy and dignified for people of all marginalized backgrounds. There was the democratic crisis revealed by the fact that, for a while there, we weren’t sure about a peaceful transfer of power. And there was climate, the question that refuses to go away, even in plagues, with coronatime perhaps serving as a test drive for what it looks like for the world to rally together.
There are no personal solutions to problems like these. There are no corporate solutions to them. There are no nonprofit solutions to them. As Carol Hanisch once taught us, there are only political solutions to shared political problems like these. The strange gift President Biden inherited was a network of problems so deep-rooted, so far-reaching, so long-in-the-making, so gnarled in their intersections, that they provide the best cover and ammunition in years to advocate for government(emphasis added).
This is an excellent article that I encourage you to read in full. We have to stop making war on ourselves.
One doesn’t expect to read about the need for intervention to deradicalize the Christian right in a magazine website devoted to foreign policy. But two assistant professors at The Citadel, Melissa Graves and Muhammad Fraser-Rahim, make the case for intervention at Foreign Policy magazine in their article Deradicalization Needed for Evangelical Christian QAnon Believers. They suggest we need programs in the U.S. similar to those designed to reform violent jihadis abroad. Such work could help tackle the spread of QAnon and other conspiracy theories in evangelical communities.
“Religious people are particularly susceptible to conspiracy theories due to their belief in the supernatural and their endorsement of a good-versus-evil worldview.“
“Christian communities have suffered extreme damage from divisions among believers caused by QAnon theories. Online support groups have sprung up in recent months to offer support for family members of QAnon members. In a recent op-ed, New York Times columnist David Brooks aptly observed, “there is strife within every [Christian] family, within every congregation, and it may take generations to recover.” QAnon conspiracies are just the latest iteration of a long tradition of right-wing extremism, rooted in white supremacy and anti-Semitism.“
Graves and Fraser-Rahim note that one recent event put this issue front and center.
“Nothing, however, has shifted the narrative regarding evangelicals and QAnon as much as the Capitol insurrection. No longer is QAnon seen as a fringe belief among white evangelicals; rather, it is the basis for a newly emerging violent Christian extremism. Elizabeth Neumann, a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security, has acknowledged the national security threat posed by those who are violently motivated by QAnon conspiracy theories.
“Try as they might to seem “tough,” the media did not succeed in knocking Biden off message. Biden spoke in great detail and length to show not only his mastery of the issues but also to suck tension and conflict out of the room. He simply would not be lured into accepting a false premise devised by Republicans (i.e., that his nice demeanor prompts parents to send kids thousands of miles under deadly conditions). ‘I’m going to send him on a thousand-mile journey across a desert and up to the United States because I know Joe Biden is a nice guy and he’ll take care of him? What a desperate act to take,’ he said. ‘The circumstances must be horrible.’”
“As a loyal Fox News viewer, I am disgusted by President Joe Biden’s stubborn and un-American refusal to behave in a way that matches the narrative I have been receiving.
Biden is, I’m told, a senile old man who barely knows he’s there, and also a radical leftist tyrant fiendishly scheming to turn America into a socialist hellscape that outlaws Dr. Seuss and the Bible and, if it exists, the Dr. Seuss version of the Bible.“
We’ll end with one other post that should make you smile. Tennessee writer (and current LA resident) Tracy Moore writes of how she has rediscovered her roots in the Washington Post piece How covid-19 gave me back my Southern accent.
“Everyone claims to like Southern accents these days, but what they mean is an anachronistic upper-class affectation, where people lose the letters “g” and “r” on the back side of words. What they don’t mean is an Appalachian dialect, where an “r” shows up in places it’s got no business being. I would learn that superfluous consonant in warsh is called the Intrusive R by linguists — even the operative word, intrusive, suggests an infection.
I spent a lifetime reshaping my speech. It took some doing — the flat “i,” as in “Ahm nihhhnteen,” took years to tamp down, and resurfaced whenever I had a couple of beers. I made sure warsh didn’t stick, but the shame did, and it got me both ways: ashamed I had ever sounded so country in the first place, and ashamed I’d lacked the courage to stay true to it. Still, I don’t believe for a second I’d have made it as a journalist any other way.“
As a result of lockdown during the pandemic, Moore has learned to come to terms, and even embrace, her roots.
While never possessed of that East Tennessee Appalachian accent, I have been known to launch into some harsh — for many ears — Middle Tennessee country dialect. One colleague in particular used to poke fun at my accent and especially the use of the word “might” in strange places.
Oh, and yes, I have been known to say “that dog won’t hunt” in a professional meeting. Get over it.
A former colleague posts an article each day on LinkedIn to help her friends and readers navigate the world. My work day often begins by reading either the full article or Anoka’s helpful summaries, which is how I learned about the existence of telephone anxiety.
An article on The Conversation website reported that a 2019 survey of UK office workers found 76% of millennials and 40% of baby boomers have anxious thoughts when their phone rings. As a result, 61% of millennials would completely avoid calls if possible, compared with 42% of baby boomers.
In my family both parents enjoyed talking on the telephone, so this new information surprised me. However, I may be behind the times. In a recent conversation on the topic, our millennial son told us that his generation believes phone calls can be an imposition on someone else’s time. And when this tweet showed up in another context and hit too close to home, I was reminded that there are many different perspectives to consider.
Nonetheless, let’s have a look at telephone anxiety. There were several reasons given in the article as to why people feel anxious when the phone rings (or chirps, or whatever) for them. Anoka summarized them as:
Talking on the phone can be daunting because we’re limited to just the sounds of our voices.
Research also suggests phone anxiety is related to a preoccupation with what the other person thinks of them.
Another reason phone calls can sometimes feel overwhelming is the pressure that comes with being someone else’s focus.
A phone conversation can feel impulsive and risky.
I admit to having experienced pangs of worry in the past when taking certain calls. But on the same day that Anoka posted her article, I used the phone to call a friend. We once worked together on an almost daily basis. Over the last 20 years, however, we had done little more than exchange holiday letters. Now in his 90s, his last letter led me to think that a call would be welcome.
It turned out to be the best twenty minutes I spent that day.
After getting over his surprise to hear this voice from the past, we jumped in to discuss the pandemic and current family situations. Then we moved into a discussion about work and associates, past and present. Even into his 90s he is writing an autobiography about the lessons learned from landmarks. He had a suggestion for a project I am involved with at the moment. We both were able to express our appreciation for the support given by the other over the course of our careers.
Given the health effects of the coronavirus on those over the age of 65 — an age group that may also struggle managing Zoom technology — the all-too-important human touch often has to be limited to coming “over the telephone wire” as we used to sing. But reaching out and hearing that human voice brings so much meaning that an email or even a letter cannot achieve. That can also be true even for those in younger generations.
To combat phone anxiety, the article suggests making a list of the people you need to speak to on the phone, such as friends or colleagues, and then going through each one by reflecting on what it is about the call that makes you anxious. If you think you might benefit from seeking professional help, counseling is a great option and there are a number of talking therapies available.
But one of the most effective ways to overcome phone anxiety is to expose yourself to more phone calls. Pick up the phone and call someone you haven’t talked to in a while. Take a chance that it won’t be an imposition but will, in fact, be welcomed. Say hello in there. Then do it again. And again. And again.
You will likely receive just as much in making the call as the other person will in hearing from you.
One of the joys of writing Saturday Soundtrack — my weekly music post — is the discovery of new musicians and new bands that pop up unexpectedly in the research. I came across Low Lily last fall while catching up on the music of Matt Flinner, an artist recently featured on Soundtrack. This Vermont-based vocal and string band…
“explores the roots and branches of American folk music with traditional influences and modern inspiration that weaves together a unique brand of acoustic music. Liz Simmons (vocals and guitar), Flynn Cohen (vocals, guitar and mandolin), and Lissa Schneckenburger (vocals and fiddle) are masterful players with deep relationships to traditional music styles ranging from bluegrass to Irish, Scottish, New England and Old Time Appalachian sounds. When you combine this with stellar composition skills and inventive arrangements you get music that is rooted yet contemporary.“
The band’s “outstanding and meticulous” vocal blend first drew me to the group. This comes from many years together on the road, both as a band and as key members of projects by other musicians. Hope Lingers On, written by Lissa Schneckenburger with Liz Simmons on the lead, is a wonderful tune in which to hear their beautifully crafted harmonies.
My love, when honor is gone
My love, when honor is gone
In our darkest hour hope lingers on
My country, when justice is gone
My country, when justice is gone
In our darkest hour hope lingers on
I will not hate, and I will not fear
In our darkest hour, hope lingers here
Next let’s explore the band’s instrumental work — featuring fiddle and mandolin leads by Schneckenburger and Cohen — with the lovely tune The Good Part.
10,000 Days Like These was the title track of Low Lily’s 2018 album, featured here in a live version. That’s followed by The Girl’s Not Mine with a lead vocal by fiddler Lissa Schneckenburger.
Matt Flinner joins the band in this 2019 live performance of the bluegrass tune Love of the Mountains.
One of the band’s more recent projects has been a remix of Dark Skies Again from the 10,000 Days album.
“Went real far from home, I didn’t know what I’d find
Things had been tough and I needed some peace of mind
I put miles of ocean between me and it all
Lay down under the stars til I felt real small.
Dark skies again
Dark skies again
I’ve been hanging around that dirty town too long
Sometimes you don’t know where it’ll all come down.“
We’ll end where we began, with another great vocal mix — this time underpinned by a beautiful bass line — on Nobody Knows.
Nobody told me that the road would be easy…but it is nice to have such beautiful music to take us along the path.
Enjoy.
More to come…
DJB
Image of Low Lily from HOME | LOW LILY. I love the Gibson A-4 mandolin Flynn Cohen holds in this picture. I have one from 1921 that features the same red sunburst coloring and similar marks of wear. It is a beautiful instrument.
With the issues around social justice, the future of democracy, climate change, and a global health crisis, we are clearly living in a historic point in time in the United States. But one piece of history that may not be fully understood or appreciated by most Americans is the confirmation of a Native American as Secretary of the Interior. As Secretary Deb Haaland’s new boss might say, it is a really, really, really BFD.
As always, this Weekly Reader features links to recent articles that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry.
“I was raised in Lawrence by my Navajo mother and Scottish and Romanian father. As a child, the juxtaposition between the history of Haskell Indian Nations University and the vibrancy of the young Native people pursuing a college education left me confused about how these two realities could exist on this small plot of land in eastern Kansas. Growing up, I would present my Certificate of Indian Blood to the Indian Health Service clinic on campus for routine dental and medical screenings, as promised in treaties from over a century earlier.
Because of the unique relationship that the federal government has with American Indian tribes, and the fact that American Indians have a unique political and legal identity in addition to race, my healthcare and education were controlled by the policies of the Department of the Interior. The policies of Congress, the Department of the Interior, and consequently those of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, over the past century have defined Haskell and the many Native people within it by the (failed) policies, (lack of) funding, and multitude of (broken) treaty obligations.“
As Dr. Necefer notes, “a number of secretaries of the interior in recent decades have been more supportive of tribes and advanced beneficial policies.” However, not a single one of those secretaries has “had to live with the effects of these policies after their tenure.” Until now.
There is no one size fits all for Native Nations when it comes to economic development, energy, and climate policy….The challenge of this position, in this time, is significant. Secretary Haaland not only inherits the long and tumultuous history of the position she has been appointed to, but also the uncertain questions of the role of federal lands in climate policy….Auntie Deb, as she is known endearingly within many Native communities, is well aware of how her tenure will affect her life, those of her community, and Native people throughout this country. She has a stake in the game, and her future success will open the door for many other Native people after her.
This is truly a BFD.
History is also being made in the response to the coronavirus, as the administration works to clean up the mess made by the former denier-in-chief. While most of the nation recently watched President Joe Biden’s thoughtful, sober, and hopeful speech concerning the response to a deadly, worldwide pandemic with the gravity it deserved, Mark Sumner, writing at The Daily Kos, let us know that those who chose to turn to conservative media sites for information found something…how shall we say it…different. He observes that Fox News’ coverage of Biden speech underscores the total disintegration of conservative news.
“Meanwhile, on Fox News, viewers saw a presidential address as they never had before — with a real-time box allowing Tucker Carlson to mug for the camera in response to everything Biden said. Under the banner “Live Tucker Reaction,” Carlson did his best to demonstrate outrage and disgust with expressions large enough to overcome the relatively small size of his on-screen box. Meanwhile, the shifting Fox chyron offered its own commentary, including reminding viewers repeatedly in the last 10 minutes that “Biden speech nearly finished; Tucker will respond.” And spending the last couple of minutes pouting that “Biden should be finished.”
On the one hand, it may seem a wonder that Fox News decided to air the speech in any form. After all, since President Biden moved into the Oval Office, Fox has determined that it would be much better to cover anything — including devoting a full day to a misread press release about a plastic toy potato — rather than deal with the issues facing the nation. But the Carlson-in-a-box episode may serve to underscore something that’s been obvious for months: Fox News is dead.“
“It didn’t have to be this way — and it might not have been this way had Mitch McConnell lived up to his reputation as a master tactician. Think about it. If you don’t want the majority to emasculate you, and you don’t have a tool for stopping the majority from emasculating you, there’s only one thing to do: stop giving the majority reasons for emasculating you. Mitch McConnell could have vowed not to abuse the filibuster, as he has so many times before, in the hope that the Democrats don’t take it away. Instead, he vowed to block everything if the Democrats take away his favorite tool for blocking everything. I can’t imagine Nancy Pelosi doing something so dumb.
Of course, this is the man who stole a Supreme Court seat before looking the other way while the Russians sabotaged a Democratic presidential candidate. This same man rammed through another Supreme Court justice by breaking the rule he totally made up to prevent a former Democratic president from naming a Supreme Court justice. To prevent the Democrats from nuking the filibuster, he would have to keep his promise not to abuse it, but honestly, after all this time, why would the Democrats trust him?“
Stoehr has another important Editorial Board piece, this time about the really bad coverage of the border situation, in Chuck Todd and the anti-moral press.
Reporters prefer covering partisan conflict, especially conflict that has no foreseeable way of being resolved. Conflict begets attention begets profits—or just a feeling of being pivotal to the country’s destiny. The press corps will be at the heart of the action even if its members have to invent the action.…
“The border is an old mess the new administration must clean up. But it is not a ‘political crisis’ unless Chuck Todd and others think decency and law constitute political crises.“
I’ll end with links to four articles you should really, really, really read.
First up, my friend and former colleague Tom Mayes interviews Empire State Development EVP Holly Leicht for Preservation Magazine inLoss, Redemption, Renewal: The Moynihan Train Hall. While the transportation solution isn’t perfect by any means (that would require demolishing Madison Square Garden), the design work on the James A. Farley Post Office Building in Manhattan is beautiful in helping bring back memories of old Penn Station in New York.
Cory Albertson, writing in The Bitter Southerner, has a deeply personal article entitled The Radical Queerness of Dolly Parton. This thoughtful essay by the Georgia-born Albertson offers thanks for the ways Dolly’s music, stage presence, and insistence on being different spurred him to “hitch a ride with the wind.”
“It doesn’t hurt that when Progressive introduced the Dr. Rick ads in April 2020, they quickly became a warm, sunny island of gentle observational humor in a vast sea of grim commercials murmuring about “these uncertain times.” Or that they’re performed by a cast of veteran improv actors recruited from the Groundlings and Second City. (In one roundly beloved bit, two of Dr. Rick’s patients struggle not to stare at a stranger with blue hair. ‘We all see it,’ Dr. Rick tells them under his breath, as they continue to gape. ‘We all-l-l see it.’ That bit was largely improvised.)“
And for something you never expected, take a look at Liz Alterman’s post in McSweeney’s entitled 24 Surprising Ways to Injure Yourself When You’re Over 50. I laughed especially hard at numbers 10 (opening a jar}, 11 (moving that jar back and forth as you squint to decipher its expiration date) and 15 (reaching into the backseat of your car for an umbrella). I’ve come dangerously close to injuring myself with all three!
After a recent and particularly egregious blunder, my apology was accepted, accompanied by the comment that, “I knew you were just thinking like a male.”
In the context, it sure sounded like an oxymoron.
There are studies showing how men and women think differently, but that’s not what happened in this instance. My actions were the result of not really thinking at all. After misreading an email and misremembering something from the past, I proceeded to push ahead without listening to suggestions that I could be wrong.
In the end things worked out fine. However, my unwillingness to stop and ask for help put me squarely in the mindset of “thinking while male.” I wasn’t really thinking deeply about what I was doing. Unfortunately, I do it often enough to recognize the signs.
Stereotypes can be harmful and are often used to avoid getting to know people as individuals in order to look down on them as a group. They also describe behavior, roles, and preconceived notions we absorb from an early age as appropriate for our gender or social class. One of the best known stereotypes of the male mindset is the willingness to drive for long periods of time rather than stop and ask for directions. In this case, it becomes a stereotype because so many of us have adopted this behavior without giving a great deal of thought as to the reasons for our actions. But these routines don’t have to be self-fulfilling prophecies in our own lives. We can defy convention. Habits do not have to become destiny.
In our family discussions, we’ve now reflected over which past factors may have contributed to an increase in my oh-so-self-assured lack of judgment. Identifying the problem and calling something by name is a first step in making the conscious decision to break the routine that leads to bad habits. We discussed things I could do to be more present and mindful. I was also gifted a little book by Lee Coit, Listening, where I’ve been reading about the difference between the limitations of ego and the understanding that comes from following an inner guide that is deeper and connected to a truer vision of the world. Listening to that guide requires stillness, avoiding the tendency to pre-plan, and having no investment in the answer to the questions other than wanting to follow what is true. I don’t have to always be “right.”
Shifting from a busy job filled with tasks and challenges to the different pace of the next third of my life is not a simple step. Even after taking a gap year and then enduring — along with the rest of the world — pandemic lock-down, I still find I rely too much on the old habits. Yet as one of my mentors suggested, this time in life can be so much more meaningful if I will slow down, be present, listen, and think deeply about what is before me.
That means I will need to stop “thinking while male.”
Canadian singer and songwriter Elise LeGrow grabbed my attention with her vibe on Who Do You Love, breaking the Bo Diddley classic down to a new set of bare bones for my Halloween version of Soundtrack. Her rasping howl brought ‘a tombstone hand and a graveyard mind’ to life and I was immediately determined to hear more. So here we are with a full-length treatment on Saturday Soundtrack.
LeGrow was signed to a publishing deal in 2009 after a live performance at the NXNE festival in Toronto. And while many of her early efforts on YouTube are covers, you can immediately hear the distinctive voice and musical sensibilities on tunes such as Bill Withers’Ain’t No Sunshine.
The beautiful Anymore, also from 2014, displays an ease and control with her voice that can be mesmerizing.
LeGrow has a wonderfully “raspy” voice that takes over no matter the spirit of the tune. She explained it this way to American Songwriter.
“I’m told that I have a lot of ‘sound.’ One of the challenges that I’ve encountered again and again is finding the right sound for the song. Ultimately, the song is the most important thing to me. It’s more important than the production, it’s more important than the show — it’s all about the song. So, for me, the vocal tone is there to serve the song. It’s one of many tools that tells the story. So, my vocal tone on this song (Evan) is really broken up, and I think that fits the sentiment of the song. Whereas, some of the other songs on the record have a completely different vibe, so you’re going to hear a lot of different tones coming out of me in the future. They’re all a little raspy! But, this song was much more intimate, it has a more intimate tone than you’ll hear on other songs of mine.
Her first full-length debut album, Playing Chess, was drawn entirely from the catalog of Chicago’s iconic Chess label, home to Muddy Waters, Etta James, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and so many more. While her grandfather was a drummer and trumpeter active in Chicago’s jazz scene in the 1950s, LeGrow had only a passing familiarity with the history of Chess. But after realizing that many of the artists she admired had recorded for the label, she decided to make their music her own.
LeGrow didn’t faithfully recreate this material. Her interpretations, as one reviewer notes, “strip the tracks of their previous identities, transporting them to a world where the past and present are inextricably intertwined.” I am especially fond of the live acoustic versions she has posted of several of the tunes.
The album begins with the aforementioned Who Do You Love. Other favorites from the album include You Never Can Tell, and Rescue Me. LeGrow takes these familiar songs and — with her inimitable style, phrasing, and arrangements — makes them her own.
In one of her more recent releases, she sings of the loss of a young friend, a song she wrote over several years.
What inspired this song was a friendship with a boy named Evan. We met in high school — he was actually my then-boyfriend’s best friend. When I met Evan, we instantly became friends and we shared this crazy time. We had a whole group of friends that all lived in this neighborhood together and we used to party a lot… we were teenagers, we were kids. When I look back on those years, it really feels like it was a ‘golden age.’ This song is the culmination of 10 years of grappling with the loss of my friend Evan and the emotions that came with that. That’s why it took so long to write it — I’d sit down and try to write, but I’d just get overcome with sadness. I think what allowed me to finally put pen to page was focusing on the good memories we shared. That’s what I talk about in this song; the music we listened to, the TV we used to watch, the joyful moments.
Let’s end with Drinking in the Day, another LeGrow tune that showcases both her singing and songwriting skills.
“Oh babe, don’t say you’re doing fine Don’t hide yourself away, something on your mind You’re drinking in the day, coming from the way Sometimes it’s good to cry, cry cry cry cry“
MORE TO COME... 