The Shawnee Chapter of Code Pink hosted a Mother’s Day Celebration in Woodland Park this past Saturday. I had already met the primary organizers, Janice & Jerry at the Spiritual Walk for Peace on Easter Sunday. After reading their literature, and looking at the national organization’s website (cited above), I decided this was a cause I could support.
I toyed off & on with the notion of driving to Shawnee to perform at the rally. Shawnee is a little less than an hour away from OKC, so this seemed like a very small investment to make in a worthy cause. Plus, I thought it might be a good experience for me to perform a set as a solo act. So, I e-mailed the organizers, and we made preliminary plans via that ethereal medium.
Having no idea how many performers would be at the two-hour event — even the organizers were not positive until shortly before things started — I planned three sets of ~15 min each, and prepared my ego to do only one. As it turned out, this was a good plan.
There were six speakers, so the rough outline was for me to do a set, followed by two speakers, then do another set. I was grateful that I had brought a song list along, with the plan for the three sets – this was a technique I learned from Lark.
The weather in central Oklahoma had been pretty bad the latter part of last week — tornadoes ripped through their traditional path of Moore, east OKC, Edmond, and NE OK. There was some forecast of storms Saturday morning in Shawnee. As it turned out, they had a pretty strong storm which blew through at 1:00, but things cleared off by the time the event started, at 3. It was sunny enough for me to get respectably red (admittedly not much of a challenge for this fair-haired, fair-skinned boy). The organizers and I agreed that the unpredictable weather may have prevented as large a crowd as we might have hoped for.
I had expected to be performing for mostly strangers — "soon to be friends" — but I met a woman who graduated two years before me at PC West – Gretchen. Gretchen ran with Rusty Nichols (also two years before me), who was pals with my friends Drew Curtis, Gary Shilling, and Gary Zimmerman. These last three were fellow members of the class of 1975. Drew & Shilling, in particular, were members of the fabled "Street Saints" with whom I spent a mythic summer in Princeton, NJ.
Gretchen was joined by her husband, Bobby Crow, who plays blues harp. He got very excited when he saw my blues harp, and said he wished he’d brought his. I said "Why not?" and he went home to get it. Gary played two of his own tunes as I pounded out chords in the key of A (the fifth to his “d” harp).
I opened with my arrangement of the Youngblood’s “Get Together,” which I play in drop-D tuning. I also used my new “jelifish” pic, which is supposed to make a six-string guitar sound like a 12-string. Heaven only knows if it really did — there was no instrument mic, and my guitar has no pickup, so folk could just barely hear the guitar.
I began the performance by encouraging the audience (around 20 folk) to sing along. Though I couldn’t hear them, I could see their lips moving. As planned, I followed that with “Pack Up Your Sorrows.” Then I played my medley of Wm Blake’s “The Tyger” (tune by Alan Ginsberg) and Dylan’s “Masters of War”, which I dedicated to the Military Industrial Complex — which I believe to be the prime movers of recent events.
Set Two — Bobby read two poems, then brought me on-stage to accompany him on his first blues song. We had run through the song a couple of times, and I think we did very well. The man plays a mean harp (much better than me), and the lyrics were also good. I followed his tune with “Their Brains Were Small and They Died”, which I introduced as a cautionary tale. I do a mouth trumpet thing in this tune, as a little homage to my Aunt Merri, who did this as part of her night-club act back in the day. I closed the set with John McCutcheon’s “Immigrant”. This song ends with audience participation — “Ay-y-y am an immigrant, I am,” repeated as often as the performer dares. I like to do this as a fade-out, by walking away from the mike. Just as I did, I had the inspiration to walk off stage, into the audience. Singing with them in that way was very special for me.
Set Three — I opened with Dylan’s “Mighty Quinn.” Now, this is a song where I totally indulge my inner ham. I give it a long introduction where I explain that it is the official song of the faux millennium (2000), and sing the first verse in the style of Leonard Cohen. The day before the event I had an inspiration for the second verse:
“Everybody’s just standing ‘round, just feeding pigeons on a limb,
But when Bush the Shrub gets here, all the pigeons gonna run to him!”
The audience liked that. I employ so many singing styles in this song (rock, soul, and faux-Dylan) that it’s hard to keep track of them all.
I re-introduced Bobby back to the stage for another of his blues songs — which we had not rehearsed. As I said at the time, the ultimate in home-made music. The challenge for me was to work some variations on the "A" blues progression. I’ll confess now, to the anonymous ether, that I see myself as a competent guitarist who is an exceptional singer. I followed this with my close-to-Bo Didley version of Cohen’s “Bird on the Wire.”
I continued with a story about how, each year, I nominate a different song for the national anthem. In 2000, my nominee was "Born to Run". In 2001, my nominee was "Sixteen Tons" Since I nominate these songs on July 4, I did not think the gag would fly in 2002 – so I tried to play the Star-Spangled Banner, Travis-style, as a medley with "This Land is Your Land."
So, a couple of months early, I used this rally as the time to introduce this year’s nominee for an alternate national anthem — the humorous tune "Your State’s Name Here," by the Berriman’s. People really enjoyed it. I closed with Guthrie’s version of "Lonesome Valley" which was only slightly spoiled by the fact that I couldn’t remember all the words.
So … with three sets of approx 15 min each, I played a total of 45 min. The longest set I’ve done as a solo act. I drove home exhausted, and happy.
Envoi
People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and openness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and open anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People who really want help may attack you if you help them.
Help them anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt.
Give the world your best anyway.
— Mother Teresa
No comments:
Post a Comment