I can barely remember a time when I did not feel the lure of America – the dream of it. For me, as a child growing up in a very troubled Northern Ireland, America was always the promise of a sunny day. My grandmother was responsible for this. Although she died when I was very young, she is vibrant in my mind’s eye. I can still hear her voice, gentle but urgent, coaxing her daughter – my mother – to follow the sun as she had once done.
In the 1920s, she and my grandfather had emigrated to America, settling in Connecticut. They loved the boundless opportunities before them and knew they had made the right move, but a relentless stream of letters from back home, guilt-spiced reminders of familial obligation, ultimately pulled them back across the ocean to rural Derry, with their American-born children – four sons and a daughter.
My grandmother isn’t smiling in the photograph that would be placed in the family passport and stamped as she boarded the boat to return to a part of the world that would one day enchant the global literati as Nobel Laureate poet Seamus Heaney’s HomePlace. But in 1932, the farmhouse on the Broagh road was an austere and unwelcoming place for my grandmother and her young American children.
Defeated, with an air of resignation that stayed with her always, she and my grandfather resumed the known and expected ways of ‘home,’ abandoning forever the glittering possibilities in America. Within six years, their family was complete with two more daughters, one of whom is my mother.
There was little opportunity and no easy money for them. As a matter of economic necessity, the family was ‘off the grid,’ all of them resigned to hard work. There was, my mother tells me, a vague awareness of education as a way up and out, but it wasn’t really enforced beyond my grandmother’s mantra that “the pen was easier handled than the spade.” For my grandmother, America would always be the best option. She urged my parents to go for it, knowing my dad’s entrepreneurial spirit would have paid off. Yes, it would. But the right time to leave Northern Ireland eluded my parents.
A Spectacular Risk
For me, it was different. I grew up unafraid to take what Doris Kearns Goodwin once called that “spectacular risk” – to leave my home country. In the late 1980s, as Northern Ireland’s Troubles raged around me, I left. I suppose I was something of a cliche, part of the “brain drain.” Young, well-educated, a bit wild, I couldn’t wait to get out of there and maybe live out my grandmother’s dream. I remember I wrote a clever poem to the local bank manager – I really did – and subsequently got an overdraft to pay my fare to New York.
I packed my backpack and off I went, looking for America. Just like that.
I loved what awaited me. I loved diners and convenience stores that were conveniently open 24 hours a day and roads that went on forever. I loved cars that I had only seen in movies and I loved percolated coffee and bagels and New York style pizza by the slice. I loved bowling alleys, and I loved baseball. I didn’t understand it, but I loved it. I loved the Champion store in Hyde Park or maybe it was Poughkeepsie, where I bought T-shirts with the names of baseball teams emblazoned on them. I loved the road-trip that would eventually take me from upstate New York to Phoenix, Arizona.
I thought I was in a Bruce Springsteen song.
Much to the chagrin of my parents, my first job was in a Phoenix bar. A dive bar by any other name. With my Northern Ireland accent and the right amount of naiveté about America, I was the main source of amusement for the men who stopped by for a shot and a beer after their shift at a nearby manufacturing plant. They greeted me every day with “Hey Irish, gimme a beer.” And, I’d ask what color because I hadn’t memorized yellow for Coors, silver for Coors Light, blue for Miller Lite etc. My beer knowledge was limited to Guinness, Harp, or Bass. Those avuncular guys taught me how to play liar’s poker and cribbage, and they took care of me, making sure I got home safely to my apartment every night. The best part of the job was that I was also in charge of the jukebox and every couple of weeks I’d go to a big warehouse somewhere in Phoenix, where I perused aisles of 45s and brought back the ones I liked. That jukebox had a new lease on life by the time I was finished.
The worst part of the job happened one morning, following a hasty tutorial on how to make cocktails. The bartender had decided it was high time I graduated from serving beer in colored cans to making mixed drinks. When Cliff, one of my favorite customers walked in at 10am, instead of serving up his regular bourbon, I offered him one of my new concoctions. I don’t remember what he chose, but he thought it was cute that I had written down all the recipes in my little notebook and that I was planning to learn them off by heart.
Casting the Stones of Silence
While he drank his free cocktail, pretending to like it, we chatted about nothing important, mostly about how hot it was already. It was quiet, the jukebox silent, the AC humming. Two men I didn’t know were at the other end of the bar, smoking and talking low. As I stood there, cutting lemons and limes to garnish my new cocktails, not a care in the world, one of those men called out to the owner, back in the kitchen and out of sight. “Hey Bud, since when do you allow the help to talk to n****ers?” Silence. Again. “I said since when do you allow the help to talk to n***ers?”
I froze.
I was afraid. Instantly, I recognized it as the same fear I had felt years before, when I turned a page of the Belfast Telegraph to see a black and white photo of a young Catholic woman who had been stripped and tied to a lamp-post, hot tar and feathers poured on her roughly shorn head, because she had committed the crime of falling in love with a British soldier. I wasn’t in America anymore – I was back in 1970s Northern Ireland.
I chose to say nothing to those two men. I was too scared, and I was also ashamed that I was too scared. To Cliff, I mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.” He looked right in my eyes, not with anger but with a kind of resignation that told me he was used to it. He picked up his hat, put it on his head, stood up, and walked out the door. He left a $20 tip. I never saw him again.
If you’re still reading, let me describe the scope of my naiveté. I had assumed there would be no racism in 1980s America. To explain this, let me take you back to my adolescence, to Sunday evenings in our Dublin Road living room, when my parents and I – along with everyone else we knew – gathered around a tiny television to watch ‘Roots.’ We were horrified when Kunta Kinte was sold into slavery in America and whipped within an inch of his life for trying to escape. Aghast, we watched every episode. As the entire country seemed to be galvanized by the story unfolding on Roots every Sunday night, I suppose we all held onto the notion that surely America would have learned and subsequently adopted a kinder, gentler attitude. And surely America would be kinder and gentler than 1980s Northern Ireland.
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …”
But that morning in a dive bar in Phoenix, Arizona, I couldn’t have been farther away from Gambia, West Africa in 1750, Kunta Kinte’s place of birth. I couldn’t have been farther away from the Dream of America. I couldn’t have been further away from the right thing to do. I said nothing. I have never forgiven myself for casting the stones of silence.
You know where this is going. That morning in the bar taught me a hard reality about America – one that has resurfaced many times in recent years for all of us, captured on cell-phones and broadcast all over the world.
I stayed in America for almost 30 years, always confident that I find the Dream of it. I fell madly in love with an American man and married him and together we bought the house that would become the home where we raised our daughter. I eventually left the bar and found a grown-up job in public education. I was good at it too. I worked hard. I paid my taxes. Because I wasn’t a citizen, I couldn’t vote.
Earning the right to vote
I participated in civic live in other ways. I helped register voters, knowing that voting is perhaps the most important privilege of democracy in the USA. Maybe I delayed my decision to become a citizen because I felt a kind of guilt for all the other immigrants in Arizona – especially my immigrant students – who couldn’t vote. Even though they had lived there since they were very young, perhaps even taking their first steps or speaking their first words on American soil. Even though they pledged allegiance to the flag every day in school, they couldn’t vote, nor were they permitted to apply for a social security number which would allow them to work, drive, enjoy all the benefits afforded to those like my American daughter who was born here. I devoted a great deal of time to working on behalf of undocumented kids. That work is unfinished, and as I write, many of these immigrants are in jeopardy.
I couldn’t vote in the 2016 election that placed Donald Trump in the White House. His election is what finally motivated me to pursue American citizenship. I wanted to vote. I wanted my voice to be heard. Because I had the means to do so, I hired an immigration attorney to help me with the process. There was a lengthy application, a $670 fee, an interview during which a USCIS officer assessed my civic knowledge with 10 random questions from the 100 question citizenship test. Then there was the ceremony in November 2019, where, along with new Americans representing 70 countries, I raised my right hand and swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I have no adequate words to describe the collective disappointed and disgusted groan that emanated from an audience of hundreds that morning when we were directed to watch the screen for a message from then President, Donald Trump. This is not hyperbole. It was the sound of damage done.
A woman from England stood next to me. She and I chose to look away from the screen, and afterwords we wondered if such a thing had ever happened at a swearing-in ceremony before. I doubt it. I couldn’t imagine a video message from Carter, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or Obama eliciting such an immediate and negative response from a crowd of families and friends of freshly minted immigrants waving Old Glory.
America unfinished
I left the United States two months later. For better. And, on September 18, 2020, I voted for the first time in any election. Absentee voting is not an option in Ireland. And, because of rules about the length of time away between elections, I am also ineligible to vote in Northern Ireland/UK. I poured a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table in a house in Mexico to vote for Joe Biden. As I uploaded my vote, a news update flashed on my phone that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. I remember wondering what would happen next to the Supreme Court. I know now.
The next part of my American story is unclear. My daughter lives there. My friends and her friends live there. I’m grateful to America for making possible some of the most beautiful and miraculous moments of my life. To ensure those kinds of moments are possible for my daughter and her generation, I know I will vote for the democratic nominee.
Do I like the choices before me for American President? No. Two old men. But even if I’m disappointed with the Democratic Party, especially because they wouldn’t expand the Supreme Court when they had the opportunity, and even if Joe Biden stays in the race, I’ll vote for the Democratic party again.
I’ll vote for that Constitution I swore to defend in 2019. I’ll vote for the America my grandmother wanted for me.
Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line — you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat.
~ Patti Smith
How do I begin to pack the stuff of the past twelve months in a box and tie it up with a big red bow? Just begin. Pluck out a memory and wrap it up. Move on to the next – in my own time.
Shortly after Ken died, I discovered on Christine Ohlman’s beautiful record, “The Deep End,” a song that was then too much for me to listen to, too beautiful, too true – “The Gone of You.” I had forgotten about it until it showed up on my playlist this weekend and stopped me in my tracks, like Steve Earle’s “Fearless Heart” or Lou Reed’s reminder that “there’s a bit of a magic in everything and some loss to even things out.”
I’ve had a chance to thank Steve Earle in person for the songs that have lifted me up and set me down – gently – over the years, this last in particular. I tell myself, hoping it’s true, that wherever they are, Ken has made a point of thanking Lou Reed for the same. Last night I visited Christine Ohlman’s website and sent her a note, just to thank her for putting in words and music, the heart and soul that truth-telling always reveals.
Lest I be misunderstood, The Deep End is not a sad record. It just tells the truth, and in it, like Dave Marsh I also found find:
. . . so many ‘wow’ moments. Ohlman turns out the best blue-eyed soul of her career…’The Gone of You’ fully exhibits how much grief a blues-drenched heart can bear. The whole history of soul music can be heard here, reflected in a passionate life–or two.
Knowing she had wowed Dave Marsh and knowing more about the demands of her schedule, I was surprised to hear back from her, and so quickly. In a lovely note, she wrote to tell me she understood, that things will get easier, that on New Year’s Day it will be a decade since she lost her partner, that Lou Reed was a friend, and that she just worked with Steve Earle in November. Such details confirm for me, that we really are connected, aren’t we? All of us. We just need to figure out the geography and how best to cross the borders between us.
I asked her if I could post here the lyrics to the song that has crept inside a corner of my heart. “The Gone of You” appears below just the way Christine shared it with me this morning. A litany of truths, it says close to what I’ve wanted to say when the right words have eluded me, when I don’t know how to respond to the people who love me when they ask – or when they don’t – how I’m doing. Mostly, I’m doing fine. Mostly.
I miss the taste of you, the feel of you
The heart and the soul and the real of you
I miss the thought of you, the mind of you
The dark and the light and the sight of you
I miss the skin of you, the near of you
The lips and the hands, the not-here of you
I miss the touch of you, oh, how I long for you
I miss the eyes, and the wise, and the gone of you
I want you right now, wantcha right now wantcha right now
I miss the salt of you, the sweet of you
The coming home every night of the week of you
I miss the scars from you, the times I wept for you
The wrongs, and the rights, the secrets-kept of you
I miss the part of me that was a part of you
The wish, and the kiss, the morning star of you
The make-love of you, the true of you
I miss the all-the-way-my-heart-through of you
I’m out here on my own in the big, wild world
It’s a beautiful place sometimes
I keep my eye on the sparrow and my mind open wide
But I just can’t keep from cryin
I miss the gone of you, the gone of you, the gone of you……
right now….
But back at the beginning of 2014, I wasn’t interested in telling the whole truth, and certainly not out loud. Nor was I making any New Year’s resolutions because doing so is too much like planning. Still, I resolved, albeit loosely, to live this year a bit more like the way I used to, ready to jump in to the deep end, to take a chance, to remind myself of the girl I used to be at twenty, the one with the world at her feet, before America and Arizona, before marriage and the mortgage, power-suits and politics, motherhood and menopause, breast cancer and the blogosphere. And, before being a widow and worrying about whether it would be alright if I just cut my own groove.
I made a point of telling my dearest friends – and they are indeed dear to me – that 2014 would be my version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat Pray Love” year, except mine would have a glorious soundtrack. It would probably be more along the lines of a distract, deny—which I’m sure is what the experts would say—and, with a nod to Roxy Music—dance-away-kind-of-year. There would be minimal healthy eating and less exercise. There would be fabulous music, long drives into the night and far away from the desert heat, daily reminders of fabulous friendships maintained from afar, and, by God, there would be laughter.
All this was well and good, except when it wasn’t. It wasn’t on those first anniversaries throughout the year when Ken wasn’t here for his birthday or mine, or milestone moments like Sophie’s driving test. My mother would call to remind me ever so gently and in the parlance of home that I have ‘been through the mill,’ and I am vulnerable; my friend, Rhonda, would sigh with empathy and tell me to be kind to myself; my sensible and stoic daughter would caution me with a superbly adolescent eye-roll not to allow people to walk over me (neither unscrupulous plumbers and auto-mechanics nor ostensibly interested interesting men who are only, let’s face it, in my life “because dad isn’t“) and Amanda – in it for the long haul as best friends are – would tell me to just live, to play it out, because if she gave me specific advice, I would be sure to ignore it. And, anyway, Ken would be watching over me. Whether or not he would approve, he would understand.
I suppose since it’s the most wonderful time of the year for telling the truth, I should also mention that Amanda, in her more comic moments, has mentioned that she would not have been at all surprised to receive an early morning call with a request to bail me out of jail, not for doing anything “bad,” but maybe for making a point about something unfair in the world.
The year’s not over . . .
Christmas gift from Amanda
It has been a full year, much of it spent with those lovely friends who have not been as subtle as they think, watching over me and ready to intervene before or immediately after I have made a spectacular error in judgment. I am much loved, and I know how lucky I am to have these souls in my life. I have spent time re-shaping and re-arranging the home where two of us used to be three, and I have taken stock. Repeatedly. I worry now far less about things that ten years ago would have kept me up at night.
After twenty years of managing schools and people in them, and sometimes — I’m ashamed to admit— spending more time with other people’s children than my own, I returned to teaching college students. Financially, it’s a step backwards, and even though the kind of money I used to make would be very useful, I am just not ready to return to what often amounts to a whole lot of “adminstrivia” and not a lot about kids and whether they are learning.
For now, the classroom is where I am supposed to be, as safe and sacred a space as it was when I walked in to a Belfast secondary school as a twenty-one year old teacher, hoping to make her mark. The only thing different – maybe – is that I have acquired what Ken used to tell me I needed: “some hard bark” – but only some.
So here is my year in music, without the details about the deep end . . .
1. It begins with looking for something new to listen to. My colleague and Philly friend, Ian (named for Janis Ian and Ian Anderson) introduced me to WXPN 88.5 Public Radio from the University of Pennsylvania. The first song i heard there was “Distant Light.” Apropos then that my new year in music begins with Dr. Dog who stopped in Phoenix for a sold-out show at The Crescent Ballroom. I had never been there, but loved all I’d heard about it. It reminded me of the kinds of places I used to go in Belfast a million years ago – where you could eat, drink, and be merry.
But following the distant light
And I know if I keep walking, I’ll never touch it, but as long as I move it’ll shine down on me.
2. Next was The War on Drugs, again at The Crescent Ballroom. I had asked my brother, Keith, to recommend some music, and in one of our marathon Facebook chats, he told me I should check out The War on Drugs. We have impeccable timing on such things, because War showed up the next month in Phoenix. Naturally, I went. Instant fan.
What you should check out is The War On Drugs, particularly if you’re in the hammock – here’s a great track, the opener from their latest album. Imagine ‘New Year’s Day’ by U2 or ‘Glittering Prize’ by Simple Minds, only written and perhaps sung by Bruce Springsteen or a young Dylan. Great road music. It is as Dustin Hoffmann observed of the nighttime Las Vegas skyline in Rain Man, ‘very twinkly… very sparkly’.
3. Joan Osborne, MIM Music Theater, Scottsdale, Arizona, May 20 2014
Joan Osborne was the featured vocalist for The Chieftains at Scottsdale Center for the Arts when I first saw her back when Sophie was in pre-school. I remember she strode on stage in a black suit and belted out a Billie Holiday song. It was the kind of singular performance that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand straight up. Sophie was with us, just four years old, and interested only in clapping her hands and dancing in the aisles to boisterous fiddle playing courtesy of Natalie McMaster and The Chieftains. I just wanted to hear more of Joan Osborne, so when she announced a stop at the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Scottsdale, a stellar venue with only 299 seats, amazing acoustics, and a good chance of a meet-and-greet afterwards, I bought two tickets, one for me and one for Ian as a birthday present. He wanted to hear “St. Theresa.” I wanted to hear something from her post-Jerry Garcia Grateful Dead days. She obliged on both.
Joan Osborne is so much more than “One of Us” (although she resembled some of us as she sauntered on stage with her cup of hot tea and fabulous red shoes). Accompanied by the outrageously talented Jack Ptreuzelli on guitar, Keith Cotton on piano, and occasionally the drum-track from an app on her iPhone and a tambourine, she purred and sashayed, and at times, she just blew the damn roof off. It was an electric performance, and other than meeting her afterwards, the highlight for me was her rendition of the Dead’s “Brokedown Palace,” which gave me a minute or two to be with Ken again. By the water . . .
Goin’ to plant a weeping willow
On the banks green edge it will grow grow grow
Sing a lullaby beside the water
Lovers come and go – the river roll roll roll
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
to rock my soul.
It wasn’t until after hearing him perform “Fearless Heart” unplugged last May, without The Dukes, that I remembered the song as a much-played favorite from “Guitar Town,” perhaps the last vinyl album I bought from Good Vibrations record shop in Belfast.
You can either get through life or you can live it. And if you’re gonna live it, there’s only two things you need – an inquisitive mind and a fearless heart.
Steve Earle doesn’t know that “Fearless Heart” has helped me put one foot in front of the other some days. It’s become a kind of mantra that I whisper before jumping into the deep end, which might actually be where I belong. I know that many of his songs resonate every bit as much if not more with his legions of fans. I’m sure he knows that too, but I still wanted to tell him, and I didn’t even care that I kept everyone else waiting. I also wanted to talk to him about Bap Kennedy and Belfast and Seamus Heaney. “Did you study at Queens?” he asked. “Were you a literature major? Was Seamus Heaney there when you were there? I fucking love Seamus Heaney. I’ve read everything he ever wrote. And Michael Longley. I fucking love him too. Damn. ” Well, he had me at Heaney. Of course he did. And then there was the posing with a note to Bap Kennedy whose record Earle produced and who will be performing at the gig for Terri Hooley tomorrow night at the Limelight in Belfast. It really is a small world after all.
At the MIM with Steve Earle, Shawn Colvin, and Amanda
5. James Taylor US Airways Center, Phoenix, Arizona, June 10, 2014
The last time I saw James Taylor was in the summer of 1984 at Saratoga Springs. With Randy Newman. He was terrific, but I haven’t listened to him much in recent years. He’s become like that sweater in the back of the closet – I never wear it but know it’s there for when I want to just curl up by the fire and wallow in what ails me. So when my friend Suzy offered me a free ticket to a James Taylor concert, I wasn’t sure I would like it, but I like Suzy, so I went. US Airways Center (although it might be called something else by now) is a big venue which somehow doesn’t seem right for songs about Carolina in my mind. JT pleased the crowd, and were you to check, I bet you’d find he did every single song on his “Greatest Hits” album. I wanted to hear only one, and knew when he plugged in his guitar that he was still “a cement mixer for you baby, a churning urn of burning funk.” It was 1984 again, and I was gone to Saratoga in my mind.
6. Rodney Crowell, MIM Music Theater, Scottsdale, Arizona June 18, 2014
Driving home from Morro Bay on the first Father’s Day weekend since Ken died, a Rodney Crowell song popped up on the playlist. Sophie and I just looked at each other. “Wow, mom. It’s like Dad’s talking to us in that song.” (We’re both convinced that Ken speaks to us through songs we hear in the car). In this case, “Closer to Heaven,” Crowell lists all his pet peeves – hummus, nosy neighbors, chirpy news anchors, politicians, buzz words like “awesome” and “dude” – while making sure anyone listening knows he is closer to heaven than he’s ever been, that he loves his family and is much loved by them.
Rodney Crowell is a story-teller, a memoirist, a poet by any stretch, even though he is not quick to assume the role, telling Rolling Stone:
Poets, I think, are born . . . you can’t teach it. It’s genetic – the circumstances of how you were raised… and there’s probably some Irish in your blood lines,” he smiles.
I remembered he was performing in Phoenix but didn’t realize it was the next night. Sophie called Rhonda who somehow scored the last two tickets to the sold-out show.
Afterwards, I thanked Rodney Crowell for that song, and for “Earthbound,” in which he writes about how people like “Tom Waits, Aretha Franklin, Mary Karr, Walter Cronkite, Seamus Heaney, Ringo Starr, the Dalai Lama and Charlie Brown make me wanna stick around.” Another Seamus Heaney fan, he told me about walking through Stephen’s Green in Dublin with our poet.
Oh, to have overheard that conversation . . .
7. Steely Dan, Comerica Theater, Phoenix, Arizona, July 15, 2014
The Jamalot Forever Tour seemed appropriate for me this year, and this was an impeccably tight show with both Fagen and Becker in great form. Walter Becker, wry old card, as Keith calls him, turned “Hey Nineteen” into almost ten minutes of boozy craic about what might happen when you find inside an old shoebox, a stash of “the best chiba-chiba that money can buy” and then, boom, the Cuervo Gold. Now I know the video’s a little shaky, but we were dancing and it was recorded on my phone. So just close your eyes. You may as well be in your bedroom in 1980, playing your new Goucho LP. As my brother says, “the groove is damned tight.”
One of the best things about Lyle Lovett’s big band is that it includes the phenomenal Francine Reed, who has soul to spare. Like Mavis Staples. When I first moved to Arizona, Francine Reed performed regularly in clubs like Chuys. Hearing her belt out Wild Women Don’t Get The Blues I want to tell Lyle Lovett that the large band – and the entire room – belongs to Francine.
I can’t help it. I have loved Tom Petty for over 35 years, and I’m convinced that had he met me when I was younger and could hold a tune, Tomcat would have snagged me to be one of his “heartbreakers.” Ken liked Tom as well and always took me to see him when he played in Phoenix. He always made sure we had plenty of Tom on the playlist for our road-trips to California, and earlier this Spring, I’m sure he was looking down at me and laughing when the Hypnotic Eye tour dates were announced with not one show planned for Phoenix, I know he knew that I would convince Amanda to drive to San Diego to see the opening gig – something I would not have been able to convince him to do. A mere five hours away, a road trip to San Diego would require no planning. We only needed tickets, gasoline, a place to stay, at least three outfits, and an assurance to each other that we would be back to Phoenix the morning after to see our girls off to school – my daughter’s first as a high school Senior, and her little girl’s very first as a pre-schooler.
Mission accomplished and worth all of the inconvenience that comes to people who are notoriously bad at planning. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Soar screamed the review from a San Diego newspaper the next day. That’s all I need to say.
10. The Hold Steady, Crescent Ballroom, Phoenix, Arizona, August 4, 2014
Once upon a time, I read magazines made of paper and held together with staples and glue. That’s where I learned about upcoming artists and bought their new LPs before anyone else and where I found out who would be playing at Slane Castle next. I remembered reading about The Hold Steady in one such publication and that Bruce Springsteen really liked “First Night.” I forgot about them over the years, but for $22, I figured it was worth checking them out when they came to the Crescent. Even Keith agreed:
“Well, the Hold Steady ARE Bruce Springsteen! Apparently they’ve ditched their piano player though. Not sure how I feel about that. “Boys and Girls in America,” is superb. ‘Stuck Between Stations’ is pure post-punk Bruce. Great stuff. Oh, and I like the signage for The Crescent Ballroom – very Asylum-era Tom Waits, that is. Jesus, go!”
So I bought tickets, not stopping to think that this was the day after the Tom Petty concert. Still, true to our word, and in spite of the fact that Amanda’s car battery died in the parking lot during the concert, and a very nice hipster helped us out but only after the entire parking lot had emptied out, we made it back to Arizona just in time for Starbucks to open, so we could see our little girls off to school, coffee in hand and “beer” still stamped on our hands.
The Hold Steady setlist
11. The Felice Brothers and Spirit Family Reunion, The Rhythm Room, September 28, 2014
This was a special night not just because I love the Felice Brothers, and had been looking forward to seeing them in such a great venue, but because I had just found out that after two weeks of bleeding and a biopsy, all was well.
With the Felice Brothers at the Rhythm Room
The results were negative, the cancer had not – and, by all accounts has not – progressed. Turns out, I was more taken by Spirit Family Reunion.
Dusty acoustic guitars, wailing fiddles and weeping accordions, with a woozy-yet-skintight rhythm section– and topped off with burr-edged vocals that sound like they’ve been soaked in a Mason jar for generations — it’s the type of music that blurs the line between past and present so thoroughly, and so deftly, that time feels irrelevant.”
–Paste Magazine: Best of What’s Next
With Amanda and Suzy
12. John Fogerty, The Arizona State Fair, October 18, 2014
I love a State Fair. My first was upstate New York a million years ago, where I sampled Niagara Wine Coolers and too many roller-coaster rides (or vice versa). I love the midway, I love cotton candy and cracking wise with crafty carneys hoping they will just give me a cuddly toy for Sophie (they always do). I love the concerts too – general admission for the price of a fair ticket. It still seems wrong that Dire Straits performed at the State Fairground in 1992, but not during the Fair. It was surreal to walk through the empty fairground to the coliseum hearing, in my mind, the arrangement of Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s Carouse Waltz at the beginning of Knopfler’s “Tunnel of Love,”
And now I’m searching through these carousels and the carnival arcades,
Searching everywhere from steeplechase to palisades
In any shooting gallery where promises are made
To rock away, rock away, from Cullercoats and Whitley bay out to rock away
Partial setlist from a weary sound guy
Fair to say, is it not, that a State Fair is as American as a John Fogerty concert. Ken and I saw him before, in the Fall of 2005 when he performed with John Mellencamp at the then-Desert Sky Pavilion. We always had a “thang” for CCR especially the ten-minute version of “Heard it through the Grapevine.” For years, in fact, Ken wanted to challenge Alex Trebec who told a Jeopardy contestant she was wrong about who released the record in 1967. Ken, you were wrong, my love – indeed it was Gladys Knight and her Pips.
At the 2005 concert, I remember being stunned by some in the crowd booing him for remarks he made about whatever war we were and are still fighting, and before singing “Deja Vu (All Over Again).” How can anybody boo John Fogerty, in his blue flannel shirt? A Vietnam veteran?. Come on now.
But in ninety minutes, this September, as the review says, John Fogerty belted out a song for everyone there. He didn’t talk much between songs, but that was because of the curfew. So he kept things moving, and he was bloody marvelous.
If you could have harnessed the energy from the crowd as it erupted with the opening chords of “Proud Mary,” you could have supplied enough electricity to power the State Fair for its entire run.
And now for something completely different and absolutely over-the-top fabulous (which could also apply to the lads who accompanied me to the Erasure concert). Fabulous.
When, half-way through the set, Andy Bell strutted on stage in a tight and tiny pair of sparkly hot pants, I was immediately transported to a Friday night long ago in some thumping night club between Antrim and Belfast, complete with silver sequins, synthesized sound, strobe lighting, and glitter.
I know I saw Tom kick off the tour in San Diego, but I have never been to the Red Rocks, and I have always wanted to go. And Rhonda had never seen Tom Petty, so it was really more out of consideration for her. Now, I don’t know how it was for Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers, looking out at thousands of adoring fans between those red rocks, but it was magical for me. As the sign says, there is no better place to see the stars . . .
15. Stevie Wonder, MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, November 29, 2014
In the middle of October, my brother posted to his Facebook wall a Youtube video of Stevie Wonder performing “Big Brother (Natural Wonder)” with a comment that it was apt, even though it was recorded over forty years ago. One thing led to another the way it does on Facebook, and when Keith told me that Stevie Wonder is one of those legendary performers (along with Bob Seger) that he would love to see in concert, I first rubbed in the fact that I have already purchased my ticket for Mr. Seger’s return to Phoenix in February.
I have been proudly flying the flag for the amazing Mr Wonder ever since I bought his 1986/7 album ‘Characters’ from Ronnie Millar’s Pop-in Records.
And then, on a whim, I consulted Bandsintown to find out that Mr. Wonder was about to begin the Songs in the Key of Life tour to celebrate almost forty years of that record which I first heard on the radio when I was 13 years old. There was no concert scheduled for Phoenix, but he would be playing the weekend after Thanksgiving at the MGM in Las Vegas, only a five hour drive up the road. Now, Las Vegas has never appealed to me, and after all there had been enough bright lights at the Erasure concert to last for a while, but this was Stevie Wonder. In concert.An entirely different proposition.
With Rhonda before the show
Coincidence and the universe conspired, and Rhonda and I were on the road again. Such a night. Three hours of joyful noise at the MGM Grand:
. . . and at the close, when it seemed Stevie Wonder had given every ounce of his genius, he dove into the song that brings the party for all time. “Superstition” closed it out, and the song that once rocked “Sesame Street” gave a burst of funk and love on the Strip.
I know I could download it, but it’s just not the same as asking a weary sound guy for the setlist . . .
16. John Prine, Celebrity Theater, December 4, 2014
John Prine might be my favorite living singer-songwriter. I first heard of him in the 1980s when my friend, Ruth, and I went to the Errigle Inn on Tuesday nights to hear Kenny McDowell and Jim Armstrong do their acoustic set.
One of the roadies, Eric, told me at the beginning that I might be able to meet John Prine after the show, just to check with him. Sure enough, Eric saved a couple of guitar picks for me, and when the roadies had packed it up and were ready to go, he ushered Rhonda and me backstage. I can’t explain here how special it was, but just know that it was. What a gift to give John Prine a hug and thank him for the songs that have taken up permanent residence in my heart over the past thirty odd years, many of which he performed, “Sam Stone,” “Angel From Montgomery,” “Souvenirs,” “Hello in There,” and “Six O’Clock News.”
With a legend – John Prine. Celebrity Theater
Like Rodney Crowell, he is my kind of story-teller, unafraid and quick-witted, the kind who can break his own heart and yours and crack wise. Seamlessly.
I always wanted to grow up to be an old person. Well, voilà.
My brother loves John Prine too and shared a lovely story with me about his little boy, Tom, who recently asked him to play The Sins Of Memphisto. Not that it’s a strange request, but you should know that Tom is just seven years old:
Dad, put on that song about lookin’ at the babies and the factories.’ I was well impressed with that request when he first made it, I can tell you. I was so shocked that I genuinely couldn’t think of the song he was talking about!
In 2003, my best friend gave me the best present for Christmas – an external hard drive with more music on it than you could listen to in a lifetime, courtesy of her husband who allegedly is the one with the technological savvy in their household. Anyway, he and my brother are the same age, with similar tastes in music, and he had turned me on to Ryan Adams, “Gold” back then. He and Amanda have seen Ryan Adams several times, but somehow I always missed the opportunity. Not this year. It was very cool that the three of us saw him perform together.
With Amanda and Todd before the show at ASU Gammage
When the lights dropped low and that barking, staccato chord that opens up “Gimme Something Good” rang out, Ryan Adams let everyone know he was in the room. There’s no better entrance song than that, worth every ounce of its Grammy nomination, and that ripping guitar tone like Adams’ own admission that this evening would be one to remember.
And, in the “Seriously?” category, each of us is convinced that the three guys next to me thought they were at a Bryan Adams concert. They left half-way through, seemingly flummoxed by Ryan Adams being a little too sleepy on “When the Stars Go Blue.” I kid you not.
Not really a concert, but this was my first show in Las Vegas and part of what would be a very special weekend – Sophie’s seventeenth birthday. Just the two of us, we drove to Las Vegas, tuned into the Classic Vinyl radio station the entire way, so it would feel as though Ken were behind the wheel. As a back-up, she brought a CD of what she calls “legit dad rock.”
Amanda has been telling me to go see the Cirque du Soleil Beatles Love show for years – she and Todd have been twice – but I just never got around to it. That, and to be honest, I’ve never been a big Beatles fan. I know. Don’t judge. I have a new-found respect for the Fab Four. It was a visual feast, the songs showered down from the ceiling, sometimes as the Beatles would say, “it’s all too much, ” but we loved it. That’s all that matters.
. . . an extravagant mashup of history and hallucinations, studded with dazzling special effects, hot dance moves, and tantalizing gestures
Until last Christmas, it had been many years since I had, as my mother would say, “darkened a church door.” But following Ken’s death and knowing neither of my parents really knew what to do to make it all better while here and far away from home last year, I took them to a Christmas Eve carol service at First Church in Phoenix. There, I was undone by two things – the hospitality of the people and the magical glow we created in the sanctuary during “Silent Night” as we turned to light each other’s candles. It is a beautiful ritual, and connects us all again.
20. No more concerts in 2014, except the benefit for Terri Hooley at the Limelight in Belfast. Geography gets in the way again with Ormeau Avenue being a bit far from the desert southwest, so I can’t go, but I bought a ticket, and I am there in spirit knowing that it is to benefit Terri Hooley who is in the hospital awaiting bypass surgery.
Here’s the thing – this gig at the Limelight is not just about Terri. It’s about Belfast, a place that gets it right more often than you might think. It’s about punk rock, it’s about loving music, it’s about buying records from Good Vibes, a smoke-filled shop just down the street from the most bombed hotel in Europe, and it’s about every musician who ever played – and ever will – in Northern Ireland. It’s reminiscent of what Joe Strummer once said:
When punk rock ruled over Ulster, nobody ever had more excitement and fun. Between the bombings and shootings, the religious hatred and the settling of old scores, punk gave everybody a chance to live for one glorious burning moment.
The chance – for everybody – to live for one glorious burning moment.
Maybe 2014 has been a bit like that for me, knowing now what I thought I knew before – that yes, life really is short and it is for the living. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to scorch this earth doing what I love to do, whether singing along with whatever’s playing on the radio, high-maintenance ordering like Meg Ryan’s Sally when I go to a new restaurant with Amanda, baring my soul right here, baking bread, teaching somebody something, rearranging furniture, driving all through the night because the road is right there in front of me, going to concerts and waiting for the roadies to take the stage, to tear it down and pack it up again, waiting to say thank you to these artists whose music never fails to lift me up and set me down again.
And now that my “Distract, Deny, and Dance Away” year is almost over, it is a whole lot easier to say aloud what Christine says in The Gone of You:
I’m out here on my own in the big, wild world
It’s a beautiful place sometimes
I keep my eye on the sparrow and my mind open wide
But I just can’t keep from cryin’
Today is one of those ‘sometimes.’ It really is a beautiful place, here with our beautiful girl. Unlike me, Sophie couldn’t care less about attending concerts, even though she has already seen more bands than some of my friends. Rather than leave her with a babysitter, Ken and I just took her with us. Writhing in my arms or sleeping or playing whatever video game I bought to keep her occupied while Ken and I rocked out to Bob Seger or Springsteen or U2 or my Tom Petty. One day, I think she’ll be impressed with her ticket stub collection. But not quite yet.
And unlike me, my Sophie does not emote, as she explains better than I can:
I am almost inaudible, mom; whereas, you are almost breaking the sound barrier.
For her seventeenth birthday, I knew not to surprise her with a party or too much noise or anything that would draw too much attention to her. I wanted to mark the day with something quieter than Las Vegas, something that would stay with her always.
If anyone would know – still – what to say to a girl on her seventeenth birthday, it would be Janis Ian. I first saw her perform “At Seventeen,” in July, 1983, at the RDS in Dublin. I was twenty years old and in college, with no notion of what I would do with my life, other than trade in Ireland for America. She, along with Peter Frampton, played warm-up for Chris de Burgh. I know. That makes no sense.
I saw her perform it thirty years later at the Rhythm Room, where she will be again in February 2015. I was then fifty years old, six months after a cancer diagnosis that had placed a question mark in the middle of my life and eight months before Ken’s death placed a period on it.
Sophie wasn’t with me – the Rhythm Room is a “21 and over only” kind of place, but I may as well have been seventeen myself, sitting there with a stiff gin and tonic, unsure about what tomorrow would bring but sure that I would show up for it, even if it meant jumping in the deep end. Again.
So thank you for that, Janis Ian, and thank you to everyone who had anything to do with the “wow” moments this year.
Bob Dylan has always been almost as old as my parents. He has also always been forever young, staring up at me from the yellowing cover of the book that has graced my coffee table for decades.
When was it that a Bob Dylan song first mattered to me? I cant remember. Nor can I remember a time when it didn’t, a time when I wasn’t tangled up in blue.
Maybe it was in the Spring of 1979, when my high school English teacher let me borrow his Street Legal LP, an album that was crucified by a handful of critics considered more qualified than the rest of us to measure the success of a Dylan song. Pioneer of Dylan studies, Michael Gray, was not among them, writing that Street Legal is “one of Dylan’s most important and cohesive albums . . . of astonishing complexity and confidence delivered in one of Dylan’s most authoritative voices.” Granted, he points out that it was badly produced, but that certainly didn’t occur to teenage me. What mattered to me then and still and to anyone else who has ever missed someone – or something – is “Where Are You Tonight?” It remains a staple in the soundtrack of my life. I’m sure you have one too.
But without you it just doesn’t seem right. Oh, where are you tonight?
“Hey, hey, HEY, hey.”
Where are you tonight?
Picturing the picture on the cover of the Street Legal album, it occurs to me that this was the first time I had considered Bob Dylan in color. Until then my idea of him was monochromatic, an iteration of the Dylan we know from the “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video – forever flippant, flipping over cue cards, dropping them in the alley. Deadpan.
Laid Off. Bad Cough. Paid Off. And, finally – naturally – What??
During one of my first summers in the United States, an American cousin took me to Buffalo to see The Grateful Dead open for Tom Petty and Bob Dylan. In color. Previously, I had seen Dylan perform at Slane Castle in Ireland in the summer of 1984–a mighty performance with Santana and Van Morrison.
This was different. This was as American as the idea could be. Deadheads. Tie-dye. Weed. The Wave. This was the Fourth of July. “It doesn’t rain on the Fourth of July!” Bob Weir told the crowd, and like poetry, the heavens opened. True story.
As a going away present, that same cousin later gave me the coffee table book. Published in 1967, it is a collection of black and white photographs by Daniel Kramer, indelible images taken over a period of two years, revealing a young man Kramer characterized as someone “who set his own marks and did not allow himself to be manipulated.”
For Kramer, Dylan was “someone worth photographing,” someone worth seeing from different perspectives. For me, Dylan is someone who forces you – without telling you – to shift a little in order to see better. Thus we find him perched on a branch in a tree or in an alleyway in London or Stuck Inside of Mobile. Or in the falling shadows.
Photography is just light, of course, and the good photographer will always find the right light. It is writing with light. As Amyn Nasser describes there is a kind of magic in this
. . . ability to stir the soul with light and shape and color. To create grand visual moments out of small and simple things, and to infuse big and complicated subjects with unpretentious elegance. [The photographer] respects classic disciplines, while at the same time insists on being fast, modern and wild.
Like a welder … seeing things in front of us and into the empty spaces between them. The self proclaimed song and dance man makes gates out of vintage iron and scrap metal items, spanners, chains, car parts, and axes. Some include reminders that he is also a musician – a treble clef or a guitar. Born and raised in iron ore country in Hibbling, Minnesota, Dylan writes in Chronicles, that he has always worked with iron in one way or another. Paul Green, the president of the Halcyon Gallery in London – which first showcased Dylan’s iron works explains, “He’s drawing from an industrial past, a working man’s past . . . It’s partly about looking back but it’s also about resurrecting these items and the physical act of putting these objects together.”
Why do gates hold such appeal to Dylan? He says it’s “because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference.”
What??
Because something is happening here But you don’t know what it is Do you, Mr. Jones?
Something is happening here, and Nobel Prize winner, Bob Dylan, doesn’t have the answers either.
His Never Ending Tour began in 1988 and continued for more than 3,000 shows until COVID-19 changed plans. During his time away from the road, he stayed busy, releasing three original songs from a new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. “Murder Most Foul,” a 17 minute rumination on the assassination of President Kennedy and America and music, arrived unexpectedly one midnight with a Tweet from Dylan: “Greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude for all your support and loyalty over the years. This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant, and may God be with you.”
Two years later, The Rough and Rowdy Ways tour began, and it continues with Dylan scheduled to join Willie Nelson along with an impressive lineup that includes Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, John Mellencamp, and Billy Strings at the 2024 Outlaw Summer Festival.
Why does he keep touring?
I keep touring because: it is a perfect way to stay anonymous and still be a member of the social order,” he said. “You’re the master of your fate. But it’s not an easy path to take, not fun and games.
Wall Street Journal
Happy Birthday, Bob. I find myself remembering you on a hot monsoonal night in the summer of 1988. You were playing at the amphitheater in Mesa, Arizona. Lightning struck during “Mr Tambourine Man.” Of course it did. At the time, a brand new immigrant to the United States, those were days of wonder for me, days before we worried about what waited around the corner – before we were observant, and before we knew better.
As easy it was to tell black from white It was all that easy to tell wrong from right And our choices were few and the thought never hit That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split
On your birthday – and every day, Bob Dylan – may you stay safe, stay observant, and may God be with you.
P.S. I see you’re heading back to Buffalo in September. Maybe I’ll be seeing you again. I love a full circle moment.
Part of the magic of art is that we stitch meaning into everything we see and hear, whether artists leave us a needle and thread or not.
Robin Hilton NPR All Songs Considered
I know there’s some science involved, that a song can make us cry because of the way it was composed. In an interview with NPR, John Sloboda, professor of music psychology at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, said hat the very notes within songs can make us weep. He attributes our tears to a kind of grace note, a musical ornament – the “appoggiatura,” from the Italian word “to lean.” As an example, Adele’s ‘Someone Like You” is full of them. Sloboda explains “Generally music is consonant rather than dissonant, so we expect a nice chord. So when that chord is not quite what we expect, it gives you a little bit of an emotional frisson, because it’s strange and unexpected. The music taps into this very primitive system that we have which identifies emotion on the basis of a violation of expectancy. It’s like a little upset which then gets resolved or made better in the chord that follows.” A more famous version is the opening word of Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” an appoggiatura of G3 to F3 over the chord of F major.
Musical theory aside, when I started singing with my partner here in Mexico, it was as a duo. This was a convenient arrangement during that time when COVID social distancing measures were in place—no dancing, couples sitting with a chair between them at tables 6ft apart, waiters in face masks offering a bottle of hand sanitizer. Remember that time? We were different, weren’t we? Introspective. Quiet. Uncertain.
Because we were unable to make the music we used to make with a full band behind us – and also because we were cloistered at home for months, we sang together. Unplugged. No backing tracks. Just the two of us, we carefully selected songs that told stories and touched our hearts and, as it turned out, included those appoggiaturas, those little upsets that might make us cry . We made each song ours, finding our blend of harmonies on deep cuts from the likes of Robert Earl Keen, Steve Earle, Guy Clarke, Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch, and Townes van Zandt.
Lyrics first. For us, it’s about the lyrics. Always.
As restaurants and venues slowly reopened, we ventured out— just the two of us—with our voices and an acoustic guitar, sometimes providing little more than musical wallpaper in restaurants trying their best to stay solvent, but sometimes connecting with people through lyrics crafted by master story-tellers. Every once in a while during a set—and this is still true— I’d spot a stranger singing along with their eyes closed, the lyrics transporting them to a place only they know. I’d realize we were singing ‘their’ song. This requires a reverence.
In those duo days, we always ended our set with my song. I didn’t write it, but it is mine. I remember one night a bartender asked me why we perform it, Steve Earle’s “Goodbye,” the sad song that more than once made her cry. There’s a deeply personal reason that I kept to myself at that moment, because I didn’t want to break open my own heart. And, there’s also what Emmylou Harris said in an interview she gave about her love for Gram Parsons, her partner in song, and with whom she recorded “Love Hurts,” a pivotal song for her:
There is something about the uniqueness of two voices creating a sound that does not come when they are singing solo. That song, and our harmony, is a kind of a pinnacle of our duet-singing together.
Emmylou Harris
Steve Earle’s “Goodbye,” is the song that has been pivotal for me. Appropriately enough, it was Steve Earl on acoustic guitar when Emmylou covered it on her “Wrecking Ball” record. It was ‘my song,’ before I met my partner in song and in life.
I’d been a Steve Earle fan since the 1980s when I had a vinyl record collection that I miss today. The last album I bought before leaving Northern Ireland in 1987 was “Guitar Town.” Until then, I had lied to myself that I didn’t like country music, dismissing it as the music of my parent’s generation, but when somebody in Rolling Stone or Q magazine said Steve Earle was somebody to pay attention to – along with Dwight Yoakam – I did. For a while, his “Fearless Heart” was my touchstone, Steve Earle introducing it at performances with his characteristic take-no-prisoners wisdom:
You can either get through life or you can live it. If you’re gonna live it, there’s only two things you need … an inquisitive mind and a fearless heart.
Steve Earle
But this is not just about my fearless heart. It’s about a “Goodbye” that I never got to say. One day I’ll tell that story too.
Over our first few years of singing together in Arizona, it became our song, a staple in a repertoire of songs into which listeners will stitch their own meaning too.
On night, shortly after we met Scott finally picked up a harmonica and began to lay. It was on this song, the first song we sang together, finding harmonies as if we had never not sang together. It’s in the key of C. Naturally. If you were to ask anyone who’s ever played with us, they will tell you that C is my key. Scott knows that’s not really true, but to see me panic for just a second before he begins his signature picking, he’ll call it up in A minor.
I don’t have to remind him anymore not to sing—not even harmonies— on my verse, the quiet one about Novembers and why they always make me cry. I’m possessive about “Goodbye,” Steve Earle’s “ninth step in the key of C.”
I wrote it when I was still in treatment, before I even got to that step, the first time I got my hands on a guitar. It wasn’t a very good guitar, but I hadn’t written anything in a very long time, so it was kind of reassuring to write something and to write something that good.
Steve Earle
He also said Emmy Lou is possessive about it too, telling a Scottsdale audience before performing it with Shawn Colvin at the MIM a few years ago, that Emmylou gets mad when he performs it with someone else. He might have been joking … but I know I wished it had been Emmylou on stage with him that night.
There was a ‘meet and greet’ after the show, and I made my way towards a very warm and approachable Steve Earle. I told him that there were days when “Fearless Heart” had helped me put one foot in front of the other, that it had become a kind of mantra that I whispered before jumping into the deep end, which I realize might actually be where I belong.
I know I’m not the first fangirl he’s encountered, so he indulged me and didn’t seem to mind that I was holding up the line of people waiting for him to sign their posters and ticket stubs and album covers. I also wanted to talk to him about the lovely Belfast singer, Bap Kennedy, whose record he had produced and about Belfast and about the late Seamus Heaney. Thus one of my favorite moments with a famous person: “Did you study at Queens?” he asked me. “Were you a literature major?” Yes. Yes. I was. A Music major too. “Damn! Was Seamus Heaney there when you were there? I fucking love Seamus Heaney. I’ve read everything he ever wrote. And Michael Longley. I fucking love him too. Do you know him? Damn. Goddamn.”
In the way things go around and come around, years later, when I had an essay published in a literary magazine with none other than Michael Longley, my first thought was that there was the teeniest possibility that Steve Earle might read it.
I wanted to ask him more about Emmylou and “Goodbye,” but Shawn Colvin was clearly weary of me. To be fair, there were people waiting. So off I went without telling him how grateful I am for “Goodbye,” the sober song for anyone who has ever been to hell – and back – and for everyone who’s sorry for the harm they caused even when they don’t remember causing it.
It’s a song for the work of a November in my life.
I’m grateful for the sound and the harmonies it pulls so naturally from Scott and me, even when we haven’t sung it for months, even when we’re not talking to each other over a mountain we’ve made out of a molehill, a storm in a teacup.
I can hear it in my head right now. Quiet, steady, and familiar—it lives in that realm reserved for country songs and Psalms from the hymnal I recall from the church of my childhood. I can hear that sound that only comes when I’m singing with my partner.
Steve Earle doesn’t know that “Fearless Heart” has helped me put one foot in front of the other some days. It’s become a kind of mantra that I whisper before jumping into the deep end, which might actually be where I belong. I know that many of his songs resonate every bit as much if not more with his legions of fans. I’m sure he knows that too, but I still wanted to tell him, and I didn’t even care that I kept everyone else waiting. I also wanted to talk to him about 
Afterwards, I thanked Rodney Crowell for that song, and for “
Once upon a time, I read magazines made of paper and held together with staples and glue. That’s where I learned about upcoming artists and bought their new LPs before anyone else and where I found out who would be playing at 
And now for something completely different and absolutely over-the-top fabulous (which could also apply to the lads who accompanied me to the Erasure concert). Fabulous. 
I know I saw Tom kick off the tour in San Diego, but I have never been to the Red Rocks, and I have always wanted to go. And Rhonda had never seen Tom Petty, so it was really more out of consideration for her. Now, I don’t know how it was for Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers, looking out at thousands of adoring fans between those red rocks, but it was magical for me. As the sign says, there is no better place to see the stars . . .
