My Queen Jane

What you say to your audience between songs is an art in itself. Walter and I don’t want to break the spell of Dylan’s lyrics with stray patter in our Muscle and Bone shows. So this story, though umbilically melded to Queen Jane Approximately for me, is better essay than segue.

My mother the painter, Jane Weber, raised her children to recognize beauty, to seek it out. What a gift she gave us. In the summer before she died, as my father cared for her in sickness and faith, I’d check in by phone between visits. One evening I ducked out of the café where the songwriters were gathered and called the folks. Once we’d covered the physical discomforts Mom was dealing with, I told them about the small corner of Ohio City spread out before me. White lights on tree branches, muted conversation of people gathered around tables under the street lamps, music wafting over it all. When I stopped talking I heard Mom’s frail voice say, ‘Thank you for telling us what you see.’

I don’t think my heart had ever broken quite that way before.

Mom’s world, and in many ways Dad’s too, had shrunk so small by then. Yet she had one more gift to give me as I stood among the vibrant, throbbing world she only knew through stories. In a time when I felt helpless to comfort her, Mom told me how; just tell her my stories.

Whenever we sing Queen Jane Approximately, I’m reporting my surroundings to her still. Look, Mom, do you see the listeners basking in this warm music? Do you feel their joy, their memories, their dreams? Do you hear the lyrics made of words you loved so much, and the clapping, like roof tiles under an all night rain?

For a short while, in the refrain, she is there when I call, ‘Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?’

Photo of Janie Weber

Whisky echo bravo echo romeo

That’s me. My name, spelled out by the reservations clerk over the phone last week.

It could also be the Julie Roberts character line in Larry Crowne. Campus lush to Juliette luscious in two easy hours of movie magic.

Or, make it a writing challenge: use whisky-echo-bravo-echo-romeo in a song set in Dodge City 1848, sans cliché. Good luck.

I just got home from a short stay with kin who live in a seniors village. I’m glad for them for whom the stress of accomplishment has subsided. I’m saddened by the sure knowledge that we the boomer-gen will likely one day frame our wanderings in borders of sore knees, stiff backs and way too many keepsakes.

But consider 60 year old Diana Nyad, about to swim 60 consecutive hours in shark and jelly fish infested waters from Cuba to Florida. She has a different take on aging: “I want the candle to burn bright. We have changed a lot. Our parents’ generation, at 60, they considered that old age. I’m in the middle of middle age.” 

So what does whisky echo bravo echo romeo DO with her next few decades of relative freedom? From pain. From caution. From softly shrinking sidelines?

Well, there is this Muscle and Bone project. Walter and I sing songs of Dylan, voice of our generation and poster-bard for neither shy nor retiring. Our repertoire is a font of youth in a pond of plenty. Fond regards. Faithful friends. Eternal re-awakenings.

Spell check all of the above and you get Weber and Campbell hitting the trail. Two bravos, amigo, and no regrets.


Painting Maria Catharina Wiik, Out into the World

Homestead Dylan

Dylan’s songs let us in. They are his butler, impeccably dressed, astute, well versed in the bard’s wishes. Oddly, this butler lets anyone enter who rings the bell.

Please come in. Wipe your feet if you don’t mind; you may leave your coat and hat on the hook, madame, for you have no need of them here. We have a hearth, you understand. Do sit down. Oh, no, the master is not presently meeting with visitors, not personally, that is. But he wishes your comfort - yes, do have a look around. No, we ask that you not finger the tapestry for it is quite rare. Yes, this is the library. Kindly read anything you find here. The words, sir, inside the books. The bindings will only get you so far.

No, there is no television. The newspaper is just there, under the bird’s droppings. You would like to sketch the bird? By all means; your request is not uncommon. Yes, it is a rather splendid creature, I have to agree. Yes, yes, steel blue eyes to be sure. I, too, find them quite watchful. My but yes, he does sing, quite frequently. I have to say I like the sound of it, though I've been told it's an acquired taste.

The view? Most assuredly, it is among the bard's favorites. True again, the valley below is both deep and wide. I’m afraid I can’t tell you why the table stands empty by the edge of the sea.

Ah, good question, where are all the other visitors? The estate is vast, you see. As each of you ends up staying a long old time, we can’t have you stumbling all over each other, now can we? But you will most likely find and become quite fond of a guest or two. It happens that way. Dear madame, I do realize you wish to meet my employer, face to face. But you see, this is precisely why he employs me. To invite you in, make your stay enjoyable and answer your questions. I assure you I can answer all relevant questions about this place without troubling master for an interview. He’s a busy man and even you would be an interruption. Think of it, the time it would take from his work were he obliged to chat with each person who walks through the door.

What? Oh, very fine observation, sir. Why let you in if you aren’t allowed to get any closer than our feathered friend here and the weavings and this card game and the words, all these lovely words? I’ll tell you what, sit awhile, take your time. Chances are good you’ll figure things out for yourself.

Go ahead. You deal.

Image Rama Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France

Bob Dylan: Ageless sage

A little kid at my school assembly grinned up at me after the show. ‘You remind me of somebody I know!’ he chirped. ‘Who?’ asked I. ‘My Gramma!’

It wasn’t the first time my internal chronometer got a jolt of sudden aging. My dad’s friend told me one day I looked more and more like Frieda, my paternal grandmother he’d known as a child.

All this grandma talk can get a girl cranky in the bones.

Music, as usual, to the rescue. Fan of anything Bob Dylan (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Steinbeck...), I ran across this Guthrie quote:

I just reared back and soaked in every note and every word of their singing. It was so clear and honest sounding, no Hollywood put-on, no fake wiggling. It was better to me than the loud squalling and bawling you’ve got to do to make yourself heard in the old mobbed saloons. And, instead of getting you all riled up mentally, morally and sexually - no, it done something a lot better, something that’s harder to do, something you need ten times more. It cleared your head up, that’s what it done, caused you to fall back and let your draggy bones rest and your muscles go limber like a cat’s.
Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory

I'm a whole lot better off than the dust bowl refugees Woody put his mind to. I've got work, respect, food and home for which so many yearned (and still yearn). It’s the ode to musical truth I can relate to best in his words.

The Grammys’ red carpet is a gawker’s paradise of swank primp and tasteless swagger. You can almost see the cogs reel behind the brittle eyes: ‘To be heard I must be herded.’ The term ‘cattle call’ does come to mind.

I didn’t see Dylan on this year's carpet squares, but he of silk shirt and suave shoes dignified the Grammy stage when he broke out with Maggie’s Farm, backed by a dozen prize contenders and his own jokerman shadow dance. True to Woody, Dylan eschewed the fake wiggling and got down to it, the point of it all, the crux of art, the pith of poetry. The good bard applauded his humanity and ours with his ageless delight in the moment’s rich élan.

Now, with an artist like that at work to clear my mind, how can I stop singing?

This just in: As I looked up a clip of Dylan’s Grammy performance, I felt tingles up and down watching Mumford & Sons, the next generation of artists in the Guthrie-Dylan tradition.

Photo njnnetwork, Bob Dylan at the 2011 Grammys

Capacitance

My dear father knows a great deal about frugality, magnanimity, cheese and bees. He can distinguish himself in a card game, tossing out helpful tips and random quips, all the while creaming his opponents. He’s aggregated funny and wise, humble and proud, stoic and wry into his crossword puzzler’s brain over ninety plus fruitful years.

But there’s one thing he’s wrong about, and I’m about to tell you why. One Sunday morning of my impressionable youth, Dad pointed out that a pair of hymn singers into microphones had little to write home about because their sets of pipes were enhanced by technology. I, the wee girl, proceeded to disrespect my natural singing voice for just about the rest of my life.

Enter the iPhone.

Today, after Walter and I recorded ‘All Along the Watchtower’ on his phone, I slid the file into GarageBand, juiced up the reverb and listened, dumbfounded by the transformation.

You’d think by now my long hours in the studio belaboring sound waves would have cured me of the misapprehension that only a naturally voluminous voice is worth its salt. But alas, until today, I felt like impostor mom raising fertility drug quintuplets on borrowed pampers.

Nevermore. A quiet shred of evidence enters my tender mind, a whispered brushstroke signifying truth. Philosphers challenging the sea, actors strutting the Globe, sopranos warbling to the rafters, Streisand any day of the week - those are another species entirely from the studio rat, the circus mime, the no-name dame who shares her glory with programmers, engineers and the miracle knobs they twirl and tweak.

A song that touches your inner ear, rushes through your veins, roars out your soul and changes how you are because a microphone stands open to the singer's breath, this is a force of nature nurtured by the congregate contagion of civilization.

Photo Ben Köhler, Patti Smith performing in Finland, 2007 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license