Friday Night Frolic — Fifty is Nifty?

                                                             
Fifty is nifty when you're twelve years old and in pressing need of rhyme for Mother's birthday card. But when you're fifty—when you're actually fifty, well, somehow it doesn't feel so nifty. Nor peachy, nor swell, nor cool. Nor... you get the picture. I mean, you get the picture—just look at it! Filled with squiggly lines and creases and greenish-brown age-like marks. It's a bit crumpled and uncertain of whether it's an upper or lowercase condition! Clearly, it wants to be uppercase, but the t and y informs us that its appearance is dwindling.

Say what? You don't see age marks and wrinkles on that card? You mean it's confetti and streamers? Ooooh! You see how twisted one's perception becomes at the ripe old age of fifty? Fifty is shifty is what is fifty.

For my birthday, Hubby gave me poetry 180—A Turning Back to Poetry, which is an anthology of contemporary poems carefully selected and introduced (said introduction can be read here) by Billy Collins. In it is one I love—probably the shortest—by Carol Snow:

                            Tour

Near a shrine in Japan he'd swept the path
and then placed camellia blossoms there.

Or—we had no way of knowing—he'd swept the path
between fallen camellias.

Without touching upon the poem's symbolism (camellias, shrines, Japan, paths!) which might reveal much about its meaning, but I have no way of knowing—just as I have no way of knowing if the flowers have drifted to the ground, or have been trampled upon the ground, or are untouched in full bloom on the ground, or who he is or when or how precisely he may have swept the path—what Tour speaks of to me (and that is what a poem is all about, after all, right?—what it says to you) is perception. 

In Tour, there are possibilities. There are lovely fallen camellias on a path that has been swept near a shrine in Japan. Does it matter if we do or don't know when or how the camellias came to be placed upon the path?

That's what fifty is like. I'm on a tour. Paths have been swept. Camellias have fallen. There are other bits and buds with which I've littered the path, and some I've gladly cleared it of. I can't know everything about the path, or the fallen camellias—other than they have, indubitably, fallen—but there are possibilities. Still.

Hmm... 

Maybe fifty is nifty. 

If I had to pull together a soundtrack covering the paths I've traveled these past fifty years, there would likely be a trail sprinkled with Neil Young song crumbs. It would lead one from his early days with Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young up to his live album A Treasure, released in June 2011, which includes a half dozen previously unreleased songs.

Some of the many paths I've followed over this half century remain constant, reliable courses lined with pretty flowers, while others became worn and treacherous and had to be abandoned. Still, paths await to be swept. Or littered with confetti and streamers.

Here, Neil Young returns to his native country in 2005 to perform with his wife, Pegi.

The Bridge School Concerts—25th Anniversary Edition—will be available on DVD and CD this Monday, October 24, 2011. You can preview the official trailer here.

Friday Night Frolic — Falling Waters: A Meditation

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.  Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.  The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.                                              ~John Muir

I know why Backwoods Betty left the city. Though this, I did not always know. Nor was I certain it was a good idea—Betty being a cityfied professional for nearly three decades, held captive by the city's assiduous urban hum, it's vibrant sheen, culture and diversity—I was worried, couldn't imagine how she'd negotiate the solitude of the mountains and northern boreal forests, the frigid and often dangerous winters, the slowed pace. As a second home, sure, but on a permanent basis?

But North of Franconia Notch is hardly an isolated, unfriendly or stagnant plateau. It is a series of verdant mezzanines, palisades of evergreens and brush, pillars of granite and peppery stones that line its natural corridors and wrap around its lush and coniferous woodlands. There, in the thick of this mountainous weald, it is to breathe crisp air and listen.

It is to be spoken to by a voice rooted deep in earth's core, an oracle.

It is to be in the company of good friends. Like the croaking bullfrogs at dusk.

Sunday morning we hiked Falling Waters. Here, along this rugged, root covered, stone lined trail, worn by the tread of many a trekking shoe, insulated from flurry and fuss, from what can sometimes feel like the madness of the world, we heard water falling: drips of clear liquid dropping from one green leaf to another, like Mother Nature's tears running down a stairway of foliage. Then, a trickle of water from behind slate and golden rocks, around fallen birch limbs, and quietly through the brook.

It is a conversation, accompanied by a lullaby.

Without television, radio or internet for the entire weekend, on Sunday we were still unaware of the events that had unfolded in Oslo, and Utoya. We climbed, quite blissfully, higher up the steep and sometimes muddy trail, and witnessed a different kind of unfolding: cool water plunging down granite steps. Pulling ourselves skyward, past sharp twists in the terrain, through shallow pools of water and up stone risers set by the AMC, the waterway widened and gushed from enormous slabs of stone into cascades of trilling aqua.

It is a melody.

We rested at the top of one of the largest falls, and absorbed the deep pigment of nature, whistling birds, barreling water, buzzing insects, pine and dirt and rock, the organic lyrics of the mossy forest.

It is a symphony.

Not knowing anything but the rich sounds of tall pines, clods of mud under foot, wild geese, bullfrogs, or fanning falls can be bliss. (It was Walt Whitman who said:  You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.)

But the north country is not about not knowing. The north country is about paying attention to knowing. It is a meditation on knowing the true identity of the world, and all its creatures, of self and of what brings oneself joy and peace.

It is a meditation on quality of life.

It is a libretto of life. And death. And renewal.

And it is a meditation on everything we don't know, may never know, may never understand.

We went up and down the trail unfettered by the knowledge of the chaos and killing in Norway. The whole weekend, unfettered. It's hard to believe. Some things we don't want to know. Some things we most certainly will never understand.

At the base of the trail, turning on the radio, it was a requiem.

Falling waters, slipping tears. Sounds that resonate.

I didn't want to leave.



Thomas Dybdahl is a Norwegian Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter. His music has all the serenity and lushness of a stream rippling through mountain gorges. His voice: undulating waves of light and sound. His lyrics: as colorful and emotional as the deep northern forest, flooded with the steamy warmth of southern everglades. The sound: rooted in pop, its branches having a multidirectional spread to folk, rock, country, jazz—it is as melodic, scenic and pristine as the glacial terrain and falling waters that seduce us, that speak to us.

His new album, Songs, was released this month in the U.S.



This week, Dybdahl has been touring the States, dedicating his shows to his Norwegian countrymen. Next week, he returns to Trondheim and the tears of Norway. There, he's sure to bring much comfort.


(In the background, Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss speaks of quality of life by asking, roughly, how it may be defined and how it may remain high or become heightened? He reminds us that quality of life has nothing to do with what one has, but how one feels about oneself, what brings one joy. Næss is well known for his work on the principles of deep ecology. )

I worry no longer. Betty knows exactly what she's doing, and she's doing it well. There, in the backwoods of New Hampshire, is much joy and peace. I wish it were the same the world wide.

"In every walk with nature one receives more than he seeks." 

~ John Muir

"Friday Night Frolic" - Yodelayheehoo!

Source

He'd been playing his whole life. He "couldn't live without it," he told Derek Richardson in an interview back in 1999, seven years before his death at the age of seventy-two. He had realized his biggest dream and sung for the first time at the Grand Ole Opry just two weeks prior. By then he was known as the "Pavarotti of the Plains." An accomplished guitarist, singer and songwriter. A yodeling cowboy. Slim Whitman's chummy and chubby doppelganger.

He sure had come a long way from that shy kid who'd climb trees and sing only to the wind.

Strumming what's known as roots music since he was eleven, at the age of sixteen he shared  local club bills with fourteen year old Buddy Holly, who lived sixty miles north of the older musician, up Highway 87—a straight shot from Lamesa to Lubbock—at the southern edge of the Texas Panhandle.

Nine years later, Buddy would be killed in a plane wreck.

Had he imagined what if? If he had played Holly's final concert in Clear Lake, Iowa? If he hadn't refused to change his style? If he had chosen to leave Texas, lured by rock'n'roll and dreams of celebrity and riches? If he'd been chartering planes? If he'd been on the Beachcraft that hit the frozen, snow-covered cornfield outside of Clear Lake in the early morning of February 3, 1959?

His name was Don Walser. And to wonder would have been a luxury. Walser had stayed in the Panhandle, sidelined his music aspirations to raise a family in the dusty plains, high winds and boundless horizons of the northwestern Texan sky. He'd grease gears as a mechanic and work as an auditor for the National Guard. At night, he'd scrub his hands with powdered Boraxo, pick out the grime from under his nails, and leave his small ranch house to play local clubs with The Texas Plainsmen. Or he and his band might gather at a radio station and bang out a few numbers for its listeners.

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Walser wouldn't sign a record deal for another thirty-five years after Holly's death.

But all of Texas had known him anyway. If he'd not put family before fame, he might easily have been just as much a household name as Holly. All of Texas had sung his songs, had waltzed and two-stepped and howled (and in later years, even moshed) with Don Walser for nearly half a century. All of Texas had heard the radio dispatches from Lubbock's KDAV deejay, High Pockets, rooting out a teenage Walser—who had no phone—so that he might appear in a local gig.

Walser would later play festivals with Tommy Allsup, one of Holly's back-up band members who took the bus that fateful February evening after losing the coin toss (for a plane seat) to Richie Valens.

When Walser was first discovered in 1990 by a talent scout who found him playing in Austin with his new band, Pure Texas Gang, he was singing Rolling Stone From Texas, a song he'd written at least thirty years earlier.

                                    (Music kicks in at 1:08 -- WAIT for the yodel at 1:55!)

In 1994, at almost sixty years of age, and after he had retired from forty-five years of serving and working for the the Guard, Walser signed his first record deal.

In 1996, he opened for Johnny Cash at the Erwin Center in Austin, TX.

Don Walser—family man, gifted musician, happy cowpoke, cultural treasure of the Lone Star State—died in 2006. He'll forever be remembered for his music, his perfect tenor voice, his down-home sensibility, and his masterful yodeling.

Like Holly, Walser's music appealed not only to country fans, but also to rock'n'rollers around the globe. The old Texas country music with which he'd spent a lifetime preserving was embraced even by punk rockers. I wonder if the little guy who sang in trees would have ever imagined that.

Yodelhayhee, yodelhayhee, yodelhoo.

"Friday Night Frolic" - Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose!

Remember this guy from Sling Blade? He's had more than a few stellar moments on the big screen, but the stage is where he really shines.

In 1989, a few years before we were married, I introduced my husband to Dwight Yoakam (er, his music, that is). I remember taking Dwight Yoakam's debut album, Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., (in audio cassette form) out to Chicago with me; couldn't wait to tell Michael about this Kentucky cowboy. (You see, I had finally found a music artist that he hadn't yet heard of! A near impossible feat.)  I didn’t much like Country music then, still don’t for the most part (except for Cash, and the sublime Emmylou Harris), but Dwight—he was different. He had that hat. And the tight jeans. The pout and the swagger. Let’s just say, he was sexy—is sexy—an understated Mick Jagger and Elvis Presley. And then, years later, we saw Yoakam in Mansfield, and I was transfixed.

But Yoakam's music was more than Country, it was his own version of the rough-edged Rockabilly sound from the 1950's (think Elvis, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis), greatly influenced by his personal hero, Buck Owens. It was a new sound: Honky-Tonk. Hillbilly. And did it rock!

(After opening video click on Youtube link to view it.)

It's been more than twenty years since Dwight's songwriting brilliance transformed the Country music scene, introducing a whole new generation to a unique and contemporary Country sound, and influencing many young artists. He's still cranking out new tunes and keeping a hefty tour schedule, and his music is as exciting as ever.

If by any small chance, you don't have a lick of Dwight Yoakam, you may want to start with The Essentials—a compilation of the most rockin' rockabilly songs out there (and click on the link below for another taste of Yoakam). 

Whoot, whoot, holla... the boy's got some mad skillz. Pull up those cowboy boots, channel that inner-hillbilly. Hey Mister, turn it on, turn it up, turn me loose! 

"Friday Night Frolic" - GONE GONE GONE!

Alison Krauss, an extraordinary country artist (but so much more than just a country artist): 

You may have heard her ethereal voice from several different movie soundtracks, such as Mona Lisa Smile, Cold Mountain, (where she sings the heartbreaking and haunting melody, The Scarlet Tide—click, but I warn you, there will be tears) and O Brother, Where Art Thou; or, from TV series like The Wire and Sesame Street. Perchance you have seen her performing with Yo-Yo Ma, or on Austin City Limits?  More likely, you discovered her via her wildly popular 2007 masterful collaboration, Raising Sand, with Robert Plant (yes, the one and only Led Zeppelin hard rocker)—produced by the distinguished and innovative Mr. T. Bone Burnett (do look him up). But, if by slim chance you haven't yet been acquainted with this multi, multi talented woman, then you simply must, there is no longer any excuse. Here, an opportunity...

The introduction... by way of a an old Everly Brothers tune (and rockin' with Plant):




But wait... more... (because yes, Robert is fantastic and now you are likely ready to go, go go —done moved on—but this really is about Alison) Alison—backed up by the venerable Union Station—slowing it down a bit, this, one of my daughter's favorite songs:





This accomplished singer, songwriter, fiddler—GONE, GONE, GONE... out of this world good. 

"Friday Night Frolic" - It's Friday Night - Go On, Raise a Ruckus

What a girl would tweet if a girl could tweet. Rock me. 
Click HERE for more about Old Crow Medicine Show (the fab five).