The River Landing

The Elk River Dam - a music post

I recorded this song (vocals, 12-string guitar, keyboard) over the last few weeks.  It came to me in an interesting way, with a pathway that began in the 1980s.  That was when I first discovered Irish or Celtic folk music.  My favorite group was the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem.  Their song "Red-haired Mary" became one of my favorites.  On the song they mention the town of Dingle in western Ireland.  Ever since it was a place I wished to visit.

Years went by without visiting Ireland, but in the mid-2000s, I discovered the music of Éilís Kennedy, an Irish singer who lives in Dingle.  I now had another reason to visit the town and John Benny's Pub where she frequently plays.  This actually happened in 2011, but I missed her pub appearance by one day (see a related post).

In 2016 Éilís Kennedy released a new album called Westward, recorded in Ireland and the US.  With my interest in rivers, I immediately focused on the song "The Elk River Dam."  On the album's liner notes, she writes, "I got this song from my friend Rachel Goodman, when we met for coffee in The White Raven Café in Boulder Creek."  It has now joined "Red-haired Mary" as one of my favorites.

Here is my version.

Download Elk River Dam with keyboards

Amazing Grace - A Music Post

Please click on the following link to hear my piano version of the classic song Amazing Grace: 

Download Amazing Grace mix#1

Down in Salley Gardens - a Music Post

In a previous post called The Highlands, I told the story of how I became interested in Celtic music in the 1980s and how that interest eventually culminated in a trip to Ireland in 2011.  Since that post I have tried better to learn one of my favorite Irish folk songs, Down in Salley Gardens, on the keyboard.  I recently made a recording of this song on the keyboards with the sounds of pan flute and recorder added later (to hear the recording follow the link:

Download Down in Salley Gardens-mix#1). 

With the recording, the photo below, and a selection from my trip journal, I hope I have been able to convey a bit of what it felt like being in Ireland.

 

Blasket Islands, Ireland, 2011

  

Journal entry, September 25, 2011, Doolin, Ireland:  "And then finally the end point:  the head of the Dingle Peninsula and the furthest extent of Europe westward.  As at Dunbeg, the winds were strong and constant.  We parked and gazed toward the distant Blasket Islands.  It was amazing how all of the peninsula was covered by stone-bordered fields, even the larger Blasket Island.  New homes were also dotting the land, a strange modern/ancient mosaic of life ways.  I thought of the fear the people living here must have felt upon seeing a distant Viking ship.  And the sobering  fact is that the human nature that allowed the Vikings to exist has never died.  We must never let our guard down again."

  

The Highlands

 

“…And when I’m gone, may I be one with the air, the land, and the foam, in an orchard green ‘neath the Comeraghs in my sweet Dungarvan home.”  From The Orchard, by Kevin Evans

 

My fascination with Ireland and Scotland began in the late 1970s at a place called Dirty Dick’s Pub in Oak Park, Illinois.  It was an Irish pub, and it was here that I was introduced to Celtic folk music.  The songs told stories of Ireland and Scotland and traveling on the sea.  This was a different kind of music from what I had ever heard on the usual top 40 of the day or FM radio.  After a few pub visits and a growing familiarity with certain tunes, I began to form mental images of what I thought these faraway places might be like:  of course, they were radically different from and more interesting than Berwyn, a near Chicago suburb where I lived at the time.

Though the songs told of large cities such as Dublin and Belfast, I was more drawn to the images of the small hamlets, countryside, rugged mountains, and coastlines.  I filled my record collection with music from groups like the Dubliners, Liam and Clancy, and the Tannahill Weavers.  I learned about places such as the Dingle Peninsula from a song called Red-haired Mary; Cork, Killarny, and Kilkenny from Whiskey in the Jar; and the Comeragh Mountains at Dungarvan Bay from The Orchard.  Many of the songs told the history of Ireland and Scotland, which I pieced together bit by bit from titles such as Sound the Pibroch, The Rising of the Moon, Foggy Dew, and Botany Bay.  Songs of travel like Wild Rover, and the many seas songs fed the growing wanderlust of my early twenties.

Though I was intrigued by travel abroad, there was much that I wished to see in my own country.  And so, for a long time my interests in Ireland and Scotland would remain confined to the music and my imagination, whether the latter was accurate or not.

Music, in fact, had been a big part of my life since childhood when I began playing the accordion at around nine years old.  During my teenage years, I was persistent and occasionally worked hard at improving my playing abilities, but I never really connected with the instrument.  The problem was that I did not listen to accordion music, did not play with a band, was not very fond of polkas, and contemporary rock and country music—the music that I actually listened to at the time—were not accordion-friendly.

I probably would have eventually given up on the accordion were it not for discovering Celtic folk music.  Groups that played this music actually had accordions in their bands.  And it sounded great!  Irish and Scottish folk songs on the accordion sounded good to my ears; my own playing improved and my musical horizons expanded.

One day in the mid-1980s I had a tune in my mind.  I’m not sure where it came from, but it “sounded” like a slow Scottish ballad.  Along with the tune, I imagined the Highlands of Scotland, although I had actually seen few photographs of Scotland up until that time.  Still, I imagined rugged mountains covered in tundra-like vegetation with hidden wilderness valleys, cobble-bottomed clear streams with gallery forests, blowing winds, greyish skies with only intermittent sunshine, and few or no people.  I quickly worked out the tune on my accordion, and added it to my usual repertoire.  I had written a song, and I called it The Highlands.

 

***

Since that time, I eventually did drift away from the accordion at about the same time that I took up the guitar as my main instrument.  My wife, Julie, though, loves accordion music.  At her request one day, I played her a few tunes.  One of those tunes turned out to be The Highlands.  Her response was enthusiastic, even more so after being informed that I had composed the tune over twenty years before.  Without hesitation she encouraged me to copyright the song.  And after writing a few lyrics, before too long, I did just that.

 

The Highlands

        Grey skies, to the Highlands, I’ll journey.

        Great waves, they break on the rocks.

        The wild Highlands they call on me;

        Buried away in my dreams.

 

        In lochs, we’ll sail through the Highlands,

        Leading us down to the shore.

        At sea, one night I must leave you;

        Fair winds, I’ll wait and be gone.

 

            Ancient battle cries;

                The eagle flies;

                The gathering storms will arise.

                Grey skies, to the Highlands, I’ll journey;

                Or never no more may I roam.

 

        Dark cliffs, to the Highlands, I’ll journey.

        Mountains, they rise with the dawn.

        At home, no more will I leave you;

        This night and all through the ‘morn.

 

                Ancient battle cries;

                The eagle flies;

                The gathering storms will arise.

                Grey skies, to the Highlands, I’ll journey;

                Or never no more may I roam.

                

***

In 2011, I finally saw Ireland, when Julie and I flew across the Atlantic Ocean and landed at the Shannon Airport near the town of Limerick in Ireland’s west.  Julie’s goal was to see Cork, where family legend said her ancestors, in the 1800s, sailed for the United States.  On our visit, we found the exact departure point in the coastal town of Cobh.  From there we drove to Ireland’s far west, eventually reaching the end of Dingle Peninsula, considered the furthest western extension of Europe.  At nearby County Clare, we stayed in Doolin, known far and wide for its Celtic music pubs.  Late one afternoon, we enjoyed a few pints while listening to a group of older musicians playing The Orchard.  For both of us, circles had been completed.

At the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland, 2011

 

[To hear The Highlands on the keyboard, follow this link: 

Download The Highlands.]

 

[To download The Highlands sheet music, follow this link:   Download The Highlands Sheet Music.] 

 

Paradise over the Years

For several years now I have been giving programs to various groups as a way to promote my book, Side Channels:  A Collection of Nature Writing and Memoir.  The programs include short readings from the book, photographs of river scenes, stories of how I became interested in rivers and nature in general, and a few specially selected songs on my acoustic guitar. 

One of the songs that I usually play is John Prine’s Paradise, mainly because I know the words very well and it is a rather easy song to play (only three chords).  Paradise tells the story of a small Kentucky town, along the Green River, that was moved so the land could be strip-mined for coal.  The song has been one of my favorites for a long time, and when I’m playing it, I lose myself to the past.

 

Green River, Kentucky, 1977

I first heard Paradise in the mid-1970s at a Tom T. Hall concert at the Grundy County Fair.  Still in high school at the time, a few friends and I made the 50-mile trip one summer evening from Cicero to Morris after hearing about the concert on our local country music station.  At that time, Grundy County was very rural; the Chicago area’s sprawling suburbs were still many miles away.  And so, as we sat on the outside bleachers waiting for the concert to begin, we looked upon farm country that stretched nearly unbroken in every direction; it may have been the first time I had ever seen the sun set over the actual horizon.

I remember the concert starting late, which created some frustration within the audience; and when Hall finally appeared, he seemed rather uninterested in playing, as if he simply wanted to be relaxing at home with a drink.  On the second or third song of the show, he played Paradise, and he became much more alive and focused.  I don’t recall that he mentioned who wrote the song; so I thought that either he was the author or that it was an old traditional bluegrass tune.  For the rest of the concert, Hall returned to his somewhat distracted state, and we left the fairgrounds a bit disappointed. 

Three or four years later I was at a co-worker’s basement apartment drinking beer and talking about music.  When I mentioned that I liked Bob Dylan, he replied that I needed to hear John Prine, who, he said, sounded a bit like Dylan with a southern accent.  He then put John Prine’s first album on the turn table; and listening with an open mind, I immediately liked what I heard:  “Blow up your TV, throw away your paper, go to the country, build you a home.…”  Then Paradise came on, and I instantly recognized the song from the Tom T. Hall concert.  I found out then that Prine was the author of Paradise.  And I made up my mind at that moment to pick up some John Prine albums.

  Not long after that evening, a couple of friends and I were again attending a Tom T. Hall concert, this time at a small venue on Chicago’s north side.  I don’t remember much about the concert except that Hall seemed even more distracted than the last time I saw him.  But to be fair to Hall, after the concert, our small group was bound for Chicago-style deep dish pizza, and that was about all I could think of for probably the last half of the show.  We couldn’t have left the concert hall fast enough for me. 

But after the house lights finally came on, I noticed that sitting in the next row of seats, just in front of us, was none other than John Prine and Steve Goodman!  At the time, I was much less familiar with Steve Goodman, other than being able to recognize him as someone who had played with John Prine.  So I whispered to my friend Jeff, “Hey, that’s John Prine over there, and he was sitting in front of us during the whole concert.”  So Jeff boldly walked up to Prine and said, “Hey you’re John Prine.”  Prine smiled and replied, “Yeah, I am.”  Steve Goodman just smiled.

I think of these little stories whenever I play Paradise, and I probably always will.

 

[MUSIC DOWNLOAD:  To hear my version of Paradise, please click on

Download Paradise Mix#1.]

 

Order Side Channels from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or many other online locations.

 

Recollections of a Man on Skid Row—Chicago, Early 1970s

Recently my wife Julie and I were planning a trip to Lake Michigan’s dune country, about 50 miles across the lake from Chicago.  And as is my habit before such a trip, I’ll make a visit to the plastic cabinet on our front porch, where the miscellany of my life is being stored:  brochures from sites visited long ago, outdated maps, scattered photographs, bits of this and that being saved for obscure reasons.  And during my search for whatever I was looking for, I came upon an envelope crammed with old black-and-white photographs.

I shuffled through the prints rather quickly, like a deck of cards, and was almost ready to store them away again before seeing each one—as I remembered the photos very well, and knew there would be no surprises—when one rather abruptly grabbed my attention.  It simply showed a man walking on a sidewalk.  Yet the photo brought forth a flood of memories, and pulled me back to that exact day and time over 40 years before.

 

Chicago, Madison Avenue, early 1970s

 

In those days, my father, who passed on in 2009, often took my brother Bob and me on Sunday drives.  Sometimes it seemed as if we had no particular destination in mind, just being out of our little neighborhood for a while was enough.  Downtown Chicago and the lake front were our favorites.  We once drove through beautiful neighborhoods of what seemed like mansions in the northern suburbs of Kenilworth and Winnetka, to see how the other half lived.  And we drove through Chicago’s western suburbs past new shopping malls, which my father said was how the future would look; and I felt as if we had just traveled through time.  I remember seeing the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, in the 1960s, before, it seemed, much attention had been given to air pollution control:  a sunny day turned somber, dark, and gray; and my father said that this was progress, and called the wetlands and open fields “wasteland.”  On one adventurous trip, just after Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King had been killed, followed by riots with burning inner-city neighborhoods, my father was curious to see the aftermath—what he, a World War II veteran, called a “war zone.”  We traveled down Madison Avenue where the rioting had been the worst; there was no shortage of charred buildings and debris strewn over the streets and sidewalks; yet all seemed peaceful on our Sunday drive, even though tensions must have been tight as a drum.  Though my father seemed oblivious to any danger, he instructed us to shut the car windows and lock the doors.

A few years later, in a high school photography class, I learned about the different cameras available and how to develop black-and-white film and create prints.  My parents indulged this budding interest by purchasing a small photographic enlarger and allowing me to develop film and prints in the house, which, to my mother’s dismay, involved the use of some rather smelly chemicals.  Soon, from money which I earned through various odd jobs, I bought my first good camera:  a 35 mm, Yashica rangerfinder with adjustable lens, shutterspeed, and focus.  Armed with this new camera, then, I was eager to take pictures of just about anything. 

Downtown Chicago continued to be a prime choice, but I tended to travel there more by the elevated train system (the “L” train) and buses accompanied by one or two friends.  Though Sunday drives with my father were becoming less frequent as I became older, on one of our last, we ended up, once again, on Madison Avenue.  By that time, about 1972, there had not been rioting for a few years, and the perception was that social disharmonies had improved quite a bit since the late 60s.  Our optimistic world view said that that had to be the case:  things always improved, and progress moved everything forward.  But Madison Avenue was still Skid Row, as it had been known for a long time:  a poor, dangerous, high-crime area with flop houses, junkies, prostitutes, homeless street people, gangs, broken-down buildings, filth, and disease.  Skid Row had not improved, and may actually have gotten worse.  Now, some may say this is a harsh assessment, flavored by the flaws of memory.  Fair enough.  But it is called Skid Row for a reason.

When our car slowed in the traffic, I noticed a tall man walking quickly, taking big steps, dodging around slower-moving pedestrians.  He stood out in the crowd.  And I cried, “Look at that guy!”  His face had a wild, maniacal expression.  And so I quickly readied my camera over the protests of my father and brother.  When the man was just opposite our vehicle, I snapped the shutter, and we quickly drove onward, back to our world, a world away from his.  I think this was the last time we traveled to Skid Row and one of the last Sunday drives, as my life apparently became busier, and being with friends assumed a greater importance.

As I now look at the print of this man on Skid Row, I wonder about his story.  How did he end up there?  Was he a penniless alcoholic who had just found enough money for a drink?  Is that why he was in such a hurry?  Or did he just steal something?  Was he a war veteran, who had seen terrible things, and been broken by the experience?  Was he someone’s once beloved husband or father who had fallen on illness and hard times?  Or were the hard times of his own making?  Was he dangerous, and would he have been furious to know that his picture had just been taken?  Should I not have taken his picture?     

Such questions were not on my mind when I snapped the photo, knowing only that I wished to be as far from this man and his surroundings as possible (yet there he is in a cabinet, in my home, along with special moments from my life).  And I also did not wonder why it was that my father brought his two sons through Skid Row on a Sunday afternoon.  As I recall, my mother also wondered, shaking her head in disbelief at her former husband’s choice for a drive with his sons.  But I believe his reason was to impart a valuable and memorable lesson:  Work hard, get an education, save your money, be honest and kind, stay sober, and you won’t end up here.  Although he never offered an actual word of explanation, his message was loud and clear, then as now.

[MUSIC EXTRA:  As I was thinking about posting the photograph that is the subject of this essay, I kept thinking about Bob Dylan's song Only a Hobo from 1963.  And so I recorded it on my 12-string guitar and keyboard.  For a listen, click the link:  Download Only a Hobo Mix#1] 

"Wrote a Song for Everyone" a Music Post

Last year after presenting the program “Side Channels in Story and Song” to selected gatherings, as a way of promoting my book Side Channels:  A Collection of Nature Writing and Memoir, occasionally someone would ask if I had recordings available.  Since then, I’ve been experimenting with a digital recorder and mixer.  I was kind of pleased with this recording that I made of “Wrote a Song for Everyone,” originally done by Creedence Clearwater Revival in the late 1960s; I recorded the guitar and vocals on a cold, snowy day in February and then added the keyboard this afternoon on a very pleasant spring day.   

Download Wrote a Song for Everyone Mix#1

Although I did not perform this song on the “book tour,” it has always been one of my favorites.  I even once tried to analyze the lyrics for a high school English class…without the correct lyrics.  No wonder it didn’t make sense!  But I think I get it now.  

Illinois Native Plant Society's 2013 annual meeting

Side Channels in Story and Song

    Music has always been a big part of my life.  While childhood accordion lessons in the 1960s formed a solid foundation and revealed the technical complexities and mathematical precision of music, from adolescence onward, specific songs became linked with experiences and emotions, making music a true part of my life.

    This is because even when the radio was off, songs tended to play in my mind as I went through each day.  I enjoyed all types of music to varying degrees, but every once in a while I would hear something on AM radio that really drew my attention, a style different from the rest, a style that said to me that this was my music; and as I look back today, I see that many of the songs that I really connected to were folk-, country- or blues-inspired songs about traveling, enduring against  life’s struggles, or just being free:  John Fogarty’s Lodi and Proud Mary immediately come to mind.  When I was low on money, I would sometimes think of the line from Me and Bobbie McGee, that said “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

    Johnny Cash, with his songs of hobos and train travel, eventually became a major part of my record collection.  Much of Cash’s music highlighted the rugged, independent individual; and this had great appeal to me as a teenager in the early 1970s, even as my parents repeatedly commanded me to “turn down the music.”  In chapter 21 of Side Channels, I wrote about how Bob Dylan’s song Watching the River Flow has been an inspiration to me for over three decades.  And through my interest in Dylan, I discovered Woody Guthrie:  more songs of being on the road and surviving against the odds and the oppressors.

    Of course, life’s unavoidable obligations and responsibilities eventually took center stage, but I have never abandoned music.  In fact, music is now a bigger part of my life than ever before.

 

*    *   *

    When Side Channels was published in 2011, I knew that to promote the book, I would have to engage in book signings with readings.  Although at first, the idea of reading from my book in front of a group of listeners seemed strange, after a few successful events, I began to feel more comfortable with the process.  And yet, I never was able to completely lose the fear of being boring, even with a fancy Powerpoint presentation.  If I saw any audience members yawning or shutting their eyes, instead of thinking about what I was saying, I could easily begin worrying that they were bored.

    Sometimes after giving a program, due entirely to my own insecurities, I would feel a bit sorry for the audience, and ask myself if I could not find ways to make my programs more interesting.  Then one day last year it hit me:  music!  Although Side Channels is a book about nature, especially birds and birding, it is also part memoir.  How could I give a talk about Side Channels and my life without mentioning music and its influences?

    So I developed a program called Side Channels in Story and Song that combines short readings from Side Channels with a Powerpoint slide presentation and music on my acoustic guitar.  For the musical selections, I chose some of my favorite songs that relate to specific topics or scenes in the book.

Thomas V. Lerczak at the Illinois Audubon Meeting, April 2012

    From my perspective, combining a book reading with music is a natural combination, and one that I would imagine few authors are able to do.  Even so, I wasn’t sure how well such a program would go over with nature-oriented groups, the presumed major audience for Side Channels, who tend to expect serious presentations, usually something topical or scientific with slides of data and statistics.  The thought did occur to me that I might have been setting myself up for a big embarrassment, which would be much worse than simply being boring.

    To say that I was nervous the first time I presented this program at the Illinois Audubon Society’s 2012 Spring Gathering in Danville, Illinois, would be an understatement.  But when I played the first song, Johnny Cash’s Crystal Chandeliers and Burgundy, and saw many audience members tapping their feet, I knew that adding music to my program was the right move.  A woman at the Du Page Birding Club even said that my program was “like being at a campfire.”

[To listen to my version of Crystal Chandeliers and Burgundy, click the following link:

Download Chrystal Chandeliers and Burgundy Mix#1.]

    I plan to have Side Channels in print for at least two or three more years, during which time I will be open to scheduling more book signing programs with music (for inquiries, please send an e-mail to tvincl@casscomm.com).  It certainly makes the entire experience easier and more enjoyable for me, and I hope for the audience also.

 

To purchase a copy of Side Channels, please visit Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, or other online booksellers.