Michael Martin Murphy and Tom Rush

I remember the very first WoodSongs show.

It was in Kevin's old studio behind Flagfork Farm on Broadway in Lexington. We could barely seat 15 people. My friend Rob "The Beatnik Cowboy" McNurlin was the only artist on the show.

Times have changed.

We now pack a 400 seat concert hall every Monday no matter who is on the show. The audience comes regardless. Blind Boys of Alabama, Jakob Dylan ... or 11-year old Almire Fawn. The Kentucky Theatre fills up. To stand on that stage before the show starts remains a moving experience for me, I feel the same rush each week as I walk up from behind the curtains and see so many that support the WoodSongs idea.

And speaking of "rush" ...

I recall being in junior high when "Wildfire" first came out. I would crank up the radio each time it did .... I loved that song. So you can imagine what a total blast it is that Michael Martin Murphy would come on the show, not once, but twice so far. Each time, he and I would have dinner afterward and I would get to know this very kind hearted, true-to-the-core artist that I've admired for so long. And we talk good-cop, bad-cop politics, which is a lot of fun. MMM is a tremendously intelligent man who cares very much about society and music and who almost single handedly reintroduced the music of the American west to an entire generation of young people.

And speaking of "Rush" ...

Tom Rush has been a musical mentor for me in many ways. His passion for the unknown artist and for using his fame as a stepping stone to introduce artists like Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor ... not to mention Shawn Colvin, Susanne Vega and Dar Williams ... to the music public is a template for generosity not seen since Pete Seeger's early days. It was Tom Rush's example that gave birth to my phrase "... you don't have to be famous, you just have to be good" that I use on the show each week.

Imagine the rush ... Tom and MMM on my stage at the same time.

... and who ever said folk music was boring :)

mj

The Dimensions of Art

It is the difference of seeing a Van Gogh online, verses seeing it in a museum. It is hearing the album in your earbuds, verses watching the concert onstage. It's viewing the song on YouTube, verses singing the song to your family gathered in the living room on a winter night.

It's two dimensions vs three ... the great artistic war of the new century.

Years ago, all art was three dimensional. It captured all of your senses and immersed you in the baptism of another artists life and spirit. It wasn't reproduced, it was experienced. That is what art, true art, is for.

This changed with the advent of two wonderful inventions: the photograph and the record player. Let me repeat: they are wonderful. But only when they and their resultant offspring are kept in their proper place.

The photograph, which morphed into television, computer screens and iPods, captured a three dimensional soul ... whether a person or a mountain or a flower in a vase ... and relegated it down into the two dimensional world. In perfect form, this would inspire others to go out and experience the mountain, meet the person and smell the fragrance of that beautiful flower.

The same with records and radio. These musical arts that, one time, thrived in a three dimensional world of small stages and clubs and courtyards, front porches and living rooms. Soon, the art was was captured and relegated down into the two dimensional world. In perfect form, and this often worked, the record and the radio would motivate the audience to learn that song or go see that artist in person.

Not any more.

We are, for the first time in human history, dealing with a generation who experience art and music primarily in the two dimensional world.

And that's a shame. Kids today experience art and music in cheap $15 earbuds, computer speakers, iPods, computer screens, TV and a couple of speakers wired to their stereo. It has become a very rare thing for kids and families to see music performed in person. venues, in this economy, are closing by the dozens and America is becoming venue starved. The opportunity for three dimensional art is becoming harder to find.

Even the "star system" is designed to remove art from you, selling you on the insane idea that only the "Star" is truly qualified to play music, therefore you are relegated down to a two dimensional participant. Your role is to buy the record. The farther the music industry can push you away from your own music, the better customer you become.

As the audience surrenders to the two dimensional world, and artists loose their ability to capture their attention as two dimensional art saturates people with an endless bombardment of mundane artist efforts, we must look to other artists who figured out a way to marry the two worlds together.

Pete Seeger comes to mind. Pete released his records, went on TV when he could, got played on radio ... all in an effort to get the three dimensional world, his audience, singing. And it worked.

The finest, truest role of the two dimensional media is to get real people involved with real art.

I try to do that on WoodSongs. The two dimensional media platforms are, as I said, wonderful. And a very powerful tool to inspire. But not replace. At the end of every show I try to encourage the audience eto use what they just heard as inspiration to play their own music.

And that's what I hope you do. Use WoodSongs, successful as it is on radio, public television and online, as a wellspring of inspiration to turn it all off and play your own song. Sing to your children. Play for your friends. Re-baptize your heart in the magnificent world of three dimensional art.

It is like a wonderful paradise of music and art.

Michael

Poppy

It is snowing as I look out my farmhouse window tonight.

The woods feel so silent and still, the wind is just barely there, pushed away by the soft sounds of a fireplace in the next room. Without the kids here, the house is very still, very pensive. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for their return.

But I am torn with a lot of feelings tonight. A confusing tsunami of disappointment, regret, resignation ... and loss.

My mind is vivid with a technicolor memory of when I was still living in New York, long ago. Seventeen years old. Sleeping on a cot in the attic of a friends house by myself with everything I owned in a brown paper bag.

I had a part time job at a grocery store. I would change the prices on shelf items. They gave me a can of Lysol and a steel wool pad and I would scrub the ink off and then stamp the new prices on. A few years later that was all replaced by bar codes. But I was at my job this afternoon, an angry and ripped-to-shreds teenager that was put in a position to have leave his home.

I remember forcing myself to stay busy at my job. I needed the money now. I promised my friend I would pay rent for the little attic room. The feeling of that empty, hollow hurt in my chest is still there when I think back. I remember it very clearly. I was mad. I was scared. I was fed up.

And I was still just a kid.

And I remember looking up and seeing the tall, husky figure of him as he walked down the store isle to me. I called him dad, but he wasn't. I found out just a few years ago that I had another dad who died before I was born. That little piece of information answered a lot of things for me. I could never figure out why I was always treated differently, why I never fit in, why I didn't belong there. Then I found out. Dad wasn't my dad. And I carried this man's name publicly, but it wasn't really mine. I had two names. A public one and then a secret one that I could never say out loud. It made me not know who I was, or who I belonged to, or who I was supposed to be.

So I handled it all like I was still a kid.
Because I was.

And he walked up to me and asked how I was doing. And I said OK, too proud to ever look up. And he put his hand on my shoulder ... I don't ever recall he ever touched me before or after this day ... and said, "Let's go to the diner next door for a hamburger."

So, I put down my can of Lysol and my steel wool pad and left the store with him. That was OK, because, after all, this was HIS store and he gave me this part time job. And we sat at the diner counter and he didn't say much. I didn't say much. But he wanted to know if I was OK and he handed me some money in case I needed it. And then he left.

That was the closest I ever felt to him. I wanted to run out of the diner and grab him and hug him. I knew he cared about me. I knew that, in his heart, he didn't see a difference if I was his or not. And if left to his own inclination, he wouldn't treat me any different than my brother, who was his actual son.

But he wasn't my dad. And I wasn't his son.
And it mattered to me that I was reminded of that from others constantly.

And so I left. I left New York and went as far as I could without leaving the nation and landed on the Mexican border in Laredo, Texas and began a search, a journey that finally led me through trials and errors and stupid mistakes. I would have given the world to have a father to help me navigate through it all.

That journey led me to Melody. And Rachel. And my own son, MichaelB. And I learned from the things I missed, and try to be the best dad I can be for them. I tell them I love them constantly. They have a hug whenever they want, and when they don't expect it. I tell them that, someday, they will be in trouble. They might have done something bad that might even be their fault. They will be embarrassed or ashamed. And that's the day they will need their dad the most. And I will be there for them. No matter what. Always. And forever.

But tonight ... the snow is turning to ice tonight. And the cold is creeping into the farmhouse and I really need to put a another log in that fire. But I don't move, I don't leave this screen until I've finished writing.

Because Poppy died today.
And I didn't really know him that well. And he never really knew me. I saw him a few months ago and he was frail, no longer the husky Bull of a man I remember. I walked into the hospital room and he took my hand and he asked me how I was.

And for a moment, as I held his hand, I was seventeen again. And scared. Living in an attic and angry and alone. But only for a moment. Because I'm not a kid anymore and times and people change.

Poppy is gone, and I will forever miss the man that took me for a hamburger and sat with me that afternoon at that diner. And I will always regret that he and I never could get past what other people impuned on our relationship. I needed him, but could never tell him.

Instead, I put all that energy into my children. They are the life and light and joy of my life. And I sit here tonight, mourning my step father's passing ... a man I really never knew very well. Writing in this farmhouse thinking of my children ...

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for their return.

Odetta

She had a heart as big as the Universe ... and a voice that filled it.

Now, that magnificent voice is silent. And the Universe is almost still in tribute to the kind, generous, passionate woman that was Odetta.

My friend was a feisty, spirited lady. She treated a song with the dignity of a queen, yet presented herself to the audience with the humility of a princess. Never would she go onstage unless properly finished in dress and makeup, because "that is what the audience expects of her ... to care enough to look right for them."

I was a young, scrappy, energetic folksinger when I first met her. Oh, I knew who she was because of a Janis Ian record. At first, I thought "Odetta" was the name of some music gear that created these awesome, cosmic tones on the record. Then I found out that Odetta was a real person. One day, my agent booked me to open a concert at a dinner theater in Maine, named, oddly enough, Jonathans. I walked in for sound check and sitting on stage, positioned under a lone spotlight, dressed in white robes with a white headband, her guitar on her lap with a stick of burning incense positioned between the strings of her guitar tuners, was the woman named Odetta.

She looked like a black angel.

Odetta and I had a great time and, a couple of months later, she flew to meet me in a recording studio where we recorded Si Kahn's song, "New Wood." Oh, how her voice filled the speakers and the song and the room and my head. Later that night, we went to the Kirchner's farm to film the music video. It premiered on CNN of all places. I went to NYC and she and I taped an interview together that aired on CNN's Showbiz Tonight.

My point in all of this is simply to show that my friend gave more to me than I ever gave to her. And my little career didn't even register on the Richter scale of her world. The last we spent time together, she taped a WoodSongs special event in her honour (check out show #381 on my Archives page). The night before, we spent all evening at Portafino's Resturant talking and laughing and swapping stories of being on the road too much.

She fell sick recently, although she remained energized at the hope of singing for Barack Obama at the inauguration this January. That would have been a sight, so see Odetta stand and sing in front of four million people. The same Odetta who sang for Martin Luther King, Jr. at his civil rights marches all those years ago.

The woman who gave voice to the songs of slaves would have deserved that honour. And, darn, she would have made sure she looked great, too. Because that's what the audience would have expected of her.

Odetta was in fact a legend. She carried herself like a legend. She performed like one. But she never acted like one.

Yes, the Universe is a little less brilliant today. The stars reflect a little less light. The music that drifts in the clouds sound a little less sweet. And there is a silent place in any heart that loves the true spirit and passion of music.

I will miss you, my friend.