How Play Came to Be and How We Came to Play

Nields History Part IV-Our 1998 Release, "Play"

We Nields have never had a number one hit single on the radio, nor have we appeared on National TV on a late night talk show.We've never ridden on a tour bus and we've (sadly) never had action figures made to resemble our personages.Nevertheless, in the 8 years of our existence, we feel we've lived the full gamut of a rock and roll career worthy of a VH1 Where Are They Now? special. For the first seven years, we were widely touted as The Next Big Thing, which was fun for awhile, though we tired of well meaning friends saying, "I had an idea for you!You guys should be on Conan! If you went on Conan, you'd be famous!"(Courteously, we'd thank each one of these good people, saying, "Yes, what a fine idea! Why didn't we think of that earlier?" While inside we were tempted to grow bitter and cruel, self-mocking and depressed. But we fought this temptation with all our might!) As obedient Next-Big-Things-To-Be, we left our homes in February, 1996 to chase the Rock and Roll Dream in our sweet Dodge Ram Van, Moby, all the while fantasizing about traveling in a tour bus. We played in venues ranging from beautiful theaters, gorgeous outdoor festivals to little scummy clubs redolent with beer and excrement, with dressing room graffiti that would make Marilyn Manson blush.

We wrote what we hoped and prayed were catchy sell-out hit singles only to have our record company A&R guy and our publisher tell us they were merely "more cerebral Nields songs about teen agers." Rats! we cried.

By the fall of 1997, our van, Moby, began a slow and excruciating death march across Texas.

News from the home front was that our record company, Guardian, was about to fold. When we called them, concerned for their health, they said, "What are you doing talking to us on the phone?! Get back on the road--we need you to keep promoting Gotta Get Over Greta." "But we have so many new songs!"we whined. "We want to make a new record. Or two." "Tough," they said kindly but with tough love."We're busy trying not to become a nonentity Your petty concerns distract us.Meanwhile, go to California where we have a gig for you that will make you famous, put you on TV and in magazines and get you a tour bus."Obediently (for we were nothing if not obedient!), we flew to California to become famous, finding our selves in the Bloomingdale's at the Stanford Mall, performing a song about a teen age prostitute to a group of extremely nervous and self conscious fifteen-year-old-winners of an amateur model search (as well as the losers-they weren't so happy either.) Curiously, this did not directly lead to our fame and fortune, or even a mention in Seventeen Magazine. For the rest of the fall, we played all over the North American continent. In late October, 1997, we took a break in Sewickly, PA to learn the backlog of new songs we'd accumulated. This was the smartest thing we'd done in years.For when the record company did fall, and we found ourselves with no van to travel around in, in that darkest hour between 1997 and 1998, we looked around the room at each other's dear faces and shrugged. Someone said, "We can still play."

Well, play we did. We hunkered down at Sackamusic Studio in Amherst and spent the next third of a year recording these 13&1/2 songs, determined to create something that would make our fans proud of us. On June 13, 1998 we held a fundraising concert called Jam for the Van and bought a new van (Nessie, the Loch Ness Vanster) to replace Moby, and that same month, we signed a record deal with Zoe/Rounder/Mercury/PolyGram on the theory that if one record company buys you lunch, four must feed you for at least four meals.

Where did the songs come from?

-"Easy People" was written in Bloomington, Indiana while Nerissa was going for a run. She was very grateful.

-"Georgia O" was written in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Katryna had suggested to Nerissa that she write a song about women who inspired us, especially Georgia O'Keeffe because her name was so musical.

-"In the Hush Before the Heartbreak" was an idea conceived in the Adirondacks.

-"Snowman" was written on a snowy January morning at home in Hatfield, MA and first performed at Passim in Cambridge, MA. David wrote the guitar chords and the words and handed the lyric sheet to Nerissa and started playing. She made up the tune. ("I wrote the chorus!" David complains frostily.)

-"Art of the Gun" was conceived in Atlanta, GA and David first played it for the rest of the band in Grand Junction, CO. He'd heard about an art exhibit called 'Art of the Gun' and thought it was an oxymoron.

-"Last Kisses" was conceived on the New Jersey Turnpike.

-"Friday at the Circle K" was conceived at the Iron Horse in Northampton, MA while we were watching a show featuring Eddie from Ohio and Susan McKeowan & Chanting House; it was finished in Sewickly, PA.

-"Check it Out" was an annoying phrase squeaked out ad nauseam at that show in Bloomingdale's in Northern CA. Nerissa woke from a dream a few days later with the entire first verse full written in her head. She finished it on the stretch of road covering New Mexico, Arizona and eastern CA.

-"Nebraska" was written in Florida, although the inspiration for the song came from a different state.

-"The Train" was written at home in Hatfield. David said, "I oughta write a train song. It's about time." So he did.

"Jennifer Falling Down" was written at home in Hatfield.David came to Nerissa with the words to the chorus and said, "I think this is kind of good." She agreed and wrote the song in about ten minutes.Then they went to a party.

-"Innertube" was written in Pittsburgh, inspired by Dave Chalfant's grandmother's beautiful house.

-"Tomorrowland" was mostly written in McLean, VA, but it was based on a chord pattern written at the Loomis Chaffee School back in 1995.Nerissa found an old "work tape" one day and played it in the car ride down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina (much to David's annoyance: it mostly featured her playing the same droning pattern over an over again, attempting to master a certain guitar lick. She still hasn't mastered that lick, but she did get inspired to write this song.)

Thoughts on the History of Gotta Get Over Greta

Gotta Get Over Greta

Greta was our first big major label release. This is taken from the songbook we published in 1997.

Greta began in the fall of 1994 when Dave Hower called me up a few minutes after I'd called him to tell him we had twelve gigs in October for which we'd be needing his services. He said, "I'd better join the band for good." I ran, shrieking, to the building next door [the NEO theatre at Loomis Chaffee School] where David Nields and Dave Chalfant were working on some music for Peer Gynt. I told them the great news. At that point, after many years and three previous recordings, The Nields, the five of us, was complete.

The first song written after that fateful day was "Bulletproof" which David and I wrote in a little lookout tower on the Outer Banks of North Carolina over Thanksgiving holiday. A few weeks later came "I Know What Kind of Love This Is." I wrote the melody on a piano and walked around the room singing it to myself until it turned into a story. Around Christmas time as I was wrapping presents, I heard David playing my acoustic in the next room and singing "Gimme my ball back, yeah." We didn't arrange that song for another nine months, but that's when "King of the Hill" was born. "Fountain of Youth" and "Best Black Dress" were written in the Spring of '95. I was thinking about power relationships and generational warfare and Steely Dan's "Hey Nineteen." We arranged these two at Loomis Chaffee's NEO Theatre and I remember our excitement when David Nields and Dave Chalfant came up with their bass/guitar interlocking duo on "Fountain." Around that time, David wrote "Cowards," and the five of us went up to Dave Chalfant's brand new studio, Sackamusic, in Amherst [now in Conway] to record a demo of these five songs [all the above except "King of the Hill"] to send to record companies. We did a show at the Bottom Line, along with Acoustic Junction, Hart Rouge and our dear friend Dar Williams. It was hosted by WFUV DJ Rita Houston and Dar said, "Why don't we work up 'Lovely Rita' to sing in her honor?" Dar's record company, Razor & Tie was at the show and said, "Hey Nields, we'd like to put out your record."

So we began preparing for that eventuality by seeking out different producers. A trip to Memphis was in order to do some work with John Hampton at Ardent Studio (he produced the Gin Blossoms there). Out of those sessions we kept takes of "Cowards" and "Alfred Hitchcock" for our EP Abigail. We also recorded "Fountain of Youth," which later made it onto "Greta." We had a great time with Hampton and ate a lot of peanuts and played with the velcro cats who prowled around the studio and would stay suspended on the carpet-covered walls just like those birthday party balloons do when you rub them just so.

In the fall of '95 we relocated to Long View Farm Studio in North Brookfield MA to record with Kevin Moloney, a lovely, delightful Irishman fond of Guinness and the Beatles. We were psyched to work with him because we greatly admired his production of Sinead O'Connor's first record The Lion and the Cobra. He slept in Keith Richard's windowless room and ate a strict vegetarian diet, except for the last night when he had lamb with mint sauce. We breathed in the good New England autumn air, patted the horses and made our record, track by track.

Gotta Get Over Greta was released by Razor & Tie on March 5 1996. With a red 1/2 cover and a blue icon-covered CD peeking through,

[designed by Stefan Sagmeister, who went on to become a Grammy award winning artist, designing covers for Lou Reed, the Rolling Stones, Talking Heads] she attracted a lot of attention from the press and we found ourselves driving like crazy from radio station to radio station to tell our story and sing some songs from the CD. Within two months, a major label [Mercury Records's president Dan Goldberg] called Cliff and Craig (presidents of Razor & Tie) and negotiations began to buy out our contract and re-release Greta. By September, a second label got into the bidding, and on October 3 we signed with Guardian, a division of EMI. Just a few days earlier, we'd reconvened at Long View to reocrd a brand new song called "Einstein's Daughter." We also called up Dar and she popped in to sing her part on "Lovely Rita." In January, 1997 the label flew us out to sunny Hollywood where we stayed at the swanky and slightly seedy but very historic Hotel Roosevelt and record the last track for Re-Greta with the man Victoria Williams calls "that nice Paul Fox." Paul did an amazing job on "Taxi Girl," and our record now starts with the song about our long lost friend. I hope someday she hears it.

ON May 6 1997, Guardian released Gotta Get Over Greta with a new blue cover and and a red CD peeking through.

Since that autumn day when Dave Hower made that fateful decision to be our drummer, we've driven our trusty white Dodge Ram Van named Moby around the country (two and a half times), sold 15,000 copies of Red and Blue Greta, made countless batches of Greta cookies and tee shirts, lobbied Ben and Jerry to name a flavor "Strawberry Nields Forever" and made thousands of new friends all over the country. It's always been our goal to have our songs made famous over the airwaves of this country's campfires and school buses. This book is a step in that direction.

Memorial Day

How weird is this: when Tom said he wanted to take me away for a romantic night (made possible by Katryna's birthday gift to him of taking our kids for the night), and further that he wanted to surprise me with the location, he chose Williamstown, MA. This wouldn't be weird if Tom knew how much I love that place; that it's most likely in my top five favorite places on the planet, and my first choice for a getaway in my own home state. That it's significant to me because my grandfather grew up there (his ancestors lived there for generations and are all buried in the Williams College cemetery); AND that it's the place where my band got its start almost exactly twenty years ago.

But Tom didn't know all this, really. He just thought Williamstown was a cool place, and he sort of wanted to hike Mt. Greylock. Add to the weirdness that it's Memorial Day, and that I've spent the last few months poring over my band's history in preparation for our big 20th Anniversary celebratory weekend Jam for the Fans (June 10-12) and thus have had Williamstown on the brain, and you get one of those situations writers love. I couldn't have written this into a novel. No one would have believed it.

We dropped the kids off at Katryna's mid day Sunday, and while they ate lunch and got acclimatized, Katryna brought out her scrapbook which she'd made during our first couple of intense years on the road--1996-1997, during which time we were home a total of 36 days in two years. No wonder we still have a bit of PTSD; those were heady days.
We were lauded across the board, by friends, fans, enemies, frenemies, industry and media as being the Next Big Thing: we had press everywhere we went; our CD was charting on Triple A radio (Adult Alternative Acoustic--or something like that); we had fans following us all over the country.
Meanwhile, we were living in our 15 passenger Doge Ram van and sleeping in Motel 6s where the towels were the size of placemats, and trying to stay somewhat healthy by eating salads with pretzels at Subways. If we were feeling flush, maybe we'd spring for TJIFridays. But then if the record company wanted us to do something, say a showcase for radio, we stayed at the very best Hyatt in town, with 20th floor views of the city and dinners at five star restaurants. Some gigs we sold out 800 seat theatres, and the next night we might be playing to forty people at a scungy rock club with female genitalia scrawled all over the dressing room walls. We were constantly in planning mode, like generals mulling over various battle plans. Our record company was like one general; our manager like another; Patty our friend, ally, booking agent-turned-road-manager-turned-manager had her own ideas, and so did we. So there were too many generals in the kitchen, to mix metaphors.

But the metaphor was pretty consistent, actually. "We totally killed!" we'd gloat after a great show, or after we outsold the other acts CD for CD at a Canadian festival. "You're going to make a killing," one indie record company president said to us and to his colleague, another president as he signed the papers, signing us over to that major label. That major label folded a year and a half later, taking with it--or so we thought--our entire back catalogue. A victim of the implosion of the music industry in the late 90s.

Tom let me talk as we drove to Williamstown, through Shelburne Falls and Savoy, up over Florida Mountain, past the hairpin turn. Katryna and I used to drive this road during those crazy touring years because our octagenarian aunt Sally still lived in Williamstown, and whenever we had a week off, we'd visit her. I tried to tell Tom the whole story, month by month. After a full day, I'd only brought him up to 1997. He is a patient sort; after all, he is a therapist and paid to listen to people's stories. It was fun to remember, and it was fun to listen to the mix of songs I'd put on my iPod--what is most likely going to be our set for the Iron Horse show on Saturday night.(I cannot divulge any song, because Katryna swore me to secrecy.)

Tom and I checked into our hotel, walked into town and all around campus. I showed him the little deli where we said we would pay for free when we first came to town and were pounding the pavements. (That's the one where only Anthony Edwards and Mike Morrissey watched us.
Some other friends came, but they sat upstairs in the deli. When we asked why, they said, "Oh, we could hear you fine from here.")

I showed him 66 Hoxsey Street.
I showed him my grandfather's house

and also his grave, which is across the street from his house.
We remembered it was Memorial Day.

Monday morning we had read and wrote in our journals as we had tea at the Tunnel Coffee bar and watched the parade, which lasted about a minute and a half.
I wanted to hug the old men in the convertibles. I wanted to hug the girl scouts throwing candy to the onlookers. Then we went for a walk through some farmland, into the woods. I was talked out.

Later, after we'd picked up the kids (who didn't want to come with us--they'd had such a good time with their cousins--) I cleaned up, preparing dinner. I heard story after story on NPR about families who had lost a son or a husband in a war, and my musings paled in comparison, seemed narcissistic and pathetic. What must that be like, to send your child off, your partner off, to wonder every day, is he OK? Will she make it home? What is it that propels someone to serve one's country like that? Politics aside, it's a brave choice, for everyone involved. What propels any of us to do something that might allow us to stick out, to get struck down? I took a breath and said a "thank you" for another day, a great Memorial Day, a great reminder of why we do what we do, every day.

Nields History #2, September 1995-the Trio Becomes a Band.

The Compliet History of the Nields

(as of September 1995--Introduction to the Nields first Songbook)

Katryna and David and Nerissa started this band slowly. The conception took place at the Madeira School, in Northern VA in the summer of 1987. Inspired in no small part because of a story the Washington Post had just done on the burgeoning open mic scene in the area, the three of them--under various terrible band names such as Odd Man Out-- worked up four tunes; one of Nerissa's ("Tripping the Light Fantastic"), one of David's ("Fade to Black") and two covers ("For What it's Worth," "Oh, Sister" by Bob Dylan). Odd Man Out lasted for two week, and the three of them went their separate ways, to different cities to pursue various degrees and to learn to do something useful. But all three of them kept making music individually. David grooved on guitar and wrote gross songs about vampires; Nerissa started an unwieldy folk group called Tangled Up in Blue and wrote a bunch of songs for her first album, Map of the World, recorded on a Walkman and released on a tiny label that duplicated its tapes via a home tape-to-tape player and sold them for free. That left Katryna, who went to Nepal and barreled through four years at Trinity College, where she hung out with Dave Chalfant (AKA Guitar Dave) who hung out with Dave Hower, both of whom played in many Real bands separately and together. But that's getting ahead of our story. The point is, in 1991, after several graduations and useful degrees of various sorts and a marriage between Nerissa and David, the three pals whose last name was Nields moved in together in a house in Williamstown, semi-demonically addressed 66 Hoxsey Street. They met really cool actors who are now famous (Gwyneth Paltrow, John Cullum, Anthony Edwards). They got their first paying gig at the terrifying Williams Inn (what they now think of fondly as their Hamburg). After that intoxicating experience, they moved to Connecticut where David had a job at the Loomis Chaffee School. Wishing to make a better demo, they hit the studio (Wellspring, now in Concord but at the time in West Newton MA) and made what became their first album , sympathetically entitled 66 Hoxsey Street.
They infiltrated the burgeoning folk scene in the zydeco-loving town of of Hartford, winning over the kind folks at WWUH and WHCN.
They lurked in Boston and at the Bottom Line in New York City, where they almost became famous several times. They drove a lot and covered most of Northampton, MA with posters and Nields fans.
They sang and grew and wrote many songs and thought, just like Christopher Columbus you don't know what you've found.
Their audiences sang along, adding their hollers to the Nields second album, Live at the Iron Horse Music Hall.


They bought cool clothes, hoping to intimidate.
They ate really spicy food. They went to LA and their guitars were stolen in a very special episode of Melrose Place.
They heard their songs on the radio and shouted for joy. They asked Katryna's friend Dave Chalfant to join them because he made them chuckle and actually keep the beat.
Now a quartet, they sang and grew and pondered the fact that many fans wrote letters wishing for a new album. Nerissa, Katryna and David asked Dave Chalfant for some advice. Make a record, he said. You make a record, they said. Yer mother, he said. They made a record and named it after Katryna's friend Bob on the Ceiling, who used to hang out in the Barracuda with Nerissa and Katryna back in the seventies.
They wheedled with yet another Dave--Hower--to play the drums on it. And in a blinding fury of light and thunder, the Nields Became!


Well, it sort of happened that way.

Nields History June, 1991

Monday's post is at Singing in the Kitchen and it is worth reading. Elle declared Saturday, "The best today of my whole life." You will know why if you read it.

It was a full weekend. The kids got to watch TV on Saturday morning because Tom and I had to clear out the kitchen, which is being renovated this summer. Already we have a pit dug to the east of the kitchen where the extension will go, and on Friday the good men came and cut a hole in our dining room window and put in a door so we can go out and in from the side porch. There is a John Deere backhoe in our yard. Jay is in heaven. "I wike dat man," he said pointing at our contractor who was operating the backhoe, making it lift shovelsful of dirt out of the ground and carefully dropping them in a pile. "He's a good guy."

At the top of this post is a picture of the house Katryna and David and I first lived in when we were trying to be a rock band. OK, folk trio. The address was 66 Hoxsey Street in Williamstown, MA, and we later named our first CD after this address. We moved up to Williamstown the day after our first paid gig (Trinity College reunions on June 7, 1991) because David got a job as an intern at the celebrated Williamstown Theatre festival. I established a tiny office with my 1986 Mac (remember those? the ones that looked like a small vertical box.)

I tried hard to get us gigs and was extremely frustrated by the fact that in order to get gigs you had to have played some. I cold-called Charlie Hunter who managed Sweet Honey and the Rock and some guy named Chris Smither, and he told me to make a press kit, which discouraged me, as we had no press. So I wrote a bio (I claimed we had a cult following; I didn't say the cult consisted of four friends of mine from college) and a list of songs we covered, including the Velvet Underground's "I'll Be Your Mirror" and "Stephanie Says," The Roches "Hammond Song," King Missile's "I Am a Sensitive Artist," Trapezoid's "Wagoner's Lad" and of course Sinaed O'Connor's "Black Boys on Mopeds." We lived off of ramen noodles and microwave popcorn for a few weeks. We got invited to a cocktail party by one of the actors, and a young actress named Isabel Rose said, "You really have to hustle in this business. I mean, you won't get anywhere if all you do is sit around knitting sweaters." I immediately stopped knitting.

Another actor at the festival, John Bennett Perry (father of future Friends star Matthew Perry) had a lovely voice, and at the cocktail party, we all took out our guitars and played Hank Williams songs. John is from Williamstown and he knew the guy in charge of getting entertainment for the Williams Inn. John told the guy who booked us that we would bring in the actors.

The Williams Inn paid us $400 a week to play for four hours Sunday and Monday nights in their bar. We thought we had made it big. We spent our first paycheck on a sound system which we purchased in Brattleboro VT at Maple Leaf Music. Slowly we grew a following; the actors from the theatre festival did indeed to see us on these days--their days off. We performed to a seventeen year old Gwenyth Paltrow, who hung out at our table between sets, saying things like, "My parents really want me to go to college, but I want to be a movie star!" We said, "Now, Gwynnie; you really should go to college." She said, "But I hajust got my first movie! I'm in Hook! All I say is," here she gasped, "'Petah!'" in a British accent. "But it's something."

We also hung out with Kate Burton, daughter of Richard and an amazing actor in her own right; John Benjamin Hickey, and the guy from the Heinz gravy commercials who was rich and used to buy everyone in the bar a round or two of drinks.

We also started playing the Williamstown Theatre Post Show Caberet, which was more fun that anything we'd ever done at that point. Later, playing workshop stages at festivals came close.

For My Favorite 10-Year-Old

For Amelia—What I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Turned 10

1. When a boy is mean to you, it doesn’t mean he likes you. It means he is mean. Don’t hang around with mean people.

2. Listen and observe the rules the adults make, but be sure to keep a part of you wondering why they made these rules. Allow yourself the space to figure out for yourself if the rules are good. If you think they aren’t, you might (now or later) suggest (politely, or impolitely) that the rule could and should be changed.

3. Think very very hard about getting a tattoo. They might be cool now, but in 2030 you might deeply regret it. And they might be totally out of fashion. (This was the case in 1980, when I was a teenager.)

4. Love your brother and your parents even when they are annoying.

5. Stretch! Try something you might be really bad at. You might surprise yourself. (And then go back to what you are good at.)

6. Read a lot, but observe the spirit of Rule #2: People who write books do not know everything.

7. Never ignore the smell of freshly mown grass

8. When you are sad, write down your thoughts and feelings in a journal where no one can find it. Better yet, keep writing great songs. (OH! Also, write some bad songs.)

9. Girls your age are going through a lot and might be really terribly afraid and therefore behave poorly or in ways that disappoint you. They also might be working really hard to not seem afraid, so you might not guess that that is what is going on. Don’t compare what they seem like on the outside with what you feel like on the inside.

10. Be yourself. Be yourself. Be yourself!!!!!! Keep being the best Amelia you can be!

11. One to grow on. Do not ever smoke a cigarette. You will thank me later.

Love, your aunt and godmother,

Nerissa

Countdown to Jam for the Fans, T- minus 21

This was during our This Town Is Wrong tour in 2004. We are playing with the CrackerJack Band at this place in the suburbs of Philly that reminded Katryna and me of the set of the TV show Friends. What was the name of this place? Amelia might have been in the dressing room with a babysitter. Katryna was just barely pregnant with William.

I have lugged my amp up from the basement (full disclosure: Tom did the lugging) and have taken the Les Paul out of its gorgeous pink case to show my children. They were suitably impressed; more by the pink than the guitar. I use "showing you the guitar" as a bribe to get Elle to finish her violin practice.

Ten Words of Advice to Graduates

What I wish I'd known when I was 22:
1. All the terrible things that happen to you (and terrible things will happen to you) will turn out to be great stories, grist for the mill, food for your growth, opportunities for you to become bigger-hearted and stronger and more resilient, IF you can see them that way and not as pure tragedy.
2. Don't forget how to play.
3. Establish a spiritual practice, even if it as simple as taking time to connect with the natural world every day.
4. Drink 8 glasses of water per day
5. Move your body, be fully in your body, and don't think of your body as something you have. If you are "taking care of" your body, you're not really living in it. You're missing the point.
6. The more you give generously of yourself, your time, your resources, the more you get.
7. Everything you ingest becomes a part of you--so choose wisely, be it food, entertainment, friends, experiences.
8. Sleep a lot.
9. Compromise with your lovers and friends
10.Master the art of forgiveness.

Countdown to Jam for the Fans Day 2

So I finished the song for the finale, except now it's not for the finale. If we can arrange it in time, it will be somewhere else in the set. Katryna and Patty and I just met for lunch, looked at lots of old pictures, massaged the set list, planned the dinner menu for the folks who bought the entire weekend package. I think we are supposed to call them "package holders." So many people have requested songs on Facebook! I wish we could learn them all. I mean relearn them all.

As part of this blog-every-day project, I will also post an old photo a day. Here is today's: It's of me and Christine Lavin plotting to set Patty (our manager) up with Julie Gold. Don't we look like evil yentas? Sorry about the quality. (As far as I can tell, we weren't successful.)

Countdown to Jam for the Fans #1

I am supposed to be writing a song for the Nields 20th anniversary/reunion finale at the Iron Horse. No pressure. It's just supposed to sum up the last 20 years, be upbeat, have a great chorus that the fans can sing along to, and top everything else that we play. I started to write it Monday. Or rather, I started to write something; but what I wrote, while good, is not an end-of-the-show kind of song. It's the kind of song that, in the days of the band when we all lived together and breathed in unison, we would have placed about fourth or fifth in the set. It grooves. It would have gotten everyone on their feet. But it never would have ended a show.

Men came today in a big red dump truck and hacked away at our back porch until it was gone. I thought this would be terribly depressing; after all, I loved that back porch. I wrote chunks of my books sitting on an Adirondack chair on that porch, and I (and others) sat on the floor, guitar in lap, and wrote songs. In fact, the song I mention above was started there. I kept spacing out as I was writing it, gazing at the beautiful flowery backyard, moping about the fact that I would never sit here again, never gaze at that view again. Then I remembered the whole point of the renovation is to create a ROOM in that very spot so that I can sit and gaze and write songs--from my new kitchen.

Two great surprises came from the porch demolition. The best one was that the men located Jay's small Hess motorcycle guy (actually William's--Jay stole it.) Motorcycle guy has been AWOL for over a year. He had been buried under the porch. Jay is apoplectic.

The other is the light. The light! Our kitchen is light! The porch had been blocking the light! Now I have a tangible, experienced vision to meditate upon when I lose heart for this project, as I will sometime in June when I wish for more than a trickle of water to wash my greens, or when one of my kids reminds me why it's a really good thing to have a bathroom on the first floor (the bathroom is being gutted, too.)


Katryna said I could re-write an existing song for the finale. I actually had just done that.

For five generations now, our family has spent parts of our summers at a place in the high peaks region of the Adirondacks called Putnam Camp. This rustic place, nestled at the foot of Giant Mountain, hosted Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung along with William James while the two psychoanalysts made their first and only trip together to the United States. Cabins have names if not running water, and after each family style meal, guests climb the base of the mountain to have tea and dessert in a wall-less cabin affectionately known as The Stoop. This is also where folks pull out guitars, banjos, the occasional hand-made upright bass, and sing songs passed down from family to family for generations.

Putnam Camp has some traditions which require music, too; notoriously a song guests sing to latecomers to dinner called "Little Popsie Wopsie." (Our mother lived in fear of being "Popsie wopsied," and thus we girls were never once late.) But our favorite song is the one guests sing to the departing visitors. At the end of a stay (typically a week), remaining guests line up and hold hands and do a kind of modified can-can while singing this song to the car loaded with the departing guests as it drives down the mountain out to Route 73.

We’ll dance like a fairy
and sing like a bird
Sing like a bird, sing like a bird
We’ll dance like a fairy
and sing like a bird
And wile the hours away

In our family, we have taken this tradition and applied it at every possible opportunity to bid farewell to any guest at all. My kids would sing it to the postwoman if they could. My parents often sing it to us as we drive away from their house, the two of them holding hands and kicking their feet gamely back and forth, waving with their outside arms as our car follows the bend in the driveway.

Last Sunday, our friend Kris departed after spending a lovely day with us. "Dance wike a faiwy!" Jay shouted as she closed her car door, and so Elle and Jay and I sang and danced and waved as Kris made her way back home. As we turned to go back in the house, it occurred to me that the song needed some new verses. Probably this occurred to me because my son wouldn't let me stop singing the one existing verse, and I was getting bored. Boredom is the doorway to creativity, says our friend Holly Near.

We’ll dance like a fairy and sing like a bird
Sing like a bird, sing like a bird
We’ll dance like a fairy and sing like a bird
And wile the hours away

We hope that your travels bring you safely home
You safely home, you safely home
We hope that your travels bring you safely home
And show you some fun on the way

We’ll hold these good times we had close to our hearts
Close to our hearts, close to our hearts
We’ll hold these good times we had close to our hearts
Until we’re together to stay.

We’ll wile all our hours away while you’re gone
Away wile you’re gone, away while you’re gone
We’ll while all our hours away while you’re gone
And then we will go out and play.

Don't you think this would make an excellent finale to Jam for the Fans?

Your House Is Strong-Happy Mother's Day!

Here is the video we made in conjunction with MotherWoman. The shot of the woman holding the sign "..and wise" gets me every single time I watch it. And those kids...

More Easter Thoughts

The Master gives himself up
to whatever the moment brings.
He knows that he is going to die,
and her has nothing left to hold on to:
no illusions in his mind,
no resistances in his body.
He doesn't think about his actions;
they flow from the core of his being.
He holds nothing back from life;
therefore he is ready for death,
as a man is ready for sleep
after a good day's work.
-Tao Te Ching, verse 50

After I wrote this piece, it actually was Easter. I read Katryna my last post ("Follower of Jesus") and she quipped, "Maybe it's because I haven't slept in a few days, but I could hardly stay awake listening that."

Following through on my promise last year that Easter should be more about spring and bunnies and eggs and sugar and less about my existential angst, I joined forces with Katryna to create Easter baskets for the kids and spent the wee hours on Sunday planting Reese's peanut butter eggs and Jelly Bellies all over my mother's living room.



We hid the colored hard boiled eggs outside and marveled at the cuteness and generosity of our four kids, three of them making sure that the youngest got his fair share.

We then proceeded to church where the kids made God bells (don't ask) and we listened to such divine music (complete with tuba, trombone, marimba and gigantic organ) and a beautiful sermon by the wonderful, wise Aaron Fulp -Eickstaedt which reminded me that, no matter what one might ultimately believe, one strong message of Easter is that the story isn't over. It ain't what it seems to be.

Later that evening the grown ups sat around the dinner table talking about the Steven Mitchell book Tom and I had read. I was full of the day--letting go of all my wonderings about The Truth and Life and Death and Resurrection. And yet I found myself, as we talked about the ideas in the book, feeling disconnected again, lost in my head. It hurts in a way to be stuck in your head, thinking about ideas. In a way it's a kind of anesthetic. You forget you have a body when you are lost in ideas. But eventually your body reminds you, and you feel pinched and cramped and slightly sick to your stomach; at least I do.

We got to the part about Jesus parentage. I was putting forth Mitchell's idea that Jesus was shaped significantly by his illegitimacy, and explaining that historically being called "Son of Mary" (or of any woman as opposed to "Son of Jack" or "Son of Matthew" or Son of Any Man") was a slur. (Mark 6:3)

Elle raised her hand patiently until someone called on her. "Excuse me," she said, acting not at all as though she had consumed her weight in chocolate that day. "Was Jesus's mother Mother Earth?"



And we all said, together, Yes, she was.

Follower of Jesus

I didn't use to love Easter. Maybe it was the reoccurring failure to successfully give up anything for the whole of Lent, maybe it was the disappointment so often of the New England springtime weather, but more likely it was confusion I felt about the story of Jesus rising from the dead. Did he really? And even if he did, what did that mean for me and all my mortal friends? I could never accept the equation given to me in a shouting match my freshman year in college when I was collared by a member of Campus Crusade for Christ who with great frustration tried to get me to believe that Jesus was a kind of blood sacrifice in atonement for Adam's original sin. That God was somehow powerless to keep us from burning in hell, and that therefore He had to let His son die a miserable death in order to retract us all from the pawn shop. It seemed bizarre and completely unbelievable to me. And what about all those good people who believed in and loved God or Spirit or Allah or the Tao or Kindness and Goodness with all their hearts and souls and minds and strength? Or even the mean people who had bad lives and so were bad to others? They were doomed to hell because of some equation? No way.

And yet I have always loved Jesus. I felt his love as a little child, seeing myself in the scripture where he tells his disciples that one must enter the Kingdom of God as a little child, and then takes the children into his arms to bless them. I always loved the poetry of the Sermon on the Mount, the poetry in the story of the blind man whose sight Jesus restores (“I see men walking like trees!” he exclaims when he first gets his sight back.) I love the moment when Jesus pauses to stoop and write on the ground in the dust when asked if it is right to stone a woman for adultery. And most importantly, when I am most troubled, most challenged, the version of God I need always turns out to be Jesus.

This year, starting in early March, Tom and I joined a book group. The book group was led by our minister at the West Cummington Church, Steve Philbrick. Together we read The Gospel According to Jesus by Stephen Mitchell. This book takes as its premise that while there is much to love in the gospels, there is also much not to love, and much to be taken with several shakers worth of salt. It's Mitchell's version of what (with a nod to Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy and a group of scholars known as the Jesus Seminar) he believes to be the authentic sayings of Jesus minus what centuries of games of telephone, Roman Emperors, church councils and warring factions plugged into what we now read as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, littering them with polemic and attempts to prove Jesus's paternity and divinity (which, by the way, are already at odds with each other--how can Jesus be descended from the House of David via his earthly non-father Joseph AND be the son of God?) Indeed, in my own lifetime of reading the gospels I have always been troubled and confused by what appeared to be two Jesuses: the Jesus who says, "Why do you call me good? There is no one good except God," (Mark 10:18) and "No one gets to the Father but through me," (John 14:6).

Mitchell's book produces a streamlined Jesus, one who feels like a real person, more coherent, an enlightened human, completely lovable and charismatic, with a journey that makes sense to this reader. Born into bastardy at a time in history when this was akin to being a leper, he undoubtedly suffered unspeakable social torments as he grew into adulthood, watching his mother produce other brothers who were not afflicted similarly. He certainly must have wondered with frustration who his father was. Jesus's epiphany--his moment of awakening--comes at his baptism, where he hears the voice of his true Father, and realizes he is God's child in whom God is well-pleased. But, Mitchell argues, Jesus doesn't necessarily believe that this makes him any different from you or me. We too are children of God; we just have to realize it.

"But I tell you, love your enemies, do good to those that hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you, so that you may be sons of your father in in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the wicked and on the good, and sends his rain to the righteous and unrighteous. (Matthew 5:44)

As Jesus came to forgive his childhood tormentor, he demonstrates that we all have this capacity to forgive within our hearts. His forgiveness of that which is most challenging can be a more slow-going process. A reading of the text supports the argument that it takes Jesus until the end of this gospel to come to a forgiveness of his mother (in the story of the woman about to be stoned for adultery.) Remember that when Mary and his brothers bang on the door for an audience, Jesus says, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" and points to the crowd in the room listening to him. "These are my mother and my brothers" (Matthew 12:48-49)

Forgiveness is Jesus's great new teaching, the piece that Christianity brings to the world with more clarity than any other religion. God's forgiveness of us when we come to Him as supplicants is old hat at the time of Jesus. All religions posit a God who yearns for our repentance and delights in forgiving us. What is new to me in this translation is the concept that we must forgive each other and ourselves. Maybe this kind of forgiveness is uniquely Jesus's to teach precisely because Jesus had within himself so much anger and resentment. This possibility makes me like him even more than I did before. I am much more willing to follow someone who has actually struggled with what I struggle with and has overcome it. (Mitchell reads the story of the woman being stoned for adultery as a moment of insight into Jesus’s own anger with his mother--when he writes in the dust, perhaps he is rewriting his own "story", realizing as he does so his own teaching, that as we judge, so are we judged. He forgives the adulterous woman and in doing so makes peace with his own biography.)

Jesus preaches over and over that the Kingdom of God is at hand--here, now, in all that is around us, good, bad, boring, distracting. The tsunamis, the cancer, the babies born, the lilies of the field, the billboards, the filibustering on CNN, the miracle of life. When we align ourselves with the flow of it all, we lose track of time: this is the eternal life we gain. When we let go of our self-pity, selfishness, obsession with our status, wealth, waistlines; when we act out of love for our brothers and sisters, for our enemies and for the strangers we encounter on the road; when we see that we are all connected and that any small act we do for anyone else we do for Jesus (and for ourselves), we are reborn. We are made new. We are in heaven.


Mitchell does away with some of the most familiar parts of the Jesus story: the Christmas scene, Bethlehem, The Last Supper, and most importantly, the physical resurrection. This last is the part I flinched at. My own childhood fear of death, fear of annihilation, hope for an afterlife where I would be reunited with everyone I loved and where we would all live in peace and harmony with no billboards and filibustering, and where somehow we were not bored by the monotony of perfection, still remains. I don't want to not exist. I don't want to be nothing. I passionately want to BE! Death terrifies me. I want a heaven. I want a resurrection. I want to live forever with Tom, Jay and Elle, not to mention Katryna and Abigail and my parents, and all the writers and friends I love. I want to see my grandparents and Mimi again. Call me spiritually immature, but that is my truth. I have been tortured with fear ever since reading this book; real existential fear. What if this really is it, if it really does come down to this moment and nothing else? Then I am truly screwed every time I space out, check my Facebook status, worry about food and money and clothes, leave the Kingdom for my myriad of plans for tomorrow. I am wasting my one and only life.

I hate this thought so much.

So I have been praying. God, please show me what You really mean by resurrection. Show me what you mean by Heaven. Give me a new idea, one that I can embrace and pursue with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, all my strength.

I called a friend of mine, a lifelong Catholic and told her about my doubts. She surprised me by concurring with my questions about the veracity of the resurrection of the body of Christ. She said she had prayed during a retreat for answers to this, and experienced Jesus saying to her, "Here are my wounds. Take them. It doesn't matter whether I rose or not. What matters is that you have risen." Steve had said a similar thing when our group ended last week. “What matters is not whether Jesus rose,” he said, pointing at each of us. “But that you do. That Karen does. That Betsy does. That Tom does.”

Later, as I was pondering these thoughts on my run, I thought about the pain of Ego, the pain of wondering if my shows would sell out, if my work would be received well or poorly, the pain of judgment about my physical appearance, the pain of comparing myself to others. I thought about the pain of wishing I had what I don’t—everything from a gas/electric Wolf range to private school for my kids to free health care for all, to having everyone around me acknowledge at all times that I am right about everything. And suddenly, I got it. When I am thinking about these things I am not here. I am in my head, not my body. I am not in the present moment. And even when I am thinking about others and not my tiny limited self, I am still not present. I am not dwelling in Jesus’s Kingdom of God.

As I practice mindfulness, as I love my sisters and brothers and elders and children, as I act as a good steward of the Earth, as I do my Yoga (writing songs, tending the garden, teaching my workshops, coaching my clients), as I try to follow the teachings of Jesus, I move incrementally into a state of less self-centeredness, less ego. And perhaps someday I will lose my passion for having things go the way I think they need to go. If I do my work well, and am blessed with a very long life (for it will take this gal a very long time to practice thus!) then maybe I have a shot of rendering my mind fit for an afterlife of stillness, of unity, of oneness.

On Good Friday, Tom and Elle and Jay and I went to the airport to fly to Virginia for our show at Jammin Java's in Vienna Saturday night, and Easter with the grandparents Sunday morning. As we moved along in the terminal after our security check (we always mark each passing of security with a hearty family high five), I rose out of my habitual whirl of worrying, mom-planning, spinning in my small self, and gazed up to see Tom, Elle and Jay running and jumping and dancing as they made their way to the gate. At that moment, I didn’t need any help to be present, gleeful, with my chest blooming with love and joy. Perhaps this is my Easter moment, and perhaps it is enough.

The Rites of Spring

photo by Jim Henry

About this time of year, I find it necessary to listen to Stravinsky's Rites of Spring, the 1913 ballet that caused riots at its debut in Paris. The piece depicts Pagan Russian fertility rites and supposedly features a girl who dances herself to death. I first heard the piece when I was a freshman in high school, where I promptly fell in love with all things early twentieth century, and choreographed my own version in my bedroom later that week. Each year, right around post-tax day, in the pre-tulip, pre-lilac, when it's still red-bud April I need to hear it.

I am not alone in yearning for a reflection of the season. Last night Katryna and I played a show at Shelburne Falls' Memorial Hall. In the green room on the second floor of that lovely old building, we looked out over the Falls and could barely carry on a conversation for the noise of all that golden snow melt cascading down, crashing over and churning it all up.

We played with a band called Flapjack Overkill, a stupendous student band directed by our own Dave Chalfant and fronted by three seventeen year old singers, who each possessed a lovely, unusual, gorgeous voice capable of sending the audience into riots of joy. The band was not what the promotor expected at a nice little folk show with Tracy Grammer & Jim Henry and the Nields. Instead, it was a 13 piece ensemble complete with horn section, keyboards and killer rhythm section who rocked the house. They joined us on "Easy People" and will remain one of my all time great musical memories. Something about the pure power of all that youth behind us made me feel as though I could handle anything this spring, even revolution.

By now it's a cliche to talk about all the other kind of adolescent disruption that seems to take place so often around Hitler's birthday which is April 20. April 19 was the day the 51 day Waco siege ended in fire, and a year later, the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. April 20 was Columbine. April 21 was last year's BP oil spill. Ugh. There seems to be something in the early spring when the sun is about to leave the first sign in the zodiac--the adolescent Aries, a ram kicking its heels into the air and butting anything before it with its blunted horns--and enter the more congenial territory of Taurus.
But before we enter the sweeter part of spring, I want to try to walk the razor thin line that runs between the intoxicating chaos of life coming back to life with the promise of all that energy I saw in the Falls and hear in the Rites and Slapjack Overkill, and the places where it threatens to spill over and engulf us all in the violence that I believe can only come from the same God that I worship as the gentle parent I know in my most quiet and centered moments. God is that big. God is that mysterious. God is that unfathomable.

Notice, PS, that there two other pretty large cultural/religious events that happen at this time of year: Passover and Easter. (Actualy, I am quite sure there are parallels in each of the major faith traditions the world over,and I invite readers to educate me about this.) In each case, life and resurrection, in the form of new patterns, new traditions, emerge out of shocking violence. Passover's seed story is of "God" asking the Hebrew slaves to mark their doors with the blood of a lamb so that "God" can spare them the last of the ten plagues: the killing of all first born sons in the land of Egypt where they are enslaved. Easter is the story of Jesus being brutally murdered by crucifixion. And yet in each case, these events gave birth to the fundamentals of each religion. The Hebrews were able to leave Egypt in the wake of the "passing over" of the massacre of the first born, and eventually come to the land of Canaan. More importantly, Passover is seen as the beginning of Yahweh's covenant and protection of the Jewish people. Christianity of course springs from the aftermath of the death of Jesus; his martyrdom inspires countless followers to go to any and all lengths to promote their faith.

Tom and I have a friend who is dying of cancer. We got a message last night that he has weeks to live. The doctors have taken him off chemo. His thirteen year old daughter has been told. This daughter, by the way, was adopted from China by our friend and his partner. When the daughter was five, our friend's partner died of cancer. How can it be OK that a kid lose not one not two not three but four parents before she hits puberty?

Steve Philbrick, upon hearing this said a couple of things. One was, "That kid sure must need to be here, if they're shooting out all the parents under her feet." He also said, "It ain't much of a God if you can easily discern His will."

Oh, right. What kind of a God would it be if it all made sense to me? If it were all predictable? If we all knew for sure that when they rolled aside that rock almost 2000 years ago and saw no body, if a risen Jesus had appeared on CNN and granted some interviews, there would be no need for faith, or for a leap. Faith without a leap is just more of the information gathering we do anyway. Then faith is just the ability to Google.

I played the Rites of Spring for my kids the other day. I crouched down on the middle of the carpet where the pattern makes a circular design and the three of us pretended to be small plants just below the crust of the earth. When the music got loud, we jumped up and danced around. But then I made the mistake of pointing out that the drums and bassoon might be a bear. Jay jumped in my lap at that point. Elle stated, "I am not scared like Jay," but then she too jumped in my lap. I abandoned our ballet to make tomato soup for their lunch and turned off the music, which I had decided was really about the same as playing them Marilyn Manson at their ages. Jay followed me into the kitchen. "Where is da beaw?" he asked. He wanted to see a picture of the CD cover. I picked him up and cuddled him and talked about how you can make up all sorts of things in some kinds of music and make pictures of them in your mind. He has been talking about the "beaw music" ever since.

Lots of good happens between April 19 and 21 too. Some of my favorite people are celebrating birthdays. Life is expensive, this period seems to remind us. In all the things we want, the things we fear, the things we push away, the places we grieve and mourn, we can forget that we have been given this most precious gift of all: awareness and a heart that beats. We don't know for how long we get to have this gift. But spring gives us great hope that even when we are gone, the gift remains.