Georgianne Nienaber: Author. Journalist.

Stones of the Golden Women

The Stones of the Golden Women: A-Bombs, a Tsunami and a Hackberry Tree Define Art at P.E.N.　

By Georgianne Nienaber
original content at
OEN

On August 6, 1945 at 8:15 am the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. One kilometer from ground zero, a hackberry tree in the gardens of the Hiroshima Army Hospital was seared by radiation from the blast and half of the tree vaporized. The tree was a favorite of patients at the hospital, who would sit under its sheltering branches as they recovered from the wounds of war and life. The Hackberry miraculously survived the vaporous hell and stood as a silent witness to the horror of Hiroshima until 1984, when it suffered a direct hit from a typhoon, produced a few leaves the following spring, and finally died in 1988.

It is February 2008. My friend, Susan, and I are attending the final wrap party for a conference on Culture and Natural Disaster in Tokyo. “Screamed, Survived, Start Anew,” is the theme of the Japan P.E.N. club’s sponsored event, which has attracted writers and musicians from around the world. They have just spent five days presenting their work and discussing human responses to the fury of nature. Every participant at the conference has produced a body of work that speaks to the essence of humanity in the face of the unspeakable.

The memory is indelible. My hand is on my friend’s shoulder while I struggle to keep my knees from shaking as the remnants of the Hiroshima hackberry tree become an instrument, and the haunting notes of Amazing Grace fill the banquet room. It is a private concert, composed of an audience of two. We are both literally leaning into the tones— a sound that seems to suspend reality into a moment when all time and suffering and redemption are distilled into the purest strains of music one can imagine.

Famed Japanese musician Kurotaro Kurosaka had graciously responded to my request to please play the kokarina (flute) he carved from the hackberry that survived the A-Bomb. The sound is clear, beautiful, indescribable, but filled with power. It shreds the heart and cuts to the soul and to hear it is to never, ever, forget it. I am like a greedy lover and ask him to play it again—and he immediately obliges. Bowing, smiling, he puts the wood of the ancient hackberry to his lips again, his unruly shock of hair falling across eyes that are closed, absorbed in the beauty, the moment. Eyes filled with tears, because the release from the beauty, the power— was required.

Listen here.

The soul of Kurotaro consumed every room he entered, and certainly the concert hall, known as “Space Zero,” where the bulk of the P.E.N. presentations unfolded like beautiful, complicated origami. Kurotaro is an unassuming man, and his face will never grace the cover of a celebrity magazine, but that concept is born in American definitions of “culture” and “art” which are bastardizations of truth and beauty.

The International P.E.N. conference has reaffirmed an unexpressed feeling that Americans have been consumed by monotonous “art” that fills the galleries of uncounted seaside tourist traps, music stores, and honky-tonk strips that pollute the vast American coastline and interior lake country resorts. Art in the United States has been reduced to a concept of “Americana” that is self-serving at best and a monetary rip-off at worst. Throw some paint on a canvas, write sloppy music, find an agent or a well-heeled sponsor who thinks they can make a buck, and you are well on your way to American “celebrity” and “artistry.”

Kurotaro’s hackberry tree kokarina supported a literary presentation, “Stones of the Golden Women” at the P.E.N. forum and defined the essence of truth and beauty—the expression of which is the duty of the writer and artist. Fraud, shape shifting, celebrity narcissism, the quest for money, and deception—all have no place in art.

Novelist Khwaiyun Lukjan of Thailand narrated his description of the tsunami of December 26, 2004, when the Adaman Sea devoured the landscape of Thailand in Phang Nga Province on the island of Phuket. The tsunami surged numerous times as set after set of waves ebbed and flowed a distance of over two kilometers inland. Not a building, not a tree survived.

“When people meet with major catastrophe, we throw away the self-image that has been created to protect ourselves in our regular lives and lay bare the self essence residing in the deepest recesses of our hearts,” Lukjan narrated.

“There was only one thing on my mind at the time. To live. No matter what happened I had to overcome it without fail. To survive was the only thing I was thinking about.”

He described himself as “a small ant—drifting in a giant sea,” and from this perspective the story of the “Stones of the Golden Women” was born.

The title of the work describes a devastated Moken Village, Hin Nang Thong, and the quest of a man (Lin) to find the body of his wife and mother of his child, so that he may put her spirit to rest.

The Moken are known as the “people of the sea, or sea gypsies.” Their ancestors arrived in Thailand thousands of years ago from southeastern China, entering the ocean from Indochina. The Moken numbered only 3,000 in the American-dominated tourist areas of Thailand before the tsunami, and their history and culture was literally overrun and ignored. They were truly “an invisible people,” in the words of Lukjan.

The Stones of the Golden Women is a place name that describes a wide stretch of coastline where rocks and stones littered the beach and shellfish were once bountiful in the shallow coastal waters—shallow waters that by their very nature gave lift and power to the tsunami. Shellfish are an important food for the Moken, and Moken women inhabited the beach for this reason. No one standing there survived the 2004 tsunami.

Lin’s wife, Sonporn, whose name means “wishes come true,” left their home on the morning of December 26, 2004 to gather shellfish at the place of the Stones of the Golden Women and never returned. Lin was reduced to bitterness and alcoholism and his relationship with Sonporn’s father was destroyed—“violent waves still battering their respective hearts.”

Finally, Lin tells the narrator that his wife appeared to him in a dream.

“I went to Khao Lak and got lost, and now I can’t find my way home,” she said.

Lin says, “She was looking for me to help her. I want to look for my wife. I want to find her body. I want to bring home her bones.”

During the recitation of this story, the pure tones of the A-bomb hackberry tree filled the auditorium at Space Zero. So did the heart and soul of the musician and flute-carver Kurotaro as the narrator continued.

The narrator described how the pain of loss seared Lin’s heart as surely as radiation seared the hackberry tree. Lin lost his emotions as well as his will to live. Lin became like the shellfish clinging to the shores and stones at Stones of the Golden Women. The shellfish were dislodged and upturned during the tsunami and left to die and burn under the South Seas sun—irradiated and demolished.

I came to believe that we are all Moka. The word means “human beings.”

How many of us have stood ancient and strong in spirit through incredible challenges, only to be felled by an unexpected typhoon of physical or emotional assaults or betrayal? The challenge comes when we pick ourselves up and whittle away to find the core of our existence, shape it, reform our lives and go on to make beautiful music that originates in our core--the soul. Sometimes we can accomplish this on our own, sometimes it takes an angel or two to salvage what is left of us after we experience our personal disasters, and sometimes love is all we need and love is forever elusive.

The expression of that struggle and triumph is the true stuff of art. And true art is also elusive. Beware the individual who calls himself/herself an “artist.” At the P.E.N. conference, all contributors were known simply as “participants.”

There were six Americans at the P.E.N. conference in Tokyo. “Music” and “art” conferences are a billion dollar business in America and attract hundreds of thousands of participants. What have we Americans contributed that is of any real value, when we are defined in the rest of the world by celebrity culture? It is an audacity, irony, and affront to the human spirit that some “art” in the United States is known as “Americana;” especially when one considers that the American A-bomb almost destroyed the essence of the hackberry tree that now fills auditoriums with the strains of Amazing Grace.

Scream. Survive. Start Anew.

Amazing.

Hope

Disaster results from betrayals by humanity and nature. Songwriter Caroline Herring Herring suggests that the true of heart tackle the challenge facing heart and mind anyway; running headlong in the maelstrom.

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Caroline Herring Brings Roots Music Home on "Lantana"

Caroline Herrring Brings Roots Music Home on "Lantana"

By Georgianne Nienaber

Original content at OEN News

Regular readers of these pages will understand what this writer means when I say that it felt like the answer to a prayer when the CD compilation “Lantana,” by Americana roots musician and writer Caroline Herring, was officially released on March 4. After a trip to Tokyo for an international conference on art, music and literature, the stranglehold of major American music labels on what the public “should” hear seemed insurmountable. Even though market analyses predict that record labels, which control everything and anything played on the radio, will no longer be in existence in five years, radio stations are still largely ruled by sacrosanct corporate “play lists.” Along comes Herring and the buzz is that Indie music has finally found a savior—Herring is the go-to “it” girl in Indie music this year.

It is about time that excellent writing and singing is making its way back into the genre of Americana. Caroline Herring nails every single track on Lantana, and national critics should be shouting from the rooftops that art and Americana can co-exist. Traditionally, most if not all big name music critics are sycophants and dilettantes who are as about as reliable as movie critics who loved the English Patient. Real roots writing and the craft of musicianship has been largely ignored in favor of a bizarre infatuation with drug addicts, losers and alcoholics, who, while certainly part of American culture, have somehow assumed a faux representation of family life, and especially women. Real life in the American heartland and southern landscapes has been co-opted, and it is no wonder that the demographic for music sales favors males.

A better way to say it might be that family life and the inherent challenges women face have been degraded in favor of an infatuation with the idea of woman as loser. This is an insult to the culture of music and literature that is historically as rich as a Mississippi bayou night and bright as fireflies in a Georgia hayfield. Thank the gods that Caroline Herring has returned public credibility to music that comes from the heart of the landscape that nurtured Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner. That is not to say that there aren’t many, many female roots musicians who know how to craft an honest tune.

The problem is that the critical favorites thus far have not painted an accurate portrait of women in rural America, or mothers in general. The only time this all-but-forgotten-demographic has received any attention is during an election cycle when the candidates are desperate to figure out what it is that makes these women tick. Obama and Hillary should go out and purchase Lantana today. Or, contact me and I’ll order a couple of disks on Amazon and send it to their boiler rooms.

Unlike many Americana singer/songwriters who hide behind the banners of true iconic artists like The Carter Family, Emmy Lou Harris, and recently, the great Lucinda Williams, Caroline Herring grabs their standards and rides like Joan d'Arc through the images of the southland--firmly planting her flag in the red dirt of the Mississippi Delta.

Rhythms Rising II: Ruby Rendrag's Class Act in New Orleans

Photo by Dennis Gardner

Ruby Rendrag’s hair is, well, red. A nice red. Not exactly “ruby” red. Hard to describe. Subtle tones, but definitely red. Pretty. Her music is subtle, too. Definitely rock, but there are the pop and folk influences also. Maybe just a hint of Rilo Kiley. Yeah, definitely.

We first caught up with Ruby at Station 8801—a nice little bar and restaurant tucked along a levee in New Orleans’ Garden District on Oak Street. Doing a series on musicians was not originally on the agenda for an investigative reporter fresh from Africa, and Ruby’s gig was supposed to be down time to reconnect with a new acquaintance. Ruby’s band changed all of that, and thus the Rhythms Rising Series was born for progressive media. No matter that the band was playing outdoors and a train added a sub-woofer rumble to the sound. This group was far better than just “good,” and you don’t often hear a cello added to a rock sound, but it sure worked.

Turns out Ruby was everywhere on the club scene in New Orleans for the next six weeks. We knew some of the same people and it was inevitable that we would be meeting at our Louisiana Pizza Kitchen “headquarters” for an interview. She showed up with Suki Kuehn in tow, who was the same cellist we heard back at Station 8801. An interesting man and classically trained to boot, born in Japan and reared in Baton Rouge, Kuehn says he got the classical bug when a “good-looking woman demonstrated cello for his fifth grade class in Ohio.” Kuehn was on the move even as a kid.

Kuehn may be “classical, in musical temperament” but he’s got a devastating sense of humor, listing his musical influences as “mostly dead guys from the 18th century.” But don’t let Kuehn’s humor fool you. He may have just invented the southern rock cello—a perfect counterpoint to Ruby’s accomplished guitar.

Ruby’s musical roots are all New Orleans. She grew up in Kenner and played bluegrass with five brothers. Someone handed her a guitar, “put her in a room to learn chords,” and told her to “figure out how to keep up,” she says.

Well, she certainly learned to do more than just keep up, and has developed a unique sound that musicians in the Big Easy actually term the “Ruby Rendrag sound.” A sound that is difficult to categorize, Ruby calls it “eclectic with a rock edge,” but you really get the idea what she is all about when she explains that she went “straight from bluegrass to Led Zeppelin influences.”

Call it what you want, the Ruby Rendrag sound is sophisticated and plays out as if real musicianship went into the arrangements and lyrics. The compositions are intelligent and go far beyond simple folk/rock three chord progressions and reliance upon a cheatin’ capo. Like Dana Abbott, whom we first profiled in this series, Ruby knows how to use the frets on the guitar and works the instrument for all its worth.

She also knows how she wants to be presented. We showed up with video camera in hand and offered two venues for the shoot. We could do a street musician thing up against the levee at the end of Esplanade, or do something more “fancy” in the courtyard of a nearby hotel. It was no contest. Ruby knows exactly who she is and Kuehn’s cello would work nicely in the courtyard, thank you very much. Ruby Rendrag is a class act.

We set up in an atrium with southern ambience to spare and, unknown to Ruby and Kuehn, an audience of a few tourists hanging over the fifth floor balcony, who rewarded the duo with applause after a few warm up measures. That moment provided our first glimpse of Ruby smiling broadly, rocking back in her chair, and laughing out loud with Kuehn. It was obvious that the spontaneous, accidental applause was heartwarming. Ironically, the tune that merited the appreciation was “Long Way Up”—Ruby’s “Katrina” song.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to play it out for us, since, as she said, it is an “angry” song. The strong, anxious arrangement and hard-hitting chord progressions certainly conveyed fury and more.

When she sings “all night long…waiting for the sound of a gun,” you know exactly what the aftermath of Katrina meant for those who stayed.

Hurricane Katrina and the flood of 2005 may have spared the Garden District or Ruby’s home in Kenner, but it certainly submerged the New Orleans music scene and it will be a long road home for most musicians. Those who have stayed in spite of it all are a tough, dedicated lot. Currently, Ruby is recording and mixing a new album at Studio in the Country, which as Ruby says, is “one of the last really good studios near New Orleans.” Things are going well and engineer Ben Mumphrey is offering “fantastic support,” Ruby said in an email as we were preparing this piece.

It is a story we heard too often in storm-ravaged south Louisiana. The property that houses the recording studio was almost sold and turned into a golf course. This is the fear you hear from well-known and not-so-well-known artists. Development and big money are hovering over a hurting land and culture. Artistic venues and affordable housing for artists, musicians, and just regular people of all stripes stand to be devoured by the vultures of corporate development—circling over New Orleans in search of their carrion prey. Ruby’s concern is palpable and everywhere—will new Orleans still be a refuge for the true artist, or will the glitz and hype of Nashville devour the New Orleans’ music scene as well? Individualism and freedom of expression are on the line, and as another musician told us (tongue in cheek)—she didn’t want to have to move to Nashville and be forced to wear “funny clothes.”

Ruby Rendrag has a bright future, Nashville or no Nashville. If the accompanying audio of “Superman” is any indication, she might already have a hit if the right person hears the tune. Try not to end up humming the melody after one play. The arrangement snaps and the vocal is right on. Subtle, but strong. Definitely rock, but then there are those pop and folk influences also. Definitely worth your attention.

Both Ruby Rendrag and Suki Kuehn can be found on MySpace.com. Ruby’s web site is due to be up and running soon at www.RubyRendrag.com.

Next: Marc Stone is one of the best known guitarists and singers in New Orleans, and his resonator guitar really plays the blues out over the Delta. We’ll take a look at his unwavering support for New Orleans roots music, including his latest projects with The Campbell Brothers and soul legend Betty Harris.

Rhythms Rising: Musicians Fight for New Orleans

Dana Abbott is more than "Halfway Home"

Singer and songwriter Dana Abbott is recalling the day that Lake Pontchartrain devoured the 17th street canal in New Orleans. Even though Hurricane Katrina had moved well north of the City, the waters kept rising and Pontchartrain became a malignant entity as she swept through a two-block breach in the main levee, taking lives, homes and hopes along with her. Abbott wonders if there is too much “Katrina fatigue” and hesitates on elaborating any more about how the rising waters forever changed her own life. But her husband, John Beyer, encourages her to keep speaking. It is a story that needs to be told. America had a collective wake for New Orleans in the immediate aftermath, but still, two years later, recovery is slow, and no one is phoning the city and its residents to see how they’re doing.

We are sitting at a table in the Louisiana Pizza Kitchen—a stone’s throw from the French Market and a few blocks from the heartbeat of New Orleans—The French Quarter. The doors and windows are open to the street on a mid-November balmy afternoon. It’s Saturday, so there are more tourists than regulars. The hum of paddle fans is drowned out by the annoying voice of an overweight middle-aged woman decked out in Bermuda shorts, cell phone earpiece, sun visor and sunglasses. She’s talking to the kids back home about what a terrific time she is having. Score one for New Orleans. Subtract one from ambience.

Katrina was the great leveler for the music business in New Orleans. Famous and not-so-famous and completely unknown musicians, singers and songwriters were wiped out. Completely wiped out by the flood. Musicians not only lost the physical structures of the home that sheltered them, they lost their instruments, songbooks, notes, CD collections, studio tapes and masters—you name it. Cyril Neville told us that he lost 25 years of reel-to-reel tapes that represented a lifetime of recording. The sludge of chemical soup, salt-water and sewage made restoration impossible. He is keeping them anyway.

Abbott was living on Bellaire Drive, about ten blocks from the 17th Street Canal when all hell broke loose. The water eventually reached the ceiling of the apartment below, but not before Abbott and Beyer were able to evacuate. Ironically, they left 1500 music CD’s behind and the collection survived, unscathed by looters and water.
“Yeah, we were looted,” Abbott says.

‘They took all of our movie DVDs, except for the BBC collection,” she laughs. “I don’t know how they managed not to track in any mud.”

Precious instruments, the tools of her trade, did not fare as well. A guitar was filled with dead bugs and warped by the humidity by the time they were able to get back into the apartment—a month after the flood.

Memories of Katrina are stored in the vault of memory and memory is an individual thing. What is etched in personal perceptions is a manifestation of time and life interrupted—snapshots of what life was like before fate, government malfeasance and the perfect synchronicity of a major hurricane intervened.

It is now two years later, and Abbott recalls playing at Southport Hall the night before she and her husband evacuated to his mother’s place in Georgia. She was the opening act and was sitting at Parlay’s Bar after the show was over in time to catch a 2 AM weather report that seemed ominous. By 8 AM it was clear they should evacuate and so they were long gone before the Sunday night mandatory evacuation was issued for New Orleans.

A formaldehyde spewing FEMA trailer was home for the next six months and soul-searching replaced song-writing as the difficult decision about whether to stick it out in New Orleans against all odds consumed conversation, dreams, and just about every waking moment. Abbott worked a stint at Catholic Charities to help keep body and soul together while slowly coming to the realization that New Orleans was home now, and there was no way she could or would want to leave.

“The city has always been and is still a musician’s boot camp,” Abbott smiled.

How does she describe her unique voice and songs?

“A combination of blues, folk, rock and blue-eyed soul,” she says with zero hesitation.

No minor statements from a 25 year-old who left Vermont after high school to pursue a dream and has not regretted that decision or anything else that life has pitched at her. The Road Home took her through Chicago and finally to New Orleans, where the roots took and the future looks bright for a talented newcomer.

Halfway Home is the title of Abbott’s EP, which was produced by Malcolm Burn, who has also produced Emmylou Harris’s acclaimed Red Dirt Girl.

Abbott still feels the after-effects and a certain amount of post traumatic stress, though. She is tough, but not a mountain.

“Survival mode” is how Abbott described achieving some sense of normalcy. Is she there yet?

“The first song I heard on play-back in the studio was ‘I Can Take It.’ The moment felt very awkward—one of those moments that said ‘here I am.’ I felt completely and totally vulnerable.”

She may feel vulnerable, but Abbott has already proven that she is a survivor and offers no excuses. Ready to move forward in the city she now calls “home,” Abbott is a well-respected regular on the club circuit, and is humble enough to take the opening act slot when it is offered. Check her out here. If Danna Abbott’s smoky, soothing voice doesn’t immediately win you over, great songwriting certainly will.

NOTE: Next up we will feature singer/songwriter Ruby Rendrag, a New Orleans native, and get her perspective on the challenges of writing and working in the city she has always called home.

Soulful Betty Harris Raises Temperature of West Bank with New Orleans’ Finest

Betty Harris, on the list of the greatest soul singers of all time, gave a knock down, drag-out-all-the-emotion performance at New Orleans’ Old Point Bar on St. Algiers Point. Some of the city’s finest back-up musicians were there to support her in the person of Marc Stone’s Band, and the 200 plus audience that crammed into the funky little West Bank neighborhood bar was knocked flat by a performance that happens once in a lifetime.

When Harris growled, “Is it Hot in here, or is it me? This love is hotter than hell,” the mercury soared and probably didn’t let up until a few days later. Could explain the heat wave in New Orleans this week. That’s the great thing about music here. Great stuff happens in little out of the way places and musicians go all out to support each other. The usually affable Marc Stone looked like an anxious wreck before the performance. He had put heart and soul into bringing Harris down from Atlanta to return to the city where she cut many of her original records for Allen Toussaint’s Sansu label in the 1960s. Intuition (Evidence Records), produced by Jon Tiven, is Harris’s first release since she defined the term “funk” with the explosive “There’s a Break in the Road.”

Stone wasted a whole lot of worry, because Harris still knows her stuff, the band delivered, and the audience knew it. Harris made it to the top of the R&B and soul charts in 1963 while still in her teens with “Cry To Me.” Backup vocalists included Dionne Warwick and Cissy Houston. After that initial success, the road beckoned, and fellow travelers included none other than Sam Cooke, James Brown, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and most of the top names in black music.

Harris virtually disappeared to raise her family and sang only in church during those “missing” years. She has since taken major venues in the US, Australia, Italy, Spain and France by storm with rave reviews wherever she goes.

The past aside, Harris was in absolutely unbelievable voice as she played it all out over the Algiers’ levee. I would suspect people heard her across the river at New Orleans’ City Center. This was no small feat with a horn section that only the Big Easy could deliver. The audio engineer commented that even without a monitor Harris was able to bring it home because R&B singers of her day worked without a net all of the time. Hurricane Betty Harris did not disappoint, and the guys were blowing hard to keep up.

Harris was all elegance and soul, diamond ring catching the lights as she worked the crowd to their knees, begging for more. “I don’t need no love I don’t want no love, I don’t want your love, baby, They say love is a contradiction But I think it’s just science fiction… Take it and shove it.”

Where else but New Orleans can you stumble into a neighborhood bar and find Eddie Christmas, currently drumming for Jon Cleary, formerly with Sting, the Black Crowes, Gerald Levert, Willie Nelson and many others; Bassist Sam Price, leader of Otra and New World Funk Ensemble; Jimmy Carpenter, sax man and horn section leader for Walter ”Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters--not to mention a three piece horn section? Guitarist Marc Stone is well known and loved throughout the New Orleans music scene and has worked Campbell Brothers, Eddie Bo, Harry “Big Daddy” Hypolite, Terrance Simien, Marva Wright, Eric Lindell and countless others from the the Louisiana Music Scene. Stone convinced Christof Waibel, Austria “boogie piano master” who backed Betty at her triumphant appearance at Festival MNOP in France this year to round out the mix, along with Harris’s hand-picked vocalists from Atlanta who came along for the ride.

For video of Betty with the Marc Stone Band at Festival MNOP in France (August 11, 2007) see this link: http://vids.myspace.com/%20index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=18434184

Harris has a sleeker look now, but don’t skip this video. Only 200 people saw Harris at Old Point, so listeners probably won’t be disappointed with her Nashville-backed CD, Intuition. But, it is unfortunate that the Nashville band sounds flat and uninspired compared to New Orleans’ best. It would be fun to hear a recording with Stone’s band, a band that knows what soul is all about and is able to meld perfectly with the performer and support the emotion.

“I need a bible, bring me a beer,” (A Bible and A Beer) is what I felt after listening to Nashville sleepwalk through Intuition. Harris is worth the investment, though.

Harris keeps getting “discovered.” Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint recently covered the ballad, “Nearer To You”, which Betty cut for Sansu in 1967. Christina Aguilera included Betty’s original version on her latest release.

Check out www.evidencemusic.com

Note: We came down to New Orleans to cover post-Katrina and environmental issues, but the return of music to the Big Easy and the ongoing struggles faced by musicians in a city that has been all but abandoned by the music industry caught our attention in a big way. We think this is an important enough story to put some real time and effort into. So, over the coming weeks we will take a closer look at well-known favorite artists who refuse to leave, and up-and-comers who will help define New Orleans’ culture for decades to come. Next up we will visit with Dana Abbott, a young singer/songwriter musician with talent to burn, and a desire to make a go of it in a city she has come to call home in spite of incredible obstacles. Malcom Burn, who produced EmmyLou Harris’s Red Dirt Girl, thinks so, too.

Believe in Susan Cowsill's "Just Believe It"

November 4, 2007

By Georgianne Nienaber

Susan Cowsill Photo (Copyright Catherine Carter)

Carrollton Station (Copyright G. Nienaber)

(Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_georgian_071104_believe_in_susan_cow.htm)

Susan Cowsill is perched on the front stoop of her home in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans on the west bank of the Mississippi, doing an interview about the wallop hurricane Katrina delivered to her family as well as the local music community.  The conversation drifts to the iconic Summer of Love and when, exactly, she joined the Cowsills. Yeah, THAT Susan Cowsill.

Susan recounts the discography: The Rain, the Park and Other Things, We Can Fly, Indian Lake, Hair, and you can almost hear the refrain drifting on the salty autumn air.

“Flowers in her hair. Flowers everywhere. Was she a reality, or just a dream to me?”

Only seven, she joined the band two months after The Rain, the Park and Other Things forever defined the summer of an entire generation. It’s a writer’s dream to be given the opportunity to recount an artist’s telling of the beginnings of her career and the soundtrack of an era. But, there is another story surfacing that has been lost. It’s the story of too many artists who are bought and sold down the river by record companies, deep pockets, pressure to perform no matter what, and artistry that is either ignored or subject to the whimsy of news arcs.

In 2004, New Orleans resident Susan Cowsill released her first effort as a solo artist on Euro Solo as part of a European distribution deal. It wasn’t until October of 2005 that Just Believe It was available for distribution in the United States. Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, All Music Guide and others raved about the writing, the musicianship, the vocals, the arrangements and the “emotional truth” of the compilation.

Rolling Stone claimed Just Believe It offered “the hardy, heartbreaking sound of a bar band angel.” The Washington Post shouted, “As good as Cowsill’s voice is, her smart emotional songwriting is her biggest asset.”

And the CD tanked. So what happened?

The soundtrack of Katrina happened and dominated all things media. How does a musical artist compete with Katrina?

Susan recalled being a virtual refugee in October 2005 when promoters called her with the good news of the CD release in the United States and expected her to tour. Her enthusiasm for the project became an elusive muse. In October of 2005, Susan Cowsill’s beloved brother Barry went missing, ultimately a victim of Katrina. Her life was consumed with scouring phone text messages for clues as to Barry’s whereabouts. Her kids hoped to go home to the orange juice left sitting on the kitchen table of a home that wasn’t a home anymore and just wanted to get their cat back.

The reality is that CD’s don’t sell without grueling touring and media attention driven by the pockets of the promoters. No tour equals no promotion. There was no way Cowsill could tour and promote what is most likely the best work of her life—a project that took two years to complete, untold financial risks, and would not exist without the love and support of the couple of hundred friends who are listed on the CD’s cover insert.

So, is Just Believe It that good?

Go buy it now. Buy it if you remember the Summer of Love and even if you don’t, or are too young, you will not be disappointed.

Listen right on through and the music will tell you a beautiful story. Or, listen through once and find yourself hitting replay again and again on Track 7, Nanny’s Song, while a mournful cello and the angelic voice of Lucinda Williams provides powerful support to Susan Cowsill’s strong, seasoned voice--the soaring voices of women covering a beautiful, prophetic lyric.

“I was born with a broken heart; it’s not a pretty way to start. But, I don’t want to leave this earth; I don’t want to let it go. It’s real life that sets you free.”

If that isn’t good enough, the ghost bonus tracks are worth the patience. We won’t give it away, but there is a hidden iconic track that will absolutely carry you away and should be released by some record executive with any sense and who wants a mega hit right now.

This CD is can’t be defined by the straight jacket known as “genre.”

Just Believe It is part country, rock, pop, and a touch of folk that shows Susan Cowsill’s writing chops as well. She wrote or co-wrote everything (not the “secret” ghost track) except the old Sandy Denny folk classic, Who Knows where the Time Goes, and the singing here blows the Judy Collin’s version out of the water. The rocker comes out in Talkin’ when the vocal puts it to an ex-lover: “The last thing I need at the end of my day is to hear about you talkin' shit around town.”

Quite simply, debut albums are rarely as moving, as revealing, or as accomplished as Just Believe It, and while it may have taken Susan Cowsill nearly 35 years to get to this point in her career, the results are more than worth it -- this is masterful music from a major talent."

Rolling Stone
June 30-July14, 2005

Hurricane Katrina hit Susan Cowsill’s hometown of New Orleans on August 29, 2005.

Cowsill is also a former member of the Continental Drifters, and the Psycho Sisters, along with Bangle Vicki Peterson. Visitors to New Orleans can see her at Carrollton Station, where the Susan Cowsill Band performs the “Covered in Vinyl” series on the first Saturday of every month. Visit www.carrolltonstation.com and learn how these efforts support musicians who were affected by the hurricanes of 2005.

Purchase Just Believe It at Amazon.com,  iTunes, or visit the website at www.susancowsill.com.

(More with Susan Cowsill and Russ Broussard next month)

Sinead O'Connor Delivers at New Orleans Voodoo fest

October 28, 2007

Sinead O'Connor Delivers Magic at New Orleans' Voodoo Fest

By Georgianne Nienaber for OPED and COA News

Nothing compared to Sinead O’Connor as she commanded center stage at New Orleans’ Voodoo Fest on Saturday, October 27. Two years post Katrina, New Orleans is still struggling to reclaim its heritage and culture, and festivals like Voodoo provide a welcome escape and just plain fun. Considering that O’Connor began her career over twenty years ago, it was surprising that the youthful audience gave a cheer when the intro to the iconic “Nothing Compares 2 U” blasted over the soggy grounds. Rain pummeled the Big Easy and caused some minor flooding a few days earlier, and the city had still not dried out. Voodoo is a great venue. Even though the alcohol was flowing freely, security was not a big deal and the only overt police presence was a couple of NOPD officers on horseback. The audience was there to listen and have a good time.

And listen they did to O’Connor. The Irish poet and singer may have a prickly reputation, but her live performances come straight from the heart—honest emotion—a still strong and powerful voice that seems to reach deep inside for every note. In an age where singing seems to be a lost art, it was refreshing to hear an artist who can wrap her voice around each note and send it out there. The audience knew it and sent the emotion right back to her. New Orleans needed a little Voodoo magic and O’Connor delivered.

Musically, the arrangements were layered and complex, but blended perfectly into a performance experience that was clean and expertly supported by her back-up musicians.

With a reputation built around thirty seconds on Saturday Night Live twenty years ago, when she ripped up a picture of the Pope, it is important to remember that O’Connor has moved on. She has had a very public profile lately with her discussion of her bi-polar disorder, but she does not use it as a crutch. She keeps growing as an artist, and the selections she offered from the double album, “Theology,” prove it.

Released in June 2007 on Koch Records, “Theology” is offered as a prayer—quiet, intense reflections of an artist’s personal journey. The Voodoo audience reacted in kind with rapt attention.  A video clip From Voodoo Fest is available on her official website.

O’Connor and her management graciously offered us a short interview, which found O’Connor is a reflective, tired mood. Understandable, given her grueling touring schedule. Her response to questions about war and world events was a weary, “I don’t know.”

Honest.

We had to go to her webpage to get more on her feelings about “Theology.”

“It is my own personal response to what has taken and is affecting everyone around the world since and including September 11, 2001. I want to be very clear - there is no message. No preaching. Nothing deep and meaningful the artist wants to say, nothing trouble making. I simply wanted to make a beautiful thing, out of something beautiful, which inspires me.”

O’Connor is not an activist these days and has totally embraced her artistry. Refreshing in the age of Brangelina, when actors and musicians with no knowledge of the deeper machinations of world events use celebrity to bolster their own narcissism. O’Connor is the opposite. Humble and somewhat shy when we met her, graciously posing for photos, when there was no reason for her to do so.

O’Connor has been called the Joan of Arc of music. On a sunny Saturday afternoon in October, she rode into Voodoo Fest with her artistic banner flying and laid claim as the maid of New Orleans.

Voodoo fest was the first music to return to New Orleans post Katrina last year.

Besides Sinead O'Connor, Dr. John, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Black Crowes and Rage Against the Machine were among the musical acts headlining the weekend experience.

The three-day festival began Friday on the grounds of New Orleans City Park and also will included a host of Louisiana act-- Theresa Andersson, the Hot 8 Brass Band, Ivan Neville and his band, “Dumpstaphunk,” Marc Broussard, Irma Thomas and the New Orleans Social Club.

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Mary Gauthier: Singing Her Heart Out at Nashville’s Bluebird Café on the WWW

By Georgianne Nienaber for COA NEWS

 

Audio/Text: I was at the Bluebird Café in Nashville last Thursday for my first chance to hear Lost Highway recording artist and country indie favorite Mary Gauthier live and do a proper review. Well, not exactly. The Bluebird Café recently joined virtual live-music venues and established an agreement with software developer SanSoft Inc. to produce Bluebird Café performances on the web.

For three bucks and a decent Internet connection, streaming technology has now entered the concert arena. It was a dicey proposition, since the rather spooky technology feels voyeuristic for an old time reporter and I felt obliged to drop a chagrined email to Gauthier and tell her I would “be there” for her performance. This type of venue offers a lot of promise for access to music that independent reporters don’t have the time or money to pursue. It can’t hurt the indie artists either, since press and promo budgets are obviously limited in comparison to big-name acts. It would have cost $700 and a lot of down time to get to Nashville—this review cost a few dollars, a couple of hours of some well-spent time, and two Cokes.

Getting the technical critique out of the way, the audio was great after a few minor glitches that Gauthier handled with grace, humor, and a self-confidence that proved she knows her way around sound gremlins. Gauthier is an incredibly relaxed performer, and even a booming monitor and distorted guitar failed to cause her to miss a beat on her opening numbers. The video stream left a lot to be desired, but was certainly good enough to get a good sense of the performance and audience reactions. What was obviously missing was the one-on-one interview with the artist, but that would be a profile and not a review.

In the interest of editorial honesty, Mary Gauthier’s music grabbed me by the throat when I was in working in Congo and someone emailed me a couple of her tunes. Who in the heck is this artist who is by turns, gritty, irreverent, soulful, tender, tough, and wears her heart on her sleeve for all to hear? I was reminded of Patti LaBelle’s famous comment to K.D. Lang at an awards show: “You really scare me.” Turns out there is nothing to fear.

Bob Dylan highlighted Gauthier’s song I Drink for his XM radio gig. By her own admission Mary Gauthier was “born a bastard child in New Orleans.” Forty-something and a late bloomer, she is somewhat of a surprise in a music industry dominated by glam women. Channeling Janis Joplin and Hank Williams in her smoky Louisiana drawl, Gauthier is by turns a pretty and striking woman with a tough, yet vulnerable stance. It is a stage presence that is best experienced rather than described, and one good reason why a virtual concert can add a whole new dimension to a performer who is not easy to access. Gauthier sings about being “brave enough to love and brave enough to leave” and readily admits in published interviews that she never came out as a gay woman because “I was never in.” Her biography is all over the Internet, but other than the fact that her complex past has defined the soul of the artist, what is remarkable is that Mary Gauthier delivers a great show and incredible songwriting.

Gauthier sang her heart out at the Bluebird Café for an hour and fifteen minutes to what looked like, from a desktop vantage point, a very appreciative audience of mostly women. Can Mary Gauthier be THE new voice for women of a certain age who lost Janis Joplin over thirty-five years ago? Major label Lost Highway Records thinks they have the real deal, and the label is ready to release her second CD on September 18. Her first CD with Lost Highway was the 2005 Mercy Now, which the Washington Post called “one of the year's best singer songwriter efforts; even the presence of songs by Harlan Howard and Fred Eaglesmith do nothing to eclipse the power of Gauthier's originals.”

While Joplin was all tie-dyed, feathers, rows of bracelets, and her Full Tilt Boogie Band, Gauthier took the stage in torn jeans and tinted glasses with her beat-up guitar case as a backdrop. In interviews, Joplin used to say that she kept “Janis Joplin in a box” in her dressing room. With Gauthier, you feel like she immediately invites the audience in to experience her personal reality. She may drive a Lexus now, but her soul is still back in hardscrabble Louisiana.

Gauthier is a first-class songwriting power-house and told a fine story to her Bluebird audience about how Nashville thought she was “too slow,” and would send over collaborators from time to time to force the Muse. One experience made Gauthier “want to fling myself out the window.” Whatever Gauthier is doing to collaborate with her personal Muse is working, and one hopes she keeps on doing what she is doing and ignores Nashville’s advice.

As she opened the show, Gauthier warned the audience that “If you’re feelin’ good, hold onto it, ‘cause it ain’t gonna last. Everybody has their niche and I think I found mine…there’s a niche in sad songs.”

To call Gauthier’s wrenching autobiographical songs “sad” is like calling Darfur a “conflict.” It is her bravery in the confession to her audience that she’s had to “live” what she wrote that makes the tales of heartbreak, loneliness, struggles with alcoholism, abandonment and redemption so powerful. Minnesota’s world-renowned substance abuse center, Hazelden, uses some of Gauthier’s songs in its therapy sessions.

Gauthier deftly and confidently conquered the trials of live performing and sounded as good as or better than her studio work. There is something truthful about a live performance—those instances when the voice cracks just enough to let you know that delivery is incredibly hard work and the artist is strong enough to get past the occasional falter. It is the human dimension that is so compelling, and with Gauthier’s deeply emotional content as well as her strong vocal presence, you have to wonder how she can do it for over an hour.

As she told the audience about a dangerously dark song written in the style of Flannery O’Connor, “it is deep seated southern misery.”

“Man-oh-man, this song scares me,” Gauthier half-joked.

Gauthier is no freeloader as a musician either. Her guitar work is strong—not an easy task when you have a demanding vocal to deliver. This reviewer grew up watching John Prine perform when he was still a mailman in the Chicago suburbs. He did some of his best work then and Gauthier far, far outstrips those early performances. Gauthier won’t like that sentence, but I’m leavin’ it in. She considers Prine a model and mentor.

Gauthier premiered a new song she wrote while vacationing in Provincetown. In a brief email after the show, she said “last night was the first time I payed it out, and I was hoping people would like it.”

Written after a frustrating year of months of travel in European venues—which seem to have embraced her more quickly than the American music mainstream—and not much time for songwriting, the Provincetown Song has Gauthier reclaiming her inspiration and motivation to write:

“I don’t trust my eyes anymore, they only notice what they’re looking for…I think my eyes are blinding me...some people never really love…they don’t mean the sweet words they say…other people can’t see the truth…I didn’t know I was that way.”

Gauthier wrote Prayer without Words with Tom Damphier and readers can find it on the Mercy Now CD, available on Gauthier’s website, along with a download. The studio version is wound tight, but the song has to be experienced in performance—no matter the combination of searing imagery with studio finesse, the kick-gut delivery in the virtual world makes you wonder if she sucks all the air out of the room in the real world.

For a sense of the May Gauthier experience in concert, we are streaming the audio for the Provincetown Song and Prayer without Words here, and added some FLASH so readers can get to know the performer.

Gauthier is on tour for a good part of the summer. Her schedule is posted on her website, www.marygauthier.com. Don’t rely totally on the virtual word. Technology is something else, but I would suspect she is even better in person. Go see her if you can.

Also check out Filth and Fire, which was named the Number One Independent CD of the Year in 2002 by the New York Times. Stark and downright beautiful writing dominates this album. For a singer/songwriter who describes herself as a “slow” writer, Gauthier cranks out perfect lyrics again in this, her third independently produced effort, before signing to Lost Highway. Skip right to track two, A Long Way to Fall, but go right back to Walk Through Fire, with an organ underlay that makes you feel the southern heat.

More than 2,500 songwriters appear each year at the Bluebird Café. The club is known for helping start the careers of such country artists as Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban, Trisha Yearwood and Kathy Mattea.

Gauthier’s show was sold out at 105 seats in the live venue, with 15 “virtual” visitors. Bluebird Café owner Amy Kurland said she feels the virtual audience will expand as they advertise through their email list of over 6,000.

SanSoft Inc., a virtual reality software company based in Franklin, Tennessee, has an exclusive agreement with the Bluebird Café to bring live performances to the Internet via Second Life and the World Wide Web. Second Life is a 3D virtual reality world program, but visitors to the Bluebird Café can access performances directly through their browsers at www.bluebirdcafesl.com/viewer. Second Life was created by Linden Labs. Link only works on performance days.

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Additional Flash content by Ollie Moltaji