One of the themes of my brain is that the universe works in mysterious ways. This is in no way mystical. It’s about nonlinearity and feedback. Sometimes if you push the effect is to pull. It’s how I can be both clinically depressed and a cheerful hobbit. I am watching The Flash as I write this and lost why I wrote this for a bit. Now I got it, and that’s the point. I had a rough night, spent much of it in the bathroom, somehow that led to me wanting to write something positive. The question is what? Two things were on my mind yesterday; the reasons that Tiffany Aching is the greatest fictional heroic child and great non-famous songwriters. I’ll go with the latter even though I’m now watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and I usually think of Harry as the anti-Tiffany. No, I made my decision and I’ll let Tiffany ferment another day. I’ve written about her before and I need to focus on my new thoughts.
Why great non-famous, unfamous? Certainly not infamous, songwriters? Because a friend of mine, I wish I could remember whom, asked for songwriter recommendation, ones that aren’t famous, with Tom Waits given as an example of famous. The ones I came up with off the top of my head were;
- Jean Rohe
- Anaïs Mitchell
- Brian Gundersdorf
- Joe Crookston
- Sam Baker
- Dar Williams
There was a question of whether or not Dar is famous, she’s the archetype of folk famous. I could also question Anaïs as she has a show running in the West End that will be on Broadway in April. As I knew her when she was playing places the artists play for tips, I’m leaving her in.
My guess is that they are all well-known by My Gentle Readers. The exception might be Sam Baker who travels in somewhat different circles. What they all have in common is that they are wordsmiths. They use words in different ways, but all to great effect. Brian is the epitome of the clever songwritery songwriter. I got that from another great songwriter, John Elliott. He gets the words to do intricate dances.
Jean and Anaïs are mythmakers, modern day Homers. It’s obvious with Anaïs in Hadestown, which is based on Greek myth, but it just as true of Jean writing of encounters in Brooklyn. Myth is not about content but viewpoint.
Sam and Joe are storytellers. They don’t write about gods and heroes but men and woman. These are folk songs in their purest form.
Then there’s Dar, who has an album about Gods, but nobody thinks of her as mythic. Dar touches our soul with her thoughts.
One way is not better than another and those are not all the ways. Those are just what struck me at the moment. Oddly as we are talking about songs, I have not mentioned music. Bizet wrote some pretty good songs that I love without understanding a word. And just because I talked about the words doesn’t mean that the songwriters I mentioned don’t write great music. Now that I have the time I’m going to list other great songwriters that aren’t famous. Not famous is better than non-famous or un-famous. I’m not going to depend on my unreliable memory but will run through my music and list other great songwriters. Of course this will rely on my totally unreliable scanning abilities. Being great is necessary to being on the list but not sufficient. As I’m crumbling under pressure I will not examine these writers, just list them. They all worked their magic on me.
- Amy Speace
- Amy Rigby
- Charlie Parr
- Cheryl Wheeler
- Christine Lavin
- Dan Bern
- David Massengill
- SONiA
- Fred Smith aka Iain Campbell Smith
- Honor Finnegan
- Jordana Greenburg
- Jill Sobule
- John Elliott
- Jonathan Byrd
- Kristin Andreassen
- Mark Allen Berube
- Mary Gauthier
- Pete and Maura Kennedy
- Rhiannon Giddens
- Robert Sarazin Blake
- Rod Picott
- Chuck and Mira Costa
- Slaid Cleaves
- Susan Werner
- Andrew Ratshin
I learned a lot making the list, first why my initial choices were all wordsmiths; it’s so difficult separating songwriting from performance. I agonized over the Kennedys. The deciding factor is that we always sing and love Stand at the Dharma Café even though the Kennedys aren’t there. I also learned who I consider current. I didn’t include some songwriters that are often my examples of great songwriting but haven’t written great songs in a while. I didn’t say so before I started but to be on the list you list you must be alive, thus no Dave Carter or Jack Hardy. The fame boundary is fluid. I put Dar on the original list but left Richard Shindell of the supplement. That was clearly because of fame, not quality.
What I knew before I started is that what makes great songwriting is not technical skill. It’s genius and originality. A great songwriter takes me places I wouldn’t otherwise go.
Now let’s get scary and look at gender breakdown. Why is that scary? I didn’t think about it at all when making the list so implicit prejudice was given free reign. Here’s the final score.
Men – 13
Women – 13
Women were winning but I just removed Lucinda from the list as she is obviously famous. I don’t know how she got on the list. If I made the list again there might be more women than men. There might be more men than women. So many artists were on the cusp. When I made a list of famous songwriters the male bias was clear, It was Joni and a bunch of men. Why? Some is my prejudice but more societal. Women are not given the same opportunities which mean that fewer become famous and fewer even try to reach that level. Damn, do I have to remove Rhiannon from my list? I won’t as she doesn’t get the credit she deserves as a songwriter. The toughest calls were close friends.
The ultimate test is that if someone looks to this list to find great songwriters I don’t want them to be disappointed. I tried to err on the side of exclusion. If you want to learn songwriting you can do far worse than learn from these artists then find your own way to be great.
Wise Madness 