Welcome to a rare early afternoon edition of Wise Madness. My soundtrack is WFUV‘s Sunday Supper hosted by John Platt. At least when I start. It was a long day and it might take more than the show’s remaining 45 minutes for me finish. It was long because I went on four county, two state, cultural odyssey.
As always my day started in the Bronx, my first destination was the Central Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. It was my annual pilgrimage to 90-Second Newbery Film Festival. “The Newbery Medal was named for eighteenth-century British bookseller John Newbery. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children;” in other words the year’s best kid lit book. Each year other books are awarded Honors. The films in the festival are short, 90-seconds, and are made by children. They range in age from elementary to high school. It is the brainchild of James Kennedy, the author of YA novel The Order of Odd-Fish; most certainly not awarded a Newbery Medal or even Honor; not that James is bitter. This was NOT his reaction.
The festival always starts with a little skit that James writes and this year’s was a riff on that attitude but using A Christmas Carol as the framework. That six-second version of the five-minute skit is the essence of the films show. Kids have to condense an entire book into a 90-second film. They often take great genre switching liberties with the source material. One film this year retold Frog and Toad together as an action film about a marine and a ninja. My favorite was perhaps Abrahamilton; based on Lincoln: A Photobiography. It was all parodies of Lin-Manuel Miranda songs. I laughed out loud to that and many of the films. Some were simply beautiful. There was a film of Annie and the Old One that was done as stop-motion animation of drawings done in a book. To me in evoked the game Myst. If you played the game you’ll get the idea.
This year I went with Carolann and Felix. I have always wanted Felix to make a film and enter it. He has the creativity and chops to make a great one. You might know Carolann as a musician, but Felix says that her business card should read, English Major. Usually I go out with James and his friends after the festival. I know him through Carey. This year I had to forgo the pleasure as I had the next leg of my odyssey.
That was in Teaneck which meant first getting to the Port Authority. I had the pleasure of Carolann’s company for the first few stops on the 3 train. We talked a lot about Elizabeth Warren. I need to get back to volunteering for Liz. I guess I should do what I do best and write about her more often. The Port Authority is in Manhattan, aka New York Country, the third county of my odyssey. You are probably thinking that the second was Brooklyn, you’re wrong. Brooklyn is the name of the borough the coterminous country is Kings. I just had to do research to get the word “coterminous.” Why? Because I care.
Why did I journey to Teaneck, in Bergen Country, NJ, fourth county and second state? To get Taylor Ham of course. You can’t get it in any of the other county’s I was in. I used to get it in all of them but none of the stores that carried it, still do. It’s a New Jersey specialty. As long as I was in Teaneck I figured I’d find something else to do so I went to see Abbie Gardner and Crys (kris) Matthews at Ethical Brew. To make it even better Bri met me there and we got to hang before the show. I did take some time out to get the aforementioned Taylor Ham at Stop & Shop. You know, I might remember this wrong and I actually went to see the concert and Bri, and only took advantage of being in Jersey to get the Taylor ham. That just seems less on brand for me.
I had friends coning out of the woodwork at this show; it’s the biggest congregation of old time Red Molly fans that I’ve seen in ages, more than at Red Molly concerts. Let’s see how many I can remember, Sue, Chris, Gene & Isabel, and Mike. Is that really it? It felt like more. Perhaps some of my other friends were old-time Redheads, Judy, Peter & Paula, and Gail. They might have loved Red Molly, but they weren’t the people I saw at every show. There was also Perry & Beth who run the Ethical Brew. How many friends did I just lose by forgetting them? I only saw the backs of heads so I don’t have a feel of where anyone was sitting but Bri and Judy who sat in the back with me, and my prime way of remembering who was at an event is by looking at my visual memory map of the room. Oh, Ron Olesko was there! I just got the corner of the room he was in. He streamed the show on Folk Music Notebook. I didn’t know he would be there, but I was wearing my Folk Music Notebook shirt. I always try to represent something I want to promote when I go to a concert. I also had my WFUV hoodie on, but I always have my WFUV hoodie on. That’s because my ears get cold.
Not only did Ron stream the school but he interviewed Crys. Yet that’s not what triggered my memory, it really was visualizing him sitting in the corner. I unabashedly love Crys. She was one of my top discoveries of whatever year I first saw her. She didn’t grow on me; she was a musical giant from the beginning. Her songs tend to be songs of social justice and love songs, plus By My Side. No, that counts as a love song; it’s about her dog. I’ve seen her quite a few times and have listened to her music more. Yet last night I realized that she directly challenges my theory of what makes a great protest song. I hate the songs that bludgeon you over the head. They make me think of the Tom Lehrer song, Folk Song Army, which has the line; “I’m against poverty war and injustice/not like the rest of you squares.” The best political songs are subtle not direct. Crys’s songs are direct but still great. How does she do it? Part of it is that they are so interest musically. If you didn’t speak a word of English and had no idea what she was singing about you’d still love them. They have all the elements of great music, they never drone. She is a classically trained musician, albeit on clarinet not the guitar that she plays, and it shows. She has chops. Her singing is compelling. And even though she’s direct she doesn’t bludgeon you over the head. The lyrics aren’t rants; they are poems. I shouldn’t be surprised that I was wrong about what makes a great protest song; things are not simple. Every rule has exceptions and every exception has exceptions. So much of life and art is holding the bird just right; too tight and you crush it, too loose it escapes. Crys holds it just right.
Abbie, this isn’t fair. I just wrote about Abbie nine days ago. That was a show she did with Carolann. Bri was there too. Yesterday was a split reunion for me. I was with the same three favorite people but yesterday in two different cities. Abbie was also a classically trained woodwind player; Abbie studied flute. That’s just like dobro, right? It’s very difficult to accompany yourself singing on a woodwind. Emily Mure is a classically trained oboe player. I think the three of them should go on tour as the woodwind trio, and then have none of them play the instrument they were trained for. It also amuses me that the flute, clarinet, and oboe, have zero, one, and two reeds respectively.
Did you notice that I didn’t really write about Abbie? Damn, now you did. I have written about her so many times over the years. There was one year that going back over my diary I realized that she was the person I saw the most times, not the musician, the person. What do I have left to say? She can play the bro off the dobro. She can sing like some bird that isn’t a canary. She can write songs of depth that are entertaining. She’s written more songs in waltz time than anyone I know. She has a new song about playing in waltz time.
Crys and Abbie’s repertoire meet at the blues. They finished the song with Crys’s 3/4 Shimmy. Abbie had never heard the song before, but she played along on her dobro. Don’t you hate that there are people that can do that when you can’t play as well with the sheet music in front of you? Fine I don’t hate it, I love it. I just wish I could do it. The thing is I could hear Abbie singing the song. It’s the kind of singing that Abbie does in her own songs.
Sunday Supper is long over. I’m an hour into Live From Here. that’s my cue to start wrapping this up. I didn’t mention it but of course you knew I was doing the merch. I was fortunate enough to get a ride back to Manhattan with Chris. When people drive me back from Ethical Brew it’s usually easiest to drop me at the George Washington Bridge bus terminal and that’s what Chris, not Crys, did. He was driving two other friends home too. I’m engaged to one of them, the husband; so, it’s really sad that I don’t remember their names. Who knows what our being engaged means? Right, it means he made food that I loved. It was sausage rolls. The way to a diarist’s heart is through his stomach. That might just apply to me.
Wise Madness 