Alex Bledsoe's Blog, page 11

How everyone, deep down, is “Like Me”

So one time I met Chely Wright.

It was around 1998. I worked in a Nashville mall at the Bombay Company, a repulsive chain store that sold overpriced foreign-made furniture and faux artsy knickknacks. I was the assistant manager, and took it as seriously as I did most of my other jobs, which meant that I worked no harder than I had to while I wrote every chance I got. And one day Ms. Wright came in, looking for a dining room table.

I struck up a conversation while I described our merchandise. Somehow the subject got onto her music; I hadn’t heard of her despite her considerable commercial success, and I asked her with now-unbelievable crassness that if I bought her latest CD and didn’t like it, would she buy it back from me?

In spite of this level of repartee, she did not offer me her phone number, and left without buying a table. Over time, I’ve become more and more embarrassed at my lunkheaded behavior. Who asks a musician if they’d buy back their CD?

I mention all this because I recently watched a documentary, Chely Wright: Wish Me Away, all about her experience coming out as a gay country music singer.

I watch a lot of documentaries, and a lot of them are about musicians. But this was the first one I’d seen where the subject was someone I’d met in a situation where we were sort of socially equal. I mean, I’d flirted with this woman (well, “flirted” in the sense that I’d made a total ass of myself while trying to be cool, which is pretty much how I flirt). It made her journey real in a tangible way that someone like, say, Sixto Rodriguez of Searching for Sugar Man never was for me.

It’s one thing to announce your lifestyle change from the comfort of the Kardashian cesspool; it’s something else to face the country music audience, the group that embraced you and gave you your career yet is not known for its compassion to people like you, and still find the courage to say, “This is who I am.” I haven’t yet read her autobiography (I did get a kick out of seeing her working over the manuscript, though, with little colored post-its indicating the editor’s notes), but I couldn’t be more impressed with her courage.

She’s happily married now (in every state, thanks to the Supreme Court), with a lovely wife, adorable twins and a wonderful career. That’s the real triumph here. And it turns out she and I actually have a mutual friend, magician Tony Brent (it was his comment about knowing her that prompted me to write this). And it’s a reminder to me (who tends to be very cynical about celebrities) that there’s always a real person behind these stories, and that there’s a journey leading up to those public moments when someone says, “This is who I am.”

Support her “Like Me” organization, which speaks out about the need for LGBT equality and against classroom and LGBT bullying, here.

Thoughts on Black Widow and Joss Whedon, two months late

(I’m always behind the curve on whatever’s cool, which is why I’m posting about The Avengers: Age of Ultron while everyone else is discussing Jurassic World.)

It’s no secret that many fans, particularly feminists, had issues with Age of Ultron when it debuted a few weeks back. Their ire centers around writer-director Joss Whedon’s treatment of Black Widow, a.k.a. “the girl Avenger.” You know, the one left out of all the marketing.

When I first read those complaints, I recalled something I noticed in the first Avengers movie back in 2012. When I mentioned it online then, I got raked over by the Whedonites, who seemed to be the SF/F equivalent of Taylor Swift’s Swifties, One Direction’s Directioners or Justin Bieber’s Beliebers: their hero could do no wrong, and they would swarm, like yellow jackets, anyone who suggested otherwise. Now, perhaps, I can talk about it at somewhat less peril, because it’s the reason the current Black Widow outrage doesn’t surprise me at all.

When Loki’s army attacks the helicarrier, Bruce Banner transforms into the Hulk. The Hulk blames Black Widow and pursues her through the vessel. She only escapes when Thor intervenes, drawing the Hulk’s ire away from her. She then slides to the floor and huddles against a wall, trembling in apparent fear.

Now, keep in mind, this is a crisis on multiple levels. Loki’s forces, led by the possessed Hawkeye, are attacking. They’ve released Loki, and are determined to bring down the ship. The Hulk is on the rampage. Every hero is needed.

And Black Widow sits against the wall for six minutes of screen time.

What else happens during those six minutes?

Iron Man and Captain America plan to turn the rotors to restart the damaged engine.

Thor fights the Hulk.

Loki’s forces attack the carrier bridge.

Agent Coulson goes to the weapons locker.

Thor fights the Hulk some more.

More fighting on the carrier bridge.

A jet is sent to distract the Hulk; unfortunately for the pilot, this is successful.

The Hulk attacks the jet.

Iron Man clears debris from jammed engine rotors.

Loki’s men attack Captain America.

The possessed Hawkeye shuts down the other engines.

And only now do we cut back to Black Widow, still huddled against the wall. She has to be summoned to rejoin the fight that all her male compatriots have never left.

Six minutes—that’s 4% of the film’s running time that our lone female Avenger is completely out of the action because she’s too scared to continue.

(One of the common responses the Whedonites gave me back then was, “well, what would you do if you’d barely escaped the Hulk, smart guy?” I would no doubt be sitting in a puddle of my own pee and cry-laughing like a maniac. But then, I’m not an Avenger. Black Widow has no superpowers, no mutant abilities, nothing but skill and will; and if her will isn’t up to the task, then it legitimately begs the question, Why is she an Avenger?)

Now imagine if this had been Thor, or Iron Man, or Captain America, or even Hawkeye so traumatized by some aspect of the battle that they simply lost the ability to function. While dramatically it certainly might be more interesting, the fans would have stormed the Marvel citadel (surely they have a citadel by now, don’t they?) and demanded Joss Whedon’s head.

Instead, because it’s Joss Whedon, it’s…okay?

Except that it’s not okay, not even if Joss “Mr. Feminism” does it, which is why the current outrage surprises me only in its intensity. If Black Widow is competent enough to be an Avenger, then she shouldn’t be shown essentially having the vapors during one of the big battle scenes (or, as in Age of Ultron, be the only Avenger captured by the villain). She should shake it off just as Thor, Iron Man, Captain America or (non-possessed) Hawkeye would’ve done, and gotten back to work. That’s both feminism, and good storytelling. We’re long past the point where only “the girl” can, or should, show fear. Or be the only one who can’t stand the heat in the kitchen.

So again, it’s no surprise to me that, when tasked with finding some secret for Black Widow to reveal in Age of Ultron, it has to do with her sadness at not being able to do something traditionally feminine. When it comes down to it, Whedon has always treated her as a traditional movie female; why should be surprised?

Guest blog: Curious Research and Sightings of the Modern Day Faery

At this year’s Pagan Unity Festival (a.k.a. PUF) I met Kiki Dombrowski, who conducted a workshop on the history and persistence of stories of faerie folk. She was also kind enough to write a guest post for me about this very topic.

***

Faery sightings are not so out of the ordinary after all. Tales of real life encounters with faeries intrigue us, pulling us away from our electronic world to awaken our imagination and give us hope that this universe still holds mysteries. The exploration of what faeries are and how faeries interact with us has been a topic for many authors and researchers. Faeries have been linked to ancient gods, fallen angels, transformed spirits of the dead, and even demons. Some tales say that faeries are an immortal, wise and beautiful ancient race. Other tales describe faeries as malevolent creatures who steal babies in the middle of the night. Others still say that faeries take the shape of animals to visit and observe us.

Many researchers have collected volumes of information on the relationship between faeries and humans. One thorough collection, and perhaps one of the more famous is The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries by W.Y. Evans-Wentz. In this collection of tales, Wentz recounts hundreds of witness stories across the Celtic Nations. Examples of the tales include the sound of hearing pipes at the sacred Hill of Tara and King Arthur’s spirit visiting his birthplace of Tintagel in the guise of a blackbird with red feet and a red beak.

The Fairy Investigation Society, which was founded in the late 1920s in Britain, had meetings to discuss faery phenomenon and collect data on faery encounters. In the 1950s, the secretary of FIS, Marjorie Johnson, carried out a “fairy census” in which she collected 20th century faery sightings. One of the most peculiar from the collection happened in Wollaton Park, Nottingham, where a group of children claimed to have been chased by gnomes driving little cars. Ms. Johnson’s research was finally published last year in a book called Seeing Fairies. You can visit the FIS website for an extended list of recent faery sightings.

In today’s metaphysical and pagan revivals, people have warmed up to faeries and their reputation has thawed out. Modern authors such as R.J. Stewart, Orion Foxwood, and Emily Carding have written books outlining methods for interacting with faeries in a beneficial manner. In The Sidhe: Wisdom from the Celtic Otherworld, John Matthews shares his encounters of speaking with a member of the Sidhe, the Irish ancient faery race connected to the divine Tuatha de Danann. He was able to communicate with the Sidhe by meditating with a spiral glyph he saw in an Irish hillmound chamber.

A friend of mine within the Pagan community also has encounters with faeries. She shared her story with me about how they would often hide her things: “The Fae are great borrowers of things they find fascinating or useful. They can also be wickedly clever tricksters. Back when I was still waiting tables, I came home from my day job to change for my server job. I laid my work apron and my server book on a chair, and then went to the bedroom to change. When I returned to collect the apron and book, the book was gone. After an exhaustive search, I lost my temper. I demanded the Fae return my book or I would salt the entire house and surrounding property. I went back in the bedroom, counted to ten and then returned to find my book exactly where I had left it.”

I had my own faery encounter during high school. I resided with my family in Connecticut a walk away from a state forest that was rumored to have ghosts, midnight coven meetings, and men in black appearances. At that point in my life I was already reading about about faeries. I used to leave out small dishes of berries, cream, and honey in my backyard as offerings to the faeries I believed resided on such supernaturally charged land. One midsummer evening I woke up to the distinctive feeling of the bottom of my feet getting tickled. Stirring from slumber I shifted awake when I heard the most unusual thing: the sound of what I could only describe as a chorus of tiny voices giggling. I sprung up in bed and turned on the lights to an empty room.

Modern fantasy novels have also created beautiful, immortal, magical faeries, perhaps sparking the idea that faeries did indeed have their merits. Were they misunderstood for thousands of years? Do we now have access to benevolent forces through practicing mindfulness, meditation, and connecting with nature? One theme that seems to link all modern faery encounters together is the connection to nature and the awareness that there is divine spirit in all living beings on earth. By touching the world of faery we open ourselves up to magic, fantasy, and an ancient wisdom that is connected to the natural world around us.

***

Kiki Dombrowski lives in Nashville, where she is a tarot card reader, life coach, and workshop teacher. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from Southern Connecticut State University and her Master’s Degree from Nottingham University. Having extensively studied mythology, divnation, and Paganism, Kiki has been a teacher at Pagan Unity Festival, Pagan Pride Day Nashville, Goddess and the Moon, and Mystical Heart Spiritual Center. Her articles have been published on WitchVox and in Green Egg. Her website is www.kikidombrowski.com.

The Music of Release Day

So today, the third Tufa novel, Long Black Curl, hits stores and devices. The pre-release reviews have been good ones, and that’s always a comfort. But the finally judgment really comes from the people who buy it. Hopefully, you.

Like Wisp of a Thing, the prior novel in the series, this book also features song lyrics by contemporary indie artists. Here’s the story behind two of them.

“Paranoid,” by Alice Peacock

Originally I’d hoped to use a different song, one from a major artist, to express the emotions of one of the main characters. But although the artist approved, I was unable to work out an arrangement with the label, publisher and management. This was an artist I still admire, and truthfully I was certain I’d never find another song as perfect. But then I started searching, and discovered Alice Peacock’s “Paranoid.”

I found it on the Real Women, Real Songs Facebook page. This group challenged female singer-songwriters to compose a new song each week based on a prompt. In this case, the prompt became the title, and the song is a marvelously clever paean to the surprising intensity of unexpected love.

What got my initial attention was the rolling ragtime piano, so fundamentally different from the soft acoustic guitar or gentle keyboards of most of the other submissions. Then as I took in the lyrics—the part I could really use in the book—I realized how perfectly they fit the character. As with so many things in life, the initial defeat turned into a much better triumph. Now I can’t imagine another song serving this purpose.

Luckily, Alice was excited about being included, and okayed the use of her song. And therein lies the advantage of working with indie artists: they don’t have “people” who complicate things. I asked Alice, she said okay, and that was it. And I am amazingly grateful.

You can find the officially released version of this song on her new CD, Live from SPACE.

“Valiant and Fury Girls,” by Lou Buckingham

As part of charity auction, I offered to mention the folksong of the winner’s choice in the book. I hadn’t planned on actually quoting the lyrics or making it a major part of the story; instead, I planned to literally just mention the title in passing. But when the winner sent me an mp3 of Lou Buckingham’s unreleased “Valiant and Fury Girls,” I realized it could also work perfectly in the story. So I contacted Lou and, like Alice, she was gracious enough to let me use it.

The interesting quirk in this is that is was only months later that I found out Lou is actually the aunt of one of my best friends in town. It’s a small round world sometimes.

“Appalachia,” by Josiah Leming

And finally, the first lyrics you’ll encounter in the book are an epigraph courtesy of Josiah Leming. Josiah is a Tennessee native like me, with four EPs and three full albums to his credit. His song, “Appalachia,” provided the lines that I felt set the mood for the story to follow, and like Alice and Lou, he was kind enough to let me use them.

 

These three wonderful artists now join Jennifer Goree, Kate Campbell, Andrew Brasfield and the members of Tuatha Dea in the exclusive “honorary Tufa” club. If you like the stories and novels, I hope you’ll seek out the music and support them.

And I hope you enjoy Long Black Curl.

Guest Post: Touching from a 35-year Distance

April 30 marked the 35-year anniversary of Joy Division’s video for “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” in many ways their most defining, and certainly best-known, song.

I discovered their music shortly after the death of singer and lyricist Ian Curtis in 1980, and they’ve been one of my touchstone bands ever since. But I wondered if they were simply a “period” band for people who’d lived through their era, or if their music was still meaningful to younger listeners. Fortunately my friend Anevay Darlington was kind enough to write about her feelings for Joy Division.

*****

I’ve always had pretty unique music tastes for my age group. Instead of crying over One Direction lyrics, I cried over the song, “Piano Man,” by Billy Joel. My musical tastes really started blooming at the age of 11 when I first heard the band Journey. From there, I started an obsession with my 80’s and 90’s music – rap, punk, rock, ska – from A-ha to ZZ Top. I cried listening to The Smiths, fell in love with The Cure, danced to The Specials, questioned Tones on Tail, and then I discovered Joy Division.

I fondly remember the first time I heard Joy Division. I was sitting on the couch listening to Bauhaus on Spotify Radio while doing some homework, and suddenly the song Atmosphere played. The unique sound of Ian Curtis’ deep voice, Steve Morris’ passive drum playing, Peter Hooks’ melodic bass playing, and Bernard Sumner’s chords immediately captivated me; everything in their music just seemed to work, and it was unlike anything I’d ever heard.

Many people call Joy Division one of the original Goth bands because they inspired many Goth bands and had a tendency for gloomy lyrics. In fact, the band was birthed in punk, although they had such talent and harmony that I think they drove past the limitations of punk and their music is in a category of its own.

When I first listened to Joy Division, I didn’t really listen to the lyrics. Later, I listened to the words and realized that they were poetry. This made me respect the band even more.

Joy Division never explained the meaning of the lyrics to the press, and Curtis, the sole lyricist, said, “The lyrics are open to interpretation. They’re multidimensional. You can read into them what you like.”

I have two ways of listening to Joy Division: when I’m in a thoughtful and maybe in a sad mood, I listen to the lyrics and reflect on what they mean to me; and when I’m working I simply listen to the melody. I think it’s amazing that I enjoy the music regardless of the mood I’m in. It’s hard to find a band that’s famous for both its sound and also its words.

Many people call Joy Division a kind of sad teenager band – a band to cry over – but, like John Bush of AllMusic, I think that they are in fact one of the few bands “emphasizing not anger and energy but mood and expression.”

When people learn that I am a fan of Joy Division they either think it’s really cool and agree that it’s a great band, or they say something along the lines of, “but their lyrics are so depressing –why do you listen to them?”

I like and listen to Joy Division because like my musical tastes, they were truly unique – they inspired other great bands such as Bauhaus, U2, and The Cure. Despite making only two albums, and being together for only four years between 1976 and 1980, the members of Joy Division were great musicians who continually inspire me.

Anevay Darlington is a 13- year-old musician, writer, and feminist living in New York City. She studies cello under Isabelle Fairbanks and is part of the SMP Orchestra at Turtle Bay Music School. Anevay is a member of the Trinity Youth Choir. This season, the choir has performed Turbae ad Passionem Gregorianam by Alberto Ginastera at Carnegie Hall, sang with Bobby McFerrin at Trinity Church, and is recording an album of Trevor Weston’s music at Drew University. Anevay has published articles on the Advice Project and Wandering Educators websites, and has had an article reposted to All Digitocracy.

Some Thoughts on the Chosen One

There is a concept, a hidden implication, in the original Star Trek series that James T. Kirk might not be unique. He might be merely one of many Starfleet captains out there boldly going, having amazing adventures across the galaxy. After all, the Enterprise is one of a dozen identical starships, and the rest are certainly not sitting in space dock all that time.

It’s an idea that has almost completely been replaced in contemporary SF and fantasy by variations of the “Chosen One” mythology. Its modern popularity goes back to Luke Skywalker, the farm boy who turns out to be descended from the great fallen Jedi (himself a Chosen One, what with his midichlorians), but its origin is millennia earlier, with the tale of baby Moses found in the reeds, and King Arthur raised as a simple squire. Superhero origins are rife with it: Superman is the last son of Krypton, sent (Moses-like) to a new society. Wonder Woman is the created (not born) daughter of the Queen of the Amazons. Billy Batson is literally chosen by the gods to become Captain Marvel.

Its current prevalence is vexing, because in a lot of ways, it seems to be the only story around. I mean, in the new Star Trek continuity, even James T. Kirk is a Chosen One, with a miraculous birth, raised in the hinterlands, until he gets the Campbellian call to adventure, learns of his true nature and becomes the entitled dude-bro J.J. Abrams has made him.

“Sorry, old guys. We’re boldly going where no douche-bro has gone before.”

 

I was led to pondering this issue indirectly, by noticing the shifting character of Marcus Brody from the Indiana Jones films. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, he tells Indy, “Ten years ago I would’ve gone after it [the ark] myself.” The implications are both that Marcus used to be an adventurer like Indy, and more interestingly, that Marcus is in fact Indy’s future: eventually Indy will settle down and devote himself full time to academia, just like Marcus, making way for the next generation. It’s a rich concept that, among other things, sets the two up as equals, just at different career stages.

“Let’s drink as equals, Indy, before I’m turned into a buffoon.”

But this is all thoroughly trashed by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in which Marcus is revealed to be an idiot. I mean, really. A recurring joke is that he once got lost in his own museum. And while this doesn’t exactly make Indy a “Chosen One,” it does remove him from a world in which he might have equals.

There’s nothing wrong with the Chosen One as a story device, as long as it’s done well, except that it removes all agency from the character, who has only to decide to embrace his or her specialness, not create it. (WARNING: SPOILERS)  In the Divergent series, Beatrice is born capable of stepping into any of her society’s “factions.” In the Maze Runner series, hero Thomas is revealed to be the Final Candidate, who might cure the world of a deadly plague. In the atrocious Men in Black III, Agent J is revealed to have been watched over by Agent K since childhood. And in possibly the greatest Chosen One twist of all, The DaVinci Code’s heroine is revealed to be the last living descendant of Jesus Christ.

That’s why I’m happy to see someone like Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, whose heroism is driven entirely by her own impulsive choice to take her sister’s place; she is “chosen” by no one but herself. It’s also one reason I like Batman as a character: he suffers a precipitating trauma, but he chooses to become a vigilante; he is not chosen, by other characters or circumstance.

It’s the way most people become heroes in the real world, after all. Name one real-world hero who was a Chosen One, destined from birth to do something extraordinary. Hard to do, isn’t it? It’s because the  Chosen One is an artificial construct, one that we embrace because it excuses the failure and cowardice of the rest of us. And I think it’s a model that might have outlived its usefulness.

Guest blog: Sonya Clark on Getting the Music Right

I meet a lot of writers through social media, and one day I was chatting with Sonya Clark, author of the Magic Born trilogy and two novels in the Bradbury Institute series. It turns out she’s working on a novel about music, and her thoughts on that intrigued me so much that I asked her to share them with my blog readers.

###

How much do I love music? My honeymoon (ten years ago, our wedding was on April 2) was a blues pilgrimage. We started in Memphis with Graceland and from there went south to Mississippi. All over Clarksdale, the mural of W.C. Handy hearing the blues for the first time in Tutwiler, down to the Dockery Plantation where Charley Patton lived, all three of Robert Johnson’s grave sites.

So while I’m a writer, reader, and book lover, to be honest, music means more to me. Some of my earliest short stories as a teen revolved around music. I can’t sing and I’ve never been able to learn an instrument, so maybe I’ve been trying to translate what music gives me into a form of expression I can use. Long before I was finally able to finish a manuscript, I knew there were particular books I wanted to write. These weren’t the only books I wanted to write, just ones I knew I had to write. All were tied to genres of music and archetypes and ideas I associate with those genres.

I’ve loved county music since childhood, but I haven’t always loved Top Forty country. A lot of good music has come out of Nashville, but plenty of great artists either got run out of town or left on their own, too. It’s practically a musical archetype: country singer/songwriter with great potential comes to Nashville, can’t or won’t conform and also probably can’t or won’t behave, goes back home to Texas to forge their own path. In my personal Tarot of Music, I call it the Willie Nelson card. This is one of the music stories I’ve wanted to write for a long time, because I love the archetype and because the artists who fit it made some of the country music that has resonated with me the most.

That’s what my unpublished small town romance Good Time Bad Boy is about. Wade Sheppard is a washed-up country singer who drowned his career in booze and bad behavior. Now he’s back in his small West Tennessee hometown for the summer, falling in love with a woman who makes him feel like Wade Sheppard The Man instead of Wade Sheppard The (fallen) Star. He’s also rediscovering songwriting and it leads him in brand new directions, to more of an alt-country/Americana sound. With Wade’s character, the focus is very much on music and not the celebrity trappings of being a star. I had no interest in writing about that, which was the main reason for putting him at past his career prime.

Getting Wade’s relationship with music right was the most important thing for me. What motivates him to pick up his guitar and a pen and notebook, his musical influences, even how he uses other people’s songs to express himself on stage. I wanted to get those things, and so much more, right to honor every time Van Morrison or Miles Davis or Nine Inch Nails got me through a case of the mean reds. Every time I write about music I’m hoping to capture something of the feeling of an amphitheater full of people coming to their feet to sing along to “California Dreaming,” the last canned song before the concert starts. “The Dance” by Garth Brooks played at a funeral, “Can’t Help Falling In Love” at a wedding. The relief of being temporarily free of heavy anxiety and fear of crowds because it’s a band you love and those forty-five thousand people are your friends for a few hours. The feeling that there’s something bigger and grander than the everyday, something mystical and magical transported through headphones or cheap speakers or a high-end sound system.

I don’ t know if I succeed but it’s what I strive for when I write about music.

Sonya Clark writes a few different flavors of romance – paranormal, sci-fi, and contemporary. She loves music, all things Whedon, has a weird thing for the abstract art of Wassily Kandinsky, and a long-standing obsession with Robert Johnson that will one day result in a blues-themed novel. She lives with her husband and daughter in Tennessee. You can learn more at her website, sonyaclark.net, and follow her on Twitter @sonyabclark.

Coming this fall: the ultimate Tufa event

So here’s the big news:

On September 18 and 19, 2015, the Enchanted Chalice Renaissance Faire  in Greenville, SC will present the ultimate Tufa event. For the first time ever you’ll have the music that inspired the Tufa, and the music inspired by the Tufa, at the same place as the guy (me) who writes about the Tufa.

“Huh?” you say. Let me explain.

First, I’ll be there, doing readings and workshops for writers of all ages.

Second, Tuatha Dea, whose album Tufa Tales: Appalachian Fae was inspired by my novels, will perform. They put on one of the best live shows of any band I’ve ever seen, so this alone would be worth the cost at the gate.

And last but most assuredly not least, singer-songwriter Jennifer Goree, whose music provided the titles for all the Tufa novels, will also perform.  You can read about how I discovered Jennifer’s music here. Jennifer and I have never actually met in person, so I’m as excited as I hope you are.

If we all fly away on the night winds, I don’t think anyone should be surprised.

Watch for more details as we get closer to the date.

Your Musical Community Is Where You Find It

Music as a communal event is difficult for someone like me, who doesn’t play any instrument and doesn’t (or shouldn’t) sing. I’ve attended concerts where the sense of community was created by the shared music we all knew, or by the intense efforts of the performer to make sure that connection happened. But for the most part, I’ve always been an observer, watching a show and enjoying it, but never really being part of it.

However, I do recall one particular connection, a communal act of music that, while it lasted, joined a roomful of disparate people in a single tune at the same time.

Back in the 80s, I attended college at the University of Tennessee at Martin, and hung out far too much at a pool hall called Cadillac’s. It’s still there, although obviously many things have changed; you can get a sense of the original place in my Firefly Witch stories, where the narrator hangs out at the place as I remember it.

Cadillac’s, the bar where I grew up.

Cadillac’s, like its immediate neighbor Hillary’s (now long gone), was a place where the students and the locals had an uneasy truce. Hillary’s was known as the rougher place, a bar where the bikers had their own room and the students knew to stay out of it. Cadillac’s was far mellower, a simple pool hall with a live “ball racker,” at the time a slightly befuddled older man named Billy, who would collect your money from the non-coin-operated tables and then rack them for the next game.

In those days, the music was provided by a juke box that actually played 45 records. A guy came in every so often and replaced older records with more current songs, but there were always a few that were never changed, unless it was simply to add a new copy in place of a worn-out older one. And the one that I’m sure everyone from my time at UT-Martin remembers is David Allen Coe’s “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.”

You can read more about the history of the song  Basically it’s a middle finger to the country music industry, written by Steve Goodman and an uncredited John Prine. After the second verse, Coe goes into a spoken word section in which he says Goodman told him it was the perfect country and western song, which Coe disputed because it did not mention “mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or getting drunk.” Goodman then provided a final verse that included this list.

What I remember most, though, is the way the crowd at Cadillac’s would acknowledge the start of the song with a loud whoop of recognition and then, no matter what else you were doing at the time, join in to sing along with the final verse:

“Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison

And I went to pick her up in the rain

But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck

She got runned over by a damned ol’ train!”

To this day, the memory of a bar full of people, many of whom would never associate with each other in any other circumstance, bellowing out that last line makes me with smile.

Any of my UTM alumni friends remember this?  And have the rest of you got any similar musical memories?

Music as a communal event is difficult for someone like m...

Music as a communal event is difficult for someone like me, who doesn’t play any instrument and doesn’t (or shouldn’t) sing. I’ve attended concerts where the sense of community was created by the shared music we all knew, or by the intense efforts of the performer to make sure that connection happened. But for the most part, I’ve always been an observer, watching a show and enjoying it, but never really being part of it.

However, I do recall one particular connection, a communal act of music that, while it lasted, joined a roomful of disparate people in a single tune at the same time.

Back in the 80s, I attended college at the University of Tennessee at Martin, and hung out far too much at a pool hall called Cadillac’s. It’s still there, although obviously many things have changed; you can get a sense of the original place in my Firefly Witch stories, where the narrator hangs out at the place as I remember it.

Cadillac’s, the bar where I grew up.

Cadillac’s, like its immediate neighbor Hillary’s (now long gone), was a place where the students and the locals had an uneasy truce. Hillary’s was known as the rougher place, a bar where the bikers had their own room and the students knew to stay out of it. Cadillac’s was far mellower, a simple pool hall with a live “ball racker,” at the time a slightly befuddled older man named Billy, who would collect your money from the non-coin-operated tables and then rack them for the next game.

In those days, the music was provided by a juke box that actually played 45 records. A guy came in every so often and replaced older records with more current songs, but there were always a few that were never changed, unless it was simply to add a new copy in place of a worn-out older one. And the one that I’m sure everyone from my time at UT-Martin remembers is David Allen Coe’s “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.”

You can read more about the history of the song  Basically it’s a middle finger to the country music industry, written by Steve Goodman and an uncredited John Prine. After the second verse, Coe goes into a spoken word section in which he says Goodman told him it was the perfect country and western song, which Coe disputed because it did not mention “mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or getting drunk.” Goodman then provided a final verse that included this list.

What I remember most, though, is the way the crowd at Cadillac’s would acknowledge the start of the song with a loud whoop of recognition and then, no matter what else you were doing at the time, join in to sing along with the final verse:

“Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison

And I went to pick her up in the rain

But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck

She got runned over by a damned ol’ train!”

To this day, the memory of a bar full of people, many of whom would never associate with each other in any other circumstance, bellowing out that last line makes me with smile.

Any of my UTM alumni friends remember this?  And have the rest of you got any similar musical memories?