Singing Evenings: What We Lose Without Them

I was fourteen, sitting in a cabin with a rubber bubble cap over my hair, which I was attempting to dry. I was extremely bored — so I decided to start singing. At the time, I was a loyal fan of Joan Baez — so I began with one of the songs on one of her albums.

Within a few minutes, two young men I had secret crushes on appeared at the door. We’d all been signed up for a summer program by our parents, and this was happening on one of the group’s five-day outings. The fact that I was wearing a dryer cap embarrassed me beyond words, so I stopped singing immediately.

But the guys — who also happened to be twins — were having none of that. “Was that you?” one asked. I yanked off the cap and replied. “Yeah.”

“Would you sing with us some time?” they asked, letting me know both of them played guitar.

I agreed, and that night, our singing evenings began. While there was no romantic involvement, as both guys were in relationships with two of my friends — I think, looking back on it, I found something better.

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Photo by Devang Saklani on Unsplash

Crossing That Bridge When You Come to It - So You Can Add It to Your Song

 

Did you know songs have bridges, too? Not the kind you walk or drive on, but they do function as bridges that take you from one place to another.

Bridges in songs function as transitions, allowing you to add a new direction to the song you’re writing. I didn’t use to know this, but when I discovered bridges in a musical theater group class, I became obsessed with them. I started listening for bridges in every song I heard.

Why are bridges put into songs, anyway? I can only answer that with a question. Do you want to hear the same verses and chorus over and over again, or do you want to take a break and listen to something new? Bridges give us a way to enjoy a new melody, instrument, mood and more. And — before I forget — the bridge is the only part of the song you hear once — as you really don’t need to repeat it.

What kinds of songs use bridges? 

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Love and Miracles

Today's story is brought to you by love and miracles, and it comes from beyond the grave. 

I know you may think what I'm saying sounds like a fairy tale. But it's true. 

Beginning at the beginning:

My husband got a package this week, a late Christmas present from his old friends Tom and Cathy. He opened it and then read the letter inside. The letter made him tear up (or try not to, as men will). "You have to see this," he said, and I hurried over to see what was affecting him so much. When I read the letter, I was affected too.

About ten years ago, one of my husband's best friends died suddenly and died young. Diabetes may have been a factor, but whatever the reason, it hit all his friends hard. 

"Grog," as he was known, was warm, bright, funny, and big-hearted. He loved his friends and he loved rock and roll. So it was no surprise that he had a custom bass (created for him by Wishbass).

When Grog died, his mother disposed of  his house, car and belongings quickly, so his friends never had a chance to choose or keep any mementos that would have been precious to them. A few weeks ago, one of Grog's friends (also a bass player, named Brett) started looking through Facebook Marketplace, to see if there were any Wish bass guitars on the market. And in a perfect "seek and ye shall find" moment, he found a Wish bass for sale. 

AND. It looked 

Just. Like. Grog's. Bass.

Because, of course, it was.

Brett called the owner and asked about the bass. As it happened, the owner had been tasked with clearing out Grog's home and was told to keep some of Grog's belongings if something appealed to him. Brett talked with the owner a few more times, and found out he had kept a number of things.

Brett told his friends Tom and Cathy about the situation, and they shared the news with their adult son Owen and daughter Ava. All had known Grog most of their lives. As the holidays approached, Owen drove to the Wish bass owner's house and bought the instrument. The seller gave him a number of other items for free, after learning about what happened.

Cathy and Tom woke up Christmas morning to see the bass under the tree, as well as Grog's precious walking stick, and other items. "Needless to say, a few tears of joy were shed, for sure," Tom wrote to my husband. Tom will fully restore the bass and the walking stick is now on display in Tom and Cathy's home. 

My husband received a picture of Jerry Garcia and a book about the history of the Grateful Dead--also part of Grog's belongings.

"Merry Christmas from Grog!" Tom wrote, making me tear up not only when I read it, but as I'm writing it now. 

The whole story reminded me of another friend who told us he had pawned his guitar due to money issues, and then found it again after a series of events that brought his guitar back to him. I am happy to say he still has the instrument and things are going much better.

So for all you cynics and doubters (and hey, I'm one of them), I can only say sometimes, like Mick Jagger, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes...You get what you need."

Love and miracles, even ten years later.

They're out there.

Photo by Rahul Viswanath on Unsplash

Musical Chair

 

I talk a lot about stories and books in this blog--and much less about writing plays. Yet, if you asked me to describe myself, my first word would be "playwright."

Would I also say "musical playwright?" Likely not, but maybe I should.

The first play I wrote (ever) was a musical, and before that, I wrote songs with a composer/partner for a variety of rock bands. Like all bands, we had our problems, and when it seemed we were very close to breaking up, we did break up. The composer went on tour in a children's musical and I started auditioning for acting roles.

We decided to keep in touch by writing a musical--which was a little like  jumping on the back of a very slippery dinosaur and trying to ride. Fortunately, the composer and I had help from a musical theater company in New York. The play wasn't produced, but the workshop helped me figure out what you needed to write a musical. That included the same sense of character and dialogue you use for writing unmusical plays, a rhyming dictionary and complete and utter fearlessness.

I didn't think much about musical theater for many years after that, concentrating instead on writing plays. During the 2008 recession, I had the great good luck to work with Theater Latte Da as a grant writer. That brought me to an amazing theater group called Prosody.

Prosody was created by Composer and Music Director Denise Prosek, and though it's not active right now I can tell you it had a profound effect on me. The first time I saw the group's performance  was at a cabaret, where the authors and composers gathered to share their work. It was the first time I was actually present at the dawning of so many songs, on so many different subjects. It was also the first time I realized what songwriting could be.

That night, I decided I had to be a member of the group (or die). Luckily I didn't die, and even more luckily they let me in. Prosody taught me far more about writing musicals than I had time to learn when writing my first one-- so in that respect, I was lucky, once again.

I'm not going to say much more at this point, except to say I'm writing a musical with a composer these days. It's taking a while to get where we want to be, but that's okay. I have a feeling it will be worth it when we get there.

Distraction Day: Beatles & Stones

Once upon a time, The Beatles and the Stones ruled the earth. I was on the Beatles side (though it seemed to me John Lennon's writing got a lot better when he went off with Yoko. Listen to Double Fantasy if you even slightly disagree).

I'm not a huge fan of the Stones now, either, but I have come round to realizing what good songwriters they were, too (and, yes - Keith Richards IS the definition of cool.) Mick's voice has never been something I could listen to for long --but-- 

--in the interest of fun and distraction on another cold April day that refuses to warm up--

I've decided to list my favorite Beatles and Stones tunes -- in the order I like them. 

Beatles

1. I've Just Seen a Face
2. I'm Looking Through You
3. Baby, You Can Drive My Car
4. Daytripper
5. Norwegian Wood
6. Blackbird
7. Here, There and Everywhere
8. Happy Birthday
9. Happiness is a Warm Gun
10. Eleanor Rigby

Stones

1. Paint it Black
2. Ventilator Blues 
3. Sympathy for the Devil
4. As Tears Go By
5. Waiting on a Friend
6. Wild Horses
7. 19th Nervous Breakdown
8. Moonlight Mile
9. You Can't Always Get What You Want
10. Jumpin' Jack Flash

To be fair though, Paul Simon (and Simon and Garfunkel before him) wins the title of best and favorite songwriter. I can't list any particular songs because every one makes the list. Tied with Roseanne Cash. 

Of course, you're always welcome to send your favorites, too.

Headphones photo: Daniel McAnulty

Lyric Adventures

As a lyric writer, I spend a lot of time trying to rhyme--and no, what I just said happened completely by accident. I promise.

I've never liked rhymed couplets or that sort of thing, but a few Steven Sondheim plays were pretty much all it took to get me hooked on lyric writing. His rhymes always seem to be organic to the stories he is telling, and while they are pretty much perfect rhymes, they always manage to smack you upside the head with their cleverness.

That's what I always hope to do with my lyrics, and now and again, I get lucky. When I started writing my first musical, I carried a rhyming dictionary around with me so I could write on the subway. 

Now I'm looking at rhymezone, but truthfully, I've never found a rhymer that works as well as I want it to. So if you know of one, will you write and tell me what you found?

Sometimes I hook onto a word that I absolutely love, and have to drop it because I can't find the right word to pair with it. When that happens, I have been known to make up a word or three:

I met him at a festival, all magical and mystical,With fortunetellers, fire and contortionists all twistical
He was staring, I was staring and all the others staring too
And then my chair was in the air and there was nothing I could do

Then there's the internal rhyme which always makes me happy when it happens: 

If I could say I’d have my way, a perfect mate, for night or dayI wouldn’t want a guy who would lounge and scrounge around all dayI want someone to make me hum and take me on the perfect dateAnd nothing else would be as close as getting me to levitate

My husband says he likes it when I make up words, but I'm not sure I should be? On the other hand, if it's impossible to rhyme something, what else CAN you do--especially on the choruses?  

For a real-time ritual, interstitial, unconditionally, fractiously divine

Intensely visual, serendipital, unself-critical, baroque bonanza shine
Horizontal, vertical, even birth-ical, you can be lying on the ground
And levitation, that nautical sensation, will turn your world around

Such is my world sometimes. At the moment, I am trying to find something OTHER than etiquette to rhyme with Connecticut.

Any ideas?


Happy notes photo: Carl Glover

Random Thoughts on the Music We Love

How do we learn to like music? Or should I be asking how we find the music we like? I once asked a co-worker what kind of music she liked best and she refused to tell me. "It's just so personal," she said. I was surprised, but knew what she meant. It's hard to share your preferences if you don't know how they'll be received.

My husband says the music he wants to listen to started in 1955 and stopped being created after 1975, with a few exceptions for current bands. Besides the major players like Chuck Berry, the Beatles, Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Ozzy Osbourne (Black Sabbath), Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, Smashing Pumpkins, he likes artists who were less commercial--including Frank Zappa, Ozrick Tentacles, Madeski, Martin and Wood, Steve Vai and Phish.

I was all over the map growing up, liking a lot of the commercial bands mentioned above but also the Pretenders, Joan Jett, Rickie Lee Jones and Blondie, Regina Spektor, Janis Ian, Avril Lavigne, Beyonce, Natalie Merchant, and then a whole LOT of talented people you likely never heard of. If you forced me to tell you my very favorite, favorite artists - I'd say Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen.

I started liking classical music during my last year of high school and wouldn't play much of anything else for the next couple of years. My son did some of that too during college.

Both my husband and I shared music with our son. He gravitated instantly toward liking the same bands my husband liked - and only occasionally listening to mine. (I think he does like Leonard Cohen). I believe we want our kids to like what we like artistically, but it rarely happens. The best we can hope for is they'll be interested in us enough to ask why we like certain bands or artists.

I decided my husband has more experimental musical tastes than I do - but no matter what I or anyone does, we like what we like, right? We do share a taste for 1930s and 1940s tunes once in a while - which I think a lot of people do, though not a lot say so. I know my son feels the same way because I've heard him listening to Frank Sinatra.

Did he find Sinatra through his father (who is not my husband, btw)? His dad sings a lot of Sinatra material and my son sings some of it too. He surprised me when his grandfather died and he played "One for the Road" in his room. That led to me playing the recording at my dad's funeral. I know he would have loved that song.

I still haven't figured out how we find the music that means the most to us. I'd hate to believe it was just a random thing, because that means it's totally out of our control, like love. What if the love of your life is living just a few miles away and you never meet them? What if the music you love most in the world is being played in a bar in another city, and you'll never hear it?

I have to admit I think it's likely that love, music, and whatever else moves us and knocks us out and makes us happy IS random. I don't know what to do with that. But I think it's true.



Guitar photo:  Nasrul Ekram

Hipster Christmas

Realizing my blog day falls on Christmas, and that I started the blog as an author of a book about the Beat Generation, the last thing I should be writing about is Christmas traditions--don't you think? No Rockefeller Center stories, big goose or turkey stories, posts about the Christmas spirit (or Spirits) or Hanukkah or other holiday traditions in the old-school way.

That doesn't mean I don't believe in celebrating--in fact I'll take any chance to celebrate anything--but my character Ruby and her friends are not exactly traditional people. So if they did want to do Christmas, it would have to be more off center and definitely hipster style.

If I have to imagine a Beat Generation Christmas, it would be going out to hear jazz or a poetry reading or gathering with friends to create jazz and read poems (some written by Ruby, of course).

No big dinners, but my menu of hipster snacks might include chips and salsa, cold gazpacho soup, crackers with olive tapenade, raisins and almonds with dark-chocolate chips, black teas, Irish coffees, incense instead of mistletoe (though maybe they'd have mistletoe), beer, burgundy and cognac--but no egg nog, please.

No Christmas carols, but songs, definitely, yes, and they'd have to be much jazzier than the typical songs we mostly hear. My list has old songs for Ruby's 1950s life, but not all the recordings are made in the 1950s. I listed them here with my favorite performers for each song and gave you one each for the 12 days of Christmas.

Boogie Woogie Santa Claus - Mabel Scott
Cool Yule - Louis Armstrong
Dig That Crazy Santa Claus - Oscar McLollie & His Honey Jumpers
Five Pound Box of Money - Pearl Bailey
Good Morning Blues (I Want to See Santa Claus) - Count Basie
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Judy Garland
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - Amy Winehouse
Merry Christmas, Baby - Lionel Hampton
Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt
Santa Done Got Hip - the Marquees
Sugar Rum Cherry - Duke Ellington
What Will Santa Claus Say (When He Finds Everybody Swingin') - Louis Prima

Download some of these for your Christmas - and let me know your favorites, too?

Hipster Santa: Thunderchild7

Jazz Christmas photo: Roberto Cacho Toca

Surrealistic Moments: Getting Married Because of the Indigo Girls

Did you know there's something like 200 surreal moments we experience every day? I didn't either and who knows if it's true. It IS something I read in a magazine this week in a New Yorker story about Iceland.

True or not, it got me thinking about the surrealist moments in my life. First of all, what would I define as a surrealist moment? A long-lost acquaintance surfacing who turns out to be a relative? A doppelganger? A warp-speed change in the universe that suddenly makes a wish come true?

About the latter. I know I don't have 200 such moments a day, but I did have one I remember for its very significant result: the Indigo Girls being the reason I got married.

What happened was that I was minding my own business more or less as a single mom, and as people will, I started seeing someone. He had actually been a friend and a very fine one, but I had not expected things to go the way of dating, so I suppose that might have been a surrealist moment in and of itself.

In any case, a few weeks into our dating life, this fellow, we'll call him Pete because that's his name, asked if I wanted to go to an Indigo Girls concert. I knew this was because he knew I liked the band; his taste ran more to heavy metal.

That in itself should have given me a clue this man wanted to go the extra mile to make me happy, but I was, as they say in post-divorce parlance, taking it slow. Never mind that he was fun, handsome, kind, sexy and funny, that he genuinely loved my son and we had genuine chemistry; or that I should know better than to look for talismans instead of seeing plainly what was in front of my face.

God help me, I wanted a sign.

There was little likelihood of getting a ticket because the event was sold out; but Pete thought we might be able to find something by showing up a few hours before the concert started. Oh, and did I mention this was right around the time of my birthday? (Is that another surreal event)?

We walked up to the box office and asked if there were any tickets left, and someone said "no." And that, I thought, was that, and I'll tell you what else I was thinking. I had decided that if there were no seats, the universe was telling me that Pete and I would or should not be together. I don't really know why I decided this, but there you have it, thinking I could or would be able to design my own life.

We were starting to walk away when a woman entered the box office and looked at us. Her eyes met Pete's and she said, "Looking for tickets? Come here."

I promise you she looked directly at Pete. As we approached, she handed him two tickets which turned out to be front row seats for the concert. Looking directly at him, smiling the whole time, and putting us mere inches away from the singers.

If that's not a bona fide Surrealistic moment, what is?

Watching the concert, which was amazing, by the way, I decided maybe this guy and I could have a future. The rest, I believe, is history, because we married about a year and two months later and have been married ever since.

I guess this is where I admit I owe this good fortune to the Indigo Girls, capricious as it was. Would I have married him without them? Let's just say... sometimes you need a push from the universe. Fortunately, I got one.

If you have a surrealistic moment that changed your life, I'd love to hear it. You can either comment here or send it to me via my website at jennazark.com.

Music Matters

When my son was 10, his school held a concert with a 1970s theme. He was asked to come up with a dance solo and settled on a disco routine from Saturday Night Fever. He practiced and practiced, and we got him white pants and a white jacket at Burlington Coat Factory so he could imitate John Travolta.

When he came onstage, suddenly and inexplicably, screams rose from the audience as the first bars of the Bee Gees iconic tune started. Somehow I found myself joining in with the screaming, which continued throughout the song. When I think back on it, I am still surprised we all reacted as intensely we did.

Surprised, and not surprised, because we are more easily swayed by the power of music than by anything else. It starts early in life and stays with us to the grave—and it is, I’m convinced, one of the greatest (and freest) blessings life has to offer.

Bringing your baby home for the first time? Turn on the radio in your car and see what happens. Does it make the baby calmer, or more alert? Lean over her crib and sing to her and see what happens then. We are hard wired to move, dance, sing, stretch and shine to the sound of music, and we always will be.

When I was little the music that moved me most was classical or show tunes. As I got older I gravitated to folk, rock, jazz and blues. My son couldn’t get enough hard rock as a boy and now loves opera and classical music more. Interestingly, his father was a rock musician who became a cantor in Jewish synagogues; and that’s what my son is studying to be now. His stepfather is a diehard Grateful Dead fan with a strong predilection for guys like Ted Nugent and Iggy Pop.

My husband also introduced us to long nights of some of the best bluegrass I’ve ever heard via his family cabin in northern Minnesota. After a day of hiking and firelight dinners on the beach, Fourth of July weekends (and other weekends) end at the home of family friends who play mandolin, banjo, stand-up bass and harmonica and who sing beautifully or badly (depending on who feels like getting up at any given moment for a song).

That experience added more magic to my son’s life (and mine) than either of us could have imagined. Before he was born, I spent countless hours around a piano with friends in New York, singing torch songs and standards at the apartment of my dear friend Susan while her husband Robert accompanied us. What I learned there was that singing is one of the best ways in the world to make your friendships stronger—and to feel what it means to be alive in your own skin.

I am hungry for those days, because it’s been a long time since I sang with friends. Being part of a group of musical theater writers helps because whatever your tastes are, I believe most of us don’t just like or love music; we need it. If I have to drive twenty minutes without tunes I feel grouchy; when I sit down to write, I know my writing will the poorer without it. So when I see children’s music programs like the Suzuki Method or the Minneapolis early-childhood classes at MacPhail Center for Music, I thank whoever had the foresight to bring these classes to us.

So I hope we’ll do whatever we can to keep those classes and musical opportunities coming, in schools, theaters, music stores, apartments and families. Because it’s still the best deal out there in terms of entertainment—and making life lighter and brighter, even and especially on the darkest days.