Spitball Army

Today, as I write this, is Monday, the 8th of November, and I am plowing my way toward a 50,000 word count in the NaNoWriMo challenge.  I traditionally find that I write best when I can lose myself in it, which means no music.  I love music, but it is completely distracting to me, even if it is something I am familiar with.  Especially if it is something I am familiar with.  So for most of the past week, I’ve been scribing in silence, but it started to get to me – the silence began diverting my attention.  I decided to reverse-psychologize the situation and play some music. I led off with some Beethoven piano sonatas, but couldn’t stop following the music in my head and soon I was humming along. Then I went the route that least resembled the one before it: I put on Boston‘s first album.  Suddenly, I was back on my high school campus, running for class vice-president and failing as badly at this writing project as I did as a candidate.  So I stepped back into silence, which made my garage office the writer’s garret that it’s supposed to be, but I quickly got fidgety.

The character I am working with at the moment is a red-headed Scottish newlywed who shares a small apartment with her mother and very young brother, waiting out the end of World War II and the return of her American G.I. husband who is stationed on the European mainland.  In an effort to maintain geographic consistency, I put on the English folk-rock group Fairport Convention and the disc played all the way through without incident.  Then I tried some June Tabor, then a Tom Rush album.  I realized that what was working for me in this phase of the project was British Isles-based folk music.  So I kept it going, one modern troubadour after another, and the inspiration started coming back, though slowly.

That’s the story, really.  How a handful of musical artists in one niche genre helped me get through a hump in my quixotic writing project.  Best part: I was able to squeeze a playlist out of it.

Approximate playing time: 76 minutes.

1. June Tabor  “Apples and Potatoes”  (1994)
2. Peter Yarrow  “Take Off Your Mask”  (1972)
3. Eddi Reader  “Please Don’t Ask Me to Dance”  (1999)
4. Fairport Convention  “Fotheringay”  (1969)
5. Sandy Denny  “It Suits Me Well”  (1972)
6. The Roches  “Hammond Song”  (1979)
7. Lucinda Williams  “Lately”  (2002)
8. Leonard Cohen  “Love Calls You By Your Name”  (1971)
9. Greg Brown  “Brand New ’64 Dodge”  (1994)
10. The Swell Season  “In These Arms”  (2009)
11. Robinella & the CC Stringband  “Man Over”  (2003)
12. Gillian Welch  “Caleb Meyer”  (1998)
13. Buffy Sainte-Marie  “Guess Who I Saw in Paris”  (1970)
14. Tom Rush  “No Regrets”  (1968)
15. Archie Roach  “Beautiful Child”  (1990)
16. Joan Baez  “When Time Is Stolen”  (1971)
17. John Gorka  “Blue Chalk”  (1996)
18. Judy Collins  “Who Knows Where the Time Goes”  (1968)
19. June Tabor  “The Irish Girl”  (1994)

Some notes on the songs:

• Freshman year in college, I took a class called Folklore & Mythology, taught by Professor Albert Lord, a very respected scholar of balladry and a kind gentleman, to boot.  Two of our sessions were guest lecture “demonstrations,” concerts of folk music performed by Jean Redpath and Tom Rush.  I don’t remember what Tom played, but “No Regrets” is one of my favorite songs of his.
• The Lucinda Williams recording of “Lately” is a cover of a Greg Brown-penned song.  Sandy Denny wrote “Who Knows Where the Time Goes,” which is sung here by Judy Collins.  Both Brown and Denny have recordings in this playlist, too.  The folk community is artistically incestuous, so these things are bound to happen.
• Archie Roach is an indigenous Australian singer-songwriter.  He is a member of the “Stolen Generations,” referring to the aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their homes by the Australian government up through the late 1960s. A great percentage of his songs deal with this tragic period of Australian social history, and “Beautiful Child” – though it deceptively begins as an ode to familial love – is no exception.
• Oddly, there are no songs on this playlist dating from anywhere in the decade of the 1980s.  What do you think of when you think of ’80s music? I bet it’s not a folk tune.