|
|
Interview with Christine Lavin
JMcL: Where do we start? With Dave Van Ronk, of course! Tell me more about this lovely big gruff guy (I play The Pearls from Sunday Street eachweek as my theme music on Roots & Wngs)
i
Christine:
Well, everything you’ve ever heard about Dave is true. He was larger than life – in everyway. He dropped out of highschool, joined the Merchant Marines, came back to NYC and proceeded to educate himself. He was a voracious reader, a self-taught gourmet cook, a self-taught guitar player, a womanizer – he drank a lot, he smoked a lot – and he even told me a funny story about way back in the day when Greenwich Village was a happening hot spot and really influenced the culture of the moment. He and his friends decided to come up with some crazy idea that was totally crackpot, then see if it would ‘catch on’ with the idiots.
Their idea: spread the rumor that you can get high smoking banana peels. Did you ever hear that rumor, John? I know that I did at some point. It was Dave and his friends who made it up.
It spread like wild fire – people were actually drying banana peels in their ovens, then grinding up what was left and rolling it up in cigarette papers, or stuffing them into pipes. Dave said they got such a kick out of watching the rumor take hold . . . but then they started hearing about people doing it who actually WERE getting high!
He said they had no choice but to see if it could possibly be true. They dried the peels, ground em up and smoked em – only to find it WASN’T true. He said they laughed themselves silly over it – how they got bamboozled by their own prank.
Dave loved music of every kind. Although he was thought of a folk and blues singer, he thought of himself as a jazz singer. He was constantly curious about everything. He would have made a great talk show host.
JMcL: I got the prepublication proof of "Cold Pizza forBreakfast: A
Mem-Wha??" without the Index scheduled to appear in the published book. In the
Foreword, you suggested to young people reading it that they could Google any name in the Index, and get an education. OK. Can you do a quick run-down of the names in the Index as it appears in the published book, say ten names, Amram to Breckman, Fingerett to Ginsberg to Hardy to Rivers to Roche, and give me a quick sketch of the kind of thing they'd find out by Googling?
Christine:
OK – I’ve got to go find a copy of the book. Then I’m going to randomly pick FIVE from the index and FIVE from the ‘1,000 terrific songs’ list (a lot of those names are NOT in the index),but since the song list goes by artist name and it’s alphabetical it’s like an extra list of good names to google.
From the index:
Jann Arden – Canadian singer/songwriter – if you love Mary-Chapin Carpenter, you’ll love Jann. Beautifulvoice, sensitive writer, good soul.
Wayne Batchelor – he’s a British bass player, can follow any chart written, very nice guy. There’s a million guitar players but not a million bass players. Always good to have one you can call in a pinch.
Klea Blackhurst – the reincarnation of Ethel Merman. When she was in fifth grade she wrote a paper about Ethel Merman. Her fate was sealed even way back then.
Barbara Cook – in her 80's, still selling out Carnegie Hall, and she has recorded what I think of as the definitive recording of Janis Ian’s song “Stars.” Barbara Cook is proof that if you take care of your voice you can still be an amazing vocalist as an octogenarian.
Annie Golden – if you have ever seen Milos Forman’s film version of“Hair,” she was the little hippy chick in that film. She has become a monster vocalist who easily straddles the rock and theater world. She also played Cliff Claven’s girlfriend on “Cheers” (remember the girl who was pregnant and Cliff was going to marry her?). There’s nothing this girl can’t sing – and she loves folk music, too!
OK, from the ‘1,000 terrific songs list’:
Tim Atwell – I can’t remember who gave me this guy’s CD, but he’s a wonderful, funny, wry songwriter.
Jim Beloff (pronounced BEE-loff) – he is the ‘go to’ guy for ukeleles– he and his wife run their uke biz out of their Connecticut home. But he’s also a terrific songwriter. His song “Charles Ives” is one of my all-time favorite favorite songs.
William “Equality” Blake – he is one of the best singers I have ever heard. In September he is getting to do his own concert at Birdland in NYC for the first time. Check the Birdland website for information, and if you want to be one of the people who will be able to say,“I saw him before the rest of the world knew who he was,” make a reservation.
Francesca Blumenthal – like Ray Jessel, she is someone who started a songwriting career AFTER she had retired from a regular day job. Her songs will be sung a hundred years from now – here’s a sample lyric:
Queens
what can you say about Queens
there’s a wide choice of fine gasolines
it’s where no one begins their beguines
it’s where size nines becomesize eighteens
Queens . . .
John Bucchino – he writes timeless songs that work in any setting –stage, cabaret, folk – Judy Collins recorded his song “Sweet Dreams” – she has a knack for finding theater writers and introducing their songs to a whole new audience. Most recently there was a revival of A Little Night Music on Broadway where a very famous movie star had to sing “Send In The Clowns” every night. I told Judy, “If you go to see this show, you must wear a disguise. If the audience knows you are in the house there will be a riot – they’ll pull that movie star off the boards and insist you sing it. You OWN that song.” She’s doing the same kind of thing with John Bucchino songs.
OK, that’s five names from the 1,000 song list. And for the latter list I didn’t even get past the letter “B.”
JMcL: "Mem-whah??" implies a stunned response to the story. Why would that be? Do you think of it as something so far off the usual run of the memoir that you needed "Mem-whah??" to warn the audience a bit about what was coming?
Christine:
As I was writing the book I noticed that I had a bunch of incidences that left me saying, “Whaaaa?” And then I realized that since what I was writing was a sort of memoir, that maybe mem-wha?? was a better word.
I googled it to see if it had been used anywhere else, and I didn’t see it, which was a good sign. Afew years ago I was thinking of calling an album, “Bad Girl Trapped In A Good Girl’s Body” but I googled it to find it was the name of a porn website. Good thing I changed that title.
A lot of odd things – and strange coincidences have left me saying “Whaaa?” more than once – and a lot of these are in the book (like how I eventually met up with Megon McDonough and Sally Fingerett and we eventually became the Bitchin’ Babes).
That word still works for me. Every day I say “Whaaaaa??” to something (very often connected to Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, or Glenn Beck).
JMcL: Could you describe, for a non-performer/non-musician,something of what it's like to be under the big lights on the Mainstage at Philly? Has that changed since the first time you got out there with your flaming batons?
Let me set the record straight – I have never twirled flaming batons –even though HUNDREDS of people have sworn to me that they witnessed me doing just that. I think these people were smoking banana peels at the time.
Philly is probably the scariest big stage to ever play. For one thing, they have those giant screens on either side of the stage that show not only every flaw you possess now, but also . . . FLAWS OF THE FUTURE!
I’ve never played it safe at Philly, so that is why I shake my head when I think of some of the things I have done on that stage. I used my ‘boomerang digital phrase sampler’ one of the first times ever on that stage, wrote this crazy thing with vocal loops going frontwards, then backwards, then I picked up my batons (they glow – they’re not on fire -- big difference -- especially to the fire marshall) and I started twirling like crazy to the backward vocal loops, then I tossed one of the batons up in the air, and it came down hitting THE ONE BUTTON that instantly erased all the vocal loops.
In a million years I could not have hit that button with a baton if I tried – and yet it happened by accident. It was the end of my set. All the music stopped. I just stopped, bowed, stretched out my arms and said, “I tried! I tried!” No one knew what to make of what I had done. Some people thought I had lost my mind– trying something so nutty on the mainstage. I spent the rest of the festival explaining to anyone who would listen what I was TRYING to do, not what I had done. My plan was to put the batons down and then finish singing frontwards while the loops sangbackwards. I worked like crazy on it – it worked in my living room – just didn’t work when the loops got erased. The ending was (to quote theRoches) a big nothing. I was mortified.
I’d say to anybody playing Philly for the first time to go with the music you feel is your absolute best at this point in time. If most of the crowd doesn’t know you, go with what you know is you’re A++ material. If you are using a piece of equipment for the first time, think long and hard about it. With all those eyes on you, maybe now is not the time to go that far out on a limb.
JMcL: You're known for your collaborative work, for example withthe Bitchin' Babes. Does that effort - that kind of work - take away from your solo career?
Christine:Conversely, it’s DEATH to be in a group with people you don’t get along with. Way back when I was a waitress at the Caffe Lena a bluegrass band came through. Lena was warned ahead of time that the mandolin player and the girl singer had grown to hate each other. After every song he would adjust his mike because it squeaked and got on her nerves. She asked him not to do it, but he did it anyway and halfway through the way through the show she burst into tears. He laughed. The audience didn’t know what to do. All I knew was that this band was doomed.
Leaving the Babes was so hard to do because we had so much fun everywhere we went. It really was like a travelling pajama party. One time we were driving to Atlanta for a gig and we laughed so hard all the way there that we barely had the strength to perform we were so laughed out.
I wonder if that’s where the phrase “died laughing” came from. After experiencing that with the Babes I think it IS possible to drop dead just from laughing that hard for that long. Maybe that’s why I had to leave. I was afraid I would die. Ha ha ha ha ha – I’m cracking myself up.
JMcL:
What was the first song you wrote that you knew was a keeper? Were you right? Did it have a short shelf-life because of its topicality?
Christine:
Oooh, that’s a tough question. There are songs of mine that people continue to request that I couldn’t play on a dare – what I think are keepers and what other people think are keepers are very different things. I remember reading somewhere that Frank Sinatra HATED the song “My Way,”but he simply HAD to do it every show because the audience demanded it. So you remember that, all you hip crooners out there (Michael Buble, Tony DeSare, I’m a-talkin’ to YOU). Be careful what you choose to sing because it may come back to taunt you later.
Hey, that could be a good “Twilight Zone” episode – a struggling lounge singer sells his soul to the devil for one wish: and that wish is that he is thegreatest singer in the world every night singing the song made most popular by the greatest singer in the world.
Poof! You’re Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.”
Oh there was a question here, wasn’t there? I guess the first ‘keeper’ would be “Ramblin’ Waltz,” the song I wrote when I got to be part of the entourage of Bob Dylan’s “Rolling Thunder Revue” back in 1975. I started singing that song again – now, thirty five years later – and I thought, hmmmm . . . I was pretty young when I wrote it and it doesn’t make me cringe, so maybe it is a keeper.
JMcL: From your most recent recording work, what's the real keeper among the songs?
Christine:
The song I LOVE doing the most is “Hardwired.” I wrote it with the help of John Alford of Rice University, Jeff Mondak at U of Illinois and John Hibbing at U of Nebraska – and also Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post. It’s a free download at my website. It’s based on real science – how people who identify with the left and people who go right really ARE wired differently. I get so riled up watching the news – I thought if I could write a song that lets people know we really have different priorities, how we’ve got to stop calling the other side idiots or traitors – acknowledge our differences, find some common ground, stop fighting and get to work saving this country.
You score on your fingers as you listen to the song – left hand for “liberal” answers, right hand for “conservative” answers. I spent a long, long time writing it –went through many different questions that the academic scientists rejected for one reason or another, til we had five questions that they all agreed worked.
Here’s one of the questions that didn’t make it into the song, and I want you to honestly say what your answer is:
Do you get grossed out if you see someone putting ketchup on vanilla ice cream?
If you say yes, you do get grossed out – that’s the way more Conservatives answer that questions (that’s how the scoring goes – you compare your answer to other Liberals and Conservatives who’ve answered the questions previously). So that’s a point for your right hand. If you said No, doesn’t gross me out, more Liberals answered like that.
People who identify themselves as Liberals are a bit more open minded and experimental; Conservatives are more concerned with safety and order. Ketchup on ice cream upsets that order for them.
You can download, listen and score yourself at: http://www.christinelavin.com/index.php?page=songs&display=690 The lyrics are also posted and there’s a lot of fun little links within the words.
JMcL: It's obvious from your comments addressed throughout "Cold Pizza" that you like to help young folks coming up in the business. If you hadn't become a performer, do you think you might have become a teacher? What level,K-12? Or would college have been how you went, if that had been your career path?
Christine:
If I have learned anything that can be helpful to anybody in any field– I feel it’s my duty to pass information along. I just recorded the audio book of “Cold Pizza” and have written up that experience to help anybody who might be contemplating recording a book in the future – I gave my notes to the guy who owns the recording studio and he is including them in his packet to give all new clients now.
I would not have become a teacher – I don’t have the patience for that. If not a folksinger I think I would have liked to be the information lady at an airport. There are all these people wandering around in a strange new place. I spend so much time in airports. I’m always looking for the best place to eat that has the healthiest food. And then when you get stranded – where do you stay? I’ve had every ridiculous travel thing happen to me in my life – from sitting on a plane for seven hours that never takes off,only to go back to the gate and then be told your baggage is lost – to missing a connection in Denver to Tuscon, so instead flying to Phoenix, then organizing cab drivers in Phoenix together to see who would give me the best price to drive that night to Tucson.
I could help out stranded travelers because chances are good, what ever they’re dealing with has happened to me, too. Either that, or a pastry chef.
JMcL: Which do you like to write, love songs, comic songs, or political songs? Or do you just sort of gate-keep for whatever comes thro from your muse?
Christine:
I never know what’s coming – I just keep my antennae out there. I have a new song called “Random Acts Of Kindness” that I think really hits a nerve (or funny bone). It’s about offering to do something really kind and generous (like helping someone move – that’s a BIG act of kindness) but having the person turn you down! You get the points for asking, but you don’t have to do the work!
I’m beginning to learn that there are people who specialize in this kind of behavior – big talkers who are adept at making the grand gesture once they are secure in the knowledge that their offer will be refused. I hope this song is going to smoke them out!
JMcL:
Thank you for your time and patience with this quiz, Christine. Is there any obvious question that I forgot to ask? Anything you'd like to add? Anything that got dropped from the book you'd like to put back in? Anyone you want to give a shout-out to? I've enjoyed this, and I think the readers of The Digitial Folk Life will too.
Christine:
There are two deleted chapter called “Jingles’ Lost Chapter” and “Why Not Popular China I In” – I have posted them at my website – if you click on the ‘books’ button on the home page you will find them.
The publisher thought the book was just too darn long, so things like those chapters were cut just on that basis – length. Jingles, the teddy bear, was BARELY recovered from his brush with Madison Avenue when he got word his chapter was hitting the cutting room floor, and he is devastated. I keep telling him that people are reading his chapter at my website, but that doesn’t help. He says, “What’s a website? I’m a teddy bear! Don’t toy with me!” So for Jingles' sake I hope people will read his chapter. He still has dreams of his book project coming to fruition.
There’s also an afterword and a bunch of extra photos – one of the really gratifying things about having this book out is being contacted by long-lost friends. When I was six years old a classmate named Marilyn Pomart taught me how to twirl batons. Her sister showed up at a concert in Schenectady and now I have photos of a very young Marilyn in her baton outfit at my website. How much fun is that??
These were very interesting questions. Thanks for sending them along, John. Now I must run – there's a batch of banana peels drying in my oven.
