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Concert Review: “Roots & Wings,” (dba The Digital Folk Life. Org)

Steve Gillette & Cindy Mangsen at Vic’s Music Corner
– a Concert Review

 I got lost on the way, which is why I walked in on Penelope Swales, their Strine opening act, showing off her Janis Ian wa-wa gear, and then teaching the audience how Strine audiences applaud people they really like, like Reba, the hostess for the series  – “One- clap, Two, clap-whoop, Three- clap-whoop-stomp!” Demn, you could work up a crowd that way! Which clearly Penelope had already done before I wandered in the side door and got me a glass of tea and found a seat in the corner of O’Brien’s Pizza Parlor in Rockville to watch Steve & Cindy, whom I’d driven over from Connecticut & Veirs Mill, some place like that, to see this Wednesday night in late September, 2004.

 Man, I was so lost, what I needed was a night of sweet and lovely music to calm me down. Coming up, right away.

 Steve’s the guy who wrote the book on songwriting, literally (Songwriting & the Creative Process, Singout Press), and has written songs for Garth Brooks and Jiminy Cricket – yeah, that Jiminy Cricket - to give you an idea of the sweetness of his personality, if you’re unlucky enough never to have met the guy, a complete charmer, whose specialty is making everybody in the room think they’re the person in the world he most admires, next to Cindy, his wife. Cindy, like Steve, is a silver-haired beauty now living in Vermont, where it’s an accepted thing to celebrate a neighbor who’s a centenarian and knows the old ballads from Scotland that you can make your own and then go on to emulate in the songs you then write. You’re following this, I know. They’re that kind of stage magic, singing solo or in harmony with one another. They’ve also got the kind of drop-dead timing other people would kill for, honed over years on the road – a string goes flat, and it’s “Tuning, ah what a concept!” “Some day!” and away from the mike momentarily and then back and on to the next song, the audience giggles making the transition flawless. That kind of thing. An opening song, “Here’s to the road,” metaphor for life’s journey,  from Steve, and then Cindy’s story about her Vermont centenarian neighbor, and “Come and Sit By the Fire,” and then  discussion of why concertinas are not allowed in the car, followed of course by a sort of Lou Killen medley, jig-hornpipe-reel (who ever dances those three dances together – have moicy), and then Steve on the stern rectitude of Vermonters, among whom love songs are not common, followed up – of course – by a song about the beauty of the changing of the leaves in Vermont, which somehow is nothing but a metaphorical and plaintive love-song, isn’t it? – “No matter where you are, I want to be with you … when the frost is on the fence post.”

 But before the evening descends into bathos – bathing in pathos, right? – Steve is shilling the new Waterbug anti-Bush compilation, “Vote in November (With Joy in Your Heart), and explaining what a “Wumper” is – from his song on the compilation – Wealthy – Unborn – Monocled – Pompous – Egregiously – Rich – something like that – and the evening has taken another bend in the road. The CD’s for sale from Waterbug Records (www.waterbug.com),  for $5, and the proceeds go to benefit Moveon.org. And you have never seen so many mature folkies reach for their wallets so fast in your life. I swear.

 Then Steve departs the stage, saying “I’ll give my wife room – unless she over-rules me” – rueful chuckle from half the guys there – and cackle from all the women – and here’s Cindy displaying that gorgeous voice, on the poem by EB White for which Pete Seeger wrote the tune, “Charlotte’s Web,” and all is stilled again in the room. Can you say “magic”? “I will attach a silken thread to you for my returning.” Perhaps the word I’m looking for is close to awe at beauty. Yes?

 Mark Graham’s “Their Brains Were Small, and They Died,” nominally about the dinosaurs, but we know to whom it refers by now, I’m sure, follows, to move the evening along,  followed by Steve’s rippling version of “Corinna,” surely employing many more than two fingers and one thumb, and then, to get to the break,  not Waylon Jennings’ version of Steve and Rex Benson’s song about reincarnation – Steve said he politely turned them down with “Nope, I guess I won’t be singing that in this lifetime” – you miss these lines sometimes – but that beautiful classic, “The Restless Wind” – yes, Steve’s own – and we’re out of there in what would be a standing ovation if the mellow crowd could manage to get to their feet from these fine captain’s chairs all around the room.

 So okay, that just gets you to the intermission, and then from there it’s a second set. You think I’m gonna spill the beans about what they did then, so you don’t hafta go to the show your own selves? Not happening.  You wanna hear when “Time and the River Rising” comes in the set, and what precedes and follows it? You want to find out what they use as a tribute to the strangely-departed Howard Dean, ex-governor of Vermont, darling of the hipper set one week, couldn’t buy a cracker from the barrel the very next week, devotion of the crowd must have been a quarter inch deep if it was a mile wide? You wanna find out which Lou & Peter Berryman tongue-twister they chose to twinkle-toe thro? Do you want to hear something about Bob Copper’s childhood in Devon, and a song that came out of it?  If you’d written “Darcy Farrow,” when did it come in here and how did it go? Is there a song about a Salvadoran martyr-poet that you might think they’d sing? “Closure about to be achieved… but I digress – but I go on….” That song about Gamble Rogers,  that “gentleman with a guitar,” was it introduced by a tip of the hat to gifted giants in the audience? Could be. Ah, the art of it all…. That’s why you have to get to their concert when they get to your area – see their website for tour details – and find out all about this for yourself. And then you can join in, “I always did feel like a drifter,/ This time of the day…. I go reaching for the river, / Like it’s reaching for the sea…,” and you’ll find the magic rolling you up in its arms and taking you, finally, along with it as you roll out the door. OK?

Thanks Steve. Thanks, Cindy – John

(Review copyright John McLaughlin, 9/24/04.)