My Parents' Hands

When I think of my mother Jean's strong fingers, she's typing 75 wpm on a Royal manual in a newsroom or the stylish Olivetti in the blue case that she carried to Jerusalem on a reporting trip after the Six-Day War. I think of my father Harvey's slim hands massacring Beethoven piano sonatas or squaring off his cigarette lighter on top of a pack of Chesterfields next to his martini on the coffee table.

I've been thinking today about hands and handing over. Fifty years ago -- yes, on an April Fool's Saturday; it probably explains a lot -- they hand-wrote inscriptions in the King James Bible they presented on the occasion of my baptism by the Rev. Canon Howard McClintock at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit.

I was six, which is old for an infant baptism. My genial but abstracted father, also a journalist, moved out when I was two, and even before then, as I understand it, it was never dull, because of the music and martinis. My mother worked long hours as a pioneering general assignment reporter for the Detroit Free Press to support us and finally pay my father's attorney to divorce her, since otherwise that might never have happened, either. I was lucky to have received the sacrament as early as I did.

Harvey died in 1975. My mother doesn't type as much as she used to, though she can still write an eloquent and whimsical e-mail. I type like crazy, when my fingers aren't itching to play the guitar. On my father's beloved piano, I only got as far as massacring Mozart sonatas. After decades of air guitar I bought my first dreadnought on my 40th birthday and have learned to play well enough to accompany myself singing folks songs. I play with church friends and for St. John's School students during chapel. Last weekend in the mountains, friends sat politely as I struggled through two Tom Russell songs and one by John Prine. When I'm playing guitar a lot, I'm blogging less, and then the other way around. Kathy definitely prefers the blogging, but I love them both, because I was anointed by my parents' hands and blessed by the things they loved.

Loving Music, Loving Guitars

Tom Russell, America's greatest living folksinger, on how he got started:

I was the kid in the room with heroes tacked up over my head. Pictures ripped from magazines. Grandma’s paintings. At first the walls were covered with athletes. As I became a teenager, the athletes were given over to folksingers. First the Kingston Trio, then the real stuff: Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Ian and Sylvia, Tim Hardin, Peter LaFarge, Fred Neil and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. Oh, those lived-in faces. Beautiful beat-up guitars. Brazilian rosewood with scratches and wounds; cigarette burns; bullet holes. Guitars absorb every situation they work in. These dream photos depicted my legends and heroes. Icons of the Minstrel Trade. I wanted that life, but didn’t have the guts and heart for it, until I’d been to West Africa and seen war, and also the miseries of life in an academic setting.

In a pawn shop in San Luis Obispo I picked up a 1946 Martin D-18 guitar and went search of the folk crusade, not knowing it would take forty years and a lifetime to arrive at a watering hole where you could sit down and rest your camel, re-string your guitar, and contemplate whether you were a troubadour.

Photo: Willie Nelson's guitar

"Guadalupe," Tom Russell

Latest from the greatest

"Issac Lewis," Tom Russell

Losing my friend Ed Simons 15 years ago was devastating to his whole family. His father, Clarence, who died last week, never quite got over it. "Issac Lewis" is about a father who buries his son. It came up on my iPod when I went for a walk this afternoon after Clarence's funeral.

Reading God's Footnotes

Driving and blogging between gigs in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, America's greatest cowboy folksinger, Tom Russell, files this report:

There is still a west. It exists on desert back roads and in odd, fragmented glimpses: Saguaros against Sonoran sunsets; pawn shop Kachinas; crosses made of Saguaro ribs and copper; the lingo of the muleteer, a blueberry pie slice in Pie Town; frozen quail on the hand of the Falconer. God’s footnotes.

The End Of The World At Coney Island

Folksinger and blogger Tom Russell won $60 at Del Mar (he bet on a horse named Modern Song) and went CD shopping. He bought Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs," Jimmy Webb's duets album, and the Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." He writes:

My God. Have not listened to this in 20 years. I assumed it would sound like a dated psychedelic artifact. Naw. This is a record about loneliness, depression, age, death, suicide…masked in a circus-musico format. The end of the world at Coney Island, with raunch guitars, superb vocal arrangements, and gut wrenching singing. It’s the Beatles, of course. Unfair to compare them with anyone else. This was like finding a forgotten Van Gogh in the closet. The record was recorded on a four track tape machine 33 years ago. Where has our technology taken us? I would borrow from William S. Burroughs in inferring that modern digital technology may be leading us toward boredom and oblivion....

Definitely Gathering Moss

Sitting in an airport a couple of months ago, great American folksinger and songwriter Tom Russell, stuck with an old copy of "Rolling Stone," experienced discouragement:

Over 90% of their 500 best songs ever written [as identified by RS] were written before 1970. The summation is there ain’t been much to be excited about in the last forty years - with all our bleating, digital gadgetry, conferences, alliances, SXSW, “how to write songs” cartoon books, posturing circus rap, and lack of human artistic character. The chaos has led us, with our little IPOD head phones on, into the death throes of popular song.

Or maybe, Tom, it's just the people who drew up the list. For instance, you wrote this one, "Isaac Lewis," just a few years ago. Sure beats "Stairway to Heaven."

Border Songs: "East Of Woodstock, West Of Vietnam"(2009)

Tom Russell

Texas Songs: "Gallo Del Cielo" (1997)

Tom Russell

I'd been wondering lately about legendary Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot, who I knew had been seriously ill. Rooting around for information about the LA-born Russell, I found his road blog, which has a moving reflection about encountering Lightfoot at a tribute concert a few years ago:

Lightfoot had been in hospital for two months recovering from an aneurism. The prognosis aint good. Suddenly the crowd parts, like the Red Sea, and people are shrieking and applauding, and here’s Lightfoot himself, walking through the crowd with a guitar case. Damn, it’s Jesus coming to town on a mule, armed with an antique wooden machine gun. Then he’s on stage, singing an old song. People are weeping. Quite a moment. I had the chills. Lightfoot waves and retreats to a trailer dressing room and disappears. The door slams. The applause is deafening. The only problem is my guitar is in that dressing room, and I’m on stage in 10 minutes for the tribute. I politely knocked on the trailer door, and Lightfoot bid me come in. He was sitting in the corner, grizzled and shaky-legged, smoking a cigarette. He looks at me: « What song you gonna sing out there, kid? » I said, « Your song, ‘For Lovin’ Me’ » He motions toward his guitar with his cigarette. « Here, take my guitar and sing a little for me. I wanna see if you’ve got it right. » (I thought, holy shit. Im auditioning for Gordon Lightfoot. Heavy dues.) I picked up his revered old Martin axe ; it glowed in my hands. My fingers burned. I sang a verse or two of his wonderful song. « That was great,“ he said. „You sing it great, kid. Go out there and kill em“….I handed Lightfoot back his old Martin and glided out of the room. Later on he made a point of coming up to me and telling me how much he enjoyed my version, and my work with Ian Tyson on « Navajo Rug ». I thought back to that old stained set list on his 12 string at Newport in 65. And all the motel rooms and miles and the dignity of the man. A songwriter. It was like running into Homer, and he hands you his lute. A few troubadors still walk among us, with stained set lists taped to the top of their road battered axes. Old guitars soak up every room and song and situation they’ve been involved with…and oh, the stories they can tell. For a moment, in Lightfoot’s dressing room, I knew I was at the center of my universe. I knew why I was a songwriter. Amen.

Texas Songs: "Tonight We Ride" (2004)

Tom Russell (for more about Gen. John J. Pershing and Pancho Villa, go here)