Americana Amore

There seems to be a blossoming musical revival happening in the Twin Cities. It’s a resurgence of new musical styles and forms including Americana music. For me, it’s been sixty years from roughly 1964 to the present, for my music to come back. From a coffee shop in West Saint Paul to old Saint Anthony, there are a growing number of performance venues scattered across the Twin Cities.

Is Amore Coffee Shop in West Saint Paul the new West Bank for Americana music? What about the Finish Bistro in Saint Anthony? Could be. At one point, near the mid-seventies, many artists left the West Bank and migrated to NorthEast Minneapolis. Now there seems to be a shift taking place with that music moving to other spots in the Twin Cities. The variety of new musical styles is astounding and new venues seem to be opening up each year.

On a more personal level, I’ve always had a long-term romance with Americana music. Whether from the hills of Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, Chicago blues, western swing, cowboy songs, or folk ballads, that style of music has grabbed my soul and interest. It began in college with the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary and more authentic purveyors of that folk art like Bob Dylan.

‘Tangled Roots’ is one of my plays reflective of that interest. The play is really a folk concert

wrapped around a storyline under the banner of a play. A retiree, once a struggling folk singer,

wants to return to his song-writing and performing days in an era when folk music is no longer

popular. A mysterious woman might be the answer to help him along his way.

Now at the ripe age of eighty-something, I’ve taken the tentative steps of writing my own songs

for several of my plays. It will be trying to capture the mood of that era while safely ensconced

in my present-day life.

It won’t be a return to the West Bank and my quasi-hippie experiences there. Those were wrapped up in memories, real and imagined, in one of my first novels ‘Love in the AShau.’ Instead it will be exploring the song genre under the umbrella of a new play.

Song writing is hard. Lyric writing is even harder. It’s not just arranging words to fit the mood.

It goes far beyond what the ear can hear and the heart can feel. A good set of lyrics can capture

the imagination like few things in life can.

I was always enthralled by the ability of a song and its lyrics to carry me to another world, to

wrench my heart strings taunt and rip open emotions long left dormant in a sometimes cold and

uncaring world. Three minutes of sound that captured my imagination, fueled my dreams, and left

me breathless sometimes with their self-imposed imagery. I was always left wondering ‘how in

the hell were they (the songwriters) able to do that? Now I want to find out for myself.

I’m discovering a whole new batch of singer/songwriters appearing on the local musical scene.

Some are seemingly plucked right out of the folk tradition. Others bring a more current

sensibility to their performances. Either way, the message is the same as it has been for hundreds

of years. It’s a call from the open road, justice for all and the freedom to love when and where

and how one chooses.

It’s a message I’m trying to create with my own song book of my personal songs. Right now, it’s

just a roughhewn collection of song titles, lyrics, thoughts, and emotions coming from my heart

and meant for a receptive audience. If or when it gets completed, is anyone’s guess. It’s

journey I’m on as an artist and one I can’t get off of. Such is the life….

Pure as Folk

Most of us have a musical window inside our head. It’s that time period when music played a critical role in imprinting images and emotions into our brain. These are feelings that generally stay with us for the rest of our lives. My musical window extends from roughly the mid-fifties through the sixties. Folk music, now labeled Americana music, was one of the driving forces behind my rabid interest in music of many different genres, styles, and forms.

I recently finished a book that brought back a lot of memories of that period and some interesting footnotes for that style of music. It’s called: ‘Always A Song; My Story of the Folk Music Revival by Ellen Harper.’ Ellen is an accomplished folk singer and mother of Ben Harper, another well-known singer in that tradition.

One of the dichotomies of that period was the conflict between the folk purists and the new musical explorers. While I couldn’t define or even explain it, folk music struck an emotional chord with me. As the book points out: ‘Many in this largely affluent, well-educated, and restless generation, seeking inspiration and hope, embraced the authenticity of folk music as a powerful medium for expression.’ But storm clouds were on the horizon.

The book continues: ‘There has always been a tension between what is considered authentic and what is thought of as commercial. The folk music revival is a story of blurred lines, and navigating those often poorly defined boundaries as complicated. There can’t be a folk music revival without the music industry.’

Authentic folk singers such as Pete Seeger, Bud and Travis, The Steeple Singers, Hedy West, the New Lost City Ramblers, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Huston, and many more were always on the hunt for traditional material. They mined the hills of Appalachia, the printed volumes of English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish music and other cultural artifacts for long lost musical treasures. The thought seemed to be that if it wasn’t over a hundred years old, it wasn’t authentic.

I, on the other hand, was raised on the button-down folk groups like the Kingston Trio, Chad Mitchell Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary and many others of their style. Folk purists thought these new groups had sold out with their crass commercialization of their traditional music. I found the music easy to listen to, with a message that grabbed me on an emotional level that few other experiences had before that.

Folk music has been around forever but changes shape and form as new generations discover its power amid its simplicity. A new trend I’ve discovered on my Facebook newsfeed are the offers of free music from these folk types with only charges for shipping.

The old mechanism of music publishing and distribution has been thrown for a loop with the advent of the internet, YouTube and other streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. If I want to check out a group, old or new, I can either go to their web page or YouTube to see and hear them. Singers today must be their own best advocate with their home page on the internet and other means of reaching their intended audiences.

Talk about coming around full circle. So, here I am at age Eighty-One trying my hand at writing lyrics and creating songs of that style and period. I’ve been so fortunate to have met a fellow traveler who has been an enormous help in crafting nine original songs for one of my plays.

I’ve also written a play about an aging folk group still trying to make a dent in the music business. It’s a combination folk concert and a play. Both plays PTV and Tangled Roots are looking still for a home.

Added to that rucksack of stumbling ambition, my mind (as untethered as it is) has wandered off in a totally different direction. It’s the creation of a full-blown album called: ‘Made in Minnesota.’ My fantasy is that it would highlight periods, incidents, fellow travelers of my past through songs. It would be wrapped up in the cloak of folk and its universal themes of love lost and found, the angst of youth and pleasures of being raised in the North Country.

Where it might go is anyone’s guess at this point in its development.

True Collaboration

The definition of collaboration is simple enough. ‘Collaboration is the action of working with someone to produce or create something.’ Sounds simple enough and therein lies the gaping black hole of potential failure. What isn’t mentioned is the willingness of both parties to forgo personal ego and goals for a shared vision and outcome. Give and take must be part of that equation if any partnership or collaboration is going to work.

My experience up until now in the creation of music hasn’t been that successful. Over the years, I’ve enlisted the support of different musicians in creating a music for various writing ventures of mine. One of the first was a music video for one of my first novels and another for incorporating music into several of my plays.

Unfortunately, the outcome wasn’t very satisfying. I had envisioned working with the musician to write the music, melody and lyrics and then cooperate in the creation of different musical layers to fill in the bones of the song.

The artists I was dealing with saw our relationship first, as a solicitor of music (that would be me) and secondly, as a purveyor of music (that would be them.) And never the twain shall meet or at least it never did in my case.

Almost immediately, it became apparent that these musicians weren’t open to suggestions about the pace, mood, form or function of the emotion I was trying to capture for my work at the time. They saw themselves as creating the product and I paid them for it and they kept all rights to their work. No thanks to that.

Click here to buy AJ's album 'Town Boy'
Click here to stream 'Town Boy' on Apple Music

Fortunately, this pattern of one-sided venture-taking came to a halt with my introduction to a very talented singer/songwriter who ‘got it’ in terms of cooperation. The back story is simple enough.

My first job after college and a brief hiatus in Europe was with the Minnesota Department of Public Health as a staff writer. My first ‘real’ job came in the form of freelancing (for free) at the local public television station, KTCA-TV. I was working on the crew at least five nights a week.

In retrospect, I understand now that it signaled the ending of my ‘Lost Years’ and the beginning of a new life with a newfound partner in life and love. Working at the station, first on crew and then as a producer/director was fun, exciting and opened up a lifetime career in television and video production work. It also introduced me to a host of colorful characters who inhabited the studio chambers and work cubicles. Little did I know that it would become a veritable cornucopia of storylines just waiting to be told.

Eventually it became the basis for one of my plays entitled: ‘PTV.’ After completing my manuscript, I knew something was missing. The music. Music was a part of my life back then and still is. It also played a huge part on the lives of my associates at the station. I wanted to capture the mood of that period but with new songs instead of capturing the old ones we remembered. Thus began the quest to find a musician or two that I could work with to create these new/old songs of that period.

AJ Scheiber

True collaboration is really about finding someone who shares your vision for a project. Then working together to create that project to your mutual satisfaction.  In my case, it turned out to be with a very talented singer/songwriter by the name of AJ Scheiber. AJ does both solo work and plays in a band by the name of Wilkinson James. I would describe his work as akin to John Prine and Tom Paxton.

After a couple of meetings and AJ reading the script for PTV, it became apparent that he shared my vision for the play and the prominence of the songs therein. He introduced me to many different styles of music such as Texas Swing, Delta Blues, Chicago Blues, folk, Americana, Bluegrass, gospel, Appalachian, and a host of other similar styles of songwriting.

We followed a very simple route of writing the songs. I wrote the lyrics. AJ adapted, rewrote and tweaked the lyrics to fit into the rhythmic pattern (melody) that he had created for that particular song. I then reviewed his adaptation of my lyrics and if I felt they don’t fit the message I was trying to convey, we discussed those particular words and came to some kind of compromise. AJ got the words to fit his musical pattern and I was satisfied with the words chosen.

AJ wrote out lead sheets for each particular song. Lead sheets are tools used by songwriters to convey the basic structure of a song to musical directors and arrangers. The fun part (in my mind) begins in the studio when each song is layered with additional tracks of musical instruments. In my mind, the arrangement is everything.

Since I have a vested interest in the mood each song must convey to my audience, I see layering as critical to each song’s success in conveying that mood. In PTV, each song was written as another emotional cue to help the audience better understand my characters and their actions. It was imperative that each song emit that emotional reaction from the audience.

The marketing of PTV has begun. Once we’ve received inquiries, AJ can begin to upgrade our demonstrations of each song and share it with interested theatrical venues through a file-sharing system. My job is to keep fishing and hope to land a theatrical venue that can host the show.

I have no doubt that it will be a long and arduous process to find the right venue for this play and then to produce it in the right manner. If we can pull it off and the show resonates with the audience then the sweat, labor and tears it took to get there will have been all worthwhile.

Not for the faint of heart but then anything of value seldom comes easy.