Help Is On The Way

Image by Comfreak from Pixabay 

“Don’t give up the ship — even when you feel it sinking and you don’t know what to do…” writes David Friedman in his great song, “Help Is On The Way.”

I found myself thinking about this song when I heard Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer say “Help is on the way!” on TV after helping to pass the American Rescue Plan.

Although I have not been able to confirm this from searching the internet, I think David Friedman created this song during a previous plague — HIV/AIDS.

I wrote about David in a post three years ago which you can read if you are curious by clicking here.

Image by Plz from Pixabay

Some were willing and able to ignore the threat of HIV/AIDS when it appeared — as some are still attempting to do with COVID-19.

However, HIV/AIDS left a vast trail of shock and grief for many human beings — as COVID-19 is now doing…

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

I thought of this song again when I was listening to yet another medical expert pleading with us to continue to wear masks, wash our hands, and practice physical dustancing.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

“We have the football on the five-yard line,” he said, “and we’ve got to hang in there so that we don’t lose possession of the ball when we are so close to making a touchdown and winning the game.”

His football metaphor was inspired by the fact that many states in the USA are currently relaxing health measures even as new — more communicable and possibly more lethal —varieties of the COVID-19 virus are spreading exponentially around the country.

Apparently we are now in a contest to see if we can vaccinate enough people before we are overtaken by yet another tidal wave of infections due in part to these new genetic variations and in part to us human beings letting down our guard.

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Image by Miroslava Chrienova from Pixabay

My heart goes out in particular to the health care workers who — amazingly — continue to care for people infected with Covid whether the infected people had chosen to take Covid seriously in the first place or not…

I’m not a healthcare worker or someone with a job that requires interaction with the public or a senior citizen.

So I’m wearing a mask when I go outside for my daily walks and waiting patiently — as I know many of us are — until I become eligible to get vaccinated.

Singer Bobbi Carrey, pianist Doug Hammer and I recorded this song many years ago as part of a musical program called IN GOOD COMPANY which explored working and business and capitalism using songs and stories.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

I consider it to be a quintessential “helps me get out of bed in the morning” song.

And I’ve been needing these sorts of songs in recent weeks — because I’ve been feeling rather crabby.

Maybe it’s the rising spring energy of the northern hemisphere as we struggle — like bulbs — to push our way through the thawing soil towards the sun.

Maybe it’s the fact that a pandemic which we all thought might last a month or two has now stretched past the one year mark…

Maybe it’s an at-times-overwhelming sense of empathy for all of the folks who have already died due to Covid-19 — AND for their grieving family + friends.

Maybe it’s a sense of frustration that we human beings seem to have done an extremely poor job of teaching one another about the formidable power of exponential growth.

One doubles and becomes two.

Two doubles and becomes four.

Four doubles and becomes eight.

Eight doubles and becomes sixteen.

Sixteen doubles and becomes thirty-two.

Thirty-two doubles and becomes sixty-four.

Sixty-four doubles and becomes one hundred-and-twenty eight.

And sooner than one might think possible, the total rises into the thousands, then millions, then billions…

Understanding exponential growth deepens one’s respect/humility/awe/terror for how a virus left un-checked spreads exponentially through a host population — and thus has vastly more opportunities to mutate into new varieties as a result…

This is why we need to be distributing COVID-19 vaccines to every country in the world — even countries such as Tanzania, led by a Covid-denying leader who recently died after an 18-day period of ill health…officially attributed to a heart condition and unofficially speculated to have been Covid-related.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Clearly it is a huge challenge to change anyone’s mind when they have very strong convictions about a particular topic.

Here in the USA the Covid-related death of a newly elected, incoming, 41-year-old congressman from Louisiana — Luke Letlow — has done little to change the mindset and behavior of some of his Republican colleagues regarding the severity of the risk of Covid infection.

Yet another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

I don’t entirely believe the message of this song — although I WANT to believe it because it gives me hope.

My favorite line is probably “from friends we may not have met yet.”

I feel that way about some of my fellow bloggers, and also about some of the photographers on Pixabay.

Now that I have started including their names underneath their beautiful photographs, I have begun noticing that certain photographers have taken a LOT of the photos I’ve used in past blog posts.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

David Mark is one of them.

Many of the images in this blog post were taken by him.

And he has thousands more at Pixabay.

I will end this blog post with several more of his lovely images.

Thank you to David Friedman for his wonderful songs and to Forbes Magazine for this great interview with him.

Thank you to Doug Hammer and to Bobbi Carrey for their heartful musicianship.

Thank you to all the “friends we may not have met yet” — who are growing our food, developing new vaccines, taking care of us in hospitals, working in grocery stores, delivering packages, etc. etc. etc.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Thank you to Pixabay and all of the photographers who generously share their images there — and allow me to travel far and wide around this extraordinary planet earth without leaving my living room.

Thank you to the cardinals who have been singing and singing and singing in my neighborhood in recent days.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Thank you for the return of spring here in New England.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to another one of my blog posts.

I’ve re-designed my website in recent months to include a LOT more music — and you are always welcome to visit there.

You can also find me on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music and other digital music platforms.

One more deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

“Help is on the way…”

I’ll Cover You…

Today’s blog post features a song from Jonathan Larson’s hit musical Rent.

I recorded it several years ago with fellow singer Bobbi Carrey and pianist Doug Hammer for a CD called If I Loved You.

You can find it on Spotify if you are curious by clicking here.

It is an appropriate choice for today’s blog post because — in addition to learning how to release my original songs — I am learning how to release cover songs.

As you probably already know, a cover song is a new interpretation/recording of someone else’s song.

It was once a much more common phenomenon than it is today, with several versions of a new hit song – recorded by singers such as Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, Dean Martin, and Doris Day — climbing the charts at the same time.

Then came singer-songwriters, rock bands who write their own material, and producers who co-write hit songs with/for pop stars… so nowadays it is less common for major recording artists to release cover songs.

Pianist Doug Hammer has a wonderful recording studio in the lower level of his home, and I have been recording all of my rehearsals with him for over twenty years.

If you are curious to learn more about Doug and his studio, you can click here for a lovely interview with him.

Every now and then he and I come up with a particularly fun or moving interpretation of someone else’s song.

In recent years I’ve shared a bunch of these recordings via my blog…

Now, during this period of Covid-19 isolation, we are polishing/tweaking many of them — with me listening at home via Zoom and Doug in his studio — so that I can distribute them to anyone in the world who has access to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and other digital platforms.

In order to distribute a cover song, one needs to pay for a mechanical license to the person who wrote the song.

This income is often split with the songwriter’s publishing company.

Originally a mechanical license allowed someone to reproduce a song in mechanical form — starting with player piano rolls, wax cylinders, and early phonographs.

Nowadays, even though it is still called a mechanical license, there is very little “mechanical” left in the process — since most of the music sold and listened to these days is distributed digitally in streams of zeros and ones.

You can read a terrific historical summary of how recording technology has evolved over the past 100+ years on Wikipedia by clicking here.

Money paid for a mechanical license goes to the songwriter and possibly their publisher.

There are at least three organizations in the USA where one can purchase mechanical licenses — the Harry Fox Agency (which has been around for a long time), Songfile (which I think is affiliated with the Harry Fox Agency) or Easy Song Licensing (which is the one I am using).

The US Government sets the rates for mechanical licenses, which started out in 1909 at two cents — meaning the songwriter and publisher each earned a penny — and remained unchanged for 67 years.

In 1976 Congress created a Copyright Royalty Tribunal, which decided that mechanical rates should be raised to 2.75 cents.

In 1987, the Music Publishers Association, the Songwriters Guild Of America and the Recording Industry Association of America successfully filed a joint proposal with the Copyright Royalty Tribunal to ask that mechanical royalty rates be increased every two years, based on U.S. inflation data.

Currently the statutory mechanical royalty rate is 9.1 cents per song per unit for recordings of compositions up to five minutes (5:00) in length. If your recording is longer than five minutes, you have to pay additional 1.75 cents per minute or fraction thereof.

The next song I am releasing was written by a fellow songwriter named Barbara Baig whom I met twenty years ago at open mics I used to host in Harvard Square.

My recording of her song is 5 minutes and 39 seconds long; so I paid her and her personal publishing company in advance for 100 digital downloads — (100 x 9.1 cents) + (100 x 1.75 cents) = $10.85.

If all goes well, my recording of her song will be available for streaming and downloading next month.

Once it is released, I will need to register my recording with a non-profit organization called SoundExchange — which was first created by the Recording Industry Association of America and then expanded by Congress — to collect and distribute digital performance royalties for sound recordings. 

And I think Barbara will need to register her song (and my recording of it) with an even newer nonprofit organization — the Mechanical Licensing Collective which will soon be issuing and administering blanket mechanical licenses for eligible streaming and download services in the United States. 

The Mechanical Licensing Collective will also collect royalties due under those licenses and pay them to songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers.

I may write more about both of these organizations in future blog posts.

Basically they are attempts to keep up with the ever-changing technologies of how we purchase and listen to recorded music.

And they are a perfect example of how many important details there are to learn when one is beginning to share one’s music with the world…

Thank you to Bobbi and Doug for their contributions to our recording of “I’ll Cover You” — and to Jonathan Larson for writing it in the first place!

Thank you to Pixabay for the great images.

Thank you to everyone who has registered to vote — and may even have already voted! — in our upcoming election.

Thank you to all the folks who are engaged with our electoral process — writing postcards, donating money, making phone calls, sending texts, helping to get out the vote, and much, much more…

Thank you to everyone who is educating herself/himself/themself about the challenges facing all of us here on planet earth.

Thank you to our extraordinary health care workers, who are again in the midst of a pandemic hospital crisis due to rising cases of Covid-19 here in the USA.

Thank you to everyone who cares enough about their neighbors and neighborhood to wear a face mask in public.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to yet another blog post!

Fever…

“Fever”

In my last two posts, I have started explaining a little of what I’ve been learning in recent months about the music business.

My musical selection for this post is from a CD I recorded with fellow singer Bobbi Carrey and pianist Doug Hammer — which was then enhanced by arranger Mike Callahan as well as other local musicians.

“Fevered” might be one way to describe my current mental state as I recover from our recent — deeply disrespectful and dangerous — presidential non-debate and THEN make sense out of the news that our president and his wife and many members of his staff have been diagnosed with COVID-19.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

At the very least, this is a stark reminder of how a virus makes its presence felt in every niche of human society — from the folks with (allegedly) daily testing and access to the best (and in the case of our political ruling class, FREE) health care to the folks who have to go to work with very little (or no) protection and very little health coverage in places like meat packing plants.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Let us all continue — in this time of COVID-19 — to remain aware of our daily temperatures and to continue wearing our blessed face masks!

Now I will attempt to explain a little bit about performance rights organizations.

One thing a songwriter must do is affiliate with a performance rights organization (also known as a PRO).

In the USA, there are two entry-level ones — ASCAP and BMI — as well as two more — SESAC and GMR — which you can be invited to join when you are earning a fair amount of money from your songs and also a (new?) one called Pro Music Rights about which I know almost nothing.

Most other countries around the world only have one PRO.

This is just one example of how things are often done differently in the USA than in the rest of the world…

ASCAP was the first performing rights organization founded in the USA.

A group of composers, lyricists, and publishers (who were selling millions of copies of sheet music on behalf of the songwriters under contract to them) decided it was time for them to get paid for public performances of their songs — which I think was already the norm in many European countries.

It 1914 they formed a not-for-profit organization called the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

The founders included Victor Herbert — who according to an article in Irish America magazine wrote the music for “forty operettas, 23 musicals, two operas, and several Ziegfeld Follies; did musical scores for motion pictures; and composed for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra” from the 1890s through the 1920s.

Yowza!

Victor Herbert circa 1895

Herbert was himself a transplant from Europe, having been born (out of wedlock) on Guernsey island in the English Channel and raised in England and Germany.

His mother told, him, however, he had been born in Dublin, and he maintained a strong emotional connection to Ireland for his entire life (perhaps jumpstarted by his mother’s and his grandfather’s strong Irish nationalism).

Herbert was also a cellist, conductor AND long-time advocate for the rights of songwriters.

According to Wikipedia he testified before Congress and influenced the formation of the Copyright Act of 1909, which allowed composers to earn royalties from the sale of new-fangled sound recordings.

And then in 1914 he helped found ASCAP to collect money for public performances of musical works in cafes, hotel ballrooms, live-music clubs, and theaters.

Thank you, Victor Herbert, along with your fellow songwriters and political advocates!

As our technologies continued to evolve, public performances grew to include music broadcasts — live or pre-recorded — on radio and TV as well as in elevators, grocery stores, theme parks, and much more…

In 1940 there was a historical turning point.

During the 1930s ASCAP had been increasing the royalty rates they were charging to radio broadcasters for the use of their members’ songs.

So… for many months the radio broadcasters decided to STOP playing any songs affiliated with ASCAP — a period which is mentioned in the biographies of many famous songwriters such as Irving Berlin and Cole Porter as a time when many potential hit songs never got airplay and consequently languished…

In 1940 the radio broadcasters took another huge step and founded a competing PRO called Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI).

BMI signed up a very different cohort of songwriters, including people from the R&B, gospel, jazz, country, folk and Latin music communities.

And some degree of competition — and diversity — was introduced into this particular segment/function of the music industry (the collection of money due to songwriters and publishers for the use of their songs…)

These days BMI remains a bit more accessible than ASCAP — because BMI is free to join while ASCAP charges $50 to join as a songwriter and another $50 to join as a publisher.

I went with ASCAP partly because my fellow songwriter Steve Sweeting had already joined BMI, and I thought it might be interesting to compare his experiences with mine over time…

There is also a man who has been at ASCAP for decades named Michael Kerker who loves the Great American Songbook and is an avid supporter of new songwriters.

I met him many years ago when I invited him to a Boston-area songwriter showcase I co-produced at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education (where I worked for 16 years).

Then one of my guardian angels, Amanda McBroom — a delightful and generous songwriter whose biggest hit (so far) has been “The Rose” — recommended I reach out to him.

So very shyly, I did.

And he got back to me almost immediately.

We ended up having a long conversation on the phone — and when I had a couple of follow-up questions, he was equally prompt in replying to me.

So I am now an ASCAP member.

And on October 10th, my first recording is scheduled to be released to Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, and a bunch of other online musical platforms.

I’ll be blogging more about that soon!

Now that I think about it, songs are kind of like viruses — they are not alive and cannot reproduce themselves without the assistance of a living host.

Hmmm…

I’ll also be sharing how people who do NOT write their own music collect money for the use of their unique recordings of other people’s songs.

And I will continue to give tiny amounts of money to as many political candidates who are in close races as I can.

And I will continue wearing a face mask.

And I will continue walking and riding my bike.

And leading my Music Together classes — both outside in a local park and online via Zoom.

And I will continue to be very grateful that I have a roof over my head, and electricity, and a functioning laptop, and food to eat on a daily basis.

Thank you to Bobbi Carrey, Doug Hammer, Mike Callahan, and the other musicians involved with our recording of “Fever” — as well as the original songwriters Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell AND Peggy Lee, who added several sets of new lyrics when she recorded her classic version in 1958.

Thank you to Pixabay for wonderful images.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to another blog post!

Let us all remained engaged — and vigilant — during the upcoming days and weeks and months!

ps: Have you gotten a flu shot yet?

A Melody Played In A Penny Arcade…

As longtime readers of my blog probably recall, when I was laid off from my day job as assistant director of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education seven years ago, I decided to devote my life to making music.

And writing songs.

And leading Music Together classes.

A few months after my lay-off, a Boston-area jazz pianist named Joe Reid reached out to see if I might like to do a gig at the retirement community where his dad lives.

I had met Joe several years earlier — when HE was in the midst of a life transition from working full-time as a lawyer to working full-time as a musician — and promptly said, “Yes!”

We needed to prepare an hour of music, and I mentioned that I had long loved many songs co-written by composer Harold Arlen — a list which includes “My  Shining Hour,” “I’ve Got The World On A String,” “Accentuate The Positive,” “Anyplace I Hang My Hat Is Home,” “Come Rain Or Come Shine,” “Blues In The Night,”  “That Old Black Magic,” “If I Only Had A Brain,”  “Over The Rainbow,” “Happiness is Just A Thing Called Joe,” “Let’s Fall In Love,” “Get Happy,” and “It’s Only A Paper Moon.”

I had sung a few of these songs in a program of music featuring the lyrics of Johnny Mercer with singer Bobbi Carrey and pianist Doug Hammer — because one of Mr. Arlen’s many collaborators was Mr. Mercer.

And I was familiar with others due to the movie version of The Wizard Of Oz, for which Mr. Arlen composed the music and Yip Harburg wrote lyrics (and a lot of uncredited dialogue  —  a topic I will explore in a future blog post dedicated to Yip).

I biked over to Joe’s house — in the town next to mine — with a bunch of sheet music.

We spent about 90 minutes running through thirteen songs — picking comfortable keys and exploring tempos/feels for each of them.

And that was it for rehearsing with Joe.

Joe (on the left) is very much a “let’s-trust-in-the-moment” kind of musician who welcomes improvisation and spontaneity.

I, too, value spontaneity — and I also appreciate structure.

So I booked time with pianist Doug Hammer at his studio north of Boston.

We recorded all of the Arlen songs once or twice so that I could have a set of piano-only tracks to play on my iPod as I walked around Arlington memorizing lyrics.

And some of the versions we recorded — such as the version of “It’s Only A Paper Moon” included in the player at the beginning of this blog post — came out surprisingly well.

“It’s Only A Paper Moon” was written for a 1932 play (not a musical) called The Great Magoo set in Coney Island which was not a big success.

It is credited to Arlen, Harburg, and impresario Billy Rose — who was somewhat infamous for adding his name to the songwriting credits of other people’s work after having contributed an idea or two during the creative process.

You may recognize Rose’s name because he was married for many years to the great performer Fanny Brice, and his character appears in the movie Funny Lady starring Barbra Streisand as Brice.

Somehow this Coney Island hot dog made me think of him…

Luckily the song was rescued from The Great Magoo and included in a movie called Take A Chance the next year — which led to successful recordings by a wide range of musicians over the past 70+ years.

I love the metaphors and imagery used in the song — all things one might encounter at an amusement park like Coney Island.

I also love the sentiment of the song — that if someone believes in and loves another person, their belief and love can be transformative.

And looking at these photos, I am struck by the way an amusement park transforms from day to night…

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and I would like to dedicate Doug’s and my version of “It’s Only A Paper Moon” to all of the folks who have at one time or another believed in me — including friends and acquaintances in the WordPress blog-o-sphere.

Your positive feedback regarding my music and my blog continues to touch and inspire me every day.

Thank you to Pixabay for the great color photographs of Coney Island and other amusement parks around the world.

Thank you to Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg and Billy Rose for writing this wonderful song.

And to Joe Reid for asking me to do a gig with him seven years ago.

Since then Joe and I have done hundreds of gigs together and created twenty five different one-hour musical programs.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his engineering excellence and his playful virtuosity at the keyboard.

And THANK YOU for reading and listening — and even leaving a comment or two from time to time.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

 

 

Skylark…

As our president speaks on the radio about his recent decision to kill an Iranian general (and others) in Iraq, I thought I might share a post about love and melody and music…

John Herndon Mercer was born on November 18, 1909 in Savannah, Georgia.

From the 1930s to the 1960s he co-wrote a slew of hit songs including “Jeepers Creepers,” “Hooray For Hollywood,” “You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “One For My Baby (And One More For The Road),” “Anyplace I Hang My Hat Is Home,” “I’m Old Fashioned,” “Moon River,” “On The Atchison, Topeka And The Santa Fe,” “Too Marvelous For Words,” “Accentuate The Positive,” “That Old Black Magic,” “Blues In The Night,” “In The Cool, Cool, Cool Of The Evening,” “Autumn Leaves,” and “Skylark.”

Mercer was nominated for 19 Academy Awards — winning four Oscars for best original song — and had two successful shows on Broadway.

He was also a popular recording artist AND co-founded Capitol Records!

“Skylark” was published in 1941 — when Europe was engulfed in WWII but the USA had not yet entered the fight…

The song had a long creative gestation.

According to Wikipedia, the composer Hoagy Carmichael was inspired to write the melody for what became “Skylark” by an improvisation which his old friend Bix Beiderbecke — a jazz cornet player — had once played.

Bix’s music and too-short life had already inspired a novel called YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN which Hoagy was hoping to adapt into a Broadway show (and which a decade later provided the source material for a movie of the same name starring Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day and Hoagy Carmichael…)

Apparently the Broadway production never gelled, and after that Hoagy shared the melody with Johnny in hopes that he might write lyrics for it.

Different books report different versions of how long it took Johnny to write the lyrics for “Skylark.”

Most agree, however, that it was a long period of time — several months to a year — and that Hoagy had kind of forgotten that Johnny was working on lyrics for it (or at least Hoagy had stopped checking in with Johnny to ask him if he had made any progress…)

Around this time Johnny had started an on-again, off-again love affair with Judy Garland.

He was 31 years old (and married…and upset because his father had recently died) and she — fresh off her success as Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ — was 19 years old.

Many writers have speculated about which of Mercer’s lyrics were inspired by his love for Judy — and “Skylark” is one of the contenders.

Here is Judy in an MGM publicity photo from 1943 — when she was 21 years old.

Beautiful and funny and gifted and smart and hard-working and … inspirational.

Another thing which inspired Johnny was the natural world.

His family had a summer home outside Savannah on a hill overlooking an estuary — and he spent his summers as a child fishing, swimming, sailing, picking berries, and lying very still.

He wrote in an unpublished autobiography, “The roads were still unpaved, made of crushed oyster shell, and…they wound their way under the trees covered with Spanish moss…”

“It was a sweet indolent background for a boy to grow up in…and as we drove out to our place in the country there (were) vistas of marsh grass and long stretches of salt water.”

“It was 12 miles from Savannah, but it might as well have been 100…”

“Out on (our) starlit veranda, I would lie on a hammock and — lulled by the night sounds, the cricket sounds… my eyelids would grow heavy (and I would fall sleep) — safe in the buzz of grown up talk and laughter (and) the sounds of far-off singing…”

I started reading about Johnny Mercer when fellow singer Bobbi Carrey and pianist Doug Hammer and I put together a program of his songs that we performed at Scullers Jazz Club here in Boston.

We also were fortunate enough to perform this program of songs on Spring Island — one of the multitude of barrier islands which run along the Georgia and Carolina coast.

Spring Island was once one of the largest cotton plantations in the southern United States.

And echoes of plantation life remain on the island…

Spring Island is now half wildlife sanctuary and half retirement community for folks who are very wealthy — some of whom love music enough that they would fly me and Bobbi and Doug down to perform in their lovely club house.

Although he enjoyed living in New York and California, Johnny returned home to Georgia on a regular basis — usually via a long train trip since he did not like to fly.

He savored the slower pace of life in his hometown as well as the beauty all around.

Having traveled to Spring Island, I have a much more vivid sense of Johnny Mercer’s roots…

A song like “Skylark” or “Moon River” makes sense in a different way now that I have seen and smelled and tasted and heard the environment where he grew up.

Full of streams…

And birds…

And mist…

And blossoms…

And swamps…

And big old trees…

And ocean…

And flowers…

And light…

And sky…

Thank you to Bix Beiderbecke and Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer for creating such a lovely song.

And to Doug Hammer for his spectacular piano playing as well as his super-competent engineering skills.

And to Pixabay and Wikimedia Commons for most of the images in this post.

And to YOU for reading and listening to this blog post!

Catch Me…

 

Recently I read a small but devastating article in The New Yorker about what our new Secretary of the Interior has already accomplished in the first year of his service.

It immediately reminded me of the song “Catch Me” (which opens with a few seconds of silence after you hit the play icon at the top of this page…)

“Catch Me” is another song by David Friedman (about whom I wrote recently) which Bobbi Carrey and I recorded with pianist, arranger, and engineer Doug Hammer for our If I Loved You CD.

Although Ryan Zinke held much more conservationist views when he was a Montana state senator — acknowledging climate change as a significant threat to US national security, for example — now that he is Secretary of the Interior, he is working hard to remove burdensome regulations to industry on public land and in our coastal waters.

He even reversed a recent ban on lead ammunition in wildlife refuges designed to protect birds that eat carrion.

The article concluded by saying that — while it is possible future elections will nudge our leadership back in more sustainable and respectful directions — the damage already being done to our public lands and wildlife will take decades to re-balance or repair (which, of course, is not even possible when a plant or animal becomes extinct…)

Somehow this article has thrown me into what I trust is a temporary tailspin of depression and hopelessness.

As lyricist Fran Landesman once noted, spring can really hang you up the most…

Obviously there is SO MUCH that we human beings need to do to reduce and re-balance our patterns of consumption and destruction as soon as humanly possible.

And yet so many of us — me included — are unable to change a lifetime of habits and assumptions and behaviors in order seriously to address the coming environmental challenges/catastrophes/opportunities.

For example, many of us who are blessed to live in countries such as the United States continue to think, “Of course I deserve to travel as much as I can afford.”

Yet according to a recent article on The Conversation web site, “no other human activity pushes individual emission levels as fast and as high as air travel.”

Yikes!!!

And even if we can’t afford a plane trip to someplace warm (or intriguing or affordable or colorful) we are strongly urged by our morally bankrupt financial institutions to pay for it using a credit card…or two…or three.

How many of us are basically indentured servants to our credit card companies, making minimum payments yet never paying off all our accumulated debt?

Another assumption I find odd is that most of us continue to think that we deserve to have one — or more — cars.

Of course, this is often related to the fact that many of us think that we deserve to live wherever we like — places which may not be located anywhere near public transportation, for example — so, of course, we have to have a car in order to get to work, to shop, to visit friends and family, to drive to the gym (the practice of which I truly don’t understand… why not ride your bike or walk to the gym? Or ride your bike/walk/run instead of joining a gym and donate what you used to pay for your gym membership to a deserving non-profit group?) etc.

And how about those of us who feel that we deserve to own vacation homes — sometimes built in very unwise locations?

Many of these structures sit uninhabited for weeks or months at a time, consuming fuel/electricity so that the pipes don’t freeze, or so that the house doesn’t get too humid, or so that the burglar alarms are functioning…

The list of possessions and privileges to which many of us aspire is loooong — and has been extremely well-marketed for at least a couple of generations here in the USA.

Yet so few of us seem to be able or willing to pause and ponder the consequences of our consumption…

And global greenhouse gas levels continue to rise.

And weather becomes more erratic — affecting wildlife habitats as well as human agriculture (and thus the ability of more and more countries to feed their citizens).

And plastic — some of it visible and some of it in tiny fibers — continues to pollute the waters of planet earth and contaminate aquatic life on all levels of the food chain.

Sadly — depressingly — tragically — hubristically — the list of human pollution, deforestation, and environmental degradation goes on and on and on…

I often feel — as I watch TV or listen to the radio or use the internet — that I have entered a frantic cocoon created solely so that we human beings can hide (for couple of hours or for an entire lifetime) from the terrifying realities of the larger patterns/feedback loops which are unfolding/unraveling right now on planet earth.

And I want to say — to myself and to most of my fellow human beings here in the USA — WAKE UP!!!

Often this is when I catch a cold.

And I stay home and write a blog post like this…

I am aware that I am extremely blessed to live a life where I can moan about larger environmental challenges because my basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, employment, love, and respect have already been met.

And I have a job — leading Music Together classes — to which I can walk or bike or take the bus.

However, I am also aware that anyone writing or reading a blog post is using electricity and some sort of magical electronic device which contains metals mined all over the planet by human beings under inhumane conditions as well as plastic from fossil fuels — and which have most likely been assembled by human beings working under inhumane conditions.

And my other job — sharing one-hour programs of beloved standards at retirement communities, assisted living facilities, and public libraries — involves driving many miles per month in a trusty, high mileage Prius belonging to the jazz pianist Joe Reid, with whom I do 50+ gigs per year.

So I am utterly complicit.

And I wonder what the f–k I am doing with my one precious life here on planet earth.

Yet I also know that music matters in some way — that it can touch our hearts and even inspire us to do unimaginably courageous things.

A documentary I watched recently about James Baldwin reminded me that there was a lot of singing by heroic non-violent protestors as they were marching… and as they were being beaten… and as they were being thrown into police vehicles.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

What do you think/feel about any of this, dear reader?

What do you think/feel about the sad news that Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain — two people who have achieved international success, wealth, fame, influence, celebrity, and in theory the happiness which success/wealth/fame/influence/celebrity are alleged to bring — have taken their own lives during this past week?

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Thank you to David Friedman for writing such compelling songs.

Thank you to Bobbi Carrey for her musical collaboration over the past 15 years.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his piano playing, engineering, production wizardry, patience, and humor.

Thank you to Mike Callahan for his vocal arrangements.

Thank you to Pixabay for the images in this blog post.

And thank YOU for making time so that you could read and listen to another blog post.

 

The Wind Beneath My Wings

 

This afternoon I saw an airplane rising in the sky above Boston.

As usual, I was amazed that such a huge and complicated chunk of metal could become airborne.

Apparently it has something to do with the Bernoulli Effect.

In online article by Matthew Reeve I learned that “Daniel Bernoulli was an eighteenth-century Swiss scientist who discovered that as the velocity of a fluid increases its pressure decreases.

This can be demonstrated when a constant flow of fluid or gas is passed through a tube, and a section of the tube is constricted.

At the point of constriction, the flow will speed up and there will be a drop in pressure against the walls of the tube.

This principle has become widely known as the Bernoulli Effect.”

The Bernoulli Effect explains why planes fly AND why we are able to produce sound with our vocal cords.

Matthew Reeve continues,

“The two results of the Bernoulli Effect can be explained with two examples.

Flow increase: When you place your thumb over the end of a running hose, the flow of water speeds up and travels further across the garden. At the point of constriction velocity increases.

Air pressure drop: An airplane’s wing is shaped so that the bottom is flat and the top is curved. When air flows across the top of a plane’s wing, it travels faster and the lower pressure creates lift.”

This keeps the plane aloft.

Astounding!

I first heard about the Bernoulli Effect in a voice lesson with Professor Eugene Rabine.

He was attempting to explain to me how our vocal cords — which are more accurately called vocal folds — vibrate to produce sound.

When we make a sound using our voice (also know as phonation), our vocal folds are pulled together by a team of small, strong, sophisticated muscles.

During phonation, the stream of air coming up from our lungs through our wind pipe/trachea is momentarily stopped by our vocal folds.

At this point pressure begins to build up below the vocal folds.

Back to Matthew Reeve’s article…

“When the pressure is high enough, the vocal folds are forced to separate and the airstream is allowed to flow through the vocal folds.

The airstream through the vocal folds then accelerates causing a drop in pressure.

This drop in pressure then sucks the vocal folds back together.

Air pressure under our vocal folds then builds up again and the process continues.”

This cycle of our vocal folds opening and closing — hundreds of times per second — creates the waves of air pressure that we recognize as sound.

Reading about the Bernoulli Effect reminded me of a recording of “The Wind Beneath My Wings” that pianist Doug Hammer and I made during a rehearsal for a memorial service a few years ago.

It combines the act of singing with the imagery of flying.

Thank you to Nicki Nichols Gamble for asking me and Bobbi Carrey to sing at her husband’s memorial service — and for requesting this particular song.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his terrific piano playing and for his engineering expertise.

Thank you to David Gay, Eugene Rabine, Roland Seiler, Craig Wich, Mary Klimek, and all of the other human beings who have taught me about healthy vocal function.

Thank you to Pixabay for some lovely photographs and to the internet for some useful graphics

Thank YOU for reading and listening to another blog post — and thank you to everyone who continues to offer me positive feedback and enthusiastic support for my music-making.

You are indeed the wind beneath my wings.

And — echoing the final lyrics of the song — I also give thanks for the Bernoulli Effect, which allow planes to fly and human beings to sing!

If I Loved You…

 

Today’s post is inspired by the act of collaboration.

Theater is all about collaboration — as are many forms of music.

I have been part of a musical collaboration with singer Bobbi Carrey for almost 20 years.

The song at the beginning of this blog post — “If I Loved You” — was written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers for their musical Carousel.

Both Hammerstein and Rodgers had achieved tremendous success working with other collaborators before they joined forces during WWII to create the musical Oklahoma! 

Following the triumph of Oklahoma! they rose to new heights, co-creating a new musical every couple of years — interspersed with producing plays and musicals (such as Annie Get Your Gun) created by others.

And as their extraordinary list of hit shows — including South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song and The Sound of Music — expanded, they also devoted a considerable amount of time to overseeing touring companies, movie adaptations, and revivals of their work.

It was an extraordinary creative and business collaboration — the fruits of which will continue to be harvested  and celebrated for decades to come!

Collaboration can be a mysterious process — and theirs was not without its challenges.

But they persevered, remained respectful of each other’s gifts, and left an astounding body of work for the rest of us to savor for decades to come.

Pianist/composer/engineer/producer Doug Hammer, singer Bobbi Carrey and I recorded “If I Loved You” — one of their most beautiful ballads — for a CD we put together with exquisite arrangement input (both vocal and instrumental) from Michael Callahan.

Mike wrote the cello part on this recording of “If I Loved You,” for example.

My collaboration with Bobbi, too, has included a variety of challenges — and we have also respectfully persevered

Right now, due to a variety of factors, our collaboration is in a fallow period.

Mike is busy being a music professor at Michigan State as well as an enthusiastic husband and father.

Doug’s career as a composer, producer and touring musician — in addition to being a devoted husband and father of two terrific sons — has meant that he is less available to perform with singers (although regular readers/listeners of this blog know that he is still willing to make music together in his wonderful home studio on the north shore of Boston).

Bobbi was working for a while in various parts of Asia — with a home base in Kuala Lumpur.

And I — now that I am making a very modest living as a singer, songwriter and teacher — am (somewhat paradoxically) less available to collaborate with Bobbi than when I had a full-time, non-musical day job.

Blessedly, recording technology exists so that all of the collaboration we did together has not evaporated without a trace.

 

Here’s a version of “The Little Things You Do Together” that we recorded with Doug playing piano plus a playful string arrangement by Mike.

Stephen Sondheim wrote it for the musical Company, and it paints a slightly different picture of love and marriage (another type of collaboration) than one might find in a Rodgers & Hammerstein show.

I have loved this song ever since my parents bought the cast album — which I listened to again and again and again as a child.

Sondheim knew both Rodgers and Hammerstein very well, having been unofficially adopted into the Hammerstein family when he was a teenager.

Hammerstein became a role model and mentor for Sondheim as he, too, devoted himself to musical theater and songwriting.

And after Hammerstein died, Sondheim even collaborated as a lyricist with Richard Rodgers on a show called Do I Hear A Waltz? — along with one of Sondheim’s collaborators from West Side Story, librettist Arthur Laurents.

As someone who writes songs, I am always curious to learn more about the lives, practices, and habits of other songwriters.

I forget where I read it (maybe in one of Laurents’ great memoirs? or one of Sondheim’s terrific books about his own creative process?) but I was surprised to learn that Sondheim — with Laurents’ approval and support — transformed chunks of the dialogue  which Laurents wrote for early drafts of the West Side Story libretto into lyrics for certain songs in West Side Story.

And Laurents did not ask for co-credit on the lyrics for these songs,

It was simply part of their generous and respectful collaborative process.

Now Sondheim continues to support, nurture, encourage and inspire new generations of musical-theater-lovers. librettists, songwriters, and performers.

Thank you to Sondheim and Laurents and Rodgers and Hammerstein — and all of their scenic, costuming, choreographic, lighting, casting, directorial, production, and performance collaborators — for leaving us an extraordinary body of songs and shows and ideas.

Thank you to Bobbi Carrey, Doug Hammer, Mike Callahan, Jon Lupfer (who did the final mix of our CD at Q Division), Jonathan Wyner (who mastered our CD at M Works), and the musicians who played on it — Mark Carlsen (bass), Jane Hemenway (violin), Mike Monaghan (tenor sax and flute), Gene Roma (drums, percussion), Johann Soults (cello), and Kenny Wenzel (trombone).

Thank you to the internet for the photos of Rodgers, Hammerstein, Sondheim, Callahan, and Hammer.

Thank you to Paul Forlenza for the photos of Bobbi and me.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to this post!

What have YOUR experiences with collaboration taught you?

In Praise of David Friedman

 

David Friedman is a composer, a songwriter, a conductor, an arranger, a producer, a philosopher, a teacher, AND a dedicated advocate for the singer Nancy LaMott, who died much too young in 1995.

I first became aware of him after hearing one of Nancy’s CDs — and eventually buying all of them because I was so touched by the heartfulness in her voice.

Nancy recorded many of David’s songs, and I fell in love with several of them.

So when David put together a songbook of his original works, I bought it and got to work!

Two of his songs ended up on a CD of songs about love which singer Bobbi Carrey and I recorded with pianist/engineer/producer Doug Hammer, arranger Mike Callahan, and a handful of Boston-area musicians called If I Loved You.

“I’ll Be Here With You” (on the player at the beginning of this blog post) is one of Bobbi’s and my favorite songs with which to end a performance.

And, although I do not know the details of Nancy and David’s musical partnership, I have the sense that this song may have had a strong emotional resonance for them (and might even have been inspired by their friendship…)

Perhaps people who know more about David and Nancy’s history can weigh in using the comments section at the end of this blog post.

I think of David whenever someone says something along the lines of, “They don’t write great standards like they used to…”

There are, in fact, many people who are alive and well on planet earth and who are writing beautiful, wise songs.

But the ways that those songs reach — and touch — the rest of the world have changed significantly since the days of sheet music and singing around pianos in living rooms.

No longer does a new song get recorded by many, many different performers — with different recordings of the same song vying for the top spot on a few national radio networks.

The rise of the singer-songwriter — along with self-contained bands who create their own original material — marked a significant shift in our popular musical culture.

David’s songs have been recorded by pop stars including Diana Ross, Barry Manilow, and Petula Clark — but these days Diana, Barry and Petula are not dominating the charts as they once did…

However, we now have many new ways to share music — such as YouTube, Pandora, Spotify… and even personal blogs like mine.

And there are many singers still devoted to both the Great American Songbook of standards from the 1920s-1960s AND to all of the great songs that have been written since then.

So ripples of music continue to wash around our culture and around our planet…

Thank you to David Friedman for writing songs.

Thank you to Bobbi Carrey for her singing and for her musical collaboration over the past 15 years.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his piano playing and his engineering and his production skills and his patience and his humor.

Thank you to Mike Callahan for his vocal arrangements.

Thank you to Pixabay for most of the images in this blog post (and to the world wide web for the ones of David and of Nancy).

And thank YOU for making time so that you could read and listen to another one of my blog posts!

At The Pound…

 

I recently returned from another Massachusetts Men’s Gathering — otherwise known as MMG.

MMG has been happening — one weekend each spring and one weekend each fall — for 25+ years at various camps around Massachusetts.

When I first started attending it was held in Becket, MA, but now we gather in the woods near Worcester from Friday night until Sunday afternoon.

At the opening circle on Friday night, someone spoke about the recent death of a beloved canine companion.

 

 

I was reminded of a wonderful song by a writer named Babbie Green called “At The Pound” (in the player at the start of this post) which I recorded with the gifted pianist Doug Hammer for a CD I did with another singer, Bobbi Carrey, called “If I Loved You.”

 

 

Although I have not had a dog in my daily life since my teenage years — when my family had a very loving and patient Corgi named Bryn — I see how invaluable they can be in the lives of my friends and family.

 

 

I love “At The Pound” because of the details Babbie includes in the song — such as “now my car’s got a permanent blanket of dog hair.”

I also love how it ends…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“And they praise me for saving her life, saying, ‘oh what a lucky dog she…’ but when I think of all I have learned about loving, it is Molly in fact who saved me.”

 

 

Bette Midler — you with the wind beneath your wings who sometimes looks at our planet from a distance — you need to record this song!

Thank you for reading and listening to my blog.

And thank you — yet again — to Pixabay for the lovely photographs.