We paid tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. on The Folk Show with a number of folk songs that were popular during the civil rights movement. We included “We Shall Overcome” and “We Shall Not Be Moved,” and songs from Odetta, Pete Seeger, Sweet Honey in the Rock and John McCutcheon, all wonderful folk musicians known for inspiring folk audiences and for making listeners like me want to sing along.

One song I included was Billie Holiday’s 1939 recording of “Strange Fruit" based on a poem written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx, about the lynching of two black men. He published under the pen name Lewis Allan. 

Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

The song is dark, somber and deep. It is a reminder of where we once were as a nation.  The third Monday in January is a day to pay tribute to the accomplishments of a great leader and peacemaker. It is also a day to reflect with the knowledge that we need never go back again.  As Pete Seeger sang with the Rivertown Kids on his Grammy nominated cd, Tomorrow’s Children, “Take it From Dr. King.”

OY!  Imagine Christine Lavin’s voice, “OY”!  Christine Lavin and Don White stopped by recently promoting their new memoirs. 

Don’s new book, Memoirs of a C Student,  is chock full of stories about his life growing up in Lynn, Massachusetts. It is a wonderful narrative from a boy/man who could have been anyone’s neighbor in Lynn, who dared to give up his day job to become a folk musician. It is steeped in family, almost a companion book to his tunes, “Adolescent Rant”, “Be Sixteen With Me”  and “I Know what Love is “  It is poignant, funny and real… the real Don White!

In her book Cold Pizza for Breaokfast, a Mem-wha?, Christine guides us through her life as a folk musician. Before she left the studio a couple of weeks ago, she handed me the audio book.  I wonder what people are thinking as I giggle behind the wheel as I listen in my car.  I have already cruised through 6 of the 12 cd’s full of stories and songs with some added surprises thrown in.Talk about driveway moments!  She tells the story of opening for Joan Rivers at a  gig in Miami, a not so great experience for a young folksinging guirtar playing baton twirler. She gives us an insider’s view of the business behind the folk business. 

Oh, and the tunes and tunesmiths she knows from her immersion in THE folk clubs in New York.  It’s a folksinger’s tell-all.  I can’t wait to get to disc 7!  OY!

During our fall fund drive, NHPR’s Folk Show offered a special opportunity to donors. We offered a fun incentive for donors giving $500 dollars or more: an opportunity to be a guest d.j. on The Folk Show. Jeannie Dismukes took us up on our offer and joined us Sunday night as our guest. It was a telling experience for me, because it gave me a bit of a glimpse of who is listening to The Folk Show. I determined that there is no “typical” Folk Show listener. It is a mistake, I think, for anyone, like a consultant, to think they can stereotype our Sunday night listening audience

Jeannie is an airline pilot, originally from California and now living in Newbury, New Hampshire. She travels around the world, so listening to NHPR is not always an easy feat, although she admits, she can listen on the web no matter where she is. Her selections made up much of the first hour of our program. Jeannie likes songs whose lyrics tell a story. That is her understanding of what folk music is.

She had an opportunity to see Catie Curtis at The Folk Show Folk Show a couple of years ago and really enjoyed Catie’s song ”Hey California.”, whose lyrics boast
“In December we pretend that we're moving
We point out places on the map
We look at houses online, we read the L.A. Times
We go out in to the snow and laugh

And when you go to California
They want to know why you'd live back East
When the weather there is cold and the people there are cold
I say the people are why I'll never leave”

There’s a reason Californians, like Jeannie, stick out the cold here in New Hampshire and soon spring will peek out from the snow to remind us all just what those reasons are. Of course, as an airline pilot, Jeannie has ample opportunity to escape the cold blasts we’ve been experiencing when travel calls her away to places like Hong Kong and Mumbai.

Jeannie sent a tune out to her co-workers, “Bald Headed Men” by the Four Bitchin’ Babes. She is a professional woman in a male dominated industry, .so it seemed perfectly fitting to poke a bit of fun at receding hairlines.

Jeannie’s husband is a Michelle Shocked fan so we sent out “Child of Grace” to him. He was listening at home with friends at a special Folk Show listening party in honor of Jeannie’s appearance on our program.

The African American roots trio, Carolina Chocolate Drops are coming to Hanover, so Jeannie picked out “Dixie” from their album Dona Got a Ramblin’ Mind, and dedicated it to her mom Dixie who was listening on the web in California.

Of course, it wouldn’t have been a show co-piloted by a pilot if we hadn’t played her selection, Vance Gilbert’s “I’ve Got a Plane” from his Unfamiliar Moon album.

It was a real pleasure to have Jeannie in the studio. She’s a really lucky person. Not because she is an airline pilot who hosted the Folk Show, (she earned that), but because last year Jeannie and her husband won the Toyota Prius for participating in the car raffle, an NHPR fundraiser. She said she didn’t believe NHPR staff member Beth Szelog when she called to tell her she had won because her husband never even told her he bought the 50 dollar raffle ticket! Here’s hoping that Jeannie’s luck rubs off on all of us.

Many thanks to my co-pilot, Jeannie Dismukes!

They paved paradise. Well okay, they didn’t quite pave it yet, but I was stunned to see what used to be the Bardwell Farm on route 10 being rolled and flattened to become, I hear, a parking lot for a supermarket. I remember when we’d drive from Keene to Swanzey, past the property once home for many black and white cows. My kids would point and cheer, “The cows are out! The cows are out!!” They had names for the cows, too. “There’s Daddy and Mommy….and Maggie…look, there’s Nana and Lael”, they exclaimed from their back seat stations, giddy with excitement

Dave Mallett’s song “Main Street”, Greg Brown’s “Boomtown”, and Iris Dement’s “Our Town”, in addition to Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” all bemoan the changing landscape of our communities.

Another song that brings me pause is Greg Brown’s “Canned Goods”. He paints us a picture with smells of baking bread and the taste of pickles on our tongues with the picture of gram in her apron steaming up the kitchen windows while preserving summer in a mason jar.

As I was picking blueberries the other day I could hear my mom coaching me in the art of blueberry picking. “Gently roll the berry off the bush with this finger and your thumb. If it doesn’t roll off, it’s not ripe yet. Careful, careful…put your bucket right under the berries so you don’t lose them on the ground.” Then she’d smile, teasing, “one for your bucket, one for you.” It was really hard to put every berry in the pail, the luscious and juicy fruit staining my fingertips and teeth. Back in those days, I wasn’t really that interested in berry picking. It was hot. The bugs were biting. It required patience as the pail seemed to take forever to fill one berry at a time.

But now I’m so grateful to have had my mother’s coaching and for those days when the cows were out and the berry bushes loomed over me and my little berry pail. I’m grateful for the twirl and swirl of memories that fill all my senses like the smell of bread baking, the sounds of old songs and the images of black and white cows in a wide-open pasture.

Ours is not the first generation to watch our memories steam-rolled into the future. I’m reminded to savor those memories, just as I’ll savor the blueberry pie made from blueberries picked one blueberry at a time.