A Light for the City
October 12, 2008

We were dressed in black and seated in the choir loft at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. More than a hundred of us had rehearsed with the Nashville Choir’s leader, John Coates. We had rehearsed with the conductor of the evening, David Hamilton. It was our job to provide background vocals for several artists who had gathered to honor the career of Michael W. Smith at a 25th anniversary gala performance. We opened the evening with a medley of Michael’s worship songs, beginning with one of my favorites, Shine On Us. (It appeared on a recording, My Utmost for His Highest, for which Michael wrote several songs.) That led us into Hosanna and then all the way back to How Majestic Is Your Name, one of Michael’s first and best known praise songs.

How powerfully music can return you in memory to a particular time and place! It was Belmont Church, in the early 1980s…I wasn’t a member there, so I must have been visiting for a special service or program. Michael came bounding down the aisle and gave me a hug and said, “I’ve met the woman I’m going to marry.” He was so excited. He and I had co-written a couple of songs together because we were both published by Randy Cox at Paragon Music, which later became Meadowgreen, a Sony subsidiary. These days those copyrights are administered by Universal.

My favorite of the two songs, Waiting, we recorded in the eight-track studio at Hummingbird Productions, where I worked. I had heard Kathy Troccoli sing at church (before her first album), so we hired her to sing this ballad of yearning which compares a woman’s waiting for her true love with our waiting for Jesus’ return. As far as I know, no one else has ever recorded it, but just this year I received royalties from Psalm 42, the other song he and I co-wrote. I don’t recall our recording a demo of it. I’m trying to contact Universal to find out who recently recorded it. It would be amazing to hear the song after so many years.

After the choir finished our opening songs and had been seated, the master of ceremonies for the evening took the stage. Bill Gaither is ubiquitous on TV these days with his Homecoming gospel music shows, but early on I knew of Bill and his wife Gloria as songwriters. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s we were singing their praise choruses, He Touched Me and There’s Just Something About That Name and Because He Lives.

I am grateful that many times I have been privileged to meet and thank songwriters who have moved me and changed my life. Bill is one of those. I was on a plane to L.A. when I recognized him across the aisle. I only said a few words of thanks to him, but it meant much to me to be able to express my gratitude to him personally. I’m thankful that he used his gifts to touch the lives of so many and help us sing out our gratitude for God’s love. Gloria is the primary lyricist, but I have yet to meet her.

Next, on stage came four men who were Michael’s original touring band. So much history with the first guy! Chris Harris and I were band members together in Fireworks in 1977-78. We later worked for six years together at Hummingbird Productions. Many years and a lot of living later, Chris and I were sitting in the lobby of the Vanderbilt hospital where his son Brandon was recovering from a terrible car wreck. As he introduced me to another friend, we discovered something we hadn’t known about our shared history. We both made the decision to quit the jingle business on the same night.

That jingle session in 1987 was yet another in a seemingly endless stream of late nights, impossible deadlines and frustrating circumstances. The product was Kotex and it was four in the morning when we finished the vocals. The music was FedExed off to Chicago or New York or wherever the client was. As he drove away from that session, Chris prayed, “God, You’ve got to get me out of this.” He said it was only weeks later when the call came from Smitty (This is how most friends refer to Michael Whittaker Smith, the honoree of the evening.) hiring Chris to be the bass player on his first big road trip. Instead of asking God to remove me from the situation, I just decided to leave it cold. I’ve wondered what might have happened had I exercised the same wisdom Chris did.

Next on stage came Chris’s brother-in-law Mark Heimermann. I remember the night I first met the Heimermann family in the late ‘70s, so many of them crowding into my then-favorite Nashville restaurant, the Laughing Man. (It no longer exists, and nothing has taken its place.) The whole family was in town for one of Belmont Church’s Come Together Thanksgiving weekends. Chris may not have imagined when he found his wife Jan that he was marrying into a musical dynasty. Elder brother Charlie is a composer as well as a singer in the Nashville Symphony Choir; a choral composition of his was performed for the Pope in recent years. Younger brother Mark and Chris later formed a group called Prism which produced four albums of hymns, reimagined with contemporary pop arrangements. Brother-in-law Don Wise is also a gifted musician, as are many of the family’s next generation.

Following Chris and Mark onstage was Wayne Kirkpatrick. When Wayne was still a student at Belmont University, he brought a demo tape to me at Hummingbird. At that time, it was one of my jobs to review all the demos submitted and evaluate them for quality of musicianship, writing, performance, etc. I would then give the evaluation sheets and tapes to the producers to recommend a small percentage of all the demo submissions. Wayne was one I had rated highly. Years later his evaluation form surfaced in some office housecleaning and the person who found it happened to know Wayne, so I think she gave it to him as a keepsake. I had never spoken to him about the story so I enjoyed sharing it with him in the hall before rehearsal earlier that day.

The fourth guy, Chris Rodriguez, played guitar in Michael’s touring band and went on to accomplish much in his own musical career. He and I happened to share a flight to L.A. once and had an excellent discussion about Israel, which has been a subtext of my life. So there they were, his original touring band, singing another medley of Michael’s memorable ‘80s songs, Secret Ambition and I Will Be Here for You, along with a black gospel version of Nothing But the Blood.

I’m not much of a TV watcher and especially not a fan of all the talent competitions which have become such a prominent part of our culture. I find that intense desire and yearning and disappointment very difficult to watch, having lived through it in my own life and in the lives of many around me. But Michael mentioned to me that his family regularly spends time watching American Idol together. The kids’ friends come over and everyone hunkers down with popcorn.

So of course it meant much to him to have Idol winners Melinda Doolittle and Jordin Sparks sing the song he wrote in memory of the Columbine High School tragedy, This is Your Time. Jordin was one of his backup vocalists when we in the Nashville Choir sang behind him in a Christmas concert a few years ago, and she did the same amazing job on that night as she did on this, powerfully interpreting Michael’s song All Is Well. I believe it’s one of the most moving melodies he’s written.

The Nashville Choir also sang backgrounds for his most recent Christmas album, the 2007 It’s a Wonderful Christmas. I’d never recorded in quite this way before. With so many voices, there was no way each one could have headphones, so we were asked to bring personal radios with headphones and tune to a particular radio frequency, and the recording feed was broadcast to it. Amazing.

I’m not sure why Ricky Skaggs was on the program because I don’t know what his and Michael’s association has been. Ricky’s been a leader in Bluegrass music, the protégé of Bill Monroe, and is well known for his Christian witness. I’ve never met him but I pitched a country song to his company (the only country song I’ve ever written, The Laundramat Waltz) and I stood nearby as he and his wife’s family, The Whites, sang in the lobby of the Green Hills movie theater for the premiere of O Brother, Where Art Thou? I know a lot of people who know him, including his recent production company manager, whose wife is in my book club. That’s Nashville for you.

Earlier in the afternoon before the MWS gala began, I was standing in the hallway telling Wayne Kirkpatrick my story about his Hummingbird “evaluation” when Mark Heimermann, Chris Harris and his son Brandon all gathered with us. As we stood chatting, down the hall came Amy Grant looking for the dressing rooms. Amy had her Harris-Teeter grocery bag, a couple of other bags or purses, and her guitar. She looked weary and a little befuddled. You wouldn’t have imagined that she could put on a black dress and sparkly earrings and come out on stage looking like a million bucks just a couple of hours later, but she did.

Amy is the fourth daughter of one of my grandmother’s doctors, Burton Grant. Her mom, Gloria, once went to get a prescription filled for my grandmother, because the weather was so cold. That’s the kind of gracious people they are. My grandmother was in a garden club with Amy’s grandmother, Zell Grant. I didn’t know these things until I was telling my mother about singing background vocals on a young girl’s album back in the fall of 1976 and she clued me into how many ways we knew the family. At the time we met, Amy was sixteen and a member of the Belmont Church’s youth group of which Brown Bannister was a leader. (More about Brown and me later on.)

Brown had moved to Nashville, with his friend Chris Christian, after graduating from Abilene Christian University. Chris (aka Lon Christian Smith) was an ambitious young Texas businessman who saw his future in music and made a lot of things happen very quickly. That year, 1976, he had worked a deal with Word Records to produce ten artists, many of his own choosing. He charged Brown with the task of becoming a recording engineer almost overnight. Brown’s early engineering sessions included lessons from the studio musicians as to which dial on the sound board did what.

With Brown’s help, Amy made a tape of some original songs she intended as a gift to her parents. She had written these songs in an attempt to communicate with her Harpeth Hall classmates about the love of Jesus which had become so real to her. Brown played the tape for Chris, and Chris played the tape over the phone for the Word people in Waco. “Sign her up!” they said. Thus Amy became one of the ten acts Chris had contracted to produce that year.

Since it was low budget and since Amy was in high school, many of the recording sessions were done outside normal studio hours. Sessions usually ran 10-1, 2-5 and 6-9. I was one of a handful of slightly older singers who were thrilled at the opportunity to record, to invent our own background vocals, to stay up late being creative and sometimes, occasionally, make a little money. (Not union scale, but we were so poor that we were still grateful.) We were in our twenties so to Amy we were “grownups” but we didn’t feel very grown up.

Marty McCall, Gary Pigg and I found that we worked well together. We were inventive, our voices blended (mine was the fuzzy bonding material between the two unique voices of the men), and we were quick. The three of us had the privilege of singing background vocals on most of the ten projects Chris produced that year, including B. J. Thomas’ first Christian album, Home Where I Belong. (His claim to fame was the Bacharach/David hit Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head from the movie Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, and I loved his other hit from the ‘60s, Hooked on a Feelin’.)

Marty had recently moved to Nashville to become a solo artist, but when Word Records heard the three of us together, they offered us a two-record deal to become a group on their label. We named ourselves Fireworks and Chris Harris (introduced above) became our bass player and Lanny Avery our drummer. Now, sitting in the darkened auditorium listening to Amy sing Michael’s songs (Thy Word, which they co-wrote; Rocketown; Give It Away), I glanced up to the seats in the balcony to my right and there sat Gary Pigg with his son Landon, also a singer/songwriter with much success nationally in the past couple of years.

Marty now lives with his wife Vickie in Herndon, Virginia, and I have visited them twice, in 2007 and again this spring. But Gary and I see each other almost every week, as his wife Carol and I have been dear friends since 1975. I’ve watched their son Landon grow up, along with his sister and three brothers. It’s amazing to see the next generation taking off, doing what we aspired to do and doing it better. The youngest, Gabe, is a drummer.

And their daughter, Cari-Ann, married a drummer. A few years ago, their wedding was held at Michael and Debbie Smith’s country house, in a beautiful garden beside a lake. Of course her brother Landon sang, but a young lady I didn’t recognize sang too. It turned out she was Jenny Gill, Amy Grant’s step-daughter with Vince Gill.

Amy and I have never “hung out” but living in the same town has given me the opportunity to run into her at various times over the years. Once my mom and I were waiting in the airport at the same gate where Amy showed up, and I was able to introduce them and describe the family connections to Amy. Another time she and her sister Mimi were having lunch and we spoke. I was pleased to hear that they had been discussing our band, Fireworks, on her tour bus and wondering where everyone was now. When I quit the group I felt I had fallen off the face of the musical earth. Turned out I was wrong, but who could predict?

After singing backgrounds on her first album, I also had the privilege of singing backgrounds with Gary Pigg and another girl when Amy first performed with a live band. (Until then it had been just Amy and her guitar.) The concert was at Vanderbilt, where she was then in school, and it happens that I currently work in the building next door to the Langford Auditorium where we sang twenty-nine years ago. It was not much fun for me since rehearsal time was too brief, and we were singing with a girl who flew in from Texas for the event and missed rehearsal. Also the pay was minimal, and I was beginning to notice.

When it was time to record her third album, a friend and I co-wrote a song, Say Once More, which we handed on a cassette to her producer, Brown. (I still get tiny royalty checks for that song, even though it appeared on her second-least-selling album, Never Alone.) Those were the days, when you could simply walk up and hand a song to a producer! It wasn’t long until even the contemporary Christian music industry, the little brother of pop music, had become so complex and organized that all the songs came from known writers who had publishing deals. There were official song presentation meetings and the like. Of course, by that point we were talking about real money, so every Joe Schmoe and his sister were trying to get their songs cut, and there had to be some kind of filter.

I have always trusted Amy’s sincerity, but she made a huge impression on me years ago with the extra effort she took to bless a young friend of mine. She asked me for my friend’s name and actually remembered it, greeting her personally when I brought the girl to a teen fellowship/concert at Amy’s barn. I later told that story to Vince when I met him at a Belmont Church “family reunion” held in the ‘90s. He smiled and agreed, “She’s really good at the name thing.” That’s an ability some people have naturally, but Amy works at giving people this gift of recognition. She has grown up under constant public scrutiny and, despite untold harsh criticism, she has remained deeply genuine and consistently kind.

I’ve run into her at restaurants and in the grocery store parking lot, but the most significant moment for me came when I had the privilege of encouraging a creative impulse. She sang, along with our old group Fireworks and several other groups and singer/ songwriters, at a reunion concert in November, 2007. We were standing backstage and I asked her if the scripture song she had just performed was “written” or if it’s different every time she sings it. (I’ve known people with the gift of improvisation who compose new melodies on the spot, as they sing.)

She said she had many more like it and had been considering recording them. She had been discouraged that such a project could not be a commercial success. I exhorted her to do it anyway, saying, “We bought albums years ago that were musical dreck just because they were scripture. There is an audience. There are people who will buy this! Please do it.” Since she hasn’t recorded it yet, I’ve thought about writing to reinforce how moving I believe it would be to hear symphonic arrangements behind her very free, creative melodies.

Back at the Schermerhorn gala, the next artist to appear on stage carried a significant chapter of my history with her. Wynonna has had a solo career for decades now, but when she was a teenager she sang with her mother as a duo. They were known as The Judds. Neither woman is likely to remember my name, but I played a deep-background supporting role in getting their career off the ground.

In 1982 I was living alone in a four-bedroom house. One evening I went out to dinner with friends from church to meet a couple visiting briefly on their way from Florida to Rochester, New York. Their names were Don and Christine Potter. I felt an immediate, strong connection with both of them, and when I discovered they were considering moving back to Nashville (having lived here previously in pursuit of the music business), I offered without hesitation for them to stay with me while they looked for a place to live.

They loved visiting our church, but they could hardly believe it was real, so they made two or three trips down from Rochester just to go to church before they made the decision to move. When they arrived with their van full of stuff, I discovered they were in bad financial straits and would probably be staying with me longer than a few days or weeks. We couldn’t have imagined three years, but that’s what it turned out to be. Don, a fabulously talented guitarist, felt that God wanted him to lay down his guitar and work as a construction laborer for a time, and he was obedient. But one day, I believe it was Thanksgiving 1982, Don took his guitar on a visit to the home of an old music business friend, Brent Maher.

He played for Brent, and when he heard the jazz inflected brilliance of Don’s playing Brent was amazed. Just that week he had been conversing with Dan Raines, a contemporary Christian music business guy, who described his search for a new artist with precisely Don’s capabilities. Eventually, songs were written, and two albums were produced. But in the meantime, during the production process, Brent said to Don one day, “There are these two girls living out in Franklin, a mother and daughter. I think I’d like to pitch them to RCA. Why don’t you go out there and work with them to get a few songs ready for an audition?”

Wynonna and Naomi Judd had reinvented themselves as Kentucky country girls. Their real names were Christine and Diana and one of the mother’s previous jobs had been in L.A. as receptionist for the office of the Fifth Dimension (a pop group at the height of their fame in the ‘60s and ‘70s). Simple, unsophisticated country girls they were decidedly not. The mother was a nurse and had cared for Brent’s son when he was in the hospital following a car wreck. Naomi (Diane) slipped Brent a cassette of songs she and her daughter had sung into a cheap cassette recorder in their kitchen. That cassette went into the glove compartment of Brent’s car and months passed before he got the urge to pop it in and have a listen.

And so it was that Don Potter met Naomi and Wynonna and worked with them to get a few songs ready to perform. The executives at RCA agreed to audition the girls in person – unheard of since decades before – and offered them a deal the same day. Their first album was released in 1983. Don went on the road with them in the early months of their career, and then continued to coproduce the majority of their records with Brent. Don’s wife Christine and I visited the studio one night to hear what they were up to and met Wynonna for the first time there. Many nights we dropped Don off in the Kroger parking lot where the bus was waiting to take the girls on the road. I recall one evening when Wynonna came over and sat in our living room and discussed her boyfriend troubles.

One morning in 1985 I was home sick and got to witness a little of the life that went on in my house when I was on Music Row working at the jingle company. The folks at RCA, or her management company, someone with clout, had decided that Wynonna needed to lose weight. They hired an Asian guy to go everywhere with her and keep her moving. He was the first personal trainer I had ever met. Dressed all in black, he reminded me more than anything of Cato, the servant of Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies.

Back at the gala, the Nashville Choir rose to our feet to sing Great Is Thy Faithfulness, one of my favorite hymns. It was an evening conceived to honor the ministry and career of Michael W. Smith, but I’m sure many people felt, like I did, that it was a night of looking back over our own lives as well. Indeed, God has been faithful: to teach and train, to correct and comfort, to empower and to protect through many challenges.

We ended the evening with a worship medley led by Brown Bannister. How appropriate that the last person to take the stage was the first person I met. Back in 1973, it was summer and we were gathered at the campus of Pepperdine University for a wedding. Our friend since seventh grade, Janice Hahn, was marrying a Texas boy, Gary Baucum. They had met at Abilene Christian University where Janice roomed with my best friend, Marilyn Young. Gathered to celebrate Janice and Gary’s wedding were all these precious Texas men.

We found that God’s Spirit was at work in Abilene like He was in California, wooing our hearts and drawing forth worship. We all sat in the Youngs’ living room and sang and prayed together. Brown Bannister was one of those young men. He and I, with my college boyfriend Danny, were asked by Janice to sing Noel Paul Stookey’s There Is Love in her wedding. So I met Brown in the context of worship and music three years prior to our first recording session, in the Nashville studio called the Gold Mine (the basement of Chris Christian’s home).

The Smitty concert ended with a song that has become a beloved anthem for many reunions and partings. Michael and Debbie wrote it on the spur of the moment one night for a friends’ going away party, and it became an instant classic. It was a fitting close for the concert and it also serves as an excellent blessing with which to end this stroll down memory lane.

“Friends are friends forever, if the Lord’s the Lord of them
And a friend will not say ‘Never’ for the welcome will not end.
Though it’s hard to let you go, in the Father’s hands we know
That a lifetime’s not too long to live as friends.”

Sharansky and Obama, 2009

I was a junior in college when Anatoly Shcharansky applied for an exit visa to leave the Soviet Union and move to Israel. He was a mathematician and a chess prodigy. I didn’t hear of him until a few years after he had become involved in the Refusenik movement in Moscow. He became the spokesman of the Helsinki Watch Group and drew international attention to the failure of the Soviet Union to abide by the Helsinki Accords, which included relaxing travel restrictions on the signatories’ citizens. In 1978 he was convicted of treason and spying for the United States and began an imprisonment that lasted until 1986, much of it in a Siberian labor camp.

During the years of his imprisonment, I was involved in a church which focused much of its attention on Israel. Like many Bible-believing Christians, I felt I had a stake in that part of the world for several reasons. First, its towns and villages, its Jordan River and Galilee and Dead Sea were part of my mental geography from years of Sunday school and personal Bible study. They were more familiar and significant to me than the geography of my own country.

Second, its prophets were my prophets. Didn’t Martin Luther King move me when he declared, “Let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream”? (Amos 5:24) Wasn’t I thrilled to hear Commander Frank Borman read from the book of Genesis as Apollo 8 orbited the moon on Christmas Eve, 1968? The first words of scripture I ever took as a personal message of comfort from God were not from the New Testament. They came through the prophet Jeremiah in his Lamentations (3:22).

Third, I had come to understand that my faith was a mostly Jewish faith until Gentiles were ushered in through the work of a Jewish Roman citizen named Paul. My Messiah was Jewish, as were his twelve apostles and the vast majority of his followers until decades following his death and resurrection.

Still, the attention I paid to Israel was out of the ordinary, and led to many friendships with Jewish people, nine months spent living in Jerusalem, and seven trips to the country. I eventually also worked for eight years as executive assistant to the rabbis of a Reform Jewish congregation in Nashville, but that came later.

Thus it wasn’t surprising that I had heard of Shcharansky and the tireless international work of his wife Avital to get him freed from imprisonment. When the moment came in 1986, he was released in exchange for two Soviet spies, and was asked to walk across a bridge from East to West Berlin. I learned from Wikipedia that “famed for his resistance in the Gulag, he was told upon his release to walk straight towards his freedom; Sharansky instead walked in a zigzag in a final act of defiance.” He was finally free to make aliyah to Israel, where he adopted the Hebrew name Natan.

In the fall of 1986, I had just moved to Jerusalem, but I didn’t see Sharansky at that time. It wasn’t until 1989, when I had returned to sing at the bris of my friends’ baby boy, that I had the privilege of witnessing his dream come true. He was already rising in Israeli politics, and I heard a crowd, upon spotting him in a local bank, crying, “Sharansky! Sharansky!” Hail, the conquering hero! What a victory of persistence and hope. More information about Sharansky’s remarkable achievements and honors can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharansky

I felt privileged to hear him speak in person this past March 18, 2009 when he participated in the Impact Forum at Vanderbilt University, where I work. The Forum has hosted many national figures, including some American presidents. The first of two evenings featured Madeleine Albright, focusing on the topic “Diplomacy in the New Millenium.” The packed audience was hoping for an encouraging word from a woman of such expertise, given the state of international events challenging our young president.

I mostly gleaned from her experience a sense of the humanity upon which world-changing decisions depends. Phone calls (sometimes daily calls), friendships, the fragile ability to communicate person to person, are often the only things keeping us from tripping over the edge of crisis into chaos. She was just one woman – certainly a very bright, capable, intelligent woman, but nevertheless operating with only the same set of skills and tools any other human comes equipped with – and yet she represented our nation on the international stage and made a difference.

The following evening belonged to Sharansky. I arrived early and expected the auditorium to fill close to the hour, as folks on “Nashville time” generally arrive a minute or two late. But the auditorium did not fill. I realized I should have taken it upon myself to do some publicity. I could have invited all four synagogues to advertise the event. I could have emailed all my acquaintances with a similar interest in things Israeli, and that network could have increased the audience size. It hadn’t occurred to me that perhaps Sharansky has not been enough in the news for this generation to find his appearance compelling.

When he was introducing Mr. Sharansky, the young Vanderbilt student warned us that we would have to listen carefully, but he assured us it would be worth the extra effort. Indeed, Sharansky speaks English like the Ukrainian he was. If one is accustomed to many accents it’s not so difficult to make the adjustment, but for some, especially the young people in the audience, it must have been a strain to get past the accent to the treasure of his thoughts.

It was awe-inspiring for me to sit and listen to this man about whom I had heard so much. In the brief time we had in his presence it became more evident to me the personal strengths with which he endured the extremities of his long imprisonment. Not only was he highly intelligent, determined and disciplined; he also has quite a sense of humor. His ability to see past externals into the meaning of the moment was deeply inspiring.

He admitted to us that it may have been “mean” of him (his word), but he often used humor to disarm his guards. He would be brought in from time to time for pointless interrogations. He would take the opportunity to tell jokes about Chairman Brezhnev, which, he noted, were easy to make as Brezhnev provided such great material. The guards, staunch representatives of the State, had to suppress their laughter, which they could scarcely do. He realized at such moments the beautiful irony that he, though a prisoner, was a free man, and his guards, though powerful officers of State-authorized terror, were not free even to laugh at a good joke.

Sharansky said so many memorable things that I was grateful I had bought his book (and had him sign it) prior to the talk. I can sum up his message, though, in just one major thought. Since the topic was “Diplomacy in the New Millenium,” of course he addressed the problem President Obama faces in dealing with so much unrest and long unresolved conflict in his own region of the Middle East as well as in many places around the globe.

Sharansky posited that there are three kinds of people in any totalitarian regime. There are those who are true believers, who fully agree with the regime. There are the dissidents who vocally and publicly stand against it. And the third group, the vast majority, are afflicted with what he calls doublespeak. They think one thing but say another. The internal conflict which this disconnect produces must be encouraged, ignited, and raised to a level where they begin to say what they truly feel.

Speaking from his own experience in the Gulag, as well as the years prior when he was an activist and still able to communicate internationally, Sharansky encouraged us to believe that our freedom is enticing. Our freedom to think and choose and speak and act on our convictions will ultimately strengthen freedom lovers in other countries to risk whatever it takes to gain those same freedoms. I wish I had taken notes that evening. It didn’t occur to me at the time that I would see his hard-won wisdom lived out so quickly on the international stage.

Less than three months had passed when on June 4, 2009, President Obama went to Cairo to deliver a major address to the Muslim world. Being a Bible-believing Christian, as well as a person who has spent thirty years thinking about the Middle East, I certainly came to the moment with a full arsenal of opinions, but also with a great deal of hope. One of the campaign slogans last fall, “Choosing hope over fear for two thousand years,” spoke my heart. If we really believe our scriptures, we must take courage from verses like Proverbs 21:1, “The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.” Though constrained by wisdom, we must not succumb to fear and hopelessness in the face of tyranny and oppression.

I have an unpopular conviction which my liberal arts education did not provide. I was raised in a university atmosphere where Islam was always presented as one of the three monotheistic religions, as if Christians and Jews were at least its cousins if not its brothers. In academia one doesn’t regularly hear discussion of such concepts as “the demon” and “the spirit of anti-Christ.” Yet I had come to an understanding that, since Mohammed received his revelations (or, as I perceive it, cobbled together his new religion) after Jesus had come, the underlying spirit empowering his system could be none other than the spirit of anti-Christ.

This statement sounds like something from the Crusades, a rallying cry for the Knights Templar, a horrific and benighted belief that can lead to nothing but conflict and bloodshed. Let me be quick to distinguish between my rejection of Islam as a belief system and my concern and affection for those who embrace Islam. The much maligned dictum, “Hate the sin, but love the sinner,” is easily dismissed, yet it is precisely how I see this dilemma. I believe Islam is a tyrannical system which oppresses women, appeals to men’s baser natures, and ultimately is intent upon world domination. At the same time, I am personally acquainted with people who identify themselves with Islam who are respectable, honorable, loving people.

I have confessed my inner convictions about Islam in order to demonstrated that my hope for President Obama’s Cairo speech was not easily won or lightly held. I hoped in spite of deep distrust for the system which he was addressing. I hoped for the sake of the millions of individual hearts he was addressing. I won’t quote his speech here, as hundreds of pundits have already done so. I will simply register my amazement and gratitude that I had lived to see the day that an American president would do what my Refusenik hero Sharansky had recommended. President Obama reached over the heads of the hierarchies of the Middle East, the mullahs and sheiks and imams, the councils and Ayatollahs, to speak to the vast majority of people who have been thinking one thing and saying another.

He spoke of freedom, of change, of opportunity, of new, tentative attempts at relationship. He spoke of shared history, and honored their cherished scriptures, choosing to quote tenets upon which we can all agree. His very presence in the office of President of the United States spoke more strongly than any words, since his own family tree is one of such diversity that even people in our mongrel nation are amazed by it.

Still, in my admittedly fertile imagination, I could not have come up with the scenario that now plays itself out on in internet, through cell phones, on Twitter, and eventually to the 24-hour news programs. We may be seeing the first fruits of the President’s invitation. Iranians have taken to the streets declaring their desire for freedom. They are standing up to their Supreme Leader.

It remains to be seen how this unpredicted popular uprising will end, whether in a new government for Iran or in increased oppression. Nevertheless, I feel so grateful to have been a witness to the simple, humble wisdom of Natan Sharansky. And I am grateful, and amazed, to see that wisdom demonstrated by a President whose earnest desire is for civil discourse on the road toward peace.

Some of my co-religionists who have been watching Israel play its part in the apocalyptic drama will ask me, “How can you possibly hope for peace in the Middle East? There will be nothing but war and unrest until Jesus returns.” I would counter with the psalmist’s exhortation, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6) And Isaiah 62:6,7 reminds us: “I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the LORD, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.”

Though I’ve sung about it for decades, I haven’t yet been able to imagine what the peace of Jerusalem will really look like. I’ve only known it divided, at war, on constant vigilant alert. But surely in spite of current political realities we can’t shake off the vision of the prophet Micah who saw the day when “they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.” (Micah 4:4)

Musings on Aging

When I was the child in this photo, my goal was to become a college student. So when I graduated from college, I felt more than a bit lost, having given little thought or energy to the life that lay beyond. For the next couple of decades I still felt 17. I enjoyed a reputation as a precocious young person amidst my elders, and recently realized I still take pleasure in exceeding expectations.

In my thirties and forties I unofficially adopted a growing family. As “Aunt Gwen” I became a quasi-matriarch, ending up with seven grandbabies. My mother transformed from a plan-initiating, world-traveling woman to an Alzheimer’s patient, addled, dependent and childlike. Empathy for my mother’s situation, interacting in the workplace with folks decades older than me, and my own fibromyalgia and other complaints added to my feeling quite “old”. Still, eighty didn’t seem so old now that my mother was eighty.

Life changes suddenly brought me into daily contact with young people. In the medical school, the energy of youth surrounds me. The intellectual dance of serious learning and playful cleverness is stimulating. Emotional and relational struggles in my younger friends’ lives reflect my own. Being single all my life adds to the fluid sense of age, since I have no family milestones from which to take my bearings. It’s freaky to have friends my age with receding hairlines, paunches and wrinkles and still recognize the young person they were when we met.

Writing my autobiography in 2006 allowed me to revisit all the years from the first half of this journey and incorporate all those parts of me into who I currently am…child, adolescent, young woman, matriarch and (currently) a white-haired but “youthened” woman experiencing a creative renaissance, pursuing a wide range of activities and finding that play enhances my sense of well being and engagement.

At my fiftieth birthday I was asked to share any wisdom gleaned along my path. My response was instant: “For every ‘Yes’ you say in life, there are many ‘Nos’.” The finitude of this life experience has been my greatest ongoing challenge. I can’t be more than one place at once. I can’t practically incorporate as much adventure and relational richness and newness into my life as I would wish for and imagine.

Poets and scholars affirm my confidence that there is another world, an experience beyond this one, where finitude loses its restrictive grip and expansiveness becomes our “normal”. “There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace.” (Isaiah 9:17) I’m dying, and living, for the dawning of that day.

Elizabeth Alexander’s poem for the Inauguration
January 20, 2009

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other,
catching each others' eyes
or not,
about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise.
All about us is noise and bramble,
thorn and din,
each one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem,
darning a hole in a uniform,
patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky;
a teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words,
words spiny or smooth,
whispered or declaimed;
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways
that mark the will of someone
and then others who said,
"I need to see what's on the other side;
I know there's something better down the road."
We need to find a place where we are safe;
we walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks,
raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce,
built brick by brick
the glittering edifices they would then keep clean
and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle;
praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign;
the figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."
Others by first do no harm,
or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love,
love beyond marital,
filial,
national?
Love that casts a widening pool of light.
Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle,
this winter air,
anything can be made,
any sentence begun.

On the brink,
on the brim,
on the cusp –
praise song for walking forward in that light.

Leiper’s Fork Christmas Parade

This caroling adventure started out as the brain child of a Leiper’s Fork restaurant owner. We’ll call her Miss Patti. She asked her music business friend – we’ll call him Mike Macintosh - to gather a few carolers to sing in the Leiper’s Fork Christmas Parade. Where I got the idea we would be standing under a pavilion looking all Currier & Ives, I can’t imagine. [Oh yeah, it was in his invitation email! I didn’t make that part up.]

The plan was that we were to meet at her eating establishment an hour before the parade and “rehearse”. I imagined we might turn out to be an odd collection of out-of-work session singers, and hoped I would read music well enough to keep up. Instead of rehearsing, I was vaguely introduced to another lady and asked to follow her to I wasn’t sure where. Gamely we made our way down Old Hillsboro Road amidst the gathering crowd and across a large, somewhat muddy field to the area where all the floats were assembling. There we were joined by a few more caroling volunteers.

We located our “float” by its identification number. This was a pretty long parade if we were number 41, I thought to myself. It was a flat bed truck, loaded with hay bales for sitting. Miss Patti had found a Santa and a snowman on sale somewhere and they were stationed at the front of the flatbed. She produced multiple Kroger bags full of garland to tape to the front of the truck and along the sides of the trailer. Everyone, guys included, hustled to get the decorating done. When we finished draping and taping, it was five minutes to the parade start time and we all piled aboard to “rehearse”.

Then we realized that we were positioned immediately behind another float which had seriously amplified TRACKS and a drum machine. There was no way anybody was going to hear us, motley unamplified a cappella crew that we were. Miss Patti found the Parade Director (a woman with a clipboard) and insisted that the parade order must be changed. “But Demetria Kaladimos already has the script! This is being televised on local TV – it won’t be good if we get out of order!” Miss Patti declared that she would take the responsibility. So a few other parade participants slid between us and the drum machine float.

The singers included the Mike Macintosh and a lady who I believe might be his wife; a gentleman in an overcoat; a cute young couple who showed up at the last minute bundled up in ski parkas; a family of young black men led by their matriarch; and a family of small blond children with their matriarch, who wrapped them in a huge camouflage quilt to keep them warm. I think the two matriarchs may have been the “singers” in the two families.

The guy in the overcoat was very handsome. I kept trying to discern his eligibility and I think it ended up he was single. Still, since we were never introduced, there’s little hope that our sitting back-to-back on hay bales will develop into a lovely connection.

How we might have sounded under different conditions, we’ll never know. Here’s how it went down. Miss Patti, restaurant owner and caroling entrepreneur, had a Mr. Microphone with amp which she placed next to her. She sat in the back of the truck facing the singers, who were facing outward to the crowd, back to back on the hay bales. Between Miss Patti and the rear of the flatbed, we singers seemed to be in two or three different time zones. Full of leadership energy, Miss Patti would start a song at quite a good clip and the guys in the back would end up singing it at their own, more (shall we say) relaxed, pace.

Finally, the parade began. Since I was sitting directly behind the tailpipe of the truck, the sky was overcast and gray, the temperature was in the low 30s, and I had just spent a week at home sick with bronchial issues, my Christmas spirit was not exactly exuding. But the cheerful faces of the crowds, (one- and sometimes two-deep along the parade route), kids waving, old tobacco-chewing men looking sheepish or skeptical, young couples with babies in strollers trying to make some magical memories – it all started to get to me. Pretty soon I was waving and smiling and making eye contact like a professional float rider. And before you knew it, it was over!! We actually sang better, and longer, on the slow trek back to the field than we had during the actual “performance”, about two blocks long.

There were some amazing sights to be seen. It was rumored that Naomi Judd was to be the Parade Marshall, and though there were no Judd sightings, we did see her red sleigh, very elegant. There were some awesome small horses with heavy fur, bedecked with multitudinous sleigh bells that made a shimmering sound, with their riders dressed in red finery. There was an old bearded guy gussied up as Father Christmas with long robes, his similarly garbed ancient wife and two enormous Great Danes draped in black velvet costumes that made them look like tiny horses. Demetria Kaladimos, looking small, cold and red-nosed, was indeed elevated on a platform in the middle of town (read two blocks of Old Hillsboro Road) announcing the parade, and a swarthy and mysterious gentleman, her announcing partner, noted as we passed that we ought to “Sing louder!” Right.

We determined that next year Miss Patti’s float would use TRACKS and choose three songs to feature, all upbeat and cheerful. There’s no time for aesthetics or sensitivity in a high powered parade like this.

Thanks to Mike Macintosh, the instigator of my Leiper’s Fork adventure, for inspiring me to write this little essay. Such memories should be preserved. Think what I would have missed if I had never left L.A.

Below, see Puckett's Grocery, a famed Leiper's Fork music venue and eatery.

2007 was an excellent year.

January: I rang in the New Year in California with Chip and Sharyn and their international friends. I continued receiving a weekly massage from a neighbor, Michael Shumate, also developing a cherished friendship. I continued enjoying my monthly Book Club and the other three Tuesdays each month I participated in a support group on “Boundaries”. Henry Cloud and John Townsend have written some really helpful books and produced a filmed teaching series on this subject, which we watch and discuss.

February: I started another series of watercolor classes at the Watkins Institute. Though I arrived at class exhausted (6:00 pm on a weeknight), three hours later I was feeling exhilarated and inspired!

March: I did a recording session with a small group of singers from church and enjoyed being “back in the saddle” again. Friends who live on a farm hosted a wonderful potluck with music by an Israeli harpist and a Celtic guitarist and a wonderful big bonfire. It was great being introduced to all the farm animals.

April: A big month! What a privilege it was to share a Passover seder at the home of Sandra and Aaron Elkins. I enjoyed singing with the Nashville Choir at the new symphony hall, the Schermerhorn. It was a hymn sing sponsored by the Sparrow Foundation fulfilling a longstanding dream of Billy Ray Hearn. I loved seeing the movie Gypsy Caravan. (A documentary follows bands of gypsy musicians from four different countries as they travel and perform together.) I sang a David Foster-composed duet, The Prayer, with Courtney Schadt, a senior medical student, at the Fine Arts Recital at Vanderbilt – the first time I’ve sung a “big” (loud!) solo in public. Finally, I began having weekly creative meetings with my dear friend Carol Pigg. We’re each working on writing a book, hers about journaling, mine a romance.

May: I traveled to Washington DC with a group of sixteen from the Nashville Choir to participate in a Convocation of the Arts sponsored by the Washington Arts Group. What a rich feast of fellowship, fun, creativity and challenge. The trip was like going back to high school or college –getting to talk and play non-stop with a bunch of great people, our only responsibility to sing (and fight the temptation to criticize the chaos). Gary Pigg and I also enjoyed having lunch with dear friends Marty and Vickie McCall and Carolyn Naifeh.

June: I finally began inviting dinner guests using the china, crystal and silver I inherited from my mom. I attended the Schermerhorn again and enjoyed Carmina Burana, performed magnificently by the symphony choir. With the Nashville Choir I had a great time recording for Michael W. Smith’s next Christmas album.

July: A life-transforming process began when Carol Pigg and I began doing one chapter each week from the exercises recommended by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way.

August: One of the dreams I listed in an exercise from The Artist’s Way was to sing in a Renaissance chamber music ensemble, and an email came my way mere weeks later announcing tryouts for such a group. I tried out and became a member of Collegium Vocale at Vanderbilt. Very challenging!

September: The C.S. Lewis Foundation put on a wonderful one-day seminar at Belmont University which I attended with my C.S. Lewis-loving friend Diane West. At our first Collegium concert I reconnected with the first guy who offered me a publishing deal in Nashville, Randy Cox. I was inspired by my neighbor the massage guy to begin a detox program with an amazing Christian nutritionist named Celeste Davis. If you’re local and you would like to be healthier, go to her website at http://wellnessworkshopcoolsprings.com

October: Jack Hayford spoke at a local church and it’s always a personal blessing for me to hear Pastor Jack, my spiritual father since 1973. I braved a Pepperdine alumni gathering for the first time ever and enjoyed meeting several new people and renewing a few previous connections. We were all grateful to hear that the fires had not damaged or injured any Pepperdiners. The most fun thing about October was rehearsing with Gary Pigg, Chris Harris, Cindy Hudson and Ric Simenson for a reunion of our group Fireworks, one of the groundbreaking early rock groups in contemporary Christian music.

November: Lead singer and songwriter Marty McCall has been battling cancer so we were not sure if he could join us, but he gloriously did, and we had a fabulous night singing at the Koinonia Family Reunion Concert on November 1. Other musicians included ‘70s groups Homecoming (Brown Bannister, Bob Farnsworth and Alan Robertson subbing for original member Mike Hudson) and Dogwood (Steve Chapman, Ron Elder and Ken Fletcher). We were all thrilled to hear Amy Grant, Billy Sprague and Jim Weber. Some of us did a promotional interview on Brian Mason’s Sunday morning radio show (photo below).

November also included two weeks in California. I enjoyed time with my brother and sis-in-law, Chip and Sharyn, as well as Thanksgiving Day with Sara and Sam Jackson, Helen Young, and their family. The Jacksons and Steve Stewart and I had a wonderful dinner with Janie and Mark Long. I had a great evening reconnecting with college friend Dan Hoard, who is the new minister at the Redondo Beach Church of Christ, where I also got to see Jimmy, Janice and Ramona Hahn, George Hill, the Smythes, the Grimeses – it was an old home week for long-time Pepperdiners.

December: The most amazing month to top a remarkable year – I connected with an eHarmony guy who has visited from Illinois twice. Ted and Jane-Anne Thomas (with whom I attended a family reunion last year) stayed at my condo while Jane-Anne had a medical appointment at Vanderbilt and later returned to receive a clean bill of health. After performing in an Advent concert with Collegium and a Christmas concert at church, I enjoyed being a part of the congregation at the Christmas Eve midnight service at St. Bartholomew’s where I love hearing Eric Wyse lead worship.

“Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power

that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and]

do superabundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think

[infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]--

to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus

throughout all generations forever and ever.

Amen (so be it).”

(Ephesians 3:20,21)

Ideas for a Really Great Year, Listed in No Particular Order

(2006)

“Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.”
– W.T. Purkiser

= Join or initiate a Book Club. I found it enhances your reading to know you will be able to discuss it later with friends. Our group began with Soul Survivor by Phillip Yancey, reading one chapter per month plus any outside reading we could manage by or about the person Mr. Yancey profiled in that chapter.

= Find a massage school where you can receive massage from their students for half price. What a gift this has been in my life, beginning this summer. I may never quit, now that I’ve benefited so much from it. Other discretionary income items may have to go; this one stays!

= Order a copy of the Illustrated Discovery Journal by Sarah Ban Breathnach from amazon.com. (They’re currently available for only $1.00 plus shipping in good used condition.) I had more fun doing this project than I dreamed, and it met needs in me I wasn’t aware I had.

= Break through your resistances (they’re flimsier than you think) and finally do that thing you’ve been talking about doing for years. A friend and I went to the Watkins College of Art & Design and took three evening watercolor classes, something I’d been talking about doing on and off for thirty (gasp!) years. We loved it so much we’re planning to take nine more evening classes starting in February. You might have thought how fun it would be to try a little pottery, or drawing, or a few sewing or riding or dance lessons. Just do it!

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.” – Goethe

= Speaking of dance lessons, I tried one of those too! Two-Stepping is easier than you might think – that is, if you’re a lady and your partner can lead. I’m going to try more lessons next year, but in a slightly less seedy establishment next time. Aesthetics matter to me. : > )

= Turn back the clock. Seek out a way to interact with younger people. I find it so refreshing and stimulating to work with the medical students at Vanderbilt. I think they are youthening me. We don’t always have to act our age.

= Take advantage of iTunes free download of the week. If you are already doing that, you will have found Landon Pigg’s “Sailed On”. He is already experiencing real success in his short time as a professional musician/singer/songwriter. He’s the middle son of my old and dear friends Carol and Gary Pigg. Gary and I used to sing in the contemporary Christian band Fireworks, as well as lots of studio work. Here comes the next generation!

= Gary sang background vocals for Neil Young’s album Prairie Wind and the accompanying movie, Heart of Gold (as well as other concerts including Farm Aid.) I enjoyed my 1.5 seconds of fame as the camera scanned the waiting crowd outside the Ryman Auditorium. The two evenings I spent in the audience so moved me that I wrote an essay about it, and Gary sent it to the director, Jonathan Demme, who wrote back that he enjoyed it. So my words have officially been scanned by the eyes of a Hollywood director, something I certainly never expected! If you’re a Neil Young fan, buy this DVD. It’s a treasure.

= Write a book. No, I really mean it. Yes, you. What’s the computer there for but to listen to your memories as they trickle, and then flow, and then pour out? I posted mine on a blog in ten-page increments so friends could reminisce with me. I found it a therapeutic, integrating experience to tell my story, gathering up so many fragments all in one place. Some said it sparked their own memories, so I provided a community service as well. You can read it in doable doses at http://www.gwenmoore.blogspot.com/

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Blaise Pascal

= If you miss singing in a choir but don’t think you can commit to weekly rehearsal, find a choir that needs seasonal help. I had the blessing of singing in the 100-voice choir for the Michael W. Smith Christmas concert last Sunday, and this Sunday will sing three of Handel’s choruses from The Messiah during worship at church. Not many rehearsals, lots of singing pleasure. Here are dear friends and singers Dave Durham and Gary Pigg with me at the Smitty concert. (Thank you, Gary, for inviting me to participate in the Nashville Choir.)

“Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression.” – Georgia O’Keefe

= Go visit someone you love and miss. I believe that relationships are the only eternal thing we take with us when we leave this life, so they are undeniably worth the investment. I broke my personal record and will have had blessing of three visits with my California loved ones in just one year. What a gift. Sharyn took this picture of my beloved brother Chip near their home in Pacific Palisades. I’ve also been very thankful to renew ties with old friends there.

“Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending.” – Anonymous

= Attend someone else’s family reunion. You can be a spectator and visit with anyone you like. I highly recommend the Thomas family for such an adventure. I got to see Elaine and John Harris for the first time since their wedding! And their four beautiful kids. Great to be with Ted and Jane-Anne and their boys Todd (I last saw him when I babysat in Heidelberg) and Terry, their wives and children. Fine talks with Martha and Melody. I said thanks and farewell to patriarch J. Harold, who passed away only two months later. And I got to sing hymns not once but twice a day with this hymn-loving family. Thank you all for welcoming me. It was so delightful!

“Great persons are able to do great kindnesses.” – Miguel de Cervantes

Neil Young
August 18 & 19, 2005

The past two nights I have spent joyfully reliving many memories with friends. The Memory Fest was sparked by the arrival of Neil Young in Nashville to make a movie, directed by no less than Jonathan Demme. He’s most famous for his Silence of the Lambs but my favorite of his projects was Philadelphia. So now I know why Neil Young was chosen to write and sing the theme song of that movie – I wasn’t aware that Jonathan and he were friends. My friends (the reason I got in to the concert filming), Gary and Carol Pigg, didn’t know who the director was, they just knew he was “Jonathan”. He was so unassuming and humble and quiet, they would never guess he had such an impressive filmography, or status in the movie industry.

Pegi Young, Anthony Crawford, Jonathan Demme, Gary Pigg, Diana DeWitt

Gary Pigg and I met in 1976, when we were both called for a session at the Goldmine. That was the studio owned by Chris Christian, and we were working for his jingle company, Home Sweet Home Productions. It was my first paid session. My first time singing in the studio had happened the year before, when I did background vocals for free on the song “You Can’t Get to Heaven by Living Like Hell” for that wild man producer, Gary S. Paxton. (He sang on “The Monster Mash” and was the multi-tracked voice of the Hollywood Argyles, singing “Alley Oop”.)

Gary and I continued singing on more jingles and then backgrounds for several albums, along with Marty McCall. Finally, the three of us were invited by Word Records to become a group which was intended to fill the void left by the 2nd Chapter of Acts on their artist roster. 2nd Chapter had moved to Sparrow Records and they needed a “replacement group”. Kind of a silly idea, since no one could hope to replace the brother and sisters trio which revolutionized contemporary Christian music with their rock ‘n roll voices, unique harmonies and intimate lyrics.

Gary and I left the group, Fireworks, after not very long, but Marty continued it for several more years. Gary and I both did jingle and background vocal work for some years, but meanwhile he had married my dear friend Carol Ann Jackson Thomas and taken on her boys, David and Jason, to raise. He had a burden of responsibility I did not have, as well as greater drive and ambition, and he made quite a career for himself in the Nashville and Chicago recording industries. After about ten years singing, I became an administrative assistant for a number of musicians, companies and institutions over the years.

Earlier this year, Gary was recommended by our mutual acquaintance, Diana DeWitt, to accompany her and Pegi Young, Neil’s wife, on background vocals for Neil Young’s new album, Prairie Wind. He couldn’t have been happier about the job, since he had never aspired to be a jingle singer in the first place – his dream had always been to be a rock star. Neil had a longevity and legitimacy to his musical career that was more than a level above what often happens in Nashville sessions, and Gary took a lot of pleasure in working with someone at that level of creativity, not to mention historical significance.

Then the decision was made to record the new album as a movie concert, after the example of The Last Waltz by The Band and other such archival footage. Gary was hired! So he spent the previous two weeks in rehearsal, and Carol called and asked if I would like to attend the concert/filming. Would I!?! Certainly would. So I wandered down to the Ryman Auditorium Thursday night, August 18, 2005, to join a fascinating crowd waiting to get in to see one of our heroes, Neil Young.

It was an incredibly hot and muggy evening in Nashville, which made waiting outside for Carol to show up with the tickets a very drippy half hour. As I waited, I was able to observe such interesting people and relationships, some folks making contact after years of separation. I heard one lady who looked to be a suburban, Republican grandmother – the epitome of unhip – talking about working with Neil in L.A. in 1969. Ah, the foolishness of judging a book by its cover.

There was more long hair on the men than the women. Someone commented that they hadn’t seen that many VW buses in years. The crowd was mostly over forty, and everyone was glancing at everyone, trying to figure out who was who and whether any notables might be spotted. I recognized no one Thursday night, but then I don’t know the Nashville film community. I went back Friday night for the second concert and that night Meryl Streep showed up with a young man someone said was her son. We tried hard to politely glance and not stare.

I also got to spend some time with Gus Laux, who caught me waiting in line the second night. He used to road manage Don Gibson, got me in one night to Harlan Howard’s Birthday Bash, and has been around the Nashville music scene even since I left it. What a delight he is. He says he’s currently splitting his time between producing sessions and doing fine wood working on remodels for very patient friends, which sounds to me like a lovely creative balance. But I digress. Back to the man of the hour, Neil Young.

When I was just getting into music as a collector might, learning music history, making connections between various artists and groups, seeking out new writers and artists to love, there was a group calling the Buffalo Springfield. It was after the Watts Riots, it was during Viet Nam, I was in Southern California, it was the hippie generation, but it was pre-Woodstock. A song came on the radio called “For What It’s Worth.”

“There’s something happ’nin’ in here…what it is ain’t exactly clear.
There’s a man with a gun over there tellin’ me I got to beware.
I think it’s time we stopped, children — What’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s goin’ down.”

That song, written by Stephen Stills, became the anthem of an era. Matt Young was my best friends’ older brother and my musical guide. He had more money and more freedom than I did, being five years older, and he spent more time in record stores, although he did take me along occasionally. He played Buffalo Springfield albums (there were eventually three) and I fell in love with the articulate, searching, yearning, politically aware, romantic hearts of these guys.

Even then, Neil Young stood out. “I Am a Child” appeared on the third album, and there was also “On The Way Home,” the meaning of which to this day I don’t fully comprehend but nevertheless I’ve always loved. The version I love most, though, came four years later, when the album Four Way Street was released, and Neil did a much slower, more ethereal version of it. That was my theme song in Heidelberg in the summer of 1972.

But I’m jumping ahead. Back in L.A., I would sit in the Youngs’ bedroom where the big speakers were, or lie on the floor between them, and soak up the music. Musical groups and couplings in the ‘Sixties were relatively short lived, though very fruitful, and you always watched to see what the various artists who had split up would do next. What they did next was awesome. Woodstock happened, and one of the groups that played over those few days was Crosby, Stills & Nash. Neil Young joined them at Woodstock, though he was not on their first album. It was their second gig. (Their first appearance had been rather less dramatic, at a hall in Chicago.) Neil Young had not made any business commitments to these guys yet, but they were friends, so when they did their third gig, opening for Joni Mitchell at the Greek Theater in L.A., Neil sat in with them for the second half of the performance.

That summer night in 1968 started with David, Stephen and Graham standing together before one mike, with Stills the only guitar, and singing those incredible three-part harmonies which had originally brought them together. (Cass Elliott of the Mamas and Papas was responsible for introducing them.) Graham Nash was later to remark on the magic that seemed to happen the first time he and David sang together, and then when Stephen Stills joined in, the powerful musical connection couldn’t be denied. So there the three of them were, in front of a curtain on the stage of the Greek Theater, and making this gorgeous but very gentle acoustic music. Their fans were wondering whatever happened to the electricity. Graham had been part of the Hollies, and Stills, with Neil Young, was in the Buffalo Springfield. David Crosby had been a member of the Byrds. All the bands had made big noise, with electric guitars and amps and effects and etc.

After the first part of their set, the curtains opened to reveal banks of equipment…and Neil Young. And the rocking began. The crowd went wild. This was what they had been waiting for! This was what they came to hear. When the boys were finished thrilling us, they humbly thanked Joni Mitchell for allowing them to open for her. “This is our third gig, man,” David Crosby announced. What a night.

The funny thing about that concert was the audience. We were sitting in a steep natural outdoor amphitheater, surrounded by trees. This was the late ‘Sixties, and there were a lot of young people who loved this music but couldn’t or wouldn’t pay to hear it. They hiked up the Hollywood hills and climbed the trees. The only problem was, some of them were too loaded to hang onto the branches, and occasionally we would hear a crashing of bushes and ivy as someone fell out of a tree and rolled down the hill.

I was still in high school, living at home but spending as much time as possible with the Youngs, my second family. Matt kept me moving along the musical highway. Déjà Vu, the second album, after the introductory Crosby, Stills and Nash, had added “and Young” to the group. When the time came to record a third album, things got rocky. I didn’t hear this story until many years later, but it seems that at one of the sessions for that album, Neil became discontent with the way things were going, or the way he was feeling about it, and he simply left town. No warning, no “I’m not going to be there at the session tomorrow.” He just split. And thus ended Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

What was left for the record company but to put out an album featuring the individual strengths of each of the four players, all their diverse directions and leanings. It was clear, listening to Four Way Street, that theirs had been an explosive coming together, but not a lasting merging of talent. They were all solo artists…except Graham Nash, the one who preferred relationships to individual acclaim. The other three were the egos and he was the peacemaker, the oil that eased the scraping and banging of these Titans of rock music.

Out of Buffalo Springfield came another group, Poco, with Richie Furay, George Grantham, Rusty Young, and Jim Messina, which we also loved. (See the Endnote for more about Poco. Isn’t the internet wonderful?[i]) Their music reflected the happier side of the Springfield. It’s been said and written many times that the Southern California music scene was incestuous during those years. Cross-pollination was happening everywhere. People were hanging out together in Topanga Canyon, visiting each others’ homes and playing in a lot of the same venues, like Doug Weston’s Troubador.

When Woodstock happened, Crosby, Stills and Nash were able to make it to their second gig, but Joni Mitchell didn’t get in. Roads were jammed for miles around, and she wasn’t even able to get to a place where a helicopter could have lifted her in. So she was stuck in a New York hotel room, witnessing only what little could be seen by everyone else on TV. That didn’t stop her finding an incredibly moving way to comment on the event. She composed the song “Woodstock” and sang it with her own quiet melancholy, and then gave it to “the boys” to interpret, who of course rocked it in their muscular, more powerful way.

David Geffen and Elliott Roberts were managing many of these artists at the time. (Elliott has apparently continued with Neil until today, in 2005. He’s listed on all the albums as “Direction”. Gary also tells me that he learned Elliott managed Bob Dylan for twelve years.) The Eagles were in the same management stable with Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Still & Nash, and Don Henley and Glenn Frey have said that this represented quite a challenge to them in terms of sharpening their song writing.

James Taylor and Joni were involved for awhile – her Blue album was all about that. Graham Nash and Joni were in love for awhile, and her Ladies of the Canyon paints a few pictures on that theme. Joni even drew a sketch of David Geffen in “Free Man in Paris,” on Court and Spark, though she says this made him uncomfortable for awhile. James was singing the songs of Carole King, who was making the transition from being a bopper in New York’s Tin Pan Alley to becoming an earth mother in the mountains of Colorado.

Meanwhile, Neil Young was pretty rich at a mere twenty-four years old, and he bought himself a ranch. It’s in Northern California, but he doesn’t choose to say that. He tells the story that a man named Louie Avilla and his wife Clara lived on that ranch as caretakers, and Louie asked Neil how it came to be that such a young man was able to purchase such a lot of property. “Just lucky, man, very lucky,” Neil responded. Louie couldn’t get over it. Neil said he wrote “Old Man” for Louie.

“Old man, look at my life – twenty-four and there’s so much more
Live alone in a paradise that makes me think of two.
I’ve been first and last. Look at how the time goes past,
and I’m all alone at last, rolling home to you.

(and that incredible banjo makes its statement…and then the pedal steel…)

“Old man, take a look at my life – I’m a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
By one look in my eyes, you can tell that’s true.”

(and then back to that ever so recognizable chord…)

When Neil did that song last night, the audience recognized it on the very first chord. I was sitting next to Carol Pigg and she was amazed by that. I whispered, “Nobody else ever started a song with that particular chord!” While all of us single hippies and wanna-be cowboys were listening to Neil and Joni and James and the Eagles and such, Carol Pigg had been Carol Ann Jackson Thomas, a married woman raising two little boys, and she hadn’t paid all that much attention to music. Funny that her life has been immersed in music ever since, yet left her relatively unaddicted. She never quite caught the bug. She worked for Jerry Reed, she managed Sound Stage recording studio, she worked for Chris Christian, she managed the office for Hummingbird Productions (where I worked with her and then took over for her) and then moved to Blanton & Harrell where Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith were changing the face of contemporary Christian music once again.

Then she married Gary, whose life has been music. Landon, their son and a mere twenty-one years of age, earlier this year was signed as an artist with RCA New York. Landon shared tales with me about private hours spent with Clive Davis. (Along with Ahmet Ertegun and Quincy Jones, Clive has been a primary mover and shaker in the music industry for most of my life, so this was quite something to me.) Yet for all this, Carol’s primary roles have been mother, wife and friend, throughout the decades.

Another friend from the ‘Seventies was also in attendance both nights for this 2005 Nashville concert event. Chris Harris was friends with Gary Pigg back in college at Abilene, Texas, and they both moved to Nashville in the mid ‘Seventies. Chris drove his baby blue Texas truck into town and almost immediately became the bass player for that group that Gary, Marty and I had started, Fireworks.

Lanny Avery, our drummer, lives in Florida, so I never get to see him, and Marty and his wife moved to the D.C. area a couple of years ago, but I’m grateful to still touch lives with Chris and Gary on occasion. With Chris, though, it’s been too seldom, he stays so busy as a record producer. Last night was a treasure, because he and I and Landon and his friend Costa went out after the concert and us two oldies reminisced for the boys at length. More about that later.

Finally, we got to escape the heat and get into the building. A ticket! That’s all we needed to gain entrance, and more than usual, those tickets were hard to come by. There we finally were, in the Ryman Auditorium, infiltrated by scurrying men in black, and cameras both fixed and roving. A large timing device mounted to the left above the stage was clicking away the hundredths of seconds as the evening progressed, flashing the red digital numbers as if to underline the speedy passage of time.

Neil commented on the incredible sound of the Ryman, like playing inside of a guitar. He was dressed in a light gray, loose fitting suit that could have belonged to a farmer or tradesman in the ‘Thirties, with a broad-brimmed light-colored hat that he regularly hid under, spending the majority of his time looking down, and only occasionally peeking upwards to make eye contact with an audience member.

The moves that reconfigured the stage between each song were as multiple and shifting as a kaleidoscope. Those moves had been rehearsed for two weeks, and with only a couple of exceptions appeared to go flawlessly the first night. I say the first night, because the second night felt looser. I suspect that once they had the first night in the can, the crew all felt a bit freer and not quite so rigidly tied to the marks they had rehearsed. Stage hands moved tables, chairs, mikes, instruments, between each song. Musicians and singers rearranged themselves. Neil paced the stage, in his lanky, loose limbed, laid back way. Guitar techs traded guitars with him for each new song.

A humorous moment for me was each time that this one stage hand came out to remove the little table that held a glass of water with Neil’s harmonica in it – as if that table’s presence would distract from the presentation of the next song. Someone was paying incredible attention to detail, and from what Gary reported, it was primarily Neil. Gary said Neil was amazingly aware of everything that was happening at all times, and would deal with anything he might find faulty or distracting on the spot.

The musicians were many of the same guys that had been with him ever since his first work in Nashville which produced the Harvest album in 1972. How did this rock ‘n roller from Canada end up finding musical expression in the South? It was an easier fit than I would have guessed. His roots were in the Canadian prairie, and the agrarian, rural background of Southern musicians may be the closest thing available to his familiar sounds and feel.

I didn’t know until last night that Neil was a chicken farmer as a boy. He told the story of the first instrument he ever owned, a plastic Arthur Godfrey ukelele that his daddy bought for him, probably at his request, though Neil doesn’t remember that for sure. He said he had never heard his daddy sing or play before, and also never seen the goofy smile on his father’s face which appeared as he sang and played “Bury Me on the Wide Prairie” for Neil that day. Neil said his dad and his uncle both ended up playing along with him and the whole family developed a tradition of making music together.

So when Johnny Cash, the Man in Black, had a TV show in the late ‘Sixties, and invited these young California whippersnappers to appear on it, Neil visited Nashville for the first time, along with James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.[ii] Johnny was a visionary. Though he was deeply Southern, and solidly a country music star, he loved all kinds of music and used his success as an entrée for these younger musicians. Just one example of his musical sophistication? Witness his use of mariachi trumpets on his hit, “Ring of Fire”. Who else would have thought of that?

Last night, I told Carol, who grew up in Nashville in the middle of country music, “See, we had never heard a banjo or a pedal steel used like this before.” We (my friends and I in California) were prejudiced against country music, which we ignorantly associated with all those spangles and twangs we saw on TV, and dismissed as “plastic.” I hated the TV show “Hee Haw”, which my Nashville cousins found delightful. Why, I was so ignorant of country music that I didn’t know Buck Owens lived not far north of me in Bakersfield, California! So when Neil Young was singing and a banjo enhanced his hippie aesthetic, like in “Old Man”, or a pedal steel reflected back the melody on “Heart of Gold”, it was a revelation to my ears.

From top left: Clinton Gregory, Chad Cromwell (Memphis Horn player); Rick Rosas, Larry Cragg, Pegi Young, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Karl Himmel, Anthony Crawford, Grant Boatwright; (front) Gary Pigg

Neil continued to work in Nashville and remained faithful and loyal to these friends he had made here, so this week in 2005 there were men on the stage with him who had played on his 1972 album, Harvest. One friend, Grant Boatwright, had long white hair and wore a black cowboy coat to his knees, and postured a bit that first night. (He behaved more circumspectly the second night, and I wondered if he had been chastened by a correction from Neil.)

Grant was featured in one of Neil’s longer tales during the show, about the guitar he played on “This Old Guitar,” a duet with Emmylou Harris. Apparently Grant had found this guitar for him 35 years before, which Neil was able to buy from Tuck Taylor. He quietly and respectfully informed us, “It was Hank’s.” The audience duly drew in its breath when that hallowed name was mentioned, then clapped long and hard for the rightness of Hank Williams’ guitar being reunited with the Ryman stage, where it had been played back in 1951, the year Hank got fired from the Grand Old Opry.

Neil Young has always been slow, deliberate, close to tedious in making his dry-witted remarks. My favorite song introduction was enshrined on an album called Four Way Street, when he said, “This next tune’s guaranteed to bring you right down. It’s called ‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down.” (I love the pause, where one guy in the audience “gets it” a bit late, and cackles all by himself at the irony of the remark, and the rest of the audience laughs at his enjoyment.) Neil goes on, “It sort of starts out real slow…and then it peters out altogether.”

Well, his delivery hasn’t changed a bit in 35 years. He told a quite involved tale of his favorite hound dog, Elvis, which he embellished each night with different details, and nearly every sentence was followed by a pause, pregnant with the audience’s anticipation of what on earth he would choose to say next. Elvis entered the story in a cardboard box under the Christmas tree, and he ends it reappearing after having been lost. The main humor in the story was how bad Elvis stunk after he got his natural and much-prized doggy smell covered up by some wretched perfume at the “Foo-Foo Parlor.”

The punch line was the fact that Elvis, who had run off and been left behind on a road trip, was recovered and delivered back to Neil by a guy in a yellow pick-up truck, at a concert about a hundred and fifty miles down the road in Eureka, California. The truck guy got free tickets to the concert as a reward for returning Elvis. Not too stirring a tale, although there was some dramatic tension in the fact that Neil thought for a few hours that his dog was gone, and came to realize how attached he was to the “blue tick” Tennessee hound. Just to confuse things Neil had intended to simplify, in the song Elvis is called “King”.

It’s that old country story-telling tradition that James Taylor honored in his concerts where he told the story of his pet pig, Baby. I declare, some years back in one of James’s concerts he spent a full thirty minutes on that story, and it had no dramatic tension and no punch line. There’s something so pleasant, though, about being told a story by one of these musicians with whom you’ve shared so many private hours. It’s a living room feeling, like he or she is talking just to you, and there’s something intimate about the fact that the story has no actual significance, except that it happened to them and they have chosen to take the time to share it with you.

Let me back up a bit and tell you about the stage setting. When the curtain opened, we were introduced to the title of the album (and the concert), Prairie Wind, which was written in a rope-style font on a backdrop which filled the back of the stage. A local artist was called three weeks prior to the show and commissioned to create three different backdrops, which he did all by himself, one week each. They were pretty great. The first one, along with the words, was a simple depiction of a brown prairie. A few songs into the concert, a second backdrop was drawn across the first, and this one, again all in browns, was the inside of a log cabin, with a river rock fireplace, an open door on the left, and a little kitten walking in. The final backdrop was saved for the one silly song, “The Last Time I Saw Elvis” (This time we’re talking about Mr. Presley, “Thank you very much,” not the hound.) and it was a fantasy of guitars and piano keyboards in pastels.

Neil used his musicians and singers judiciously, changing them up for every song. I never realized quite so clearly before how much like painting song arrangement can be. Each voice, each instrument, was like a color on Neil’s palette. He had my friends Gary and Diana DeWitt available to sing background vocals, and as I already mentioned, Emmylou Harris as well. Also singing along on many of the songs, and playing guitar on a couple, was his “lovely wife” Pegi. Carol had mentioned how much she and Pegi looked alike, but for the concert they had given Pegi blond hair extensions so she could have long hair like Emmylou and Diana.

Another background singer that Neil used occasionally was also a guitar player, Anthony Crawford, who looked so much like Gary and Carol’s sons, Landon and Gabe, that it freaked us out. Then there was Grant Boatwright (in the long black cowboy coat) on rhythm guitar, and Spooner Oldham looking frail, on the Hammond B-3 organ and piano. (Chris told me that Spooner Oldham was the composer of “I’m Your Puppet”!) Neil mentioned that Ben Keith, his dear friend and the steel player, had been his producer ever since Harvest. Ben was a white-haired guy who seemed even more laid back than Neil.

I know I recognized Rick (the bass player) Rosas, an Native American-looking picker, but he wasn’t in Crazy Horse (the band on Neil’s first solo album) and he wasn’t on the album Comes A Time (one of my favorites, from 1978), so I don’t know where I have seen him before. Larry Cragg, who did play on that album, stepped forward to do the banjo solo on “Old Man” (done by James Taylor on the recording of Harvest, James’ first and last attempt at playing banjo), providing an aural thrill to everybody gathered.

Then there were the strings, eleven of them. I didn’t recognize Kris Wilkinson, a lady I had worked for as a personal assistant, but my friend Chris insisted she was the viola in the middle of the front row, and Gary said another old boss of mine, David Davidson, was playing violin too. So even though the Nashville String Machine got the credit, the A-Strings were well represented too. The string players had the only stage direction I disagreed with. They came on during a song, because they were only playing in the bridge of it, and then walked off during that song, and I found all that movement too distracting. Then there were the horns, Wayne Jackson of the Memphis Horns and two of his buddies, all in Blues Brothers suits and black hats. Karl Himmel, who was on the 1978 record, was still the drummer for this concert, along with Chad Cromwell on percussion and drums.

Another “color in the palette” was the use of the Fisk University Jubilee Singers on several songs, a small chorale of about a dozen. I must say, had I been one of those singers, I would have felt terribly bored and underused, since their background parts were so simple and so sparse, but they trouped on like professionals and offered their best smiles and lots of energy.

Gary tells me that the famous country music couturier, Manuel Cuevas, was hired to dress the band and singers and Neil himself. The ladies looked great in shirtwaist dresses, pastels for the first half and a darker blue for the second half. Neil changed out of his pale suit into a burgundy suit for the second half. The band didn’t really look “dressed”, but I guess they may have been. I’ll give Manuel credit for amazing restraint. He’s normally known for flash, sparkle, sequins and beads, but this whole stage dressing was very subdued.

The first half of the concert was the new album, so I hadn’t heard any of that material before Thursday night. I liked a lot of it on first hearing, but by Friday night I had already become tentative friends with some of the songs. I especially loved the line, “If you follow all your dreams, you could get…lost.” Then after a brief intermission, the curtain opened again and Neil stood there by himself singing “I Am a Child,” a tune from his Buffalo Springfield days. It was so sweet to hear that same gentle choirboy voice, practically unchanged, singing those tender lyrics from another time and place.

Then the band and singers rejoined him for a stroll down Memory Lane. As each old favorite began, the audience paused for a heartbeat to be sure they recognized it, and then burst into applause. The second night, they were rowdier than the first, perhaps picking up on the slightly more relaxed mood of the folks onstage. But they were also more passionate, giving a standing ovation to “The Damage Done”, which Neil performed all alone in a spotlight.

Two of my personal-favorite songs got special treatment. Neil briefly noted the recent passing of Rufus Thibodeaux, who had played fiddle on Comes A Time, and just in the last week, Vassar Clements, and in their memory he called upon every free singer and band member to line up along the front of the stage with guitars and play first “Comes A Time” and then “Four Strong Winds,” a song I had loved ever since Ian Tyson had written it in the early ‘Sixties.

On “Four Strong Winds” he put Diana DeWitt on autoharp, which I hadn’t realized had been the special sound on that record. It wouldn’t have sounded right without it. (That way, Gary got to play the guitar and join the lineup across the stage. Apparently there weren’t enough guitars to go around until Diana moved to autoharp.) Neil told us that as a kid of sixteen in Canada, he had spent a lot of time at a local diner which had a jukebox, and spent all his money listening to Ian and Sylvia’s record of “Four Strong Winds” over and over again.

Neil mentioned Nicolette Larson, who was featured on Comes A Time, as if she was no longer with us, but never made that quite clear. He said he felt her there in spirit.[iii] I must admit that Pegi sounded nearly as good when doing that duet with him. Then he explained that he had been full of love songs for the young ladies in his past, but that recently he had written a new kind of love song. He supposed you could call it an “Empty Nester” tune, and he had written it for his daughter, twenty-one and in her senior year of college. “I guess you could say, I’m there for you,” was the final line.

Talk about there for you – I had heard that he and Pegi had founded a school for kids afflicted with cerebral palsy, called The Bridge, because Graham Nash had mentioned doing a fundraiser for it with Crosby and Stills. But I didn’t know it was because they had a son with cerebral palsy. He attended the concert both nights in his wheelchair. I was touched that they would go to the trouble not only to bring their son with them on this Nashville trip, but even transport him to the concert, not just one but both of the nights.

My friend Chris told me that Neil has the most enormous Lionel train set. It’s housed in a separate building on his property. He has invented special controls that his son can use to run the trains. Chris also reported that Neil then decided to just buy Lionel Trains, the manufacturer. Why not, if you love them that much?

The next song was “Harvest Moon” which I had heard a bit, from the Harvest Moon album Neil made in Nashville in 1992. For me, it’s not the kind of song you crave to hear, but it was so soothing and mesmerizing that you didn’t want it to stop. One mighty cute thing about that song was the percussion. Karl Himmel came on stage carrying a broom, and a roadie laid down a rubber floor mat in front of him. Throughout the song, the “brushes” sound that is usually associated with jazz was being produced by Karl sweeping that mat. A fun bit of knowledge, like my enjoyment in knowing that one of the percussion instruments on Delaney & Bonnie’s Motel Shot was someone banging on an empty briefcase.

The concert ended with “One of These Days,” promising that someday Neil planned to write everyone a letter, telling all the people he had loved how much they meant to him. It was a great goodbye song, and when they were finished with the show, they really meant it. None of that coy waiting in the wings until the audience proves they want you back. No amount of stomping, pounding the backs of the pews, hollering or clapping could convince them to do an encore, though we tried. They just did a final curtain call, all arms linked around waists and bowing together, and the merciless curtain closed again.

Then came the leaving. We didn’t really want to. Gary called Carol on her cell and asked her to keep everybody there till he could get down to us. Gabe and Landon were there, and Jason and Cari-Ann and her husband Curt Redding, along with Gary’s mother Lorene, his sister Brenda, her daughter and boyfriend. Chris and I waited with them until Gary finally made it out of the building, appearing to have showered and changed. I envied his freshness, drippy and hot as I was, waiting outside in the still oppressive night air.

Gabe, Gary, Carol Pigg; Chris Harris, Curt & Cari-Ann Redding, Gwen Moore, Landon Pigg, Jason Thomas

Gary was thrilled we all had shared the evening with him, but soon he was off to the afterparty at the Hermitage Hotel. He told Landon to wait awhile until he scoped out the mood of the party, and if it was loose enough, he would call Landon and he could show up and be further introduced around. Landon had already met Elliott Roberts earlier in the week and had a good conversation with him, and had made friends with one of the camera guys. So Landon needed to hang somewhere else for awhile, and he and a friend, Costa, and Chris Harris and I went to the Sunset Grill to decompress and debrief.

I honestly didn’t realize how much I had missed being in my music persona. It had been years, if not decades, since the last time I really talked with anyone about my personal history in music. Chris started the reminiscing by describing the Laughing Man, the health food restaurant we used to love that has long since closed. That’s where I first met the musical family he married into, the Heimermanns. Then Chris proceeded to quiz me about some of my family history and Pepperdine where I grew up, since his two boys, Taylor and Brandon, are living in L.A. at the moment, and hoping to discover their professional futures. (Both are musicians…of course.) Then we moved on to how we both came to Nashville and why…he for music, me for library school at Peabody. Then the two young guys started asking questions, and it turned into a humorous and fascinating music business history lesson.

What fun. I got to tell some of my favorite stories, including the Christmas Card debacle at Hummingbird. I talked about the ease of simply handing producer Brown Bannister the cassette of “Say Once More” and getting it on Amy’s third album with that little effort. I told about the fun of knowing most of the studio musicians in Nashville because I booked them for sessions. I told Chris about my favorite early vocal session, of getting to sing with Little Jimmy Gilmer, one of the first voices I could remember in my pop music listening career as a mere ten year old. Jimmy was the singer on “Sugar Shack.”

The way that session unfolded really astonished me. Alan Moore had produced it at the Goldmine, before he moved to Chicago, and I sang with Jimmy and Hank Martin. Alan simply talked for a couple of minutes about what he wanted the jingle to sound like, and the Nashville pickers just played it. There were no charts, no arrangements, no notes written down of any kind. It was what they called a “head session”. The producer simply communicated an idea, and the musicians grabbed it and ran with it, creating as they went.

I told them my favorite vindication story. I will omit the names for the sake of love, but it was so amazing to have Peter York (President of Sparrow Records) hand a famous producer my Healing Heart album, saying, “Make your next album sound like this.” I dearly loved that producer, but I had been hurt when I was not chosen to sing on an artist’s recording sessions after there had been some success. In my own mind at least, my status as a legitimate musician was more than restored in this moment with Peter. And God chose to make it happen more dramatically and to a greater degree than I would ever have wished for.

Peter York is a whole nother story. He used to play guitar for the 2nd Chapter of Acts, that group that our band Fireworks was supposed to “replace” at Word Records. After I quit the band, I sang in a wedding of mutual friends with Peter, so we’ve known each other since the ‘Seventies when we were both starving artists. Who would have predicted he would end up as president of Sparrow Records?

Chris got to tell about the first jingle account he won. His demo for Crisco beat everybody else’s and he got to produce the legendary Loretta Lynn singing it. He told about the time he showed Stevie Ray Vaughn how to play a demo he had written for some other jingle client. And how Stevie excitedly showed Chris the scriptures he had written into his AA 12-Step book, and how very well prepared Stevie was to go, when his plane crashed six months later.

We talked about Chris’s four months (Seemed a lot longer than that to me!) of parking cars for the Spence Manor, when it was the only locked, 24-hour service private hotel in Nashville and all the stars stayed there, and how he had met everybody who was anybody, including Cheech & Chong and Wayne Newton and lots of celebrities between those extremes. Chris said it was Carol Pigg’s idea that he apply for the job.

The boys asked us whether Mike Blanton was a genius, and was that was why Amy Grant had succeeded in such a massive way? Chris and I agreed, “No, we love Mike, but he’s no genius. He didn’t make anything happen. It was a God thing.” Chris told a story I was not aware of, that some Nashville guy had moved to New York, made contact with some wealthy Jewish backer, and had arranged for Amy to play a huge stadium there. When she sold out, with eighteen thousand people filling the stadium, that was when Blanton & Harrell could start booking her on that much grander scale. So Landon commented, “Mike’s genius was in not saying no, then.”

Landon Pigg, the question man, asked, “So what do you think made Neil Young so popular?” Chris said a few words, but he didn’t cover any of my reasons, so then I jumped in. “First,” I said, “Neil Young isn’t the greatest singer, and he isn’t the greatest guitar player, and he stands there so humble and unassuming and thankful and generous that the audience relates to him as a normal guy. Second, he’s used a lot of the same people in his band for years and years, some of them as far back as 1970. That’s loyalty, and that’s friendship. He makes relationships the center, instead of money or fame. He just loves the music.

“See,” I explained, “many producers are not all that confident about their own choices, so they are constantly looking to see who other people are using, and who played on this or that hit, and they use those pickers, thinking it will make the same magic for their project. They’re more superstitious than baseball players.” I asked for confirmation from Chris, and he agreed.

I didn’t say this to the guys, but for the reader’s benefit, I will add that those kinds of producers don’t realize something basic. The magic doesn’t come with the “hit-maker” picker like a package deal. The magic comes from the right players, with the right amount of direction, playing the right kind of music, in the right atmosphere. Casting is as important in a recording session as it is in a movie or a play, and so is the amount of direction offered from whoever’s in charge. If you pick the right player for the song, he or she will naturally know what to do to make it feel the best it can, so a wise producer will leave them alone to do their job unless they really need direction.

I had many experiences where a producer would hire me (the Queen of Mellow) and two other mellow singers, and then tell us to make the song “exciting”. When I finally got just too fed up with that kind of thing, I asked one producer right from the vocal booth, “Why did you hire Mr. and Misses Mellow, if you want excitement?” He did not appreciate that comment, and as you may imagine, I did not work for him again. I had other experiences where the producer would absolutely love my performance – in one case, saying he had never produced a perfect solo, but that this one came close – and then be talked out of using it later on by someone else’s opinion. I slowly, painfully learned that insecurity runs rampant in the producer world.

It was getting very late, and I didn’t get to offer my third reason. Neil Young has done the impossible, by constantly reinventing himself and trying all kinds of musical configurations, and yet always seeming to be a constant, someone you can depend on to always deliver his heart in everything he does. I didn’t get to say that, but I was definitely thinking it, or something like it. Then Gary called, saying that Landon should come on over to the party at the Hermitage, and the evening ended for us. Costa remarked, as we got up from the table, “I hope someday I have stories like these to tell.”

I’ll say, in closing, that Sunset Grill sure beats the Vanderbilt area International House of Pancakes, which used to be the only place you could go to eat and drink in Nashville after midnight. So Thursday and Friday, August 18 and 19, 2005, gave me a great forty-eight hours. I was as excited as a child to get to participate, and incredibly grateful for the rich experience I had with my friends and one of my earliest musical heroes.

Gwen Moore
August 20, 2005

Neil Young’s Greatest Hits reprised just for me on August 18 & 19, 2005:

Old Man; Heart of Gold; The Damage Done (1972, Harvest; “Heart of Gold” was his only #1 single)

I Am a Child (1968, Last Time Around, Buffalo Springfield)

Harvest Moon; Old King; One of These Days (1992, Harvest Moon)

Comes a Time; Four Strong Winds (1978, Comes a Time)

NOTES

[i] Poco was a country rock band started by Richie Furay (vocals and rhythm guitar) and Jim Messina (lead guitar and vocals) following the demise of Buffalo Springfield in 1968. Other initial members were Rusty Young (pedal steel and dobro), George Grantham (drums and vocals) and Randy Meisner (bass and vocals). The first album Pickin' Up the Pieces was significantly delayed - so that Meisner had joined Rick Nelson's Stone Canyon Band and later was a founding member of The Eagles. Timothy B. Schmit - bass and vocals - subsequently joined the band. Poco (1971) and Deliverin' (1972) followed. Messina then left the band - being replaced by Paul Cotton. Messina experienced considerable subsequent success with Kenny Loggins as Loggins & Messina. After two Poco more albums: A Good Feelin' to Know and Crazy Eyes, Furay also left the band - forming the Souther Hillman Furay Band.

[ii] As host of The Johnny Cash Show on ABC-TV (1969-1971), he served up 60 hours of prime-time TV, which featured performers like Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Linda Ronstadt, Ray Charles, Neil Young, James Taylor, Neil Diamond, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Kenny Rogers, Roy Orbison, Hank Williams Jr., Dennis Hopper, Judy Collins, Charley Pride, the Oak Ridge Boys, Patti Page and Merle Haggard, most rarely seen on TV back then. Chris Harris comments: “I remember it was the Johnny Cash show that got em all here!!!! Wow...and John Darnall was the music director for that show.” John is a guy we’ve all worked for, and I’ve booked as a guitar player. His then-wife Beverly booked background vocals for the majority of sessions in Nashville for the past twenty-five years.

[iii] Thanks to the internet, I learned that Nicolette died in 1997, at the age of 45, of a cerebral hemorrhage.