Jane Siberry: False False Fly

Jane Siberry's 1993 album When I Was A Boy (''calling all angels, calling all angels, we're cryin' and we're hurtin', and we're not sure why'')

 

Birthday greetings to singer/songwriter/poet Jane Siberry, who spent three years known as Issa — not to be confused with, or in recognition of, the California congressman of the same name. Siberry celebrates No.56 today.

Siberry might be mostly anonymous south of the border, but not in her native Canada. If you didn’t know her home country, you might have guessed if you ever heard her song Hockey. Who else but a Canadian, or Canadiens’ fan we presume (she’s from Toronto, but we don’t hear any Leafs references in the song), could work the night of the riot at the Montreal Forum and Hall of Famer Jean Beliveau into the same song (“this stick was signed by Jean Beliveau, so don’t f——- tell me where to f—— go”).

Siberry’s work is hard to categorize, except as . . . varied and different. You can easily decide for yourself since Siberry’s website, janesiberry.com, runs on the honor system. Visitors are invited to download her music from the site and pay what they can or nothing at all. According to Alexandra Gill on osdir.com, less than 1 in 5 downloaders were doing so for free, and of those who paid, most paid the normal fee. Of those that didn’t, more paid more than paid less.

Whatever they paid, Siberry is a bargain, and her voice is beautiful. Don’t expect to typecast her music, or her. We know this: she resembles, to these eyes, Meryl Streep; she seems to love dogs (“if you remind me of my dog, we’ll probably git along,” she sang on Everything Reminds Me of My Dog); and she must spend a lot in business cards — the artist formerly known as Jane Siberry and formerly known as Issa is known again as Jane Siberry.

“I felt the need to make some strong changes in my life,” Siberry told Sarah Terez Rosenblum in 2009 at windycitymediagroup.com. “It seemed important to change my name, so I did. I changed it to a name that I thought was simple, an empty cup. I had never heard the name Issa before, and it turns out to have some wonderful meanings, including a haiku poet in Japan, and the name that Jesus had in India. But . . . I officially changed my name back to Jane Siberry. I felt with the name change, I had gotten in my own way, in terms of devoting myself to my career, making my work available to people. So, Jane Siberry is my name again until further notice, but I feel richer from having been Issa for three years.”

A link and lryics to False False Fly from the 2000 album Hush below:

“Will you come along with me?”
said the False False Fly
To the lovely little child on the road
“No, I won’t come with you,”
said the lovely little child
She was only but seven years old

Sources: wikipedia.org, janesiberry.com, bittersuiteband.com, osdir.com, windycitymediagroup.com

John Prine: Day Is Done

John Prine's 1995 album Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings; if Dylan is looking for Lake Marie, it's track No. 5

Birthday greetings to singer/songwriter John Prine, who celebrates No. 65 today.

Many years ago, my friend TC and I shared, in no particular order, a love of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, 3 a.m. and Casey’s Tavern. Many nights when we had exhausted all three, he would inevitably request John Prine be put on the turntable (that’s how long ago it was).

The first time I told him I had no Prine, he was aghast, almost insulted. Second-class was charming in a taproom, not in a music collection. You need to listen to John Prine, he scolded, but when I learned that Prine had started out working for the postal service, like TC, I dismissed him. Postal workers stick together, I assumed.

Years later, long after TC and I had moved on to more respectable pursuits, I was in a used CD store (that’s how much later). I came across a Prine album (cover above) and because you could sample the fare before buying, I played it with TC’s words in mind. It took only a few notes to realize TC was right. Somewhere he was smirking and didn’t know why.

Irony is, Dylan, master of Blood on the Tracks, would always have agreed with TC.

Dylan on Prine, as told to the Huffington Post: “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about “Sam Stone” the soldier junky daddy and “Donald and Lydia,” where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might be “Lake Marie.” I don’t remember what album that’s on.”

Lake Marie is on Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings, the album I sampled in the CD store. Talk about blessings. But, like a lot of Prine’s work, not many people bought it. According to wikipedia, Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings reached 159th on the charts; no Prine album has been higher than 55th, which is far more an indictment of the audience than the performer.

It’d be even less, perhaps if not for Roger Ebert (and TC), who was one of the first to discover Prine in Chicago, where Prine delivered mail by day and sang at night (TC worked for the postal service by day and wrote sports at night).

Prine, on being discovered by Ebert, according to ottawaxpress.ca: “I was singing at this little out-of-the-way club in Chicago and Ebert stopped in one night, got himself a beer and he had just walked out of a movie because the popcorn was too salty or something like that. He sat and listened to my songs and the next day instead of writing about the movie he wrote about me. The headline was ‘Singing Mailman Delivers The Message.’ He said my songs were like little movies and a lot more interesting than what they were showing down at the theatres.”

Prine’s next album harkens back to that long-ago headline. The Singing Mailman Delivers will be released later this month; Prine’s website says it will include live and studio recordings dating back four decades. I’ll be thinking of TC when I get my copy.

Lyrics from Day is Done (link below), also on Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings, written by Prine and Gary Nicholson:

We’ll carve our names
On a tree
Then we’ll burn it down
So no one in the world will see

And we’ll make love
While we watch the flame
Then we’ll walk away
As if we never had no shame

sources: wikipedia.org, huffingtonpost.com, ottawaxpress.ca, johnprine.net

Steve Miller: Your Saving Grace

Birthday greetings to Steve Miller, who celebrates No. 68 today.

There are few musicians for whom the before and after contrast is as stark as it is for Miller. Before Fly Like An Eagle, he was counter-culture, bluesy, cool, underground FM available; after Fly Like an Eagle he was commercial, mainstream, conformist, overplayed and uninspiring. Before Miller was the highlights, after Miller was Miller Lite.

You could hear Fly Like An Eagle songs seemingly everywhere but in elevators (every time I hear Take The Money and Run, I feel like doing so, away from the song). The metamorphosis started with The Joker in 1973 — Miller’s first No. 1 hit — which gave us the expression “pompatus of love,” but was still of a different feel than Fly Like An Eagle. We’re not sure what happened, but we can guess that it’s good to be No. 1.

If you’re familiar only with the After Miller, know that there’s an earlier and better decade of Miller to listen to. Mentored when young by jazz guitarist Les Paul, a family friend, Miller’s early band mates included Boz Scaggs,  who had his own breakout album (Silk Degrees),  Ben Sidran, author, pianist and critic, and, if you know what I mean, Lee Michaels, whose one and only hit was Do You Know What I Mean.

Miller’s early work was rebellious, enduring and worthy of appreciation: Space Cowboy, Living In The U.S.A., Going To Mexico, Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around, Going To The Country, etc. A link to Your Saving Grace and lyrics from the same below:

 And now I spend my life
On the velvet side of hell
Aimlessly here searching
For what I cannot tell