I am a self-styled jazz-blues piano player who has been a poetry writer (not a poet) all his life and who as recently in the last 10 years (I’m a mountain on his 75 year around the stars), has developed his own style of writing fusing his piano chops with the chops in words written as if they were stingy gold.
Hearing this adventure has brought me to tears in a somewhat religious way due to the strength of the purpose, the script, the cleanness of the way Ismay moves through her search for herself as she searches for a musical icon and soul-craft mate, Lucinda Williams.
I knew of Lucinda but have never dived into her music, until recently when I bought “Car Wheels.” I’m a devoted Dylan fan and saw Charlie Sexton with him on several occasions (not enough, I think). I’m a religious proponent of the Dead and their enormous body of work, not to mention their singular status as iconic performers. I love all the old guys..Willie , Hank, Merl as well as John Prine, Ian Noe, others. I came to this was a little bit of background. What is incredibly honest and heart warming, and one of the best segments was her interview with Mary Gauthier who has nothing but essential wisdom and warmth.
However, as a creative writer with a lot of material and very little exposure due to my reluctance if not “fear” of being a part of the social barnyard, I can say that exposing the story through the medium most available to the writer is not so much a craft as a process of being amenable to the “accident of discovery.” This is the setting down of lyrics-words-story line that would suggest control if not for the fact that the “work” is the one in control…and recognizing that space is as much a talent as the inspiration to be a “truth giver.”
I am, at my late blooming age of discovery, becoming more proactive with playing out here in WNC and, as Blaze Foley said, “trying my songs on the people I meet and get along with it all.”
Blaze is also one my new discoveries and the link to him and Lucinda through Gurf Morlix was a nugget.
This show is like one of those gourmet take out desserts that when you get it home, you only treat yourself to a forkful and then betray the rest to the fridge to wait for the next day.
