Jen Bernard and Songwriting
The first time I came across Jen Bernard, she was singing with a friend of hers at the Hearthstone, a now-defunct local bakery that hosted a weekly "coffeehouse" on Saturday nights.
That evening was the first time Penny and I had been to one of Hearthstone's coffeehouse nights (at Penny's behest) and because the bakery moved to East Lansing not long after, it was the only one we'd attend.
I recall that it was quite a cold winter night and that it was a fairly decent crowd – mostly friends of the two singers. The room was in its usual configuration – tables and chairs – and I believe that light snacks or soups were available in addition to tea and coffee.
The women were quite young. I guessed at the time that they were perhaps twenty at best; Jen's hair was long and flowing and her partner's was a shorter bright orange-red. They were dressed as – what I referred to at the time – neo-hippies. Their clothes were throw-backs (perhaps even hand-me-downs!) to the 60s, no doubt a time in which their parents had grown up.
They had lovely voices, though Jen appeared to be the force within the duo. She did most of the lead vocals, most of the song introductions and played guitar. I don't recall much else about their music that night except for the impact it was soon to have on me.
One of the songs that Jen sang toward the end of the evening was Michael Smith's "Spoon River" – one of my favorite songs of all time.
Spoon River
© by Michael P. Smith
All of the riverboat gamblers are losing their shirts
All of the brave Union soldier boys sleep in the dirt
You know and I know there never was reason to hurt
When all of our lives were entwined to begin with
Here in Spoon River
All of the calico dresses, the gingham and lace
Are up in the attic with grandfather's derringer case
There's words whispered down in the hallway, a shadowy face
The morning is heavy with one more beginning
Here in Spoon River
Come to the dance, Mary Perkins, I like you right well
The Union's preserved, if you listen, you'll hear all the bells
There must be a heaven, the Lord knows I've seen mostly hell
My rig is outside, let us ride through the morning
Here in Spoon River
I recall that when she introduced the song, she warned us that she didn't quite know the chord progression, and asked that we bear with her. In my seat, I thought to myself, "Ooh! Ooh! I know it! I know it!" and I wished I could leap from my seat to the rescue. I didn't, of course. I sat along with everyone else and enjoyed the song, although I think that I enjoyed it on a couple different levels.
First, she did a fine rendition of the song, so I enjoyed it in that sense. More importantly, however, I was elated that someone so young was performing a song that was not only one of my favorites, but was fairly obscure – even as folk music goes. Michael Smith is hardly a household name, and I suppose that had I not been a Steve Goodman fan, I'd probably not have heard of Smith myself, as Goodman's version of this song (as well as Smith's "The Dutchman") were my introduction to Smith's writing.
At the end of the evening, we came home and I – still in my "Ooh! Ooh! I know it! I know it!" frame of mind – got out my guitar for the mere purpose of proving to myself that I did know how to play the song.
My guitar was one that Penny had given to me as an anniversary gift a few years earlier. She had picked it up from her cartoon instructor/friend Dennis Preston for $75 as a matter of trying to encourage me to play again. I had sold the first guitar I'd ever owned a number of years earlier because I'd lost interest in playing it – mostly because it was a piece-o-crap Ovation guitar that just didn't sound to me like a guitar should sound. (Hey, what can I say?!? I was young and stupid when I bought it!)
The guitar had seen its day. It was a twelve-string model – not something I would have purchased for myself, although I think that Penny must have heard me talk about having played a twelve-string at one time and that – at the time – I'd liked the sound it made. The biggest problem with the guitar was its action (basically the distance between the strings and the fretboard) which made for a difficult time playing it. That there were two sets of strings to press down on didn't make it any easier.
Still, despite the guitar's deficiencies, I picked it up that night and I haven't stopped playing since. I got used to the bad action and began playing the guitar much like a six-string, picking individual strings a la Bob Dylan, John Prine or Loudon Wainwright III.
Jen, of course, wouldn't have known that night the role she'd played in my little personal renaissance. But later that year, I met her in one of those "colliding world" moments when she showed up at a Ten Pound Fiddle Coffeehouse concert (Eileen McGann) with her parents and her sister Wendy (I can't recall if her brother Seth was with them that night), whom I met that night as well. Penny had met her parents (Bob and Chris) earlier that year at the East Lansing Art Festival while drawing caricatures at Jane Rosemont's Toomuchfun Rubber Stamps store. They kept in touch and had let Penny know they'd be driving down from Lake City that night for the show as they were big fans of McGann's music.
Coincidences (or perhaps more fittingly, "conspiring incidents") continued to dominate my days as the Bernards told us about Blissfest, a music festival that they'd been attending for years. The first year Penny I attended (1991, I believe), Loudon was one of the headliners. I had been a fan of his since high school but had never seen him perform. Upon our return from the festival, I ran out and bought up every recording of his I'd neglected to buy since 1978. I continued to play guitar, mostly learning Loudon Wainwright III songs.
In the spring of 1992, my dad died, and after attending another Ten Pound Fiddle concert (Carla Sciaky), I came home and wrote what was probably only the second or third song I'd ever written. It dealt with the nonsense that occurred the week my dad died. Apparently, he'd requested that his grandchildren not see him while he was in the hospital. He often had a respirator covering much of his face and he supposedly didn't want them to remember him that way.
Ever the free-thinker, Penny ignored the request and we took Zachary and Allison in to see him. I'm glad we did but it really pissed off a few people in my family. It was a good thing – I could tell that my dad enjoyed their company more than he might ever have let on, and the kids, of course, never mentioned the respirator after that.
Coming Of Age
© 1992 by Patrick T. Power
We sit across from each other
At the trough – a hungry herd
We gobble up all our dinner
And we hardly say a word
This life is such a mystery
Can we turn another page
To the best part, our later years
When we'll have come of age
We sit cross from each other
With beer cans in our hands
Our eyes on the television
(Ain't it great to be a man!)
I suppose this ritual
Has trapped us in a cage
Where we pace around in circles
Until we've come of age
We sit across from each other
In the hospital crying tears
For all the time we never shared
Through all our growing years
Now Dad is dead and so begin
The battles we must wage
We watch our children growing up
Before we've come of age
While I don't subscribe to the "everything happens for a reason" way of thinking, it sure seems as if there was some grand collusion that had brought me to something I'd always wanted to do – songwriting.
Of course, there are many things in our lives which affect our paths from one day to the next; from one year to the next. Still, when I think of songwriting and how it came to be something that I consider a vital aspect of my life, I remember a cold night on Michigan Avenue in Lansing, listening to some young woman singing "Spoon River"...
Calling Me Home (Jen's Song)
© 1992 by Patrick T. Power
On a cold night in a very cold year
An old familiar tune came to my ear
And like the winter wind it chilled me to the bone
To hear an angel calling me home
You didn't see, you couldn't have known
You were an angel calling me home
There are some things we hardly ever see
And there are ways we just don't know how to be
We're so weak when we try to stand alone
Until an angel calls us home
You didn't see, you couldn't have known
You were an angel calling me home
It was a cold night in a very cold year
When your voice drifted out to me so clear
And this heart that I thought had turned to stone
Heard an angel calling me home
You didn't see, you couldn't have known
You were an angel calling me home
You didn't see, you couldn't have known
You were an angel calling me home
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