It was 38 years ago earlier this month that we moved to Ann Arbor. Although we had played two "concerts" (euphemism for a University of Rochester cocktail hour, and a fraternity house party) in Rochester, NY, where we moved from, our very first appearance before sober people was at the Ann Arbor Art Fair in July of 1973.
Things were much looser in those days when it came to scheduling music at the Fair. We showed up with our guitars on Wednesday afternoon at the Graceful Arch Stage on East University and there was nobody playing. With the chutzpah of youth, we told Lois Lintner, the kind lady who seemed to be in charge, that we were professional musicians (well we did get paid for those two parties!) and asked if could we play a set. She said, "Sure. Nobody’s scheduled for the next hour." We had just about enough material for that, and played our first real (non-paying) concert.
We were not even thinking about children’s music at the time — we were singing and playing an eclectic (read "random") mix of traditional folk music from different parts of the world, the songs of Bob Dylan and other folk heroes of the 60’s, and our own original songs for adults. A few people walking by the stage stopped and listened, stayed for a song or two, applauded politely, and continued browsing at the Art Fair booths. But Lois Lintner liked our music and invited us to come back the next day — and for many years after that.
Of course, we had no idea when we played that first set at the Art Fair, that we would be lucky enough to still be making our living playing music 38 years later.
The world-famous actress, Sarah Bernhardt, was pacing up and down in the wings, waiting for her cue to go on, obviously quite nervous. Seeing this, a young actress came up to her and said, "Miss Bernhardt, after all these years, and with all your fame, you still get nervous?" Bernhardt replied, "Why, yes, of course." The astonished young actress exclaimed, "I'm in my very first role, and I'm not nervous at all!" Sarah Bernhardt didn't miss a beat in her response: "Don't worry, my dear, it comes with talent."
I take that as reassurance that I must have some modicum of talent since, after nearly forty years, I still get nervous before gigs. But I've learned not to call it nervousness, with its negative connotations, but excitement or enthusiasm, and to recognize it as the energy needed to bring out my best. And if it doesn't come up on its own, I've learned, at least to some degree, to generate it—by making an effort to become as focused and as present as possible—and then the interaction with the audience and the power of music enter in to increase it.
But it wasn't always that way. When San and I first started playing concerts in 1973, what I felt was not nervousness, but fear. Partly it came from being worried about not being prepared enough to be doing what I was doing. After all, I'd started playing guitar just a little more than two years before. I was still looking at my hands to make sure I was putting my fingers in the right place—and there were plenty of times when I didn't! San and I barely had enough repertoire of folk songs for one night of music, and I wasn't completely sure I'd remember all the words to all the songs, especially when I was focused so intently on my hands. I'd also just recently started writing original songs, and I really didn't know if an audience would like them. So, there was plenty to be scared about!
And my mind was quite capable of taking those somewhat reasonable fears and expressing them in pessimistic, defeatist inner voices that said things like, "Who are you kidding? You know you're really not very good at this. You should have listened to your parents and gotten a real job."
Over the years these critical inner voices have diminished, and I've also learned a bit about how to respond to them when they do come up. These days, if a cynical voice comes up before a concert, I look at it the way I look at the Caller ID on my phone; if it's a telemarketer, (and whatever they're trying to sell me, I don't want it!) I simply don't pick up the phone, and after four rings they hang up. Or, sometimes I pick up the phone and say, "Please take me off your list, I'm not interested." In other words, I say to these killjoy voices in my head, "Thanks for sharing."
But in the early days of playing music, it was not so easy to do this with these inner voices. And, in fact, years after we started playing concerts, I was still "picking up the phone" and getting out my credit card to buy the nasty, gloomy products these voices were selling.
It all came to a head in January of 1979, when we played the first concert where we did it all—rented the hall, (the Pendleton Room on the second floor of the University of Michigan Student Union) made up fliers and put them up all over town, printed tickets, sent hand-addressed (!) post cards to the relatively few people whose addresses we had collected at our gigs, and mailed or hand-delivered press releases, calendar announcements and PSA's to the media contacts we'd compiled. Remember, this was way before e-mail, Internet, Facebook, etc. (maybe even before fax machines?) and we were still pretty new at this; we knew even less about marketing than we knew about music.
The concert was scheduled for 2:00pm on a Sunday afternoon, and we set up the room and tuned up our instruments well before. There was no PA system. We didn't own one, and could not afford to rent one. Besides, we'd grown up singing un-amplified with our Dad in the synagogue, and the Pendleton Room was not that large, had decent acoustics, and, of course, we expected people to be listening to us—not like in the bars where we had first started performing, and where we still played from time to time.
After setting up, we went out into the lobby to greet the people we were hoping would come. At 1:30, people started arriving, and by 1:40 there were more than 50 people in the room—and they kept coming. At quarter to two, when there were more than 100 people in the room (50 more than we expected!) I went around the corner to a hallway off the lobby and hid. I was scared stiff! It had suddenly hit me—all these people were here just to hear us! They'd be doing nothing but sitting quietly, in neat rows, all facing us, and listening to us sing and play. If we invited them to sing, they'd do that, and at the end of songs they'd applaud, but otherwise they'd sit quietly, and focus totally on us!
I'd been nervous, even scared before concerts plenty of times, but somehow this was different. This was fear bordering on terror. They say that for many people the fear of public speaking ranks number one among fears—ahead of the fear of death! That was what I was experiencing at 1:50. And the feeling was growing as I heard more and more people coming up the stairs.
At five minutes to the hour, San found me. "Where have you been? I've been looking for you. We've got a great crowd." I quavered, "I know. And I'm not going out there." San looked at me like I'd just said something in Swahili. "What do you mean, you're not going out there? Don't be ridiculous!" I repeated my fear-soaked refrain, "I'm not going out there."
San became reasonable. "Look, it'll be fine. They're all here to listen to us. Nobody is drinking, they'll stop talking as soon as we come in, and besides, they're all fans or friends." I told him I knew all that, and that's why I was not going out there.
I don't remember whether he pulled me by the arm, or got behind me and pushed, but the next thing I knew we were by the door of the Pendleton Room, and people started applauding as soon as they saw us. We walked in singing an unaccompanied welcome song I'd written, and stepped up onto the two risers that had been set up as our stage. I looked out at a capacity crowd of nearly two hundred smiling, encouraging faces. San was right. It was fine!
We hope your new year is getting off to a great start. I am very happy to let you know that I feel great and back to doing everything I was able to before my bypass surgery in October. I’ve been cross country skiing, swimming, even shoveling snow! More importantly, Laz and I played our first concert since the surgery on January 17th, when we played at the Discovery Center here in Ann Arbor. It was great fun to sing for and with people again. It was our first time back together on stage in just over three months, our longest hiatus since we began playing in public in 1973. Of course, in the interim Laz played a number of shows alone and with other musicians, and I played my guitar and piano a great deal at home, so we weren’t rusty. In the interval I also got to play a few concerts with my daughter, Emily, beginning with a show for seniors on December 31st. It was a great way to end the old year and begin the new.
She and I also played a concert at the Chelsea Retirement Community in honor of my long-time friend, Ray Schairer’s 89th birthday. Ray, a retired farmer and woodworker, is the man who crafted the wooden bones that my bones teacher, Percy Danforth, played. Since 1976 Ray has made upwards of 30,000 pairs of bones that have been sold all over the United States and even overseas. In 2002, I began apprenticing with Ray, learning to make the bones, and last year he very generously gave me all his tools and turned over the bones-making business to me. In the past few years, I also helped Ray write a book of his memories growing up as a Michigan farm boy in the 1920s and 30s. It’s a wonderful record of a way of life that has all but disappeared. You can read excerpts from Ray’s book at BarefootBoyBook.com.)
Playing music these last few months, both at home and now back on stage, has been incredibly healing and invigorating for me. Through all my years of music making I’ve had frequent magical/whimsical moments, on stage and off. The recent enforced vacation allowed me to practice more than our usual busy schedule allows and refreshed my love of music making and my gratitude for what it brings to my life, and, it seems, to others. On Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday Emily and I played at a senior center here in Ann Arbor. Before we began, the seniors, many with Alzheimer’s and other limitations, sat withdrawn, with blank, sad expressions on their faces. By the time we ended, most were smiling, animated and talkative.
The other day I played for toddlers at the Towsley Children's House, here in Ann Arbor. Laz and I alternate going there every month. I’d not been there since September, but the staff and children welcomed me warmly and remembered the songs I bring, many of them different from the ones Laz brings to them. We were singing my Pizza song together in the front lobby around 11:30 when a man delivered two huge bags of pizzas for lunch. We all laughed with delight.
Thank you again to all of you who sent cards, emails and good wishes in the past few months. Laz and I also thank all of you who ordered our music recently. We are grateful to all of you for supporting our music all these years. We send you our best wishes for a great new year and look forward to seeing you at one of our concerts soon.
Over the winter break, Laz, Helen and Daniel were in Ecuador, working on a land reclamation project in a deforested area. They helped plant nine native Molle trees (pronounced Mojay) and started a terraced garden up the hillside. In all the planting, they were working around native grasses and flowers that are coming up through the rock-hard ground, starting to help with the eroded soil. They were last there in August 2010, and were delighted to see the area coming alive with birds (especially hummingbirds), butterflies, and bees that had not been much in the area for many years. Laz also got to write and play music, inspired by the magnificent vistas of the Andes mountains. For more information about the project see HillsideOfDreams.org.
Mt. Cotopaxi, nearly 20,000 ft. high, greeted us many a morning
The view to the South
The loma (hillside) on which we lived and worked
Another view of the Loma
One of a number of amazing rainbows we saw
The valley below
Helen shopping at the daily fruit and vegetable market in nearby Salcedo
We hope you had a restful, enjoyable Thanksgiving break. This year, more than ever, we have much for which we are thankful. I continue to recover well from my surgery and by now can tell that I’ll be ready to get back on stage in January. I didn’t play in our annual Mott Children's Hospital benefit concert at the Ark— the first one I’ve missed it since we started doing those concerts 16 years ago. However, I couldn’t resist sneaking in the back door of the Ark and watching the concert from the hallway. Laz led a wonderful show, aided by our good friends in the Good Mischief Band, (Brian Brill on piano, Aron Kaufman on drums and Eric Fitihian on guitar) and of course, my daughter Emily. I was mostly undetected in the back, but one little boy walked by me, did a little double take and said, pointing to Laz, "Are you his cousin?"
I want to thank you all from the bottom of my newly refurbished heart for the many, many good wishes I’ve received via cards, emails and phone calls. Not to be flippant about it, it’s been truly heart warming and healing.
Laz and I and our families also want to thank you for your support of our music in the past few weeks. Many of you have ordered our recordings, videos, songbooks and instruments and we very much appreciate your generosity. We’ll continue to offer our products here at the same reduced prices ($10 for any CD or video) through December 14th and thank you again for your support.
We send all of you our best wishes for a happy Chanukah, merry Christmas and a very happy, healthy New Year. We look forward to seeing you soon.
San
In early October I started experiencing some chest pain, and to make a long story short, I had bypass surgery on October 27th. The docs found that my heart and lungs are very healthy, but the arteries were not. I've been home from the hospital since the 31st and have been surprising my docs and myself since then.
I'm recovering well. I am able to walk, albeit slowly, for nearly a half hour at a time. Even before I left the hospital I started playing harmonica (to supplement the breathing exercises they gave me) and have been able to play piano from the first day I've been home. Guitar will come soon, once my incision is less sore and, as you can see, I can work on my laptop. I voted on Nov. 2nd, have gone on brief errands, and plan to attend my daughter, Emily's violin recital later this week, as well as her class play, Bye Bye Birdie, next week. I have my appetite back and have very little pain. I won't be able to drive for another few weeks, but I fully expect to be back playing concerts by January. (In the meantime, I’m also bonding with my couch as never before.) In short, I feel extremely fortunate, grateful and blessed.
Please note: though we've re-scheduled the concerts we'd booked into November and December, Laz will play our annual Thanksgiving Weekend Benefit Concert for Mott Children's Hospital with our Good Mischief Band — Brian Brill on piano, Aron Kaufman on drums, Eric Fithian on bass, and featuring my daughter, Emily Rose on vocals and violin! See details below.
Laz's wife, Helen, gave me several very helpful BodyTalk healing sessions, and organized some delicious meals to be brought to us by our friends and neighbors. Laz's son, Daniel has been great company with frequent card games, along with my mother-in-law, Norma. Laz has held down the Gemini fort admirably, re-scheduling concerts, booking new ones and generally running our vast enterprise and holdings. ☺ My wife, Brenda and Emily are, of course, champion caregivers and so I, we, lack for nothing. Your good wishes, though, are extremely helpful and very welcome.
Laz and I have been fortunate to have been able to put aside some savings for just such a rainy day, so we will be able to weather this rough patch without undue hardship. We are not asking for your help. If, however, you'd like to buy any of our recordings, DVDs, songbooks, and instruments for your family, or as gifts, we would welcome your support. We are offering a special discount on all of our recordings! Through December 14th, all of our CDs (for children, as well as for adults) and also our live concert DVD, will be reduced to $10. You can order here to complete your collection of Gemini recordings, and also to give them as gifts to family and friends. And feel free to forward this offer on to others who may be interested in our music.
We wish you and your family the best for the rest of this year, and for a very happy and healthy new year.
Ernie Harwell and San in Nicola’s Bookstore, Ann Arbor, in 1985
Growing up in Hungary and Israel, I never saw a baseball game until after our family moved to the US in 1959. I didn’t pay much attention to baseball till I got married in 1982. My wife Brenda, and her parents, Bill and Norma, were lifelong fans of the game, and of the Tigers, and I caught the bug from them. I fell in love with baseball, and I fell hard—hook, line and sinker. The hook was Brenda and Bill and Norma’s affection for the game, the sinker was the Tigers’ magical 1984 season, but the line that kept me connected then, and ever after, was Ernie Harwell.
For me, as for so many of us, Ernie Harwell was not only the voice of the Detroit Tigers, he was the sound of baseball, and indeed the soundtrack of spring, summer and fall. Even though Ernie is gone now, our memories will not soon fade of that one-of-a-kind, yet Everyman voice, or of that remarkable, yet remarkably humble human being.
I listened to Ernie for countless hours. It’s a safe bet that I spent more time listening to Ernie than I did to any single musician or band, probably more than to many combined.
I got to meet him once, at Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor in 1985, when he was signing copies of his books. He was as authentic, as warm, and as genuinely friendly as I’d long heard people say he was. I asked him if Nicola Rooney could take a picture of us. He graciously agreed and the photo is now one of my treasured keepsakes.
Laz and I also had the great thrill of hearing Ernie say our names on the radio a handful of times. In 1989, we began singing the Anthem before Tigers ballgames a few times each season. Ernie and his longtime on-air partner, Paul Carey, announced our names before we sang and sometimes would say a few words about us afterward. A recording that a friend of ours made of their comments on one of those radio broadcasts, is another treasured memento. Having Ernie say something nice about you, (did he ever say anything else—about anyone?) was, though not rare, still precious.
When the Tigers let Ernie go in 1991 I boycotted their broadcasts. I only started listening again when they re-hired him. Even today, some of my enjoyment of current Tiger announcer, Jim Price, stems from my memories of his voice intertwined with Ernie’s when he was Ernie’s partner. Anyone who was good enough for Ernie will always be good enough for me.
Goodbye Ernie. Thank you for all the hours, thank you for all the memories.
Famed folk singer, Odetta, died in December. There are many wonderful articles/pieces about her on the Web. Here is one that has another link within it.
We were fortunate to spend some time with Odetta a number of years ago and we have some fond recollections. In Boston, in 1982, we opened seven concerts for Odetta at Passim's Coffeehouse. If she was upset about the relatively small crowds that week, she didn't complain to her audience—or to anyone else that we heard. If she had any resentment about the folk boom of the Sixties that, for the most part, had passed her by, yet elevated a number of arguably less talented performers to much greater popularity, she didn't take it out on any of the people around her. Passim's only had one dressing room, perhaps more accurately described as a dressing closet. The tiny cubicle was cramped for one person, let alone three, yet every night Odetta graciously invited us to share it with her, rather than allow us to warm up in the only other available spot, the hallway next to the kitchen. Before we went on stage for each show, she sent us off with a heartfelt, "Give 'em heaven!"
She closed all her concerts with "Amazing Grace." At the end of her last show, in a sweet and generous gesture, she invited us up on stage to sing it with her. She sang the first verse differently than I'd ever heard it before. Instead of, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me," she substituted, "a soul like me" and said, during the musical rest following that phrase, "No wretches here." She obviously believed that, and treated people accordingly—on and off stage. (We’ve sung the song that way ever since.)
Her obituary in Newsweek Magazine said she had been planning to sing at Barack Obama’s inaguration from a wheelchair. It’s sad that we didn’t get to hear her there, but we’ll always remember her with gratitude and affection.
My father-in-law, Bill Miller, died the evening of November 10, 2008. His wife, Norma, and his daughter, my wife Brenda, were at his bedside. My daughter Emily and I, along with one of Emily’s closest friends, were at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, listening to Joan Baez in concert. We’d bought the tickets several weeks before, as a special birthday gift for Emily’s friend, and of course had no way of knowing that Bill would die during the concert. But my wife must have had a premonition, because when we bought the tickets she decided not to buy one for herself. And the universe also sent us a comforting signal. Partway through the concert, as it later turned out, at almost exactly the time Bill died, Joan Baez spoke at length about her sister, Mimi Farina, who died recently. One of only two a cappella songs she sang that night was a striking version of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” (“Comin’ for to carry me home…”)
Longtime fans of ours probably remember Bill as the tall, smiling man who sold our recordings after many of our concerts. This was a labor of love he took very seriously, always making sure he had plenty of cash with which to make change, memorizing the list of songs on all our recordings so he could answer our fans’ questions about which recordings contained which songs. Bill was one of those people who could strike up a conversation with a stranger and make a friend in minutes. I watched him do that countless times with people at our shows. He was inordinately proud of his son-in-law and of his son-in-law’s brother and bragged about us frequently to whoever would listen. He was even prouder of his daughter, Brenda, pointing out to everyone that she designed all the covers of our recordings.
Of course, we were all supplanted from the top spots in the bragging order when his only grandchild, Brenda and my daughter, Emily, was born. No grandpa could be prouder or more loving. Bill logged nearly as many hours as my wife and I did holding Emily while she slept on his chest. And if Emily’s love of books and reading is due in part to how much she was read to as a child, then Bill certainly deserves a big share of the credit. He probably holds the world record for the number of repetitions of “Pat the Bunny,” not to mention the hours of peek-a-boo and hide-and-go-seek. When Emily began playing the violin, and started joining Laz and me on stage, Norma probably frequently needed to replace shirt buttons Bill popped from pride and joy.
Bill worked at the General Motors Fisher Body Plant in Lansing for much of his adult life. (I find it a sad coincidence that since Bill died GM seems to be in its own struggle for life.) He received a number of awards for production line improvements he suggested there. He was a conscientious and reliable worker, but when his thirty years were up he was ready to retire and Norma and he enjoyed a number of years of traveling to Florida during the winters, and made a whole new circle of friends down there.
Bill loved music, especially gospel music. His favorite song was Amazing Grace. Laz and I sang it frequently when he was in our audience and Emily and I almost always sang it for him when we visited. Joan Baez’s last encore the night Bill died was an a cappella “Amazing Grace.” I’ll never hear her voice again without thinking of Bill.
In those last few weeks, when Bill was failing, Emily and I visited often and sang and played for him. In his last few days, when he was in a coma in Hospice of Lansing, we continued to play for him, and when we were not there, Brenda and Norma continued to play music for him — home recordings that Emily and I made.
Bill and I had a long running joke between us. I often called him “my favorite-father-in-law” and he returned the favor by calling me his “favorite son-in-law.” The fact that I was his only son-in-law, and he—obviously—my only father-in-law, never lessened the affection with which we used these terms of endearment. I drove up to Lansing the afternoon of November 10th to visit Bill. I sensed that he was close to dying and was pretty sure I would not see him again. When I left, I said, “Goodbye, favorite father-in-law.” I hope he heard me. I’m sure he knew.
Mt. Cotopaxi, nearly 20,000 ft. high, greeted us many a morning
The view to the South
The loma (hillside) on which we lived and worked
Another view of the Loma
One of a number of amazing rainbows we saw
The valley below
Helen shopping at the daily fruit and vegetable market in nearby Salcedo
One of the Molle trees we planted
