The Fiddler Is a Good Woman, page 17
Eventually, and it was a long, hard road, I got her out of my system. She worked her way through me, wrecking everything in my system as she went. But she is out of me now. I have a great thing going with a genuinely honest, good person, through and through. And being good does not mean being boring, after all, dammit.
I mean, if, one day, we were both old, and retired, and we’d both mellowed a lot with time, I can sort of imagine us being real friends again, maybe living in the same neighbourhood, visiting each other for tea like nice old ladies. And I still have the boots.
Miruna Molnar
Ferry from Galiano Island to Victoria, 2016
Was she a hippy? I don’t know. What is a hippy? Am I a hippy because I make kombucha and I have long hair and I like to live outside the city, as sustainably as I can? Yes, she did smoke a lot of weed. Well, mostly little bits of weed, or hash in that little pipe of hers, all day.
Yes, we kept our own chickens. We used to argue about who was going to get up in the morning in the freezing cold and let the chickens out of their coop. She was the one who talked me into getting them, and named them all. So I thought she should be the one to deal with them and clean the chicken house, especially since I dealt with them all the time when she was on tour. Including when a raccoon got in with them and left the most brutal bloody mess, like a serial-killer crime scene. I threw up in the chicken yard when I saw it, and then I threw up again when I went back to try to confront it and smelled my own vomit. Gross, gross, gross!
Yes, we had goats for a while. We sold the goats. Our lady goat, Belinda, had kids, and DD named the male kid “Tom-Tom” because she was already planning to kill him, skin him, and make a drum out of him. He was super affectionate. He would just nuzzle up to you, warm and fuzzy like a living stuffed animal. But boy goats get really aggressive when they hit puberty. They start getting very smelly and butting everything and everyone right in the crotch. Yes, she chopped his head off with an axe. It was really quick, but I couldn’t eat him, although I know I’ve eaten goat before lots of times at Ethiopian and Jamaican restaurants — but I couldn’t eat him. I would’ve puked him up again. I couldn’t go through that again, so we sold the other goats. But yes, she nursed him with a bottle, she raised him, and she chopped his head off with an axe. Is that a hippy thing to do?
It was right around that time that she started getting a lot of postcards from Rosalyn Knight, from the road. “Hi from your old stomping grounds in Belfast,” “Greetings from L.A. (Lethbridge, Alberta), miss having you ride shotgun!” that kind of thing. I started to get a little disquieted by that, but she told me I was being silly. I don’t believe that I was being silly, in retrospect.
Anonymous
Rejected Review of Ferry Lights
by the Low Johannahs, Submitted to BC Musician Magazine
, 2012 (Postmarked Macedonia)
The fact is that the Low Johannahs have been finished now for at least five years. Like the Rolling Stones, or, more locally, Blue Rodeo, the band is a zombie corpse of its former self, cursed to wander the world and make everybody sad for the loss of something magical that can no longer be.
Somebody should take a hatchet to this band, who once created so many perfect moments of inspired misery but are now just going through the motions, miserably. And if you don’t know the difference then you’ll never know and I can’t tell you. The originals are uninspired, and the covers feel phoned in. This reviewer had it from several sources that none of the Low Johannahs were ever even in the studio at the same time for this record. They just individually recorded their tracks, alone, and then mixed them together in post-production. They studio-usly avoided each other.
There are only two bright spots on the whole record. One is a stunning cover of “Tecumseh Valley” by the one and only Townes Van Zandt. The only proof that they didn’t record it long ago when they were still playing together like a real band is the perfectly woven-in violin part by newcomer DD, formerly of the tragically overlooked Supersonic Grifters, who is largely wasted on the material here. In fact, the only other bright spot is a deceptively simple number penned by DD herself, entitled “You Are Home to Me,” which should have been the single, and if they still had competent management like they did in the past, this reviewer is relatively sure that DD would have been asked to contribute more to this pathetic effort, which should otherwise be taken out behind the barn and shot.
2/10.
Mykola Loychuck
Back Bar, Cameron House, Toronto, 2016
Here’s something that really gets me down sometimes these days … now that I sometimes hang out with really successful musicians, people … people who play to theatres full of adoring fans who know all their songs or at least the hits. The thing is, it’s quite striking how many of them are … miserable. Cole Dixon has struggled with what you could definitely call, what I would say, in my professional opinion, is clinical depression. Several of the lady-singers I’ve met had severe eating disorders, scarfing down pizza and then throwing it up in the alley behind the bar. It’s a little bit of a mess out there. The whole idea is to work your way to living your dreams … but a lot of the dream-livers are having such a terrible time that the dream is starting to threaten my interior life, like the dream is partly a light that’s moving farther and farther away, but also a looming monster that I’ve seen eat people.
I know, I mean, I always knew that was a thing that rock stars talked about in their songs and in interviews, but in the past I imagine I was ignoring that sort of thing, dismissing it as pampered whining. Now I’m not quite as sure that I should dismiss it. I’m not sure what the route to happiness might be, but what I’m saying is that this route that I had unconsciously — or maybe … maybe it’s more accurate to say consciously — planned for myself is looking sort of like a dead end if I look at it too hard. So I don’t look at it too hard most of the time. That’s my strategy.
The Low Johannahs were the first musicians I knew personally who went from unknowns to stars. From being dirty tree-planter girls swapping Mississippi John Hurt songs by the campfire, to going on Letterman and headlining festivals and having herbal tea at Emmylou Harris’s house. And they seemed to be having a terrible time.
I think the real idea behind taking DD into the band was to find some antidote to the misery. Hoping that DD might help them find a path back to … to the joy of making music together. She clearly had a door that opened in that direction. Individually, each of the Johannahs was capable of going there with her, but as a group, it just wasn’t happening. Or, not often enough to make it work, and my personal theory is that their misery is what drove her underground.
The one thing I loved about them when they were at their worst was the stage banter. Punk rockers are supposed to not give a fuck what people think, but those women, they really did not. Did not care. I would say that there are unwritten rules about things you’re never supposed to say from the stage. I would say that they seemed to have a checklist of them, and they would sometimes seem to be running down the list, doing all the things you don’t do.
It’s important to be in tune. “I tune because I care,” that’s what Rosalyn always says. That’s true. But one of them or the other would each choose a space between a different song to tune up their instrument, and of course they couldn’t begin a song while one of them was tuning. There would be these amazing epochs, eons of dead air in their sets, where they’d just be going twing … twing … twing.
And then … one of them would take it upon themselves to fill that awkward time and speak. And that would be worse than dead air. All to a vast sea of, say, five to ten thousand paying people in a festival mainstage crowd.
One time, I think it was the fest in Comox, Kris said, “Um, how many of you out there are camping at this fest?” and the crowd cheered, and she said, “That’s awesome. So cool that you’re camping.”
And then Suzie turned to Kris but said into the microphone, “Are you camping?”
And Kris was like, “Um, no.”
And Suzie went, “No, you’re not, you’re staying at the four-star hotel you demanded to be on the rider.”
And this was right on the mainstage.
And Kris said, “Well, are you camping?”
“Hell no. I hate camping. I’m just saying so do you.”
“I camp. I camp sometimes.”
“I’ve never, ever seen you camp.”
And Lila finally broke in and said, irritably, “Anyway, let’s start the song. You ready? You tuned yet?”
And, of course, then Suzie was there with, “Almost. Just gotta get this pesky D string up.…”
Twing, twing.
I mean, really. Some of us aspiring performers were just killing ourselves to try to craft entertaining jokes or entertaining introductions to songs, or just trying to find some way to reach out to the audience to get them to, you know, care about the song we were about to play, about what we were doing, in the hopes that one day we might break through the giant wall of indifference. And these women were just wasting time, or worse, slagging off their own band members from the stage, and the audience just hung on every word. And when the song did start, the crowd went bananas because they recognized the opening four notes of the song from the beloved album. Suzie would introduce a song like this:
“I’ve been going to Curves lately.”
And Lila would go, “What’s Curves?”
“It’s a place for fat ladies to work out. Fat ladies like me.”
“Huh. That’s great.”
And Suzie would go, “Anyway, I think my arms are getting pretty strong. Let’s play ‘John Henry.’”
And that was the introduction. Yes, it was.
Sometimes they’d get a bit more on point with the actual subject matter of the song, and sometimes that would, in fact, be even more horrific than the other way.
There was one time I was there watching them from the crowd when Lila said, “Some of you already know this, but in the American folk music tradition, there’s a whole bunch of songs where you know, a dude sleeps with some chick.”
Suzie: “Some chick?”
Lila: “Sorry, chick is bad, right?”
Suzie: “Yeah. Can’t say chick anymore. That’s sexist.”
Lila: “Some chickie-baby, he sleeps with her, he knocks her up. Puts a bun in her oven. She’s ‘in the family way.’ Then the pressure is on to get married. So, he’s thinking about that. But he don’t really wanna get married. He’s not quite ready to settle down.”
Suzie: “He’s unsure.”
Lila: “He’s unsure. He’s unsure. So, instead he just kills her. Stabs her with a knife, or drowns her in the river usually. Or both! Then they hang him. I like to call these songs ‘Appalachian abortion songs.’ And this here is one of ’em.”
Speaking of abortion, let’s not forget the time I saw them perform at Rock for Choice. Their song selection for the event? An old trad chestnut called “I Wish My Baby Had Been Born.” Yes.
There was also the charming habit of apologizing for the sloppiness of the previous song — “Sorry, guys. We’ll do that one better next time. I knew we should have run through that in sound check.” Or the classic game they played where they each took a turn between songs to ask the monitor guy to turn their own instrument up. “Can I get some more ukulele in the monitor, please,” says the ukulele player, followed by, “We could use a little more guitar in the monitor, if you can,” from the guitar player. And then …
“Can I get a bit more vocal here in the monitor?”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Mine as well.”
Until everything has essentially been made louder than everything else, and so nothing has happened at all, because the mix is a mix, of course, and you can’t … oh, never mind. It was a garbage palace that DD walked into. A shipwrecked train.
Kris Hauser
CafE Deux Soleils, Commercial Drive, VANCOUVER, 2014
We wanted someone to fill out the sound after Suzie left in a huff. And it had to be a girl. That’s the deal. You can say, “Oh, that’s, you know, discrimination, because you wouldn’t leave it open in terms of gender.” I find that risible, given the long history of patriarchy in the so-called music business. There are no women musicians out there. There are no jobs for them, no spots for them at festivals. Yes, of course, there’s, like, a smattering of female musicians, and it’s always the singer — if it’s not the singer it’s always somehow a big deal. A man is the bass player. A woman is “the girl bass player.” You know. And there were issues of marketing. The Low Johannahs had a vibe of, you know, the lady-hobo thing. Boxcar Bertha. Poor, free, adventuring girls on the road. And G totally fit that vibe. I mean, she was in a band with DD before.
We needed a female, and I have a general rule: if some girl leaves the band, you replace her by chunking in a lesbian, you know? They’re just lower maintenance than straight girls. And I say that as a straight girl. But I’m sorry, it’s true. It’s true! They spend less time in the bathroom, they’re ready to get going sooner, and, most importantly, they don’t tend to get accidentally impregnated, generally, so you don’t have to chunk in another girl so soon.
But when DD heard that we were going to get G to sit in on a practice, she took me aside, and she looked me in the eye, and she said, “I’m only going to ask this once. If you’re my friend, please don’t hire G to be in the band.”
And I was like, “Okay … Why? She’s cool,” and DD was like, “I don’t wanna go into that. If you trust me, and you’re my friend, just go with me on this one, since I’ve never asked for anything like that before.” So I said, “Okay, copacetic. I’ll tell the girls.”
But then the others were like, “Why?” and I was like, “DD says no,” but they were like, “Yeah, but why?” and I was like, “She won’t say,” and they were like, “Well, there has to be, like, some kind of reason to discriminate against G like that. That’s not right,” and I was like, “Okay, whatever. I tried.”
I explained to DD, and she said, “So, you’re taking her in the band anyway?” and I was like “Dude, I tried.” She just started picking at her fiddle case. She didn’t say anything. So I just assumed it was settled. There were a thousand urgent things to do to get ready for the next round of recording and touring. We couldn’t afford to spend a lot of time discussing any one thing. You know?
Tom Abbott
Kingston’s Second Oldest Bar, After Closing, 2015
I saw DD when she came through with Mykola a while back. I made a point of getting out to the Black Sheep to see the show. It was a fuckin’ killer. Hosting the open mic, there’s sometimes a long lull between nuggets of truly great stuff. You gotta have stamina, you gotta have faith, heh, that the next true moment will come along. But Mykola and DD were just stringing those moments together like a fuckin’ pearl necklace that night. Place was half-full, but we all felt privileged to be there.
I’d seen them play before and I liked their thing. Mykola passes off to DD a lot more than most singer-songwriters do with their soloists. He tries to put her in charge of the song, but she only takes charge of it when she feels like it, when she’s moved to. So when it fucks up with them, it’s because he’s asking her to take the reins but she’s not there yet, and there can be a second where he loses the thread. Also, when she really takes it he can get so into her playing that you can see he’s forgot where the fuck he is in the song. Those mistakes were still there, for sure, but not very many. They were tight-connected by a single attitude that night.
It was kinda like they had found a new gear, and the new gear was quiet. Quietness. They had their usual interaction between Mykola’s voice and DD’s fiddle, where he would sing a thing and then she would comment on that and he would change how he sang the next line based on what she just played. I could hear that. I could hear that weird conversation they have up there onstage. That’s what I came for. That and all the good songs, built with care like old-fashioned furniture so they have this fuckin’ … solidity to their construction. There were genuine old trad songs in the setlist but Mykola can put together new songs that have the same durable feel as an old song so you can’t always tell the difference. I like that.
You sort of half-noticed DD dropping down the dynamics so she’d get quieter and quieter, and Mykola was tuned into that and he’d follow her into the quietness. They would have these moments where they would drop down to just a cunt hair short of silence, and the audience would get sucked right in there till things were freakily still and some duffer in the middle of the crowd would get too nerved out by it and have to cough, but even that didn’t ruin it because they stayed quiet in defiance of any background noise. They had this aggressive, punk-rock fuckin’ quiet going on. Really made me think I fuckin’ need to steal that. I mean, I know how to do that, but I had kind of half-forgotten. Plus, when they wanted people up on their feet, they were totally able to rock the dance floor, just the two of them. That’s super hard to do without a rhythm section.
The Sheep used to be a hotel so there’s rooms upstairs. Paul, the owner and Svengali of the place, doesn’t really like people going up to the rooms anymore. But the show was so good he kind of relaxed and let us party up there above the bar. If you knew Paul you’d know that meant it was a fucking sick show. DD and I jammed on some of our old tunes. I didn’t know then that she was ill, but looking back on it she was pretty pale. Her forehead was a little pinched. She had a little wood pipe and she was leaning out the window and taking hits off little hash chunks pretty regularly, pretty often.
