Rosi Gowdey

Hello, My Friends,

Oh, sweet torture, this gift of time and relative spaciousness to suffer the tribulations of songwriting. I came into autumn with two songs carrying over from the summer. They're ready, finally, as you'll see at the end of this blog.

Fall is my favorite season. So full of changing colors and smells and temperatures, and a subtle shift inward preparing for winter. The muse is usually nearby when I'm ready for her. Sometimes, she comes knocking with ideas of her own. 

Songwriting, however, is as much discipline as inspiration, and sitting myself down in front of an empty page sometimes leaves me squirmy, jumpy and anything but productive.

I recently had such an occasion. After four months of writing, refining, rehearsing, workshopping, and rewriting two epic-length (5+ minutes) songs over the summer into fall, I realized a dry spell had kicked in. Catastrophizing voice inside: “Is it over? Will I never write another song?”

Desperate to prove THAT wrong, I thought, “Well, let's write something 3 minutes or shorter.”

Nothing.

Now, I loathe song prompts. “Write a song about lost love.” “Write one about two people vying for the same park bench.” Come on, pullease. The pencil would not budge.

I looked around my studio. Ahhh. The ignored houseplant. 

It's a ridiculous little song that makes Janet roll her eyes. But, she laughs, and that makes me laugh. I may play it at the Vergennes gig on Oct. 22, just for fun.

Meanwhile, there's more in the hopper, just waiting to emerge. Some songs take 30 minutes, some take months, and some remain snippets and shards for years – maybe forever.

The new songs ready for reveal are:

• Restless Moon (aka Insomniac's Lullaby)
• On the Trail to Sunset Ledge (My defiant inner teenager-elder emerges from a mountain hike with a bunch of younger-bodied songwriters.)
• High and Dry (aka A Houseplant's Lament)

Fall is fertile and fraught with smells and chills and colors and must. Hope you're able to breathe it in.

Stay near each other. Vote. Make fun. Find quiet.

Rosi

Spread the word – 

We'll have another solo hour at the Vergennes St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Thursday, Oct. 22nd. Show starts at 12:15. Don't know who may join me for a song or two. So many good musicians out there, and some of us are starting to play together. Come out and be surprised!

We had a nice turnout on a sunny autumnal day on September 24th, a few new faces and some dear friends from the Burlington area. I indulged in an hour of mostly originals, and introduced two new tunes I've been working on over the summer.

I am so grateful to have an opportunity to share my music. I do not take your interest and presence for granted!

So, thank you -- for being in my world, for sharing your good energy with others when you have it, and for soaking up the good energy of others when you need it. That's how we get through this life!

Keep humming!

Rosi

Short blog today. I didn't know Dolly. I don't know any really famous people. But I, like so many, feel Dolly's departure from this plane deeply. Her magic was in being utterly true to herself, and being able to see and honor the truth of others.

I take that as inspiration and motivation for whatever days I have left in this 3 dimensional life.

May Dolly's transition be as light-filled as the legacy she leaves. And may you, dear reader, have peace and ease, no matter the tempest.

Rosi

PS – Update – Drove down to Vergennes from Burlington yesterday to play at St. Paul's Episcopal. All the US flags were at half-staff – for Dolly. Each flag was a reminder of the enormous loving impact her music, philanthropy, and equanimity spread around the globe. That little light is gonna shine for a very long time.

I just performed my song, “Out of the Woods” for the lovely group of folks of the “WEAV” gathering – Wellbeing Economy Alliance Vermont. Yes, a “wellbeing economy” is a thing, and the notion is based on balancing our overuse of resources with our priority of meeting everyone's needs. 

For me, as a human and an artist, one of my steepest learning curves has been to overcome the fear and grasping that comes with immersion in a culture of competition and accumulation. I could go on a long diatribe. The short story is this:

About two years ago, I was reading The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ph.D. Dr. Kimmerer is of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and has unknowingly taught me a great deal about un-thinking Western language constructs (English in particular) in order to open my thinking and expression to kinship and flow.

At the same time I was untangling my beliefs about economic survival (Serviceberry) and about my relationship to time and life forms, the U.S. was completing an election cycle that would result in, well, many changes that push my fear buttons – fear of poverty, oppression, violence, separation, the end of life as we know it … you get it.

Real or not, fast or slow, doesn't matter. I needed a song that would help me get through. I actually wrote several songs during that time – some angry, some allegorical. One angry and allegorical. But the song (of my own) that I turn back to to re-set my mind and heart is this one, “Out of the Woods”. The chorus goes, 

The Earth is right here beneath us, The Sun still traverses the sky.

Breathe in, breathe out, and lean toward each other, And we can get by, we can more than get by.

The rest of it is about making decisions about what we're going to do if something happens and we don't have enough. Are we going to horde and hide, or share and support? Are we going to listen to our internal ruminations on fear, or to the lessons we get from nature and beings all around us?

("Where you gonna store your treasure? Where you gonna keep your goods? … What happens when a thief is your banker? What happens when you lose your work? … I will share my autumn harvest with folks all along this track, while a neighbor's woven sweater covers my back. You've got my back.")

There are other great songs to help keep our eyes on connection and relationship. One of them is “Crowded Table” by The Highwomen. Check them out. Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Lori McKenna, Amanda Shires.

Thank you, Dr. Kimmerer. I'm not always good at practicing the behaviors I know will help to transform our world – perhaps even save it. But I'm working on it. 

Soon, I will get “Out of the Woods” recorded and posted up here.

Take care, folks. We're all related. ~Rosi

We all have musical roots. The first music you ever heard. Your parent or favorite aunt singing you to sleep. Your best friend’s dad sitting down to the piano after dinner. Top 40 radio stations playing the background music for your summers.

That was mine – summers at the municipal swimming pool or in my cousins’ backyard. Folk, Motown, pop – Beach Boys, Otis Redding, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Creedence, Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and on …

In addition to my musical roots – the music of my family and environment, I believe I unconsciously slipped into a musical lineage – I became a part of a musical heritage – the moment I got my first guitar. It’s time I honored my musical ancestry.

When I took up guitar in 6^th grade it was because I wanted to BE Joan Baez. I learned everything I could about her. I taught myself what I could of her signature bass runs and fingerpicking, learned all the traditional ballads about midnight murders and lost love that she mixed among the protests songs she helped to make ubiquitous.

I have learned that the musical traditions in my lineage have roots intertwined like a banyan tree. And those roots are as alive as the music itself.

At the time, I would have denied any relationship to country music. But my guitar style carries the indelible signature of those who came before Joan Baez.

The ancestor who received deserved credit as the Mother of, among other things, lead guitar, is Maybelle Carter, or “Mother Maybelle.” June Carter was one of her daughters, and Johnny Cash her son-in-law.

Her guitar style developed into a sound that carried bass runs, rhythm strums, and melodic leads, all from her one guitar. With thumb she would carry bass runs and with fingerpick she would “scratch” along the higher strings, a method that became known as the “Carter scratch.” You guitar players can almost hear and feel it – dragging your index finger across the strings after striking a bass note or run with your thumb.

Now, a lot of people honor Mother Maybelle, but they stop too soon.

Maybelle’s father, AP Carter was a “song-catcher.” He combed the Appalachian Hills for Anglo and African-rooted songs, and found Lesley Riddle, an African American man born in 1905 in Burnsville, North Carolina. He died in 1980. Please, please follow the links at the end of this blog to learn more about Mr. Riddle and his relationship with the Carter family. 

He took up guitar while recuperating from losing a leg in a factory accident, and after losing a couple of fingers a few years later, developed an incredibly distinctive style of playing guitar. AP Carter teamed up with him in the late 1920’s and helped him capture and document the songs they found in the Appalachians along the North Carolina/Tennessee line. Many of those songs were then recorded and credited to the Carters.

Now that we know about Mr. Riddle, we can return to Mother Maybelle, who incorporated Mr. Riddle’s style into her own as she and the Carters carried that music out into the world. Her playing can be heard in the guitars of bluegrass, country, folk, rhythm and blues, rock – it shows up in almost every kind of American music. And it clearly lives in the Joan Baez style at the root of my own.

I didn’t know it for a long time, but that’s where I come from. And now, I can tell the story.

If you know more about this than I do, please, let me know!

Biography of Lesley (Esley) Riddle: https://traditionalvoicesgroup.com/biography/?_gl=1*99b1cl*_gcl_au*MTk2NzQ3MjcxNi4xNzg1MDkyODg0

Black in Appalachia: Lesley Riddle: https://www.google.com/search?q=esley+riddle+video&rlz=1C1JJTC_enUS1185US1185&oq=esley+riddle+video&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRiPAtIBCDQzOTlqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&source=chrome.ob&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:1e24c7c4,vid:UdL6WvtCcwo,st:0

Lesley Riddle performing John Henry (Folkways): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C4VBvr_yVE