I Never Met Charles Ives

I've been listening to "alot" of Ives. From his biography via the immensely useful Charles Ives Society, Inc.:

...Charles Ives came to associate everyday music with profound emotions and spiritual aspirations. One of his father's most resonant pieces of wisdom came when he said of a stonemason's off-key hymn singing: "Look into his face and hear the music of the ages. Don't pay too much attention to the sounds--for if you do, you may miss the music. You won't get a wild, heroic ride to heaven on pretty little sounds."

Charles Ives grew up determined to find that wild, heroic ride, that music of the ages--the spiritual power he felt in the singing at outdoor camp meetings and in bands marching during holidays. It would take many years of struggle and experiment, however, before he fully possessed the musical language to transform that spirit into orchestral and chamber music.

A man before my own heart. I hope it takes me fewer years of struggle and experiment to fully possess the musical language to transform that spirit into songwriting. Because Ives started at the age of 13 and I've gotten off to very a late start.

Orchestral Set No. 2 - III - From Hanover Square North, at the End of a Tragic Day, the Voices of the People Again Arose

My father was a barber

Great bangs have great beginnings.

For my birthday, I would like to tell you a story. I recorded it last night.

First, you have to sit down and close your eyes. Imagine the sound of a marching band drumline cadencing onto a crisp wet field. Imagine a drone in the low brass. Imagine a fiddle double-stop, the sounds of banjo and strings joining in, loaded with a full battery of percussion in the chorus.

And then... press play.*

  My father was a barber 

 
*Please forgive the recording quality. I am making these rough draft recordings to give would-be band members a sense of my songs. Until then, most of the instruments must be imagined. I am seeking a drummer/arranger, fiddler, cellist, and an upright bassist. If you're into this, by all means drop a line.

Thank you, you sweet puffy white sheep

One year ago this week, I posted my original blog entry on Spotsylvania's Marching Knights, stating my intentions as I launched a journey into my own musical voice. Oh! the places we have gone! The adventures!

From dragging my old wooden Holton horn case through Times Square for rehab lessons, to using the Google to find a vocal coach who strips away the lacquer and makes me cry time after time, to the moment when I realized I needed a major lifestyle change, to the flow chart I created in order make the Big Decision, to the announcement that I was leaving my job.

Tracing my origins, I easily uncovered my own musical homeland: marching band, a cappella hymns (in the shape note tradition), and acoustic singer-songwriters from the 70's and 90's.

I got brave and took a baby step by posting some lyrics about Justin Bieber's news cycle in July and about my husband's laundry in November, before admitting that I'd been wholly insincere for months.

Then I put my Courage Tights on and posted my first-ever recorded song (newgrass!) in December. It was enough to make me want to do it again, so I cataloged my existing 30 songs or so, and was in the process of getting a band together (we look like this in stick figures), when a blues tune called My Baby's Gone to Vegas wrote itself at me last week, so I just went ahead and recorded it even though I don't know how to use the recording software or play the ukulele.

In all this, I'd braced myself for the viper's den but instead landed in a barrel full of puffy white sheep. Within two days of posting my first song, I was contacted for a hometown press interview and realized I need to learn how to speak in better sound bytes. Most importantly, however, I got sweet personal notes from all over — friends and friends of friends far and wide — who heard my song and were moved by it, touched by the words I wrote all those years ago. My parents cried, my in-laws cried (!), one of my super tough lady grandmas listens to it every day and cries (!!), my older brothers finally admitted I'm not adopted . . .

And that is all I've ever wanted. So thank you. Super extra thank you. And this is the year that I intend to get a band together to play a real live show, so please stay tuned and hold on to your ******* hat. (Period.)

In the beginning, there was the Word...

...and the Word was with blog and the Word was blog. (No offense.)

Because it is not enough that I am on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace, I have found yet another way to get into YourFace—Spotsylvania's Marching Knights.

As many of you know, I am from a rural county outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia, named after British Lt. Col. Alexander Spotswood. Largely due to the absence of Wikipedia in my youth, I did not know anything about Spotswood beyond his last name until just now when I Googled it. What I did know was that my father drove me roughly 20 miles on winding country roads to get me to my Monday evening piano lessons—45 minutes in each direction—so that Mrs. Massey could run me through 30 minutes of James Bastien. We used to hang our heads out the car window and "moo" at the cows to pass time. Sometimes we'd sing along with some of my dad's favorite musicians, like David Gates or James Taylor. Usually Mrs. Robinson, wearing her bandana and standing with one fist on her hip, would wave from the porch of her candy store. Every Monday from elementary school through my sophomore year of high school we did this. My father is a kind and patient man.

Another thing that I knew was that anyone who knew anything about where they lived, relied on our high school fight song to spell the name of our county. You could see it on people's mouths at the bank or the DMV, whenever it came time to fill out their address forms: S! P! O! T! S! Y! L!—V-A-N-I-A! If you were on the inside, and you watched closely, you could see people laughing at themselves after habitually mouthing the word "FIGHT!" after chanting the letters— a common and local compulsion.

Marching band was a Big Deal in my world. The very youngest of four children (Girl ... Boy, Boy ... ... ... Girl), almost everything my older siblings did was of epic proportion to me. When Christi played clarinet (or was she a majorette? why do I remember her having a painfully cool baton??) all of the girls seemed so very very with their cigarettes and their band room. And when David played Bugler's Holiday with the veritable boy's club of first trumpets under direction of Mr. Millhouse, my 10-year old mind could not have fathomed a world larger and more powerful than the one compressed into those rotating, expanding, and contracting "boxes" that snapped into exhilarating "company fronts."

Have I lost you yet? Watch this Santa Clara Vanguard action and get nailed at the 7th second:

And so now, decades into my musical journey but only just beginning the expedition into my own musical voice, I launch said expedition with a blog named in honor of where it all started: Spotsylvania's Marching Knights.

I hope you'll stay for the show.
~Virginia