The Life of a Song
All photos by Kelley Lauginiger
At its best, grief is like a talisman you carry to bond you to something intangible. At its worst, grief wears you as its jewelry, hanging you upside down like naked baby earrings: crying, confused and freshly exposed to the world’s realities.
At the start of the pandemic when we were still putting “social distancing” in quotation marks, I had to make a choice.
It was March 11, I was grieving, it was a Wednesday and the virus had the whole world in complete shambles, but the fact remained that I had concert tickets. Even with a long list of science facts telling me not to go, I felt the pull; like a heartbeat picking up speed. I had to go. Not only had I interviewed one of the performing musicians, trumpet player and vocalist Jennifer Hartswick, but skipping shows had never been a hobby that particularly piqued my interest.
Hartswick was in Columbus, OH, for one night to perform as a duo with her long-time friend and super-talented guitarist, Nick Cassarino. As a preview for their Midwest tour stops, I had just chatted with Hartswick for ChicagoNow a few weeks prior. Of course, we had covered the usual topics surrounding music promotions and her dynamic breadth of performance history, but a concept came up that has been on my mind ever since: “the life of a song.”
“The life of a song; it really goes through all sorts of metamorphoses, you know?” Hartswick posed, in reference to the various live deliveries of a song she wrote, “Numb.” She explained that when she recorded the song, it was pretty freshly written, and therefore, a bit raw in terms of its therapeutic value for her as an artist. “Now, a couple years later,” Hartswick said, “it has really grown into a total vehicle for something else.
“That’s one of the beautiful things about music, is that it will have a life right along with you,” Hartswick said.
What a beautiful sentiment, especially from such a creative musical force as Hartswick. Music’s transformative properties are magical spells, often casting meaning and perspective onto your life when you least expect it, but probably need it. You can hear a song over and over, and over again; and then one day, because of the way life is, the song may not just be words any more. Maybe all of a sudden, the song really pertains to you. And this song, maybe you’ve been singing it your whole life, not thinking much about the story that denotes the lyrics, but just kind of reciting words out loud to a melody that probably sounded nice when you heard it once. Until one day, for better or for worse, you relate to the song’s beloved storyteller, and the words you’ve been singing all along have different meaning.
The months following my ex-boyfriend’s suicide in Fall 2019 had me questioning everything. I learned more about him in the wake of his death than I ever knew when he was alive, and yet, I had thought I loved him. We almost had a child together. He was my “ex,” but I always thought we’d get back together, since we stayed in close touch. I thought we had this deep connection, but it turned out that there were so many secrets, and he only told me the good stuff. Was the good stuff, even true, I wondered? Was anything real, besides the relentless pulsing inside my eyelids when I tried to sleep?
I was looking for answers I couldn’t find. A close friend of mine suggested listening to the detailed storytelling of John Prine to get out of my own head, and lent me her copy of his “September 78” CD. By the sheer nature of its format, I could only listen to it in my car. By the sheer nature of what I was doing in my car quite often at that time, it became that I was crying in my car to “September 78” quite often at that time.
This story is not meant to be depressing, to be clear. Grief is part of life. I accept that more now than ever before. But let me also be clear that in a specific moment, when it does grip your throat, grief also makes the decision of when to let go. This is my story of how I learned to dangle in its grasp.
One day driving around frozen winter farm fields, after previously hearing “Angel from Montgomery” approximately 776 times throughout my life, I realized its poetry for the first time. Perhaps only after the loss of something great can the listener sincerely empathize with, “Just give me one thing that I can hold on to.”
I restarted the song and with muscles I had just developed moments before, I focused on the words. I pictured this woman in the song just singing for an angel to save her and take her away from a dismal existence. She didn’t know what else to do, but she was definitely stuck, and disappointed about it. Couldn’t someone just please help? In some ways, this reminded me of my ex-boyfriend, his addiction, our addictions together, and all the things that made us different. It was like the song corrected my vision and opened up some sort of portal to understanding that I never would have expected. All from a song I had heard countless times before.
Like Hartswick said, this is the life of a song. Before that moment, “Angel from Montgomery” had been around for about 50 years. I had heard versions by Keller Williams, Susan Tedeschi and the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Bonnie Raitt, Ben Harper, Grace Potter, and more, some of them live and in person, and it had never really clicked, until now, when I could relate to the storyteller.
For the next few months, I sang “Angel from Montgomery” as some kind of therapy every morning over candlelight, and it helped me feel connected to my lost love. The lyrics transcended time, and through the woman’s eyes in the song, helped me feel his pain, and understand as I sang along. It made me hope that he got his wish, that maybe he was finally saved. I hoped that maybe, even if it physically hurt to think about now, that eventually, maybe, I could try to accept his loss by knowing he was finally at peace.
When I finally decided that March night to face the pandemic madness and go to the Hartswick-Cassarino duo show, it was no surprise that I audibly gasped when I heard them play the first notes of “Angel from Montgomery.” I did not yet know they covered the track, and in every possible way it made me feel like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I cried a little, but was oddly calm. I felt my ex-boyfriend with me, and I no longer stressed that I had made the “wrong decision” in that moment. (As I sit here over eight months later with no live music since, I’m extremely glad I went.)
Hartswick and Cassarino had genuine chemistry, and played an amazing show. Because of the circumstances, I don’t think I’ll ever forget this one.
Hartswick’s originals were gorgeous. Seeing her interchange seamlessly between a wide range of vocals and trumpet-playing without much rest for her lungs was seriously impressive. She brought down the house with her haunting, powerhouse vocals to Radiohead’s “Creep.” Cassarino egged her on and built her up, all the while proving to be an insane musician in his own right. His guitar style was so quick, staccato, and precise, it was like some kind of superhuman, fast-fingered jazz flamenco. Hartswick was not the only stellar vocalist on stage that night, either, with Cassarino surprising everyone with one of his own originals (guitar, vocals). I cannot wait to see how fast he will play after all his quarantine woodshedding, and look forward to seeing more of Hartswick and Cassarino when we’re all allowed to do air particles together again.
I know that in today’s world, you’re supposed to share about a show within 24 hours, not say too much personal stuff and write out a setlist, et al. This just isn’t that kind of music review, I guess. As humans, we can share when we are ready, and we should allow vulnerability to bring us together in our shared experiences instead of treating common challenges like weaknesses.
What I’ve been reminded of with this recently, is that songs, like the people they’re written about, have the ability to change and evolve over time. If we’re lucky, we do too.
RIP BLB
