monthly musings from JD
May 2008 - John Stewart
Hello again friends, and welcome to the May edition of my ‘corner’. Since we’ve updated our site, I promise to drop by monthly with the latest thoughts on my mind. Some of it will be silly, and some of it will be thoughtful, but it will be from whatever is left of my mind.
Today I need to talk about John Stewart.
John Stewart was one of the major songwriters of our time. Along with Joni Mitchell and John Phillips, John Stewart was a major influence on my work. Despite his untimely passing, he still is.
I came to know him through the Kingston Trio, that long ago group who served as a brilliant bridge from one type of music to another. Upon my first hearing of ‘Tom Dooley’, I was instantly hooked to the marriage of words and music. The way they could perfectly fit together so that, together, they became something ‘more’. What that ‘more’ is I still don’t think I’ve figured out, but I always know ‘it’ when I hear it.
I instantly became an avid Kingston Trio fan. They are the reason I started to play the guitar. My first song, ‘Good Time Blues’, hilariously written when I was 16, came through me as a nod to the Trio. ‘Seven Coaches Painted Black’ was to follow, and I owed it all to my love of these three ‘collegiate’ types, Dave, Nick, and Bob.
When Dave Guard left the Trio, John Stewart ‘replaced’ him. No one could ever actually ‘replace’ Dave, just as no one can ever ‘replace’ John, so we fans all held our breath hoping that John, the ‘new guy’, would be ‘okay’.
He was more than okay.
He was great.
It was a ‘different’ greatness to be sure, but a greatness nonetheless.
He sang ‘okay’.
He played well.
He seemed to ’fit in’ with Nick and Bob, and, slowly, the Trio regained their lost ground and continued on at the highest level of the music business. At one point I believe they had FOUR albums in the Top Ten Albums (we called them that back then) in the world. I don’t think any Artist or group has ever done that since.
But John Stewart was more.
John was a writer.
There is something so profoundly moving to me about ‘writing songs’ that, even as a young pup, I recognized that John was a major writer. I would carry that belief with me throughout my life, and, sitting here in the sun in my folding camp chair on the corner of 77th and West End writing these words, that knowledge still sits easily within me.
So while still in high school, I began to emulate John Stewart. While I still rather viewed myself as a combination of the Nick/Bob characters, in my writing I was John. His ‘hits’ really didn’t matter that much to me. The ‘music industry’ has a long and sordid and well deserved reputation for ‘hits’. While I was always pleased for him, it was John’s other material that always caught my ear. ‘There’s a lot of meat on this bone’, I would always say when I would come across another Stewart song. There was always a lot of meat on the bone in John’s work.
Time moved on.
Jack Kennedy was murdered in Dallas.
At about that time, the Kingston Trio released their new album ‘Time To Think’. In the cover photo, it was evident that John had been crying, and I think it was at that moment when I emotionally connected to him for my lifetime. We had all been crying. In my eyes, seeing John Stewart of the Kingston Trio also crying, John became one of ‘us’. The world had changed forever for all of us, and yet I knew by that photo that John felt the way I felt, and I knew he was one of ‘us’. I also knew, somehow in my soul, that I was one of ‘him’.
I graduated.
I served on a giant aircraft carrier and I went to war. By the time I came home, I’d lost all track of John. I’d lost all track of a lot of things.
Flash ahead some years and I was making records for RCA. At the same time I was signed to them, John was also signed to them. The many times on the road where he and I ‘just missed’ each other remain a great comedy to me. We were supposed to run into each other out there, but we did not. Some things, I have learned, are not meant to be.
My life and career went one way, and I suppose John’s went another. I lost all track of him.
I would next see him a thousand years later at the Turning Point, that great little club in Piermont, New York. My friend Steven Donaghey had insisted on it, had seen to it, and I was there. Looking back on it now, I see that Steven was the messenger who enabled me to finally keep my ‘appointment’ with John. I kept it. Thank you Steven.
John took the stage and sang ‘The Keeper Of The Flame’.
Sitting in the last chair of the last table in the back of the room, I became overwhelmed by our Stewart, and I allowed my tears to flow. Watching this brave and grand old warrior STILL shining the glorious light of the truth of the human condition, I covered my face and wept. I was glad that no one, God forbid John, could see me crying, as there was no way, and no words, to ‘explain’ what I was feeling in my heart and my soul. I know you know this feeling. I was again in my room in Littleton, Colorado, holding ‘Time To Think’ in my frightened hands, and I was seeing this magnificent Artist still wielding his steely sharp sword, and time was crashing past me and before my eyes, and I was alive again to the potential of our existence. I was verified in my life’s work by the one who came before. We were connected through the thousands of years by the noble and courageous and simple act of the troubadour. We wrote ‘em and we sang ‘em.
We carried the torch.
Thus began a sometimes screamingly funny (Tim Riley’s ‘Pimpmobile’), moving (singing ‘Chilly Winds’ with John and Steven), sometimes bumpy relationship with John. Through it all, it remains one of the greatest gifts of my life.
Oh could this man write.
So all of this leads to the sad day earlier this year when I learned that John, much too soon, had kept his final appointment. Along with that sadness, however, a quiet comfort came over me, as I fully understood that his work lives on. In that, he is immortal. Will you find me presumptuous if I say that I also understood that my work will live on when I have passed on? I hope not. I do not mean to equate my work to John’s, I simply mean to say that we both were/are honored to be songwriters, and, in doing so, we carried and carry on a tradition that dates back to the beginning.
So on April 12th of this year, instead of opening for John at Phil Ciganer’s Towne Crier up in Pawling, New York, I was instead honored to be included in the East Coast John Stewart Tribute show. It would be an opportunity for John’s countless fans to obtain some sort of ‘closure’ for their grief, and to maybe help out a bit.
I was tired that night, having performed a concert earlier in the day in Scranton. I was also nervous before Steven and I hit the stage. We were to perform two of John’s songs with his band, and, knowing that I can often veer off the track through my emotions, I wanted to remain ‘in control’ (ha) and I didn’t want to make many mistakes. There were many other supremely gifted Artists on the bill, and Buffy, John’s beautiful wife was there. The room was completely sold out. I just wanted to do ‘right’ by John, and to comfort his fans.
I opened with ‘Keeper Of The Flame’.
The band smoked.
Steven smoked.
As we kicked it in, whatever it is that ‘happens’ to me when I sing shot through me, and ‘that’ righteousness and ‘that’ joy burst through me with such a force that I was only serving as the messenger. I had wanted my part in this to be a celebration, and we CELEBRATED.
“Who will stand upon the shore?
The keeper of the Flame”.
I like to think I smoked too.
I took the last vocal note up high, a joyous shout really, and we slammed that beauty to an end as if we’d played it a thousand times before.
It worked for all of us.
This man who had written and sung to us his entire life was, as far as I was concerned, IN the room.
He was one of ‘us’.
I ended with ‘Broken Roses’, a song I had come to realize had been a very private song for John. I think all Artists ‘sum up’ their life’s at some point, when something in them tells them it is time to conclude. I believe John wrote this with that knowledge, although he may have not been aware of it.
On his record it is a gentle ballad. We played it that way, although we did not tarry.
“All the dreams were you. Every one’.
We let the 32 bar guitar solo/outtro weep and laugh and PROCLAIM the LIFE of John Stewart. ‘All 32 bars, gentlemen’, I recall saying to the band.
And then we were done.
But it is not over.
It will never be over.
He is, and we are, immortal.
I hope Stewart is ‘okay’ that I borrowed the idea of his line in my new song ‘From Time To Time’.
‘And everything I did, I did for you’.
I wrote it because of him.
I wrote a lot of them because of him.
Like I do for you.
Like I do for ‘us’.
Rest well, warrior.
Thank you.
My love and gratitude to you all.
To us.
James C. Dawson
May 7, 2008
New York
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