The Gypsy Life

I caught up with the work of modern singer/songwriters listening to the long gone weekly Sunday morning Urban Folk show on KFAI. The hosts alternated between Bob Feldman and Marian Moore.

Bob was the (re)founder of Red House Records, Greg Brown’s label. Once he took it over and made it a going concern he proceeded to sign many of his favorite artists including Spider John Koerner, Eliza Gilkyson, Prudence Johnson, John Gorka, Lucy Kaplansky, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Peter Ostroushko, and Stoney Lonesome (the bluegrass group that featured Minnesota’s Kate MacKenzie). MPR told the public side of his story here when he passed at the age of 56 in 2006.

I ran into Bob around town and got to know him just well enough to say hello. He lived in the same leafy suburb I do in the Twin Cities. We connected at a Rascals reunion show at the old Guthrie Theater and chatted at lunch in a restaurant next to the old Hungry Mind Bookstore on Grand Avenue in St. Paul when Bob signed Lucy Kaplansky or when they met to discuss her new Red House recording. As I recall, he was taking Lucy to lunch to celebrate one or the other.

He seemed to me a genuinely nice man. I looked up to him as the only person I knew who lived out the words of the Robert Frost poem:

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future’s sakes.

Bob’s death was an inexplicable and shocking loss.

The theme song for Bob’s Urban Folk shows was John Gorka’s “The Gypsy Life.” That’s the late Nanci Griffith on the harmony part. I looked forward to hearing the song every other Sunday and never got tired of listening to it. Gorka recorded it on another label, but Bob brought him to Red House and ultimately to Minnesota as well. “The Gypsy Life” — I think that’s the musician’s life. “People love you when they know you’re leaving soon.”