I think Steve Hayward is off to Europe. He says it’s for work, not play, and he’ll be contributing as he can along his way. In the meantime, he has scheduled a number of posts to be published over the next week.
Steve’s departure made me think it might make sense to post a song of the day while he is in Europe. When he was off to Scotland on vacation I took up the Minnesota music scene as my theme. This time around I thought I might try modern American and British folks artists.
I was a fervent fan of KFAI’s Sunday morning Urban Folk show hosted on alternate weeks by the late Bob Feldman and the living Marian Moore. Bob ran Red House Records. Marian is a woman of many parts who produced Women Who Cook concerts and, when Bob Feldman died, a musical tribute to him at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. Bob Dylan was of course the tutelary spirit of the show. I learned a lot listening to Urban Folk over the years.
I ran into Bob Feldman occasionally around town. He struck me as a sweet man. You could really hear it when he co-hosted the show with his then young son Ari, but I heard it whenever I spoke with him as well. I looked up to him as someone who had managed to merge his vocation with his avocation. He loved the music. I am thinking about him as I write this morning.
On one occasion when I was between jobs in 1997 I ran into Bob as he was hosting the folk artist Lucy Kaplansky for lunch in St. Paul. As we entered the restaurant I greeted Bob and let Lucy know I was a fan. I think she was in town performing, but the occasion for lunch must have been the release of Lucy’s Flesh and Bone on Red House. I ran over to Hungry Mind Bookstore next door to buy a copy and asked her to autograph it for me. Pulling the CD down from the shelf this morning, I recall that I apologized to her for inserting myself into her lunch with Bob. She signed it: “To Scott — You’re welcome to interrupt my lunch any time.”
Lucy’s cover of “Return of the Grievous Angel” is my favorite track on Flesh and Bone, but it is not available on YouTube. Lucy’s “Ten Year Night” is the title track off a subsequent CD on Red House. The song is a passionate tribute to her husband. I thought it might start a few engines running this morning.
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