I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: TWEEDY-“High As Hello” (Field Recordings, August 7, 2014).

This Field Recording [Tweedy And Son Take To The Tunnels, Friends In Tow] is another one from the 2014 Newport Folk Festival.  Much like with the Jazz Festival, it was raining during the folk festival.  This means the musicians had to play in a that by now familiar tunnel–away from the elements.

These musicians were NPR favorite Jeff Tweedy and his then new project, Tweedy.  The project features Jeff’s then 18 year-old son Spencer on drums.  Jeff and Spencer are accompanied by Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig from Lucius (who don’t get to really show off their pipes, but do provide great backing vocals).

With the rain, it was not possible to shuffle drums, so

Spencer Tweedy’s drums are made from found trash and objects lying around the fort, including a cardboard box and some boxes of gum. Still, magic happened.

I can’t help but remark (again) on the wonderful sound equipment.  The band sounds terrific and you can hear all of the guitars (a full band list isn’t given).  Somehow Spencer’s drums don’t sound like cardboard boxes.

This recording is from 4 years ago either before Jeff started wearing the ubiquitous cowboy hat or he didn’t want to wear it in a tunnel.

“High as Hello” is a slow song with great backing vocals and solos from at least one of the three guitars.

[READ: September 18, 2018] “Poor Girl”

This story was translated by Anna Friedrich and is about a woman trapped in a situation she hates.

What’s interesting is that it’s unclear if the title refers to the young mother or her daughter (as they are both poor in different ways).

The opening line is quite surprising:

The wretched mother could easily have lost her sanity watching her husband love their daughter….

What an odd thing to be upset about.  Until…

the way he stroked the child when she was falling asleep or waking up, his blissful expression when they touched, the fact that he bathed her himself, believing it to be his right and his responsibility.

So, the woman, Irina, raises some red flags, although it’s not always clear if she is being reasonable about them.

Irina does the housework and has a job outside of the house too.  When she came home, she had to endure her husband’s stories about the girl’s bath.  The girl was often sitting on his la and giving him kisses.

What’s interesting about this story is that factually what happens is just a case of a parent loving his child.  But because of her suspicions, everything takes on a sinister tone.  The fact that her husband doesn’t want to have sex with her could be meaningful.  He does occasionally “perform his conjugal duties.”  But the comparison is to nature:

A bumblebee lands on a flower that bends under its weight and exudes sweet nectar.  When the bee’s proboscis pierces its chamber, the flower arches and shivers beneath it.  A second later, it’s back to innocent blooming in the wind under the sky.

In addition to her other duties, Irina also looked after her ill mother.  She spent more and more time there to get away from her husband.  Then her mother died.  Irina packed up her things and her daughter and fled the house.   She moved from Moscow to Murmaske in the Far North where a friend told her about a factory job that paid three times as much as her current job.

The man was devastated.  He changed jobs and was now always away on business trips.  His mother lived with him and she was saddened by his change.

The daughter was also miserable.  She hated school, where the kids made fun of her accent.  She often wrote to her father giving him their address.

Finally, a year later, he was sent on a business trip in the Far North.  He did his work and then took a bus to see his daughter,

And with that, the saga in the North ends.  They all trudge back to Moscow (it took three days) on a train.  The daughter was sitting on her father’s lap and the parents were not talking to each other.

The ending of the story is fainting with the final lines beginning with “no one knows exactly what happened to them.”