Life Is Like Canadian Football and Other Authentic Folk Songs Read online

  However, buzzed both by my newfound love for Canadian folk song collection and by the beer—it was a relief to discover that the wine bar sold Labatt products—I definitely hinted that the work of Staunton R. Livingston might be the new focus of my dissertation project. “I see this as an opportunity, Professor. I want my constructions to similarly intervene in the becoming of materiality.”

  Dr. Bronnley’s response was a durational spell of silence, brow wrinkled and eyes narrowing. What could I do but wait—for some signal of interest or encouragement, the candle on our table casting flickering, ancient light? Yet, I received no such signal. “Folklorists,” he abruptly guffawed, then donned his scarf and fedora. I followed Dr. Bronnley out onto Talbot Street and he exclaimed, as though to himself, his love for Fleet Foxes before he finally fled in the direction of the railway lines.123

  Whether by accident or otherwise, had I not recovered from the dustbin of history an object of value? I was certain that this was so. Why could the gatekeepers of academia not recognize me as a game-ready rookie?

  From kindergarten on, I had been what one would call a teachable student. Eager to scale the ivory tower, I often supplicated myself by the founts of knowledge to which I had had access. Was I by now enlightened? Was this what it meant to have been enlightened?124For what I decided on my journey home to the Institute’s basement that night—the first snowflakes of the semester softly beginning to fall, enveloping the Forest City in a sound-cancelling blanket, my Wrangler jean hems dragging through the fresh, cold crystals—was that if the term “folklorist” could elicit suchlike cackling from Dr. Bronnley, then a folklorist was exactly what I was going to become.

  * * *

  That Old-Time Mountain Dew125

  from Brigid Bunyan

  Recorded in Sarnia, Ontario126

  That old-time mountain dew

  Will make a singer out of you,

  Make a real man out of you,

  Old-time mountain dew.127

  You can lay about the grasses,

  Make advances and make passes

  At all the bonnie lasses

  Who cross your sunny way.

  Ask them where they’re going,

  Or if they wanna be a rose in

  The weedy life

  Of a good drunk Christian man.

  That old-time mountain dew

  Will make a singer out of you,

  Make a real man out of you,

  Old-time mountain dew.

  * * *

  Bound for Glory

  There is a baffling contradiction at the core of modern folkloristic practice. The object of the quest has so often been framed as a relic—as medium by which a version of the past can be retrieved. The corresponding type of folklorist has consequently, or perhaps causally, been presented as possessing a nostalgic or conservative disposition; this folklorist gardens in neo-Medieval fashion.128 Conversely, one of the key implements in the toolbox of countless folk fieldworkers is the automobile, that glistening and high-octane symbol of speed, progress, and American individualism.129

  I would like the reader of the present text to visualize this paradoxical conundrum. The modern folklorist moves toward an imagined collectivist past, eager to locate organic as opposed to mass-produced cultural remnants, and does so by blazing down the highway in the most mechanical of solipsistic consumer contraptions, the Model T or, more recently, the Tesla.130

  Be that as it may, during my most active period of collecting I did not own an automobile. If I had designs to record a woodsman in Peterborough, Ontario, I did not only need to travel to Peterborough, I had to take at least two or perhaps three different Greyhound busses.131 I waited, usually three, but as many as five, hours at the bus station in downtown Toronto, reading my books and making my preparatory notes, knapsack carefully guarded on a neighbouring seat. Even without errors, the journey required at minimum one full day—from dawn until midnight—before I was snugly back home in the basement of the Institute. As you can imagine, there are, of course, many possible setbacks lying in wait for the Canadian folk song collector.

  I first began to conduct my own field recordings within London’s city limits. After a year or two of graduate school, as word of my presence in the Forest City spread, every other weekend there seemed to be a touring band or singer-songwriter playing in town who would almost always ask, in the days leading up to the show, whether or not I had a place for them to sleep.132 I do not enjoy entertaining, but I appreciated these events for their power to suspend my regular routine; it was rejuvenating to witness performers committing to the delivery of musical compositions regardless of their audience’s size or interest level. My earliest field recordings were thus made in the mornings after these nights out, before my depleted guests got back into their van and continued down the road. I began by asking whether they knew any folk songs, which they almost always did. Sometimes they even tried to teach me how to sing or play a song or two.

  It is important to note that, at this point, it was not yet clear to me how my efforts as a real, live folk song collector related to my emerging scholarly research on Livingston. The gradual accumulation of sound recordings made via microphone and cassette recorder felt formally disjointed from my usual gradual accumulation of ideas via pencils and pens. This discernment perhaps had to do with the varying natures of these distinct forms of labour, the former involving the rolling up of one’s sleeves for embodied, face-to-face engagement of fellow creatures, the latter involving the wearing of high-strength reading glasses and the insertion of industrial earplugs.133 The absurd and nihilistic values of the neoliberal university—already deeply infusing both my neurons and musculature—likely also played a role in my inability, in those days, to synthesize theory with praxis.

  * * *

  Pay Day

  My inner conflict between professional scholar and amateur folklorist was deferred, if not fundamentally resolved, by my discovery of the arts and culture granting systems in Canada.134 Although there were not any clearly designated folklore programs circa 2010, I achieved victory on my first attempt through the Ontario Arts Council’s Integrated Arts program. Their mandate was to support projects combining multiple disciplines, such that the boundaries between these disciplines were thereby transgressed in the work, and, additionally, to support projects involving clowns.135 I was ecstatic when awarded $11,000 CAD on the merits of a proposal boasting the complete documentation of the totality of Canadian folk song, having argued in my application that folk song itself—essentially, necessarily—transgresses all disciplinary boundaries, and sometimes may involve clowns (the latter claim admittedly a cynical bluff). But please do not hate the player, dear reader of the present text. Hate solely the game, as Karl Marx was perhaps the first to urge.136

  On the point of critique, the occurrence of granting allows for the empirical investigation of a crucial question: Does either the capitalistic wage- or the bureaucratic salary-relation fundamentally alter the work of the folk song collector?137 In my case, I maintain that the Ontario Arts Council grant enabled the amplification or extension of activities already underway without fundamentally altering their character. I was able to email all discernible nodes in my musical network—emails sent, naturally, from a brand-new Apple laptop computer—and thereby to retrieve the locations and contact information of dozens of possible informants. After conducting the first round of auditions by telephone, I travelled on weekends and holidays to cities and towns across the country, encoding voices and tunes into, first, my new digital device’s hard-disk drive and, second, over onto my trusty new external hard drive.138 Furthermore, I was able to entice potential singers with artist fees, perhaps the most significant amplification of all. My going rate was $100 CAD per song, a not-inconsiderable sum for only a few minutes of work, though on occasion I offered more or less, depending on the situation.139

  Therefore, as my secondary practice (folk song collec
tion) ballooned to occupy space roughly equal in volume to my primary practice (scholarly research on the topic of folk song collection qua communication), I postulated new relationships between the two sets of endeavours, an unavoidable step. Was it not possible that the doing of folk song collection was, in its own way, a form of research in the field of communication theory?140For example: accepting a home-cooked meal in a quaint cottage in Summerside, or encountering a pack of majestic coyotes on Grand Manan? Participating in a small orgy in a living room in Arnprior, or accepting a ride back to the GTA from a hopped-up transport truck driver at a North Bay Esso? What about bleeding from the head and hands as I stumbled through Toronto’s streets, having been kettled by the militarized police thugs ordered to repress democratic, anti-corporate dissent during the G20 Summit, in which I found myself accidentally entangled while on layover? Artificial lines, like those once etched in sand to demarcate the first cities carved from the surrounding wilds, may once have been required, but the phony boundaries demanded to divide my primary passions were becoming obsolete, in my view.141

  I must insist above all that Dr. Bronnley’s description to the appeal committee, of my alleged failures as evidence of “indolence,” is inaccurate. Neither my will nor my commitment to scholarly inquiry flagged as result of my frequent field-recording trips to Saint John’s, Dartmouth, Ottawa, Sarnia, Winnipeg, Regina, and the countryside and back-roads between. I was generating knowledge the whole time.142 There are many pejorative terms that can fairly and reasonably be applied to my person and conduct, but, as is demonstrated by the present volume, even just by the next several pages, lazy is not one of them.

  * * *

  Save Your Money While You’re Young

  from Laura Barrett143

  Recorded in Toronto, Ontario

  Save your money while you’re young,

  While you think you’re having fun

  With all the girls you never met before.

  Don’t you know that all your hard-earned dough

  Will surely go…

  So much faster than you think.

  And that second second drink

  Finds you underneath the table,

  When you’ve forgotten every dollar from today

  Could’ve lived another way.

  Baby, you keep your eye on the bottom line,

  Say we save up enough to buy ourselves some time

  With no money at all.

  You could spread your cash around,

  Sow those pennies in the ground.

  Let’s get it down on paper first;

  Because it’s guaranteed to increase

  If we buy into it, at least.

  * * *

  When the Ice Worms Nest Again

  from Jenny Mitchell

  Recorded in Guelph, Ontario

  Go out after dawn and they’ll be gone.

  Soon even night will be too warm.

  When the ice that they love starts to fade,

  They won’t find the frost they need,

  They won’t know the night from day.

  Lately our cold just isn’t so cold.

  Back in 1887, the ice worms were in heaven,144

  On the glaciers of Washington, Alaska and BC and Oregon,

  You’d look and they’d be seven million strong.

  Just hiding in the dark, in the ice where they belong.

  How do the ice worms tunnel?

  Do they melt the ice with chemicals they secrete?

  How do the ice worms tunnel?

  Is it through microscopic fissures in ice sheets?

  It might be cold,

  But one day I hope for them

  To find a cold that’s cold enough for them to nest again.

  I hope the ice worms nest again.

  * * *

  Nellie145

  from Mathias Kom

  Recorded in Saint John’s, Newfoundland146

  Oh, pretty little Nellie, she’s coming o’er the hill,

  Filled with charming kindness and the goodest of good will.

  I asked her, “Nellie, where you coming from?” And she said: “Friend,

  I’m after coming from the wake of my true love, for he is dead.”

  Well, Nellie, she was lovely, though a tear was in her eye.

  She stumbled with her heavy purse and I could not stand by.

  I said, “Nellie, love, please let me take your handbag for you dear.”

  And she said: “In my time of need, I’m glad to find a kind man here.”

  So, I took Nellie’s purse off Nellie and, “Oh Nellie, dear,” I cried,

  “This handbag’s mighty heavy, what do you have inside?”

  But she just laughed and told me: “Mind the wax of your own bees.

  I’m a-grievin’ for my true love and your question’s vexing me.”

  Well, on we went down past the tracks and past the grocery store,

  And Nellie’s bag was heavy and I could not wait no more.

  So I took the smallest peak inside, and Lord what did I find?

  The head of Nellie’s own true love; his eyes were staring back at mine.

  Like a little girl I screamed and dropped the bag unto the ground.

  The parking lot was empty, there was no one else around.

  Fair Nellie, well, she laughed and said: “I know you think it’s queer,

  But I went to the wake of my own true love and this is my souvenir.”

  She said: “I thank you for your chivalry and generosity,

  But it’s a pity that you have such cat-like curiosity.”

  Then fast she flashed a knife and passed a bloody swish and blur.

  She said: “Farewell my own true love.” These were the last words that I heard.

  Well, who’s that girl with such sadness in her eyes?

  She walks with such a mournful step, such a heavy purse besides.

  Oh, beware, my helpful gentlemen, be wary of my mistake,

  For it’s pretty little Nellie coming home from the wake.

  Yes, it’s pretty little Nellie coming home from my own wake.

  * * *

  Maggie Howie147

  from Olenka Krakus

  Recorded in London, Ontario

  Maggie Howie, what a girl.

  Lost her way in this cruel, cruel world.

  It happened when I was almost ten:

  We watched her sink into drink and men.

  And when we heard, we were saddened and stirred.

  Father John was an honest man,

  He raised his daughter and worked his land.

  But when the rain washed his crop away,

  He didn’t last near a month and day.

  And when he died, Maggie cried and cried.

  And then the men started coming round,

  Bringing whisky and evening gowns.

  And Maggie danced and Maggie swayed,

  Maggie drank all her blues away.

  And when she smiled, it was reckless and wild.

  One evening when I was walking home,

  I came upon her, afraid and alone.

  An angry lover had hit her hard,

  She had fled through a neighbour’s yard.

  And I held her hand, and we hid from that man.

  But in the morning I woke alone,

  So I sleepily headed home.

  But then the constable came around.

  And told us Maggie Howie drowned,

  And when I heard, I shook at every word.

  I cried and cried, ’cause no one really tried.

  * * *

  How We Got Back to the Woods This Year148

  from Andrew Vincent

  Recorded in Lindsay, Ontario

  And the woods are filled with rockers149

  With heavy hearts and empty coffers.

 
; Hey man, I’ve got an idea,

  How we can get back to the woods this year.

  ’Cause these club gigs break my heart.

  And the suburbs don’t get my art.

  Hey, mom, I’ve got an idea,

  You said you weren’t going to the lake this year.

  I packed my bags and turned out the light.

  I’ve got a map, and dad’s advice.

  All I need are trees and air.

  When it gets cold, people get scared.

  So hey, man, you can bring up the drums,

  And we’ll rock these woods till the maples run.

  Quit your job and skip the rent.

  This record won’t cost a cent.

  Now the woods are filled with rockers,

  With heavy hearts and empty coffers.

  Hey, man, do you remember last year,

  And how I had that great idea?

  How we got back to the woods last year.

  How we got back to the woods last year.

  * * *