Good music passing through
Sometimes good things come out of the blue. Such was the case Saturday when John Lilly stopped by in Geneva to have lunch with me at Mary’s Diner.
John was editor at Goldenseal Magazine for the entire time I wrote for the magazine. He was a nurturing, kind and encouraging editor, adjectives seldom attached to that title. I loved working for John and especially appreciated the freedom he gave me in the development of the Back Roads feature, which I still write.
John left Goldenseal last year to embark upon his lifelong dream of being a full-time songwriter and performer. John has been called Hank Williams with a sunny disposition. His voice is rich, authentic and filled with life’s hardships and rare joys. His lyrics are real and probe the complexity of our emotions and relationships, with some yodeling and Irish and Scottish elements thrown in for good measure.
John played in Fairview, Pa., Friday night and was heading to another house concert, in Streetsboro, this evening. Another musician, Artie, a guitar player from Baltimore, joined us for melts and memories amid the 1950s diner’s decor.
John’s latest project is to record all of the state songs of the U.S. He recently did a online funding project to pay for the studio time that will require.
Last year, John released his solo acoustic CD, “Thinking About the Weather.” John’s great sense of humor comes through in “She Talks to Me,” a song about the woman’s voice on his GPS, while we can all identify with someone who has hurt us in “Do What You Do Best.” And he questions how it is that even though we get hurt by it, we still manage to fall in love again in “How’d You Steal My Heart?”
John loves singing his songs, whether in the studio, in a small house concert or on West Virginia Public Radio’s Mountain Stage. But he admits it is a very financially challenging life, even more so than he’d originally expected. It covers the very basic necessities, but the big items that hit us out of the blue can destroy the dream and send the musician back to the day job. How sad, but tragic, that for many of us Americans in this land of opportunity, where supposedly we have the freedom to follow our dreams and be that person we were born to be, economics and a playing field that is owned by corporate interests make the decision as to whose dreams come true.
Hearing, quite by accident, the untalented, cacophony called “hits” today, and thinking of how many millions these flash-in-the-pans, cleavage stars are making for screaming into a microphone, makes me wonder about our values as a nation when it comes to art. Perhaps it is because we are raised on noise that we are so quick to accept anything that is loud and irritating as “music.” Or perhaps it is because our culture is in love with eye candy. Whatever, true artists like John Lilly can still write a song that has lyrics that go beyond a single word and a tune that haunts you long after it has faded into the night ether.
Read more about John on his website and support his work by purchasing his CDs. Hopefully, John will be coming back up this way later in 2016 and we’ll have him in concert.