It’s Saturday night, a little after 8 PM. I come downstairs to start making dinner, and snap on the radio for the weekly folk music show courtesy of our local radio station. It’s just getting started and a song or two in I recognize a theme of winter, cold; fortitude. That’s what I’m here for. I like to put myself in the hands of an expert.
I love the Folk Music show—called the Hudson River Sampler. Every week, the long-running host Wanda Fischer kicks things off by saying something along the lines of “where you’ll hear the music I’m about to play for you” which sets the metaphysical tone for things. Wanda really knows her stuff —she’s been doing this a long time.
We’re in the middle of January. It’s been creeping up on me. I open Instagram on my phone and see songwriter friends posting from the 30A Festival in Florida. I wish I was there and I don’t wish I was there.
Last year I played at 30A and was really happy to be part of things. I think Eric was over in England then. The festival is held in a beautiful part of the Florida panhandle. I was put up in a cute beach house, had the whole place to myself, and used a rental car to drive to all the proceedings up and down the stretch of the 30A highway. I played three rounds —sets with other songwriters—and also did my best to catch some of the other artists playing. I saw a bunch of friends, ate seafood and soaked up the gorgeous setting, and enjoyed myself even though the temperature plummeted and everyone was piling on layers of clothes to try and stay comfortable as most of the venues are outdoors, a beach bar kind of atmosphere.
I know what’s been scaring me about this time of year coming around again. I think of the Saturday night four years ago when I was at 30A, my first time. I was excited to be part of the festival. Things were kind of on a roll for me: I’d finally managed to get my book out at the end of 2019 and the response was beyond what I could’ve expected. I knew that my interview with Terry Gross for Fresh Air was going to run the last week of January 2020. Here I was at the festival, taking an Uber to an outdoor venue where I’d gone to see a version of the dBs play the night before. It was raining pretty hard, but the gig was in a tent and it felt pretty cozy in there.
We were in the round, Scott Miller, David Olney and I. When I walked away from the tent with my guitar on my back, I didn’t know if David Olney would make it — he had suffered a heart attack on stage, we’d all tried to save him, it’s a blur and yet all so clear in my mind and psyche and will forever be.
When I was at a Songwriter Workshop in Michigan this past November, one of the regulars, a wonderful talented guy, played a song “I Want To Die Like David Olney.” I found it hard to breathe, listening to the words, the sentiment about doing what you love and going out the same way. I knew intellectually how a folk hero became even more of a folk hero, a mythical figure. But my body felt the trauma of the experience. Maybe when my own husband had a heart attack, it helped me know what I was looking at, helped me save his life. Now David Olney is this spirit, he’s an advisor in the atmosphere. He inspires people in how he died doing what he loved, as he inspired us in life with his writing and his wit, his being. But it still feels so sad that he’s gone, not here still making music.
Wanda plays a new recording by Eric Brace she says is dedicated to Peter Cooper. Peter was a fine writer, he wrote about music for the Tennessean when I lived in Nashville. Then he became a much-loved songwriter and performer in his own right, he and Eric Brace often playing together. Peter died last December. He never really got over David Olney’s death, when I attended the memorial for Olney in Nashville in March 2020, Peter was hurting terribly. He was almost not the same person I’d known.
So much has changed since that night four years ago when Olney died. The losses piled up, for everybody. Even as I write this my hands shake, feel cold. I remember walking away from the tent in Florida, my guitar on my back, and a lady grabbing me. “Somebody’s got to tell Peter Yarrow! He’s there, warming up for his show!” I saw a lone figure in the grass, strumming an acoustic guitar.“ The woman shook me by the arm. “He’s eighty one years old! Tell him. Tell him!” I just kept walking in the rain, the medics made everyone leave. I’d found my friends Marti and Don and they’d sat with me. A little while later, out on 30A, I saw Scott Miller and he hugged me and told me Olney hadn’t made it.
Wanda is playing 500 Miles now. I know every note of each harmony, deep in my soul. It’s Peter Paul and Mary. They were my introduction to harmony, Leaving On A Jet Plane. It was a miracle to me as a kid, still is, how voices can fit together like that. Can weave and break free. I never found out what happened with Peter Yarrow, the night David Olney died, but I know he is still going, at eighty five now, and that makes me glad.
I was touched they invited me back to 30A last year. I was worried I’d forever be some harbinger for the others, that no one would want me around or onstage with them. It didn’t occur to me to apply this year and as much as I had a nice experience last year, I can’t help but feel like everyone can have a better time if I’m not there, because I’ll remind them of Olney and how he died. But they probably remember without me there and that’s not so bad is it?
So I listen to songwriters on the radio this January night in upstate New York. But I’m sensing Wanda might get to playing David Olney and talking about how he died four years ago this week and I imagine the ache I’ll hear in her voice like the one just now where she talked about Peter Cooper and so I turn off the radio. I’m happy to have a nice warm house and food in the fridge, my husband working on something in the next room. I’ve got a book almost finished, a record in the can. The past is the past —it’s important to always remember but don’t get too hung up on it. Remember, and celebrate the people we knew, and look to the future. We never know what’s ahead.
Amy, reading you is like sitting in front of a warm fire under an afghan sipping my favorite warming beverage while a storm rages outside. Just beautiful. Thank you.
Lovely story. I thought covering the 30A festival would be an interesting change of pace for me. I contacted the publicist who sent out the press release. They [he/she/they] said they'd pass it on to the person doing the press verification, but they were skeptical about my "brand" or whatever. I said I needed a press pass and nothing else, because I'm 74 and like any male my age, nature requires proximity to bathrooms, and not port-a-pottie lines. I thought I might have some cred after doing this for more than 50 years. They never got back to me, which I took as a "no." But that is a mighty powerful message from the festival, Amy.