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The Weight (The Band)
Although I was but a wee five-year-old when this song first came out, it was remastered in 2000 and is now found in the "Melancholia" section of my heart's record store. (It's a fairly big section).
Those opening guitar notes, followed by a ribcage-shaking kick drum, take me immediately to the serpentine turns of Highway 68 in southeastern Tennessee, driving through towns named for ducks and turtles. I'd been up and down this road on other trips between my hometown (Knoxville, TN) and my new home (Cumming, GA)...but this particular memory is gray and sad, for I am traveling to sit with my mother in the residential hospice from whence she would soon depart.
"Pulled into Nazareth, was feelin bout half-past dead; just need some place where I can lay my head".
What a weary road that was, and how that song still lays across my heart like a fog.
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Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills and Nash)
and American Pie (Don McLean)
Some other pearls on my playlist...
Though "marketing manager" was my preferred title, "barfly/groupie" was a more fitting description of my years traipsing after the various ensembles that featured some extraordinarily talented friends - Brent Cundall, Terry Phillips, Mike Rhode, Randy Rhode, Mike Provencher and Doug McCombs. Apart from being some of the best musicians I've ever been blessed to hear play live, these are also some incredibly good guys.
One of their frequent covers was Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. In the last section of the four-part suite, Terry would masterfully mimic Stephen Stills' garbled Spanish (which to this day remains questionably translatable.)
Anyhow, the first few lines of that fourth section are happy melodic paeans to hopefulness, and if one listens intently, and if one has had a couple of shots of tequila, one might suppose that Stephen Stills is singing about "Lauralie", instead of "la caribe".
I said as much to Terry in between sets one night, who from then on made a point to clearly enunciate my name in subsequent performances of the song, causing me to scream and carry on as if they were The Beatles and I was on the front row with a VIP backstage pass.
And every November 9th, from 1985 to 1993, the guys would accede to my beery birthday requests for Suite: Judy Blue Eyes and American Pie.
"A long, long time ago...I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.."
Some of the best birthday presents I ever received.
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How Great Thou Art
(The Statler Brothers; Elvis; Alan Jackson; Randy Travis; Vince Gill, etc.)
So my eyes are already all watery just typing the name of this one.
It was a favorite staple of my maternal family tree, and it has been sung at pretty much every family funeral I've ever attended. My baby sister did a beautiful rendition at her father-in-law's funeral (accompanied by the aforementioned Randy Rhode) which brought tears to every set of eyes in the house.
Even today, I cannot sing the first line at my own Sunday church services without catching my breath and my kids proactively digging through my purse to find the kleenex.
Yet - there is one very special memory associated with a performance of "How Great Thou Art".
Because it had been a family favorite for three generations, my sister and I wanted it incorporated into our mother's funeral service. Although she'd grown up amidst primitive Baptists, our mother became an Episcopalian as an adult and had a special affinity for Anglican liturgy and the beauty of St. John's Cathedral. Because it was my sister's church at the time, and because Mom had loved it so, we chose St. John's as the location for her service.
We were dismayed to learn that "How Great Thou Art" was not to be found in the Episcopal hymnal. Undeterred, we elected to include it in the service anyway, with the lyrics to be provided as part of the printed program.
We held the service on Tuesday, February 6, 2007, at 6 p.m. in the evening. If you've lost a parent or very close family member, then you may be familiar with the weird shroud of feelings that confuses your heart in the opening moments of their funeral service. It's so - so - final.
My sister and I sat together, without our spouses or children, in the front of the sanctuary. We wept discreetly, with ladylike tears and trembling shoulders. And then it came time for "How Great Thou Art".
I braced myself, knitting together the few remaining threads of composure available to me.
We unfolded the printed lyrics and we began to sing. Tears poured down our faces like undammed rivers. Some words went missing among the sobs.
And then we came to the third verse.
The third verse is:
And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin
Unfortunately, whoever typed our printed version was either careless or in a big hurry, because our lyrics read thus:
"And when I think that God, His Son snot sparing..." Snot sparing? SNOT SPARING?!?!
In much the same manner as two naughty little girls misbehaving in church, my sister and I completely lost it. We were laughing our heads off. To the mourners behind us, it appeared as though we were utterly distraught, violently shaking with heads down and making lots of wet noises.
But to the Very Right Reverend Thom Rasnick and the choir members in front of us, it was obvious that we'd been blessed with some righteous comic relief.
I guarantee you our mom was laughing too.
