The Joni Mitchell Hommage Presentation - The World Leaders Festival Program, Toronto October 10 - 19, 2001
Article © Joni Mitchell.com
December 8, 2001
By Jim Johanson -- The Official Joni Mitchell site
The Hommage to Joni at Harbourfront's "World Leaders" festival has been in the making for quite a while. With each event over the course of this week, it has become increasingly apparent that tonight's program is going to somehow be a special one. Although some have already been here for hours, enjoying the reception and banquet, others are just arriving. Everybody's looking forward to the show, curious about what sort of format the Hommage is going to take; that information has been hidden from all except those in the "need to know" group. Even many Harbourfront staffers have been kept in the dark until tonight.
The long narrow rooms at the Liberty Grand have received high marks as reception and banquet spaces, but I hear mixed reviews about the use of another long, narrow hall as a performance space. We enter at a far corner to find the stage in the center of the room, rising approximately five feet up from the floor and splitting the audience in half on either side of it. There's just enough room at one end of the stage for a corridor that allows audience members with seats on the far side of the stage to walk through to their destination; I look over my shoulder at the stage as I pass through the corridor. There are three music stands; two of them are clustered at one end, separated from the third by a small table with a floor-length tablecloth. There's a chair on each side of the table, which has a compact stereo on it. On the other side of the stage by the wall opposite the corridor, musical instruments await their players: there's a grand piano, xylophone and cello, along with a variety of percussion instruments and bells. The area between the instruments on one side and the three music stands on the other is where the performers will walk from one side of the audience to the other, attempting to reach everyone as they perform. Although the configuration is a little clumsy, the sight lines are good and the performers do a great job of playing to the entire audience. Two large screens hang side by side above the stage, displaying the evening's visuals program in double exposure; each of the two screens shows the same image as the screen next to it for most of the evening. These unusual choices prove to be only a minor factor; spirits are high as we anticipate honoring the artist who has meant so much to us for so long.
Once everyone is seated, the presentation begins right on time with an instrumental version of "Both Sides Now," with the cello taking the lead; the bells and percussion give the song yet another new personality. An atmosphere of almost religious reverence permeates the room as the event begins, with silence for a second or two after the music stops. Someone applauds; everybody else loosens up and joins in.
The sound of bells drifts through the air like wind chimes. Hosts Brent Carver, Anne Marie MacDonald and Rebecca Jenkins, scripts in hand, file onto the stage in the shadows of a bright blue light that illuminates the now empty chair Joni will be sitting in later tonight, next to the table with the stereo on it. Once the performers are in position, the light dims and an excerpt from Rudyard Kipling's Kim is read over the sound system; Saskatchewan prairie scenes are shown on the screens.
Anne, Brent and Rebecca are working as a team tonight. They'll do much of the Hommage as a sort of relay storytelling, passing the narration around paragraph by paragraph, sometimes line by line, even word by word. A photo of Joni's father appears on the screens holding a newborn Joni -- and on that cue the storytelling begins. The lights are brought up on each performer in sequence as they open the script books on their music stands and begin speaking.
Brent: "Once..."
Anne: "Once..."
Rebecca: "Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Roberta Joan Anderson..."
"And a precious spark was ignited when Mr. Krantzman read the story of Kim, by Rudyard Kipling, to his grade seven class in Saskatoon."
The cello plays "Both Sides Now" in the background as another excerpt from the book is read:
All that while he felt, though he could not put it into words, that his soul was out of gear with its surroundings - a cog-wheel unconnected with any machinery. The breezes fanned over him, the parrots shrieked at him, the noises of the populated house behind - squabbles, orders, and reproofs - hit on dead ears. He did not want to cry - had never felt less like crying in his life - but of a sudden easy, stupid tears trickled down his nose, and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true - solidly planted upon the feet - perfectly comprehensible - clay of his clay, neither more nor less.
As the reading ends, the music segues into a few soft intervals on the piano that serve as an introduction to Brent's performance of Joni's wonderful "Night In the City." Bit by bit, he builds into an energetic reading of the song, the theatrical interpretation recalling Joni's comment that her songs are often "cinematic." Brent's clear voice has striking range and power. He's all over the stage, dancing marionette-like in the middle of the song as it gains momentum. He ends on a sustained, very high note -- if everybody isn't sitting up in their seats before the song started, I'm sure they are now. Rebecca sings along softly for a time, possibly just carried away by the moment. There's a big round of applause as Brent finishes, and our hosts take a minute to introduce themselves before going on.
Anne begins: "The Oxford English Dictionary defines genius: 'One of two opposed spirits or angels, supposed to attend every person.'" Rebecca takes definition number two, Brent number three (upon returning home, I looked up "genius" in The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and the definition is considerably longer; I'm glad they didn't read the whole thing).
Brent: "We can only marvel at the transformational artistry of Joni Mitchell."
Rebecca: "Her fourth grade report card reads: 'Original in ideas, with a gift of interpretation.'" The audience, retrospect firmly on their side, laughs.
Brent: "Mr. Kratzmann said 'write and paint in your own blood.'"
Anne: "And by her mid-teens, though the melodies were yet to be born, innocent doodles had become paintings that would one day become album covers, and musings in the margins of notebooks soon became the poetry that would soon become lyrics."
Rebecca finishes the thought Anne started: "Even those that were never set to music reveal a Joni interpreting a world she was yet to meet."
Brent talks about a 16 year old Joni sitting under a hair dryer getting a Sanda Dee-style "do" while reading an article in Silver Screen magazine about the private lives of show business personalities of the day -- "teen idols exposed -- and while sitting under the hair dryer she wrote 'Fishbowl.'"
As many Joniphiles know, "Fishbowl" is one of Joni's earliest poems to be made public. Those who have never heard of the poem won't be disappointed tonight as Anne Marie opens a window to the past, reading "Fishbowl" aloud.
Rebecca gives the audience a glimpse of Joni's early home life, recounting when Mr. and Mrs. Anderson told their daughter "sure, you can paint murals on your bedroom walls! " She notes that piano lessons also began at an early age, as "Joni began exploring all that was Joni," and she reads a second early poem, "I Am A Guitar." Polio was still exacting a heavy toll among children at that time, and young imaginations took wing when physical movements became difficult. Nine year old Joni was a prime example; Brent draws a reference to the disease before performing a fine reading of another early poem, "Road Song."
Rebecca talks about Joni picking up a baritone ukulele and then her first guitar. "In the 60s," she tells us, "most kids, when they picked up a guitar, picked up a few licks from friends, or if you were REALLY serious, pick up the Pete Seeger Guitar Players Guidebook. And so did Joni. For about... ten minutes."
Anne: "But Joni was a tad -- resistant, shall we say, to learning the conventional way, to doing anything the conventional way. And thank God for that."
It's time for the evening's first surprise guest: Brent introduces Gordon Lightfoot, who receives a warm welcome from the crowd as he approaches the stage for what sounds to me like a stream-of-consciousness talk about the old days. He thinks back to the Detroit of his 1965 memories, when "Joan and Chuck Mitchell were at the Chess Mate and Gordon Lightfoot was at the Living End which was sort of over on the other side of town, not too far away, and they came in and they brought Tom Rush in with them to the Living End, and invited us back to the apartment, which was situated, say, a couple miles west of the core of the city of Detroit, between a college campus and an art museum, and it was a fifth floor walkup, there was no elevator or anything of that kind and we used to carry the guitars up and down and all that sort of stuff... and she got Tom Rush to play one of her selections -- he played 'Urge For Going,' and I knew right at that instant that I had heard a quality song, and the guitar was then passed to Joni and she gave us a version of what she then called 'Clouds,' which later became 'Both Sides Now'... and I said there's another quality song... I had, made a deal in New York, and Chuck and Joni were searching and looking for some kind of a way to get these songs onto record, and Chuck was very supportive of Joni's material too, but the, unfortunately, the cookie didn't crumble somewhere along the line, if I may be so crude. Joni was out on her own, back about 1967... from that point on, I can tell you a couple real good memories, the art museum was one of 'em, the artistic climate where she was... used to take us to have brunch at this art museum in Detroit, an experience which I will never forget, I remember being over there one time with Richie Havens when you and Chuck were out of town playing over at Omaha [Does anybody out there know if Joni ever played in Omaha, or did I hear wrong?] and you had loaned me the apartment for four days -- do you remember that? -- I was playing The Living End, and back in those days you know it was like Beatles, Beatles, Beatles."
"Joni and I were survivors of a dying era... tellin' ya something, it was a time when the folk revival took place, starting around 1960, and when the Beatles came out it cooled out considerably right then... we'd always have the Beatles in our faces constantly, there would be a Beatles album. You'd work for another year, you'd have an album all ready to go and there would be another Beatles album. We were label mates at Warner Bros. Reprise and would compare notes, we'd meet from time to time when Joni came to town..."
Lightfoot went on to say that he thought "Tom Rush's early covers of Joni's songs were fantastic, as were Dave Van Ronk's and Buffy St. Marie's, and several others, people used to come through town and play at the Chess Mate and after that she went to New York and then she went to LA and I didn't see her till Rolling Thunder in 1975 and we got to hang out a bit more then, and I don't think I've seen her since 1976 and I'm real happy to see her tonight."
As the audience laughs and applauds, he exits the stage.
Joni's first five album covers are shown on the overhead screens while the focus shifts to "the unmistakable, inimitable Mitchell style. She actually found sound that had never been heard before." These comments serve as an apt introduction for a recorded visit from Joni's longtime guitar tech, photographer, music transcriber and friend Joel Bernstein, Anne calling him "the person in all the world who best understands her chords of inquiry and tunings." She also mentions that "he's captured some of the most thrilling and evocative images of Joni that have been taken over the years." A montage of photos taken mostly during the 1970s, including one of Joel, are shown on the screens as he speaks to the crowd in what he calls his "disembodied voice:"
A discussion of the mechanics behind the music is especially appropriate when Joni is the subject. Many of her biggest fans are musicians, and even those who aren't musicians are often interested in how she gives her music its distinctive sound and character. Excepting Joni herself, Joel is the undisputed authority in this department.
"Ever been to a party where someone picks up a guitar and tries to play one of Joni's songs?" Joel asks, prompting a knowing combination of laughter and groaning from the audience. "Chances are good what you heard didn't sound the way you remember Joni playing it. Here's why." He offers up a short Tunings 101 music lesson, plucking string by string on an unfretted guitar that is tuned to the familiar standard tuning used for most classical, jazz, rock or folk music. He breaks the chords apart, playing them string by string as he talks:
"A guitar student starts out learning how to place the fingers of his or her left hand on the fretboard, in shapes that make familiar sounding chords, like C (ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding), or A Minor (ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding). Later, guitarists learned that by tuning the strings to the chord itself, like E for example, and by using a whole different set of finger positions, a very different set of chords can be produced. These are open tunings, and will be familiar to blues music lovers out there."
We hear "A Bird That Whistles" (Joni's brilliant arrangement of the blues standard "Corrina Corrina") in the background. Excerpts of other songs roam behind Joel's voice as he continues to explain the unique intricacies that make Joni's music the rare and beautiful entity that it is; the music helps to illustrate the importance of what he says.
"But when the young Joni Mitchell was first introduced to these open tunings," he says, "she coaxed some very different sounds from the guitar strings, like so." (Joni's "Marcie" starts to play in the background).
"And one day long ago, while retuning her guitar from one open tuning to another, she stopped someplace in between, and listened. 'ooh, delicious,' thought Joni, 'I think I'll stay here for a while and explore.' And so she did, coming up with both a new and original tuning that wasn't standard or open, and new and original chords to play in it."
("I Had A King" plays in the background.)
"This was the musical equivalent equivalent of Alice opening the little door, and glimpsing an entirely new world beyond. From that day to this, Joni's curiosity, sense of adventure and unique sense of what some composers call 'tone color' have resulted in her own very personal discovery and deep exploration of literally dozens of these new worlds, each new tuning requiring it's own new set of original chords. You don't need to know all of this to appreciate Joni's concerts and recordings, but her explorations of these exotic musical places form the basis for what is unquestionably one of the most important and original bodies of work ever in guitar composition and performance, without even going into her equal genius as a lyricist, singer, arranger, pool player, and salmon burger chef."
"Her unwillingness to be restricted to previous forms has led to her becoming not only the preeminent practitioner of these alternate tunings, but an inspiration for guitarists as diverse as Prince, Wendy and Lisa, Shawn Colvin, David Crosby and Michael Hedges."
Joni's familiar guitar figure from "Hejira" pulses in the background as Joel finishes, updating us on the upcoming release (hopefully next year) of his complete two volume set of transcriptions and lyrics to all of Joni's released works. "There will be a detailed map of where she's traveled musically over the years, and hopefully others will be inspired to explore these magnificent new worlds," he says. "But no one, even with the book, when it comes to playing Joni Mitchell songs, can do it like 'The Mitch' herself."
With that, the screens return to their standard display (Joni's signature), Joel's disembodied voice evaporates, and Anne announces a segment called "The Mitchell Effect." We're told that Joni has "probably been recorded by more artists than any other single composer, Mozart excepted. [Really?] But that said, it's unlikely even Wolfgang himself could lay claim to the results that we got in this random street survey. Ladies and gentlemen, and Joni too [yes, that's what she said], a sample of 'The Mitchell Effect.'"
"The Mitchell Effect" question: "What do you think of when you think of Joni Mitchell?"
A very funny video sequence of people on the street follows. They answer the question by singing their personal versions of Joni's songs, with widely varying skills ranging from not that bad to completely tone deaf. There's a lot of "umm, da-dah, dah, da-dah, 'till it's gone" renditions of "Big Yellow Taxi," in addition to a few other well known songs. The guy who bravely attempts the high note in "River" ("I would teach my feet to flyyyy...") gets a big laugh for his efforts; I'm sure he's not the only person who has had some trouble with that note! I'm surprised by one person who sings "Cool Water."
Enjoyable as "The Mitchell Effect" is, by the time it's over the audience is ready to hear somebody who can actually carry a tune and sing a credible version of Joni's music and Rebecca obliges with "Blue," her first performance of the evening. Her affection for the song and for Joni comes through loud and clear -- the audience is loving it.
Joni's friends, actress Angelica Houston and dancer Charles Valentino, appear on the overhead screens. Their easy familiarity with Joni speaks volumes as they relate their experience of her creative soul; the joy that exists in her relationships with close friends is palpable.
Angelica: "...being privileged to experience her work, not only as a musician, but as an artist, and in an everyday sense, the sense in which she's almost Homeric as a storyteller, or when Joni drops in on a room and pulls out her guitar, or just her observations about life, it's one of those people that makes you happy to be alive, 'cause you feel like she's always taking a big bite out of life -- she's thrilled with certain situations, you know? She eats it like food."
Valentino: "Life has a lot of magic that's happening, and sometimes we don't get to see it because we're distracted, but Joni has a knack of even testing it sometimes, testing her intuition, going out, looking for life, you know? I'm not gonna tell you her stories, but she has wonderful, magical stories."
Angelica: "You know Joni's always, running off -- with, you know, gangs who live under bridges (laughs)... these sort of sagas unfold -- she's an extraordinary artist. Because there's always the element of the angels, and I think in order to be a really true artist, first of all you have to be incredibly disciplined and you have to have the dedication to be disciplined and the inspiration to be disciplined, but having been disciplined, having, being in a way already a vessel, I think that's so much of the magic that Valentino is describing, being completely ready so that when the inspiration or when the angel comes, you can give voice to it. And that's always to me been an intrinsic part of Joni. You don't the feeling that she's necessarily the doer, you get a much, much higher, if you will, almost religious feeling, there's something channeled coming through her."
Valentino nods agreement and concludes the segment: "We love you Joni, we love your heart, we love your spirit, we love your laughter, and since you're not here today, what we're going to do is we're going to have a dance. And we'll think about you as we're twirling! We love you Joni -- you deserve this, baby! We'll see you soon! Bye..."
I'm glad Joni has been so lucky in friendship. Val's sincerity, exuberance and joie de vive are so contagious that I want to get up and dance right there on the spot.
One of the things I love most about Joni's music is the vividness of the characters in her songs; tangible, evocative, memorable. I'm glad when Brent notes this. He starts by listing a few of them: "Michael, Willie, Richard, Carey, beautiful beautiful Marcie, Cherokee Louise, Ron or Chickie or Lead Foot Melvin..." images of the inhabitants of Joni's songs pop into my head as he speaks. Where's Nathan La Franeer, I wonder? I guess he can't list everybody -- we'd be here all night!
"With every one of these people Joni Mitchell seems to have reintroduced us to some part of ourselves," Brent continues. "In the brevity of one song, she paints an entire life like that. And for over four decades, her audience has had the remarkable experience of humming along with her personal odyssey. She sees that which is plain for all of us to see, but it·s that rare gift of interpretation, as her grade four report card said, that sets her apart. And whether it is a one man band by the quick lunch stand, the hot winds and hungry cries of Ethiopia, or a license plate that spells out JUST ICE -- just... ice -- for Joni, every thing has meaning. Every thing deserves a closer look."
Brent and Rebecca sing the beginning of "Shadows and Light," watching each other closely as they tackle a harmony. Then the band takes over: the cello segues into Amelia and back into "Shadows and Light" again, finishing with one last line from "Amelia."
"Duke Ellington," Anne tells us, "said 'no boxes.' Miles Davis said 'I have to change -- it's like a curse.' 'Staying the same,' says Joni, 'is just boring.'" The story moves into the mid-late 70s and the overhead screens document an explosion of astonishing creativity: The covers of Joni's landmark albums "The Hissing of Summer Lawns," "Hejira," "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" and "Mingus" appear along with concert video from her "Shadows and Light" tour. Other paintings and photos from the 70s and beyond flash by; even though I've seen most of what's being shown, I'm still amazed and excited by the breadth, quality and prodigiousness of her work. "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" plays over the sound system as Anne tells us about Joni's drive to chart her own course, and of her innovative incorporation of world music instruments, "frustrating any attempt to categorize her, refusing to be dictated to by the marketplace, instead being guided by her own interests, passions and sensibilities, ever true to herself. It·s been said that an artist changes course at their professional peril, but as Joni once remarked, ·nobody insisted Picasso stay in his ·Blue Period· forever.· And Joni has always been her own guide. If a passion was yet to be explored, it was a road meant to be traveled. So it was, her love of jazz. Considered by many to be her most daring work, Joni shocked fans and radio stations alike with ·Mingus.· But when Charles Mingus asked her to work with him on what was to be his final project, it was not to be another remarkable revelation of a breathtaking scope of gifts, but a testament to how highly regarded she was and is by other musicians. And to those who really knew her, her passion for jazz, like her passion for art, had been born long ago in that young girl from Saskatchewan. This wasn't a case of a new Joni, just another side.·
It's a perfect time for a video visit from jazz legend Herbie Hancock.
Herbie: "People like Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez, or even Jimi Hendrix, I didn't pay that much attention to 'em until later, when I noticed that Miles Davis, who was my employer, he was paying attention to them -- Miles listens to all kinds of stuff, what's wrong with me? Years later, I got a call one day from Jaco Pastorius, who was doing a record with Joni and Peter Erskine on drums, and Wayne Shorter on saxophone, and it was a record that was dedicated to Charlie Mingus, and originally I wasn't scheduled to be on the record to my knowledge. I got this call: 'We're in the studio recording, man, why don't you come over? This is something you're gonna dig.' So when I knew that it was Wayne and Jaco... and Joni was someone I didn't know that much about her, except her reputation... I went to the studio, and found my way into the music, and from that point on Joni and I became friends. Her sensitivity to any source of inspiration, she's able to pick up on things quicker, they don't just get by her... she's extremely bright. And another thing I noticed about her -- her normal mode of conversation is so [he pauses looking for the right word] graphic and full of symbolism, just like her poetry; she speaks poetically. Joni Mitchell is pretty amazing that way. And Wayne Shorter who is also on that record, also speaks in a... I guess you could say it's his brand of poetry, he has a way of relating to people on a metaphoric level. To hear Wayne and Joni talking is like poetry itself. It's amazing -- you've got to have your wits about you!"
The screens switch to an interview with Wayne Shorter:
Wayne: "What drew my attention to Joni Mitchell some years ago was the fact that she seemed like another one of us who was willing to take chances, she seemed like a person who was ready to take a leap into the unknown, so to speak, and when she actually did it, that was a confirmation to me that she was one of the few, I said like one of us, that would be willing to put her career on the line. Thinking that Joni would acquiesce to the demands of so-called devoted fans was a misnomer, in fact she plowed ahead and stepped on the gas. The boundary lines that were demarcated, over a period of 75 years in the music industry -- you don't cross this line, you don't cross that line, this was something you didn't do, but some of us, I say a few of us again, including Joni herself who was considered to be on the other side of the fence, the pop side, proceeded to, I'd say, break the sound barrier... this is not about record sales, and all that. Herbie Hancock and I -- we look for people who are part of the quote unquote, academy. It sounds kind of Star Trek-ish!"
Herbie again: "Joni, I will work with you, anytime, day or night, all you gotta do [he puts his hand up to his ear] is call me! And I'm there. I love your work, I love you. I love you as a human being, 'cause that's the foundation of your work."
Rebecca's performance of "Two Grey Rooms" follows, and is a high point of the evening. The interpretation serves as a wonderful vehicle for Rebecca's talents, as well as a moving tribute to Joni. Many in the audience stand as she finishes and receives a huge hand from everyone (including Joni, who is sitting in the front row) for the heartfelt performance.
Once the audience has settled down, Anne offers a tongue-in-cheek consideration of the true measure of fame: "Joni Mitchell has been the answer to 42-across in the New York Times crossword puzzle!" She cites a few more references to Joni, such as the time on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where the guy didn't know the answer. "So he didn't deserve to win," Anne concludes. We're shown a montage of television and movie clips that include references to Joni; we see bits of You've Got Mail, ER, and Ally McBeal. I can't say I was expecting to see Calista Flockhart onscreen at a Joni Mitchell tribute, but hey, life is full of surprises.
Brent contemplatively sings a few verses of "Sunny Sunday" as the program draws to a close; the final performance is Anne's arresting reading of the lyrics to "The Magdalene Laundries." The room is eerily quiet during Anne's performance. The naked words stand alone in stark relief against the silence of the room, devoid of the music that usually soothes the numbing despair of the lyrics while simultaneously reinforcing them.
Brent has the last word. "...and she spent her life inquiring, and searching, planting a poetic flag on the landscapes of the human soul, 'I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, looking for something, what can it be?' She's taken us to the very edge of ourselves, with wit and humor... and while exploring the vast landscape of this thing called the human condition, through color and light, words and music, Joni Mitchell reveals not only her soul -- she leads us collectively to the discovery of our own."
"Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Joni Mitchell."
Back to articles
Article © Joni Mitchell.com
December 8, 2001
By Jim Johanson -- The Official Joni Mitchell site
The Hommage to Joni at Harbourfront's "World Leaders" festival has been in the making for quite a while. With each event over the course of this week, it has become increasingly apparent that tonight's program is going to somehow be a special one. Although some have already been here for hours, enjoying the reception and banquet, others are just arriving. Everybody's looking forward to the show, curious about what sort of format the Hommage is going to take; that information has been hidden from all except those in the "need to know" group. Even many Harbourfront staffers have been kept in the dark until tonight.
The long narrow rooms at the Liberty Grand have received high marks as reception and banquet spaces, but I hear mixed reviews about the use of another long, narrow hall as a performance space. We enter at a far corner to find the stage in the center of the room, rising approximately five feet up from the floor and splitting the audience in half on either side of it. There's just enough room at one end of the stage for a corridor that allows audience members with seats on the far side of the stage to walk through to their destination; I look over my shoulder at the stage as I pass through the corridor. There are three music stands; two of them are clustered at one end, separated from the third by a small table with a floor-length tablecloth. There's a chair on each side of the table, which has a compact stereo on it. On the other side of the stage by the wall opposite the corridor, musical instruments await their players: there's a grand piano, xylophone and cello, along with a variety of percussion instruments and bells. The area between the instruments on one side and the three music stands on the other is where the performers will walk from one side of the audience to the other, attempting to reach everyone as they perform. Although the configuration is a little clumsy, the sight lines are good and the performers do a great job of playing to the entire audience. Two large screens hang side by side above the stage, displaying the evening's visuals program in double exposure; each of the two screens shows the same image as the screen next to it for most of the evening. These unusual choices prove to be only a minor factor; spirits are high as we anticipate honoring the artist who has meant so much to us for so long.
Once everyone is seated, the presentation begins right on time with an instrumental version of "Both Sides Now," with the cello taking the lead; the bells and percussion give the song yet another new personality. An atmosphere of almost religious reverence permeates the room as the event begins, with silence for a second or two after the music stops. Someone applauds; everybody else loosens up and joins in.
The sound of bells drifts through the air like wind chimes. Hosts Brent Carver, Anne Marie MacDonald and Rebecca Jenkins, scripts in hand, file onto the stage in the shadows of a bright blue light that illuminates the now empty chair Joni will be sitting in later tonight, next to the table with the stereo on it. Once the performers are in position, the light dims and an excerpt from Rudyard Kipling's Kim is read over the sound system; Saskatchewan prairie scenes are shown on the screens.
Anne, Brent and Rebecca are working as a team tonight. They'll do much of the Hommage as a sort of relay storytelling, passing the narration around paragraph by paragraph, sometimes line by line, even word by word. A photo of Joni's father appears on the screens holding a newborn Joni -- and on that cue the storytelling begins. The lights are brought up on each performer in sequence as they open the script books on their music stands and begin speaking.
Brent: "Once..."
Anne: "Once..."
Rebecca: "Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Roberta Joan Anderson..."
"And a precious spark was ignited when Mr. Krantzman read the story of Kim, by Rudyard Kipling, to his grade seven class in Saskatoon."
The cello plays "Both Sides Now" in the background as another excerpt from the book is read:
All that while he felt, though he could not put it into words, that his soul was out of gear with its surroundings - a cog-wheel unconnected with any machinery. The breezes fanned over him, the parrots shrieked at him, the noises of the populated house behind - squabbles, orders, and reproofs - hit on dead ears. He did not want to cry - had never felt less like crying in his life - but of a sudden easy, stupid tears trickled down his nose, and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true - solidly planted upon the feet - perfectly comprehensible - clay of his clay, neither more nor less.
As the reading ends, the music segues into a few soft intervals on the piano that serve as an introduction to Brent's performance of Joni's wonderful "Night In the City." Bit by bit, he builds into an energetic reading of the song, the theatrical interpretation recalling Joni's comment that her songs are often "cinematic." Brent's clear voice has striking range and power. He's all over the stage, dancing marionette-like in the middle of the song as it gains momentum. He ends on a sustained, very high note -- if everybody isn't sitting up in their seats before the song started, I'm sure they are now. Rebecca sings along softly for a time, possibly just carried away by the moment. There's a big round of applause as Brent finishes, and our hosts take a minute to introduce themselves before going on.
Anne begins: "The Oxford English Dictionary defines genius: 'One of two opposed spirits or angels, supposed to attend every person.'" Rebecca takes definition number two, Brent number three (upon returning home, I looked up "genius" in The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and the definition is considerably longer; I'm glad they didn't read the whole thing).
Brent: "We can only marvel at the transformational artistry of Joni Mitchell."
Rebecca: "Her fourth grade report card reads: 'Original in ideas, with a gift of interpretation.'" The audience, retrospect firmly on their side, laughs.
Brent: "Mr. Kratzmann said 'write and paint in your own blood.'"
Anne: "And by her mid-teens, though the melodies were yet to be born, innocent doodles had become paintings that would one day become album covers, and musings in the margins of notebooks soon became the poetry that would soon become lyrics."
Rebecca finishes the thought Anne started: "Even those that were never set to music reveal a Joni interpreting a world she was yet to meet."
Brent talks about a 16 year old Joni sitting under a hair dryer getting a Sanda Dee-style "do" while reading an article in Silver Screen magazine about the private lives of show business personalities of the day -- "teen idols exposed -- and while sitting under the hair dryer she wrote 'Fishbowl.'"
As many Joniphiles know, "Fishbowl" is one of Joni's earliest poems to be made public. Those who have never heard of the poem won't be disappointed tonight as Anne Marie opens a window to the past, reading "Fishbowl" aloud.
Rebecca gives the audience a glimpse of Joni's early home life, recounting when Mr. and Mrs. Anderson told their daughter "sure, you can paint murals on your bedroom walls! " She notes that piano lessons also began at an early age, as "Joni began exploring all that was Joni," and she reads a second early poem, "I Am A Guitar." Polio was still exacting a heavy toll among children at that time, and young imaginations took wing when physical movements became difficult. Nine year old Joni was a prime example; Brent draws a reference to the disease before performing a fine reading of another early poem, "Road Song."
Rebecca talks about Joni picking up a baritone ukulele and then her first guitar. "In the 60s," she tells us, "most kids, when they picked up a guitar, picked up a few licks from friends, or if you were REALLY serious, pick up the Pete Seeger Guitar Players Guidebook. And so did Joni. For about... ten minutes."
Anne: "But Joni was a tad -- resistant, shall we say, to learning the conventional way, to doing anything the conventional way. And thank God for that."
It's time for the evening's first surprise guest: Brent introduces Gordon Lightfoot, who receives a warm welcome from the crowd as he approaches the stage for what sounds to me like a stream-of-consciousness talk about the old days. He thinks back to the Detroit of his 1965 memories, when "Joan and Chuck Mitchell were at the Chess Mate and Gordon Lightfoot was at the Living End which was sort of over on the other side of town, not too far away, and they came in and they brought Tom Rush in with them to the Living End, and invited us back to the apartment, which was situated, say, a couple miles west of the core of the city of Detroit, between a college campus and an art museum, and it was a fifth floor walkup, there was no elevator or anything of that kind and we used to carry the guitars up and down and all that sort of stuff... and she got Tom Rush to play one of her selections -- he played 'Urge For Going,' and I knew right at that instant that I had heard a quality song, and the guitar was then passed to Joni and she gave us a version of what she then called 'Clouds,' which later became 'Both Sides Now'... and I said there's another quality song... I had, made a deal in New York, and Chuck and Joni were searching and looking for some kind of a way to get these songs onto record, and Chuck was very supportive of Joni's material too, but the, unfortunately, the cookie didn't crumble somewhere along the line, if I may be so crude. Joni was out on her own, back about 1967... from that point on, I can tell you a couple real good memories, the art museum was one of 'em, the artistic climate where she was... used to take us to have brunch at this art museum in Detroit, an experience which I will never forget, I remember being over there one time with Richie Havens when you and Chuck were out of town playing over at Omaha [Does anybody out there know if Joni ever played in Omaha, or did I hear wrong?] and you had loaned me the apartment for four days -- do you remember that? -- I was playing The Living End, and back in those days you know it was like Beatles, Beatles, Beatles."
"Joni and I were survivors of a dying era... tellin' ya something, it was a time when the folk revival took place, starting around 1960, and when the Beatles came out it cooled out considerably right then... we'd always have the Beatles in our faces constantly, there would be a Beatles album. You'd work for another year, you'd have an album all ready to go and there would be another Beatles album. We were label mates at Warner Bros. Reprise and would compare notes, we'd meet from time to time when Joni came to town..."
Lightfoot went on to say that he thought "Tom Rush's early covers of Joni's songs were fantastic, as were Dave Van Ronk's and Buffy St. Marie's, and several others, people used to come through town and play at the Chess Mate and after that she went to New York and then she went to LA and I didn't see her till Rolling Thunder in 1975 and we got to hang out a bit more then, and I don't think I've seen her since 1976 and I'm real happy to see her tonight."
As the audience laughs and applauds, he exits the stage.
Joni's first five album covers are shown on the overhead screens while the focus shifts to "the unmistakable, inimitable Mitchell style. She actually found sound that had never been heard before." These comments serve as an apt introduction for a recorded visit from Joni's longtime guitar tech, photographer, music transcriber and friend Joel Bernstein, Anne calling him "the person in all the world who best understands her chords of inquiry and tunings." She also mentions that "he's captured some of the most thrilling and evocative images of Joni that have been taken over the years." A montage of photos taken mostly during the 1970s, including one of Joel, are shown on the screens as he speaks to the crowd in what he calls his "disembodied voice:"
A discussion of the mechanics behind the music is especially appropriate when Joni is the subject. Many of her biggest fans are musicians, and even those who aren't musicians are often interested in how she gives her music its distinctive sound and character. Excepting Joni herself, Joel is the undisputed authority in this department.
"Ever been to a party where someone picks up a guitar and tries to play one of Joni's songs?" Joel asks, prompting a knowing combination of laughter and groaning from the audience. "Chances are good what you heard didn't sound the way you remember Joni playing it. Here's why." He offers up a short Tunings 101 music lesson, plucking string by string on an unfretted guitar that is tuned to the familiar standard tuning used for most classical, jazz, rock or folk music. He breaks the chords apart, playing them string by string as he talks:
"A guitar student starts out learning how to place the fingers of his or her left hand on the fretboard, in shapes that make familiar sounding chords, like C (ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding), or A Minor (ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding). Later, guitarists learned that by tuning the strings to the chord itself, like E for example, and by using a whole different set of finger positions, a very different set of chords can be produced. These are open tunings, and will be familiar to blues music lovers out there."
We hear "A Bird That Whistles" (Joni's brilliant arrangement of the blues standard "Corrina Corrina") in the background. Excerpts of other songs roam behind Joel's voice as he continues to explain the unique intricacies that make Joni's music the rare and beautiful entity that it is; the music helps to illustrate the importance of what he says.
"But when the young Joni Mitchell was first introduced to these open tunings," he says, "she coaxed some very different sounds from the guitar strings, like so." (Joni's "Marcie" starts to play in the background).
"And one day long ago, while retuning her guitar from one open tuning to another, she stopped someplace in between, and listened. 'ooh, delicious,' thought Joni, 'I think I'll stay here for a while and explore.' And so she did, coming up with both a new and original tuning that wasn't standard or open, and new and original chords to play in it."
("I Had A King" plays in the background.)
"This was the musical equivalent equivalent of Alice opening the little door, and glimpsing an entirely new world beyond. From that day to this, Joni's curiosity, sense of adventure and unique sense of what some composers call 'tone color' have resulted in her own very personal discovery and deep exploration of literally dozens of these new worlds, each new tuning requiring it's own new set of original chords. You don't need to know all of this to appreciate Joni's concerts and recordings, but her explorations of these exotic musical places form the basis for what is unquestionably one of the most important and original bodies of work ever in guitar composition and performance, without even going into her equal genius as a lyricist, singer, arranger, pool player, and salmon burger chef."
"Her unwillingness to be restricted to previous forms has led to her becoming not only the preeminent practitioner of these alternate tunings, but an inspiration for guitarists as diverse as Prince, Wendy and Lisa, Shawn Colvin, David Crosby and Michael Hedges."
Joni's familiar guitar figure from "Hejira" pulses in the background as Joel finishes, updating us on the upcoming release (hopefully next year) of his complete two volume set of transcriptions and lyrics to all of Joni's released works. "There will be a detailed map of where she's traveled musically over the years, and hopefully others will be inspired to explore these magnificent new worlds," he says. "But no one, even with the book, when it comes to playing Joni Mitchell songs, can do it like 'The Mitch' herself."
With that, the screens return to their standard display (Joni's signature), Joel's disembodied voice evaporates, and Anne announces a segment called "The Mitchell Effect." We're told that Joni has "probably been recorded by more artists than any other single composer, Mozart excepted. [Really?] But that said, it's unlikely even Wolfgang himself could lay claim to the results that we got in this random street survey. Ladies and gentlemen, and Joni too [yes, that's what she said], a sample of 'The Mitchell Effect.'"
"The Mitchell Effect" question: "What do you think of when you think of Joni Mitchell?"
A very funny video sequence of people on the street follows. They answer the question by singing their personal versions of Joni's songs, with widely varying skills ranging from not that bad to completely tone deaf. There's a lot of "umm, da-dah, dah, da-dah, 'till it's gone" renditions of "Big Yellow Taxi," in addition to a few other well known songs. The guy who bravely attempts the high note in "River" ("I would teach my feet to flyyyy...") gets a big laugh for his efforts; I'm sure he's not the only person who has had some trouble with that note! I'm surprised by one person who sings "Cool Water."
Enjoyable as "The Mitchell Effect" is, by the time it's over the audience is ready to hear somebody who can actually carry a tune and sing a credible version of Joni's music and Rebecca obliges with "Blue," her first performance of the evening. Her affection for the song and for Joni comes through loud and clear -- the audience is loving it.
Joni's friends, actress Angelica Houston and dancer Charles Valentino, appear on the overhead screens. Their easy familiarity with Joni speaks volumes as they relate their experience of her creative soul; the joy that exists in her relationships with close friends is palpable.
Angelica: "...being privileged to experience her work, not only as a musician, but as an artist, and in an everyday sense, the sense in which she's almost Homeric as a storyteller, or when Joni drops in on a room and pulls out her guitar, or just her observations about life, it's one of those people that makes you happy to be alive, 'cause you feel like she's always taking a big bite out of life -- she's thrilled with certain situations, you know? She eats it like food."
Valentino: "Life has a lot of magic that's happening, and sometimes we don't get to see it because we're distracted, but Joni has a knack of even testing it sometimes, testing her intuition, going out, looking for life, you know? I'm not gonna tell you her stories, but she has wonderful, magical stories."
Angelica: "You know Joni's always, running off -- with, you know, gangs who live under bridges (laughs)... these sort of sagas unfold -- she's an extraordinary artist. Because there's always the element of the angels, and I think in order to be a really true artist, first of all you have to be incredibly disciplined and you have to have the dedication to be disciplined and the inspiration to be disciplined, but having been disciplined, having, being in a way already a vessel, I think that's so much of the magic that Valentino is describing, being completely ready so that when the inspiration or when the angel comes, you can give voice to it. And that's always to me been an intrinsic part of Joni. You don't the feeling that she's necessarily the doer, you get a much, much higher, if you will, almost religious feeling, there's something channeled coming through her."
Valentino nods agreement and concludes the segment: "We love you Joni, we love your heart, we love your spirit, we love your laughter, and since you're not here today, what we're going to do is we're going to have a dance. And we'll think about you as we're twirling! We love you Joni -- you deserve this, baby! We'll see you soon! Bye..."
I'm glad Joni has been so lucky in friendship. Val's sincerity, exuberance and joie de vive are so contagious that I want to get up and dance right there on the spot.
One of the things I love most about Joni's music is the vividness of the characters in her songs; tangible, evocative, memorable. I'm glad when Brent notes this. He starts by listing a few of them: "Michael, Willie, Richard, Carey, beautiful beautiful Marcie, Cherokee Louise, Ron or Chickie or Lead Foot Melvin..." images of the inhabitants of Joni's songs pop into my head as he speaks. Where's Nathan La Franeer, I wonder? I guess he can't list everybody -- we'd be here all night!
"With every one of these people Joni Mitchell seems to have reintroduced us to some part of ourselves," Brent continues. "In the brevity of one song, she paints an entire life like that. And for over four decades, her audience has had the remarkable experience of humming along with her personal odyssey. She sees that which is plain for all of us to see, but it·s that rare gift of interpretation, as her grade four report card said, that sets her apart. And whether it is a one man band by the quick lunch stand, the hot winds and hungry cries of Ethiopia, or a license plate that spells out JUST ICE -- just... ice -- for Joni, every thing has meaning. Every thing deserves a closer look."
Brent and Rebecca sing the beginning of "Shadows and Light," watching each other closely as they tackle a harmony. Then the band takes over: the cello segues into Amelia and back into "Shadows and Light" again, finishing with one last line from "Amelia."
"Duke Ellington," Anne tells us, "said 'no boxes.' Miles Davis said 'I have to change -- it's like a curse.' 'Staying the same,' says Joni, 'is just boring.'" The story moves into the mid-late 70s and the overhead screens document an explosion of astonishing creativity: The covers of Joni's landmark albums "The Hissing of Summer Lawns," "Hejira," "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" and "Mingus" appear along with concert video from her "Shadows and Light" tour. Other paintings and photos from the 70s and beyond flash by; even though I've seen most of what's being shown, I'm still amazed and excited by the breadth, quality and prodigiousness of her work. "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" plays over the sound system as Anne tells us about Joni's drive to chart her own course, and of her innovative incorporation of world music instruments, "frustrating any attempt to categorize her, refusing to be dictated to by the marketplace, instead being guided by her own interests, passions and sensibilities, ever true to herself. It·s been said that an artist changes course at their professional peril, but as Joni once remarked, ·nobody insisted Picasso stay in his ·Blue Period· forever.· And Joni has always been her own guide. If a passion was yet to be explored, it was a road meant to be traveled. So it was, her love of jazz. Considered by many to be her most daring work, Joni shocked fans and radio stations alike with ·Mingus.· But when Charles Mingus asked her to work with him on what was to be his final project, it was not to be another remarkable revelation of a breathtaking scope of gifts, but a testament to how highly regarded she was and is by other musicians. And to those who really knew her, her passion for jazz, like her passion for art, had been born long ago in that young girl from Saskatchewan. This wasn't a case of a new Joni, just another side.·
It's a perfect time for a video visit from jazz legend Herbie Hancock.
Herbie: "People like Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez, or even Jimi Hendrix, I didn't pay that much attention to 'em until later, when I noticed that Miles Davis, who was my employer, he was paying attention to them -- Miles listens to all kinds of stuff, what's wrong with me? Years later, I got a call one day from Jaco Pastorius, who was doing a record with Joni and Peter Erskine on drums, and Wayne Shorter on saxophone, and it was a record that was dedicated to Charlie Mingus, and originally I wasn't scheduled to be on the record to my knowledge. I got this call: 'We're in the studio recording, man, why don't you come over? This is something you're gonna dig.' So when I knew that it was Wayne and Jaco... and Joni was someone I didn't know that much about her, except her reputation... I went to the studio, and found my way into the music, and from that point on Joni and I became friends. Her sensitivity to any source of inspiration, she's able to pick up on things quicker, they don't just get by her... she's extremely bright. And another thing I noticed about her -- her normal mode of conversation is so [he pauses looking for the right word] graphic and full of symbolism, just like her poetry; she speaks poetically. Joni Mitchell is pretty amazing that way. And Wayne Shorter who is also on that record, also speaks in a... I guess you could say it's his brand of poetry, he has a way of relating to people on a metaphoric level. To hear Wayne and Joni talking is like poetry itself. It's amazing -- you've got to have your wits about you!"
The screens switch to an interview with Wayne Shorter:
Wayne: "What drew my attention to Joni Mitchell some years ago was the fact that she seemed like another one of us who was willing to take chances, she seemed like a person who was ready to take a leap into the unknown, so to speak, and when she actually did it, that was a confirmation to me that she was one of the few, I said like one of us, that would be willing to put her career on the line. Thinking that Joni would acquiesce to the demands of so-called devoted fans was a misnomer, in fact she plowed ahead and stepped on the gas. The boundary lines that were demarcated, over a period of 75 years in the music industry -- you don't cross this line, you don't cross that line, this was something you didn't do, but some of us, I say a few of us again, including Joni herself who was considered to be on the other side of the fence, the pop side, proceeded to, I'd say, break the sound barrier... this is not about record sales, and all that. Herbie Hancock and I -- we look for people who are part of the quote unquote, academy. It sounds kind of Star Trek-ish!"
Herbie again: "Joni, I will work with you, anytime, day or night, all you gotta do [he puts his hand up to his ear] is call me! And I'm there. I love your work, I love you. I love you as a human being, 'cause that's the foundation of your work."
Rebecca's performance of "Two Grey Rooms" follows, and is a high point of the evening. The interpretation serves as a wonderful vehicle for Rebecca's talents, as well as a moving tribute to Joni. Many in the audience stand as she finishes and receives a huge hand from everyone (including Joni, who is sitting in the front row) for the heartfelt performance.
Once the audience has settled down, Anne offers a tongue-in-cheek consideration of the true measure of fame: "Joni Mitchell has been the answer to 42-across in the New York Times crossword puzzle!" She cites a few more references to Joni, such as the time on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where the guy didn't know the answer. "So he didn't deserve to win," Anne concludes. We're shown a montage of television and movie clips that include references to Joni; we see bits of You've Got Mail, ER, and Ally McBeal. I can't say I was expecting to see Calista Flockhart onscreen at a Joni Mitchell tribute, but hey, life is full of surprises.
Brent contemplatively sings a few verses of "Sunny Sunday" as the program draws to a close; the final performance is Anne's arresting reading of the lyrics to "The Magdalene Laundries." The room is eerily quiet during Anne's performance. The naked words stand alone in stark relief against the silence of the room, devoid of the music that usually soothes the numbing despair of the lyrics while simultaneously reinforcing them.
Brent has the last word. "...and she spent her life inquiring, and searching, planting a poetic flag on the landscapes of the human soul, 'I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, looking for something, what can it be?' She's taken us to the very edge of ourselves, with wit and humor... and while exploring the vast landscape of this thing called the human condition, through color and light, words and music, Joni Mitchell reveals not only her soul -- she leads us collectively to the discovery of our own."
"Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Joni Mitchell."
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