The lyrics are astonishing, the mix of beautiful imagery - the icicles and the Northern Lights and the spring crocuses - and brutal honesty about an incredibly sensitive topic. It’s a song about the daughter Joni gave up for adoption in the mid-‘60s, an incredibly brave subject for anyone to write about, but particularly a woman 50 years ago. “Little Green” perfectly sums up “Blue’s” appeal in that it’s immediately appealing, it’s got a beautiful, plaintive melody, it’s musically straightforward, she’s still working very much in that folk-y singer-songwriter style - but then you peel back the surface and it has this extraordinary emotional depth. (Photograph by Phillip Faraone / Getty Images for iHeartMedia photo illustration by An Amlotte / Los Angeles Times)
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That I can feel warmed by my own company, and can also see that I’m all of these things that I usually externalize and put on another person. And I feel that, especially because I’ve gone through different relationships and I felt very big heartbreak in this last year.Īt this point in my life, as a 29-year-old woman - maybe not so far from when Joni was making this record in her own life - what I’m really trying to do is embrace myself and feel like I am the warmest chord. “He’s a singer in the park / He’s a walker in the rain / He’s a dancer in the dark.” What a beautiful connection to experience with someone, that there’s this person who keeps her blues away, who, when he’s gone, everything feels empty. Joni describes this person as being the warmest chord she’s ever heard in this very romantic way. You have something so strong that it exists on its own there’s a natural desire for being true and together, and maybe marriage has nothing to do with that. On “My Old Man,” Joni describes the kind of love where you cast aside the need for marriage, understanding that a certificate is just a piece of paper - a system in a structure that’s totally aside from the feeling of real love. Listen to her laugh at the end of “Big Yellow Taxi.” Like that.Īdrianne Lenker (Big Thief), “ My Old Man” “All I Want” allows itself to be light and loving, as sunny a sentiment as we are apt to hear from her. Still, I hear a personal message in several of them, her gift to me: the lucky one. I believe that some of those songs were written with me in mind although, as a songwriter, I know how songs can have their own bent truth. To his credit, Henry Lewy had us keep it simple.
#I am da one singer free#
Playing along with her spare dulcimer accompaniment, I was free to substitute whatever chords I felt, which was great but of course, it was her voice and the songs themselves that make “Blue” so singular.
#I am da one singer portable#
Maybe that’s why so many were composed on the three-string dulcimer: a nice, portable axe. I played on “All I Want,” “Carey,” “California” and “A Case of You.” She had written most of those songs in the previous year or so while traveling.
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There was never anyone else there, just Joni, Henry and me. My time with her included the recording of her “Blue” album and I remember the sessions at A&M Studios with Henry Lewy behind the glass.
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Joni and I had our year together, back when a year lasted three times longer than it does today. Chun / Los Angeles Times photo illustration by An Amlotte / Los Angeles Times)