Spirit in Action
Number 1 in America - Song/Stories to Change Hearts
David Massengill paints a griping and moving picture of the USA through his music - of race, immigrants, adoption, and much more. Instead of speechifying about politics, David brings change by involving listeners in real stories that move our hearts, all the more powerful because of his Tennessee vernacular and accent.
- Broadcast on:
- 28 Apr 2013
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action we have the privilege of welcoming singer, songwriter, and storyteller David Massengill. David paints a gripping and moving picture of the USA through his music, of race and racism, of immigrants, adoption, and much more. Instead of speechifying about politics, David brings change by involving his listeners in real stories that move our hearts, all the more powerful, because of his Tennessee vernacular and accent. David Massengill joins us today by phone from his home in New York City. David, it's great to have you here today for Spirit in Action. It's good to be back. I, of course, know you as a musician. I know you as a person who's passionate about music, and you write all kinds of songs. I'm quite impressed by the variety of songs that you write. But the reason I focused on you for Spirit in Action was because of your song #1 in America. I featured it before on my programs. It's so thematic and so applicable. It's just the way that real life works that I knew I had to have you on for my Spirit in Action program. Tell me about that song. Well, I have to give a nod to Woody Guthrie and Rob Dillon and others who wrote, if not message songs, a sort of story song that included certain messages. I was very attracted to that when I was a kid and later on I loved mountain music, ballads. I wrote that about 1985 or '86. I had seen it in a newspaper in New York City that they mentioned the hometown that the clan was going to march there. It shook me up because I didn't remember people using even racial slurs when I was a kid. And either my parents or my friends or my friends used racial slurs, but I'm sure they're out there. And yet Bristol, like a lot of Southern towns, they were late to integrate. So I guess it was '65 or so, '66, when they integrated fully Bristol schools. It was Bristol Tennessee and Bristol Virginia. So Virginia integrated one year earlier than us. So I grew up with black and white schools and then all of a sudden we were going to do it gradually. All of a sudden they decided we better do it all at once. And there's positive and there's negative. When I remember everybody was talking about how difficult it was going to be and what's going to happen at a dance and what's going to happen is from there. But also I remember the football coach, I'd just gone out for football and coach Keller had gone to the rotary club. And I asked him what they asked the football coach and he said, "Well, mostly we wanted to know if the black players were going to help us beat Kingsport this year." And I kind of laughed and I thought to myself. I guess it's not going to be as hard to integrate as they say it is. And as a kid I always wondered why it took so long. The sort of evolution of you thinking about that sort of thing. And in my lifetime I'm shocked that we have come so far in accepting certain things. In a racial marriage and now gay and lesbian marriage, it's like in my lifetime I'd have thought that the majority opinion would take longer since it was such a hard slug toward this. So when I heard the Klan was going to march, I went back to all these memories of when we had separate schools and how it was going to happen. And everybody was worried when the freedom riders were going to come through and what's going to happen then and that mayor calling up my dad. And I remember going to a little store later on, much later my sister was coming in for Christmas. And I remember watching a white family, poor white family picking out a toy for Christmas. And I remember the father and mother going, "Just one toy. We'll just want our fells to sorry for them." I thought, "Gosh, the kids are just going to get one toy." And a little girl, a little white girl picked out a doll and happened to be a black doll. Now when I was a kid we didn't have black dolls in the stores, but they do now. And this little white girl, three or four years old, just picked out a doll and happened to be black. And I followed them along. I wondered if the mother and father were going to let her keep it. I just had to see. And when they noticed that she had a black doll, all the mother did was go, "So she noticed it." And so she goes, "Are you sure you want that doll?" And a little girl said, "Yes." And the mother said, "All right then." And it made me feel like, "Gosh, we've come a long way." So I had a lot to work with, a lot of memories. And I wanted to show some of the positive and some of the negative and be as honest as I could. And so it took me about a year to get it right. But probably the thing that made me compelled me to finish it, Frankie Richmond, who was our maid, and it was black, and I was driving her home. And right down the state street, which was the line of Bristol and Virginia, this was Tennessee, Virginia. And I asked her about the Klan march, and I was thinking, "Maybe I won't finish that song. It's too hard." And I asked her what happened, and she said, "Well, the Tennessee side wouldn't give them a marching permit, but Virginia side did." So they had to march on the one side of the street. And she said, "No, I'm not sure this happened this way." But she said, "The Tennessee sheriff was standing right at the line and saying, "You ain't coming over here. You ain't coming over here." And I thought to myself, "I am going to finish that song for Frankie Richmond." So I ended up persevering. First place I played it was the Kennedy Center, and a lot of Bristol people came up. I'm not sure they were happy to hear that song. Some of them probably thought that I was putting down Bristol, but I was just showing the way. You kind of ease in to change in a big way, in a small way. In 1963, in my hometown Bristol, Tennessee, sitting on my mother's knee, watching him as an ending on TV. It was for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, little girl is tugging at his sleeve, saying, "Can I have a dog my own color, please?" He said, "Honey, you can make the leaves." Just then came a call on a telephone. It was the mayor asked if my daddy was home. This was for his ears alone. Mom and me listened on the second floor. The mayor said, "The freedom rides are on their way. They'll be here by Christmas day. Our laws they found to disobey." 'Cause our school's as white as the Milky Way. Well now we're really in a fix. Can't let 'em show us our black countries. But once we let the races meet us, it's goodbye Jim Crow politics. First it's 40 acres and a mule. Then they wanna swim and our swim and poop. Pretty soon they'll be wanting to go to school. Where we would talk the golden rule. Imagine them telling us how to live. Imagine them telling us how to live. Win number one in America. Beat the drummer up the same. Oh, the common berry man. Oh, to be. Number one in America. ♪ Vax handles versus a right to boat. Oh, I tear it as old as she wrote. Back of the bus, don't rock the boat. Separate but equal by the throat. That was 20 or years ago. With a change in the status quo. The freedom land is lying low. It shackled down on rotten wood. Better black skin man still gets the snub. He applies to the country club. But he's still his hybrid to trim the shrubs. Get down on the floor and scrub. And there's a business man held on his yacht. He's a rain of sunshine, faith, yeah. And all this talk about boycotts. He says it's all a common plot to beat. Number one in America. Number one in America. Beat the drummer up the same. Oh, the common berry man. Dynamite in America's church. Fourteen eight girls lost in the church. Firehoses and the billy clubs. All these dogs and the racist thugs. And I'm the writers and the dingy and mob. Long men say they're only two women. Two stay. Number one in America. The club's class still around with the permit to march in my hometown. But only on Virginia's ground at Tennessee side. Turned 'em down. The sheriff stood there with his deputy license to play to keep the peace. He made us this guarantee. Like God, they'll not march into Tennessee. Network cameras with a triple T. We like to cry to food and cheer. But mostly we stood there with fear to the club's clan. Disappeared. In some fall of distant dawn when the black is president. Tonight upon will they burn crosses on the White House along. Then talk of all those days by dawn. Imagine them telling us how to live. Imagine they're telling us how to live. When number one in America, number one in America. We drum for us and overcome in Birmingham. Oh, to me. Number one in America. Last Christmas Eve at the Kmart store. A white family there. They was dirt poor. Father said kids pick one toy no more. Even though we can hear the bold. I'll watch your son choose a basketball. Your oldest girl, the creosol show. The little his girl chose a black scandal. And she held it to her chest in all. I'll watch to see how they'd react. Since they were white and the door was black. But the mom and dad were mad. In fact, they just checked to see if the door was cracked. So may you make a reference game where black and white go ahead. Till they reach the freedom bank. Where the lion lies down in the bank. Oh, number one in America. Number one in America. We drum for us and overcome in Birmingham. Dynamite in a Baptist Church. Four teenage girls lost in the dirt. Our hoses and the billy clothes. All his dogs and their vases thugs. To back the clock. Little rock. Both was old on the auction. Block night riders. In the lynching mother. Long men say they're only doing lynching. To stay. Number one in America. Oh, oh, oh, oh. ♪♪ An incredible song by David Massengill. From his album Coming Up For Air. It's number one in America. There's so much about that song that I love. I feel like I go through waves of experience when I sit with that. And you've explained some of the background to it. You mentioned that your dad got a call from the mayor. What was that call about? It was about the freedom riders coming through. And what was happened? They did want to be shown up. So they said, well, they talked about the integration. They were going to do it the next year. And so in order not to be shown up, the mayor said, we're just going to do it now. So maybe they won't come if we already do it. And did they come? They didn't come. And so it worked. You're too good for them, I guess. Well, they didn't want to be shown up. You know, a lot of times people know they're wrong. And they'll do the right thing eventually, but it takes way, way longer than it should. Sometimes, you know, a prompt, a faint here, a faint there can do the trick as much as a big forceful thing. But people knew they were wrong. People knew they were wrong. It's just that their pride hurts. A lot of times people don't want to be proved wrong. They don't want to say they're wrong. So that's been a big thing. All my life, I've wondered why it takes so long for people to know they're doing wrong. And why does it take so long for them to just come around and say, I'm wrong. Let's make this right. But yet that is all around the world. I see this. In that particular instance, I saw it working. And in this way, they salvaged their pride. They're not going to show us up, they said. We're going to do it before they get here. It still makes the chuckle. When you mention about people's pride and how they get stuck in a position, I've seen that so repeatedly. There's a technique that we use as Quakers. I happen to be Quaker. It's called queries. Instead of saying, here's what you should do. Here's what you should believe. Queries are questions that we sit with. And so questions about something. So instead of having someone coming up to you say, you shouldn't be bad, sinful in this direction. Just ask you how you do stuff. And it produces a whole different willingness to look at things. It's like you said the Mary. It's like not going to show me up. I'm going to step forward. I'm going to own what's mine. I'm going to look at it clearly. I think it does work that way. You said that the folks from Bristol, some of them, you weren't so sure that they were real happy about this. As I see it, this is a ringing endorsement of Bristol. You know, I mean, with the March and all that, the Ku Klux Klan, it's not going to march on your side. Do you feel like you were raised with racist attitudes? I mean, you evidently had an African-American maid. Well, that's a very interesting thing. Like I said, my mother and father did not use racial slurs, and neither did their friends or my friends. But the black population was maybe five to seven percent. It wasn't a big percent. And yet they had, you know, Slater was the Tennessee side, and Douglas was the Virginia side. And I remember some of my friends and I went, the last Slater Douglas football game. We went to. We were the only white kids in the whole stadium watching this game, but we thought it was history. We were curious. We wanted to see it. And I remember they had a reunion a few years back, and I happened to be in town giving a show, and I was in the elevator with a bunch of these people, and I couldn't help but there was a silence in the elevator. I said, you know, a couple of my friends and I were at that last Slater Douglas game. We went because we thought it was history, and they all kind of nodded. And I said, do you remember that long 70-yard run, and everybody just like smiled and said, oh yeah, that was old Joe Hendrix. And so we had this real kind of connection for about, you know, 30 seconds in an elevator. But I just appreciated. We were in the middle of history. I don't know why it took it. It's a kid. I couldn't understand why it took so long after the Civil War to come around to do the right thing, but it did. So when we look around the world, why don't they do this? And like we did, and yet when we look at our slow evolution, right now things are happening in a way that I didn't make possible in my lifetime. And like my dad, when my dad knew that I was considering interracial dating and that sort of thing in college, he warned me against it, but he said it wasn't wrong, you know. He said it's just that if you do that and you marry, you're going to have a hard life. Now I appreciated his honesty in that. And also I remember there was a fellow that moved to Bristol that has told racial jokes and used racial language and the race he jokes to. And my brother and I were a little bit bothered by that, and we went to my dad and asked him about it. And my dad said a gentleman doesn't use that word. My dad was what they call a good Republican. He wasn't a racist. He was a fair man, and I sure do appreciate that. Well, historically, there's a whole stretch of decades that Democratic Party supported the racial oppression. Absolutely. And the Republicans were on the other side. They were pulled for it. In the 1950s, the Republican Party was trying to get racial reform going on the national level as well as locally. The name of Jackie Robinson was a Republican, and my dad used to comment about that all the time. I remember when I went to summer camp, a lot of whole generation of black kids had to be like the first kid. They were a lot of Jackie Robinson type. I was in Kansas quality down in North Carolina. The first year they had a black kid. There was one black kid. And everybody was fine with it except for like a couple of guys. I think they were from South Carolina. No onus to South Carolina just happened to be these guys were like racists. They were my age except they were bigger and they were bullies. And they would like talk about this guy. And they would use racial slurs. And none of the counselors would stand up to him. And I didn't stand to him. I was always been ashamed that I didn't turn to them and say to them. Like my dad had said, a gentleman doesn't use that word. If I had done that, they probably would have slapped me around. And to this day, I feel that I did not do what I should have done. Years later, I was a big admirer of Muhammad Ali and when he was in that fight with Foreman, I was at a bar, a bikers bar, and I was all excited about him. And I was going wrong. And when he won, I would have expected it. And I was going Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Ali, greatest man of the century. There was a guy at the bar. He was a biker. He looked at me and he said, "I'm going to throw you out that window." And I said, "Oh, please don't do that." And he stopped approaching me and I'm going, "Oh my gosh." And I kind of grabbed his arm so he can't throw me out. And he was kind of like trying to throw me out, but he wasn't doing it. And all of a sudden, I was holding on to his arms. All of a sudden, this big clunk goes on top of my head. And I'm thinking, "What's that?" And I'm holding his arms, what's he hitting me with? And then another clunk, and then it took me down a little bit. My knees buckled, and then a third clunk and I was about to pass out. And I said, "I'm just going to see what he's hitting me with." And I turned away and there was his buddy standing there with a blackjack in his hand. I went, "Oh my gosh." And the guy got all mad and told me to get out of the bar. And for some reason, I just wouldn't get out of the bar. I said, "No, you're hitting me for it." And the guy got off frustrated that wanted to throw me through the window and rushed out of the bar because I guess he felt the police wouldn't come. And the fellow that had hit me with the blackjack sort of put it back in his pocket and he genuinely said, "You know, my buddy lost $100 on that pint." And I thought he was my buddy so I thought I'd get help him out a little bit. And then he bought me a drink. It is amazing. Somebody told me, you know, when I told him that story and I told him the thing about camp, and he said, "That was you, that was you trying to make up for what you didn't do at summer camp when you didn't say my dad said, "The gentleman doesn't use that word." It's funny, I mean, as a kid, I remember I was probably politically conservative, but I went to where Martin Luther King said, "My kids don't get to go to amusement parks in Atlanta." And I remember thinking, "Gosh, that's not fair." Because as a kid, I related to that. And seeing the movie Spartacus was a big thing. You know, when I saw that, I thought, "Oh, there were white slaves too." And for the first time, I went, "Gosh, you know, slavery is worse than I thought it was." Because as a Southern boy, you know, you get told, like they just said at the IPAC thing, somebody was talking, "Gosh, they got three square meals a day. It wasn't so bad." Most, you know, slave owners were kind to their slaves. You hear that growing up, you hear that sort of thing. So when I saw that movie, I was very moved, especially when Kurt Douglas's Spartacus was beaten in a gladiatorial thing by what he strode, I believe the actor's name was, but he was beaten and was about to be killed when the black gladiator, instead of like killing him, tries to attack the Roman emperor who had just done a thumbstand. I was really taking with that moment and that moment probably changed my life in a way, also at the end, when everybody stands up and says, "There's Spartacus, that changed my life in a way. It changed my life politically in the way I thought about what you should do with my name Joe. It was standing up for your friends." That saying that seeing that at Spartacus probably prompted that line, "My name Joe." Well, tell folks what "My name Joe" is about because, again, this is a song I learned from Charlie King. By the way, I did a Charlie King song about that Dylan saying, "I did that at a Dylan contest." And I got second prize. So I worked at a restaurant for nine and a half years and all the cooks were from Thailand and the people were from different places, the islands and from Mexico and so forth. And I just sort of, I liked being in the kitchen so I was a dishwasher. So one day somebody got angry with Joe the main cook from Thailand who didn't have a full grasp of English and they had trouble communicating. And there was a picture of Joe on the next of the time clock and they put an "X" across his face, one of the way he's got mad at him. And according to the Thai Buddhist tradition, that's a very bad karma, very bad. So Joe just exploded and took his hatchet and basically, you know, the time clock got shot, killed, and this picture of the whole bulletin board and everything, and the glass has got broken. It was quite, quite a scene. Just sort of took that story and made a, so the kitchen crew was coming to his aid and so they hustled him away and protected. So my main, if I have one theme or one message, it's stand up for your friends. And so that's my name Joe, stand up for your friends. My friend, they've been rock recorded, I think nine people or so have recorded it. Joe was through another tantrum, he could not be understood. He cries like baby Samson, his English is not good. Whoa, his English is not good. Joe was boss of the kitchen, but on the outside he knows the low man only told him, is wearing giveaway clothes, wearing giveaway gifts. Joe he finds the good fight, he wears a white uniform. The waiters are artists and unicorns. Oh, chasing unicorns. Joe works fourteen hours. After ten he starts to bloom, he gets very sick. He seems the world abused. Oh, he seems the world abused. My name Joe, my name Joe. There is a king in Thailand, and he plays the jazz drums. He has a fine and healthy son. Oh, no, I'm not the one, my name Joe. From the wall by the time clock, Joe is beaming from a photograph. Someone drew across his face, the waiters began to laugh. Oh, he began to laugh. Well, Joe picked up a hatchet, and he tend to rise the wall. But he got through with his downfly, wasn't punching anymore. The time clock wasn't punching anymore. The waiters ran to cover. The matriety began to guess. The drunkard in the corner said his litties was not a risk. Oh, his litties was not a risk. Then they only called immigration. He said his someone you should know. He's an alien, and a vegan name is Joe. Oh, I know his name is Joe. My name Joe, my name Joe. There is a king in Thailand, and he plays the jazz drums. He has a fine and healthy song. Oh, no, I'm not the one, my name Joe. King the man from immigration, he said I got a job to do. Easy questions, easy answers just for me to the kitchen crew. Born me to the kitchen crew. He asked Leroy from Harlem. He asked Cisco from Mexico. He asked the white trash from Tennessee. They all said, my name Joe, my name Joe, my name Joe, my name Joe. The immigration man is buttered. The kitchen crew Leroy. And while they were hard, you and Joe slipped at the back door. Joe slipped at the back door. [Music] Down the beach Joe tries to listen to the heartbeat of a whale. How it echoes his old heartbeat, and the distance he has saved. Oh, the distance he has saved. My name Joe, my name Joe. There is a king in Thailand, and he plays the jazz drums. He has to find and help his son. Oh, no, I'm not the one, my name Joe. My name Joe, my name Joe. We're fortunate today to have with us David Masengill. His website is davidmasengill.com. He's my spirit and action guest. For the ways that he has of telling stories that lead us to treat each other better, to make this a better world. That song was my name Joe. It's a touching story, so what I get of it is half of it's true and half of it's imagined. That's right. And the thing was that my name Joe, when this happened, Joe got upset. He kept saying my name Joe, as though that was the one thing he could communicate to people that would bring his honor back in a white my name Joe. You don't mess me over my name Joe. Well, honor. Being a gentleman, these are things that you grew up with that are important to you. I think you described yourself as a conservative early on. Here on the folk music circuit, it's kind of hard to be a conservative, isn't it? Do you know any really conservative folk musicians? A few, but most of them on social issues aren't conservative, but I made the turn. I became a Democrat. I went from junior high school. I did a go water speech and I wanted to debate actually. So I went from there, you know, and then I just started to make the turn. And the Vietnam was the thing that turned me and probably the race too. I just saw how unfair and I started to see that a lot of things were dishonorable that my country had done around the world and also our evolution as a nation was not the Walt Disney style presentation that I had been toward, but Vietnam especially. And I thought George McGovern was in the same service as my dad. In 1972, I was reading Hunter Tompton, Rolling Stone, and he was talking about George McGovern as a candidate and how good he was. And I decided that I would take a year off school and go work for him. And that's what I did. And I got to stay in contact with him a lot over the years. He just passed away this past year. I dedicated. We will be together. My latest, you know, most songs, dedicated at the Hamilton story, you know, the letter I wrote. He wrote me back. And then he took a picture with me. He would do these book tours, but he was in the same service as my dad. He was a pilot, a bomber pilot in World War II. And so he did like 37 missions. I think they stopped after 36 or 37 missions, and they called themselves officially lucky bastards. My dad was also in the Army Air Corps. They didn't have an Air Force at the time. They called it the Army Air Corps. My dad was a navigator. So my dad is a Republican. I remember telling him I wanted to take a year off school, and I wanted to work for George McGovern. My dad wasn't crazy about that. And I told my dad that they were in the same service together. And my dad said, "Well, okay." So again, your pride, your honor, is once you touch on that, once you let people find a common thing, they come around. Sometimes it's a very small thing that will bring people around sometimes. And that did with my dad. As a matter of fact, I ran the McGovern campaign in Sandusky, Ohio. I did a concert to raise money. We'd had a rock thing because they were doing that with Pew Paul Marion, Simon and Garfunkel. And I thought, "I'll do the same thing on a local level." So I did all these things. And canvas went out to California. And I was like the lone white guy in Black neighborhoods. Canvas seemed for George McGovern. I was a little apprehensive. But as soon as they found out, I was doing it for George McGovern. Everybody was going cool. Well, cool was say I'd go on, you know. But I was big on, you know, I wanted to end the war. And I thought that was the honorable thing to do. And George McGovern was the very best candidate we've ever had. As far as I'm concerned, I still had my McGovern buttons. The one with the peace sign is my peace day resistance. And I wear that every once in a while. He's the most decent candidate they've ever had for president. I'm really proud that I participated. And it brought me around to a way of thinking, you know, thinking that we're in this together and is not an evolutionary chopping block. We can be like the Indian tribes. We can help everybody. I want to remind our listeners that you're tuned in to Spirit in Action. This is Northern Spirit Radio Production on the web at northernspiritradio.org. And on that site, you can find coming up on eight years of programs we've been doing Spirit in Action and Song of the Soul. You can find links to our guests, like to David Massengill. And his website is davidmassengill.com. You can just follow the link from northernspiritradio.org. You also find a place to leave donations. They are very much appreciated in helping us get these programs out. We also encourage you to make donations to your community radio station. They're doing a valuable service, a great alternative to the mainstream media. So do make a donation, help support your local community radio station. Again, we're visiting with David Massengill because he's got music that helps transform us. We were talking earlier, David, about how, if you confront people with something you don't necessarily get much change, you get resistance. I suspect that your technique is to tell them a story. And, you know, when they sit in that seat through the story, changes can come. Yeah. You know, I think the best illustration of that very thing is the novel by Mark Twain, The Ventures of Huckleberry Finn. That novel probably pulled more people toward racial justice than many others that were more forceful. My dad had never read that. I was reading him Matt Hintop's essay on how people on the left and people on the right did not like that book for various reasons. He was explaining why he thought it was a great book. I was reading that essay to my dad when I was helping him in this last year. Now, that halfway through the essay, dad said, "Well, let's just read the book." So, I stopped reading the essay, and I decided to read him, The Ventures of Huckleberry Finn. And, of course, it has the racial slurs there, but you cannot read that book without keeping those slurs just to understand and to get it. So, I read it to him, and every day at lunch, you know, I would read him for an hour, and we'd read that, and dad would say to me, "What's old Jim up to today?" In rereading it, I read it in school twice and once in college and once in high school. And I don't think a lot of curriculums are afraid to use it today. But, for me, it shows people as human beings, a Huck saying he knew it was wrong, but he had to help Jim escape. It's just so ironic, and it's so human, and it's just you make you feel, and Jim is the one you feel the most to. You just feel so good for Jim. He's such a good person in this. It comes through so honestly. It's a beautiful, beautiful book. And, like Matt Hintoff is essay, so well, it illustrates people on the left have issues with it, people on the right have issues with it. And so, when that's the case, something's usually pretty good. Well, tell us another story. We need another David Massingale story. Well, let's go on to something that's not quite obviously political, which is on the road to Fairfax County. That is a ballad style song. I remember coming up with a melody thinking, "Boy, that sounds like a traditional song." And I thought of the oldest story, which was maybe an outlaw story. And I found myself thinking maybe it's an escape from a prison, or this and that and this, some sort of macho thing. And then all of a sudden I said, "What's the oldest story there is?" Once I loved an outlaw, I wrote that line and I went, "Huh, he came and stole my heart." And I thought, "Oh, he's an outlaw. He's stealing. Oh, that's good." And then I went, "Oh, how I count the, what, years, days, hours since we were torn apart?" And it seems so easy. It came to easy. I had the whole beat. That was the first verse. And I looked at it and I said, "Oh, I'm a woman." I remember thinking to myself, "Oh, of course, a writer." "Rights meant for many voices." So now I'm going to write from the voice of a woman who's looking back. Now that was about five o'clock in the morning and I needed to get to bed. I thought, "I'll write the rest of the song and wake up." And my gosh, it did. A week later I had it won because Jack Hardy wanted me to work on it more. And I messed up everything I did except for one extra verse. So I thank Jack for that, for complaining. I thought it was, you know, important that I could take on this voice of a woman looking back on her life. But it is, from the woman's point of view, this was a great and traumatic moment in her life. So, you know, it was at the height of when you loved someone and the possibilities of your life together. At the very height of it, it was snatched away by this tragic ending for this album. So how does it make the world better? The world is not warm and fuzzy all the time. You have to deal with tragedies. You have to come back from what might have been. And when I do a message song, I'm not even really trying to do a message song. I'm telling the story. So this tells the story of what could have been. And I think showing the possibilities of paradise of euphoria is right there. Oh, once I loved and I would love, he came and stole my heart. Oh, how I count the hours since we were torn apart on the road to Fairfax County. I spied highway man. He wanted all my money, my heart, be like a giraffe. I gave him all my money. And sweet, he smiled at me. His beauty, I took pity beneath the black oak tree. We kissed but for an hour, the sun was moonlit war. The clouds were as the flowers that bloomed but for a mooring. He gave back all my money. I mowed most gallantly. He promised for to meet me that night beneath the tree. We'd flee to some far island and there we would be wed. And freely we would live there with no grace upon his hair. That night I went to meet here with my inheritance. He kissed me beneath the half moon and joy for the dance. Oh, in love, betrays all secrets. It whispers on the breeze. The sheriff, he did follow with all his deputies. Like how he's rushing to slaughter the fox who's lucky is wrong. And he stole a rent and cursed there. God damn you, every one. They seized him in a fury. And he did not mind playing. They hung him on the oak tree where he made love to me. Oh once I loved and outlawed. He came and stole my heart. Oh how I count the hours since we were torn apart. On the Road to Fairfax County by David Mess and Gil here today for Spirit in Action. He's sharing music that makes this world a better place. Obviously that song David I have to say is a tear jerk or a sad one you enter into the passions of this woman. I believe in sad stories. You can't just have happy endings to think that's not life. And so to put the sad stories out there shakes things up and makes people realize that the world, that's how it makes the world a better place. To know the sad stories when I wrote the song I knew the fella I knew it was going to be the fattest story there was. The fella was going to die in some way. Another sad story I have and I've had several people record this one as well. That one was recorded by Joan Baez and a few other people. The Voches were first and Dave Bromberg. We got time for one more how are you going to send us off? Well this is a song that just came to me. I used to go down to the hoops in Bristol. I'm here in New York City and I'd play the hoops. That's how I got my start and I would just go to the hoops and play every Monday and Tuesday and Thursday nights. I was walking home from one of those hoops I think it was at the dugout. I think it was the dugout and I was right there bleaker and the fella comes up to me and says four o'clock in the morning. And the fella comes up and says excuse me sir I am a foreigner. Where is this place you call Green Witch Village? I looked you know right there I said I pointed a stop. I said well it starts right here. Here it is. He says is it safe? I said yeah it's pretty safe. And he continues on and I started walking home. It was about a 20 minute walk to my place in the East Village. And all the way home I kept repeating his lines excuse me sir. I am a foreigner. Where is this place you call? What was America to the immigrants? There was a free lunch bar. That's of course not quite as many as maybe they thought. But there it was. And then I could see that I could go from one thing excuse me if I am a foreigner. Then I could be somebody else. It's the great American dream. One versus from a prostitute. One versus from a carpenter. Out of work carpenter. One is from an Indian. And Jack Hardy my great friend had the idea to do this as a group song. And have everybody sing a different verse. And so that seemed to really bring it out. Later on I did a little bootleg at Folk City's 25th anniversary show. And Tondie and Lillian now and Lucy Koplansky and myself and Joan Baez sang verses of this in front of 10,000 people. And I put that out not one of my bootlegs nobody complained. It's pretty sweet. I made this the best song I could and I was proud of it when I finished. Touching the heart of America. I think we have had David Masson Gill with us here today for Spirit in Action. Website David Masson Gill dot com. We close out this spirit in action leaving you looking at the America all around you with this song. Great American Dream. Thanks so much David for joining me. I am very happy to and I hope to visit again from today. Excuse me sir. I am a foreigner. I left the white sands of Zanzibar. Where is this place you call free lunch bar? I am hungry and have overstayed my visa. I work you farm your factory pizzeria. It's TV more beautiful than the morning Lisa. Someday my sons will fight for the ego. My daughters will never be ashamed of me. It is my dream to be a citizen. It's the great American dream. It's the great American dream. It's the great American dream. Excuse me sir. I am a prostitute. Just pretend that I am a playboy bunny. For a Franklin I will tongue your tongue in. My body is a battlefield and a flower. For a score in seven trees by the hour. Oh the many men one might have been my father. Gonna make my kid away in a zapalene. Take a bubble bath in the fountain of youth. It is my dream to be a girl again. In the great American dream. In the great American dream. In the great American dream. Excuse me sir. I am a co-opender. Once I've built a tree house for Rockefeller. Though now I've been laid off since December. Someday I'll build a castle all my own. In the den, the best lays him or the wrong. In every room, a different colorful. These torn hands are skilled as spiders. I hear there's work in Kansas building coal fins. It is my dream to be cremated with the great American dream. With the great American dream. With the great American dream. Excuse me sir. I am an Indian. Oh the white man is as greedy as fire. His heart is wrapped around with bottle wire. My father died of whiskey and religion. Though ghosts are sheep on a reservation. In the summer we are told just attraction. It is wrong to squeeze the earth like a snake. Be a deceit to give a storm to the hungry one. It is my dream to skin a pilgrim. With the great American dream. And the great American dream. And the great American dream. Excuse me sir. I am every man. I'm the good people of Jekyll and Hyde. I'm a social climber on a mountain of pride. I'm the devil, the dumb and the debonare. I'm the mouse, the monk and the millionaire. I'm the green white hoe riding on an old gray man. I'm a sad eyed girl as young as the earth. And I'm the mother who died giving birth. To the great American dream. To the great American dream. To the great American dream. I love freedom. I hope freedom loves me. The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World" performed by Sarah Thompson. This spirit in action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is spirit in action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing.