Mawmaw's and The End of the World

The End of the World Thank you for all of the great letters, comments, and notes in response to my last essay about A Good Quiet Set of Directions. If you missed it, you can read it here. Now, I bring you 1500 words on getting around the curve that leads to The End of the World. A derelict house near Mawmaw's. “There were no lessons that day. Nanda spent the morning walking about the garden with her father and mother. They could go wherever they liked, down to the farm or over to the orchard or right round the long walk that was called “The End of the World.” – Frost in May, Antonia White When I was a little girl staying with Mawmaw up on Smith Ridge, we had a place called The End of the World. Back then, Smith Ridge Road was about thirteen miles long and ended in a dirt track, which rumor had it, lead to Grundy. Grundy, which only conjured the words “grunt” and “grub” in my childhood brain, seemed no place to be dreaming about and held no fairytale allure for me. Mawmaw’s house was about four miles along Smith Ridge Road off the main road which came up from “town” – “town” being Richlands where there were hospitals, grocery stores, Magic Mart, the bank, the gas station, Wendy’s, and Hurst Scott Funeral home and its glowing purple lamps. My sister, Sarah, and I made the trip up and down from town to Mawmaw’s house every day in Mawmaw’s Buick. Mawmaw would slip off her high heeled shoes which matched her Sears work outfit and slip her stocking toes into her house slippers and sail that Buick across those mountain roads, climbing steadily, sometimes at breakneck speed, racing the train that crossed Highway 67 four times on our journey home. My great grandmother, Narcie, had cornbread in the oven and fresh tomatoes and green beans on the table. We didn’t have time for trains. I knew all of the curves, dips in the road, broken down outbuildings, burnt-out cars, and tabernacles of prayer from Mawmaw Margie’s house in town to Mawmaw Shreve’s house up on the mountain. But four miles along Smith Ridge, just past the Friendly Chapel Church, for me, the road stopped, because beyond Mawmaw’s house stretched The End of the World. The End of the World was strange. I’d heard about it. One farmer had an emu. One man had a house made of tin signs and license plates. There were otherchurches than the one that we went to. No hellers. Church people who believed that earth was hell, so there was no hell to be going to when you died, just a Heaven for the right people. Women who wore long sleeves and long skirts with high-necked blouses, and who never cut their hair, went to church at The End of the World. Mean dogs who would chew your leg off lived at The End of the World.   The End of the World began around a curve just past Mawmaw’s house and I never wanted to see around that curve. The thought of it made me queasy. Occasionally, Mawmaw had to go a short distance around that curve to pick Betty up for church. If I was in the car, I put my hand over my eyes and just peeked through my fingers as if I was (not) watching a horrible medical procedure on television. The End of the World was strange and I didn’t want to know anything more about it. A couple of weeks ago, I was lying in bed in the dawn hours listening to BBC Radio 4 and lapsing into sleep when I heard the musical voice of Irish writer Padraig O Tuama giving the prayer for the day. He said that in Biblical Greek one meaning of “strange” was “elsewhere.” Elsewhere can be a terrifying place just like The End of the World was for me. One day, when I was in my twenties, Mr Kyle (Mawmaw’s fella) and Mawmaw thought it would be nice to take a ride down to the end of Smith Ridge to see the emu farm. And, as though there was nothing extraordinary about it, I got in the car with them and found myself being driven to The End of the World. As we went along, Mawmaw pointed out where Betty’s house used to be which was bought and blown up by the gas company and replaced by a gas well. She pointed out where my Aunt Fannie once had her general store and told me how Aunt Fannie could make a dress for someone just by looking at them. She pointed out where there used to be a church where Aunt Fannie and her sister Aunt Nannie went – they were my great-grandfather’s sisters. She said that Aunt Nannie once fell against the church’s wood stove, placing her hand right on top of it, but wasn’t burnt and this was a sign of blessing from God. We got to a place along the road where we could see clear over to West Virginia which was called The View. And I got to see where Elsie Brown lived – Elsie Brown, Mawmaw Narcie’s best friend, who wore her knee highs rolled down around her ankles like little donuts and walked miles clear from her house way down along Smith Ridge to Mawmaw’s nearly every day, but never ever got skinny no matter how far she walked. And we saw the emu – the second largest bird in the world – right there on Smith Ridge. After that day, I walked out to The View whenever I liked. I found a cemetery where my great great great grandfather’s Confederate grave stared back at me wondering where I’d been and when I would write its song. I found Barbie dolls, toothbrushes, and old Coke bottles buried in the clay hillside and I walked inside the shell of Aunt Fannie’s store wishing she could make me a feed sack dress just by looking at me. I still took a stick with me because there were dogs that looked like they would chew my leg off, but they never had a chance because Mawmaw’s dog went with me on my rambles just to show off. The End of the World didn’t seem like elsewhere anymore. I used to call my Dad nearly every day before that day when he went elsewhere. Sometimes, especially in the spring, I’d tell him that I was feeling apocalyptic. This was the shorthand codeword we’d found to describe the thrumming in my heart and head that said change is coming, forces are on the move, something is surfacing which I felt I needed to gather strength to face, perhaps even to face down. Today, I was walking along the canal towpath in Carnforth in North Lancashire and what looked like brown sticks a few days ago were covered with tiny white balls, some of which had already willed themselves into delicate little flowers. Change is here. There are times we long for change, we tempt it into our lives, we wish and wish and wish for it, but there are times when changes happen to us, around us, and we are swept up in it. Spring can make me feel this way. Sometimes, spring’s clock seems to be pulling me along, turning brown dead-looking sticks into daytime fireworks. Sometimes I have found the energy of spring excruciating like it was pulling me by my hair from the safe ground lined with woolen sweaters, open fires, and hot drinks. Its energy whispering to me that I had no say, but demanding that I slough off my bear-like winter sleepiness and awake and be a firework. Dad seemed to know all of this when I called him to say I felt apocalyptic. I didn’t want to see around the curve that lead to The End of the World. I said to my Englishman last week, when the news was especially awful, that I felt like we were living at the end of the world. To Brexit or not to Brexit, New Zealand gunman, mendacious politicians, famine in Yemen, sharia law in Brunei, whales strangled by plastics. If I didn’t have a degree in the fall of the Roman Empire, I might be able to kid myself. But lawsy beesy, as Mawmaw Margie said, what a world! And then Padraig O Tuama said that in Biblical Greek “apocalyptic” meant “uncovering.” Now that it’s April, the wild things are throwing off their covers and springing around the curve of winter. Padraig O Tuama reminds us, “Our world inclines itself toward flourishing even if we don’t.” He prays, “God, give us strength to be brave in days when it feels like everything is ending.” And I pray, “God, give us courage to look around the curve that leads to what seems like The End of the World because, around that curve, there might be a view to another world, there might be a woman who can clothe you anew, there might be a woman who can touch fire without being burnt, there might be a mean ole dog or two, but at the end you may glimpse a bird of paradise.” If you, too, are feeling apocalyptic or, if you’ve already pulled your summer clothes out of your closet and you are ready to go, I send you smooth sailing and a nice Buick to get you there in comfort. If you want to get there quickly, let Mawmaw do the driving, her speed on mountain curves is legendary. Your friend, Jeni Peggy Seeger! YES! I am confessing a deep addiction to this record, Peggy Alone, and this outfit. I found it on vinyl with the super nifty booklet. Folk combustion girl crush! Three cheers for Peggy Seeger! I'm just picking up my copy of her autobiography, First Time Ever, which came out last year.  Let's Keep in Touch jeniannhankins@gmail.com jenihankins.com Facebook Instagram Twitter (I'm not great at Twitter, but my Facebook posts go there!) I've been making linocuts lately. I took printmaking back in art school and I always loved this particular way of making images. I highly recommend giving it a try!

The Pen is Why I Have Eleven Pairs of Scissors

The Pen and the London Show. Happy February, Friends! I’m just back from the Guitar town, Music City USA, Nashville, Tennessee, where the Englishman and I have been putting the shine on my East Nashville house so that I can offer it as a vintage vacation home. Here I am sorting out my stuff. Things get messier before they get tidy, don't they? This was the office supplies and tape moment. In all, I think I found eleven pairs of normal scissors in the house plus pinking shears (3), garden scissors (2), and craft scissors with nifty edging effects (7). Have I every mentioned “the pen” before? When I was a kid staying with Mawmaw up on Smith Ridge in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, I liked to answer the phone for my grandmothers. Later, when I was the student receptionist at Davidson College, this childhood training came in handy. But at Mawmaw’s, if I had to take a message, then I used a pad of paper and “the pen” which sat on the telephone table – paean for the telephone table to be written. Perhaps, I should call “the pen” The Pen because it was the only one in the house. Usually, it came from a bank or a gas station in Richlands. If someone moved The Pen from the telephone table, a crisis ensued. The Pen was usually one of those pens with no cap and the white eraser – an eraser that never worked, but made the paper a mess. Do you remember those? There is a similar story about tape up on Smith Ridge, but I’ll save that one for another time . . .  I tend to think the yearly summertime childhood crisis of losing The Pen and instigating a frantic search through drawers, handbags, and Bibles was the direct cause of my scissor, pen, tape, glue, and general school supplies habit. When I used to be singing on the road all of the time and I started to feel overwhelmed, a visit to any grocery store or general store school supplies or craft section had a calming effect. Sending a letter covered in stamps was also a great balm. I found a lot of stamps in Nashville, too. Even given our considerable efforts, the Englishman and I did not finish the task of turning my house into an officially rentable space. It’s nearly there, but the finishing touches and AirBnB paperwork will have to wait a few months. For now, my vintage home is providing a cozy retreat for a good friend. Do you need a retreat in Nashville between now and early May? If so, get in touch and lets see what we can do? I am back in Londontown and getting ready for my second concert of the year on February 26th – a collaboration with External Donut Presents at the Hope and Anchor pub in Islington. The folks at External Donut say we’ll have poetry reading, strummy folk, singing and sewing from me, and folky pop music at the end. I haven’t really done anything quite like this since my high school talent show where I sang the “ba pas” on a Troggs song. If you’d like to come along, I’d be tickled. I will be playing more concerts this year and I'm putting together my calendar which I will post later this spring. I plan on doing most of my touring in the summer and fall. If you’d like to host a house concert or community concert in Britain, Canada, the USA, or anywhere else for that matter (thank you to my listeners in Israel and Norway!), then please write to me and I will see about arranging my touring schedule to suit us all. This is what happens to your hair when you re-stuff a futon. I’ve brought my mountain dulcimer back from Tennessee, so I am excited to start reading Jean Ritchie’s Dulcimer Book and hearing what I can learn. I also got an electric piano for Christmas and if I practice practice practice, I’ve been promised a hulking wooden one, so I’m going to tilt my dulcimer and metronome at this jet-lag and play some music. Thank you for the notes and messages you’ve been sending in response to my newsletter. I am seeing if I can write one each month, so your encouragement cheers me along. Your Jewell Ridge Girl, Jeni Variety show in London! Come along on Tuesday, February 26th, to the Hope and Anchor in Islington (London) for a night of music and poetry. Strummy guitar music, me, pop music at the end, and poetry in the betweens. 5 pound cover. Events begin at 7, I'll probably go on after 8. Hope and Anchor, N1 1RL.  Find Me www.jenihankins.com Facebook @jenihankins on Instagram and Twitter Copyright © 2019 Jeni Hankins, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: Jeni Hankins 500 Westover Dr #13373 Sanford, North Carolina  27330 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

India and Debut Makers Market

View this email in your browser December comes just once a year and seems like a whole other kind of month on the heels of two weeks in India. Hello, dear friends! Since I last wrote to you, I have been sewing up many many cushions and handbags for a Christmas Art Market – more about that below! In the middle of the sewing, I took myself off to India for two weeks where I joined my friend Robyn Raines, owner of Whitetop Yoga in Abingdon, Virginia, for an experience of a lifetime. How two gals from a tiny corner of southwest Virginia ended up in Rajasthan together is a mystery even to us in some ways, but it seemed like a great place to start our conversation about a musical collaboration involving her great-grandfather, my musical heritage, and our mutual love of our home county of Tazewell, Virginia (more about that next year!). First, the scoop on the art market! If you've seen me in concert, you will know that I've been traveling with my own miniature craft market on tour for years. Well, this weekend, I'll be showing my work alongside other artists for the first time at Crofts Farmhouse in the tiny village of Leasgill, Cumbria, at the home of maker Jan Huntley-Peace. I wish everyone could come to Cumbria because you would love this corner of England where the hills roll and the trees bend in the wind just like they do back home in Jewell Ridge. We're a thousand feet or so higher up in Jewell Ridge, but that's just to keep the coal from settling on our sheets and hair. A note if you can come along . . . Jan's house is on the right as you go along the little road from St Peter's church in Heversham to Leasgill. Google maps and your sat nav will put it other places. She has a small sign outside her gate. Mind your step because the stone walkway is slippy from all of this rain. Their house is LOVELY and was built before 1600 with beams from a ship! If you can't come to the art market, I will be putting all of my unsold items on my bandcamp site early next week in case you'd like to give a one-of-a-kind Jeni-made gift to yourself or someone good this season! Now, India. When I was about eight, I wrote a school report on Elephants, Indian Elephants, and I have just always wanted to go there in the way that you think "One day I'd like to go to Alaska, or New Zealand, or Southwest Virginia." Well, I've gone and done it, as Mawmaw would say, and I really can't properly express how super, how magical, how provoking my visit was. And, of course, I only saw one small part of one state in India – Jodhpur in Rajasthan. Why Jodhpur? My friend Robyn was going there to design a retreat for 2019 and is collaborating with water conservationists and yoga teachers there. I thought that I may as well start somewhere and I'd always wanted to spend more time with Robyn, so why not in India? Jodhpur, known as the blue city because of all of the blue painted housed in the old city, turned out to be a perfect place to visit not just because of the 15th century fort or the mountains of textiles, but because the people were completely welcoming and adopted us into their lives like family. I felt it was like Jewell Ridge on the other side of the world, especially because Robyn and I attended all of the family celebrations and rituals of a five-day Indian wedding. So, thank you very much to Robyn for inviting along this blonde-headed gal whose exotic skin and hair meant hundreds of selfies interrupting our progress from one end of town to the other! And thank you to all of the Indian people – the ones that I met briefly, like the former Parlimentarian on the plane, and the ones that I think of as family (Ba!) – for making my childhood dream come true in technicolor. So, how strange to come back to a very rainy and cold London full of Christmas lights glittering through windows and invitations to carol singing and art markets. All over the world, people are living in patterns and swells so different from our own with their big events of the year coming along when our year rests for a moment. We can easily forget that our calendar is one of many, our rush and excitement peaks at a time of quiet or reflection for someone else. Dad called this the great wheel and he said it can't turn if we're all on one side of it. I will never forget being on the other side for a little while. I wish you goodness and kindness, my friends. Your singer and needlewoman, Jeni You can always write to me at jeniannhankins@gmail.com. You can always buy my records and Jeni & Billy back catalog at my bandcamp store where artists get the lion's share of the sale! My website is here. Copyright © 2018 Jeni Hankins, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: Jeni Hankins 500 Westover Dr #13373 Sanford, North Carolina  27330 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

The Circus and Cueball's Pool Hall

Jeni Hankins Appalachian-Grown Country Folk Music 1500 Words on the Circus, Cueball's Pool Hall, and Hearing Yourself Sing. On Friday, the Englishman and I were waiting on the roofer to give forth on the water trickling down our upstairs bedroom wall. While we waited, we played three games of pool – I lost all the games – and listened to the soundtrack for “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” on vinyl. It turned out the roofer liked that soundtrack too, and this gave us confidence in him despite the shocking revelations about our chimney pots and cowls. After he left, I continued to loose at pool and we switched to Bruce Springsteen. I said, “Do we have that record with that circus song?” And the Englishman rustled around in our vinyl collection and put the record on our hi-fi which is not only a hi-fi system, but “a nice piece of furniture,” according to the late sixties brochure which came with it at the auction.  “That circus song.” Do you remember Bruce Springsteen’s circus song? Though I’d been listening to Bruce via my parents since I was a toddler, I’d never heard his circus song until last year. It was then that a long-time fan made a disparaging remark about “The Oxygen Girl” and the “novelty song” – meaning my circus song. I personally don’t have a problem with novelty songs and I know all of the words to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Punky’s Dilemma.”What’s wrong with “Wish I was an English muffin, ‘bout to make the most out of a toaster. I’d ease myself down, coming up brown.” I never would have wondered so much about boysenberries without that song in my childhood and boysenberries seem a tame obsession for a thirteen year old girl given the other options . . . In fact, I may just make buttons that say, "Citizens for Boysenberry Jam" which perfectly defines the political chaos . . . . back to circuses. But there I was, last year, confronted with a fan who regarded “The Oxygen Girl” as a frivolous and annoying novelty song. What did circuses have to do with Jewell Ridge anyway? So, I was feeling a bit raw when the Englishman said, “All the great songwriters have circus songs. Do you know this one?” And then he queued up Bruce Springsteen singing “Wild Billy’s Circus Story” which begins, “The machinist climbs his ferris wheel like a brave.” Since that night, this has become my favorite Bruce Springsteen song. This is not only because this song was played for me in a gesture of romantic heroism, but also because there’s a tuba and an accordion in the arrangement – two of my favorite instruments. And it’s about the circus. When I was a kid I loved the circus. Even though Mom and Dad were broke, they somehow got tickets through their offices or cereal box tops or radio contests, I don’t know. And there we were, eating cotton candy, watching women in sequined dresses spin from ropes of silk between their teeth. All of the animal stuff has changed at circuses now and that’s how the world spins, but that’s where we saw elephants and tigers and bears. The trapeze. The trapeze. The trapeze. Women with feathers in their hair, balancing on the backs of horses. The knife-thrower. The fire-eaters.  My great-great grandmother’s sister ran away with the circus. I’ve been trying to write a song about her for years. I woke up at 4:30 last night with some new version of that song about her in my head again.  Maybe it’s a thing with us performing songwriters – that yen for the big-top moment. Isn’t that what we want our audiences to feel – the way that I did at the circus when I was ten – transfixed, transformed, jubilant, and defiantly hopeful? When I started performing professionally, I had been singing all of my life, but suddenly I worried that I was meant to have some kind of distinctive voice – some kind of tone. This resulted in some odd unreleased recordings of me sounding like Ralph Stanley. But little by little, I let go of this worry and just sang – sang like I was sitting next to Mawmaw at the Friendly Chapel Church or next to my Dad when he got out his harmonica and guitar at Christmas. But even after making eight records, I couldn’t say what my personal distinctive Jeni “sound” was. You all have kindly described my voice to me in terrific comments and questions after concerts, but I couldn’t quite hear “the Jeni voice” in my own head. That changed the other night when I sang “Wild Billy’s Circus Story.” The Englishman, being a longtime Bruce Springsteen fanatic knew the melody far better than I did, so he began teaching it to me. After singing along with him, and the both of us singing along with Bruce, I said, “Let me see if I can do this first verse on my own.” So, I started singing and maybe because Bruce’s voice is so different than mine, maybe because it’s normally a rock song, maybe because I’ve been doing more sewing than singing over the last few weeks, my voice announced itself distinctively as my own – a little folk, a little mountain country, certain words that slide here and there, notes between notes, and a wrapping of words around lines. The Englishman laughed with astonishment to hear one of his longtime favorite songs sung in an entirely un-Springsteen voice. He loved it. I surprised myself. We sang it again and again until our stomachs reminded us that some supper would be nice. Dad always heard my voice. He made a study of it which wasn’t difficult for him since my voice is part his voice. The last time he saw me perform – at Merlefestin North Carolina – which was the first place I felt being a singer-songwriter was the life for me, he mouthed all of the words to the songs AND the stories in exactly my rhythm. He knew what I was going to say before I did.  I think a lot of you heard my voice before I did and so many of you have encouraged and galvanized me over the last ten years of my professional touring career. You’ve done this through coming to shows, buying CDs, hosting shows, sending me cards, letters, emails, Facebook messages, calling on the telephone, and being a group of a few thousand people who together make an audience, a fan club, a family, and a congregation of sorts. I used to talk with my Dad nearly every day. When I called him, our conversation would go like this: Hello? Hi Dad. Hi Kid. How are you? I’m so good I can hardly stand myself. That was Dad. Other times he would pretend that he was a guy named Cueball who ran a pool hall and then he would pretend that he would have to go look for my father. My point is that it’s been a really crazy year in the world. Things seem very hard and confusing and downright mean sometimes. I rarely comment on any of this in these newsletters or on social media because what can I say but that the world seems to be falling apart a lot of the time. On the other hand, I have felt tremendously loved this year. I’ve made some extremely talented and some truly good friends. I’ve traveled and returned home safely. I can still hear the voice of my grandmother in Jewell Ridge on the other end of the phone. My sister is making theater. My Mom sent me a photo of our family cat talking on FaceTime with me. Sometimes, I just feel like making politicians learn the banjo to distract them from messing up the world, and other times, at the end of the day, I feel so good I can hardly stand myself. I hope that you will give yourself a chance to hear your own voice, to sing a new song, to laugh in the face of chaos, to show kindness, to dare to write a circus song, and to pretend you are in Cueball’s pool hall with Dad, eating peanuts and drinking Rolling Rock Beer. I’m going to head over there now, order a tonic water and some salt & vinegar crisps, and put “Wild Billy’s Circus Story” on the jukebox. I hope in 2019 you will feel transfixed, transformed, jubilant, and defiantly hopeful – like I felt at the circus when I was ten. Thank you for ten years of touring! Here’s to the next ten!  See you in 2019! Happy Christmas and a Bright New Year! Jeni www.jenihankins.com Next year, 2019, will mark my second decade as a touring artist! If you’d like to see me in concert next year, please write to me with your house concert or local venue or festival ideas!   First Concert of 2019 I'll be in the states for the first part of 2019 and I'm tickled that the folks from the Huntsville Assistance Program (HAP) in Huntsville, Alabama, have asked me along to play a benefit concert. Saturday, January 26, at 3pm in the afternoon at United Church of Huntsville. Tickets are $20 at the venue on the day of the show. HAP is supported by 60 churches and provides vital assistance to family through food banks and utilities. Second Show of the Year I'll play my second show of the year at the Hope and Anchor Pub  on Upper Street, Islington, London. This promises to be a terrific evening of variety for the performers and audiences alike with poets Kevin Reinhardt and Cathy Flower, strummy folkie Adrian R Shaw, electro pop band Parenthesis Dot Dot, and yours truly. It's all put together by master of ceremonies, comedian and songwriter, Hank Osasuna! I'll be playing somewhere in the middle of the evening. Tuesday, February 26, Doors at 7:30 pm. Copyright © 2018 Jeni Hankins, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: Jeni Hankins 500 Westover Dr #13373 Sanford, North Carolina  27330 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.