Episode 57 - Yes We Can! An Interview with Maria Muldaur.

It's a different sort of Dreamtime this time around. I recently had the opportunity to interview one of my favorite vocalists and interpreter of Bob Dylan songs, Maria Muldaur, and our Episode 57 focuses on Maria's latest release, Yes, We Can! which showcases the work of a variety of songwriters, including Marvin Gaye, Allen Toussaint, Earl King, Garth Brooks, and Bob Dylan himself.

A couple of show notes before we get started. As one of the Moscow Rules states, "Technology will always let you down." I had an equipment melt-down about 10 minutes before I was scheduled to call Maria, and ended up jury-rigging a last-minute Rube Goldberg recording system in order to capture the interview. I was left with the option of either capturing Maria's voice clearly, or my own, and of course decided for the former. You can tell how badly the recording sounded on my end towards the close of the interview. So, in any case, Maria wasn't indulging in a monologue, but was responding to my questions, which I edited out, but which I think you can figure out from the context of her answers.

Maria also notes in the interview that there should be a free download of a song that had to be left off Yes, We Can! on the Telarc site. As of the the time of this podcast's release, which should be around August 12, 2008, the song had not yet been posted on telarc.com. I'll put a post and a link on the Dreamtime blog when the song becomes available.

So, without further ado, here's Maria Muldaur, and a few clips from her latest release, Yes, We Can!

Direct link to mp3.

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Further Viewing/Reading/Listening

Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World, Jean Shinoda Bolen

Yes We Can! Maria Muldaur

Heart of Mine: Love Songs of Bob Dylan Maria Muldaur

Naughty, Bawdy and Blue Maria Muldaur

Maria's Web site and her page at Telarc.

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You've been listening to the Dreamtime podcast – occasional commentary on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour. Dreamtime is researched and written by Fred Bals and is a Not Associated With production. As the name says, we're not associated with XM Radio, Bob Dylan, or much of anything else.

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The Dreamtime top cats are Curly Lasagna and Shaggy Bear. Our announcers are the notorious honky-tonkin' sisters, Jailbait and Joyride.

Until next time, dream well.

Tom Waits - (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night

Our Saturday song, still following in the steps of TTRH "Days of the Week" is Tom Waits' (Looking for) the Heart of Saturday Night. We're all grateful that Our Host has better taste than to pick something like Saturday Night's Alright (for Fightin').

I have a Tom Waits story for Dreamtime readers/listeners. My initial college career - such as it was, and it wasn't much - was interrupted by the draft in the early `70s, and consequently I started college several years later than most of my peers. I eventually graduated from the University of Southern Maine in the late `70s; then known as the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham, or sometimes as Pogo U., which may be why the name was changed by the College Fathers.

In any case, although I was less than full of school spirit, I did haphazardly participate in several activities and organizations, including the college paper; a group that put on cult films; and another group that brought music acts to the school. During that time I helped produce USM concerts for such `70s period acts as Loggins and Messina; Phoebe Snow; and Maria Muldaur.

Out of the dozen or so acts that I dealt with, Maria was one of the nicest, a fact that I'd remind her of when I interviewed her for a web site column I was writing earlier this year (the web site and I parted ways, but you can still read the interview here). Maria was still at the height of her Midnight at the Oasis fame in those days, and Tom Waits, who had just recently released his Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night album, was her opening act.

I didn't have all that much conversation with Waits, who I had never heard of at the time, and who seemed a strange, scruffy, boho-type character wearing a cheap Salvation Army suit and with not the best personal hygiene. Getting ready to go on, Waits decided he wanted to bring a beer on-stage. Some security guy stopped him, and I had to intercede when the argument began to get heated. While I had the rent-a-cop distracted, Waits hid several cans of beer in his suit jacket, walked out on stage, sat down at the piano, reached inside his jacket, pulled out a beer, popped the top, put it on the piano, turned to the backstage, and gave the security guard the finger. I spent the rest of Waits' set keeping the security guy from stopping the show.

When I told that story to Maria, thirty-odd years in the future, and mentioned that I remembered Waits had smelled a little, ah, ripe, she began to laugh. "My God," she said. "I haven't thought of that in years. You're right, Tom was pretty pungent. We were saying, 'My God, doesn't this guy ever bathe?'"

Episode 20 – Heart of Mine

[Intro]

Direct link to mp3.

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I'm doing another "someone who hasn't been featured on Theme Time yet," but like my prediction about Rick Nelson, I bet she will.

Maria Muldaur. Born Maria D'Amato, and raised in Greenwich Village, Maria was at ground zero for the Great Folk Scare of the '60s. Her first influences were country music singers, Hank Williams. Kitty Wells. Hank Snow. Ernest Tubb. When she was five years old, Maria liked to sing Kitty Wells' "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," complete with yodels.

After she finished high school, Muldaur moved to a loft in the Village and got involved with The Friends of Old Timey Music, a group that traveled the rural South to find legends like Doc Watson and Mississippi John Hurt, and then bring them north to present them in concert to urban audiences. "We used to have after hours jams on Saturday nights [in my loft], Maria said in an interview. Blues legends like the Reverend Gary Davis would come over and drink whisky, tell stories and play and sing. We'd stay up all night, then drive him up to Harlem, and without getting any sleep, he'd deliver a sermon. I found myself sitting at the feet of the Rev. Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Son House and blues diva Victoria Spivey. It was an incredible time."

After returning to New York from one of her visits to the South, Maria was invited to join The Even Dozen Jug Band, a group that included John Sebastian, and would eventually end up recording for the Elektra label. "We were paid $65 each for the record and played all of four gigs," Maria says. "Two of them at Carnegie Hall, one in a church and the other on the TV show, 'Hootenanny.' "

The Even Dozen Jug Band soon dissolved, not least because most of its members were college-bound, and Muldaur migrated to Massachusetts to check out the Cambridge folk scene. In Cambridge, Maria would end up joining one of the most popular of the then very popular jug bands, The Jim Kweskin Jug Band. Except for the Muldaur connection, Kweskin and his jug band would be all-but-forgotten. The band disbanded in 1968, with several of its members, including Kweskin, joining a cult established by the jug band's ex-harmonica player, Mel Lyman. Lyman's other major claim to fame was for playing a long harmonica solo at the end of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival to the riled crowd streaming out after Dylan's famous electric outburst. But in the late `60s, after ingesting large and regular quantities of LSD, Lyman claimed himself at various times to be: the living embodiment of Truth, the greatest man in the world, Jesus Christ, and an alien entity sent to Earth in human form by extraterrestrials.

The `60s being the `60s, several people agreed with Lyman, including Jim Kweskin, and the band dissolved as Kweskin moved into The Mel Lyman Family. Happily, Maria, and her then-husband Geoff Muldaur, didn't, and they went on to become part of the Woodstock musical community. Geoff would leave Maria – both musically and their marriage – to form the Better Days Band, leaving his last name as his legacy.

"We had a friendly breakup, Maria says, "But I was left weeping in the driveway in Woodstock, a young woman with a five-year old kid. I went to our manager, Albert Grossman, and asked him for a job waitressing in one of his restaurants. I really had no vision of carrying on as a solo artist because for most of my adult life, my career had been tied to Geoffey as the musical mastermind. I was just a cooperative team player."

When Maria told Reprise Records president, Mo Ostin, that the duo he had signed to his label no longer existed,, Ostin's reaction was to offer her the opportunity to make her first solo album.

And of course, that album included the title hit, Midnight at the Oasis.

You can get Maria's full discography from that point at her web site, mariamuldaur.com, so I'm not going to get into that here. What I am going to get into is the knock-out album of Dylan love songs she released this August, Heart of Mine: Love Songs of Bob Dylan. If you haven't heard Heart of Mine, stop this podcast and whatever you're doing right now and go get it… it's one of the best collection of Dylan covers you're going to hear this or any other year. Maria turned 63 this September, but her voice, like Dylan's has aged like the finest wine. Here's Maria Muldaur doing a live version of Heart of Mine, taken from her show on the Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour. I'll be talking about Wood songs more in the podcast, but first Maria Muldaur…

[Heart of Mine]

Maria Muldaur… there is nuthin' about that woman I don't like.

That live recording came from the Woodsongs Radio Hour, a live audience radio show broadcast over 400 radio stations, and with over 70 full-length shows, including the one with Maria Muldaur available for download. Go get Maria's – Show Number 415 – from Woodsongs.com.

This had been Fred Bals with the Dreamtime podcast – occasional commentary on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour. Remember to come by and visit the Dreamtime podcast page. Just put "Dreamtime podcast" into Google and we'll be Number 1 on your hit parade.

Closing out tonight's show is Miss Kitty Wells doing the song Maria Muldaur liked to sing at age 5. "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" was an "answer song," in response to Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life," Here's the 1952 hit that made Kitty Wells a star.

[It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels]