As a classical musician, I wear black. I wear black for churches, orchestras, ensembles, and weddings where you can’t clash with any bridal colors. I have so many black clothes I divide my closet between black and the three red dresses that I wear for Christmas and Valentines.
So when I play for senior communities, I break my musical mold and wear bright colors to catch their eye and make them smile. But in January, I wore black from head to toe. And so did my song list.
I played Johnny Cash.
I added country and western to my repertoire, including Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, John Denver, and The Man in Black. It gave me a great excuse to wear all my classical clothes!
But how do you play country on the harp? At first I struggled how to transpose the twang of country guitars onto an instrument most people associate with Debussy. But the more I listened to Johnny Cash (never a hardship) the more I found that the baseline was the pulse of the song. Because of the harp’s wide range, I could be my own string bass while playing the melody. I applied this to my version of Johnny Cash’s famous Folsom Prison Blues.
Of course, I quoted Folsom Prison Blues long before I learned to play it. A few years ago when recording my Christmas CD, I rented the beautiful acoustics of Rieth recital Hall at Goshen College, less than a quarter mile from the train tracks.
And, as anyone who lives in Goshen can tell you, we have trains.
I was recording the last verse of Silent Night, letting each delicate cord hang in the air when, very softly, we heard the “Whoooo, Whoooo,” approaching. My sound guy groaned and dropped his head down on the table in front of him. I sat back from the harp and quoted Johnny Cash, “When I hear that whistle blowin’ I hang my head and cry!”
Several of these country and cowboy ballads like Folsome Prison Blues are about, well, crime. The singers are sinners in the aftermath of their actions. But for all those blue ballads, there are sunshine songs of redemption, including my favorite by Hank Williams, I Saw the Light. “Praise the Lord, I saw the light.”
After I played this tour of country favorites, it was time to bring it back home. There is a deep longing to go home in country music, whether it’s Home on the Range, looking for a new home on the frontier or Take Me Home Country Road, longing for homes we have left behind. But, as my favorite Johnny Cash song Poor Wayfaring Stranger points out, nowhere on earth will ever feel like home. Everywhere we live now is just a temporary house because our real home is in heaven. “I’m just going over Jordan, I’m just going over home.”
But then comes the question raised by all these songs. How do we get home? How do we find our way over Jordan? We need a map or a gps or better yet, a helping hand. As another favorite Johnny Cash song says, Lead Me Gently Home Father, or the old gospel hymn, “Precious Lord take my hand, lead me home.”