Music for April and May 2025: Michael Rudd, Ron Pope, Grey DeLisle, Mary Bue, Mar Grimalt

Mary Bue

 

Faithful readers will notice that my posts have been delayed lately. It’s called “being on a book deadline.” Here’s a music column as I didn’t get one written in April. That’s okay, though, as things usually get a little slower in the spring.

 

 

One of the better projects I heard was from Michael Rudd. His path has been a bit twisty. He became a teacher and has been in New Mexico, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and back to New Mexico, where he’s now a principal at Acoma Pueblo, an indigenous adobe settlement atop a dusty high mesa. At some point he began to hear songs and tunes in his sleep. His second solo album, Going to the Mountain contains some of the results from his trip to the liminal side of things. The title track is a Western song that bespeaks his twisting path to full humanity. It opens with the words I know where I’m going/’Cause I know where I’ve been but if that sounds pretty tranquil, hang on. It’s also about a guy always searching for something. It’s a very western song; note I didn’t qualify it as “country.” It’s big and open like his gravelly voice and is as honest as a lot “country” is overly processed. “Before the Demon Comes” is in the same vein. He rocks out on The Far Side.” The thing about dream songs is that they take you to unexpected places, so be prepared to travel.

 

 

Ron Pope has been around a bit too. He comes to us from Nashville via Georgia with a stop at NYU. He and his wife (Blair Clark) founded Brooklyn Basement Records and, if Pope’s name sounds familiar, he scored big time in 2007 with his platinum hit “A Drop in the Ocean.” He hasn’t slowed down a bit. Pope has released two dozen LPs and EPs, has toured, and he and Blair are raising a daughter. Depending on who is telling the story, his music is either Americana, country, or folk. Pope’s most recent LP is titled American Man, American Music, which is as good a label as any as he’s never quite what you anticipate. “Klonopin Zombies”  suggests social commentary on drug abuse, but it’s actually a personal song about how he was not in a good place after his grandmother passed away just eight days after her husband died. As you can see from the live performance, he’s a hard-working musician who’s unafraid to delve into topics mystical, painful, or sublime. Re: the sublime, Pope gives us “In the Morning with the Coffee On,” a love song centered on joyful small things. In a duet with Taylor Bickett, “I’m Not the Devil” he reminds us that he’s a good guy. Yet he also sings about veering from the straight and narrow on “Mama Drove a Mustang” whose blancmange  of rock, bluegrass, and country is atypical for someone with a voice as robust as his. Good stuff.

 

 

 

Grey DeLisle is a comedian, songwriter, and voice actress (Scooby-Doo! DC Comics, video games, etc.) As a singer she once did a tribute project to June Carter Cash, so it won’t surprise you to hear that her new project The Grey Album is a country album or, that as Los Angeles-based artist, she’s unabashed of having been married and divorced three times. DeLisle tells us rockabilly style, “I Can’t Be Kind.” She also sings “Hello, I’m Lonesome,” “Daddy Can You Fix a Broken  Heart,” “The Last Last Time,” and “I’m a Wreck.” In other words, DeLisle is from the old-fashioned heartache tradition of country music. As you will also hear, her vocal styles are insouciant, saucy, and an independent spirit. Credit her with the verve and nerve that gives us the term moxie. 

 

 

 

Mary Bue is another woman of many talents. She is a yoga devotee, has studied psychology, was hailed in 2020 as the best songwriter in Minneapolis, and has made her own Beatles-like pilgrimage to India. Her recent album The Wildness of Living and Dying is like a musical mind meld of her interests. It has themes of what she calls “world-sorrow” plus eco-awareness, expanded consciousness, and a potpourri of styles ranging from “piano poems” to electric instrumentation. The title track is heavy on dark keys and steady drumming, which make a fine contrast to her lovely voice. “Bedding Down with the Deer” has elements of Joni Mitchell in her younger, earthier days, though Bue takes full advantage of today’s mixing capabilities to backfill it with atmosphere. Be sure to check out “The Bones and the Marrow” video to capture Bue in a whirlwind of kinetic energy. She spends most of the video running and imploring us to stand tall amidst the tall pines within an electric arrangement spotted with sing-song mini raps. Mary Bue has (literal) down-to-earth values but she’s no head-in-the-sand blind optimist who is sure things will self-repair. This is her 9^th album and watching the video helps me understand where all her energy comes from.

 

 

Mar Grimalt is a vibrant singer from Mallorca, one of Spain’s Balearic islands. Her album Espurnes I coralls translates “Sparks and Corals,” and that song alone shows us that when you have vocal talent to spare you can create magic with nothing more than a melody and a frame drum. Call her voice the spark and the malleted drum its hard coral contrast. She can also pick up a guitar and pick out “Cançò Final,” a cançò being a folk song in a style linked to 13^th century troubadours. Grimalt sings as a woman sews in the background. Mar Grimlat won’t floor you with power or flashy technology. She has been quoted as saying that we often fail to appreciate what we have because it “weighs us down like tons and tons of concrete.” She should know; her family operates a concrete factory. She’s so retro that that “Reculls des versos” is again voice and frame drum and all the echoes and synth you hear were added in post-production.

 

 

Rob Weir

Small Towns: Buckland/Shelburne Falls, MA

√

 

 

I’ve long had a soft spot for the small towns of Buckland and Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. Undoubtedly, one reason is that they seem more like Vermont towns than anything most people associate with the Bay State, which is pretty much true of most of Western Massachusetts. Buckland has 1,816 residents and is more spread out because of its agrarian past. It’s perhaps most famous as the place where Mary Lyon (1797-1849) lived. She was the founder of Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, 33 miles southeast of Buckland.

There is still a house in Buckland that calls itself the Mary Lyon House, but it’s one in which she lived, not her birthplace. It’s now a private residence and, needless to say, has been updated considerably since Lyon lived there. Her Congregational Church, though, still exists on Upper Street. That name says it all. Buckland and Shelburne Falls lie in the Berkshires foothills. Buckland has a village center of sorts with a Grange Hall, a post office, and a tiny historical museum, but what most people consider the middle of Buckland isn’t. If you travel from the south on Route 112 you make an odd loops-back-on-itself turn just before you come to Route 2 and drive a short distance with the Deerfield River on your left. At that point, you’re still in Buckland unless you cross the river, at which point you’re in Shelburne Falls. There are shops on the Buckland side with their backs to the river and just before you cross over you’ll see McCusker’s, everything you’d expect a village grocer to be and a point of local pride. If you can, though, travel just beyond the bridge for Buckland’s only real attraction, the Trolley Museum. At present, the museum isn’t open, but you can walk among some of its waiting-for-restoration stock.

 

Last trolley built in MA (1951)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The compact village of Shelburne Falls (pop. 1,731) is where most people head. It really feels like small town Vermont. Its one-street main drag has angled-parking, shops, cafes, and art galleries. The auditorium in the village hall is used for community events, concerts, and a summer second-run movie series. Though you might not expect it, the Gypsy Apple has a reputation for being a superb French restaurant. 

 

Truss bridge in foreground; old trolley bridge behind it

 

 

 

 

 

Shelburne Falls from Buckland side of Deerfield River

 

 

 

Trolley bridge reflected in river; Buckland seen upside down

 

 

 

Blooms on Bridge of Flowers

Spring Run Off

"Downtown"Shelburne Falls

Shelburne Falls has some quite lovely homes as you head towards Route 2, but that’s not why visitors come here. Its four-star attraction is slated to reopen soon (though check before you go): the Bridge of Flowers. Shelburne Falls is red brick and stone to Buckland’s wooden frames. Small industries, especially those devoted to Silas Lamson’s all-things-that-cut factories–he gets credit for the curved scythe–explains its different feel. People used to commute via trolley from Greenfield to the east and Charlemont to the west. The Bridge of Flowers was once where the trolley crossed the Deerfield River, though its capacity was such that heavy trade goods often had to be offloaded and taken across the truss bridge that now carries traffic. The trolley went bust in 1927, but two years later women’s clubs put loam beds on the old span and the Bridge of Flowers was born. It’s a gorgeous 400’ walk through seasonal plantings from May through October (or beyond), a riot of color against the backdrop of the river.

 

The Deerfield River has added bonuses. It makes a big bend and spills down a rocky waterfall and a side hydroelectric dam. When the river levels are high or the dam is doing its thing, it’s a roaring mini Niagara. Plus, there are glacial potholes carved into multi-colored metamorphic stone. 

 

 

 

 

Nearby is another village treat, a candlepin bowling alley. That facility might be the oldest continually operating bowling facility in Massachusetts, but even if it’s not, candlepin bowling is a blast. No one has ever rolled a perfect game and even seasoned pros know the agony of a well-rolled ball that chops straight through and knocks down two pins! Unless you are a pro you just can’t take candlepins seriously. Few novices break 100!

 

Outside the town you can challenge yourself with a hike up High Ledges Trail to see how the Deerfield has carved a valley through the hills and if it’s a clear day you can see deep into the Berkshires. You can refuel by driving on Route 2, the Mohawk Trail, toward Greenfield. Western Mass has six Shelburne Falls Coffee Roasters outlets, but its Ur store is on Route 2, a few miles from the village center. Do a little digging and you can detour past a large stay-out compound that is the home of Bill Cosby, though locals are more proud of war tax resistor Randy Kehler. When I say Shelburne Falls has a Vermont feel, it’s not just because the Deerfield River’s two branches originate in the Green Mountain State, it’s also its countercultural/nonconformist vibe.

 

Rob Weir

Swift River: Decent Debut

 

 

 

 

Swift River (2024)

By Essie Chambers

Simon & Shuster, 304 pages.

★★★

 

Swift River, the debut novel from Essie Chambers, is sure to be a crowd pleaser. Chambers has a great story to tell, even though her novel suffers from a common problem of new writers in trying to do too much and thereby shortchanging readers on the detail needed to clarify.

 

Hers is an intergenerational tale set in 1980, 1987, and 1915. Though the novel goes back and forth in time, Chambers often plays loose with time periods. At its center is nine- then sixteen-year-old Diamond Newberry. When her father Rob(ert) vanishes when she is nine, she is left as the only biracial person in Swift River. The only clues to Rob’s disappearance is that was accused of theft and left his wallet, license, a seed packet, a grocery list, and his shoes by the riverbank. Did he commit suicide out of shame? Diamond’s white mother, Anna, assumes so, though Diamond has dreams that he’s alive and has an entirely new family nearby.

 

Those in Western Massachusetts know Swift River as a short (32 miles) tributary of the Ware River known for trout fishing. Chambers appropriates the name for both the river and her small town. Given Chambers’ local connections, one could play guessing games. Dalton? Cummington? Goshen? Stop. Chambers spent much of her youth in Greenfield and is an Amherst High alum, even if her Swift River feels like an amalgam of Berkshires hilltowns. Anna suffered unspoken ostracism for marrying Rob and when he is gone, she goes into a downward spiral of unemployment and delusion. As for Diamond, she’s way smarter than most of her peers and doesn’t really think of herself as unusual until she hits her teen years. About all she knows of blackness is from TV characters such as Thlema Evans (“Good Times) and Wezzy (“The Jeffersons”).

 

By the time she’s 16, she can no longer ride her bicycle as, at nearly 300 pounds, she’s grossly obese. She’s also aware of her ramshackle home, trips to Goodwill for clothing, and long walks as her mother has a car but doesn’t drive. Chambers relates these matters, as well as Anna’s grandiose expectations associated with collecting Rob’s life insurance policy should he be declared legally dead, with poignancy mixed with humor. Some may wonder if they lend themselves to chuckles. Diamond finds herself with few friends other than “Fat Betty,” the local librarian and Shelley, an unorthodox white peer.

 

The first part of Swift River reads like a narrative peppered with memories, but the novel’s revelations come in the form of an epistolary novel (one told through letters). Diamond discovers a lot about why Swift River is so white via correspondence with her Aunt Lena, an Atlanta nurse. Even much of those come back to Diamond third hand via letters from Clara, Lena’s mother. Call Clara the 1915 part of the novel. This is how Diamond learns about “The Leaving,” when African Americans left Swift River en masse. Chambers turns usual narratives of black history upside down. The Great Migration (circa 1910-70) is the name given to black flight from the South to the North, but this Leaving is a flight in the opposite direction. So too is the notion of a “sundown” town, a warning to blacks not to be on the street after dark. In all of New England, only Groton, Massachusetts, and Darien, Connecticut, were ever considered sundown towns.

 

It's not entirely clear why Chambers pulled this switcheroo. It’s possible that she wanted to contrast Diamond’s unfolding racial awareness by juxtaposing it against her childhood naiveté, or that by the 1980s the promise of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society was unraveling. Either way, though, a deeper explanation is needed, especially given that Clara did not leave Swift River. Clara is underdrawn and comes off as more of a device than a fully realized character.

 

Diamond, though, is so memorable that I think many readers will overlook the holes in the narrative. It still baffles me, though, why Chambers made her obese. What we are to think of that attribute? Does she just happen to be fat or is she being fat shamed? I sincerely doubt Chambers was aiming at the latter, but she leaves us with an open-ended coming of age story.

 

Rob Weir