The Family Folk Machine presents “One Family” on Sunday, November 17 at 3:00 p.m. at the Englert Theatre

Circle of the Sun

The FFM first performed this Sally Rogers song in 2014. Associate Director Gayla had a good idea about how we could spruce it up for this year’s performance. The song reassures us that all the stages of life—birth, childhood, adulthood, and death—are part of the circles of sun, clouds, wind, and rain.

Let Her Learn

The FFM performed this beautiful song by Nicole Upchurch in 2017 with the Awful Purdies. Today we present the song with our own band. Nicole’s lyrics reflect many of the themes of this concert: giving birth, aging, leaning on the example of our elders, and the gift of finding “family” in those linked to us “not by blood, but by unity.”

Walkin’ Daddy

I love hearing Greg Brown sing this song, a warm tribute to his dad and also to the power of finding your purpose in community. “Ain’t no road a good road ’til it’s free to everyone.” “Ain’t no sorrow can dim the love come shinin’ through.” “I know what I am here to do: to be of use, try to help the deal along.”

Hidden Youth

Songwriter and Folk Machinist Susan Stamnes writes:
When I was young, I used to sit at holiday dinners and listen to the older folks talk about their surgeries, and aches and pains, and latest prescriptions and thought, hmmm, I’m not doing that when I get older. Fast forward, and here I am doing the same thing.

Aging hit me rather suddenly after I had chemotherapy for breast cancer at 42. The treatment itself was no big deal (and I’m fine), but it started a cascade of aging-related things that I wasn’t quite ready for.

I recently saw a meme that encapsulates this song. It was an old man looking in the mirror at a young man with the caption “The sad part about growing older is that no one can still see you are young inside.” I love the intergenerational aspect of Family Folk Machine. But we know each other as we are now. Can the kids see beyond the wrinkles to imagine what we older adults might have been like in years gone past? There are so many hidden layers to a person that we may not know.

Lyrics:
Time is falling. Age is pulling
Trying hard to keep up with the game.
Creaking, sagging, slowing, losing,
Yet inside I somehow feel the same.
Low and high times. Long time friendships.
Please forgive if I forget your name.

No going back. Nothing to be done.
Under the wrinkles, I feel young.
Can you see it? The inner truth?
Can you see it? The hidden youth.

Pills, appointments, support garments–
Dinner table talk involves them all.
Lists, reminders, lapsing memory–
Why was I just heading down the hall?
Biking, hiking. Fragile bones.
Alive means not afraid to fall.

Inside I still feel the same. Inside I still feel the same.

The Times They Are a-Changin’

The adults of the Folk Machine enjoy watching the kids of the Folk Machine grow in wisdom and stature through the years. We are fortunate to have a mighty group of junior-high kids in the FFM, and they present this song as a testimony to their readiness to face the problems of our time. And you need to get out of the way “if you can’t lend a hand.”

The Great Divide

When I first heard this beautiful and pointed song by Janis Ian, I already had Dylan’s “The Times” on my mind, so it seemed like a cosmic resonance that The Great Divide responds to the Dylan song in its images and rhetoric. “The Great Divide” takes Dylan’s “you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone,” runs with that watery image—”Step out of the water before you drown”—and indicts those who “turn a blind eye” or “follow like sheep.” “You whose silence cost your soul: learn to speak or dig your hole . . . The tide’s already risen, the deluge is at hand; don’t sit there by the ocean while it sucks away the sand, ’cause you’ll be left with nothin’ but the memory of land.”
The fact that Ian includes parent-child relationships in this song brings the activist side of the message into a real-life context. “Come, good people, and gather here, you who still hold freedom dear; step across the waters, bring your sons and daughters.”

Homeward Bound

Gayla Drake co-wrote this song with FFMer Jerry Partridge as part of last spring’s Family Folk Machine Shop, a songwriting workshop that continued the work of a songwriting class Gayla taught in the fall of 2018. “Homeward Bound” expands our perspective to consider the human family and the way we can bring that feeling of family into our interactions with friends and with strangers.

Lyrics:
In our humanity we all seek freedom
To make a start, broken hearts need healing
We cannot be blind to the ties that bind
That create one family in the great Divine
As the world turns ‘round, as the rains pour down
As the sunlight warms us, wherever we’re found
In this dimming light, grant us sacred sight
Bring us through the mystery, lead us through the night
Back to hallowed ground, lead us homeward bound

Every man I see, my father, my brother
Every woman I meet, my sister, my mother
Every precious child, my son, my daughter
And every elder, grandmother, grandfather
We’re blossoms and leaves on one old tree
More alike than different, despite what we see
We all have minds and hearts and eyes
Our hearts are the rhythm that gives us life
So let the drum beat pound, lead us homeward bound.

We’re blossoms and leaves on one old tree
Ancient and sacred, rooted in mystery
My father, my brother, my sister, my mother
My son, my daughter, grandmother, grandfather
All those lost are found, and we’re homeward bound

On Children

Ysaÿe Barnwell set this familiar poem by Kahlil Gibran as a four-part a cappella song, recorded by her group Sweet Honey in the Rock. Our small group of a cappella singers had a great time learning this one, and its message is one that our children would like us to keep in mind.

Little Disasters

Songwriter and Folk Machinist Aprille Clarke writes:

“Little Disasters” is a celebration and critique of our Midwestern “deal with it” attitude toward the daily onslaught of challenges and heartbreaks large and small. It started as a ballad in the Family Folk Machine Shop, and with feedback from fellow workshop participants, it evolved into something brighter and livelier. With lots of help from Jean’s and Gayla’s arrangement and orchestration, and the talents of the FFM singers and instrumentalists, it became even more exciting. I’m especially happy to have so many FFM kids involved as soloists and instrumentalists, as sharing music with my own children has been one of the best parts of our FFM experience. Big thanks to Denny, who sang the ABC song to future-Miles every day through my belly and who calmed that screaming baby down by singing it to him during the scary early minutes of Miles’s life mentioned in the first verse of the song. It’s a family effort, and it will be okay.

Lyrics:
The mother smiled as the baby screamed
And clamped his eyes shut against the light and
Gravity crushed him from all directions
And everyone said “congratulations.”

Okay, okay.

He bored a hole in the wall
And stuffed it full of marbles and ball bearings and peas.
And when they smashed that house down,
The wrecking ball kissed its little sisters.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.
That’s what they say, it’ll be okay.
Okay, okay, okay, okay.
Little disasters happen every day.

A man told a woman that all points in time
Exist simultaneously, and thus,
Our actions have no consequence.
And when she left him, she hoped he found solace in that.

Okay, okay.

Poorly considered decisions
Pie crust promises flake away at dawn.
She didn’t mean to chew him up.
She must be part velociraptor.

Stop being so sensitive.
These open wounds just court infection.
Stop begging for attention.
Best to let it scab on over.

Process is greater than product,
And what burns now will soon just be an ache.
Chin up, buckle up, grow up and throw up.
And hold the wheel tightly while you pump the brakes.

Abiyoyo

We know this story-song because of Pete Seeger. In the words of the liner notes to the Smithsonian’s Pete Seeger box set, “While Pete was researching songs from South Africa, he found a melody in the Xhosa language called ‘Abiyoyo.’ Pete learned the melody from a book that told how the song came from a story about a monster that could be vanquished if parents could cause the monster to dance and fall down. Pete used this to create a story for his own children.
“The song became not only one of Pete’s most frequently performed pieces, but also an award-winning children’s book. In many ways, it is a metaphor for the battles he himself fought: ‘Even though the townspeople scoffed at the boy’s music, it helped solve their troubles.’” Beloved Folk Machinist Ed Flaherty becomes “Grandpa Ed” in reading this story to the FFM kids, who respond with their ukuleles and voices.

Flower of the Universe

This lovely, mystical song by Sade was written for the soundtrack of 2018’s film version of “A Wrinkle in Time.”

Sweet Mama Angel

“Sweet Mama Angel” is an intensely beautiful song that FFMer Jeff Capps wrote in the year 2000, shortly after the death of his mother. Our arrangement pairs Jeff’s solo vocals with the full choir and Tara McGovern’s solo fiddle parts with a string quartet accompaniment in addition to the band.

You Are Not Alone

The emotionally direct lyrics and ambling groove of this song make it great, but I also love the fact that the commercial version is an intergenerational collaboration between songwriter Jeff Tweedy and singer Mavis Staples. The message of this song is a good one to carry into the holiday season, when many people feel loneliness resulting from societal pressure to have certain types of family formations or relationships. When you feel lonely, the song says, you’re not the only one: you’re not alone. “Every tear on every face tastes the same.” Thanks to the FFM cello choir for bringing out the beauty of the dark harmonies of this song.

Lovely Day

This Bill Withers song from the 1970s is a favorite of the choir. It’s such a happy song! Please sing along—I can almost guarantee it will improve your mood. “Then I look at you, and the world’s all right with me. Just one look at you, and I know it’s gonna be a lovely day.”

Community Music Column for the Iowa City Press-Citizen November 9, 2019
Family Folk Machine

by Jean Littlejohn

On Sunday, November 17, one hundred people will take the stage at the Englert Theatre for the extravaganza known as the Family Folk Machine’s fall concert, “One Family.” The show begins at 3:00 p.m. and will feature singers of all ages, our spectacular band, a cello choir, and a 10-piece wind band. We hope you can join us in the audience! The concert is free, although we will be very happy to accept donations to sustain our work.
We’ve had a fun and productive fall session, with musical growth popping out in all directions. The Folk Machine was honored to receive a grant from the Community Foundation of Johnson County to fund our Youth Ukulele Project. With the grant, we were able to purchase ukuleles and accessories that Associate Director Nicole Upchurch has been using in our kids’ programming. We had already witnessed the way learning to play the ukulele can support kids in writing songs. With this new equipment, all the FFM kids can have access to an instrument.
Some of the kids will play ukulele in our November concert. Others have been playing during kids’ time at rehearsals, following their own interests by learning folk songs that appeal to them. Several kids sang and played ukuleles at our FFM Open Mic a few weeks ago. It’s a privilege to witness kids growing into their musical abilities and progressively taking more ownership of their music-making.
The November 17 FFM concert will sparkle due to five original songs in the program, plus another Iowa City song. The Folk Machine loves local legend Greg Brown, and we will perform his “Walkin’ Daddy” on this concert. In the August FFM Community Music column, I introduced Aprille Clarke’s “Little Disasters,” Susan Stamnes’s “Hidden Youth,” Nicole Upchurch’s “Let Her Learn,” and “Homeward Bound,” by Gayla Drake and Jerry Partridge. The fifth original song on our program is called “Sweet Mama Angel,” and it was written by Jeffrey C. Capps. Jeff has performed this song around Iowa City with his bandmate Tara McGovern, the wonderful fiddler whom the FFM band is lucky to claim as well. “Sweet Mama Angel” is an intensely beautiful song that Jeff wrote shortly after the death of his mother. Our arrangement pairs Jeff’s solo vocals with the full choir and Tara’s solo fiddle parts with a string quartet accompaniment in addition to the band.
More information will be coming soon about the Spring 2020 session of the Family Folk Machine: “One Planet,” a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day. Rehearsals will begin January 12. In the meantime, hope to see you at our November 17 concert!
If you’d like to learn more about the Family Folk Machine, please visit familyfolkmachine.org or send an e-mail to jean@familyfolkmachine.org.

Thinking about donating to the Family Folk Machine online? The Community Foundation of Johnson County is matching gifts on Wednesday, November 13 for their first-ever
GREAT GIVE DAY.
Here’s how it works:
1. On Wednesday, November 13, starting at midnight, you can go to the Community Foundation’s Great Give Day site to enter a donation to the Family Folk Machine.
2. The Community Foundation will cover all fees for online donations to Johnson County non-profits that day, so 100% of your donation will go straight to the Family Folk Machine.
3. The CFJC will match donations up to $1,000 per donor and $2,500 per organization, up through the first $25,000 donated.
4. Gifts can also be made in person at 501 12th Ave. in Coralville or over the phone at (319) 337–0483.

Thanks for your support of the Family Folk Machine!

Dear friend,

I’m reaching out to you today on behalf of the Family Folk Machine. The FFM has been building community and training kids and adults to reach their musical potential by presenting heartwarming concerts for nearly seven years. We are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and we are seeking financial support in order to sustain the growth of our mission and activities into the future. 

I’m hoping you can support us with a donation of any size. We accept anyone who wants to sing with the choir regardless of ability to pay, and we keep fees low for all our members. Support from our community helps us to continue this part of our mission while also growing in creative new directions.

Please support the Family Folk Machine today by following this secure link. Or take advantage of the opportunity for a matching donation from the Community Foundation of Johnson County by donating on the CFJC’s Great Give Day, November 13 (details below). 

Hope to see you at our fall concert, “One Family,” on Sunday, November 17, at 3 p.m. at the Englert Theatre! Thanks for your support of the Family Folk Machine.

Yours in community,

Jean Littlejohn
Artistic and Executive Director, Family Folk Machine

The Community Foundation of Johnson County is matching gifts on Wednesday, November 13 for their first-ever

GREAT GIVE DAY.

 Here’s how it works:

On Wednesday, November 13, starting at midnight, you can go to the Community Foundation’s website, cfjc.org, and follow the Great Give Day links to enter a donation to the Family Folk Machine. 
The Community Foundation will cover all fees for online donations to Johnson County non-profits that day, so 100% of your donation will go straight to the Family Folk Machine.
The CFJC will match donations up to $1,000 per donor and $2,500 per organization, up through the first $25,000 donated. 
Gifts can also be made in person at 501 12th Ave. in Coralville or over the phone at (319) 337–0483.

Fall session FFM rehearsals begin Sunday, August 18! Before rehearsal, we’ll host a session for newcomers (and recent-comers) called Introduction to the Machine. It’s our hope that attending this session will make it easier to jump in to FFM rehearsals. We’ll meet at the Senior Center in downtown Iowa City at 1:30 for the Intro session, before our 3:00 rehearsal.

The Family Folk Machine will be busy with pop-up performances through the month of June!

June 1: The FFM kids perform at Arts Fest on the Family Stage
This performance will include some of the original songs the kids wrote under the guidance of FFM Associate Director Nicole Upchurch this spring.

June 8: FFM set at the Longfellow Front Porch Music Festival
Our monthly Community Sing-Along will also take places at the Festival, along with many other fine performances.

June 17: FFM sings for Stories in the Park at Willow Creek Park, 10 am
Join us for this program of the Iowa City Public Library.

Many Voices/One Voice: We Are One Community

This collection of songs surrounds us with reflections on human togetherness. We join together, we work together, we get together with one another. We don’t live in isolation, and we all know that our world will improve if we learn how to live and work together more harmoniously. These songs offer some suggestions: “I feel glad and you feel good; we brighten up our neighborhood” when we greet the people we encounter and when we “say hello to a beloved stranger”; “Use your democratic power for the good of somebody else”; “Make this land a better land … reach your hand to another hand, with the kindness that you give.”

The singers of the Family Folk Machine answer the call to Join Together with the band. Pete Townsend’s lyrics in this familiar song emphasize that we’re joining together even though we’re all different: we don’t move in any particular direction, we don’t eat or wear the same things—“there’s a million ways to laugh, and every one’s a path.” “It’s the biggest band you’ll find; it’s as deep as it is wide.” Join us by singing along.

The FFM kids sing Fred Rogers’s beloved Won’t You Be My Neighbor? with the FFM ukulele ensemble, and they follow it up with the original song Say Hello. Say Hello was first written by students at Prairie Green School, where FFM Associate Director Nicole Upchurch teaches and will soon be co-director. Say Hello is a beautiful song about openness to the new things, places, and people we encounter in life. Nicole brought the song to the FFM kids, and they wrote two additional verses based on their own experiences and ideas.

One of our three-generation FFM families presents the Woody Guthrie song Howjadoo. It’s a joyful tune about the benefits of being friendly to the people we come across in our daily lives. There’s an instrumental break in this song during which you’re invited to shake hands with the people around you.

Ruth Pelham’s song Turning of the World expresses a resolve to improve the world we live in. “Let us sing this song for the turning of the world, that we may turn as one. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along; and our lives will feel the echoes of our turning.” Other verses simply substitute another action for turning: healing, dreaming, loving. Join in and sing along!

Anywhere is an uplifting song by the Seattle-based, Kenyan-born singer-songwriter Naomi Wachira. The song points us toward the things all humans have in common: “We breathe the same air, we bask in the same sun, we sleep under the same moon. And the rain that falls on the ground, it’s the same, anywhere you go. And even though we live in different parts of the world, we all began the same way. And even though we believe in different things, we’re somehow the same.” On her website, Wachira writes, “I know we are certainly living in dark times, but I hope that we will all find the courage to be light in whatever way we’ve been gifted… that we will seek to understand those who are different from us and find ways to both acknowledge and celebrate our differences and similarities.”

Lady of the Harbor considers one of our most potent national symbols, the Statue of Liberty, and the distance between the ideals she represents and our country’s approach to immigrants and refugees. “Will the dream survive the strain? Shine on, Lady of the Harbor.”

De Colores is the oldest song on today’s program, commonly sung throughout the Americas since perhaps the 16th century, with a melody that probably came over from Spain. In the twentieth century it was a favorite song of the United Farm Workers for rallies and meetings. The song depicts the coming of spring to the countryside and the beautiful colors of the plants and birds. It celebrates the beauty of diversity and the bonds of affection between generations, as in the second verse we hear in turn from the roosters, the hens, and the little chicks.

You might know the song Yes We Can Can as the Pointer Sisters’ 1973 hit. Composer Allen Toussaint is from New Orleans, and his recorded version of the song appeared on a 2005 Hurricane Katrina benefit album. From an inspiring 2015 obituary for Toussaint, here is Jack Hamilton writing for Slate: “A song about changing the world has never sounded so intimate, so inviting, so irrefutable.” It is a “politically upright, irrepressibly exuberant American song.” The song features “one of the greatest choruses ever written: ‘Oh yes we can I know we can can yes we can can why can’t we if we want to yes we can can,’ followed by ‘oh yes we can I know we can can yes we can great gosh almighty yes we can I know we can can.’ On the page those words look like Gertrude Stein scribbling an inspirational poster; in the mouth of a great singer they’re nothing short of magical, sliding and skipping in between beats, dancing on lips and tongue, language reimagined as groove.” Give it a try and sing it with us.

City High ninth-graders Alice Boerner and Callista Robertson wrote Silence without Sound last fall in an FFM songwriting class with Associate Director Gayla Drake. The song expresses the idea of using our voices to bring our thoughts to life. The older FFM kids support Alice and Callista in singing the verses to highlight the theme of coming of age and learning to speak out.

The Wailin’ Jennys song One Voice is a beautiful encapsulation of the idea that a group of singers is a model for community. There is one voice, there are two, there are three voices, and then there are all of us, and that is still one voice. “One people, one voice, a song for every one of us.” How do we build that community? “Love, and the will to trust.” We are very pleased to feature our first-ever FFM intergenerational cello choir in the arrangement of this song.

Let’s Work Together is a fun 1970 hit blues tune by Wilbert Harrison, later recorded by Canned Heat. The lyrics encourage us to stick together when things get hard or go wrong. “Make someone happy, make someone smile; let’s all work together and make life worthwhile.”

The British band Field Music released Count It Up in 2018. With its stark delivery and retro-pop style, the song challenges us to think about the advantages we’ve had in our lives to propel us to use our power to make things better for other people. For many of us, the lyrics hit us where we live: “If you can go through day to day without the fear of violence, count that up. If your body makes some kind of sense to you, count that up. If you can turn on the tap and your kids can drink the water, count that up. And use the breath you have left to say something that matters.” Or sing something that matters, I’d add.

Knockin’ on Your Screen Door was on John Prine’s 2018 release, Tree of Forgiveness. What is our responsibility to our neighbors who don’t have any “loose change just hangin’ around” and could use some help? “I’m thinking it’s your business, but you don’t got to answer; I’m knockin’ on your screen door in the summertime.”

Sly and the Family Stone’s Everybody Is a Star celebrates the light we share with each other. “Everybody is a star—I can feel it when you shine on me. I love you for who you are, not for who you think you need to be. Everybody is a star, one big circle going ‘round and ‘round.” Shine, shine, shine. The Machine is proud to feature our first-ever horn section on this tune.

We end the concert with the John Lennon classic Instant Karma. In his light-hearted way, Lennon prods us to think of ourselves as part of the wide human community. “What in the world are you thinking of, laughing in the face of love? You’d better get yourself together, darlin’, join the human race. Why in the world are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear.” We need your voice with us at the end: Well, we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars and the sun.

This article appeared in the February 2 edition of the Press-Citizen.

The Family Folk Machine is pleased to present a benefit concert for Chapter 161 of the Veterans for Peace on Sunday, February 17, at 3 p.m. in the beautiful new building of the Unitarian Universalist Society on Oakdale Road in Coralville. We hope you can join us to support a great local cause and to sing along with some familiar peace and social justice songs while learning a few new ones.

The Family Folk Machine will perform May 11 at the Englert.
The Family Folk Machine will perform May 11 at the Englert. (Photo: Contributed photo)
The local chapter of the Veterans for Peace is one of the organizations that serves as the conscience of our community. As individuals and as a collective, the members of VFP keep our attention on our government’s war-making and urge us all to work for peace. They write letters, they bring in notable peacemakers to give public lectures, they bring traveling exhibits to our libraries, and they have hosted a weekly rally for peace for many years now. Ed Flaherty, one of the local leaders of VFP, introduced me to a new way of thinking when I heard him say that it is not enough to hate war—we have to learn how to wage peace. The VFP are actively engaged in waging peace, and they call the rest of us to think about what we are doing to increase the cause of peace in our world.

In this benefit concert, the FFM would like to introduce you to some songs you can use in your own efforts to wage peace. We’re happy to be highlighting three songs by local artists in this concert. One is a new song called “Presidents’ Day” by Folk Machinist Gayla Drake. The song was inspired by the walk-out of Iowa City schoolkids last February in response to incidents of gun violence. We will bring back the Awful Purdies’ song “Lament to Apathy,” which we were honored to perform with the Awful Purdies two years ago. And we’ll present a choir version of the 2017 song by Iris Dement called “We Won’t Keep Quiet,” for which you can find a beautiful video on YouTube featuring lots of Iowa Citians.

Along with these newer songs, we’ll sing classics like “If I Had a Hammer,” “Down by the Riverside,” and Bob Dylan’s “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” We hope you can join us for uplifting songs supporting a good local cause. We’re suggesting a $10 donation at the door, and I’m sure the VFP would be pleased to accept larger donations as well.

We’ve started work on the songs for our spring FFM session, “Many Voices/One Voice: We Are One Community.” We’ll present a concert at the Englert Theatre on Saturday, May 11, at 2 p.m. We’re excited to be learning a wide variety of challenging music for this concert about neighborliness, unity, and our community responsibilities. We’d love to see you on February 17 and on May 11!

Jean Littlejohn lives with her family in Iowa City and directs the Family Folk Machine.