Fifty musicians and composers made up the late Paste magazine’s list of the top 100 songwriters, essentially in the past 50 years. Published in 2006, this list came to my attention only a few days ago.
This is bound to drive just about anyone else crazy, because music is subjective to the core, which they firmly state in the opening article before the list. Their criteria was that those who selected “were encouraged to vote for the songwriters they treasured the most, not the ones with the highest sales, the biggest impact on culture or even the greatest influence on other songwriters.”
For me, I don’t capishe some of their choices, such as Patti Smith being No. 95 while Tom Petty is No. 29, or Allen Toussaint at No. 68 and then putting David Bowie at No. 16. Sure, there are some they got right (remember, this is my subjective opinion), like Michael Jackson down at No. 49, and Chuck Berry way up at No. 25 (though I would have put him much higher).
What I find most significant is the lack of artists on the list, such as Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, both of whom are still very alive. The Ramones could have been added, with Tommy and Marky still standing. Yeah, their songs were simplistic, but the music they wrote and produced was exciting, and they electrified the world. What about John Lydon, who wrote some incredible lyrics?
It is leaving out Ellie Greenwich, who died after the list was formulated, that is just criminal (for just a starters, she wrote or co-wrote ”Leader of the Pack,” "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry,” "Why Do Lovers Break Each Others' Hearts?" "Be My Baby," "Baby, I Love You," "Then He Kissed Me," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Not Too Young To Get Married," "Hanky Panky", "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", "Chapel of Love,” "I Wanna Love Him So Bad", “I Can Hear Music," "River Deep, Mountain High"… well, you get my drift? To me, it just shows sheer ignorance on those who chose.
Here is Paste’s top 10: 10. Prince 9. Joni Mitchell 8. Elvis Costello 7. Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys) 6. Leonard Cohen 5. Paul McCartney (The Beatles, Wings) 4. Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan 3. Bruce Springsteen 2. Neil Young (Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) 1. Bob Dylan
With the exception of No 5 (Paul McCartney above Lennon-McCartney, who aren’t even on the list? Ha!), I don’t really have a problem with it.
But the thing is, though, that nearly all of these listed are pretty major players, despite the “favorite” label. However, there are so many other musicians who are under the radar who consistently write incredible songs. For example (in no particular order) there is Mary Gatchell, Tamara Hey, Maria McKee, Ruth Gerson, Harriet Shock (who has won awards for her tunes), Margo Hennebach, Adrienne Jones, Anne Lorre, Carrie Catherine, Kim Delmhorst… Oh, there are so many others.
My guess is that Paste’s selectors of the list have never heard of many – if any – of these powerful songwriters, because of their lack of numerous chart hits. You may have noticed that all the ones I have selected are women. Why? Because the Paste list has only 11: Patti Smith, Victoria Williams (No. 89), Julie Miller (No. 73), Dolly Parton (No. 55), Aimee Mann (No. 54), Gillian Welch (No. 48), Loretta Lynn (42), Carole King (No 31; one ahead of Leiber & Stoller), Lucinda Williams (No 22), Patty Griffin (No. 19), and Joni Mitchell (No. 9). They all deserve to be there, but that’s only 11 percent.
These kinds of lists are bad ideas. They draw in the readers, sure, and it’s those numbers that drive the magazine biz, but most of them are insufficient and have wide gaps. It’s part of the reason I usually don’t do “Best Of the Year” articles. Personally, I believe that these “greatest ever” things are made up just to get people riled and write angry letters, which can then be published to show everyone, “Look! People read us!” Guess it didn’t help Paste though, as they can no longer be listed in the 100 best existing magazines.
This is the fifth part of a series of articles or interviews that have been published before in magazines that no longer exist. This one was originally published in Oculus Magazine, January/February 1995; an update follows.
Have you Ever Heard an Angel?
Mad Agnes: Margo Hennebach, Mark Saunders, Adrienne Jones
It was sunny when I traveled up to Cold Springs, New York. Woodstock II was happening just across the Hudson. The first Woodstock was a celebration of both rock and folk music. Since the second was only rock (if you want to call that rock), I went to the folk. I interviewed Margo Hennebach.
We sat on her porch having salad culled from her own garden and talked about her recent self-titled album, released on the 1-800-PRIME-CD label. As the interview officially started, Margo picked up her guitar and quietly strummed away (when not running off for the ringing phone). Playing music for relaxation is nothing new for her: she possesses a Masters in Music Therapy from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in England.
Margo Hennebach, 1994 Music was an early love for Margo, a native of Queens, New York. She is an accomplished pianist, guitarist, and vocalist, who has performed publicly since the age of seven. Classically trained, her attraction to the folk genre began while studying at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, where she became involved in a folk music club. “They were way into Celtic music,” she recalled. After moving to England for two years, she became further familiar with traditional songs by joining in the national pastime of hanging out in pubs. “I think I’ve always known how to sing it, I just didn’t realize it.”
Michaelean, 1996 Bringing her training to the traditional sounds brought further appreciation of its appeal: “It’s sort of wailing, and sort of crying and singing all at the same time. It’s interesting inflections with the voice that sometimes reaches high in the chest voice, sometimes in the head voice. Melodically, it seems very ornamented sometimes, but other times it seems very simple and pure. I also like harmonically moving in the modal areas. We might be going from a D chord to a C chord and back again. And I like the drive. I like the rhythm.”
Possessing an eclectic music background that includes classical, opera, Mariachi, and Tex-Mex, Margo is not tied down to one style of folk, which is evident in her CD. The songs are folk-based, but clearly there are outside influences evident in her work. “We’re still using this term ‘folk music,’ even though we’ve already pushed the envelope of what that actually means.” When asked if the category should be widened to include World Music, as it has at many folk festivals, Margo contemplates, “Sometimes, as songwriters, we like to call it contemporary acoustic music. I don’t think too much about what to call it; I just make it.” And make it she does. Her CD is an assortment of stories of life – some hers, some others.
Big Love, 1998 A somewhat introspective, bittersweet look at life, the collection contains some potential breakthrough pieces, such as “Have You Ever Seen an Angel,” thoughtfully about he loss of someone close, or “Winter Snows,” which examines a relationship from intimacy to break-up. “I like to say that there are not more happy love songs out there because when someone is happy and in love, they’re not in their boudoir writing songs,” Margo says with a big smile. “We just want to be happy when we’re happy. We don’t want to think about ‘what is the process of being happy?’ We just want to jump into someone’s arms. Whereas when we’ve broken up with someone, when we’ve lost someone close to us in our lives, that’s when it’s easier for us to contemplate. That’s a place that I find a lot of my material.”
Comfort and Joy The recording is overall very emotional. Stepping into the Western corner of folk, one song that stands out is “Fool’s Gold Paradise.” I tell Margo how touched I was by the lines, “I am grateful for you hands/I love them so/You know they understand/The sounding of my soul.” Actually, nearly all the songs stand out, which is quite impressive. I query Margo about her songwriting processes: “I’m not a facile writer,” she confesses. “So, to start to try to write some of those things that mean so much to me is like transforming this thing into words. Sometimes it doesn’t seem possible.” And just what makes a song a complete entity? “Bob Dylan sets a poem to music and sometimes the music is almost a little incidental to the words that he’s trying to say. For me, there needs to be like a marriage of the music and the words, otherwise I lose interest. Later in life I discovered that a song is a perfect art form: just to try to bring that sort of otherworldliness of the music to something very practical that has the kind of limitations of it that language has. The songs that I know that are what I consider perfect, I think that’s just incredible.”
One of those songs is covered on the CD, the lilting “Caledonia,” by Doug MacLean, which she recorded before hearing the original version. “I had heard Rod MacDonald perform it. I got some of the words sort of different from the original. I guess that is sort of the process. I float it a little more (than Doug); I make it a little more ethereal.
Live at UH, 2002 The whole process of folk music is based on an oral tradition, so many versions of the songs abound. Margo appreciates that. “In classical music…you would not think of altering a note. ‘This is how Mozart wrote it, this is how you play it.’ In the folk tradition…it’s only natural that things would get changed, like my version of ‘Caledonia.’ Some of the words are different because I learned that through the folk tradition, through someone else doing their rendition. Meanwhile, people are learning my rendition and that’s making them spin off other ways of singing it. You don’t know if that is getting further and further way from Dougie’s song, or in a way maybe it’s closer because it means that we all have a personal relationship with it. I find that really exciting. A different artist is going to make you see something a little different than others.”
Magic Hour, 2003 Margo has a personal philosophy about other performers’ and writers’ songs: “As an artist, I’ll never want to cover a tune the way I’ve heard it done. I’m too rebellious by nature. The only reason why I’d wanna cover it is that I can lend something else to it; I can really involve myself in it. Even if that means doing ‘Oh, Suzanna’ and sticking in a little whistling part.”
“Oh, Suzanna” is a reference to a performance by Madwomen in the Attic a few weeks before this interview at Maxwells, in her old neighborhood of Hoboken, New Jersey. Madwoman in the Attic is a trio consisting of Margo and two other Connecticut-based folkers, Diane Chodkowski and Adrienne Jones, who use the group to try out songs and to just have fun with folk “oldies” and newer covers (e.g., by Richard Schindel).
Who's Mad Agnes?, 2005 DVD With a solo album out, appearances on numerous compilation albums, and a new album due out early next year, Margo is happy to see folk music spread its wings. “The Hoboken people are now working on our second batch of tapes, albums and demos. The stakes are a little higher, so there’s a lot more attention and care. And I think the music is getting better and better all the time. I would love to see there be a movement, and it’s happening. Music is taking place all over, with people in their own backyards making music, opening up their homes and are bringing people in to have home concerts; sort of taking control of the music a little more. People are deciding, ‘Well, we don’t need to go to a club to make music. We’re just gonna do it ourselves.’ And eventually a community is formed and created around that. Then a coffeehouse exists and that moves perhaps to a theater. It keeps getting bigger and bigger as more and more people get drawn to it. I’m amazed at all these places I can go to, and people will hear music. They won’t know who I am, they won’t know any of the performers who come through, but they learn to trust that people come to their towns and make music for them. I think there’s going to be a maturity in the music that I already hear happening now. And I think that’s going to keep happening.”
Revenants, 2006 After our lunch and talk, Margo gives me a tour of an ancient cemetery and then directs me to the train. On the walk back, it starts to pour. Reassuringly, I was just as drenched as those at Woodstock II, except for me, it was in the name of folk. A good tradition.
* * *
Now: It’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen Margo play. In fact, I’ve had the pleasure to see all three members of her present trio, Mad Agnes, play in one form or another, but always with Margo as the center. Margo (vocals, piano, synth, guitars, bass) I’ve seen a few times solo, in Madwoman in the Attic with Adrienne Jones (vocals, guitars, bass), as mentioned above at Maxwells, and with her husband Mark Saunders (vocals, acoustic, electric and National steel guitars, mandolin, bass) at Fast Folk and the Sidewalk Café. I’m looking forward to seeing the Mad Agnes, who mixes folk and humor into a good-natured show.
DISCOGRAPHY MAD AGNES Revenants (2006-7) Who's Mad Agnes? DVD (2005) Magic Hour (2003) Live at UH (2002)
HENNEBACH & SAUNDERS Comfort & Joy (2000) PrimeCD Big Love (1998) PrimeCD
Currently living in Saskatoon (email at RBF55@msn.com for address). From 1977-88, I used to publish a print version of a music magazine in New York called FFanzeen, which dealt with the wide-ranging independent music scene. I also photographed many bands from the period (and since). Now I write this blog. And the beat goes on.
”One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor”
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