Acoustic Sunday Live! – Memphis Flyer

Maria Muldaur

Maria Muldaur is one of those perennial luminaries in the music world that we all too easily take for granted. But even though her biggest hit, “Midnight At the Oasis,” came out in 1973, she has consistently created a body of quality, genre-spanning work that has one foot in the past and one eye on the future. It’s no small feat, then, that the annual Acoustic Sunday Live! series was able to add her to its roster this year, along with several other Americana talents. As with last year’s show, all proceeds benefit the nonprofit Protect Our Aquifer, dedicated to warding off threats to the pristine quality of this city’s natural underground water supply. I caught up with Muldaur to see what she’s been up to lately, and it turns out that it’s been quite a lot.

Memphis Flyer: Is your stop in Memphis part of a tour, or is this a one-off thing?

Maria Muldaur: First of all, I’m always doing a lot of shows. I haven’t slowed down at all. I started the year with a Grammy nomination for my 41st album, and did a couple of tours this year. In the fall I was awarded the Americana Music Association’s Trailblazer Award. And so in that sense I am doing a lot of shows, most of the time, but my stop in Memphis is to do something very special: a benefit for the aquifer. And then I’ll be doing some Christmas shows with an amazing guitarist named John Jorgenson. I’m looking forward to that. And that closes out the year for me.

MF: I know the progressive community in Memphis appreciates you lending your voice to this cause. You’re no stranger to wedding your musical talent to a political vision.

MM: Well, first of all, environmental causes shouldn’t be just for progressive communities. These different environmental crises and situations we’re facing are things that concern all of us, as a human, or even an animal, on the planet. These are universal issues. But I’ve always really cared about the environment, and about social issues.

In 2008, I put out an album called Yes We Can!. After making almost forty albums, I was searching for a theme for the next one, and I thought about all the issues that were weighing on my heart and mind at the time. So I came up with the idea of doing a protest album. But I quickly realized after a few days that I had never really liked “protest music” that much when it was first coming out in the early 60s. I totally believed in the causes they were singing about, but the music itself seemed a little dreary and overly serious for me.

So over a couple of days, the idea morphed into doing a pro-peace album. And I used a lot of songs that soul and R&B artists had written and recorded in the late 60s and early 70s. So I switched my focus a little bit and put together some wonderful songs from that era, including three Bob Dylan songs, and also songs by Marvin Gaye and so forth. And I formed something called the Women’s Voices For Peace Choir which included Bonnie Raitt, Joan Baez, Jane Fonda, Odetta, Phoebe Snow, Holly Near, Jenni Muldaur, and others. I gathered up a bunch of women who had raised their voices in the cause of peace and social justice and the environment. Whether it was through singing or another medium. And anyway, we all got together and did that album. I always like to do songs that address those issues. As long as they’re full of spirit and good music. I guess I would call it protest music to dance to.

MF: And the song “Yes We Can, Can” is a perfect example of that. Was that recorded in New Orleans?

MM: No, it was recorded here in the San Francisco Bay Area. But I have recorded many albums in New Orleans, including my last one, which was my 41st album. That was called Don’t You Feel My Leg, and it was a tribute to a wonderful blues woman from New Orleans named Blue Lu Barker. And I did that with a band of all-star, killer players from down there. My music is very informed by New Orleans music. So I have a special connection with that. But the “Yes We Can, Can” song was written by Allen Toussaint, one of New Orleans’ greatest musicians and songwriters, so you weren’t far off on that one. We lost a good one when he left us.

I also did the song “War.” And three Bob Dylan songs, “Masters of War,” “License to Kill,” and “John Brown.” To think that he wrote two of those when he was but 21 years old is kind of amazing.

MF: The song “John Brown” was fairly obscure — something he recorded under the name Blind Boy Grunt, for the Broadside Ballads album back in 1963.

MM: Possibly, but I actually first heard it sung by the Staple Singers. I’m a huge fan of the Staple Singers. In fact, I’ve known Mavis and the family since 1962, before they even broke out. I used to go hear them in a little church in New Jersey. I grew up in New York City. So Mavis and I go way back. And of course Pops Staples sang that one. And it’s just a riveting, really powerful, poignant song. I wanted to definitely include that one.

MF: It sounds like you’re somewhat familiar with the Memphis Sand Aquifer.

MM: I don’t know too many of the details, but the minute I heard a little bit about it, I said ‘Sign me on.’ It’s one thing when people make stupid choices without knowing any better, but now we do know better and it’s just sad that we even have to make an issue of it. It should be, ‘Oh, is this threatening to cause damage to our water supply? Oh, of course then we won’t do it!’

MF: Who will you be performing with in your Memphis show?

MM: Well, this is part of Bruce Newman’s benefit that he does every year, Acoustic Sunday Live! He does a benefit every year in the form of a hootenanny. It’s what we used to call ‘open mic’ back in the 60s. So I’m gonna be onstage with all of the other performers, including Ruthie Foster, who I dearly love. She’s just wonderful. Guy Davis, a wonderful guitarist. And Don Flemons. And also Doug MacLeod. So we’ll all be sitting onstage together, each doing a couple of songs. And they all play guitar and can back themselves up, but I explained to Bruce that I don’t play guitar. So I’m bringing my piano player from my band, the Red Hot Bluesiana band.

Blues is where I’ve comfortably settled after taking a 56-year odyssey through various forms of American roots music. My keyboard player for over 26 years, Chris Barnes, is going to back me up, because I need someone to accompany me. And I think there’ll be some nice interaction between us artists. There may be some duets and this and that. It’s a very informal and intimate format, really, and I’m really looking forward to it.

I think we’ll have fun because we’re all kind of musically interrelated in the styles of music we do. It ought to be a fun and creative evening. And I just hope that the folks of Memphis will come out to support this really good cause. It’s something that affects all of them. Besides raising money, we have to raise awareness about this and make people ever more aware and ever more vigilant about issues that are directly impacting the health of their environment.

I don’t care what party you support, we all have to breathe and we all have to have clean air and water. That these kind of things should even be an issue means we’ve got a long way to go to catch up with a lot of the rest of the world. The rest of the world is waking up and placing more of a priority on cleaning up the environment and rehabilitating it. We need to do everything we can not to further damage the environment.

I love Memphis, the people, the culture, the music, not to mention the food of Memphis. And I actually built in an extra day on my trip so I could spend a whole day at the wonderful blues museum down there. And it’ll be a special treat to be up on the stage with my brothers and sisters. I hope everyone will turn out and make it a success. Amen!

Maria Muldaur appears at Acoustic Sunday Live! The Concert to Protect Our Aquifer, with Ruthie Foster, Dom Flemons, Guy Davis, and Doug MacLeod. Sunday, December 8th, First Congregational Church, 7 p.m. Proceeds go to Protect Our Aquifer. To purchase tickets, go to acousticsundaylive.eventive.org.

Nestled between Memphis’ many music festivals, Acoustic Sunday Live doesn’t always get much attention. But don’t let that lull you into indifference. For a quarter century, this labor of love has been bringing some serious talent to town, always to the benefit of local causes.

Bruce Newman, the founder and chief organizer of the series, describes its origins: “We started out about 24 years ago with a Woody Guthrie tribute. I had Richie Havens, Odetta, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Tom Paxton. And then, over the years, we’ve had Guy Clark, Gretchen Peters; last year, we did Kathy McCay and Tom Paxton again. Jonathan Edwards one year. Just acoustic artists.”

Joe del Tufo

Dave Bromberg

Each show in the series is a benefit for a different local institution. “It’s always for a cause,” Newman notes. “Like last year’s show at the Halloran Centre was for Indie Memphis.”

The artists tend to be of the ilk featured on Newman’s weekly radio show on WEVL, Folk Song Fiesta. And this year is no different, with this Sunday’s concert featuring Dave Bromberg, Tom Chapin, Shemekia Copeland, Bobby Rush, and John Kilzer. The beneficiary will be Protect Our Aquifer, a nonprofit “dedicated to protecting and conserving the Memphis Sand Aquifer,” the source of Memphis’ drinking water.

Newman notes that this year’s beneficiary is more “political” than most. “Even though,” he adds, “I don’t even see why it should be a political issue. It’s our water, right? This is an asset that just has to be protected. Doesn’t matter what side you’re on.”

One of Sunday’s star performers is Dave Bromberg, who’s no stranger to combining politics and music, being one of the most distinct voices to emerge from the New York folk scene of the 1960s. Still, that association doesn’t quite sit right with Bromberg. “I don’t know that I was ever really a folkie, past 1960, but I’ve always been accused of that,” he says. “The term is very limiting, because there are many radio stations who have decided that’s who I am.”

Ironically, Bromberg’s love of all things musical played a role in his leaving show business for an extended time. After writing and performing with the likes of George Harrison and Bob Dylan, among others, he notes, “I got really burnt out from performing too much. And at the point where I was really doing the most, and playing for the largest audiences, and getting the most radio play, I completely stopped playing for 22 years. All I knew was, when I wasn’t on the road, I wasn’t practicing, I wasn’t jamming, and I wasn’t writing. I questioned that and decided I didn’t wanna be one of these guys who drags himself onto the stage, doing a bitter imitation of what he used to love.” He changed course into work that he does to this day. “I decided I had to find another way to lead my life. What I wanted to learn was how to identify different violins. It’s like art appraisal. You have to recognize not only the brush strokes but the chisel strokes to really get an idea of what’s what.”

In recent years, Bromberg has eased back into recording and performing. Two years ago he released The Blues, the Whole Blues, and Nothing But the Blues, which, with its full-band, Chicago-style jams, should break the “folkie” tag once and for all. Yet he remains a master of solo performance and plans to play acoustic versions of many of the album’s tracks Sunday night. And as for the politics of our aquifer, Bromberg’s only too happy to support the cause. “The water thing is only now beginning to be important,” he notes. “It’s gonna get a lot more important. We’re almost over oil. But water, I don’t know if there’s a way past water.”

The Concert to Protect Our Aquifer, Sunday, December 9th, 7–10 p.m.,
St. John’s United Methodist Church, 1207 Peabody Ave.; Tickets, $50-$100.