Ferron is one of my favorite singer-songwriters, and should be better known than she is. She’s a slightly intimidating topic because I worry that my summary will be too superficial, but I’m happy to attempt the introduction for people who don’t already know her, focusing on the title song of her album Shadows On A Dime
Some biographical information from wikipedia, some of which shows up in the song
Raised around Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, [Ferron] learned to play guitar at age 11, and left home at 15. Ferron attended Total Ed, an alternative high school in Vancouver, B.C., graduating in 1973. Of her earliest musical memories, she wrote, "my mother's French Canadian family played music. I heard guitars and banjo and accordion and scrub board and my grandfather clogging. I put it together...music meant fun, meant love and laughter. I started writing songs when I was 10, never saved them after some kids at school found them and teased me about it. I wrote songs and remembered them and when I forgot them I felt they were not important anymore. The next time I saved a song I was 18. It was 1970." It was with that first saved song that she made her professional debut in 1975, playing the song "Who Loses" at a benefit for the Women's Press Gang, a Vancouver-based feminist publishing house.
...
Shortly after two self-produced albums, Ferron (1977) and Ferron Backed Up (1978) ... 1980's Testimony was her first professionally produced album, originally distributed through Holly Near's Redwood Records label. Testimony brought her much interest in the United States, particularly in the women's music community. The title song became something of an anthem for many in the women's music community, was notably covered by Sweet Honey in the Rock, and was featured on the second season of The L Word, playing dramatically over the closing credits.
She’s working class, queer, stubborn, independent, only well known in certain circles, and writes music that connects with people.
“Shadows On A Dime” demonstrates her voice. It covers familiar territory; she’s on a train, thinking about her past. 15 years ago (about) she worked in a factory, 10 years ago she get her guitar, and 5 years ago she was in love, and all of that carried a weight:
But I don't forget about the factory
I don't expect this ride to always be
Can I give you what you want to see?
Can we do it one more time?
Ten years have worn this guitar down
Its ivory whites are now mustard brown
Its face bears cracks from every town
Still it resonates with age.
Where would I be without its ring?
Who would I be if I didn't sing?
Part of what makes it distinctive is the willingness to hold onto connect and still let go (a strength of her writing. There’s the memorable line in “Ain’t Life A Brook” from he prior album, “I know that love's a gift, I thought yours was mine / And something that I could keep” which says a lot), and that she’s not just looking inward.
And now a tired conductor passes by
He takes my ticket with a sigh
I don't think he meant to catch my eye
But he doesn't turn away.
He says "I have a daughter as old as you
And there's really nothing anyone else can do
Do you play guitar...well good for you
Me I play the violin"
I imagine him with his hair jet black
Does he hide his fiddle in the back?
For additional reading this is a good interview and career summary, and I should write another post about her 1994 album Driver.
One of Ferron's most evocative songs is 1994's "Girl on a Road". ...
She wrote it fast, waiting for her turn to soundcheck in Chicago. She found a junk room with an old desk that reminded her of her childhood. She remembers squeezing herself into the seat and the song poured out. Everybody she played it for later that night burst into tears. When they recorded the song, she asked everybody to pull back from any kind of flourish, to find the core beat and not embellish.
"Even now, just talking about it, my hair stands on end. I don't know what it is. It just killed us. Then we took it to the mastering guy and he cried. Nobody can say why they cried, we don't know why we're crying. Maybe we just hope that forgiveness actually can heal things."
The song has only one autobiographical line, Ferron says: "My momma was a waitress, my daddy was a truck driver/ the things that kept their power from them slowed me down a while."
"That was all I had to say about it," she says. "I couldn't believe that, but that was enough. That was the same thing I was asking from the [session] musicians: say it and don't embellish it. And so that fascinated me. The tenderness of forgiving, and identifying and forgiving. You can't forgive like a priest. No, you forgive because it is you that's forgiveness."
Same
Thank you for introducing me to Ferron. I wasn't familiar with her work before today!