Forgive me St. Frances, for I have sung...

I started playing my Ovation guitar and singing at open stages in Omaha when I was 18. By 19 I had my first gig—two little hippie chicks doing an acoustic duo in the “folk room” of a seedy bar in Council Bluffs. By age 24, I was singing in a folk duo with my ex, in a midtown hotel lounge, 5 nights a week. And I played and sang in duos, trios, or bands for the next 20 years or so. So music & me? We go waaay back.

Anyhoo, it’s the beginning of Spring Break here in Little Town, so Ray and I switched off our work minds and spent the weekend soaking up local music. On Friday night, we went to our favorite Little Town watering hole, where some of Ray’s band buddies have a standing Friday happy hour acoustic gig (check out the Public Domain Tune Band, missing their awesome bass player in this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJWunou64M8). These guys aren’t just fun, they’re virtuoso musicians. Then last night, Ray and I headed to the Big City to hear another stellar musical quartet (East of Westreville doing a Dennis Westphal song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Odm2-xKLI). These four friends play roots-ish stuff, with two guitars and string bass, and those spine-tingling tight harmonies.

I am SO grateful to know and to get to hear dozens of incredible, “undiscovered” musicians here on the prairie. But the weekend of music might also have been just a song or two too much. It’s left me in a pale blue haze I need to shake off—I think once you know how it feels to be doing it, it can break your heart just a little to only be watching it. So I’m lifting up a prayer to Saint Frances Gumm (Judy Garland), to help me over this tiny chasm and to ease me into my week-long celebration of spring…

ST. FRANCES GUMM

patron of girls who must sing

Saint Frances, sixteen lifetimes of loss

spilled from you in a voice too big to hold,

echoed in the hearts of girls lost on stage,

rainbows tattooed on scooped-out pelvis

or small of the back. Nailed each night

to a marquis, you lived on spoonfed hosts

dipped in sorrow and sweat, just enough

to keep you thin, hungry, dancing at the speed

of light. Swaddled in organza and sequins,

humiliated and adored, you paved us a golden road

into the starlight—you, with hips too big,

crooked mouth made perfect in grownup red,

full lips teasing a mic, stand-in for men

who urged you on, filled you to bursting

with fairy dust until broken glass at your throat

felt like a kiss. Saint Frances, bring the house lights down

to hide my trembling joy, keep me from back alleys,

the bottle, the temptation of dreamless sleep,

the bite of a mic’s metal on my teeth.

Bless me with songs like blood, songs

that pump and clench my heart like a fist,

songs that soothe this radiant net of nerves,

songs that pulse in my heelbones,

cradled in rubies and glitter,

clicking for all they’re worth.

(Amen.)