Welcome!

Photograph copyright Rob Amberg 2020. Photograph courtesy of the Photographer.

My mother started teaching me ballads in utero. No kidding. I would absolutely swear that I have known the words to ‘Little Margaret’ since before memory. Ballads, ballad singing, performing ballads, being on stage, and traveling all around the U.S.A. were such an intrinsic part of my life that I never stopped to think about how amazingly awesome and special it is to have such an ancient tradition as a birth right. Isn’t it funny that a secular, tiny little aspect of my culture became the very foundation that I have built my life on? Going to festivals and other performances with mother when I was young gave me the confidence to travel later in my life, opening my eyes to a great big world that my ancestors and the purveyors of this tradition would never have dreamed to be possible. Ballads created in me a deep love for a good story and honed my imagination. Ballads offered me the opportunity for many adventures and I have led an exciting life because of them.

However….you know what else? Like many others who are given things at birth that they never had to work for, I took the ballads for granted. I always thought of mother (who happened to be the strongest, coolest, most amazing female EVER) as infinite…and immortal…and as having shoes it would be impossible for me to fill. We have both been coasting through life, expecting that SOME DAY we would get together…SOME DAY I would get serious about wanting to learn the songs and stories for real…SOME DAY. Life happened and the daily grind happened and love, hate, birth, death, rebirth, marriage, divorce, sunrise, sunset, and all manner of other things happened and me learning the ballads went to the FAR back burner. Then, this past Christmas, mother and I had a moment, an actual telepathic connection, wherein we locked eyes from across a crowded room and, together, decided that it was finally SOME DAY. We started the conversation later as I walked her to her car.

Have you ever felt like when you are on the wrong path, the universe keeps putting barriers up so that every step feels like beating your face against the wall? But when you get on the right path, the universe keeps opening door after door and easing the way into the future? After we had that initial conversation, the doors flew open. How can we afford to spend so much time together? NCArts Grant is how. Where will we find the massive amounts of time to spend together given mother’s work schedule as well as my job which doesn’t slow down until December and cranks right back up in March? Covid-19 is how. NOT that Covid-19 is a good thing (duh) but for mother and me it has been somewhat of a ‘phoenix rising from the ashes’ type event.

So here I am, almost 50 years old, barely able to remember what I went to the refrigerator for, trying to learn a ton of new ballads and, even more frightening, trying to learn how to use technology (ETC) to assure that this tradition does not falter during my generation. Of COURSE my generation would have to deal with the internet, youtube, twitter (which I still don’t quite understand), Facebook, cameras in your phone, websites, links, and, for the love of GOD, computer code in order to have a viable tradition to pass on. Geez. I hope I am up to the task.

Please don’t forget…this is a work in progress! Thanks to my wonderful sister and brother-in-law, I am maybe not belly crawling through figuring out this website thing, but I am still sort of just stumbling along. My hope is that as time passes, this website will evolve into something I (and NCArts, of course) can be proud of!

For better or worse, welcome to my journey!