Gypsy Rover
I don’t remember how it came up, but the other day Ted and I were talking about The Womenfolk, my first girl-crush and a major musical influence. I threw out the comment “Gee, I suppose they’re all dead by now” and a few minutes later he was showing me a web page by my favorite womenfolk member, Leni Ashmore.
“There’s a post from earlier this year so I bet she’s still around” he said.
Well then.
I pulled up the contact page and I wrote her a letter. (This is a longer version of what I said)
Dear Leni
When I was 4 1/2, my aunt started to play her folk music records (Kingston Trio, Tommy Maken and the Clancey Brothers, etc) for me, with the result that ideas were put in my head. One day nothing would do but that my mother take me to Lazarus in downtown Columbus Ohio to hear a live concert by my favorites, The Womenfolk.
I remember being transfixed. Live music is always stimulating for a young kid, and all the guitars and harmonies really fixed in my neural network and set me vibrating like a tuning fork. And most of all, I remember you.
I was anxiously awaiting the song “500 miles” because it was my favorite (after The Great Silkey which you didn’t perform) so my mother leaned toward the group between numbers and called out, “How many more songs will you be doing?”
You turned to her, held up 3 fingers and said “Three”. You trilled your R!
I know- right? Of such small moments are lasting impressions made.
I thought you were beautiful and exotic. I loved your deep, rich voice. I wanted to look and sound just like you. I wanted to BE you! My family did a fair amount of singing, my mother and her sisters arguing over who had to sing melody for Sweet Violets or On Top of Old Smokey. Between that and singing church hymns next to my mother’s strong alto, singing harmony was in my blood.
As was folk music. I sat in my little rocking chair for hours listening to my one Womenfolk album, looking at your faces, learning all the parts, picking out your voice from among the layers. (To be fair- I did the same with my sister’s Beatles albums.)
Fast forward to college. I decided to study a brand new field: music therapy. For my audition to the School of Music I played the guitar and sang a folk song that I had written myself at age 14. They were… less than impressed; however, it must have been a slow year because I was admitted as a voice principle.
Pity my poor voice instructor. First he had to tell me that I was actually a soprano (aaaaugh!) and then radically change my musical diet. Folk music wasn’t considered real music at that school (well, they had only recently decided that Jazz was real) so he dragged me into the world of “Art Song” and operetta. I did my best.
One day he played for me a recording of the great operatic alto Leontyne Price and when it was done, said “I played that because I believe, if you would work harder, you could sound like that!”
I was shocked. I was touched. I was sad.
“Mr Zook” I said at last, “I know that was a great compliment. But I don’t want to sound like Leontyne Price!I want to sound like Leni Ashmore.”
We both soldiered on.
In the end I became a nurse, and a mother, and did a decade as the music director for a very small church where I was able to fully satisfy my need to sing harmony. My kids heard Little Rag Doll and The Great Silkey as I rocked them when they were sick and sang Rickety-Tickety-Tin and The Green Mountain Boys around campfires. Because folk music is not music to study- it’s the music you live.
Anyway.
Last month my dad turned 90. At his party we had a sing-along with me on guitar, my husband on ukelele and dad on his washboard (we’re an odd bunch). After we annoyed the neighbors by belting out my dad’s favorites like Darktown Strutter’s Ball, Shine On Harvest Moon, etc. one of my sisters said, “What about that ah-de-doo ah-de-doo-dah-day song?” So we closed the party with the Womenfolk version of The Whistling Gypsy Rover.
 All this is my very long-winded way of saying, from that scrawny girl back in 1964 to you today– thank you for so many years of music!
Tracy Meisky is a poet, writer, singer, songwriter and all-around boat rocker from way back. Feel free to look around, but if you break it, you bought it.