I went to Passaic Valley Regional High School in Little Falls, New Jersey in the years 1956 to 1959. I loved Little Falls, as a town and as a state of mind, as soon as we moved there the summer before I was fifteen. We had lived in kind of congested and slummy neighborhoods in the Oranges, and suddenly it was countryish and quiet and there was a tree house in the back yard. There was a back yard, for God's sake. I was used to intense city living and everyone here seemed so relaxed and welcoming, especially after nine years of Catholic school.

I loved Little Falls and I still do. Oh do I ever. I go there often when I'm playing New Jersey dates, and I walk the streets so familiar to me from youth, and so different and new at the same time. It is a big emotional trip. People are going who's that guy? If Little Falls was Uma Thurman I'd be on trial right now.

Like anything you're moved to love for a long time it doesn't give you quick emotional return. I mean I don't feel particularly embraced by that town, it's not like I actually am up to speed on anyone who lives there anymore, except for Fred Hoonhout, who lived two doors from me, was in my class at PVHS, and still lives in the same house. Tho I haven't seen Fred much, I'm happy to say that I do hang out a lot with my best friend from PVHS, Dave Jeffreys, but that's usually down the shore, which is all right with me. It seems like everyone else I knew in Little Falls has moved away, or died, or both. Or they're avoiding emotionally unstable tourists.

So I don't know what it is I love, really, it's just the idea of Little Falls maybe and the way things seemed to me then in those lovely years 56 to 59. Stephen King said today on the radio that he didn't relate to people who had a good time in high school Oh man I gotta say I had a great time in high school, once I got outta Seton Hall.

Kingston Trio web site

This was a time when the Kingston Trio were getting very large. I had started to play the guitar to learn some Harry Belafonte calypso songs and I remember a classmate saying I heard something on the radio that sounds like you. It was "Tom Dooley" by the Kingstons, whose first album I heard at my friend Buzzy Swithers' house. Bob Shane sang lead on that tune, and that was the beginning of hearing some new and really great songs done in this hip, cool, mysterious and infectious style that the Kingston Trio had right from the start. I hadn't heard those songs before so the Trio, along with Belafonte, embodied the romance of folk music for me. Well, acoustic music with guitars. And they harmonized like buttah, innately musical guys. I got crazy about them, learned every song. Had I known about the Weavers and Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie I would have heard a lot of those songs before, but I went directly from Elvis and doowop to Belafonte and the Kingston Trio. The Trio went down awful easy and I loved what they did with guitars and harmonies. I'd never heard sixths before, or Pete Seeger style banjo, or minor ninths, or "Santy Anno".

I knew I couldn't be Belafonte, he was so singular...it was like wanting to be Piaf or Brando or Elvis, kind of out of the question; but I wanted to be theTrio, that seemed almost possible. That was their gift, they were like college kids and they didn't play rock and roll and they were still cool. And they were the Little Falls soundtrack for me for those happiest of years. And Shane's voice, man: "Scotch and Soda", "They Call The Wind Mariah", the first and best recording of "It Was A Very Good Year". Bob Shane had the perfect voice. Hip, cool, and mysterious. You heard that voice and it was all over. So I know this is getting to be a long story but there's a point...I have used my lovely life in Little Falls to fuel and construct a fair amount of songs. One of those constructions started out to be about Fred Hoonhout and my sister Margaret, who dated for a nanosecond in high school. The song went where it wanted to go and it became "The Dutchman" which is probably my most well known song.

Bob Shane of the Kingston Trio has recorded "The Dutchman" on his very first ever solo CD and it's coming out momentarily and I've heard it and he does it so good, it makes me cry. It is the definitive recording of "The Dutchman" as far as I'm concerned, and "The Dutchman" is a Kingston Trio song at last, fifty years after I first heard the Trio at Buzzy Swithers' house. I am so happy and grateful for this and some of these days when I'm walkin the streets of Little Falls with Bob Shane's recording on headphones I'll drop a copy off at Fred's and when I go past the Swithers' house I'll wave to Buzzy, though Buzzy's been gone for quite a while.

Hey folks

I played a gig in Alaska...this was a big deal for me, as I get older I'm like less and less enthusiastic about going anywhere at all, but the same thing always happens (you'd think I'd get the picture by now): the first day of traveling is over and I'm absolutely thrilled to be on the road again. Just like the Willie Nelson tune. There's some kind of lightheartedness that takes over that's very hard to forecast the night before one leaves.

Well anyway I went to Juneau and it was not at all what I'd expected, I guess I thought it would be a metropolis and everyone would be like forget the Sargeant Preston stuff, we're modern now. But it really was very down home, like a small town, and there was a tremendous amount of snow everywhere and everyone a total rugged individualist in the best way. They really were the coolest people. The audience was very hip and got everything, the sound system person was so together, and man, the best tasting fish in the world. They were awful nice to me and I'd go back in a minute.

Selfish Giant was some experience, playing to kids. A world apart. When you get a whole bunch of little kids together they are their own little nation. I worked differently, didn't feel the need to be as (what?)...careful, maybe, or guarded as I might be with adults, and if someone wandered away in the middle of a song it wasn't the end of the world. Heck, if I wandered away it was cool. Blair Thomas and I performed together and it was edifying to watch him work. Kat Eggelston spelled me very ably while I was on the road.

I'm doing Selfish Giant one more time at the Old Town School on Sunday May 4th at noon with Blair, one show. This show was sponsored by The Children's Theater of Chicago. They were awful nice to me and I'd go back in a minute.

I saw my brother Leo in Portland, Oregon for about a second, he looked great and according to my sister Pat he's in a play in Salem as we speak, playing guitar and singing. I loved Seattle, a great used bookstore right down the street from the gig on Phinney, and meat loaf in a bar right up the street. Portland was fun, I also played Toledo, Oregon for the second time, it's a charming little town just short of the Pacific and the drive is beautiful and they put you up in this little seaside apt where it's really really quiet and you want to stay there for three weeks instead of overnight.

I was in LA and stayed with my friend James Lee Stanley, played at my friend Marie Kaufman's great house concert, went to Lakeside (hey Jimmy), Orange, (classy red wine and great pizza) and of course Tales from the Tavern), full house, did a filmed interview afterwards and said some things that surprised me, courtesy of that red red wine...I might have another live CD coming out with those folks. Came home and went on a diet (yeah I saw the interview).

All's well, can't complain, glad to be alive. OK bye.

Hi folks

Snow Queen 2.0 was a great experience for me, and I feel fortunate to be allied with Victory Gardens. The people there have been so encouraging and there's nothing like being able to rewrite and fix things. My favorite thing to do, I think. Snow Queen is almost perfect now, it seems to me. Just a few more little things gnaw at me, the solutions for which I'm sure will become apparent in the next couple of months.

I loved working with this ensemble of twelve so much that I'm going to do another adaptation of something by Andersen and use these same people, if they're willing. For me it's so much easier to write songs quickly when they're for a musical...it kind of takes away the burden of looking for subject matter.

Meanwhile I'm at Fitzgerald's in Berwyn on the 30th of January, with my friends Small Potatoes. There was an article in the Sun-Times about how Berwyn is getting to be the hip place to live. I just can't escape that voice of Svengoolie, you know what I mean? I love the sound system at Fitzgerald's (loud) and they give me free (well freeish) cabernet. The Fitzgeralds are lovely people. You're welcome to drop by, as for me they pay me to come and sing there so I can't refuse. Jeez, forty thousand dollars. For those kinds of gigs you practice. Then to the Northwest, Seattle, Bellingham, Portland, Juneau. JUNeau, Mr. Svengoolie says.

Right now, well not right now, but this week, I'm rehearsing with Blair Thomas and friends for a show to be presented soon at the Field Museum, sponsored by Chicago Children's Theatre. It's called The Selfish Giant and was written by Oscar Wilde and I have written and will perform a bunch of songs to tell the story w/ large puppets, Blair is known for that, he did the Snow Queen constructions.

I got crazy about Oscar Wilde when I was eighteen and looking for something to be crazy about other than the Kingston Trio. Oscar Wilde, Eugene O'Neill and Nietszche(sp?) [Ed: "Nietzsche"].  Now there's a folk group for ya. I used to read them under the pine trees on the beach at Pass-A-Grille and eat hot dogs. I had no ambitions at eighteen other than to do that, and I got away with it for quite a while.The pine trees are gone now (hurricane, I think) and they've modernized the beach a-plenty and it no longer seems like Wilde-O'Neill-Zarathustra territory, but I still love St. Pete and wish there was a place I could work there, other than that creepy Howard Johnson's that I worked at in college. I've still got a scar. I don't think I've ever gotten a scar at Fitzgerald's.

Well, we're sorry but it's time to go. In Detroit when you've had a good time hanging out with people you say: O.K. bye.

   Read the original Oscar Wilde short story The Selfish Giant.  (Opens new browser window.)