Noel and his daughter Kate visited on Friday, and Noel was able to share a preview from his upcoming autobiography (!). A day of memories, presence, tears of gratitude and acknowledgement of all these years of brotherhood and adventure. We are all so grateful to be surrounded by the sweetness of family that spans the generations.
The magic dragon is drinking chicken broth and eating red watermelon hearts and slowly absorbing all the prayers, kindness and care flowing in his direction. thank you so much everyone. and thank you for the stories and videos of the children singing and sending the bright energy of their pure, sweetest love. Don't stop singing! Never stop singing! 🙏❤️
1.7 About the Break of Day
⏰Flashback: Greenwich Village, 1961
“Noel? It's Mary . . .”
I'm surprised by the call. I think maybe it's the first time Mary Travers and I have actually spoken over the phone—with me working at the Gaslight six nights a week and her living just across the street on MacDougal, we pretty much see each other all the time anyway.
“Are you busy?” she asks.
It's around noon and I’m hoping to do some more reconstruction in this apartment. It's a five-flight walk up on the lower east side, and the internal walls have been torn out by a previous tenant. As radical as that sounds, I kind of like it. More like a loft and less like a cramped three room apartment. I've just finished building a wooden bench attached to a desk near the entryway. As I have done in other apartments, I have set up a bed on top of the bureau; this time I have framed it out with two-by-fours so that I can have some storage area underneath. Still, there's so much more work to do. I haven't got the nerve or the tools to handle the leaking ceiling of the bathroom. Besides that's not my problem anyway, is it?! Well, it turns out that it is - if you have to deal with water pouring on your head every time someone flushes the toilet in the apartment above.
“Uh . . . just working on the apartment.”
I'm thinking I “could” be busy—maybe even “should” be busy—but Mary has been a good friend to me ever since those first nights at the Gaslight, laughing and applauding when I did my comedy stuff and, despite single-parenting a daughter and working days at the Rienzi Cafe, taking me to the Italian Street Fair and introducing me to many of the locals whose families fill most of the floors above the coffee house.
“Oh,” I hear a hesitation in her voice.
“No . . . What’s up?” I volunteer.
“There's this guy that dropped by.” She continues, “He plays guitar and we got to singing and I was wondering if we could come over and . . .”
I'm suspecting that I will not be going to do much more reconstructing today.
But hey, what the heck . . . it’s Mary. And, aside from singing “Lloyd George” with all the other Gaslight performers at the end of each night, I haven't really sung with other people since the Birds of Paradise in high school!
“Sure. You know how to get here? It's 629 East Fifth Street, between Avenue B and C.”
I hear her talking to somebody in the background.
“We're gonna take a cab. Be right over! Bye.”
“Uh, ok . . . see ya soon!”
Though it usually takes me 30 minutes to walk down Houston street to the Gaslight, I realize that by cab they'll probably be here in 10 minutes or so. Gads, the place is a mess. Forget the dust, I mean there are newspapers scattered all over the floor, a saw leaning against the refrigerator, empty glasses on the desk and an empty pizza box on the bookcase . . . . I gotta get this place cleaned up.
But wait, it's all about the music, right? Forget the clean-up, when was the last time I changed strings on my guitar? Where’d I put that capo?
I manage to organize some of the chaos, and sure enough, within minutes there’s a knock on the door. I walk down the long freshly painted black corridor with a translucent ceiling I've made out of a roll of clear plastic floor matting and open the door.
“Noel, this is the guy I was telling you about. Peter, this is Noel.” Mary breezes on through, and I shake hands with a man about my age in a checkered shirt and baggy corduroy pants. There’s a guitar case in his hands.
“Uh, come on in.” I motion down the hall.
“Nice ceiling,” he says as he looks up and smiles. We both walk through the narrow passage, arriving at the closest thing I've got to a living room. At least there's a lot of open space.
“Peter is managed by Albert Grossman,” Mary explains by way of introduction. There's a moment of name recognition and over the course of a few minutes, Peter confesses that his visit to Mary was not coincidental. Walking with Albert through Izzy Young's Folklore Center, he had seen a picture of her and was told that she had a strong voice and might be interested in becoming part of a group that Albert had envisioned creating.
Years later, when retelling the story, Peter speaks of pointing to Mary’s photo and Albert responding, “She’d be good if you could get her to work.” I’m still unsure if that meant “if she’d agree” or “if you can manage to talk her into being responsible,” but I suspect that since she was a single parent raising a child, it was probably more about her availability than her work ethic.
Nonetheless, somewhere in the back of my mind a bell rings. I don't volunteer that I've already had a conversation with Albert about not wanting to give up my independence by joining a group. But when Peter suggests we sing something to hear how our voices might sound together, I'm curious enough to let the process unfold on its own.
“So, what shall we sing?” asks Peter, looking to Mary for suggestions.
Mary remembers that she's heard me sing “The Golden Vanity.” So we start the song in C major. But before we reach the second line, it becomes obvious that we've learned different and irreconcilable versions. Neither the lyrics nor the melody are the same, the chords clash miserably, and well . . . so how about “Old Dog Blue”?
“Uh, I've heard it but I really don't know it very well,” I say.
And, over the course of the next few frustrating attempts to find a version of a song that all three of us know we finally, and somewhat resignedly, settle on the children’s song “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
But here's where the magic starts:
“Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb . . . .”
Mary is singing the melody, I’m singing a baritone line under, and Peter naturally gravitates toward a tenor harmony on top. It sounds pretty good. I mean it sounds like we've been singing together for a lot longer than these past twenty minutes.
“Mary had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow . . . .”
“Ok, so let's change keys, and Noel you sing the lead,” says Peter. I start off, Peter joins a third above, and Mary, who's sung in folk choruses for at least half her life, finds an alto part that is similar to the baritone line I sang previously, but because she's an octave higher it produces a totally different color.
Hey, this sounds amazing!
“And everywhere that Mary went, Mary went, Mary went . . . .”
We change the key again. This time Peter takes the melody. Mary and I find our range, and we're kind of jazzed—the sound seems so rich, so full and sweet.
“Everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.”
By the end of an hour, we're comfortable enough with each other and pleased with what we've been able to pull together so quickly and naturally, that when Peter suggests that we at least “explore” the opportunity of singing together as a group, I agree to meet the two of them at Mary's apartment over the next several weeks to create some arrangements.
Part of me is internally holding onto some “personal space.” But I mean, what could it hurt just to throw together some songs as a kind of audition for Albert. Who knows? It's 1960. This is Greenwich Village. Like Mary says, “Everybody who works in the village has to have a project.”
“Where's the bathroom?” Peter asks.
