Louise Mosrie, guitar in hand, looked into the camera at the virtual audience assembled before her Thursday evening. “I wish we could all be together,” she said. “When we see each other again, I hope it’ll be like we haven’t missed any time at all.” She then launched into the first song of her set, “Home” — “because we’ve all spent a lot of time at home,” she said.
Thursday marked the second evening of CT Folk’s annual festival — usually held in Edgerton Park over the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, but this year, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, held virtually for four days. Wednesday’s opening night had featured Crys Matthews and Bumper Jacksons. Friday’s evening show will feature John John Brown, Diana Alvarez, GoldenOak, Monica Rizzio, and Lilo & Anina Gonzalez. Saturday will bring Phat A$tronaut, Buffalo Rose, Among The Acres, Dom Flemons, and Ruthie Foster, as well as a virtual ride through the Green Expo, including Cyril the Sorcerer, Musical Folk, Full of Joy Yoga, Save the Sound, Bringthehoopla, Infinite Roots Drumming, New Britain Roots, and a musical performance from Thabisa. (Visit CT Folk’s website or Facebook page for more information.)
Thursday evening’s set, however, featured performances from the winners of the 2020 Grassy Hill Songwriting Competition: Randy Emmons, The Promise is Hope, Peter Lehndorff, Kim Moberg, and Louise Mosrie. With each act beaming in their songs and voices from wherever they were at home, and an audience of at least 60 congregating online to join them, the night was one of songs, storytelling, dealing with grief, and reaching toward hope.
“Hi, I’m Randy Emmons and it’s my pleasure to play some of my songs for you tonight.” So Emmons began his set of songs featuring his cascading, deftly performed guitar playing, serving songs both heartfelt and humorous. His first song was an ode to improvement (“Today I will do better / and never give up again / today’s the day I’ll get it together / and I’ll never give up again”), but for his second song, he revealed that he had driven an ambulance in Hartford for few year after college.
“I got to deliver a baby, save a few lives, and meet some extraordinary people,” he said. One such person was a man named John Shea, who Emmons wrote a song about. “Ambulance driving was never a bore / especially the day that he ripped off the door,” Emmons sang, before settling into songs about drinking far too much — or was it just enough? — with Shea when they weren’t working. “We’re lucky to have John Shea,” he sang.
Another song about his wife cherished the length and strength of their relationship. “Kiss me again / I want to feel what I felt when you kissed me back then,” he said. “Kiss me again / I know this could be even better than it’s ever been.” In another song, Emmons contemplated his own mortality (“When I go / I hope you’ll be okay / When I go / I hope it’s not today / When I go / I hope they say I went out in style.”) even as he considered himself satisfied, at the age of 59, with where life had taken him; he was “ready to let the new generation take over, and hope they can straighten this mess out,” he said. “That’s it. Thanks for listening. Stay safe out there.”
The comments section rapidly filled as Emmons played. “Randy, killing it on the finger picking!” wrote Len Seligman. Sue Hill declared his song “beautiful.” Jeff Wiersma loved the sound of Emmons’s classical guitar. “First time hearing Randy,” wrote Ric Allendorf. “My kind of player!”
“Thank you folks, it’s been an honor!” Emmons wrote back.
The Promise Is Hope — duo Ashley and Eric L’Esperance — began their lush, intricate set with a song, “Until My Heart Grows Quiet,” that managed to make both the Connecticut River and I‑95 feel poetic, as Ashley revealed that she had grown up in southern Connecticut. “And I’ll follow the river every mile / Been running from something since I was child / But it brought me to you so I’ll stay here a while,” they sang together. “And with you I’ll run until my heart grows quiet.”
The duo had been busy writing and releasing material all during quarantine, and had gotten into the swing of doing online shows. However, Ashley said, “it’s been six months, but we’re still getting used to no applause after songs.” They followed up with a song about being a touring musician “and how much we love that it’s our job,” Ashley said. The song entertained the idea that maybe they would become famous, and “maybe I’ll have children and I write them lullabies,” Ashley sang. “Either way I’ll do this ‘till I die.”
“I miss the road,” Eric said at the end of the song.
Toward the end of the set, Ashley thanked thanked the audience for their ongoing support of the music scene, “keeping it alive and keeping it healthy,” she said. “You’re part of what’s making it work and making it survive, and we’re super-grateful for that.”
“They sing so well together,” observed Kevin Casini from the comments section. “Very nice! Hi from Tucson AZ!” and Mare Pagel. Ellen Rubin had just tuned in; “Exquisite,” she said. Emmons, who stuck around after his set, wrote: “Gorgeous! Really great!” As soon as the duo was done, The Promise Is Hope replied: “Thank you so much! We loved your set, too!”
Peter Lehndorff‘s first song, he said, was written “a couple years after my wife had passed away.” It was about “moving forward while trying to remember what was in the past.” In a simple, straightforward style, he told a story that managed to be strong yet heartwrenching. “I still have your old hound / Every day he walks in to see if you’re around,” he sang. “I’ve got a sense of humor / I’ve got a bunch of friends / I’m easygoing / but sometimes it just depends.”
“Well, now we’re crying,” The Promise is Hope wrote. “Beautiful,” wrote Emmons.
Lehndorff then switched it up with “Marriage of Convenience,” a song about two people named Heather and Billy who work at a Cumberland Farms and a 7 – 11. They eye each other for a while until one day a would-be robber threatens Billy. Heather knocks out the intruder with a frozen burrito, and the couple finally get together.
“Peter, you are one of a kind. So good!” wrote Allendorf.
Lehndorff returned to his wife’s illness with “The Huntington’s Waltz,” a song that married a simple melody with searching lyrics to talk with brutal honesty about how Huntington’s disease can ravage an entire family, as it is carried in the genes and can take out family members one at a time. “A tickling time bomb began to go off,” he sang, “and we all started dancing the Huntington’s waltz.”
His final song, “Love on the Line,” returned to genuinely humorous territory about a long-distance relationship that, he mused, seemed suddenly to fit our current reality of Zoom meetings and FaceTime.
“Well we’ve been married for a year or two / People think it’s strange that we’ve never met,” he sang. He gave the details of a virtual wedding where no one was in the same place. “The honeymoon was awesome,” he sang. “We faxed until dawn.” He ended it with a cheeky quote from the usual wedding march.
“So proud to have had Peter as one of our featured performers at Pirate Camp Falcon Ridge 2019. Looking forward to 2021,” wrote Stuart Kabak in the comments. “Great set, Peter. Also super at Philadelphia Folk,” wrote Ralph Carson.
With fine, rich guitar work and a clear, ringing voice, the Alaskan-born Kim Moberg began her set by telling the Tlingit story of how the raven brought light to the world, through cleverness and trickery. “He opened all the boxes and set the treasures free,” she sang — the stars and moon and sun. Her next song, “Here Be Dragons,” “was written from a prompt,” she said. “Years ago cartographers would use ‘here be dragons’ to connote places that were unknown or dangerous.” She used that as a metaphor for a woman contemplating the prospect of infidelity.
“Love ‘Here Be Dragons!’” wrote Bernie Drury in the comments. “Heard you play it several years ago in Rhode Island and it has stayed with me. Wonderful!”
Moberg’s next song, “Angels Fly,” was about her sister, who died of cancer not long ago. Moberg, who lives on Cape Cod, got the call that her sister was dying and got on a Peter Pan bus to New Jersey hoping she would make it in time to say goodbye. She did not. “More than a sister, a daughter, a partner / so much more than a friend / Though I was older, you were the wiser / because you knew that in the end / angels fly,” she sang.
“Lovely guitar, Kim,” Lehndorff wrote in the comments. “Such a gorgeous, gorgeous song … and how many have lost a loved one in the past six months to the virus (or other illness) …” wrote Kathy Moran.
“Thanks again for CT Folk for doing all you do, and I can’t wait until we can all do this in person,” Moberg said. As she headed into her last song, about the simple act of being friends, turkeys managed to make an appearance on the lawn behind her.
“Turkeys!!” Lehndorff wrote in the comments. “They are music lovers, no doubt!” Moran wrote. “Well, it is very good musid!” Paul Konkle Jr. wrote. “I knew they were making a guest appearance,” Lehndorff wrote.
Louise Mosrie‘s first song, “Home,” showcased a set of sharp lyrics, first about a traveler returning from far away (“And the world falls off his shoulders like a heavy coat and he’s home”), then about another man who stays much closer by (“He’s surrounded by familiar friendly ghosts and he’s home”), and finally about herself, who finds home in a way not tied to place (“Wherever you are is where I’ll go and I’ll be home”).
“Louise! That is a great song! Thank you,” wrote Pagel.
Mosrie then performed a song inspired by an article from the New York Times that told the story of a family fleeing Germany in 1939, and leaving behind a fabled landmark on the Rhine, the Lorelei, a large stone outcropped said to murmur, mermaid-like, to passing sailors. “Goodbye Lorelei,” she sang. “Your song won’t haunt me anymore / Your heartache leaves me cold / Goodbye Lorelei / Suitcase waiting by the door / Winter welling in my soul / on the last train before the war.”
“Such an amazing song. What a fabulous songwriter you are Louise!” wrote Moberg. “Wonderful storytelling,” wrote Lehndorff.
Mosrie’s next song, “October in New England,” was a sophisticated ballad about her move from Tennessee to New England. “I love it up here,” she said. “It’s a lot less hot in the summer, and a lot colder in the winter.”
Before she began her final song, she told everyone to “be safe, be well, and I will see you all again soon, I hope.” Her last song, “Lay It Down,” was a song that spoke to our time, when many are simply exhausted.
“Lay it down / Lay it down / You’re gonna hurt yourself hauling that big old heavy load around,” she sang. “Let it go / Come on, let it go / There’s only so much hurting your heart can hold / So dig a hole in the ground and lay it down.”
“We’ll get through this Covid thing,” she said just before signing off. “I’ll see you on the flip side.”
“And that’s how you do that. Bravo!” wrote Emmons. “Great set, Louise! Congrats y’all. It was great to share the night with you,” wrote The Promise Is Hope. But perhaps Dave Peck delivered the much succinct comment, with an astonished emoji, wide eyes and open mouth. There were no words needed.
