The Folkin' Idiot

By Neil Cleary 

Anne Weiss will probably never be a star. With good reason, too- she doesn’t really want to be one. “I never had that ‘star drive’,” she says. In terms of fame, Anne has known people on their way up as well as their way down and neither looks appealing to her. Besides, game-seeking is antithetical to the way she sees making music. Weiss would rather make music out of a “desire to be inclusive” and, as someone with strong feelings and beliefs, she feels she has to “or else I would pop.”

This being said, during her time in Vermont she’s become something of a local legend for her immense bluesy voice and striking original songs. For nearly ten years now, she’s been attracting a devoted audience who grow in numbers slowly but steadily. In fact, she recorded her first tape almost reluctantly because people had been pestering her for so long to do it. It has reached the point where people were stopping her on the street, asking her if she’s recorded yet. The tape, Tomorrow’s Gate, represents her biggest venture so far into anything resembling a ‘career move’, something she resisted for a long time, feeling that people only made tapes to “start them in the machine” of the music business. With the prodding of her friends though, she came to see a tap, like any other creative endeavor, as a way she could share music with people. 

Anne’s attitudes toward music stem from her childhood on the westside of Manhattan. She speaks fondly of her grandmother, Elizabeth Weiss, a concert pianist who eked out a meager living giving lessons but managed to be “the most loving and patient person” Anne as known. Unable to read written music due to visual impairment at a young age, Anne learned from her grandmother by ear, developing a valuable ability to pick up music quickly. 

She also cites as a major influence Hey Brother, Hey Sister Coffeehouse she frequented in her early teens. Founded amidst the social justice movements of the sixties and the era’s ‘folk revival’, Hey Brother, Hey Sister attracted those with a love of music as well as those with a love of justice. It was these people that instilled in Weiss that desire to be inclusive, playing music not for performance’s sake but more to make a “creative happening where people go away feeling not separate but somehow more connected.”

Music was all over Anne’s neighborhood, between the coffeehouses and the classical music, Latin and disco music on the radio, and Afro-Cuban drumming in the park. People didn’t take their music lightly either. Once as Anne was walking down the street, a group of old men hanging out on the corner got up and blocked her way. Word had gotten around that she was learning to play blues guitar and they wanted her to play for them. Someone pulled out an old guitar that looked like it “has been used as a canoe paddle” and, handing it to her, a great time ensued. 

Being stopped on the street, given instruments, and the blues all seem to be a part of Anne Weiss’ karma. She claims she’s never actually bought an instrument but seems to have them given to her “on a regular basis”, down to the not-too-shabby Yamaha she plays today. As for the blues. Weiss clearly remembers hearing blues piano on the radio for the first time and knowing “that was it”. But a piano is not a traveling instrument and, setting off hitchhiking at 16, Anne became primarily a guitar player. 

She spent the following years traveling, playing music, spending a year here and there in college, eventually ending up graduating from Goddard and setting up shot in East Montpelier, During this time she also wrote songs, developing a distinctly personal voice that seems to come from her core. Songs written empathically, soulful and humorous, almost embarrassingly tender and careful, yet unequivocally strong, It is these songs that endear her to the people who faithfully turn out to see her. 

Anne Weiss’ music reflects a philosophy that demands hope against hard times. In “Walk Down the Road”, a song not on the tape, she asks will you sit at home with your tears and moan or will you walk down the road with me? This choice is reflected in many of her songs. If today were your last day, she asks in the song “Secret”, would you hoard your love or would you give it away?  Again and again there is the struggle between day-to-day survival and the necessity of joy. For Weiss, everyday requires resistance as well as celebration: some of us are hungry, some of us live in pain, but everyday we work for change is a good day just the same! And we make each day  a day of celebration…

Weiss’ songs are undiluted; she’s not long-winded or wordy. Her words don’t have poetic craftiness, but rather work from earnestness. Like a true folksinger, you get the feeling she could sing the goodness out of the simplest set of words. 

Perhaps her songs are so striking with such little craft because she works out of a necessity to write rather than a drive to be prolific. Weiss doesn’t have the pedal to the metal in terms of producing work. While many singer-songwriters boast reams of original material Weiss will write when “possessed by the muses…when they demand that something come out of me.” She admits though, that it is “scary when the muses shut up for a while.”

Like the composer Charlie Haden or the poet Amiri Barake, Anne Weiss sees her music as one facet of her life’s mission to help create justice in the world.  She’s not only spent time on the road as a musician but also as a political activist. Between 1986 and 1990 Weiss used East Montpelier as a home base while traveling widely, involved in radical organizing and education. These years found her on peace walks from Vermont to Washington D.C, twice in Central America and a couple times in jail. 

Although admired by and often grouped with singer-songwriters, Weiss comes more out of a folk singer tradition. Her live performances are casual, almost to a fault. She rambles, jokes, copiously rins, and occasionally forgets bits of songs. If not everyone in the room is groovy, it can be a little unsettling, Her risk taking, which often involves calling friends up on stage to sit in, can, however create moments  no strictly solo performer could ever touch, Spontaneous choruses are formed, extra solo breaks are added. It serves to Anne’s credit that she’s often more comfortable than her audience. 

The best of these arrangements are captured on Tomorrow's Gate, recorded live to DAT at Burlington’s Low Tech Studio. With an impressive roster of local musicians as well as California’s Keith Greenaway and Northampton’s Dar Williams, Tomorrow’s gate  features a refreshingly live acoustic sound, wisely emphasizing musical chemistry rather than overproduction. The voices are led by Weiss’ own, a voice that testifies to the sincerity of each song. Four of the eleven songs on the tape feature her alone, with sparse accompaniment. 

Released this summer to a packed Last Elm Cafe. there was plenty of jamming and harmonizing to be had. Many showed up with instruments. The night celebrated, more than Weiss’ renown, what a great night of music and collaboration can be like. It doesn’t happen often though as Weiss doesn’t shop herself around or actively pursue gigs. In manys eyes this may not ‘do her justice’. But one gets the feeling that Weiss is seeking justice of another kind. 

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In other news…

*Deaths and births: The Mandolinquents and Hickory Switch recently met their end, and will be sorely missed by many. First Night saw the birth of  The Last Elm String Band (soon to rename and reappear) featuring members of Wild Branch, Hickory Switch, and the VSO, and Famous Potato.

*Recent local releases include Dana Robinson, Breakaway, and Nightingale…

*Local Scenes to watch: City Market open mike on Wednesdays, Bluegrass at Sneakers on Wednesday, Traditional sessions at the Last Elm on Tuesdays, the dockside on Wednesdays, VT Pub and Brewery on the 1st Thursday of the month. The ever-expanding Gordon Stone “Trio” plays Parima (in the old Deja Vu) Sundays at 7:30.

*Contra Dances at Edmund's School in Burlington the 4th Saturday of every month by Queen City Contras…

*February at the Dally Bread in Richmond 2/2 Mark Lavoie, 2/9 Doug Perkins. 2/16 David Gusakov, 2/23 unspecified poetic endeavor…

Neil Cleary is an 800 year old poet/singer of shanty songs and in his spare time hosts WRUV’s “The Folkin’ Idiot” radio program and plays drums for the Pants and Famous Potato.