♫Do you believe in magic?♫

[captainsblog]

After last night's Lucy Kaplansky show, I do. More than ever.

There's magic in her music, to be sure, but that's Ordinary Day magic once you've been a fan for 20-plus years and a friend for most of the past one.  Is she immensely talented? Of course. Does she bond with an audience with word and song and presence? Damn she does.  Do you get a blend of old and new, sad and silly, and an amazing openness to questions and requests from the audience? You betcha.  But we saw that, a year ago, when she was disabled by a sprained wrist and had to rely on a bad piano, a major amount of a cappella, and an awesome opening act-then-accompanist to get her sets done.

Last night, after a long day on the road (and just me this time, since Eleanor had early work both yesterday and today), I got to experience all of that again. The night had some amusing hiccups and some performer kindness: she initially had to pass on a request to sing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah because she didn't have the lyrics or her glasses to be sure of getting their perfect complexity just right; during the intermission, she headed back to her green room (or whatever Unitarian churches have- probably a rainbow room;), found both, and blew the doors off it once again.

But, as I said, that's just a Friday night at the office for this artist.  It was the art that made it truly special.

This art, to be precise:



We knew the song, and the cover- I found a copy of it as a Christmas present to Eleanor- and knew, also, the basic story line of the title track: Lucy's grandparents emigrated to Toronto early last century, and her father was one of the few to head south after that, so most of her extended family is still there. The song tells, first, of she and her parents attending a family reunion there in 1971. An important part of it was a visit to her grandmother's bakery, the one depicted in the cover art.

Now fast-forward. All those cousins attended one of her shows in TO a little over a year ago, and the song goes on to recognize something we've been realizing ourselves in recent years- the generations of our parents is entirely passed, and we are now the elders.  Or, as she says it in the song far better than I,

Here we are together
Our fathers gone
Here we are together
40 years on
Here we are together
Just daughters and sons
This is our reunion
This is our reunion

When she recorded those words, and decided to title the CD after them, she wrote those cousins and asked if they had any photos or other visual memories that might fit the album. A cousin asked if she considered using "the painting." No, she didn't recall it, but she quickly fell in love with it. "The painting" that became that cover was done, not long after Lucy's grandmother started the bakery, by a worker there- one who went on to draw many other famous things:

Avrom Yanovsky (1911-1979) was a Canadian editorial cartoonist. His cartoons were printed as early as the 1930s. Most of his cartoons were printed in Canadian Tribune. He also illustrated left wing publications like the screenplay for Eight Men Speak. His works have been shown in galleries in Ontario. Yanovsky's archives may be in the process of being donated to the Library Archives Canada.

His son was musician and restaurateur Zalman Yanovsky.

Stay with me here. This ride's only half over.

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I didn't recognize Zalman's name, but Lucy mentioned where I knew him from. He, along with one John Sebastian, became the band known as the Lovin' Spoonful- which may be where some of this particular night's magic came from.  Zal, it turns out, also opened a bakery, east of Toronto in a town named Kingston, called Chez Piggy.  His daughter Zoe now runs it- and has that original painting of her grandfather displayed within it.  Lucy got the needed permission to copy it for the CD cover, but the story continues.

It took a question from last night's audience before Lucy mentioned the name of that Kingston bakery. As soon as she did, though, oohs and ahhs filled the sanctuary.  For although I think of that town as a way-east-of-Toronto kind of place, to Syracusans, it's much closer- a straight shot up 81 and then west on the 401.

"You know it? How many of you?"

Well over a dozen hands went up. Including at least one from a concertgoer whose wedding cake came from Chez Piggy.

Wow. Just wow.

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So naturally, we end with wow-er.

Did I mention how accessible she is to her fans? I should've. She signed anything and everything for those who waited around for her to do so. Including the guy ahead of me in the informal line, who was showing her a book.  This book:



I watched as she, rapt, turned the pages, and graciously accepted the copy of the cookbook from him as a gift. How he pulled that out of a hat on such short notice, I've no idea- this church was on a semi-main drag well away from the retail meccas of Erie Boulevard and such. But it touched me almost as much as I'm sure it did her, and I left for my long, late drive home with nothing but fond memories of a blessed evening.