JOHN HANSEN, MY BROTHER

When I was seven-years-old I fell from the crossbar on our swing set. My brother, John, heard me crying and ran down the hill to my rescue. He scooped me up and carried me to the house, laying me on the brown Herculon couch in our living room. He gently positioned my poor broken arm on a pillow and tucked another pillow under my head, reassuring me until our mom got home. That was the first of three broken arms for me, evidence of my inherent gift for agility and coordination.

When I was eight years old John stood in holy waters and baptized me a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was the only one in our family with the authority to do such a thing, and though he would choose to walk a path that did not include organized religion, his gift to me stuck, and has been pivotal in all that is dear to me. 

When our brother George was three or four-years-old he got his hand stuck in a scorching hot Ironrite. The rollers on the machine melted away the flesh on his little hand. Our brother John heard his cries and rushed into the room, released the safety bar on the machine, and called for our mother. George almost lost that hand, but thanks to a dutiful doctor the skin transplants took and he is able to do all sorts of magic with that scarred hand.

When I was nine-years-old I stood paralyzed with fear in the corner of our kitchen in Pleasant Hills PA as my drunken father came at my mother with a knife in his fist. Out of nowhere my older brother John appeared with a baseball bat, planting himself between my father and our mother. He raised the bat and glared at my father. “You will not touch her.” He and my father stared each other down until my father retrieved and left the house. 

Years before, when that same father had thrown our mother down the stairs in a fit of rage, before I was born, John went to live with our Aunt Mary and Uncle Archie on their ranch in Blackfoot, Idaho. Mary and Archie were never able to have children. Mom had suffered a clot to the heart and to the lungs and was not expected to live. Aunt Mary and Uncle Archie loved John, and wanted more than anything to have him for their own. But mom survived, and healed, and though Archie and Mary asked if they could keep him as their own, our mom could not give him up. A painful sort of release happened then, I believe, and their “ownership” of my brother shifted, which no doubt confused the tender heart of that young boy

John didn't get much of a chance to be a kid.

Today my big brother John enters a new decade of his life here on earth. I look at the white haired man and still see the spark of love in the eyes of the teenager who rescued me from the ground under the swing set - who facilitated my religious desires - who saved the hand of our brother - who held the reigns of Uncle Archie's horses with assurance that they would always be his, but then weren’t. And I ponder with awe and love the scene replayed in my head of my own father trying to injure our mother, intercepted by a boy with a baseball bat. Baseball bats should be swung with joy and passion on grassy ball fields. No boy should have to hold a bat in that way. 

John's hands hold gentler things.

Today I think with love and gratitude of my brother, John Hansen, the wounded warrior who rescued, in spite of his own wounds, over and over again.

Legendary icon Rosalie Sorrells loved and cherished John.
And he loved and cherished her.

He even rescued me from playing the G chord incorrectly. “Are you kidding?” I said when he told me I should change the way I was playing that basic guitar chord. “That’s a ridiculous way to play a G. My pinkie finger  isn’t strong enough, and my double jointed fingers click in and out when I try to play it that way.”

“Trust me” he said. “Watch real guitar players, at least the ones who play on stage.” Sure enough, he was right. And though I grumbled about it, I changed the way I play that G chord. And the change freed up two fingers that were able to manipulate strings with counter melodies and sustain chords. A goodly portion of the songs I have written use the free’d up fingers in that new positioning.

 

I’ve found comfort all my life in the sound of the name John. So much so that we named our firstborn son John. If you are a little girl, straddled by two little-girl-sisters, it’s a comforting thing to have a big brother named John, just old enough to seem heroic, even if he himself didn’t feel that way.

John and his old friend, Steve Eaton
play at his birthday party yesterday.
John's best loved guitars have plenty of scars.

John and Steve in bygone days.

My big brother is not without scars. In fact, he is no doubt  as scarred as our bother George’s hand. But in spite of it, he uses himself for good, planting himself, even quivering with fear that no one but him knows is there, between the great unknown and the people he loves. 

John plays with his grandkids.

He’ll be the first to tell you that he is a mess. That’s part of his charm. But we who claim the same mother, and the same distorted history … we embrace that mess. We own that mess together. And together is such a good place to be.

John's girlfriend, Garnette Edwards, threw him
the most remarkable party for his birthday yesterday!
 Hundreds of people attended. What a beautiful bash it was!

John and Garnette. 

Happy birthday, brother-o’-my-heart.

My brother and me.

John Hansen, Belinda Bowler and Rich Brotherton

See that tall guy in the pink shirt on the front page
of the Idaho Statesman paper? The solitary male among a
sea of women marching for women's rights?
Yup, that's him.

John's first band; Hard Luck and Trouble, circa 1971.
That's John in the front middle.

My brothers, John and George Hansen

We are John's biggest fans!
(and also the most obnoxious)

From an ad for the Famous Motel Cowboys Reunion Concert

41. APRICOT PORK (my brother, John)

“You really shouldn’t play your G like that.”  My brother John sat across from me in the family room at the old house.  He had just listened to me sing one of my songs and suggested I play the G Chord with my pinky on string number 1 instead of my ring finger. "You’re good enough that you really shouldn’t be playing it the way you do."  Though playing it that way felt completely unnatural to me, I was honored to think that he thought I might be “good enough”. 

I was a mother of four who stayed up into the wee hours of the night to write songs. He was a professional musician, the godfather of flat picking in the state of Idaho.  He was a guitar string's worst nightmare.  I lightly tickled the strings on my instrument. I think it was one of the first times he had come to visit us from his home in Idaho, before I knew him by heart, like I do now. I had just recorded an album of original songs, one most people now don’t know I even have.  A producer had heard me somewhere and paid for the recording. Mostly, for me, it was a learning experience.  I was naive, and rather raw as a player, singer and songwriter.  So I was a little intimidated and nervous to even let my brother hear it.  He was kind and complimentary, and most encouraging about my songwriting.  You have to know a little about the dynamics of our relationship to understand what that meant to me.

My brother John is eight years older than I.  He was the youngest child of my mom and her first husband, Cy Davis.  When my mom married Lewis Hansen,  John acquired a new set of house rules and an unhealthy dose of disinterest at best, and tragic abuse at worst. When he was in third grade he wanted so badly to belong that he started writing his last name as Hansen instead of Davis.  He still goes by John Hansen, not that his stepfather deserved any credit John has brought to his name. John was child #3 of Afton Hansen, and I was child #6. 

When I was 5 and John was wading into the waters of teenagehood, we moved from our small town in Idaho to Pittsburgh, PA. This was the early 1960’s, a tumultuous time in America.  An equally uneasy time in our home as well.  My dad, for whatever reason, was full of discontent and booze.  That’s a bad combination.  John was a lanky, long legged fellow who found a voice for his angst in the songs of Bob Dylan.  He saved up his hard earned money working at Isaley’s Ice Cream and Deli so he could purchase his first guitar.  I remember tiptoeing downstairs in my pajamas, my hair wet from my evening bath. I peeked through the rungs on the banister while John and his friends held band practice. John was hip, and handsome, and quiet and kind, though he had to have been confused by life.  The music that floated from his portable turntable became the soundtrack to the scenes of my childhood: the Beatles, and Dylan, and others whose songs I know but whose names escape me. By the time John was a senior in high school, having moved six times during his high school years, he had had enough and moved back to Idaho.  He carried a sort of mystery with him, and by the time I had grown into my own personality, he was far away.

John, front middle, with an early band, circa 1971

It was music, especially the creation of a song, that brought us together as adults.  He would end up producing my first real album, in Boise and Nashville.  He has played on most of my albums, and he is one of my finest cheerleaders.  Because of his renown, especially among musicians, I have many friends who have changed me for the better.  But mostly it is John who changed me as a musician. For years Merlyn and I journeyed to Boise to perform and record.  I felt at home in his place, and  secure in his love and respect for me and my little family.

When my son John was swirling in his own teenage angst, I remember one particularly vocal interchange in the kitchen.  We argued about something or other.  Johnny stormed up the back stairs and I followed after him, grabbing him by the leg before he hit the top stair.  We both fell in an emotional heap on the steps.  Somewhere in the conversation that followed Johnny told me we just didn’t understand him.  I asked him what he wanted in life, and he replied that he just wanted to be like Uncle John. I listened and thought a minute, then replied that he would do well to be like his Uncle John, noting some of the fine character traits of my brother.  We sat there a minute.  I told him I had spent a lot of time with his Uncle John, and he had shared with me the person he most admired. “Who’s that?” Johnny asked, sure he would find the secret of life in such a person.

“Your dad.”

My son John, to his credit, knows when to be still and absorb.  That bit of full-circle information has settled into his soul at this point, and I believe he himself would speak the name of his father in the short list of people he would like to emulate.

At that time, though, it was my brother.  And truth be known, it still is.

My brother, John is uber-talented, and his fingers are like lightening on the neck of his guitar. He has the gift of being able to sincerely feel the spirit that each song carries.  Songs are almost human, having souls of their own that yearn to be understood.  Good songs, at least. Both my John’s know how to access those personalities and stories in each song.

As our mother aged, John travelled from Boise regularly to sing to her, to kiss her soft cheeks,  to hang hooks in her garage or dig up a tree stump, or just sit with her. John, however, never just sits.  His hands need to hold a guitar.  Mom was curled into her red leather recliner, her snowy white hair like a cloud against a crimson sky. John would plant himself comfortably on the couch next to her, his guitar gently throbbing against his chest.  The words and comfortable melody of Tom Waits floated from his lips: “Time went so quickly, I went lickety-splitly out to my old 55….” Harmony rose up from her throat, our beloved mother, and if I was lucky enough to be there I could pull up a third, or listen as Kate did.  It makes me weep to think of it, to think of her voice harmonizing with all of us, allowing us to sing our own songs but supporting with her own harmonious sweetness.  Her pitch was dead on, even when she didn’t know the lyric. And her sense of timing was impeccable. There is a sweetness in family harmony that is rare in non-bloodline music.

Even though our mother has gone the way of all living things, John still works his way down south toward us. Each August, when the fruits of the apricot trees are soft and warm, when the hot August sun awakens the sugary juices so that the apricots nearly jump into the palms of your hands as you pick them, John drives down with his granddaughter Brooklyn for Pappy week.  (His treasures call him Pappy.) We pile into the van and continue south one town to Centerville, to the corner lot with the ancient gnarled trees that bend toward the ground with the weight of their bounty.  For 40 cents a pound we drag the tall wooden ladders up into the orchard, through the rutty soil, and plant them firmly under the branches where the most fruit has fallen to the ground, an indicator that the fruit there is happy to be ripe.  We usually pick between 50 and 80 pounds each year.  Only ripe ones.  No green.  The riper, the better for apricot jam.  At home we wash, pit and remove blighted portions of the fruit.  The rest we cut into little orange pieces, adding a fair amount of granulated sugar and some corn syrup.  We do not mash the fruit.  If it is truly ripe it will mash itself in the process. All day my brother will stand over the stove, stirring the fruit as it bubbles down into liquid gold. Brooklyn or one of my sisters or I will spell him off.  By the end of the day we have a couple dozen quart bottles sitting on the counter, their lids popping as they cool.  We do not add pectin to our apricot jam.  Our mom liked it a little runny, so that you had to hold your plate under your chin when you ate a crunchy piece of toast slathered with butter and a nice spoonful of apricot jam. 

One of our favorite family Sunday meals is a tender pork roast browned in olive oil and butter, roasted while we are at church and all the way through a Sunday nap, if we are lucky enough to get one. About an hour before serving we pour one of those quarts of home made apricot jam over the roast, basting it occasionally as the jam mixes with the juices of the roast.  The skin of the roast becomes caramelized with the fruits of those apricot trees.  Served with roasted yams or sweet potatoes, or a baked potato and asparagus, it is a sweet reminder even in the bitterest part of February that August repeatedly gives us her bounty, as long as the blossoms in the spring have survived a late frost, as long as the heat of the summer days dances with the chill of northern Utah nights, and as long as my brother John makes his way south toward his family.

So much of the music that comes from me is influenced by my brothers, John and George, from the life searching lyric of Dylan to the deep harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, I cannot separate my past from my present.  I am reminded repeatedly that we tend to love the things that the people who mean the most to us love. It’s a darn good thing my brothers have good taste.

There are a few men whose lives are inseparably connected to my heart, and two of them are named John.

John and me.

APRICOT PORK ROAST

Pork roast, boneless or pork tenderloin.

Apricot jam (if using commercial jam, dilute slightly with water or broth.

Onion (optional)

Olive oil and butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a heavy skillet heat about ¼ cup oil to very hot.  Add a dab of butter.

Generously coat pork roast with salt and pepper and garlic salt.

Put roast in hot oil and sear until the color of the roast changes.  Sear all sides of the roast.

Put roast in a covered casserole or cover your pan with foil and place in hot oven for 15 minutes.  Afterwards lower heat to 300 and cook covered 3-6 hours depending on size of roast.

If you choose to add onion, brown the onion whole (peeled) in oil and add it to the roasting pan.

About one hour before eating test roast for doneness. Remove lid and pour apricot jam over roast.  Baste every 20 minutes or so.

When ready to serve, remove roast from pan and cut or chunk it on a platter.    Spoon some of the juices over top.  Pour the rest of the juices into a small pitcher and allow guests to add more juicy sweetness to their servings.

(it is nearly 3 am Easter morning and I am weary to the bone.  I will post this and proof it later when I have more of my wits about me.  These late night postings are doing me in!)

21. BACKSTAGE

When your only stage is the pulpit, and your only performance a short talk about Jesus, or a simple song, you miss out on one of the best parts of any show: backstage.

I came on music gradually.  Untrained and certainly unskilled in the art of performance. When it was my turn to play I hurried on through the dark chambers behind the stage, got to the light and rather nervously did my part, then scurried off.  It has only been in recent years that I have learned to cherish the moments in the wings.

Backstage differs from the green room…the place where performers nibble on goodies and settle into soft couches, look into mirrors and warm their vocal cords.  Where you joke with friends or converse casually with other performers awaiting their turn on stage.  You can talk, and even guffaw in the green room.  Backstage, you have to whisper. I don’t spend a lot of time in green rooms.  I’m not on that level, nor am I in those kind of shows where there is a large chunk of time to wait.

But I do know a bit about backstage.  The dark, dusty place where the stage crew glares at you cuz you’re in their way and they are trying to get their work done.  Where you have to be careful not to step on a cord, or lean against a wall and release a scrim, or flip a switch.  Backstage, where the props from some other show hunker in a pile atop a long table, where little recital dancers trace patterns with their toes, their faces planted on the ground, their brains reciting the dance in their heads as their hands and feet whisper a fast-forward version in tiny swoops and swirls.  Back there where the stage manager, dressed in black, bosses other people dressed in black, her clipboard pressed into her abs like Romeo’s knife. 

Backstage for a musician is likely very different from that of an actor. Most often my backstage is pretty quiet.  Our shows are not that complex. We come on, and we don’t come off till the show is over.  We don’t usually need a stage manager.  My favorite shows are the ones I produce myself, because I have so much more control over who I get to play with and where I get to play and even what the stage looks like.  And my favorite backstage moments are my Christmas shows, there on that little Farmington Arts Center stage. There’s a little room in the wings,  just large enough for the group of musicians, our instrument cases, enough folding chairs for all of us and Eric, our engineer, and whatever guests swoop in and out.  There’s enough room, as well, for a long narrow table, upon which I set bottles of water and a bowl of Clementine oranges, a tin of European shortbread cookies, some chips and Ashley’s famous artichoke dip, all warm and creamy ready to be scooped into the mouth  facilitated by a thin tortilla chip. I avoid the dip before the show, knowing what all that cream cheese and butter will do to my throat.  My bandmates don’t care. They made a sign once and set it on the table:

The artichoke dip is usually cold or gone by the time I will allow myself to have some.  But that’s ok, because for one of the few nights of my life I am satisfied so much by the aesthetic of the evening that I don’t care for the pleasure of food.  I should sing every night.

But in actuality, it isn’t just the singing.  It’s the goodness of the audience.  I can feel the good energy they send to me.  The lights on me keep them in the dark, from my perspective, but I can sense their kindness, and can feel their hearts beating with mine as I spill my life right there in front of them then wipe it up on my figurative knees.

Backstage, at least for every show I produce, after everyone is together and we have laughed and reviewed and warmed up and shaken off our nerves, we cluster in a circle and bow our heads, thanking the Lord for this chance we have to speak, asking his angels to be with us, asking them to be with our audience.  The people I choose to play with are believers, on some level at least.

I have never felt wholly compelled to write religious music, unless I am commissioned to write something for some particular purpose.  I want my songs to work as well in a festival as they will in a church.  So it’s a fine line I walk when I write.  But just because it’s not religious doesn’t mean it is not spiritual, at least in the sense that we are all spiritual beings who are having a human experience.  And so, especially at Christmas, I think I stand as a witness of some sort. At least I hope I do.  Not a preacher, just a witness. And I feel Him with me when I witness.  And I like it best when the people who hear don’t know I am witnessing.  They just feel…something…and it’s strangely reminiscent, like the scent of their grandmother’s perfume.  They feel something when they smell it on that lady in front of them in the grocery line, but they just don’t know what it is that’s making them feel that way. They don’t remember in their brains, but their hearts do.

And that is the truest desire of my heart, musically: that my audience will sit back and close their eyes and see images that conjure up feelings that are strangely reminiscent; like they must have experienced this, they just don’t remember when.  And when they remember their hearts are soft and pliable and the hard shell that living in this hard boiled world gives them is cracked somewhere.  And through that crack comes a feeling…warm and comfortable and safe.  And they are reminded in the deepest place of remembering.

Merlyn and I sang in Boise once, in a bar.  We used to do that fairly often with my amazing brother John Hansen, who is a musical icon up there.  We sang songs people don’t usually hear in bars.  And yet they were happy and pleasant and we went back often.

One night, after singing, as we were packing up our gear, a long haired fellow, looking rather like he belonged in the band ZZ Tops, came up to me. 

“Thank you”, he said, his breath stinging of alcohol, his body leaning to the side as he stood.  

“You’re welcome!” I responded, “Did you like it?”

“Thank you”, he repeated again.

 I smiled. 

“You reminded me that I had grandparents….”

He paused for a long exhaling breath.  Then, drawing in new air, he continued;

“You reminded me that I had grandparents who loved me.  I had forgotten that.  Thank you.”  He started weeping, perhaps from the excess of drink.

A year later, when Merlyn and I went back to Boise for an album release concert, the same fellow waited in the back alley for us to come out to our car.  We knew him by now, and greeted him by name.  He told us how much he enjoyed the concert, and we chit chatted about this or that, I don’t really remember.  But then, as I lifted my guitar into the car, he addressed Merlyn and me:

“I just wanted you to know that I have been sober for six months now.  And your music had something to do with that.”

I know, firsthand, about alcohol and addiction and what it does to people and the people who love them.  I know it takes a million things to make recovery work.  But if I had even a teeny tiny part in his desire for healing I thank the Lord for planting me there with him.  And for planting those songs in my head.  And for placing the feelings in my heart, and that guitar in my hands. For placing that beautiful friend and artist, Merlyn, at my side, and my brother on the other side.

There is no back stage in bars.  No artichoke dip and no huddled prayers.  Just silent ones in our hearts as we step up on that little riser.

So when I get the chance to do a show and spend a few minutes backstage, with other performers, and with the stage crew, and often with my roadie, Dave, I cherish the moment, there in the dark, anticipating the gift of an audience and the warmth of strong bright lights.