By Victor Infante, Worcester Magazine:
With “Children So Long,” local music stalwart Walter Crockett has put together what is effectively a folk album that both feels timeless and strikingly immediate. It doesn’t hurt that the album is produced by local music legend Duke Levine — who currently plays guitar for Bonnie Raitt — and features a smattering of longtime local favorites, but that’s not what makes the album so enjoyable. No, that comes from the sense of soul, heartbreak and, ultimately, compassion that shines through each musical vignette.
Crockett — a former editor of Worcester Magazine — kicks off the album with “This Old Heart,” a bluegrass-tinged folk number that gives us the perspective that guides the rest of the album: “Take a look at this old heart,” sings Crockett, “so many cracks/Bruised in front, scars in the back/It’s a wonder that the love flows through it like it does.”
This album is, in a very real way, a love story, but not in the conventional sense. It’s an album about learning to love after heartbreak, and about learning to love a world which, frankly, seems intent on being unlovable. Crockett approaches each song with a tenderness and sense of vulnerability that makes them resonate with feeling. This becomes immediately clear on the second song, “Fleet of Wooden Caskets,” an environmentally-themed song in which Crockett asks the trees if they’ll miss us when we’re gone: “And hey, sugar maples, are you sad to see us go,” he sings, “Will you miss us in the springtime when the sap begins to flow/You won’t find us up in Greenland, where the glaciers used to be/But in a fleet of wooden caskets bobbing on the sea.”
Crockett has a strong and expressive voice, one that brings a great deal of emotion to a song like this, which in other hands could feel nihilistic. It doesn’t, though. There’s an indelible ray of hope which shines through each note. Much the same could be said of “This Time I Can’t Stop Cryin’,” written in 1991 after his daughter, Emily, was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor, according to the album’s liner notes. It’s a deep blues number, an emotional journey that leaves enough space for the listener to bring their own heartbreak into the interpretation. It’s a songwriting gift that Crockett displays repeatedly, managing to straddle the line between the deeply personal and the universal. This is re-enforced by the 1976 song, “Little Sunlight,” which portrays two perspectives on the same woman, elevating it a tad beyond being a conventional love song. There’s also a depth to the music here that adds layers to the song, which isn’t surprising considering the caliber of talent on the album.
In addition to Crockett and Levine, some of the musicians who appear throughout the album include Kevin Barry on lap steel and electric guitar; Tom West on keyboards; Marty Ballou on bass; Bill MacGillivray on drums; Chet Williamson on harmonica; Dave Jacques on horns and backup vocals from Chuck Demers, Mud Demers and Bob Dick.
The album takes both a darker and catchier turn with the blues blaster, “Roll On,” which eyes human existence and damage to the environment with an unsentimental eye: “Clean coal – there’s the answer!” sings Crockett, “Might as well tout it as a cure for cancer/Take cover! Hold your fire!/Keep on trudging through the muck and the mire.” And yet, for as much as extinction hovers over every inch of the song, Crockett leaves a sliver of hope: “And here we stand with a second chance/Roll on through the night of a million years/Roll on from the site of the trail of tears/Roll on to the light of your Chosen One/Roll on till the rollin’ on is done.”
Likewise, in his tale of a group of children encountering a guitar-playing escaped convict, Crockett finds a sliver of redemption that echoes for the song’s persona years later. Hope, redemption … they’re easy to dismiss, but Crockett doesn’t here. Indeed, they’re what fuels everything, and underneath there is, what Crockett characterizes in the subsequent song, “Feelin’ Low,” as “stubborn love,” a love that persists despite all sense. It’s a gorgeous song, every inch palpable and moving.
The next song, “You Had It,” is almost a counterpart tonally, a catchy blues-rock number with a bite. “Some call it fear some call it hate,” sings Crockett, accompanied by searing harmonica from Williamson, “First you learn to cry then you learn to wait/Wondering how your children will survive/Still the whisper of that voice inside/Did you get it that you got it did you get it you’re gone?”
It’s a bracing number, and it well sets the stage for the album’s title song, “Children So Long,” which is the soul of the album. Written in 1976, the song is a message from a grandfather to his grandchildren: “Children, so long. Soon I’ll be gone./Never give up on humankind/Live by your heart, not just your mind/Children so long. Soon I’ll be gone.” It’s bittersweet and inspiring, with a guitar line that flows like a river. But there, in the exhortation to “never give up on humankind,” is the root of the sense of hope that permeates the album. It’s easy to be jaded, but that sort of hope takes courage, and is easily dashed.
Fittingly, the album ends with a moment of grace, with “These Days Are Ours,” a reminder that happiness comes in small moments, in sheltering the ones we love against the storm, and letting them do the same. That storm is always raging on the other side of the window, after all, and love and hope have a way of slipping through your fingers, but when you can grasp and hold on to them, they make all the difference.
- Photo: Zonkaraz at Indian Ranch 2013