CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter
Just about everybody else
had left, but Helen and I were not about to. It’s not every day you get to sit
around late into the night with Chad Mitchell and Mike Kobluk and Joe Frazier,
“The Chad Mitchell Trio,” the very best of what Dave Van Ronk called “the great
folk scare of the 1960s,” singing all their delightful old hits, some of them
the songs of John Denver from when he replaced Chad in the Trio when Chad went
solo.
Joe announced that he was
tired and was leaving to go to bed. He was almost to the door when someone
asked Mike, who is originally from Canada, to sing the haunting “Song for
Canada,” written by Ian Tyson and Peter Gzowski. Banjoist Paul Prestipino and
bassist Ron Greenstein and guitarist Bob Hefferan were in the process of
putting their instruments away, but they pulled them back out of their cases
when Mike said, “Okay. We’re in Canada. I guess I have to sing it.” [1]
Joe turned around and came
back into the room. “No, you go on,” said Mike. “You’re tired. I can sing this
by myself.”
“No, you can’t,” said Joe,
matter-of-factly. “You can’t do your own woo-woos.”
Mike has such a beautiful
voice. He does all of Ian Tyson’s Canadian songs, like “Four Strong Winds,” so
feelingly. That’s the way he sang “Song for Canada,” for just a few of us tired
but mellow listeners, “Lonely northern river always flowin’ to the sea…”
I, though, was listening
to the baritone woo-woos of my friend, Joe, those barely audible sounds like
the rippling river, supporting Mike’s flowing bass.
Sometimes your only role
is to sing backup, but your woo-woos make all the difference to the song.
JRMcF
1] We were on an autumn
“Canadian Foliage Tour,” by Traveling Troubadours, from NYC up the Atlantic
coast along Canada.
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