Pat’s a guitarist I’ve known for years and Richard Kriehn plays mandolin and I do a couple songs I remember from childhood, the ballad of the babes in the woods who froze to death in a blizzard and the ballad of Frankie and Johnny, the crowd singing the refrain “He was her man and he was doing her wrong.” It is a very warm crowd, packed in tight in chairs, around tables, standing in the corner, and thanks to the cruel wind outdoors, they are all very happy to be here, which is not always true of an audience in, say, West Palm Beach or Honolulu. The cold has drawn us together as mammals. They know that I used to live here and then moved to New York, but they’re in a forgiving mood because here I am suffering with them. Someone asks if I know Bob Dylan. I don’t. I used to sing his song “Mozambique” but can’t remember the words. I sing a Van Morrison song, “Oh won’t you stay? Stay a while with your own ones. Don’t ever stray. Stray so far from your own ones. For this world is so cold, don’t care nothing for your soul you share with your own ones.”
And in a little bar on a bitterly cold night in St. Paul, I feel the full weight of those words. The crowd was in a singing mood so we did some Everlys, some Beatles, “Honky Tonk Women,” but I felt like singing a gospel song about the river Jordan: “Now look at that cold Jordan, look at the deep waters.”
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