Year of the Horse: A Wild Ride
9/11: A Year Later
conversation with Richard Shindell and Tracy Grammer
Albuquerque, New Mexico, August 30, 2002

by Bonny Holder

Senior Reporter

Rockzillaworld senior reporter Bonny Holder caught up with Richard Shindell and Tracy Grammer at a recent performance with Joan Baez in New Mexico. They shared with her their thoughts on the past year and what, if any effects the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 had on them.

Q: It's been almost a year since the events of September 11, 2001. Has anything changed for
you?

Richard Shindell: I think I thought I would be changed, and I think for a time I was. But now, a year later, I don't think I am. For a while, I thought that perhaps you couldn't go on with life, you couldn't go on with the status quo, with life as usual, business as usual.

But you do. And it's interesting that you do. Perhaps you don't take certain things for granted that you took for granted before, but in general, if you have a zest for life, you maybe just have more of it. I've found that I'm pretty much just doing what I was before.

There were a few months when I changed my set, did all kinds of stuff differently. And I found that my audience did not really want my set to be different, they wanted me to do what I had always done, which I thought was surprising. Then I came to agree with them, they want life to go on, like it did before.

There are certain political things that are different. There's all kinds of things I think about now, that I might not have thought about before. Politics. Global politics for example, or oil policy. You know. Who wins the next election, things like that. (Right: Richard Shindell)

I plan to get more politically involved, but not because of 9/11. Because of poverty in the third world, which is where I live now. I found that I had a period of time when I was feeling all North American, defensive, and now I feel more in contact with the people I live with in Argentina than I do with what's going on here. For me, the change ­ and I'm not sure it would have been different had 9/11 not happened ­ is that I feel more aware of the suffering and the poverty and the perspective of people outside of the United States.

And I find that when I come back here, that the U.S.'s new-found victimhood is ­ although to a certain extent justifiable ­ is taken to obscene extremes, and is being taken to an extreme which makes it very convenient to ignore the fact that people have been suffering in ways far worse than 9/11, forever. And continue to undergo that.

So I feel myself coming back here and wanting to say, `yeah, this is terrible, yeah, it should never happen again, but this happens all the time.' Not as spectacularly as 9/11. 3000 people dying at once is a horrible thing. But it happens every day, and nobody ever sees it.

In this country, the way the media is and the way peoples' lack of consciousness about the rest of the world is, it just becomes another reason for the U.S. to become insular and myopic and self-absorbed. And I think that is absolutely the wrong way to go.

The huge industry and the huge deal that's being made of 9/11 I find a little disconcerting. Most people are very sincere about it. It's the media, how they're harping on it and tugging on our heartstrings all the time, the way the government uses it in order to ram through their own agenda which has nothing to do with 9/11, is obscene.

When living outside of the country, you find North Americans' ability to ignore the rest of the world unbelievable, incredible. They're still worried about oil prices! With so much else going on in the world, this strikes me as crazy. You know? Find a different source of energy, and look at a world beyond the price of gas for your SUV.

Q: Tracy, you've had an amazing year of change.

Tracy Grammer: Where do you want me to start, Bonny? As for 9/11, unlike Richard, Dave (Carter) and I didn't change our set at all. We didn't even talk about 9/11 onstage. We felt that if people were getting out of their houses and away from their TVs and their radios, they didn't want to hear about 9/11. They wanted to be transported by the power of music as a vehicle to carry them elsewhere, and we saw our job to be drivers of that bus, and to make sure that we did carry them elsewhere for at least that ninety minutes, two hours.

Which isn't to say we didn't feel the effect of the events deeply, and weren't concerned about them. We really believe in music as a transformative force, emotionally and spiritually, and we sort of climbed to it and used it to that end.

And I think it totally worked, from the comments of people we talked to after the shows, they were so grateful that nothing had changed in the Dave and Tracy show, that at least they could come here and the whole thing would be the same, that we would still be smiling, that we would still love each other on stage, that we would still have the certain kind of joy that we always had when we played together. So in that respect, nothing changed for us in a way. (Left: Joan Baez band. Left to right: Richard Shindell, guitarist David Hamburger, Mz. Baez, (almost hidden) violinist Rani Arbo, Byron Isaacs, bass, Tracy Grammer, violin, mandolin & vocals, and George Javori, drums.)

Though there was a keener awareness. As we drove around the country, we would sort of joke about the number of American flags we would see in certain parts of the country, as opposed to other regions. It was kind of frightening to see the flag in so many places all of a sudden ­ the sudden patriotism. People along side the roads in Kansas, with a rifle in one hand and a big American flag in the other, `God bless the U.S.A.' It was very strange, and a little bit scary, so we just hunkered down and did what we did, and that worked for us.

In terms of the rest of the year, what can I say? Starting in February, according to the Chinese zodiac, it's the year of the horse. And Dave and I always joked that the year of the horse meant `wild ride.' For us it started with the Joan Baez tour, which was for us both the best of times and the worst of times, just in terms of expectations and changes in our involvement, lots of great exposure but lots of disappointment, too.

It was a lot of balances, ups and downs. This continued throughout the year, culminating in Dave's death on July 19th.

I won't say `I laughed to myself,' but I nodded to myself on the day that he died, I just thought, `Damn! Year of the horse, wild ride.' Wild ride. What could be next? What could be worse than this?

So I'm just hoping that, like the Baez tour where every low had a correspondent high, there's gonna be some really great rainbow at the end of this terrible, terrible tragedy that I, and we, have all suffered through this year.

Richard Shindell plans to continue playing, and traveling to and from his home in Argentina. His site is richardshindell.com His latest CD, Courier, is available there.

Tracy Grammer would like to put together a tasty little band, having already promised to perform next July at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, "in whatever configuration." Her site is daveandtracy.com She and Dave Carter released drum hat buddha last year



You can contact Bonny Holder at bonny-at-rockzilla.net

 
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