I got a recent stew of emails asking about that song (apparently it's in rotation on a radio station in California).  I used to play it every show, and told the story behind it.  Since I'm giving it a break for a while, and people still ask for an explanation for the song, here is the full-fledged version.

But first a little musing on "topical" songs... I've written a few and censured myself on several others.  

Picture a slow-moving herd of singer-songwriters (that one with the bushy hair and cowbay shirt is me).   Hear their whining call.   They respond to stimuli with song --they sing of 9/11, for example.   Katrina.   Iraq...  -But wait... they (we) aren't doing that!  Not the successful ones on TV, not even in coffeeshops (generally speaking).  Why not?  Because the industry is intricately tied to public/corporate notions of today's "fair and balanced" social mores.   "It's wartime."  "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists" percolates.   Strangely enough, the administration and the media aren't the ones who dulled the teeth of the entertainment industry (much as they would love to do so).  I think the music industry has tucked away its own fangs because it's simply NOT POPULAR to protest. 

There's a good reason that blatant prostheletizing is unpopular.   Who wants to hear a whining pixie/scruffball lecture them that they know better than the talking heads on FOX?  Protest music is singing to the choir, so to speak, right?  Who's going to have their mind changed by a song?

It's not that simple.  Songs trigger the individual and societal subconscious.   They may facilitate solidarity.  They raise questions.  If they're good, they entertain.  "John Hartford" is a song about 9/11 that doesn't mention 9/11 at all.   It was an accident, I promise.   It wasn't meant to have a "message,"  but I guess in retrospect, the message is "don't be paralyzed by fear." 

It was June 2001 when John Hartford died.  For those who don't know his work, he was a warm, deep dry, funny, burl-covered log standing alone in a plastic theme park.  He wrote songs about steamships, his wife's boobs, gently loving thy neighbor, dope-smoking grandmothers, dancing in the bathtub, etc.  He did an astounding one-man show, and he played well with others (he "ripped," in fact).   He was a steamship captain.  During the Vietnam war, he made beautiful albums of thought-provoking, mildly provacative tunes.  His career was diverse and continued through his death (he acheived new heights of popularity for his traditional "Down from the Mountain" and "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack).  I never got to play with him.

In Sept., the world trade center towers fell.  I was travelling in a band, flying back and forth from Portland to wherever the band was (I had to come back every week to attend classes).  A week after the event, I was flying home on an empty plane.  The pilot, from behind his locked door, announced that he would be taking an "unscheduled course change" and that he had procured special permission from ground control to veer from our northbound path and fly east for a few minutes and then west again...

Why??  It was just after dark.  I was sipping coffee.  His announcement frightened me and everyone else on the plane for just a second, until he finished his sentence:  "because I want to show you something."  The song tells most of the rest of the story:  in his 30 years of flying, he claimed, he had never seen a more spectacular display of the Aurora Borealis (northern lights).  By flying East, he allowed the handful of passengers to the left of the aisle to see the amazing glow; by flying west he showed it to those on the right. 

Not a dry eye on the jet.  When we landed, everyone wanted to thank the pilot for his act of heroic normality.  The door was locked, this was the period when pilots were protected by three layers of intense security. 

After a few YEARS of research with Southwest Airlines (conducted by my parents), we found the pilot, Myron Nelson.  He turned out to be a bigger hero than we thought.  He flew to a couple of my shows with his daughter.  He gave me a 1938 lap steel, which I now use in the studio frequently.  He took me flying when I was on tour in Arizona.  

I had been sitting on the empty plane wondering what John Hartford's reaction to 9/11's events would have been.  I was trying to write him an ode of some kind.  I was guessing that he would have pulled his steamship, or tourbus, to a stop for a minute. 

And Myron came over the loudspeakers....  That's the story.