Published in the
Urban Folk,
Issue 12, Summer 2007
A review of Make Music NY Event organized by
Elizabeth Devlin & Annie Crane
Wagner's Cove, Central Park, NYC
www.myspace.com/wagnerscove
"A Chronicle of Wagstock '07 in Real Time
(That Has Been Estimated)"
By Eric Wolfson
On June 8, 1936, the Carter Family went into the studio to record a song that surveyed the hardships of our world and contrasted it with the joy of the sweet hereafter. "For fear the hearts of men are failing," the song began, "For these are latter days we know." 79 years and 13 days later, Annie Crane sang these exact same words as the final song performed at Make Music New York's show at Wagner's Cove, a picturesque corner tucked away deep in the center of Central Park along the 72nd Street parallel. You won't find it on any map – I passed by it three times and asked several clueless park rangers before the popsicle man directed me up Cherry Hill, from which I found the secret rustic path that led down to the shaded grove that borders the park's Lake. Standing at the water's edge is a small wooden shelter, built in memory of a Mr. Wagner, from which the Cove gets its name.
Folksinger Annie Crane and Antifolk singer Elizabeth Devlin were drawn to this spot when they each signed up for Make Music New York, a program that organizes musicians to play free shows all around the city.. Pooling their time together, Crane and Devlin decided to fill out their allotted three-hour timeslot with Eric Wolfson (myself), Rachael Benjamin, Soft Black, Frank Hoier, a fermata, Dan Costello, and other friends and surprise guests from New York's folk and Antifolk scenes. What follows is one performer's account of the show, in estimated real time.
5:30 PM: Some people find their way through Central Park to Wagner's Cove for the show's scheduled 6 o'clock starting time; most people remain lost in the endless tangle of the Morgan Chase company marathon that is happening at the same time.
6:34 PM: Dan Costello steals a Gatorade bottle from the Chase company marathon's table, but is disgusted that the lemon-flavored "water drink" is not simply water.
6:46 PM: Enough people have now arrived for the show to start, but rain starts instead. Everyone gathers the blankets, instruments, and bags into Wagner's Cove's small wooden shelter. Bemused by the idea of a bunch of musicians' outside concert getting rained on, I dub the show "Wagstock." It sticks.
6:59 PM: Bets are placed for how long it will take for the rain to let up; Annie Crane wins with eight minutes.
7:07 PM: Wagstock co-founders Annie Crane and Elizabeth Devlin introduce the show and each sing a song to start the show. Annie plays it straight, singing a lilting folk ballad called "Seneca Falls," while Elizabeth calls up her sister Rachel to sing a song that uses the names of sea creatures in the place of regular nouns and verbs. At first I was getting Elizabeth's jokes, and then I lobster.
7:23 PM: Dan Costello follows the Devlin sisters' carefree lead and climbs onto the large diagonal tree trunk at Wagner's Cove and sings about a land where corporations only want to hire a rich son of a snob and vice presidents ignore their duties to go on hunting expeditions where they accidentally shoot people. In other words, America.
7:38 PM: During my set, one of the two random hipster kids who followed us down to the Cove laughs at my esoteric "I talked to Grover Cleveland two non-consecutive times" joke in "Talking Dead President Blues." I decide he's the smarter, although not necessarily the cooler, of the two hipsters.
7:51 PM: Rachel Benjamin opens her set with a protest song – about how her husband won't let her get a dog.
8:01 PM: I search in vain for a vendor selling Gatorade before deciding to grab two Gatorade bottles from the company marathon – one for myself and one for Frank Hoier. I never ask Frank what he thinks of the liquid, but I don't find it nearly as repulsive as Dan did. Although I would have preferred the "Frost" flavor, the "Free" flavor is ultimately the best.
8:10 PM: Soft Black comments how beautiful everything is and how he wishes he could think of a beautiful song to play; I suggest "The Light in My Eye" and he complies with a smile. It's a lovely moment, but I still wish I could remember that hilarious joke he had made a few minutes earlier making fun of the Morgan Chase company marathon. Not that Soft Black can remember it either…
8:15 PM: Debe Dalton follows up her bittersweet ballad of unrequited love, "Anytime," with a rousing version of "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain," a song that was popularized by railroad workers in the 1890s, first published by Carl Sandberg in the 1920s, and sung by Pete Seeger in the 1940s, before being recorded by Barney the Dinosaur in the 1990s. Happily, Debe drives the song back to its roots by including a verse that Barney never sang: "We'll have to hide the liquor to make her leave even quicker!"
8:17 PM: The rain comes again, this time longer and harder as the night grows colder and darker. Many of the performers and listeners retreat into the Cove's wooden shelter; Soft Black stands contently under an umbrella, a fermata sits contently under the open sky, and Frank Hoier stands contently by the trees with an open bottle of wine, drinking from a plastic cup with Feral Foster.
8:21 PM: Frank Hoier and Feral Foster perform blues rags in the rain, as the water soaks into their clothing and the wine soaks into their livers.
8:29 PM: A fermata asks to use my guitar to play his own set in the rain – "Sure, just don't get it wet," I tell him. He proceeds to play some of the most mystical and beautiful music my guitar has ever made, with lots of fancy chords that my guitar will probably never feel again.
8:37 PM: Elizabeth Devlin plucks a haunting song on her autoharp while Costello shelters her with Dalton's umbrella; "The rain is up to my lips," she intones as the water laps right up to the edge of the Cove's small wooden shelter, "And I've gone and left my raincoat at home." Somewhere, in New Orleans around 1927 – or 2005 – a woman lives these words out in a way that I can only begin to comprehend them.
8:57 PM: Annie Crane closes the night with the old Carter Family song "No Depression," leading everyone in the redemptive chorus that contrasts the earthly hardship of the song's verses. Little does Annie know she's minutes away from her own dose of earthly hardship when she'll learn that while she was performing, someone accidentally kicked her cell phone into the Lake.
9:03 PM: The musicians and their friends pack up to leave. Among the people left listening is a homeless man who has been sitting in Wagner's Cove's small wooden shed for the better part of the night, with a suitcase that holds his worldly belongings. On top of the suitcase rests a wrinkle-paged Bible that the elements have kept open throughout most of the show. As far as I know, nobody asks the man what his name is, even as we say goodbye and leave him alone in Wagner's Cove, but then again, nobody bothered to see which page his Bible was opened to either.
9:07 PM: It's still drizzling as the performers walk away from what they decide will be the first of many annual Wagstock shows. When Greil Marcus covered Woodstock for Rolling Stone some forty years before we held our little festival in the rain, he wrote that "It was a confused, chaotic founding of something new, something our world must find a way to deal with." Time will only tell if the same can also be said about Wagstock, but one thing is for certain – everyone left the show with a smile on their face and a song in their heart, as their mind softly played a Depression-era tune about looking ahead to heavenly joy in the bleakest of worldly conditions, be they wind or rain or obnoxious corporate marathons.
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