The We Three No Kings Band

Newburyport is now having weekly No Kings rallies, and yesterday I-don’t-know-how-many people braved a windchill down near 20 to march from the usual spot on the city’s main drag (US Rt. 1-A) about a 1/4 mile to Market Square downtown.

I don’t know because I went to Ipswich to sit in with the drum circle. For a full hour, the We Three No Kings Band played behind a little over 100 people who lined the main drag, also 1-A about a dozen miles away.

Cold weather discourages musicians, and so our “circle” was barely a curve. Usually we have at least seven drummers compared to yesterday’s two. Of course, we would all like more drums, but I’d drive that 12 miles for just one as gladly as I would for ten. A percussionist is a wind-player’s best friend.

In Ipswich yesterday, those two fellows were as glad to see me as I them. I’d jammed with them for most Saturdays from the beginning of the weekly event back in early March right to Labor Day. During that time there was just one other piper on one day, and he arrived in my car. Come fall, the Renaissance faire claimed me for two months that required a third month of recuperation. Stayed in Newburyport for a few weeks, but I missed the music, and so yesterday, south I went.

The drummers have a variety of rhythms and moods, tempos and texture, that keep me exploring combinations of notes, mixtures of sharps and flats in the two-and-a-half high-pitched octaves I have. All I have to do is embellish and fill, but I like the challenge of finding my own structure layered atop theirs, and at times it’s as if my pipe is taking the drums’ suggestions for coherent melodies. On a few of them, I was able to layer recognizable songs, and I had the season in mind as I played “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “Joy to the World'” and “Deck the Halls.” I also managed a piece each by Bach and Handel, but I was mostly in jazz mode.*

Oddly, I could not find “We Three Kings.” Not for lack of trying, as I thought it might get a laugh from anyone paying attention. A musical sight-gag. But songs become like the boxes and cans you store into kitchen cabinets when they go unplayed. Some are pushed so far back that you’ll only reach them with a step stool. Fine if you are just preparing a meal, but in Ipswich the drummers kept serving it. Had to knock over “Moscow Nights” to grab “Deck the Halls” as it was.

For a few minutes I compromised with the cold and became a third drummer by tapping my sopranino recorder against my water bottle. At times we were joined by one or two other fellows who stood nearby keeping the beat with percussive objects that seemed hidden in their gloves and scarves. Occasionally women would wander over to dance awhile, probably to keep warm, or just dance past us while making the rounds with friends lining the street.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere: Men banging things and women dancing. But developing it might violate some rule of political correctness, so I’ll keep piping. And anyway, there were at least two women drumming in Ipswich through the summer, and men also walk past us with a mincing attempt at dancing, and so I try to keep a straight face and play on.

If the weather had any effect on the drummers, they neither mentioned nor showed it. I, on the other hand, almost mastered the art of ripping a fingerless glove off my left hand with that other hand so quickly that I could get a handle on Handel after what seemed like a natural, improvisational break. Like a sleight of hand. On the other hand, the left hand had more room than the other hand, so the other glove stayed on the left hand, unlike the other hand. On yet another hand, there were a couple of of five minute breaks with both hands in my pockets without ever taking the glove off that other hand. But I did keep it handy on the ground at hand. We pipers gotta hand it to those flashing hands! Did I mention that it’s the repetitive nature of percussion that welcomes improvisation as a natural ally?

Yesterday was Ipswich’s 43rd consecutive Saturday rally. The honking and thumbs-up approval seemed non-stop, certainly beyond what I recall in the summer. Both drummers say they’ll be there for the 44th and hoped I’d be back. “You fellows are my launching pad,” I reassured them.

Where else would a piper go?

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*For an example of this, listen to the long, psychedelic nine-minute version of The Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today,” and in the middle of the heavily percussive instrumental section, you’ll hear the lead guitarist pick out “Little Drummer Boy.”

Don’t know their last names, so I’ll leave my own out, L2R: Jack, John, Ravi. Photo by John Shaw, posted by Democrats, Republicans and Independents for Democracy of Ipswich.

Forever in Our Ears

Finally rejoined the No Kings rallies after eight weekends in a Renaissance faire, two in witch-trial re-enactments, and one to celebrate my grandson’s 11th birthday.

Put another way, after two months in 1510, two weeks in 1692, and two days recalling 2014, I’m back in 1968 trying to prevent Project 2025 from destroying any more than it already has.

If that’s not enough, I always spend the first weekend after New Year’s taking a turn in the Midnight Watch of a marathon reading of Moby-Dick, which puts me in 1851.

Some people are all over the map, but I’m all over the millennium, and my estimates are admittedly liberal. I’m a throwback to the Pied Piper of Hamelin (1284), but most of the tunes I play at the renfaire, Celtic and Baroque, were first heard in the early 1700s. As if to balance that, all my banter about Chaucer (1343-1400) and Gutenberg (1393?-1468) make the renfaire’s 1510 a reasonable compromise. The same music pre-dates Salem’s trials, but it was still played, and I found it easy to add colonial hits such as “Gathering Peascods” and “Virgin Pullets” to my rotation. As long as I refrain from playing “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and the theme from The Godfather, the artistic director is pleased.

Yesterday, I went armed with a small, high-pitched pipe hoping for a drum-circle in Newburyport. Instead, an amplifier or two belted out classic rock. Given the low temps and the vigorous wind-chill, I was quite content to keep my hands in my pockets though I quietly wished I had trekked to Ipswich where my chances would have been better.

Just before the much larger, nationally held, and heavily attended No Kings rally on Oct. 18, a woman in Newburyport sent me an email saying I had been spotted playing with a drum circle this past summer. She wanted me to know that Newburyport would have one at No Kings, and would I join them?

Wrote back to thank her, but also to say I’d be at Renaissance festival that day, literally playing for a king.

Had that in mind when I turned north instead of south on US 1A after leaving Plum Island. These weekly rallies may not receive much media attention, but the No Kings rallies on Oct. 18 were all over the news with estimates of over seven million protesters nation wide–over 2,000 in a city as small as Newburyport, and approaching 300 in the small town of Ipswich. Each week? I’d say Ipswich drew between 100 and 150 in the dozen weeks I attended, and I’m told that Newburyport averages 200.

Windchill kept this weekend’s numbers down. At least 50 of the 75 or so protesters in Newburyport this weekend could have been with me in DC in 1968, more likely for Mayday in 1971. Same was true of all the “stand-outs” I attended before Labor Day, including one in Peterborough, N.H. In Ipswich, not only have I joined Salem State classmates, but also one of our profs who greeted us by yelling, “I can’t believe we’re doing this same shit!”

L2R: Retired Salem State English Prof. Pat Gozemba and two of her students who shall go unnamed to avoid the attention of their respective parole officers. Photo taken in Ipswich, July or August by either Karen Kahn or Marilyn Humphries.

No classmates or profs this weekend, but one fellow who knew I was looking for a drum circle greeted me by asking: “Are you going to play?”

Though touched by his mere interest, I called as much attention to the windchill as to the lack of drums to decline. Apparently one of the organizers, he offered me a bullhorn. I laughed, “That’s just for voice-“

“Do you sing?”

That deserved a laugh, but it conjured up a memory: “About 20 years ago, I learned three songs just for the sake of a break from piping. Tried them first in Salem so I wouldn’t embarrass myself here on the home court. It did not go well. So, no, I do not sing.”

“What were the songs?”

“Two by Stan Rogers.” He nodded, which I took to mean he recognized the late-Canadian folk-singer’s name. I launched into ‘White Collar Holler’:

And it’s ho, boys, can you code it, program it right
Nothing ever happens in the life of mine
I’m calling up the data on the Xerox line“

He smiled as if to say not bad, but I told him I couldn’t sustain more than a verse. I then named the other two: “Roger’s ‘The Idiot’ and Stephen Foster’s ‘Hard Times’:

His reaction took me by surprise: “Weren’t Stephen Foster’s songs racist?”

Maybe renfaire and witch-trial credentials make it easy for me to place myself in the shoes of 1854 when, as I answered: “Foster was staying in Cincinnati, in lodgings overlooking the Ohio River where he could see the random small craft of the Underground Railroad unload people escaping the South. That’s why he wrote this song. I guess I recall Uncle Tom stereotypes and words like ‘darkie’ in other songs, including ‘Old Kentucky Home,’ but for me, ‘Hard Times’ eclipses all of that. And anyway, I’m not going to pass that kind of judgment on an artist from a time so far removed from me–in a Zeitgeist I myself never had to endure.”

My new friend appeared satisfied, so I offered an upbeat sequel:

“About 20 years ago I visited a friend in Louisville who took me to Bardstown where the ‘Old Kentucky Home’ is now a tourist attraction. As soon as I saw the loudspeakers on poles around the parking lot, I quipped before we got out of the car, ‘You can bet they won’t be playing ‘Hard Times’. As soon as we stepped out, we heard:

Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears
While we all sup sorrow with the poor
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears
Oh hard times come again no more”

We soon turned our attention to the rally at hand, perhaps to prevent me from torturing anyone’s sense of hearing any more than I already had. Driving home, I realized that I had made the same assumption of the Foster museum that my friend had made of Foster.

Might seem like a cute little story except for its parallel that has been a ubiquitous landmine in the American culture war that has raged for time out of mind. Many now appalled by the banning of books treating racial, gender, and environmental issues today are the same folks who called for the banishment of Huckleberry Finn at least once a decade before this decade of our malcontent.

As with Foster, objections all aim at Mark Twain’s use of words, mostly in dialogue, common to the 19th Century and stereotypes held today only by the willfully ignorant and hopelessly shut-in. No matter that the whole point of the book is delivered when young Huck is tormented by his “Christian” belief that he must turn Jim in. No matter that a 14-year-old white boy tells us he’d rather “go to hell” than surrender Jim back into enslavement–that he chose the freedom of a Black Man over the grace of a White God.

Heavy stuff for 1884. And heavy stuff now, which may be the real reason it’s condemned by both left and right.

And maybe why I keep looking for answers in the past.

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https://genius.com/Stan-rogers-white-collar-holler-lyrics

https://genius.com/Stan-rogers-the-idiot-lyrics

https://genius.com/Stephen-foster-hard-times-lyrics

From a video (below) taken in Ipswich, Aug 23. by Marilyn Humphries.

Good Day & Better Luck

Not sure if it was called “Hands Off” or “No Kings” or maybe had another handle–or if these rallies are now an all-of-the-above movement trying to keep up with accumulating attempts to turn our democracy into a billionairocracy.

Many signs were specific, such as Courts not Camps, and Remember Polio? I do. Thanks Research & Science!

Many, general: Silence is Consent and True Patriots Protect & Defend the Rule of Law.

And comic: Resist Bigly and Looney Tunes are Running the USA.

One, perhaps unwittingly, conveyed very different, though compatible messages when viewed front or back. Its carrier had walked past me before I saw what appeared to be a replica of the tablets that delivered the Ten Commandments. Quite a bullseye on a target that steals, bears false witness, and creates craven images by the hour. But I had to see the front, so I hurried past Moses for a look.

In fact, what I thought a sacred text was actually two tombstones with separate inscriptions: GOP – Dead to Decency and Donald Trump – Traitor – 1946-

Rather than joke about any desire to fill in the missing date, I hasten to say that my favorite was very simple, and perhaps the most comprehensive of all despite its brevity:

Here we have a reminder that America is founded upon immigration, is by nature and by Constitution, inclusive, diverse, and equitable–with just three short words to state our resolve to rise to Ben Franklin’s challenge and keep it that way.

In three other words: E Pluribus Unum.

Cousin Janice, who has been attending these rallies each week in Newtown, Connecticut, no doubt had this in mind when she prepared her latest sign:

Haven’t yet made it to Newtown, but I have made a point of going to different locales. What I just described was in Ipswich where I’ll be tempted to return because it includes a drum circle. That would give this aging flautist a chance to relive the jam sessions of King Richard’s Faire–and prepare for it this fall. Ten minutes at a time, and at best two or three times. I’ll be taken out of there in an ambulance if I attempt any more than that.

All of them have been re-invigorating, encouraging–Ipswich, Rowley, Newburyport, Newbury (on US-1), and Peterborough, N.H.–but yesterday was topped off by CNN’s presentation of Good Night & Good Luck, the story of legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow’s exposure and defeat of Sen. Joe McCarthy in 1954.

As an introduction and as an epilogue, actor George Clooney had only to recite Murrow’s exact words to drive home the point that we are now living in a time all too much like that of the Red Scare. The archival tape of McCarthy calling any dissenter names such as pinko, commie, and scum may have been black and white, but it glowed MAGA orange.

The play itself–re-imagined from the superb 2006 film with musical interludes and a healthy dose of comic relief perhaps to offset the constant smoke of cigarettes–offers a model for how a country under such an internal threat might save itself.

Murrow warned about the news we consumed, moreso about the frivolous entertainment we consumed as a buffer from any news. He could not have sounded any more urgent than if he had known of Fox News and reality television.

All credible polls are showing that our weekly rallies are waking up those who slept through last year’s election and galvanizing even many low-income folks who voted for the fraud only to be hammered by the cruel reality of this second-coming of Joe McCarthy.

Murrow’s words reminded me of the biblical call to put away childish things. A perfect nightcap for our protests’ constant, implicit reminders to take up adult things.

Perhaps my next sign, wherever I go, will read: Be Engaged, or Be Estranged.

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