Maria Muldaur, interview in Blues Wax

BluesWax Sittin' In With

Maria Muldaur

Part One

By Art Tipaldi

Maria Muldaur

Maria Muldaur's musical odyssey has taken her through the various forms of American roots music. From her jug band days to her late nights at the oasis to New Orleans R&B to Memphis Soul to torchy love songs, Muldaur always paints what her heart feels. Her current Telarc record, Yes We Can, revisits the tunes from the turbulent 1960s and 1970s that asked questions about where the world was heading. To Muldaur and many others, those questions were never addressed. Jean Shinoda Bolen and her book Urgent Message From Mother Earth: Gather The Women, Save The World, played a major part of Muldaur's mission. Supported by the politically powerful voices of Muldaur, Bonnie Raitt, Odetta, Joan Baez, Holly Near, Linda Tillery, Jenni Muldaur, and the Women's Voices For Peace Choir along with non-singers like Jane Fonda, Marianne Williamson, Anne Lamont, and Bolen, Muldaur has recorded a compelling call to arms that reminds the world what is possible when people sing together.

Art Tipaldi for BluesWax: There are certain songs that just stick in your head and "Yes We Can" is one of those songs. I wake up in the middle of the night with it in my head. That's the song I'm hummin' when I walk out the door, in the stores, everywhere.

Maria Muldaur: Thank you so much. I remembered it from when it was a big hit for the Pointer Sisters in 1973. It was around about the same time that "Midnight At The Oasis" was a hit for me. That might have been the first song I picked to be on the album when I changed to pro-peace. I think the first four songs, "Inner City Blues," "Yes We Can," "John Brown," and "Make A Better World," were the first ones I thought to use.

BW: Can you explain the concept for the record?

MM: I started out with the idea of making a protest album, but soon it morphed into the idea of recording a pro-peace album. Once I realized that I didn't want to do a protest album that complains about the past, that I wanted to do an album that presents a positive message of hope and change and inspire people to be a part of the change, I immediately thought of recording "Inner City Blues" and "Yes We Can."

I picked all the songs in the fall of 2007 and recorded the album in December. It was at least nine months before I learned that Barack Obama was using that song as his rallying cry. I had already decided to call the record Yes We Canbecause I thought that fit. When I was mixing the record in late March, someone in the studio told us that Barack Obama was using that phrase in all his speeches. Because I was a Hillary girl, I wasn't aware of it in his speeches.

BW: Did you ever think to send Obama your song?

MM: People told me that I should try and get him the song so that he could use it in some way. And I said, "Yeah, right. I'm gonna get a little song to a presidential candidate." I didn't pay it any more mind.

When it became obvious that Hillary wasn't going to receive the nomination, my engineer said, "We really should get this song to Obama." That's when I realized that he picked that phrase for the same reason that I picked the song. In the face of these overwhelming challenges that we are facing, it's enough to render a soul numb and paralyzed with feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Instead of crumbling under the weight, the cry is to wake up, speak up, show up, and suit up to work together creating change in this world.

I sent him the song and within a week's time I received a handwritten letter from Barack Obama! I'm quoting him, he said, "Thank you for the song. It's lovely and perfectly fits the spirit of the campaign and I'm going to have it placed in the rotation at the rallies." He ended by saying that he hopes to thank me personally. I was beside myself. I let out such a holler in the post office when I opened the letter.

"As long as I have a voice I will raise it

to help raise the conscientiousness and spirits."

BW: What inspired the YouTube documentary?

MM: I worked with some of his West Coast campaign people on that. By and large the images were my choices. Talk about a low-budget labor of love, we grabbed images from the Internet. What I wanted to do was to take people from humble beginnings, like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, who in the face of the odds had the courage to stand up for truth and justice and made a huge difference in the world. Instead of having a feeling of powerlessness, these people rose when everything in the establishment was against what they were trying to say and said, "Yes, I can make a difference." That's what I was trying to say in that video.

My little gift in this lifetime happens to be that I can sing. As long as I have a voice I will raise it to help raise the conscientiousness and spirits. When people feel powerless and helpless they get depressed and curl up in a ball. If we all realize that we are in this together and join forces there is nothing that people of the world can't do. We can't think that we don't have power. Look at the video and see Rosa Parks sitting in her coat on the bus then being booked and fingerprinted and the next image has her getting a national award from President Clinton.

Maria Muldaur's Yes We Can!

Click Cover For More Info

BW: The concept was originally a protest album then it changed to a pro-peace album and now it's become a call to arms album. And rather then just protesting and telling us what's wrong about the world, you're offering hope.

MM: As we are touring in every state, people are responding very positively. I usually put on a kick-ass show, I always have great musicians, I always try to sing with the best inspiration I can to move people, but this is a different experience. This time around, I'm moving them in a different way. They're being moved to something beyond themselves. They leave the shows called to a higher cause. Maybe they come to the shows to hear me sing the usually songs of romance and seduction and I throw them in, but this has been a very moving, call to action tour.

To be continued...

Art Tipaldi is a contributing editor at BluesWax. You may contact Art atblueswax@visnat.com.