Folk music in Newport News. Take 2.

Friday of Memorial Day, long weekend. Concert performance by folk singer and songwriter Marion Elsass. The concert is organized by the Tidewater Friends of Folk Music and is part of its Coffeehouse Series. Website: www.tffm.org


Marion is a retired Nationwide insurance agent and businessman who participates in The Tidewater Songwriters’ Association. The association is a local songwriters' group founded in 1987 as a way to help members marshal their resources and enjoy their craft. During his career with Nationwide at its home office in Columbus, Ohio, Marion, his wife and children were residents of Upper Arlington.

Past performers at association concerts include Robert Matter, Greg Anderson, Adrian Whitcomb, Clayton Hill and Jack Staghill


Marion’s concert is at the ground floor auditorium of the First United Methodist Church on Warwick Avenue near Main St. in Newport News, Virginia.

Before the concert begins I talk to a man who turns out to be Iyricist Adrian Whitcomb. Adrian is wearing high-top Converse basketball shoes and has a small paper pad and pen in hand. Later, during Marion’s performance, Adrian takes notes. I wonder if his notes are for a review of Marion’s performance or for lyrics of a new song. I note to myself that Adrian did not take notes during or after his conversation with me, but then, no one has ever accused me of saying anything inspiring or poetic. Talking to Adrian before the performance, he is laconic but friendly. Adrian tells me that he has been a member of the songwriting group for three years and has written six hundred songs in that period. Adrian is a lyricist and relies on others for the music to his lyrics.

The audience count is forty-two. Most are couples and most are probably retired or near retirement. They are members of the sixties generation that revived folk music and popularized made groups like the New Christy Minstrels, Peter Paul and Mary, Limelighters, Janis and Ian, and Kingston Trio. The hair color of this audience is mostly the range of white, gray and silver. The room and audience are mostly blue in color. The window curtains in the auditorium are blue, the stage curtains and seat upholstery are blue. The clothing colors of this audience are almost all blue. Is the audience made up of retired U.S. Navy? Only two women have red blouses and one man has red Bermuda shorts. There is the occasional khaki trousers or white slacks, but blue is everywhere else.

The evening’s MC is Greg Anderson who manages the practical arrangements for concerts of the Tidewater Friends of Folk Music and the Tidewater Songwriters’ Association. Usually, Greg is assisted by Jerry Sauers, a lyricist and guitarist who is active in the organization. After a brief promotion announcement for the organization’s concert series, Greg introduces Marion and the performance begins.

After the performance, Marion confesses to me that he isn’t a paid member of the Tidewater group and comments that maybe the time is ripe for him to pay the annual membership fee.

The song list for the evening’s performance is a mixture of Marion’s own composition and familiar pieces from other songwriters and performers. Marion sits throughout his performance. His chair is not on the stage, rather his chair is on the auditorium floor. For those of us sitting near the last row, this makes it difficult to see Marion during the performance. After the concert I peek behind the stage curtain. The stage appears to be used for storage and unavailable as an elevated space for the performer.

At some point in the concert, I conclude that Marion needs a bass player to accompany his guitar playing.

As part of his introduction to his songs, Marion discusses the sources for ideas for songs: personal life, emotions and feelings. And then he offers one of his “When they lay my body down…” The message is to slow down and enjoy your life. He offers another song that begins “The kids don’t visit much anymore….” For a grey-haired audience, this lyric is probably a slice of real life.

Marion identifies the second source for his lyrics is observations about the people around him. As an example, he offers a song about the Vietnam war experience of young men shortly out of high school going off to a dangerous fight. “In April we were dancing on the floor of a gym, by August we were kids on a half-track when the first mortar fell, and old men when our world went to hell...”

Another source for Marion’s songs are books and his imagination.

Marion doesn’t announce the titles of his songs and those of other composers, so I offer only first lines or fragments of his lyrics.

Marion’s songs also reminded me that folk music is a source protest in America. From the left-wing stereotype protest of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, to the gentle satire of the Smothers Brothers, folk music criticizes American society, and picks apart its dominant culture. Without identifying it as a protest song, Marion offers the audience “She woke up Tuesday morning, a day like all the rest…” The lyric is an edgy critique of the 9/11 trope of identifying the victims of that outrage as heroes. The point of Marion’s lyric is that 9/11 has its heroes, but just being a victim is not by itself heroic. There were no dry eyes in the audience as this simple truth is expressed. By coincidence, this same point is relevant on the drive home from Newport News. A stretch of highway is named “Pearl Harbor Survivors Memorial Highway.” Survivors? What about the victims of the surprise attack, those who lost their lives from that act of infamy.

At the intermission, there are refreshments, cookies, popcorn and soda pop. Three volunteers keep the snacks in order. Five people leave.

For the second half, Marion discusses more on how he composes. He offers a metaphor of recipes, taking a bit from here and a bit from there and stirs it all up.

Marion’s strongest compositions are satires of social manners. A perceptive commentary on modern American marriage ceremonies begins “Started out simple and plain,”… (but then it grew without control) “…there are more at the alter than in the pew…(then the bride’s parents offer the intended couple tickets to elope in Las Vegas) “…if its good enough for Elvis, its good enough for us.”

Another influence on Marion’s compositions begins with his youthful memories of listening to distant radio stations on a little AM radio at night. He learned Hank Williams songs and recognized them as special song-writing, better, more memorable than many of the others broadcast on the radio stations he listened to. “You’re my every dream,” Good bye Joe, I gotta go” and “Fun on the Bayou.” This last is a song I forgot was Hank Williams.

Marion reminds us all that folk music is also about singing along with the performer. His first sing along of the evening is Hank Williams “I saw the Light.”

Then Marion recalls for us the Chad Mitchell Trio and John Denver “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” Then Marion performs his composition of the same sentiment, “Well, I drove all night to see her; six hundred miles in the rain.”

Marion’s lyrics are evocative of strong images. Battle scenes, funerals, rainstorms, wedding imagery. Lyrics are simple and direct and the word pictures he builds in his lyrics are vivid. His choice of songs from other composers also conjure strong imagery.

The songs he has chosen for the performance, his own and others, remind me of a program that singer country and western singer Stephanie Davis might put together.

Marion continues with two pieces that he enjoys from Kris Kristofferson “Take the ribbon from your hair…” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Then Marion continues with
two more of his own compositions: “Lingering dream, wash over me…” and “Always lonesome bound….” These are followed by a Tom Paxton number: “Bottle of wine, fruit of the vine…”

Marion closes his performance with “There were times in my life… and ends with “Mary had a baby…think what Mary has done for me…” This last is almost a Christmas carol but it expresses a thought that is not seasonal.

During the concert, Marion used a device attached to his microphone called a harmonizer. This is an electronic device that picks up the voice and guitar and make instant harmony calculations, adding one or two voices of harmony above or below the live voice. I learned this after the concert by talking to Marion. He should have mentioned the device in his introduction, because it was a surprise to me and in the first song he used it on caused a brief distraction for me and some other members of the audience.

I’m glad I came to this performance. An easy evening to enjoy and a reminder that there are lyrics being written that are better than many of the songs promoted in the commercial marketplace.

Marion’s concert is part of The Coffeehouse Series, which is an extension of the concert series presented by the Tidewater Friends of Folk Music. It is presented in the style of the acoustic coffeehouses of the 1960's. Currently the series is scheduled on Friday nights in select months and starts at 7:30 pm. The Coffeehouse is held at the First United Methodist Church of Newport News, which is located on the corner of Warwick Ave and Main Street in Hilton Village section of Newport News.

Admission is by donation, suggested donation is $5.

Refreshments are served at the intermission. For more information regarding the performing artists, click on their icon in the Friends section. If you would like more information about the coffeehouse series, please E-Mail chouse@tffm.org

Previous artists performing in the Coffeehouse Series include Jinmaku, The Moats Dogs, Tina Mica with Mary Beth Carreiro, and Ronnie Jones.

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Folk music in Newport News. Take 1.

I spent an evening in Newport News, Virginia attending a performance by songwriter and folk/country singer Marion Elsass. Marion attended Capital University here in our wonderful Bexley back in the sixties. Some of our listeners may remember a rather grubby young man struggling to learn the necessary three chords to most folk songs. Most of those performances were limited to one or two songs as that was the limits of both his repertoire and ability to remain sober enough to be understandable. It was refreshing and inspiring to witness the addition of two additional chords now that forty years has passed. He has also added several new songs but still is attempting to master those first two songs from 1963. It would appear he has made some progress, albeit limited.

I asked Marion when and why he began to write his own songs. He allowed he started back in the sixties for the obvious reason on not being able to remember the words to any songs. “I discovered one day, while sitting outside of the Berwick, that when I sang Amazing Grace no one recognized it. When asked what song that was it was less humiliating to say it was a new song I had just written rather than admit it was something they had heard many times. It also seemed to impress the women.” Later in my interview, Marion said he expanded his performance philosophy by actually inserting other words for the original ones. In 1982, during a brief moment of relative sobriety, he actually performed a song the same way twice in one month. Inspired by this dramatic success he began to gain confidence and set a personal goal to perform at least two songs not just twice the same way but three. With many years of practice he came painfully close to reaching that goal. By 2000, with much hard and dedicated effort the goal was finally achieved and as they say in the business, the rest is history. Now, he has almost doubled his catalogue of unrecognizable songs.

As Marion’s limited talent gradually increased so did technology. He now uses a Harmonizer which adds an additional voice or two over or under the singing voice. While it does seems to hide many of the performance errors, unfortunately, it can’t hide them all, particularly when Marion attempts to sing in one key and play in another. The resulting chaos makes me long for the old days when one would only have to endure one of Marion’s voices messing up a good song. Two voices made the evening tedious at best.

As I look over the audience I am struck by the average age, approaching 70. Mercifully, most have lost a goodly portion of their hearing, a fact I discover as I attempt engage several in conversation at the much needed break. This knowledge helps me understand why so few left at the intermission. I did note that someone was at the door manning a basket. I originally assumed this was a donation box to help with the cost of the performance, perhaps to purchase a one way bus ticket out of town for the performer. Upon examination I discovered it was actually a system for attendees to check their hearing aids devices upon arrival, a nice and needed touch. Obviously, some had heard Marion perform at some other time.
As the evening dragged on, finally Marion announced the performance would close with one last song. I noticed a number of attendees attempting to wake up their spouses. Some of the luckier ones were able to fall back asleep quickly. The rest of us had to suffer through one last attempt at music. As the song ended, the audience arose as one, clapping with a vigor that surprised me. Never in my life had I witnessed so many so happy to see a performance end that it they applauded the end with so much enthusiasm. I glanced down at my watch and was surprised to see only two hours had passed. Surly, something must be wrong with my watch. It could not have been only two hours! I hurried opened my phone to confirm the time and was shocked to see the time was accurate. Even more shocked to discover it was still Friday night. I was certain at least three days had passed. This must be what purgatory is like. As my wife and I make our way to our car, she remarks that the 10 hour trip back to Bexley will seem like mere moments after what we had just endured. I’m afraid that for the first time in a long time, I have to agree with my wife.


Song list - Elsass Concert May 28, 2010

First Set

Mosey by Elsass
We Were Kids by Elsass
That's A Hero by Elsass
The Wedding by Elsass
Cold, Cold Heart by Williams
Jambalaya by Williams
I Saw the Light by Williams
Leaving on a Jet Plane by Denver
The Promised Land by Elsass
Amanda by McDill

Second Set

Four Strong Winds byTyson
I Reckon I'm Destined by Elsass
Wonder if Daddy Felt This Way by Elsass
Help Me Make It Through The Nigh by Kristofferson
Me and Bobby McGee by Kristofferson
Lingering Dream by Elsass
Lonesome Bound by Elsass
Bottle of Wine by Paxton
Ride the Wind by Elsass
Mary Had a Baby by Elsass

Copyright 2010 All Rights Reserved by Marion Elsass