Introduction
Steve writes: This is another post by one of my friends, this time , my fellow editor on . Julia’s writing is always raw and insightful and this piece, about her relationship with the band Freakwater and their music, is no exception. I’d really recommend you check out her Substack, , and also dive into the amazing music she’s curated for us here.
The gift of a mixtape
I discovered Freakwater back in 1990, courtesy of an Iowa City barfly with a fine taste in Americana. He made me a mixtape of tunes which I still play and love, introducing me to Gram Parsons and Hank Locklin, the Carter family and Lucinda Williams. Among the tracks was Freakwater’s Family Tradition, a song I went back to again and again. The mournful, croaking alto of Catherine Irwin and the sweet, piercing soprano of Janet Beveridge Bean – together they made a magical sound that touched my heart like no other outfit had done or has since.
Somehow Freakwater became a soundtrack to my life. From crying in my beer over unrequited love to spitting with righteous feminine fury. From the misery of an unravelling marriage to the stony fear of facing down penniless single parenthood with a tiny baby in my arms. From political outrage to purely existential struggle: it was weird, they seemed to have a song for anything I could come up with. And most of all, they stood and still do stand for me as a heroes: women living by their wits and their creativity, drawing beautiful music out of the deepest well of darkness and pain.
While I'm fond of Family Tradition and its homage to hard liquor ( the song that christened me a Freakwater freak), it's the last song on their second album which I think of as my earliest favourite. Their cover of Dark as a Dungeon (a coalminer's lament written by Merle Travis) still gets regularly caught in my thoughts on repeat. It's my go-to whenever I'm overwhelmed with work or discouraged in my job – both a metaphor for how trapped and relentless work can feel, and a reminder that my white-collar troubles are to be kept in perspective. As I sit waiting for Windows to update, or struggle with invoices that need coding, I find myself reflecting:
well I hope when I'm gone and the ages shall roll my body will blacken and turn into coal I'll look from the door of my heavenly home and pity the miner digging my bones.
I married young…
I married young, and idealistically, to someone with whom I'd fallen in love. But my husband's history of psychiatric hospitalisation, the pharmaceutical prescriptions he wrestled with, and his flare-ups of paranoia became constant intruders in our relationship. The marriage lasted for five years, until the birth of our daughter. At that point my caring responsibilites stretched beyond my capacities, and I filed for divorce with a heavy and broken heart. Only then did Crazy Man really hit home:
All the words have been spoken All the bridges have been burned and the promises broken It's not hard just to have a little baby And I won't have far to go when I go crazy
Little did I know how true this throwaway verse would become for me. A decade of single parenting pressure-cooked me into my own mental health crisis. (But I'm getting ahead of myself...)
Those months in the wake of our separation were terrifying. Single motherhood hadn't been the life I'd hoped and planned for and I felt utterly unprepared, thousands of miles from my family and friends in the USA. Anxiety blossomed as I tried to figure out how I would manage this new situation. Again Freakwater stepped in with a soundtrack: their Lullaby became the song I sang as I paced the floor with the baby in my arms at bedtime.
Don't cry, little baby girl You have no worries in this world Your mama is a worrying kind She's always got some troubles on her mind.
Thankfully I qualified for benefits, a safety net for which I am eternally grateful. But even in the heyday of New Labour a life on benefits was a tight squeeze and a financial challenge. The song bears witness to a mother caught between a rock and a hard place where the household bills are concerned.
The landlord's coming down the hall He wants the rent, but I spent it all The heat goes off on Monday, was a letter sent I took that money to pay the rent The food is all gone now, there's nothing to eat I took that money to pay the heat
Digging deep
Not so very long after this, my father passed away. Now, I'd been raised Catholic, but had been more-or-less atheist for many years. I didn't really dig deep into it because I didn't want to think about my beliefs or examine myself in that way; I resolutely focused on the day to day life right in front of my nose. But when Dad died, I faced a dilemma. What did I believe about death? How could I process this momentous event, this ultimate loss, without considering it? (Short answer: I couldn't. But again, I'm jumping ahead...) So I did all I could manage at that point in my life: I focused on the practical matters, and listened to Freakwater’s Heaven…
Heaven is for the weak at heart And those who never are as smart as me But I would trade all that I believe And keep no trick cards up my sleeve Just to know the angels hold you in their arms tonight
Over the next several years, the work of raising a young child swept me along. For over a decade I worked part-time, keeping afloat through the tax credit system for single parents. I wanted desperately to be at home for her as she grew up, as much as possible, so this was what I chose and how I arranged things for us. But it wasn't that simple: I felt constant anxiety about my financial situation and immense guilt that I wasn't pulling my weight working full-time like many other parents I knew. On some level it felt like my time with her was a gift I didn't deserve. At this stage of my life, Cricket Versus Ant became my theme song. Telling the story from Aesop's fable, Freakwater captured my feelings:
Some work hard while others work harder To put up the jam and fill up the larder Let the other ones work these lovely days away You are the one who would rather sport and play I rubbed my knees together and just played along When I heard the crickets singing their bowleggеd song If it all goes terribly wrong Maybe it won't takе long
The years wore on…
The years wore on, and I turned forty. My daughter at that point was ten, just beginning to form her own style and independence – that first glimmer of pre-teen adolescence. There was one evening around that time, when I was preparing the dinner in the kitchen and sipping the glass of white wine (or two) which had become a routine rather than a treat. Without thinking I put on the Old Paint album whose first song is called Gravity. I guess I hadn't listened to it for a while, because I remember my shock as I considered its lyrics afresh, my throat constricting and my heart plummeting. It occurred to me that this song – once just another song – was now about me.
I wasn't drinking to forget I was drinking to remember How I once might have looked through the eyes of a stranger... all your beauty will be stolen by a young girl in the night a thief as quiet as a dark cloud that stole away the moonlight.
And yes, now I remembered that shelf I'd put all my beliefs onto, all those years back. During that intervening decade I had begun to take things down off that shelf, and undo the knots. I read vociferously and processed internally. The state of the world, the direction of my values, my relationship to society - all went under intense scrutiny. As I considered the world and my place within it, something had been building up within me: a bleak void of despair, but with it, the deepest, darkest rage imaginable…
fighting like a mad fish on the wrong end of the line just beneath the surface silver lightning flashes shine
Freakwater's Picture in my Mind captured my mood: the fierce picking of the banjo, the tension in Catherine Irwin's voice throughout, the bark and howl as she spits out
don't talk to me darling can't you see I'm gone right now?
All this emotion churning within me, held down into the polite modest well-behaved patient good-girl-woman-mother that the world had demanded of me for all those years, unravelled into downright madness.
And I won't have far to go when I go crazy
Last piece to this story
It was quite ugly and messy for a while. But there is one last piece to this story.
I've been wondering how to include this, because strictly speaking it's not Freakwater; rather it’s a track from Catherine Irwin's second solo album, Little Heater. And it's not a song of her own composition, it was in fact written by John Callahan. Singing backup on this track is not Janet Bean, her Freakwater comrade, but Tara Jane O'Neill. Nonetheless, it is the song that speaks to me most vividly about what I experienced, when the despair and the rage had been spent. It is the song I was playing on repeat, that night I packed up a bag and disappeared to Amsterdam with an angel at my side. It speaks most closely to my understanding of what my story was ultimately all about: a love song to myself.
Ever since you were a child Your soul was pure, your eyes were wild Long ago I saw you marched I gave you wine, your lips were parched The ships were tossed the world was lost I kept my vow to follow you When you crash upon the stairs I'm the answer to your prayers No parades and no complaints When the sinner saves the saint.
After that trip to Amsterdam, I stopped listening to music. I stopped needing it.
When I think back to the music of my life, I have great fondness for what I listened to in my childhood and teenage years: the Monkees, the Beatles, the Byrds... Elvis Costello, Squeeze, the Jam... the dB's., R.E.M., the Replacements...
Do you notice it too? All those male voices. Much loved, much yearned for. But it wasn't until Freakwater that I found the music that spoke for me. Freakwater is the music I really grew up to; the music that helped me to grow up and to find my own voice; the music of my adulthood.