by Sue Zalokar, staff writer
Hailing from the Bay area in California and making Seattle
his home for the last four decades, Jim Page is an iconic storyteller with a
heart that beats in time with a lyricism that is at once overtly political and
in step with The People. Phillip Elwood of the San Francisco Examiner has
likened his music to “… the Woody Guthrie I heard as a boy more than anyone
I’ve listened to in the intervening years.”
His music continues to influence many people: musicians,
teachers, students, politicians, and a wide array of people involved in the
social justice movement. A quick glance at his biography will tell you he has
shared the stage with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Dan Bern,
Michelle Shocked, Leftover Salmon, Mickey Hart, J.J. Cale, Robert Hunter, Chuck
Brodsky, Artis the Spoonman and John Hammond.
Sue Zalokar: Your bio doesn’t address the hows and
whys of the start of your interest in music and songwriting. What came first?
Jim Page: Those things are hard to explain sometimes,
I was, I suppose a typically dysfunctional teenager all full of angst and self
worth issues like most 14 year olds. One day I heard Lightnin’ Hopkins for the
first time and there was something about the way he sang. He was able to come
out of himself and into the listener. It carried me away so that I was
completely excited and consumed by the idea of learning to play the guitar and
sing songs. To me, it was a life jacket. It was a way of completely swimming
out of the drowning waters of rootlessness that a lot of teenagers have.
S.Z.: This month is the 150 year anniversary of
Lincoln’s signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Today was also the
inauguration of President Obama. What do you think we Americans, and the world
at large can expect from the President in his second term?
J.P.: I would like to think that he would be more
adventurous since he doesn’t have to worry about reelection. There were some
things he stumbled on. Maybe the Republican-packed Congress was just such a
stonewall that he couldn’t do anything. I don’t expect a lot out of Presidents
because they are basically just a hood ornament on the machinery of the state.
They don’t have that much power. Most of the left-wing people got all excited
when he got elected, and then they kind of changed their minds. They spend their
time dissecting American politics and talking about how the President is just a
puppet in the face of the real power. And then when Obama gets elected, they
expect something else.
As a political populace, we’ve been neutered. It happened
slowly and we have actually gotten to enjoy it. We enjoy our powerlessness. We
go to movies and we know all about the batting averages and the football
scores, but we don’t know a damn thing about politics, or care for the most
part. It’s very frustrating.
S.Z.: There is a quote by David Ackert that making
its way around social media sites. He says, “Singers and musicians are some of
the most driven, courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with
more day-to-day rejection in one year than most people do in a lifetime.” He
goes on to talk about the risks that musicians take. His conclusion is that at
the end of the day, “to dedicate oneself to that moment (when an artist pours
out their creative spirit and touches another’s heart) is worth a thousand
lifetimes. Do you agree?
J.P.: No. I think that’s way overblown. If all the
musicians went on strike, nobody would notice. When the garbage collectors go
on strike, everybody notices. Being a musician is nowhere near as important as
being a nurse. I’ve been a guitar player since 1965. The rejection I deal with
is nowhere near the rejection that a salesperson or a fundraiser deals with.
Doing cold calls or raising money for anything, that is rejection.
Being a musician is a job. It’s a trade. It is also an art,
but if you blow that way out of proportion, you’ll get lousy tradesmanship. You
have to show up and know your material. You have to have social skills to deal
with your employer and to talk with the people in the audience. It’s a trade.
You have to get good at it, then you have to go do it.
Artist’s have an obligation. If we are going to be supported
by the people that we perform for, then we have an obligation to support them
in return. To give them songs, stories, plays, movies that reflect their lives
and enrich their experience and give them feelings of hope and self worth as
they experience the art that we’ve made.
S.Z.: How many songs do you think you have
written?
J.P.: I actually don’t know. I stopped even caring
years ago. Way back in ‘71 or something, I counted them up and there were like
250. A lot of the songs you write only last a couple of days.
S.Z.: What do you mean by that?
J.P.: Because they are about something that is very
immediate, right now and is not going on anymore and so the song doesn’t have
any punch. Or you wrote it and then you hear it a few years later and you think
oh geez, that’s embarrassing. That’s really bad. I made myself write two songs
a week, even if there was nothing to write about. And they sounded like that.
You can write a lot, but it doesn’t mean you should.
S.Z.: Busking, or street singing, is alive and
well in the urban areas of our country. You have played a big part in that. In
1974 you were integral in changing street singing laws in Seattle. Tell me
about that.
J.P.: It was illegal to perform with a receptacle for
receiving donations without a permit in Seattle. And there were no permits. I
spent the summer dealing with city council people and the mayor’s office and so
on. I got a lot of help from the media. We had a city council meeting. I made
posters. We packed the place. It was easy. Everybody came out in favor of it
except the Musician’s Union. It is now part of the municipal code. I don’t
know, but I have a hunch that if I hadn’t done that back in ‘74 it would be
really hard to do now.
S.Z.: Tell me about your friendship with Artis the
Spoonman.
J.P.: I first met him in 1971 when I first got here.
He picked me up hitchhiking somewhere. The way he tells it, the first time he
was ever on stage playing with anybody was with me. I played at a little tavern
called the Medicine Show and there he was and he asked if he could play with
me. I just kind of looked at him and I made a snap judgement because he looked
like he would be really interesting to play with. I didn’t know what that
meant, but it would not be boring and it would not be laid back. It would be
really interesting. And it was.
S.Z.: You have said, “Every song has an ending.”
As a metaphor for the human race, how do you think our song ends?
J.P.: Population is a really big issue. The
mythological handicap says that certain core important things never change. And
we all know that there is nothing that never changes. We need to be able to
implement family planning. We need to empower women to not have children if
they don’t want to. And when religion comes out, as a mythological ball and
chain and says that is against God’s plan, that is very dangerous.
Obama mentioned nonbelievers in his first inaugural speech.
He mentioned them again just a couple of days ago. This has never happened
before. nonbelievers are the largest growing sector of the so called religious
paradigm. People who either don’t believe at all in God or are not aligned or
say, “I don’t know, it sounds kinda fishy to me.” That is very important. It
takes the power away from clergy. It takes the power away from fear. It takes
the power away from the things that keep us from moving forward.
The Martin Luther Kings of this world are everywhere. He was
a great speaker and he knew how to make people think and how to get them riled
up and get them excited about themselves. And he used the Bible and religious
stories to charge people up and to give them the courage to do things and
that’s the right thing to do.
We can be equally powerful, equally charged, equally
positive, equally constructive – without depending on magic.
We have a right – by virtue of the fact that we are alive on
this planet – we have the right to a better life.
This article appears in 2013-02-01.