For 'Tell Me About Your Song' #72, songwriter Barbara Cassidy and her husband and musical collaborator Eric Chasalow discussed her song 'Anna's Song - Shohola, 1864', which can be found on their album 'Leaving Things the Way I Found Them'.
We talked about the album version of the song, but a live version can be heard here:
In the course of our discussion, we touched on the following topics:
Shohola, Pennsylvania and the Great Shohola Train Wreck of 1864
The New York Times article about the wreck
Coal tenders
The Pike County Pennsylvania Historical Society has some information about the wreck online
Anachie Gordon
The Signature Sounds recording studio in Pomfret Center, Connecticut
Producer and musician David "Goody" Goodrich
Pump organs
For more information about the Barbara Cassidy Band, check out her website, and you can also get her music on iTunes, Amazon, and CD Baby.
The 'Tell Me About Your Song' icon was designed by Shaenon K. Garrity.
If you want more information about your host, Jacob Haller, then check out my web page, my facebook page, or my twitter account.
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Episode Transcript:
NARRATOR: In 2010, Barbara Cassidy and her husband, Eric Chasalow, found themselves traveling through Pennsylvania, where Barbara's family is from, with their son.
BARBARA: [laughs] There lots of things to do when you're taking on a young child on a long road trip -- and every time we were driving by, I'd be like, "Oh! That's where Shohola is. That's where my father's family comes from," as we're screaming down the highway on our way to one thing or another.
NARRATOR: She found herself being reminded of a family story about one of her forebears helping out six strangers during the Civil War. We'll be talking about that story, and the song that resulted from it, in today's episode of Tell Me About Your Song, Stay tuned!
[EXCERPT FROM 'ANNA'S SONG - SHOHOLA, 1864' PLAYS:]
Six strangers came upon our farm one day that mid July. Their step was slow, their clothes were torn, and Anna wondered why.
JAKE: Hello, and welcome to Tell Me About Your Song, the podcast where I talk to musicians and songwriters about a song they've written. Today I'm talking to Barbara Cassidy and Eric Chasalow, and the song they'll be talking about is named "Anna's Song - Shohola, 1864." So where would you like to start with the song?
BARBARA: We got invited to do this performance in Lords Valley, and I said, "You know what? There's this great family story, that I've heard ever since I was a child, about the great Shohola train wreck of 1864, and how it impacted my father's family. Why don't we try to write a song, right? Why not try --
ERIC: Yeah, that's -- yeah.
BARBARA: -- to write a song about this, because it's this very cool story, and we're going to go actually perform in the area where this took place." So it was a great inspiration I guess. It's what inspired me.
ERIC: And I said, "What? What are you talking about?"
BARBARA: Right. Right.
ERIC: I had never heard about this. I never heard about the Great Shohola Train Wreck, which turns out to be this monumental event towards the end of the Civil War, and Barbara starts telling me about this, and we do a little bit of research, and it's -- oh my gosh -- you know, this huge train wreck, and it's the civil war, and how can you not write a song about that?
BARBARA: So there was this, sort of, personal piece of it, which, suddenly, after hearing it all my life, it suddenly resonated. You know how you grow up, and there are all these great family stories, and they kind of, when you're young, they go in one ear and out the other, and I never really studied it. I never had a reason to go any deeper, or ask more questions, or really understand the enormity of this particular family story, or this particular event in history. So I think I ended up going back to sit down with my dad, and ask him to tell the story to me again, so I could really understand it. And it's really a very simple story.
ERIC: There's this historical event, which Civil War buffs would know, which is that there was a prison train heading north, to -- Elmira, NY, was it headed to?
BARBARA: Mm-hm.
ERIC: -- with Confederate prisoners, and there was a coal tender, or something, coming south, and these trains collide, and somewhere over 700 people are killed. It's just absolutely catastrophic. And, you know, that's a song, in and of itself, but in Barbara's case, it turns out there's this personal family lore, which makes the scene really intimate, and makes a different kind of song altogether.
BARBARA: So, the gist of it -- the long and short of the story is, is that, on the day the great Shohola trainwreck, my great-great-grandmother Anna was working on the farm, and was evidently far enough away to miss hearing the ruckus of the two trains colliding at top speed, and these six men showed up at the farm, and they were not in very good shape -- they weren't dressed well -- and they stopped, and asked for water, and she invited them in, and she fed them, and she found them spare clothes from the house, and then they went along their way. And it wasn't until afterwards -- either later in the day, or the next day, whatever -- however, when the news reached them, that they were in fact Confederate soldiers, prisoners of war, who were escaping.
ERIC: Of course, none of this can be confirmed, so it's -- this is all family lore.
[EXCERPT FROM 'ANNA'S SONG - SHOHOLA, 1864' PLAYS:]
Six strangers came upon our farm one day that mid July. Their step was slow, their clothes were torn, and Anna wondered why. As she headed out to greet them, they tipped their hats and asked, "May we trouble you for some water, Ma'am? and then, we'll move on past. soon, we'll move on past."
BARBARA: So, again, it was a story that I heard as a very young child, and, for me, it was my father's relationship with his past. In other words, as a child, he had very fond memories of living on this farm with these elders, and that -- it was special. The place was special to him. And so there was this history thing -- like, American history -- and then it was his personal history with it. So I think, as a young person, it was more of understanding the story as a way to communicate how he felt about living there, and maybe, you know, happy that this was how his family managed in this particular disaster.
[EXCERPT FROM 'ANNA'S SONG - SHOHOLA, 1864' PLAYS:]
Where are you goin' boys? asked she, and will you stop to sup? We can't stay long, we've far to go, a few weeks journey with a bit of luck. Anna fixed them a big dinner, and then she fed them well. What clothes she could she offered up, and soon they took their leave. Soon, they took their leave.
BARBARA: And so, here's where it got really interesting, because we'd also taken a trip to the Historical Society, the Pike County Pennsylvania Historical Society. They were lovely -- they just opened up this room, and there were all these wonderful artifacts, and documents, and -- about the town at the time, and about this particular incident, and then there are obviously other Army records, and things like that -- official records. And the takeaway was that the official records all agree that there were only five Confederate soldiers who were unaccounted for. But yet, my family's story is, is that, no, there were six. And when I brought my research back to my father, and said, "But you know, Dad, you know, the official documentation said there were five" -- Nope! He was adamant: There were six. There were six of these soldiers that showed up at the farm on their way, basically, back down south. I was drilling down to the details, because I like to get really specific when I'm thinking about a story, or I'm writing words, it kind of has to get really specific. So I wanted names and dates and ages and geographic locations, I looked at maps, I looked at the New York Times article on the great train wreck, and it, you know, it was great. I mean, it was -- I opened up yet another question, and then I had to go figure out what the answer to that one was. So I was clear, and I wasn't -- I wasn't making this up! This is really true! and I'm writing about something specific. There are a lot of people out there that are, like, way more knowledgeable about the Civil War than I am, and, more likely than not, really knowledgeable about this, because this was a huge disaster. So I kept, you know, going through this whole process of inquiry before I was able to then take all of the, sort of, verses I had and sort of hone them down to, sort of, a song, a good story song, that there was a beginning, a middle, and an end, and then to find the places where the personal part of it could come in.
ERIC: But the records of the Pike County Historical Society -- they're, there are oral histories that were taken down, and there are certainly stories -- there's at least one story of someone showing up, who was a Confederate soldier, and showing up on a local farm, and being hired to work through a season, actually, and staying with the family.
BARBARA: So again -- the other part is, yes, there were other people who should have gone to the prison in Elmira, but the locals basically adopted them, took them in, took care of them, and then let them go once the war was over. So I'm not at all sure, again, in this particular part of Pennsylvania, where the loyalties were -- if it was split, if there were folks who were really, you know, more than happy to help the Confederates, or whether or not, you know, they were just being humane. The takeaway from that is the way the town rallied in this, like, abysmal heat of July, to feed, clothe, and take care of a large number of horrific injuries. Many people died -- they had to be buried on the spot, before they could even be identified, because of the heat. I mean, it was, it was truly a disaster of immense proportions. And I think I read this, too -- one of the houses that was near the tracks, every piece of linen in their house was stripped for bandages, for whatever, you know. People brought food. They brought water. It brought anyone who was in that near vicinity together, to really come together, as a community, and take care of them and, it didn't matter that they were Confederates, or not -- that they were as well taken care of as one could, in a situation like that, at that time. So I was really impressed with that, so I like to think that that was my family's, in keeping with that community spirit, that would never turn a stranger away who is in want, and send them away a little bit better than they were when they came in. And I just thought, "You know, this is great! This really does need to be a song."
ERIC: There's so much detail, you know -- so much richness here. It could be a lot of songs. It could be a song cycle. But, in fact, this song -- you know, we're talking about this as if it's got a great deal of detail in it, but it's -- it's not a complicated song. You know, there's sort of -- It starts off with the story of this woman who is working on the farm, and these men arrive, and she takes care of them. And then, gradually, it's revealed, towards the end of the song, when this part of this music comes back, that it's -- they're going home down south, you know. And in the middle, there's a bridge section, which moves away from the farm, to the story of how the train wreck happened, actually. There's this central character who was the switchman, Duff Kent. He was known to, you know, to be drunk on the job, and I think he took the blame for this. But that's the middle of our song, because, you know, that's sort of here's the action on the farm, and then, here's the thing that set off this incident, and then we're back with the people again -- something more personal.
[EXCERPT FROM 'ANNA'S SONG - SHOHOLA, 1864' PLAYS:]
Duff Kent signaled the southbound train that the track through Shohola was clear, but a prison train bearing forty-score rebels, bound for Elmira was near. Duff, he was drunk again that day, so he just never did hear. Now some would live, and some would die, and some would disappear. Some would live, and some would die, and six would disappear.
JAKE: You said that originally the song, like, had just tons and tons of verses, and then, eventually, it comes down -- I think there's three verses and a bridge.
BARBARA: Yes. So I got really involved with the actual crash -- the logistics, if you will, the details of what happened, where it happened. I had a couple of verses about the townspeople coming out, and ministering, and trying to help them medically, bringing out food and water, and it got very -- more overarching about Shohola's reaction to the crash, and how the townspeople reacted to that.
ERIC: I remember, too, there was a verse in there after the bridge. You were singing about Anna realizing there had been a crash.
BARBARA: Right.
ERIC: And then we ended up cutting that out, and making that the instrumental, so it builds up to this point. And then, I said, "Let's not tell that. Let's just be let it be implicit, or a mystery. Maybe she knew, maybe she didn't know."
BARBARA: Yeah. There were two things that I wanted to be really clear about, and that is that for this to have any drama at all, she really could not have known who these guys were, and where they came from -- or she was a Confederate sympathizer, she knew very well who they were, and she was doing her best to scurry them along. So I chose that she really was unaware, and she was basically in keeping with the general, what I learned about the town, and how they behaved. She was just being a good citizen, you know, and then she heard about it afterwards. But there were -- there was a verse in there about her finding out about it. And I thought, "That's really not as dramatic as her not knowing." And also, it was getting to be a very long song.
ERIC: Probably you'd been learning 'Anachie Gordon' at that point, or some other traditional song with about a hundred verses.
BARBARA: There is a -- there is a history of traditional songs having many, many, many verses. You know, I don't know if a modern ear is so receptive to that. I think, you know, like I say, I wanted to go back to a beginning, middle, and end. I wanted it to be very clear. I wanted there to be some drama, and a little bit of mystery, in the story. And then, what you can add to it musically -- harmonically -- to make it sound like it really, kind of, was evocative of that era. It's sort of like paying homage, or it's like honoring the ancestors. I mean, I really felt I needed to do my best to get it right. I took great care with it.
ERIC: I remember you spent a lot of time, you know, paring down, and paring down, and refining this. But it wasn't as if -- You know, a lot of the shape was there. I think the bridge came after, as it often does. We really came up with the idea that the bridge would be that kernel that would tell you the larger story. But it -- again, it sounds like this went on for weeks. This was probably a couple of days.
BARBARA: So now he has all his guitars to work with, and I present him with these lyrics, and, again, the division of labor on this was: Here are the lyrics, and what can you give me? So that was the challenge, to sort of make this song sound sort of like a folk song, something very American folk song about it. You know, you've got a classic train wreck situation...
ERIC: You know, the way I work is: I -- if I see a lyric -- and I start to hear a tune, you know, usually pretty quickly.
BARBARA: His strengths have always been text setting. He can take impossible words, and, really, literally, make them sing. I enjoy sort of throwing words at him, and letting him figure out what they need to sound like, and sometimes that determines whether the song -- he gets to perform it, or I get to perform it, because we both sing. But this one in particular, I was really hoping for him to take it over, because it needed a particular kind of sound that I -- at the time I just didn't think I could muster.
ERIC: You know, the hard thing with writing folk music is to really capture something very pure, and, and, and keep it simple. You know, interesting, but simple. And what I feel -- I feel really good about this song, actually, and I always enjoy performing it, because, you know, there is a little bit of drama in the middle -- in the bridge -- and then, all around it, there's a kind of quiet, and it's just -- it's everyday life. But there's, you know, there's drama packed in there. There's that implicit drama in that, in the situation. But you've got to keep it simple, and simple it's hard, you know? I think maybe the hardest thing. And I think I settled on this chord progression, which is pretty simple, and then there's a bridge, which goes a little farther afield, but not very far afield really. And it was pretty comfortable. I think we were -- we were having fun. If I remember, you gave me these lyrics, and I worked with it a little bit, and then called you up into the studio -- the little room I have here that I keep as my studio -- and said, "Listen to this," and we were sort of laughing about it. It came, it came pretty naturally, pretty quickly, actually.
JAKE: The instrumentation kind of struck me. Is that a reed organ near the beginning?
[EXCERPT FROM 'ANNA'S SONG - SHOHOLA, 1864' PLAYS:]
Six strangers came upon our farm..
ERIC: It's actually a 19th century pump organ --
JAKE: Mmm.
ERIC: -- that -- You know, we recorded this at Signature Sounds down in Connecticut, Mark Thayer's studio, and we wanted this to have a kind of old sound to it, and a little bit of a kind of bluegrass ensemble or old timey ensemble kind of feel to it. And, you know, we had been playing it just with acoustic guitar, and we were hearing it was going to have fiddle, and we thought maybe mandolin (which didn't end up happening). You know, our producer, Goody, David Goodrich, is a great player, too, and he played Dobro on this, and then Ian Kennedy played fiddle, and Ian was terrific, but I didn't want to just launch into it with strumming guitar, and we saw this pump organ there, and we thought, "Oh, that'd -- What if we do that? That would be great, just this wheezing thing, you know, to start off the first verse." And it's a 19th century parlour instrument.
[END OF 'ANNA'S SONG - SHOHOLA, 1864' PLAYS:]
La la la.... (repeats)
JAKE: So the song ends on an unresolved chord.
ERIC: Yeah, I -- I like not buttoning it up, you know, with something that's, that's a real strong down beat, and just, you know, the end. I think there are questions. You know, certainly -- you know, Barbara made it really clear to me that there wasn't a definite attitude about whether Anna knows who these people are, or doesn't know, and we won't know what her feeling was about it, other than, I think it's very likely she was helping fellow human beings. And what are -- what the politics of this were, we'll never know. And, you know, it's always more interesting to ask questions, than to have answers, come up with answers. It's also, musically, the way this circles around, it keeps going from -- you know, it's basically G major (although it's A flat, but ...) and, you know, it circles around between G and E minor. You see, you've got that major minor interplay. And it keeps starting on a G chord, and then the phrases will come to an E minor, will end on E minor, which doesn't feel like an ending. You know, you've got to get back to a G to really feel like an ending. And it does that through the whole song, so it just felt right to do it again at the end, and leave it open ended that way, and I do think that there's a reason having to do with the, which has to do with the whole meaning of the song.
JAKE: So, I mean, we've basically -- I don't think I have any other notes. But is there anything else that you wanted to say about it?
ERIC: I think that's it about the song. You know, I think it's good to have an opportunity to let people know where to find the music, which is, it's Barbara Cassidy Band. We play as a duo a lot of the time, and when we can we play with other people, like Bob, and lately we've been playing with Jimmy Ryan some -- great mandolin player. You can find the CDs -- there are two of them at this point, we're working on another one -- and you can find them at barbaracassidyband.com, with links to iTunes, and Amazon, and CD Baby.
JAKE: And I'll put links to all those things -- I have a Web site for the series as a whole at tellmeaboutyoursong.com, and then I also post show notes on a blog at yoursongpodcast.tumblr.com -- that's T U M B L R. And I am also a songwriter myself, and if anyone wants to check out my music, you can find it at music.jwgh.org, or just google my name, Jacob Haller, which might be easier to remember. So, with all that said, we're going to go out and listen to the song we've been talking about in full. This is Barbara Cassidy and Eric Chasalow performing the song "Anna's Song - Shohola, 1864." Thanks for listening.
['ANNA'S SONG - SHOHOLA, 1864' PLAYS IN FULL.]
BARBARA: I will tell you, though -- it's very funny -- I think my mom felt a little bit left out that I haven't now written a song about her relatives.
JAKE: Mm-hm.
ERIC: Really? Oh my.
BARBARA: So I think the pressure's on to write about her side of the family.