Music On The Open Road: August 2023
This week, I am traveling back to Oregon after a business adventure in Nashville, Tennessee. My work is based in support of Article 27 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but focusing upon songwriters, musicians and performers.
To be a little clearer, here’s what I’m referring to:
Article 27
1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
On this three-day drive back to my home in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve got a truck-load of richly sponsored human rights work in tow.
My truck’s thermostat is stuck at 68 degrees. We are carrying audio reels of great music studios in New York City, 1970’s era. Places like Jimi Hendrix’ Electric Lady Land and Brooks Arthur’s Studio 914.
Our 2-inch reels are part of historic work from a groundbreaking music producer: the late Peter Schekeryk. Primarily, his recordings are performed by his wife, the stunning songstress Melanie. She has multi-platinum status since 1970.
Peter and Melanie spent years and years together working in the studio. He had enthusiastically enlisted the finest musicians to accompany her remarkable voice, and had the whole town talking about his experiments in music such as tales about using DBX instead of Dolby, and his innovative experiences like bringing two drummers into the studio for an exploration into their raw sound qualities.
Today, in 2023, those raw treasures are being caressed and soothed by my company, Article 27 Music. They were almost about to go. I had them sent to the Sonicraft A2DX Laboratory located in Red Bank, New Jersey. This lab has developed a specific, proprietary technology for extreme audio restoration from tape. Got them cleaned and transferred in time to release on vinyl “Melanie Live at Drury Lane” in Record Store Day 2020. Worked alongside Melanie. The following year, an extended audience experience version of “Melanie At The Met, NYC 1974” was released on CD.
A lot of Melanie’s worth has been compared to the international human rights movements that ushered into existence new protection against atrocities at the level of the United States government. She was one of a small group who put her life on the line through music and her celebrity status, many times Threatened with police shut-down and social attacks, she performed at Woodstock 1969, donated a tour for UNICEF in the 1970s, and made two trips in the 1990’s and 2000’s to perform inside the Korean DMZ (Demilitarized Zone).
Even though we have been happily scraping pennies to keep the show on the road, I feel like a pro these days. I know all the mid-budget hotels. And I can point out neat landmark features to my co-polit as we drive through cities such as Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Topeka, Kansas, on our way home.
Today’s blog might expound the virtue of the Hilton brand, one of the last-standing hotel chains. They have brought to the subsidiary market level a variety of trustworthy stays: Tru, Hampton Inn, Home2Suites, Homewood Suites, Hilton Garden Inn, DoubleTree and Embassy Suites. There may be many more, but those are the ones I experienced. All beautifully managed places with a friendly staff ready to own up to the Hilton name and just down-home American friendliness.
The United States, for me, is a united people. Hoping other people like that description, too.
My Irish Sullivan side emigrated into the Dakotas in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Grandpa Sullivan was a Teamster who drove a cement truck in Seattle. My German side escaped the horrors of World War I to settle in the Pacific Northwest. My uncle Rudy Hegewald purchased the Carson Hot Springs Resort in the Columbia Gorge. My Grandpa Gerhardt Hegewald started a first-of-its-kind auto repair shop in Vancouver, Washington. Both sides had a lot of pride in living meaningfully. It was a frugal lifestyle. The richness was their children, and the future America they would bequeath inside each individual homestead.
Varied and different and ethnically diverse, all us people who have entered this country in one way or another do so, generally speaking, with a willing attitude to confirm an indiscriminate, fair democracy.
Anyone who has lived the American dream thus far, indeed, understands it takes work to keep it free, to maintain honesty in the towns and states, and to secure our ownership. Doesn’t happen alone. It doesn’t happen because someone has the brightest idea in the free market, either, but that’s what they’re currently selling like hot potatoes to the moderately-moneyed (and annoyed) heirs of hard-working immigrants.
Free market is a secondary concept to America’s dream of 1776. Sneaky and ugly business ideas are the root of every cultural downfall, I’m guessing. I haven’t put it to test, but since I’m American I’ll just throw it down.
I am passionate about a fair American music industry. Upon American lands live varied countrymen who will decide upon what path to take our country’s popular business practices, so as to conform with the policy of democracy.
I look at Americans such as Donald Trump, and Biden, and find myself amazed. These men have such wealth and fame that they can pay for the security necessary to keep themselves safe enough to stand as figureheads. I am reverent about the need to keep them both safe. We need them, even though that living is not the same as what’s done by regularly unmoneyed people, like me and my brothers.
As I wander aimlessly through Cheyenne trying to find the correct freeway, I marvel that the little piece of hope each American can fight for, down to the pauper on the playground, is worth its weight in gold: the voice of every American in the government, the voice of a single person in the making of our laws that govern our taxation.
If we have a united people on Earth enough to have an America at all, the world can still be saved. But it’s up to the voice of virtually every American. Every homestead might chime in.
It must take something like 50,000 professional songwriters to tackle the problems of every type of town. If each of the 50,000 up and coming songwriters of tomorrow can’t earn a fair living today in music, then we can’t be free. Because without the individual voice of the songwriter, we haven’t got a voice singing the praises of the average, luckless person hoping to find a way to betterment. Sounds bad, I know. Personally, I feel that way.
In my mind, I’m looking at the next long ten hours of driving.
I make a decision to watch the American landscape ramble into the distance, instead of rambling myself, here, on paper.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!
Written by Corinne D. Sullivan
