FERRON: Excellent Driver

Spanish monks fill the windows at Tower Records, and way too many people have never heard of Ferron. How come? Maybe it's because she's Canadian, she records exclusively for tiny homegrown labels, and she's not very prolific (four albums in 14 years, not counting early demos and a live solo retrospective). Maybe it's because she unfashionably writes and sings her songs on acoustic guitar -- though she's a "folkie" only in the sense that Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon are. Maybe it's because she's a gap-toothed working-class out butch dyke, or maybe because she doesn't lean on any of those identity handles either for their media-grabbing value ("the lesbian Bruce Springsteen" -- nah) or for community-building (the k.d. lang I'm-so-gay-I-don't-have-to- talk-about-it strategy). Her voice (both senses) is unapologetically poetic, intimate and relentlessly emotional but the kind of emotional that operates through tough-guy terseness, indirection, humor. (Her definitive kiss-off song is called "As Soon as I Find My Shoes I'm Gone"). She's revered by people like Shawn Colvin and John Gorka and the Indigo Girls, kindred spirits who may have commercial appeal but can only wish they had Ferron's genius.

Her earlier records had their ups and downs, frankly, but her latest, Driver (EarthBeat), is a quantum leap -- the kind of album those who swear by Astral Weeks and Hejira may have given up hope of seeing again. Like those classics, Driver describes a journey just personal enough to be universal. It begins with a slice of autobiography; in "Girl on a Road" she packs into elliptical couplets the kind of traumas that keep people screaming in therapy for years and then sings them with the impossible gentleness of lullabies. After that, you're on your own. There are a couple of uptempo pace-changers (the seductive sax-driven "Call Me" and a zydeco romp, "Love Loves Me") but the album centers on five epic ballads, most clocking over six minutes.

"Cactus" (to take only one) condenses a season of letters from an older self who has intimate knowledge of every fearful and foolish step you've ever taken and offers verse upon Dylanesque verse of advice about how to walk on the water of life -- advice born not from superiority but from its own episodes of stupidity: "When I was young I was in service to my pain/On sunny days you'd find me walking miles to look for rain." From the cruelty of triangles and romantic obsession to the solace of solitude, she moves to the origin of small towns and the lessons of the moon. It starts to feel less like a melody or a lyric than a spell. Like a big dream or deep meditation, you come out of it with tears on your cheeks, unaccountable mileage on the psychic odometer, and a few pounds lighter. When she's done, it feels like someone really has told you everything she knows. Until the next song begins.

There are a dozen ways to make a meal of Driver. If you recently turned 40 and/or split from someone you'll probably spend the rest of your life having fierce imaginary conversations with, listening to Driver is like taking a long walk with a trusted friend who's been to Heartache City before and if nothing else can show you a good place to stop for a decaf latte. But the album (gorgeously self-produced with Don Benedictson, whose Jaco- like bass on most cuts makes him MVP by far) has bookends that paint the moodier troubles-talk as love. After the jokey hommage of its opening line ("Last night I dreamed Joni Mitchell cut her hair and changed her name to Gaia"), "Maya" closes the album with a vision of a garden reborn and a lifetime of second chances. And the lush, oceanic "Breakpoint" frames the album from the beginning as classic smooch music. What better prelude to an evening of romantic storytelling than an album whose first words are "Let's turn the outside way down low/And play with fire"?

Live, Ferron cuts a curious figure: slightly gawky with her tuxedo jacket and Irish potato-face, reminiscent of performance artist Peggy Shaw in her unsettling androgyny, and unexpectedly clownish. At the Bottom Line October 5, she appeared with two musicians (Shelley Jennings on guitar, Jami Sieber on electric cello) and an opening act (Iain Matthews) who were fine but superfluous. Ferron puts her songs across solo no problem, and with her standup instincts she could be her own opening act. Declining to go into the details of a life-changing experience she had in Santa Fe, she said, "You guys in New York, you probably don't have to get better. In the West, we're still trying to change. Hopefully into fish."

The Village Voice, October 18, 1994

  
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