(Never) Tired of Town: An Interview with Musician Colin McCaffrey

East Montpelier musician Colin McCaffrey’s new CD “Tired of Town” is a true gem. The Brattleboro-born Vermonter, whose musical hand, as both player and producer, can be found on a wide variety of Green Mountain musical efforts, has crafted an intimate and eminently listenable new acoustic CD featuring tunes by fellow Vermonters Pete Sutherland and Lewis Franco, as well as some beautiful songs of his own.

With his modest and understated manner, and fabulous musical chops – blues, old timey, folk, jazz, rock, contra – McCaffrey is an artist who is always interesting to hear.

The “Vermont Guardian” caught up with the ubiquitous McCaffrey for a Mad River Valley interview at LP-FM radio station WMRW (95.1 fm). Here are some highlights of our conversation.

Q. Tell us about your newest tune.

A. I just wrote a little blues number about shoes for people with compulsive shoe buying habits, people with foot fetishes, and ladies who like to ship for shoes. It didn’t make the new “Tired of Town” CD, though.

Q. Speaking of your new CD, you dedicated it to Jean Williams, 1917-2004. Who is she?

A. She’s my wife Laura Williams McCaffrey’s grandmother. I had just finished recording most of these tracks when Jean was getting ready to pass on, and I brought a recorded version of “Bye Bye Blackbird” for her to hear as she was on her deathbed. Jean was a great woman. The last time I saw her, she wasn’t really conscious, during her last days, and I went down and played her some music and sat by her bed. This is also a vintage record – I made a conscious attempt to do some older music, some older material, and keep it very simply production-wise.

Q. Reading your CD’s liner notes, I noticed that you recorded a Pete Sutherland tune. He’s a borderline legend in fiddling circles – how did that come to be?

A. Pete and I have worked together for years, including me playing with his hot-rod contra-dance band the “Clayfoot Strutters,” and recently many of us Vermont musicians have been doing “Pete-Stocks,” shows featuring all of Pete’s songs. I chose to record Pete’s “Wilderness Road,” a Civil War ballad about a Vermont boy who goes off to war with the 6th regiment under Grant down in Virginia, where Vermont, in one day, lost, I think, 1,000 men. This song that Pete wrote is just incredible – I learned it for several shows, and I just got so attached to it that I felt like I wanted to put it out there on this CD.

Q. So you play the mandolin. You play the guitar. You play the fiddle. I’ve seen you play the bass. Is there any instrument you don’t play?

A. Anything with strings I can figure out if left alone in a room long enough with it. I can get a note, maybe, out of a trumpet. No sousaphone. I always loved the clarinet, but I could never get more than a goose squawk out of it. I play a little piano, I could survive on drums, if needed…

Q. So you wake up every morning, you’re Colin McCaffrey, so what does a day look like for you? How do you navigate this amazing multi-faceted musical world?

A. I love getting up every day, ‘cause every day is something to do with music. I just finished making a record with a bunch of kids from Union Elementary School in Montpelier called “The River Gives To Me,” which is a bunch of songs about the river, and environmentalism, and Vermont history. It’s a huge project, and I’m really proud of it. So a typical day involves working on some sort of recording project, some sort of editing, maybe – I’ve got Pro Tools at home on my computer, which allows me to stay home and make money doing what I love. A lot of my production work is kind of a “value-added” thing, where I am a recorder, and a musician, and a producer all at once.

Q. What’s on the horizon for you?

A. Well, Tammi Fletcher is coming over tomorrow morning – we’re starting work on a new project together.

Find out more about “Tired of Town” and Colin McCaffrey at www.colinmccaffrey.com.

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The Great Warming: The Fingerprints Are Ours

“Something is happening to the complex system that sustains life on earth,” observe the narrators of the new film “The Great Warming.” “And the fingerprints are ours.”

Directed by Vermont-based producer Michael Taylor, “The Great Warming” is this summer’s OTHER global warming film, overshadowed, at least for the moment, by “former next President of the United States” (har har) Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

As I’ve suggested elsewhere, Gore’s failure to explore our global Peak Oil dilemma – the unpopular but much-proved notion that, supply-wise, we’re sliding off of the back side of a global hydrocarbon energy bell curve that makes our energy situation even more urgent than most realize - renders his film, at best, an “Inconvenient HALF Truth.” Sure, we can talk about constructing alternative energy systems – solar, wind, hydro – to replace our dwindling fossil fuel energy reserves in the face of global warming. But creating these new systems ALSO takes incredible amounts of energy, fossil fuel or otherwise.

The single best solution to our current climate and energy woes is to “power down,” to use much less energy and use it much more efficiently.

Unfortunately, Taylor’s film, like Gore’s also ignores the added urgency and context that come with an understanding of global Peak Oil. A glaring omission, to be sure. We ignore global Peak Oil realities at our own peril.

But, as an educational tool for “global warming,” Taylor’s film trumps “(Half) Truth” in (at least) five ways.

1. Many narrators – Al Gore, of course, is “(Half) Truth’s” only narrator. When I first read that pop culture icons - musician Alannis Morrisette and actor Keanu Reeves – would be narrating “The Great Warming,” I was intrigued and a bit skeptical. Happily, both do a bang-up job, delivering the film’s script in an accessible and non-intrusive way. And Taylor also relies on a wide variety of “talking heads” – ordinary people as well as high-powered scholars, businesspeople and politicos.

2. Diversity of people – Rather than Gore’s “(Half) Truth,” a film that makes the rich white male narrator the star of the show, Taylor delivers a film featuring multiple voices from all over the world: rich and poor; black, white, red, yellow and brown; liberal and conservative; religious and secular. Just one example– Matthew Sleeth, a conservative religious evangelical who quit his medical career to bring the gospel of global warming to Christian communities around the country, and has written a book called Serve God, Save The Planet. Who knew that religious conservatives cared about the planet’s future? But of course, many do.

3. Contextualized stories – Gore’s “(Half) Truth” uses brief video footage of spectacular disasters like “Hurricane Katrina” as sensationalistic eye candy. While this makes for good fodder for his film’s theatrical trailer, it does a disservice to those actually affected by these disasters, as well as providing little context for the many human dimensions accompanying the mounting global warming crisis. Taylor’s film, on the other hand, takes great pains to get the camera in front of ordinary people from all over the world who are grappling with the effects of global warming.

4. Depth and breadth – Unlike Gore’s “(Half) Truth,” which takes the greater part of ninety minutes to explain the basics of global warming, and offers little in the way of breadth and depth beyond some token largely visual nods towards the world’s cornucopia of communities, Taylor’s film ranges widely, focusing on the great warming’s multiple impacts on many communities around the world.

5. Real solutions – Gore’s “(Half) Truth” offers us little guidance beyond platitudes. Happily, Taylor’s film works hard to spotlight solutions. “The great warming will be fought by innovators, as well as anyone who cares about what global warming is doing to the planet,” observes Reeves. Here are but seven:

The British government’s decision to build a Thames River revolving gate system to protect against the rising river’s potential flooding of the London Underground.

Organizations implementing portable solar and wind technology for the 1/3 of the global population who lack access to reliable energy resources, providing yurt-dwelling Mongolians (for example) with carbon-free green sources of power.

Bangladeshis using of “cage aquaculture” to farm fish for food and additional income.

The state of California’s ongoing “wise use” efforts to conserve their rapidly dwindling water resources.

Architects like the aptly-named Christopher Holmes who builds houses that are intensely energy efficient.

Keene, NH’s production of “Climate Change: The Musical,” a theatrical production used to inspire an entire town to re-organize their economy around conservation and clean energy alternatives.

And, my favorite in the “gee whiz” category – Columbia professor Klaus Lackner’s vision for “synthetic trees,” giant free-standing carbon dioxide “catchers” that can trap the equivalent of 15,000 cars’ worth of carbon dioxide emissions.

But again, building these kinds of solutions requires foresight, planning, money, and above all, ENERGY, which is growing more expensive by the week.

Aside from ignoring global peak oil (a glaring omission), Taylor’s film is a realistic and hopeful one. Hopefully the movie-going public concerned about these issues can make room for more than just an “inconvenient truth” this summer and fall.

Find out more at www.thegreatwarming.com,

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X Men 3: Last Stand

“Who will you stand with? The humans, or us?”

So asks “rogue” mutant Magneto at a mutant community action meeting, at the beginning of the third installment of the wildly successful “X Men” movies.

For those of you who missed the first two films, mutants are human-like creatures with special genetically-encoded powers that allow them to bend to their will the laws governing the natural world. So, “Storm” (Halle Berry) can control the weather, “Mystique” can shape shift and become other people at will, while the cigar-chomping Logan/”Wolverine” (Hugh Jackman) possesses remarkable strength, adamantium spikes embedded in his fists, and the capacity to heal himself when wounded in combat.

Like humans, mutants are divided on their allegiance to a select few leaders. Many throw in their lot with Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who takes responsibility for educating young mutants on how to grapple with the ethical and logistical dilemmas that accompany being different than humans. Others, led by the metal-manipulating Magneto (Ian McKellan) choose to directly oppose human attempts to control mutant behavior.

As the third film opens, the mutants receive word that human scientists and the U.S. government have created a new vaccine designed to “cure” the “disease” that accompanies one’s mutant status. This gene-suppressing “cure” is embedded in the body of a young boy, who quickly becomes a target for mutants fearing government’s forced use of the vaccine on them. Attempts to inject the cure into Warren, the winged mutant son of one government official, fail, while Magneto moves to form a mutant army to fight the government’s plan. Class 5 mutant Jean Grey, meanwhile, returns from the dead (see the second film) a changed soul, possessing superhuman, that is, super-mutant energy.

Magneto and Xavier’s followers square off over the source of the cure and Jean’s destiny, and what follows I leave for you to see, if you choose to. Suffice to say, Charles Xavier’s “vision of a world united,” one in which human and mutant live together in peace and harmony, takes a licking in this third installment.

Fans of the “X Men” movies will find the usual stunning digitally-enhanced cinematography and obligatory summer action blockbuster special effects here, including a man-mutant who can fly, aesthetically-pleasing shots of the San Francisco Bay Area, and one remarkable climactic scene involving the Bay Bridge and Alcatraz penitentiary (I’ll leave it at that).

At its best moments, “X Men” raises provocative questions about the nature of the “Other” – those within any culture who are branded as “different” and who must exist among people who fear and despise them. And, how a small group within the “feared” culture – in this case, Magneto and his followers - exploit that fear for their own political purposes by wreaking havoc within the dominant (in this case, human) society.

And then there is the sheer pleasure that comes with watching Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman and other good-looking human specimens cavort on the silver screen in black latex jump suits.

This alone made “X-Men3” well worth the price of a matinee ticket.

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An Inconvenient (Half) Truth: Peeking Over The Hedge At Our Future

I just took my two kids to see the most important film of the summer.

I mean “Over the Hedge,” of course, Dreamworks” new movie that satirically celebrates America’s great gift to the world.

The suburbs.

Thanks be to those zany animators for providing impressionable American tykes with a playful picture of the most unsustainable living arrangement the world has ever seen, a world we can now condition our wee ones to laugh about in all of its fossil-fuel powered, cell phone-obsessed, television-addicted, nacho cheese snorting glory.

The plot: Bruce Willis gives voice to rascally raccoon R.J., who botches a theft attempt in Vincent the Bear’s (Nick Nolte) lair. The outraged ursus charges the desperate R.J. with the task of recovering all of Vincent’s collected suburban cave goodies – a red wagon, a blue plastic cooler, potato chips, assorted snacks – or be killed. The manipulative R.J. then enlists the help of a motley collection of unsuspecting woodland creatures – a control freak turtle, a jacked-up hyperactive squirrel, a quarrelsome but loving porcupine family - who live over the hedge from the newly-constructed suburbs, subsisting only on tree bark. R.J. sells these poor primitive animated slobs on the promise of exquisitely tasty processed food and 1001 other suburban delights that lie over said hedge, if only they might help him heist the loot from a well-coiffed goose-stepping realtor who hires a goofball exterminator to do all of them in. A few lame jokes and several slapstick scenes later, the story neatly resolves itself, in that Dreamworks’ sort of way that I leave for you to discover for yourselves.

Now I hate to ruin anyone’s good time, especially during summer blockbuster movie season. But the problem with this Pixar-driven yuk yuck-fest, of course, is that we and our children have some difficult 21st century problems to solve, dilemmas involving the END of suburbia and cheap fossil fuel energy, dilemmas that cut to the heart of our current living arrangement so trivially mocked in “Over the Hedge.”

So what to do? (Drum roll please).

Enter the earnest Mac-wielding Democrat Al Gore.

“I used to be the next president of the United States of America,” he says by way of welcome at the beginning of his new documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Har har. I’m so glad we can all laugh about the fact that now two national presidential “elections” (and I use the term loosely) have been stolen from the candidate who actually won the majority of the votes.

Put these inconvenient facts behind us for a moment, though, and acknowledge this: Al Gore has made a timely movie about what he calls the most important moral issue of our time, a movie I really wanted to like, because Al Gore seems like a bright guy burning a whole lot of jet fuel to hammer home an important message to the world.

The data seems clear.

The evidence conclusive.

The debate among folks who put their faith in the scientific method is over.

Human-induced global warming is a reality that threatens our collective future.

Now, if you’ve seen this movie’s fantastic theatrical trailer or read any of the advance buzz (“This movie will scare you to death!” scream all the national movie pundits), you’re in for a disappointment, for Gore builds his story around a live lecture he gives to an attentive if slightly-bored looking audience, complete with a wide variety of hi-tech visuals, charts, and diagrams. Typical for Gore, he makes his case methodically and thoughtfully. He’s at his best in his occasional voice-over asides and he relies on a number of engaging stories and visuals to help tell his story, but he refuses to take off the gloves when it comes to the well-funded corporate spin doctors of the “global warming is a giant hoax being perpetrated on the American people by liberal environmentalist wackos” camp.

But here are two big problems with Gore’s movie.

First, Gore never once mentions our global peak oil situation – the fact that the world is running out of cheap and abundant fossil fuel energy. Talking about global warming and our collective future without addressing this reality makes his film an “inconvenient HALF truth,” as it is our century-old addiction to fossil fuel energy that has helped create global warming in the first place.

Interestingly, I broke my self-imposed two decade long “no TV” taboo to watch Al Gore being interviewed on Larry “Softball Question” King the night I went to see his new film. Predictably, Gore was his usual cautious, self-effacing and circumspect self, but on at least two occasions, he became somewhat animated when discussing global warming. He even uttered the phrase “peak oil” in passing during the last minute of his 45 minute interview with King (the other fifteen minutes of the hour being devoted to commercial interruptions, many of them, ironically enough, for automobiles, which are the single greatest collective contributor to global warming globally).

But to not directly and honestly address our uncertain energy future seems incredibly irresponsible for a world leader of Al Gore’s stature.

Which leads to the second big problem with his new film. Gore offers little in the way of solutions, beyond tiresome and empty “we must do the right thing” rhetoric. “Political will is a renewable resource,” Gore explains to enthusiastic applause.

Yes, yes, but what must we do?

Decrease global population?

Give up our dependence on technologies that make our way of life so darn convenient?

Downsize our lives?

Use energy more efficiently?

Decrease our energy use?

Who’d like to be first in line?

And will Gore’s film change people’s minds?

The truth is, it doesn’t matter. This is the wrong question, just like Gore’s insistence on framing global warming as a “moral” and not a “political” issue is misguided.

Morality aside, global warming and global peak oil are looming political AND economic issues, two faces of a very inconvenient 21st century dilemma that doesn’t just threaten polar bears or residents of the planet’s low-lying communities in Florida, Shanghai, and lower Manhattan.

All of us have a big stake in this conversation.

And what needs to be changed our not our minds, but our actions.

And this is very hard to do - Gore’s political platitudes and ahistorical analogies aside - when our political and economic life are both governed by the very players – giant multinational corporations and the politicians who serve them - most interested in preserving the status quo.

We best get busy. I can feel the temperature rising.

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