'The Grandmother Tree', from AppleBlossom, has a dreamy, child-like feel to it, of two innocent, pre-adolescent children who, attracted to each other but having not yet bitten Eden's apple, would rather go play in the meadow on a lazy summer day than make-out in the barn.
Adam fishin' on Presque Isle, Erie, PA
In some ways, it makes you wish that our horny hormones were never invented. But then again, if that were the case, I suppose there wouldn't be any children around to go play in the meadow, would there.
Adam, I love your vocals, guitar work, and easy rhythm in this song. And Sam, I love your understated drumming. Beautiful work here. It reminds me a lot of 'Magnolia Moon', from Seals and Crofts' Takin' It Easy album, always one of my favorite (though mostly unknown) songs.
Lyrics:
If you want, I will marry you
Once we both turn eighteen.
But you just laugh and run off
to the Grandmother Tree
In your bare feet.
There you swing underneath her tree
I can see your hair blowing.
Stars and tears are the same for me tonight
Yeah, their coming out bright.
I strip down to my barefeet
and wrap my arms around yours.
If you want, I will marry you tonight
while things are alright.
I call out to the Nightingale
and lap up the evening stream.
Watch over her as she wears her veil
watch over us we sing.
If there is one person in this family who has attained a near-mythological status, it would be Adam's maternal great-grandmother, Esther Wilkins Hedges Dean, or as everyone referred to her, 'Hedgie'. When I was dating Mary Beth, way back in 1972, one of the first pilgrimages I made upon my first visit to her hometown was to 'the Castle', the home of Hedgie and her husband Tom, perched on a hill overlooking the valley on the way to Arkport.
Actually, I'm convinced that Hedgie was a hobbit, somehow mysteriously liberated from the mind of J. R. R. Tolkien. And, believe me, the Castle was not a normal home, built for normal people. Oh no, it was definitely built for (and by) hobbits, who are the size of Hedgie. As a human, I hardly fit through the doorway or into the bathroom. It was the Shire of Middle-earth, somehow transplanted to the outskirts of Hornell, New York
And just like a hobbit, Hedgie was not only smaller than humans, but she was also more innocent and wiser than we humans are. Finally, she had a cherubic face that only a hobbit could have. I'm not kidding. I have many pictures that would prove this to you.
Adam, Dad, and Great Grandma Hedgie
Anyway, when Adam wanted an introduction to his song 'If I', on his Appleblossom album, who better to turn to than his great-grandmother Hedgie, because she was always saying or doing wise things.
Actually, knowing that Adam has some 'hobbit' blood in him, explains a lot. (As does my wife...have you ever noticed that Mary Beth has no wrinkles on her face? 'That is no accident,' as they say.)
Lyrics:
Great Grandma Hedgie--"If a person, with all the things they learn in 82 years, could turn around and have another family, you know, that'd be quite an idea! I wonder if anyone worked it out. (Laugh...) Maybe I'll have another chance!" [Hedgie, I got your number...you're a hobbit!]
If I could buy a box of crayons
and tailor the world with my own hands
I'd draw you here with me
in red and blue-berry
If I could buy a box of crayons
If could sing a thousand songs
I'd sing them all for you so long
as you just realize
they're all written in your blue eyes
If I could sing a thousand songs
If I could live without regret
If I could pass that snare, jump that net
I promise I'd settle down
I promise a softer sound
If I could live without regret
If I could take you anywhere
To see secrets I've hid there
I'd take you deep inside
to where my spirit hides
If I could take you anywhere
"Say what you will, but I will be yours forever.
Those were the words I'll never regret."
Montauk Point, Long Island, NY
These opening lines to Adam's first true 'love song', the third track of his Apple Blossom album, reveal him to be a Romantic. And the odd thing is that, even as his father, I never really thought of Adam that way, until he started writing his beautiful songs. Growing up, it seemed that his 'essential self' was more interested in airplanes and Boy Scout knots, or perhaps clowning around with his male friends. Then, after he began to be interested in music, he started composing crazy songs like 'Potato Farmer Oratorio' on his 'Best CD in the World' album.
But there was always a side of Adam we almost never saw, because it was so private. And it is this Romantic side ( in the deeper artistic/literary/philosophical sense) that has begun to come out more and more in his twenties. The side that believes that the deeper realities of life lie in the feelings, emotions, and intuitions of the human being, the non-rational side of life, rather than logic or rationality or cerebrality.
This is why Adam is able to evoke such deep emotion in his music, including the longing of human love and intimacy.
Lyrics:
Say what you will, but I will be yours forever.
Those were the words I'll never regret.
Changed as we are so we can't be together.
Babe you are someone I will never forget.
I hope to keep talking and watching you grow.
With the ones you are walking.
So don't forget me just know that I'll always be here,
I'll always be here, I'll always be here.
In my mind, it never shakes
nor will it ever untangle.
But there's a taste of the courage
that I took from your pillow.
Changed as we are, at life's insistence
Babe I'll be on your side
and I will cheer from a distance.
I hope to keep talking and watching you grow.
With the ones you are walking.
So don't forget me just know I'll always be here,
I'll always be here, I'll always be here.
On three of his four albums, APL uses musical 'interludes' between songs, some of which are purely brief instrumental recordings, while others incorporate an audio recording of one of our family members, taken from our family achive of audio and video tapes which I've collected and digitized over the years.
Mama, Nathan, and Adam
The very first example of this is the first track on Apple Blossom, entitled 'The Day I Was Born'. (An appropriate way to begin your very first album, I would say--with an announcement of your birth, actually made the day you were born by your mother!) After Adam's birth, on November 18, 1982, his mother Mary Beth and I got out our cheap little cassette tape recorder that we had brought along with us to Children's Hospital in Buffalo, New York, so that we could make a recording to take back to Little Valley, NY (where we were living at the time). Our first born, Nathan, was two and a half years old, and Mary Beth wanted him to hear her voice so that he wouldn't be worried, and so she could prepare him for what was coming with her when she came home!
Somehow we managed to keep track of that and a number of other cassette recordings for over 20 years in a little shoebox, when I began to digitize them via computer and then make them available to our children. (I did the same with our VHS video recordings.) Hence Adam had access to a number of these historical family recordings when he began to compose his first album and incorporated a number of them into his songs, as either prelude or postlude.
Hence his Apple Blossom album became a very personal and intimate family portrait. In fact, the very title comes from a recording (video) of me saying something like, "spring day...blossoms are out on everything," as I'm videorecording the blossoms in the yard (track five). I think you can imagine how shocked I was to be included this way in my son's first album.
On the Highlands (NC) Parsonage Deck
But that's APL for you. We Lindquists are a tight bunch, and family means a lot to us. So I suppose it wasn't surprising that that would come out very clearly in Adam's artistry. His music is an expression of his soul, if I may put it that way. And (speaking as his father, who has known him 'since the day he was born') a beautiful, well-grounded, and loving soul it is.
Some of you know that Adam lived from ages 11-19 in Highlands, NC, where I served the Methodist Church. He and Nathan were still in Middle School when we bought them their first instruments: Nathan an electric guitar and Adam a bass guitar.
Nathan wrote his first song about two weeks after getting the guitar, so we always thought that perhaps it was he who was going to be our 'young Lennon.' But it actually turned out to be Adam who became the professional composer/performer/producer in the family. Which is weird, because he was always going into the Air Force, until one day in high school he said he wanted to go into music instead.
Adam wrote and recorded, I don't know, maybe two dozens song that still aren't available online, including the infamous album The Best CD in the World that he and his cousin Tim Bailey wrote and recorded in the Highlands Parsonage basement, and sold around town on CDs they burned on our computer. Maybe, if he ever makes it bigtime, that album will become the subject of some serious scrutiny.
Anyway, the first true 'album' that he wrote and recorded was in 2007, and he called it AppleBlossom. Simply put, it blew his mother and I away the first time we heard it! Adam's routine for his first three albums was to write and record the entire album before playing any of it for us, so that we have the same experience that you do upon listening to the album.
"Calais Tune, Chalet View" was inspired (I think anyway) by a trip to France Adam took in 2003, in order to visit his brother Nathan, who was studying at the University of Lund in Sweden. While in France, he saw a certain young lady, and, voilà, "Calais Tune, Chalet View" was born!
(And one more thing: did you know that Adam recorded Appleblossom in his Wilmington apartment bedroom, using one microphone and his Apple computer? It boggles the mind, since it sounds like it was done in a fine recording studio.)
Feel this, with me
Hear this Calais tune, chalet view
Skillfully
I'll pour out the sky
The door is waiting for sunrise
Ten 'till four
Sure the sun waits, this I'm sure
Just the way your eyes create your allure
What change, I have made?
I had to lose to create
Ten 'till four
Sure the sun waits, this I'm sure
Just the way your eyes create your allure
I'll take you anywhere....
I'll take you everywhere...
I'll take you anywhere you care
Come on, Stay awake!
Stay through the changes we shall make
So much more
Sure the sun waits, this I'm sure
Just the way your eyes create your allure...
Sarahbeth adding a flute line to 'Best CD in the World'
