Mr Wilson, The Stonecutter
First Jeni & Billy appearance on June 25, 2005. We hadn’t realized at this point that we should have called ourselves The Pickles or Sheila & Fred. If we had, perhaps superstardom would have been ours. In the end, we met a lot of really great people, made a ton of records, and traveled all over!
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Jeni & Billy, yes, those were (are?) our real names
For ten years from 2006 until 2016 I toured with the duo Jeni & Billy. I was Jeni. I was once told by a friend on the committee of an arts organization that our duo wasn’t chosen for a festival because one of the other people on the committee didn’t like our name. What can I say? I was born a Jeni. He was born a Billy. I suppose we could have called ourselves The Pickles or even Sheila and Fred. Then people would have kept saying, “Hey, Sheila.” And I would have had to say, “Well, that’s just my stage name. I’m really called Jeni.”
I only mention this story in case any of you have applied for a grant, festival spot, or a plain ole vanilla gig and been rejected. Just remember that though these organizations seem serious and like the ultimate gatekeepers of fame, they could be managed by people who just can’t get over the fact that you named your band after your actual names.
Libraries as Music Halls
On to Mr Wilson and how songs happen. As traveling folk singers, Billy and I toured the UK, Ireland, the USA, and Canada (Ontario, actually). Depending on whether we needed to make time for creating a new album or not, we’d play somewhere between eighty and a hundred and twenty dates a year at all kinds of places – churches, village halls, festivals, folk clubs, community centers, living rooms, parks, and libraries. Once we played in a club so dirty that I had to do a kind of acrobatic act in the tiny bathroom in order to change into my stage clothes. At the end of the night, we were handed our pay from stacks of bills covering a pool table and wondered if we were part of some kind of crime film.
Libraries were great places to play and the bathrooms were really clean. No one had to buy a ticket because there used to be funding for libraries to have programs like music, storytelling, crafts, and speakers. We and the library would agree on a fee in advance of the performance and we’d show up ready to sing. This was reasurring for us as performers because we knew that we would make a wage. Most touring involved us booking dates, traveling and all of the expenses involved in that, and hoping that people would buy a ticket on the night. This was inherently stressful and sometimes resulted in a state of constant anxiety which is one reason I don’t tour as much as I used to.
Another great thing about libraries was that they would have books for sale that had been removed from circulation or donated. So, rather than carry my own library of books around in the Jeep or in the Airstream trailer, I could pick up a new story at the library.
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The Stonecutter
One time at a library, I picked up a Japanese fable called The Stonecutter. As soon as Billy saw the title, he said, “A stonecutter? That’s a drunk person.” I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “We called the men who would get drunk at the bars in Baltimore stonecutters because they would fall down and cut their heads on the marble stoops.”¹
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Billy continued to tell me the story of Mr. Wilson who was a well known “stonecutter” in the Paradise area of Baltimore where Billy grew up. He worked as a gas man and came around the houses reading people’s meters. This, of course, was before the time that gas companies installed sensors in the road that sent meter readings through the ether. There was an actual person who your grandmother let in the door, gave a glass of milk, and gossiped with.
Mr Wilson had a habit of exclaiming, “How sweet it is!” which now begins the chorus of his song.
Billy also said that some of his friends who once looked askance at Mr. Wilson’s drunkenness became “stonecutters” themselves and also “drank up their wages” at The Paradise Bar. So, they take over from Mr. Wilson’s story in the last verse.
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Everything Leads Back to the Welsh
Billy talking about the stonecutters falling down from inebriation reminded me of the North Wales Bluegrass Festival which used to be held in Conwy around the 4th of July every year. Because Billy and I were lucky to play that festival many years running, we often celebrated American Independence from Britain in Britain. Now that I’ve lived in Britain for eight years, you could say that I haven’t really come very far in terms of my independence from Britain.
One morning at the North Wales Bluegrass Festival, I came over to visit with the now late John Les who ran the festival with his sister Gill. John was looking a little worse for wear though he greeted me with as much gusto and kindness as always. He had a bit of a cut on his eye and I said, “What happened, John, are you alright?” And he said, “Not to worry, Jeni, just a bit too much of the falling down water” and laughed in his unforgettable way.
Ah, I thought. And I told him the story of the stonecutters in Baltimore which he loved.
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Me and the Falling Down Water
I’ve had an anxious relationship with the falling down water. As a child, I was in too many situations where I witnessed people who’d had too much to drink and where I felt threatened or unsafe (not with my parents, I add for clarity). Some of the people were on the streets of Boston. Some were in my extended family or community. They hurt themselves or each other. They didn’t laugh it off like John in Wales. They were menacing or maudlin or violent.
So, when drinking became something my peers started to experiment with, I made myself very unpopular by seeming a goody-two-shoes-teetotaler. But what they didn’t know was that I had recognized in myself a tendency to take things very far and I was afraid of what my relationship with drinking might be.
As a kid, I had to collect all of a thing. I had to make certain things as perfect as possible every day like my room or my hair or the lines in the carpet from the vacuum. I had to learn everything about a particular thing – before the internet – by combing through library card catalogs and encyclopedias. I thought, if I start drinking, I won’t be able to stop, so I better not start. And that has served me well, though as a touring musician, it has often made me an awkward guest and companion. I remember one exasperated banjo player who was “three sheets to the wind,” as my dad would say, at a fiddler’s convention saying to me emphatically, “Oh, Jeni, I wished you drank!” I couldn’t understand why my sobriety pained him so much, but I don’t think my flatfoot dancing would have been better for his jar of moonshine.
The next morning, I bought him a secondhand shirt of the type he favored at the Goodwill, he took a shower at the public pool, and we gave him a ride to his next berth as he hoboed around the south with his jar of moonshine and his banjo.
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Mr Wilson and Songs Everywhere
I’ve met Mr Wilson everywhere in my life. When I was a child, I used to ask the adults to explain it all to me and that’s where another one of my songs about drink comes from – that and a quilt pattern called Drunkard’s Path. Perhaps, I’ll write about that song, too, sometime.
A few weeks ago, my friend Fiona Jane said, “You never know what’s coming around the corner.” I often think that about songs because a library book of a Japanese folk tale took Billy and me both back to memories of childhood and the dawning awareness of drink and drinkers. We were able to write an elegy for Mr Wilson and for all of the stonecutters we’ve known which makes no judgment, but asks the insoluble question of how any of us puzzles along the marble stoops of our lives.
I always feel that my friends help me puzzle through. Thank you for being among them. I hope you enjoy Mr. Wilson’s song.
Jeni
The Stonecutter ©Jeni Hankins & Billy Kemp 2010 The stonecutter walked down Paradise Avenue and there weren’t no doubt, the old man had a few. He was known by all as the drunk of the town – for cutting his head when the drink laid him down. How sweet it is! We’ve a journeyman’s chance of a turn in this world, but only one dance to each of us is given. Oh Mama, will we see the stonecutter in Heaven? Mr Wilson worked for the gas and electric If you had a meter, Mr Wilson checked it. But he drank up his wages at the Paradise Bar, where my father said the stonecutters are. I’d sit with my friends at the Paradise Bar – the old men shooting pool, chewed on their cigars. Mr Wilson was good for a laugh or two. Now some of my friends are stonecutters too.
Baltimore is, in fact, famous for its marble stoops. I absolutely love Michele Wojciechowski’s story in Baltimore Magazine about earning pocket money washing marble stoops in her neighborhood near Patterson Park. If you go to Patterson Park to see the stoops and you get hungry, don’t miss the best pizza place in the world at Matthew’s Pizza.
Recording of The Ballad of Mr Wilson by Si McGrath, Barwick-in-Elmet, Yorkshire, 2015. Billy Kemp, Guitar and harmony vocals. Jeni Hankins, Vocals. Other musicians, I’m afraid their names have been lost to time. Possibly Si McGrath on mandolin and Lisa Mallaghan on harmony vocals.
Billy Kemp (he still intrepidly goes by his own name, too) is playing near Baltimore on Sunday, August 24, and you just might hear this song. You will hear plenty of others as well as unparalleled guitar-playing. Details on his website.
I will be appearing at the same venue in April as part of my mini-tour in the USA. If you would like to host a house concert, church, village hall, or community concert or if you run a series, do get in touch. UK in February and March. USA in March and April. Have sewing machine, will sing with it.
Do you feel that you’re missing that little something that would make things just right this week? Something that would finish off the summer in style? How about making a paper hat for yourself, your pug, your teddy bears, your dolls, or your iguana? Instructions can be found below!
Other places you can find me on the web:
Tip Jar at Paypal or Ko-Fi. Thank you for supporting the new song, dolly rescue, bear rehabilitation, and loom re-stringing society!
Substack Notes where I post pictures and thoughts plus excerpts from other writers whose work I’m enjoying.
My shop where you can buy real albums that you can hold in your hand.
My website.
Instagram and Facebook where I post my adventures almost daily.
My articles for Modern Daily Knitting. My most recent article is about knitting sticks, sheaths, and belts.
Most recent Doll & Bear rescue is Lawrie who I found by the trash cans all wet and dusty. She’s now in charge of naps in my London studio.
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