Joni Mitchell Tribute:
David Jenkins
&
Carla Olson
(w/Syd Straw, Gabriel Gordon
& Fuzzbee Morse)
Photo by Erik Christopher Lopez
From ANDRAS JONES: For our second Pop Oracle session with the music of Joni Mitchell we once again welcome DAVID JENKINS of the Wild Honey Foundation. David now joins Paul Zollo, Chuck E. Weiss and Syd Straw as our only repeat quest questioners on the podcast so far. Nice company. We’ll be adding one more name to that list before this episode is through. David’s got a pretty cool Joni Mitchell story and, although I was dubious of his question at first (I hate how little faith I still have after years of doing this that there are NO bad questions), it yielded a truly divine divination. His answer, performed by CARLA OLSON with the help of Wild Honey Orchestra veterans, Syd Straw and Fuzzbee Morse, and Gabriel Gordon on guitar is something we refer back to several times during the episode. My favorite moment of this is when Carla takes charge of the session and lays down the goddess law as a member of the Woodstock generation in a way, I have to imagine, might make Joni smile.
WOODSTOCK
I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock ‘n’ roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try an’ get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
I don’t know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden