Spare Changes – A Personal Remembrance
By Tom Wachunas
This time of year
invariably brings some missives from friends or family chronicling their doings
over the past year. And with the approach of 2017, that particular holiday
practice has put me in a reflective frame of mind. What I wish to share with you
here is not a recap of the past year, however, but rather a few thoughts on
something that recently startled me: January, 2017, will mark the 25th
anniversary of my decision to resettle in Canton, where I was born, after
living in New York City for 14 years. Twenty-five years back in Canton! Whaaat
the…where’d the…who…how did…Huh?
Not very long ago, I
was surprised to get an email note sent by a New York friend from a lifetime
ago. It included a YouTube link that plays back an original song I had
recorded, titled “Happy the Man,” for an LP (yep, a full-length vinyl album) I
made in Columbus, called “Spare Changes,” in 1975. It also included a those-were-the-days
remembrance of how I often played the song during my brief stint as a singer
(in the loosest sense of the word)-songwriter at various Manhattan folk music
venues. The song was originally about a broken romance with a specific young
woman. Yet in listening to it again, I thought of another broken romance
altogether.
The song now has
the strange effect of bringing me to the moment when I decided to leave New York for good. I had been
staying with my oldest brother and his family for the holidays at their North
Canton home. At that point, I was coming to grips with the unsavory details of
my circumstances – taking an inventory, if you will – which included being
recently divorced, jobless, and homeless. I had beaten a hasty retreat from the
city that never sleeps to take a long, sobering look at my very un-sober life.
New York, that beguiling playground of possibilities, had morphed into an ugly
landscape of self-sabotaged dreams.
And so it is that
on one January morning in 1992, after an ice storm in these parts, I was
looking out of the picture window of my brother’s house, framing a pristine
vision of Ohio winter. A decision was waiting, as if standing in the wings,
poised to make its entrance on to the stage of my life, cluttered as it was
with the debris of so many previously bad decisions. I stepped outside to
breathe in the landscape. A persistent wind was whistling through the ice-laden branches of the trees,
causing a gentle cacophony of clicking noises as they flapped together. Back
and forth, like so many crystalline hands etched into the sky. It sounded
almost like…yes, that was it. Applause. The premiere of a new show. Adieu, New
York.
One line in “Happy the Man” is particularly
relevant in this context - “We cannot stay in one place long if staying means
losing what we are.” Indeed.
For your
entertainment, I include here a link to the YouTube entry
which
includes this short and… uhm, flattering review:
“among the Top Shelf
Singer-Songwriter albums ever! ...imagine Neil Young in some carribean lagoon
crackin' up shells for new songs and you get an idea for Tom's voice! 6- and
12-string guitars w/accordion, e-piano, vibes, bass 'n drums and Bruce Roberts (of
ONE ST. STEPHEN-FAME!!) cranks some lead-guit-licks that shimmer w/the
icy-intense-sparse ("happy the man") ...I guess Acid-Folk is the
term! an utterly relaxed performance with THAT introspective, poetic fade-glow
that borders to the ethereal shiver (Joni M. would love this...) ...10 songs
like delicious fruit in the bowl or shootin' smooth arrows outta ever-full
quiver (at the owl) recorded in Columbus, Ohio in the summer of '75 .”
And speaking of
happy, my wish for all of you readers is that your New Year is just that. See
you then.
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