Kristin Lems: Blog Archive

hi everyone, I didn't have a live recording of the song handy, but this topic is in the news, so I put up "The First Five Minutes of Life" with still photos and all the lyrics. Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for urging me to do this.  Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ-xdmn_7L0

I have another song whose topic is in the news this week. Some will remember my song, "The First Five Minutes of Life," on my 3rd album, now rereleased on my double CD Equality Road. It's about a couple that decided not to learn the gender of their baby for the first five minutes. This is a true story, and I was moved to write the song when I heard it from my friends who did this innovative thing. I recorded the song live a couple of years later and have sung it at concerts many times since then.

Over the years many people have told me they decided to do the same thing when their baby was born ~ to just have a few moments in which they celebrate the baby's existence ~ "No need to choose the pink or blue." Just a few moments to enjoy the "baby child!"

Well, now the infant child "Storm" is in the news, and these parents have let the ambiguity continue for a much longer time. Many people have written me and said I should contact the parents or the media with my song, and many others (well, 6) have bought downloads of the song on ITunes and elsewhere.

It's kind of cool to be a couple decades ahead of the issues (again :~>). I wish the family well. Things have a way of working out just fine.

If interested in hearing it, find the song on my website and download - I think you'll enjoy it!

I'm pleased to say my song, Cuyahoga River, was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Great Lakes Songwriting Contest this year. Although the Cuyahoga is a great river rather than a great lake, it seemed a fitting contest to commemorate the event of 1970 which captured the conscience of the world. I hope the Chicago River will be cleaned up to the extent of the Cuyahoga, so we can swim in it someday. Anyway, hope you check ou the song!

This weekend I'll play the flute on a couple of songs, and Margaret Nelson, with whom I'm doing the performance, will play the bodhran, which she pronounces boron. With all the strings I strum or hammer, it is fun to play a wind instrument every so often. I hope you'll be able to drop by to this gig or another in the near future!

Enjoy hearing Kristin's humorous song about making ends meet through going in debt....at Labor Notes' ezine.  Here is the link to the song and graphics:  http://www.labornotes.org/2009/12/living-wage

New songs inspired by volunteer visit to New Orleans!  I'll try to record them and get them up here somehow....

hi People - looking forward to the free Mother's Day family concert at Niles Public Library this Sunday. Here is a brief article about it in the Pioneer Press:
http://www.pioneerlocal.com/parkridge/entertainment/934184,dc-famfriendly-050808-s1.article

Here's the address: http://www.myspace.com/kristinlems
OK everybody, slouching toward the millennium here...I was just gently nudged into starting a myspace page! It is quite bare bones right now, but you are welcome to go and leave your footprint there. There are two things myspace does that this site can't do: play songs when you arrive at the site, and make artists able to be found by the entire universe! - I love that. This is still my home base however - I love hostbaby!!

We really had fun last night in the Wilmette Theatre, in the grand evening called Ladies' Night Out. After hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar, we moved into the classy 150 seat theatre, where Producer "Sam" Samuelson served as the genial MC. I opened the show as a soloist, with guitar and piano, singing my original tunes, with the biggest Powerpoint ever known behind me on the Big Screen. It culminated in the audience singing along on the chorus of "Mammary Glands," which was displayed on the screen (the words, not the glands!) behind me. Most amazingly, the winner of the raffle before my set was MY MOM!! When they asked her her name, she was very reluctant to say it because she was sure it would look like an "inside job," but finally did, and everybody cheered. Poetic justice indeed!

After my set the hilarious, witty and hyperkinetic Boomer Babes did a set to the brilliant keyboarding of George Howe. They did a "time lapse" medley of how two women changed over a 30 year period, all with song bits, funny dialog and a whole lot of props. My favorite was when they sang the theme song from the Patty Duke Show!

Finally Stephanie Rogers and her band brought us to the end of the show, with rockin classics and some originals, and we all came up on stage for "I Will Survive," which was also on the Big Screen. When I say "We all came up on stage," I mean "we ALL came up on stage" - not just the performers, the organizers, and their families and friends, but everyone with even a smidgen of stardom in them - it was delightful!

The whole evening was professional, varied, and high-spirited - just exactly what all of us needed as to combat the winter doldrums. This is a real attempt to revive live performance in a theatre that has been "movies only" for many years, and I hope it makes it. Downtown Wilmette is definitely showing signs of life despite all its competition from mall-ville. It was great to be part of the revival!

Here's an article in the latest Evanston Review about the upcoming CD release reception!

http://www.pioneerlocal.com/evanston/entertainment/595170,dn-lems-101107-s1.article

Yes, all of my original songs are now ready and waiting for your legal downloads - they even pay me a few pennies of royalty for each download. Your favorites are now available "piecemeal" (or is it peace-meal?), without buying the whole album. A couple of the CDs already had this capability, notably, Oh Mama- plus! which has registered dozens of paid downloads of "Mammary Glands" - whenever it gets national airplay - but now ALL of the albums have this capability. You can stream them first to see if you like them, and then download. You can sculpt your own album of Kristin Lems songs! Now that I have entered the water in this brave new digital world, I can only rejoice that so many new listeners will have a chance to sample my collection of songs. You can find my songs at all the standard places people download songs - including ITunes and many other sites, and can also download them through CD Baby, my main distributor, just by clicking on the album the song is on at the "Time to Buy" link. TOO COOL!!!

The weekly Freethought Today radio podcast is including a feature on Kristin Lems and her new double CD, Equality Road, 11-12 AM CST today, June 30. It can be accessed through the following website: ffrf.org/radio. It is possible to hear the show in the archive for the week following the broadcast.

Yes, the double CD has arrived and is now available here: http://cdbaby.com/cd/kristinlems6!!

Get ready for an infusion of inspiration when you reacquaint yourself with these songs, or perhaps hear them for the first time. They are quite outspoken and spirited, and represent both a decade of women's rights at its zenith and also point the way to future actions.

Yes my friends, old and new, the much talked about "ERA album" and the long out-of-print second album you've all been asking about will be released this spring as a double CD called Equality Road. Just in time for the reintroduction of the Equal Rights Amendment! I'll be putting up the ordering information very soon. It's at the pressing plant right now....it's very exciting. I hope you'll come along on Equality Road...it's a long hard road but it will bear your load, we'll all get together on Equality Road.

www.annefeeney.com is the website of dynamic singer Anne Feeney, who tours the world with feisty and funny shows. Her new CD, If I Can't Dance ("...I don't want to be part of your revoltuion" - a quote by Emma Goldman) includes my song, Days of the Theocracy, in a great version. If you can't wait for my rerelease of the song, Anne's new album is the place to get it (and a whole lot of other stirring selections). I'm proud to be part!

As I prepared my performance for the Imaginative Education Conference in Vancouver, I realized none of the songs I planned to sing were recorded. They're all about creativity in education -- and in life! So I went in the studio, recorded them, created a book of lyrics and suggested classroom activities at two levels for each of the 14 songs, and it's coming to Canada with me. In a week or two, it will be available to order online. Teachers will love it -- many funny and all too true songs which I've sung for many teachers in the past few years. Keep watching this site for the ordering info on the new project!

It was great to be told by people all over the country that my song "Mammary Glands" was aired as part of a Mother's Day segment on NPR's Morning Edition! To purchase the song (not available as a download), click on the purchase icon and then the "Oh Mama!" CD.

When Cindy Sheehan and others at Camp Casey in Crawford Texas broke camp, they decided to fan out over the country in several paths. One came to my town, Evanston, and an outdoor evening event took place on the lawn of the Unitarian Church. The large audience, holding candles in vigil, was drained dry by the stories of those who left and never returned, the lost young lives and the futility of this war. I sang songs between speakers, and was glad to be a small part of the event. What if they gave a war and nobody came? This ill-conceived and bloody war in Iraq has got to end. Bring em home now!

Singing with Peggy Lipschutz at the easel, at a midday program which also included flute and piano music, selections from a wonderful book by Ada Kahn, and lunch, was just about enough to make me want to sign up for the Presbyterian Homes myself! The speech by the organizers talked about how one can think of retiring instead as "rewiring," a chance to try new things. Many heads were nodding in agreement. I also saw many eyes dabbed with Kleenex when we performed "Wrinkles." When one thinks of wrinkles as something to be proud of, as badges of honor, it changes the whole paradigm. Did you know people who play music together have more fun? well, of course you did!

OK, so I was at my restaurant gig a couple of weeks ago, and while I was sitting and singing at the piano, a man sauntered up and dropped a $100 bill on the piano, saying, "It's a Wonderful World, please." I was mid-syllable and couldn't do anything but nod and smile furtively. What I wanted to say was, "WAIT! I don't know that song!" but by the time I had finished, he was back at a faraway table, conferring with his friends.

A table full of friends was nearby, so I quickly rushed over to them and said, "If you love me, get me the words to 'it's a wonderful world' in the next ten minutes!" As they stared at me in astonishment, I climbed back on stage and started a new song. I saw them furiously strategizing, then using the cell phone, talking animatedly, then writing on a napkin. Within just about 7 minutes, they brought the words up to me, and with no further ado, I launched into a decent rendition of the song, to the satisfied smile of my benefactor in the back!

They had called a friend at home, who did an online lyrics search, and then read the words back to them while they wrote them down. Luckily, I did know the tune already and could figure out the chords, more or less.

Certainly one of the most extraordinary performing experiences of my whole life!!

Somebody said, "You always have the same big smile in your photos. Are you always smiling?"
Answer, no, but when I'm performing, usually, because I absolutely love what I do. It's so much fun, so exhilerating, and so meaningful and varied that it's almost unbelievable I get paid to do it, too. Many musicians feel exactly like I do. When asked, "Why do you stay with the music?" we can only say, "Because I can't even imagine life without it." So I smile.

Friday Feb. 11, from 3 - 4:30 EST, there will be a longish interview with me on WRUW 91.1 fm, Cleveland, on a show featuring women musicians, recorded live in their studio. At this address, http://www.wruw.org/guide/show.php?show_id=177, you can reach the website, which has streaming mp3, enabling you to hear it on your computer. Hope you'll tune in....

I had a fabulous time in Cleveland, singing alone and with others....learned a lot and also had a lot of fun.

Here is the webcast made of our roundtable the first evening. There are three musical groups, and we each speak a few minutes and then sing a song. Enjoy!

http://www.case.edu/artsci/dmll/roundtable.html

first it was singing for a school board candidate in a noisy bar up a snowy flight of stairs with the p.a. hanging off my arms. Not enjoyable to realize that when I struck my opening chord, the volume level of the guests went UP, not down! A few sympathetic faces looked at me, trying to listen, but didn't read lips well enough to get anything. Then the restaurant gig the following night....first canceled due to snow, and then, suddently reinstated, when both the restaurant owner and some friends called me at home to say, "Where the heck are you? We're waiting for the show!" I hurriedly rushed out the door and navigated my way through drifts and forts of snow made by plows and shovels....the atmosphere was as warm and welcoming there as ever. Moral: things that look good sometimes aren't, and things that look grim often make a turnaround. Life's many surprises!

Winter 2004
I have allowed my reflections page to moulder....time for some new ones! I realize now that what I was trying to do when I started this in 1996 was really "blogging;" it just didn't have a name at the time. I have since seen how those with fluent writing styles write voluminously, and readers from around the world hang on their every word. I certainly have from time to time. I doubt I'll get to blogging level, but I'd like to kind of bring you along in my guitar case, and let you see some of the things I've seen, and the places I've been (or places I've seen and things I've been)...

The most interesting recent development was appearing in two different shows this past fall as an actor/singer. In both cases, I was selected by the playwright because of their prior knowledge of my singing. I have never intended or expected to be an actor and do not have formal training in it beyond the high school level. However, I share with actors and classically trained singers a certain comfort level with stages and audiences and programs, and besides, I always like a challenge. So I accepted the offers, rehearsed, and performed.

The first show, The Witch of Ferndale, by Kenan Heise, is an adaptation of some short stories written by the talented Heise about his aunt from the Depression era, who never spent a "single dime, nickel or cent." Her willingness to find ways to outsmart the system while still helping those she loved earned her the exasperated admiration of those around her. Some who didn't understand called her a "witch" - like so many nonconformist women have been called! I played the narrator and sang at several points in the piece. (I had previously appeared in a backer's audition for another piece Kenan wrote, called Songbird of the Wobblies, about Joe Hill's traveling companion and possible girlfriend, Katie Phar. That show was basically composed of a lot of the great old Wobbly songs).

Kenan's show was a one night staged reading at a local theatre, as part of a playwriting festival. As actors and composers know, there's quite a gap between creation and production, and it's back to the drawing board for some more changes, and some more attempts to find funding. I'm at the ready for the next time it's mounted!

The second show, by playwright Joann Koch and composer James Lucas, is a musical comedy called Hearts in the Wood. The title comes from the heart shapes carved in mountain dulcimers, which figure prominently in the play, a fictionalization of a real dulcimer maker Lucas knew while living in West Virginia. His attempts to make a new life performing his old time music to a Chicago audience, and his granddaughter's realization that she can't get the country out of her city lifestyle, form two plots full of songs and snappy dialog.

I played two challenging parts, the "love interest" of the old guy (!) and one of the ensemble members of the old timey group back in West Virginia. It was staged in a big, barny theatre in Three Oaks, Michigan, which used to be called The Featherbone Factory, where corsets were made. Now they've got huge theatre organs which make the whole building into a kind of living organ, vibrating from the huge pipes. And there's a fine stage, a set of bleachers, and some cafe style tables.

We rehearsed a lot, but hadn't been able to be in the room until the day of the show. The other actors and singers were a blast, and I learned a lot watching and listening to them. Hopefully it will get another run sometime in the future in the Chicago area.