Article © 2004 by Mike Hoy
Illustration © 2004 by R.L. Crabb
The First Time I Ever Heard
Emmylou Harris
A Memoir
by Mike Hoy
The first time I ever heard Emmylou Harris was in the
summer of 1975. I was living in East Lansing, Michigan, and was just
getting Loompanics underway. My friend, Mick, and I wanted to score
some pot, so we went over to the apartment of this guy he knew who
dealt a little. This guy, Jerry, was about our age (mid-twenties), and
driving a cab was his main gig, and he also sold just enough pot to get
his own stash for free. He would buy, like, a quarter pound or so, and
then sell three ounces of it for just enough that he could smoke for
free.
There were guys all over the place like that then,
guys selling just enough to their friends to smoke for free, and it is
somewhat flabbergasting to look back on those times now and see just
how open and fearless everybody was about smoking pot. In fact, I
didn't have any friends at that time who weren't tokers.
So we get to Jerry's apartment, and he gets out an
ounce for us ($35!!!), and of course you would always taste it before
you bought it, so he rolled up a doobie and we passed it around, and
quickly we all had a pleasant buzz on. He put on a record, and soon I
was listening to the clearest, most beautiful singing voice I had ever
heard. I asked him who it was, and he said, “ Emmylou Harris.” I had
never heard of her, but the wonder of her voice stuck in my mind like a
dart hitting a bull's-eye.
It was her debut album, Pieces of the Sky,
and we listened to “ Bluebird Wine,” “Too Far Gone,” and “If I Could
Only Win Your Love.” Holy shit. Then, Emmylou went into “Boulder to
Birmingham” (the only song of her own composition on the album), and I
knew I would be in love forever. The hemp put the music to us, and in
that cozy apartment smoke, I felt like a dust mote suspended on the
sunbeam of her voice. We all did.
We had Mick's car that day, and when we left Jerry's
(after listening to the entire album), I insisted he drive me to the
nearest record store (Wherehouse Records), and I purchased Pieces
of the Sky, my first Emmylou Harris album – the first
Emmylou Harris album. And I have bought every album she has come out
with in the nearly 30 years since then.
It's remarkable how free we were in those
pre-mandatory-minimum, pre-Just-Say-No days. Nobody thought anything of
smoking dope, or for that matter, dropping acid. Michigan State
University was there, and you could get all the psychedelic aids you
wanted with little more hassle than buying a case of beer. Sometimes
the college kids would simply take over parts of the campus,
and rechristen the sidewalks with hand-lettered signs: “Acid Avenue,”
“Mary Jane Lane,” and the like. Everybody did it, everybody loved it,
and everybody was better off for it.
I remember another time when Mick and I were out to
score, and one of his girlfriends at the time was a student at MSU, and
a friend of hers in the dorm, Bill, was a part-time dealer, and Anne
took us over to his room to pick up an ounce. We walked down the
hallway to his room, and Anne knocked on his door. “Come in,” he called
out, and we opened up the unlocked door and entered his room.
Bill was sitting there on the room's sofa, and on a
table in front of him, he had a whole pound of dope that he was
cleaning the seeds from by rolling them down a sheet of newspaper. Wow,
it was so casual, that we didn't even think of it as being casual – it
was just the way it was, and the way it ought to be. I mean, when Anne
knocked on his door, Bill just said, “Come in.” Not only did he not
have the door locked, he didn't even ask who it was. Because it didn't matter
who it was – he knew he wouldn't be hassled over a
pound of weed, not on the MSU campus in 1975. He wasn't even worried
about being ripped off, let alone about the pigs hassling him.
So we go in and say hi to Bill, and he weighs us out
an ounce. He rolled a number and we all toked up. I asked him if he had
any Emmylou Harris records, and he didn't but he put on something else,
which I no longer remember what it was, but it was cool. Eventually, we
paid for the dope, and he told us to come back any time. As it turned
out, we never did, because you could just buy pot anywhere, but I'll
never forget the sight of that college kid financing his education by
dealing hemp to his friends – and strangers, too, because smoking pot
and listening to music made everyone friends.
Well, that was a long time ago, and America was
definitely better off for pot smoking being so ubiquitous. And I have
never missed buying every new Emmylou Harris album as it was issued,
and I have never stopped loving her voice. In the intervening 30 years,
her musical talent has grown (she now writes and arranges all her own
songs), and so has her audience, a group I will never unjoin.
She has also aged so gracefully that it is truly
startling. Her hair has changed from dark brown to gray to white, but
aside from that, she still looks almost exactly as she did on the cover
of Pieces of the Sky. And while some portion my brain has to
consider that at least part of her graceful aging must be somehow
artificial, maybe even surgical, the rest of my mind doesn't give a
shit. I want her to always be beautiful, and so she always will
be.
…And, oh yeah, I still smoke pot, too. I don't buy it
anymore, because of police state hassles, but if I'm at a party and
someone passes a number around, you can count on me to take a hit,
especially if Emmylou is playing (CDs now, not vinyl). Emmylou Harris
and marijuana – my friends forever!!!
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2004 Fall Supplement
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