Masterpiece: Music From Big Pink

[Today: Going to the country...]

Every summer during my childhood, my brother and I were booked for two solid weeks at our grandma’s place in Dora, OR. Eighteen miles of winding gravel road from that metropolitan capital Myrtle Point, my grandma’s farm was a quarter mile from the nearest neighbor. It was bordered by a cemetery (where she’s now buried) on one side, and backed up into national forest service land, so it was quiet, deep country. Music From Big Pink is credited with sending popular music back to the country in search of a simpler sound, but it was also one of the soundtracks of our three-hour drives to grandma’s house – over the hills and through the woods, past Winston and Roseburg, and right into the wild west.

My grandmother picked ferns and mushrooms, could identify plants on sight, and wrote a regular column for the Myrtle Point Herald on canning vegetables and such. Her farm had chickens, rabbits, and goats, a lone horse, and a beagle named Snoopy. My brother and I used to disappear into the woods in the morning and not return until dusk. We hiked logging roads, climbed trees, hunted salamanders, drank goat’s milk, shot guns, and soaked up nature. Sleeping under the shooting stars with bugs in our hair, it was easy to feel like the whole world was ours, and those visits always went by too quickly.

Inevitably, our parents would show up to retrieve us in their orange VW Bug. One year on the way home a news flash came over the radio – Elvis Presley was dead. Putt-putting along in our VW, that news barely caused a ripple in the front seat. My parents’ muted reaction that day was in stark contrast to my mom’s stunned disbelief nearly a decade later at the news that The Band’s Richard Manuel had committed suicide by hanging himself. “What a loss… such a voice…” she gasped, before retreating into herself to process the news.

I didn’t understand her grief then (I barely knew who The Band were, let alone Richard Manuel), but I do now. The Band was creatively driven by lead guitarist and chief songwriter Robbie Robertson, but Manuel’s voice was a big part of what gave them their centuries’ old sound. Like Hank Williams, Manuel’s fragile, haunted voice belonged to a man with never-ending heartache, someone who’s seen things he can’t un-see, and that kind of musical wisdom is rare and precious. An older, better world is brought forth in every note of The Band’s music, and even if you’re not driving down a one-lane road in Southwest Oregon, Music From Big Pink can carry you back.

Listen: Chest Fever

Listen: To Kingdom Come

Listen: Long Black Veil

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Tags: Dora OR, Elvis Presley, Music From Big Pink, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson, The Band