by Richard Cuccaro



The qualities found in this month's feature artist embody an integrity of purpose that every person 
ought to seek in themselves. While Jill Sobule does not constantly breathe political rhetorical fire 
from any direction, her grasp and expression of issues facing both the average person and those 
outside the mainstream are those of a champion of free thought. These days, we need all of it we 
can get. As the forces of conservative thought pull the noose ever tighter around our necks, it 
becomes ever more important to keep that free thought alive.

As a woman who shines with a brilliant light, but still has to struggle to succeed in a world ruled 
by fractured, fragile male egos, hell-bent on destruction and subjugation, her fight is all the more valiant.

She gained national recognition with her song "I Kissed a Girl," about bisexual experimentation. 
I have to admit that, when I heard the lines "He's such a hairy behemoth… And dumb as a box of hammers," 
I winced. While I am not overly hirsute, I have committed countless acts of intellectually deprived derring-do,
qualifying for "asshole" status, especially in my behavior toward the fairer sex. Given the behavior of men 
even more clueless than me, I often wondered why more women didn't seek out life companions of their own sex. 
Chagrined but charmed, I became a Jill fan immediately.

Seen live, she radiates a sense of being here, in the moment. Her songs don't seem rehearsed, but rather tapped 
into, and adjusted to fit the moment. If there's an element within the surroundings or someone in the audience 
she can feed off of, she'll pull it into the performance, into a song.

Last year I had the great fortune to share a small living room with her, along with about 30 other people, at 
Tim and Lori Blixt's cabin home in Wayne, New Jersey. Their monthly house concert series is called "Cabin Concerts." 
We list their shows in each issue.  Jill's performance there was one of the most electrifying I've ever seen. Others who 
saw either one of the two sets she did have since agreed. Long-time Cabin devotees have experienced the raw power 
of people like Richard Shindell, Lucy Kaplansky, Cliff Eberhardt, Cheryl Wheeler, and Vance Gilbert in that same space, 
so this was no small feat.

That day, she began the first set of the day with "Resistance Song," a light-hearted, but multi-leveled romp about 
pretending to be in the French Resistance with a girlfriend, in order to escape the mundane reality of being a waitress 
who dodges men's hands instead of bullets. She's also the song's protagonist, "Maurice," who has a thin mustache 
and a mistress in the reverie. The "mistress" is, in waking reality, a bass player in a band that just got a "deal," and 
deals with assholes instead of explosives. In the chorus, they "…hide in the bushes, shoot from the bushes and make 
love in the bushes." Gotta love those bushes. She's known for her ability to get a lot of sound out of a Martin Backpacker 
and used it to full effect on that first number.

She then shifted to a full-sized guitar provided by luthier Pete Granata, close friend of the Blixts, in attendance at the
 Cabin every month, that day being no exception. Commenting on the lush sound, Jill asked, "Do I get to keep the 
guitar after the show?" [uhh… no, Jill.]

She then said, "I have no set list or anything, so if you have any requests - Kansas covers, maybe?"  I quickly responded, 
asking for "Trains." She accommodated, prefacing the song with the story of the song's conception. She had been at home 
recuperating from having had back surgery and was heavily medicated --  she flippantly described herself as being "on a 
morphine pump." She recounted, "My mom rented all these movies with trains in them." So, logically, the song contains 
scenes from about a dozen movies involving tracks, tunnels, boxcars, a soldier, an heiress, a trip from Peking to Paris, 
a meeting on a platform and a tryst in a sleeping cabin. The sad, wistful melody, appealing to the dreamer in me, sighs in its chorus, 
"Of course I let you spend the night not knowing who you are," and "We lay down and let the darkness enfold us."  
Works for me.

She'd forgotten her capo that day and attempted to have an audience member come up and hold his hand over the frets. Standing 
off to her side and reaching over, he couldn't sustain the pressure through her vigorous strum. With mock sternness, she said 
"You're fired!"  Pete, the enterprising luthier made what he termed an "analog capo" from a pencil and a rubber band and that worked.
This came in handy on "One of These Days," from her album Pink Pearl.  The studio version is a lush, dense affair that induces
swaying whether you're standing or sitting. She sings, 

"One of these days I'm gonna get it together / Gonna be on time / I'm gonna get it together / Stop wasting time / One of these days
 I'll accept the fact / I'm not getting any younger / And I can't go back / Can't go back." When she got to the fadeaway repeat, 
"One of these days I'm gonna stop saying one of these days… one of these days…" she added, "I'm gonna bring a capo." We ate it up.
 
She started playing guitar at the age of five, and, through the years, was writing her own songs, but didn't sing them for anyone 
until she was twenty. On a trip to Spain, she busked in the streets and performed her own material, thinking, "I'll never see these people again."

Her absorption of styles ranges from pop to rock, country, folk, R&B and jazz. When she first picked up the Granata, it was 
obvious she was enjoying the tactile sensation of interacting with the frets and producing a variety of sounds. She experimented 
with some runs, trying out a variety of chops, which extended beyond folk/rock, into jazz and funk. She played "When My Ship Comes In," 
a funky, up-the-neck number, then followed that up with a slowed-down, jazzy/bluesy version of "Que Sera, Sera."

Getting into the spontaneity of the situation, she took out a notebook loosely stuffed with a profusion of papers containing songs. 
Sifting through them, she said she wanted to try out some new ones, saying "Is that OK?"  Acknowledging that the loose leaf 
notebook was indeed very loose and overflowing, she joked  "I'm very organized, did you notice?" She then recruited another 
audience member to act as a music stand, holding up a sheet of paper, so she could read the lyrics. We heard a treatise on loneliness: 
"Another beer and egg / Another month gone by / Just more time to do as I please / no one there to tug on my sleeve / No one's
watchin' over me / Cause I'm free, it's just me / "I'm free, nobody but me / I'm free, save me / Free as the snow as it melts away."
Jill gave a brief seminar on what it means to "follow your dreams." Saying that just because she was "starring at the Cabin," she 
wasn't really rich. She then   pulled out a Casio-type electric autoharp, flipped some switches and brought forth a cascade of electronic 
background music. She sang and played over the background: 

"I live like a freshman / I still have a roommate / I even moved to Brooklyn / I still need a roommate / I betcha didn't know  /  
When I go home / I still need a roommate / I cook on a hotplate / Unless I order pizza / You should see the boxes / This was 
my dream / when I was thirteen / But now that it's true / I wish I was you / You don't have a roommate / You own your own 
building / You have a flat-screen TV / You never followed your dreams / They're never what they seem / I live like a freshman /
 I still have a roommate / We walk to the laundry…"

In addition to her own compositions, she included a song by a young fan in the audience, Sarah,  about six years old, who'd written 
about her dog to the melody of Jill's song "Mexican Wrestler."  Jill sang it for us: 

"Zoot loves me / I can't imagine why   / Zoot loves me / I imagine why / He loves the neighbors too / He loves all of my friends 
/ I can't imagine why / I can't imagine why / Zoot loves me." 

As she sat holding a stuffed animal, Sarah looked spellbound. 

Another experiment followed. She asked "Any musicians in the audience?"  She called for three suggested chords in a progression, 
and got G-F-D. Trying them out, she said, "How about G-D-F?"  "Knock yourself out!" came the reply. Forging ahead, we heard 
a song about her "career" as a bad waitress, where she spilled six "Cosmopolitans" on someone's leather pants, got his phone number, 
but lost the napkin it was printed on, and how Madonna and Sandra Bernhard came in and forgot to tip her -- "I'll never forget," she said. It went:
 
"I needed another job / I didn't make enough at Macy's /plus I blew it on the discount / 30% off / So I asked the bouncer at the bar / 
She looked like Jackie Gleason / If they needed another waitress / she said, 'Sure, one died last week…'"

Getting into more serious issues, Jill attacks some issues that resonate powerfully. Before playing "Pilar (Things Here Are Different)"
 from her first album Things Here Are Different, she told about the time she stayed with a family in Spain in which the daughter 
had become pregnant, bringing disgrace on the family and herself. Jill had tried to tell the girl, in "new-agey" terms, that she could 
change things and take charge of herself, but later felt like an "asshole," for not fully comprehending the situation. In the song she sings: 

"So why don't you do something about it? / Things don't happen to you; you make them happen / She laughed / You don't understand; 
you're from another land / Things here are different / Here in sunny Spain the widows all wear black / To show their respect and their 
sorrow / Here in Spain, so simple is our life / You're either a whore, a mother, or a wife."

In "Soldiers of Christ," she tells how the righteous soldier: 

"…hates the liberals, the faggots and their friends / We're soldiers of Christ / and we're here to defend / the way it used to be /  
the way it ought to be / the way it's gonna be / …When we're up in heaven / you're gonna be sorry."

The most chilling example of Jill's command of present-day issues can be found in "Vrbana Bridge." A harbinger of the all-too-close 
spectre of "collateral damage," that hunts everyone, everywhere today, a Reuters dispatch by Kurt Schork told a story from Sarajevo 
about two lovers that became known world-wide: 
"Sarejevo, May 23, 1993 - Two lovers lie dead on the banks of Sarajevo's Miljacka river, locked in a final embrace. For four days they
 have sprawled near Vrbana bridge in a wasteland of shell-blasted rubble, downed tree branches and dangling power lines.So dangerous 
is the area no one has dared recover their bodies. Bosko Brckic and Admira Ismic, both 25, were shot dead on Wednesday trying to 
escape the besieged Bosnian capital for Serbia. Sweethearts since high school, he was a Serb and she was a Moslem. "They were shot 
at the same time, but he fell instantly and she was still alive," recounts Dino, a soldier who saw the couple trying to cross from government 
territory to rebel Serb positions.  "She crawled over and hugged him and they died like that, in each other's arms."
Dubbed "The Romeo & Juliet of Sarajevo" by the International press, their story was also told through a shocking and widely distributed 
wire service photograph and has been the subject of a 1994 Canadian film and a documentary on PBS' Frontline."


Visitors to her web site, www.jillsobule.com, can download or play mp3 files available including "Soldiers of Christ," "Vrbana Bridge," 
and other  songs that resonate for anyone who can still think and feel. 
The sound of jack-boots thudding in lock-step can be heard throughout the heartland. The madness of King George and his cronies 
grows more threatening. 

Jill makes music that thrills and informs. Listen  and learn something.