The Unforgettable
Cosy Sheridan
Has Plenty to Say by Richard Cuccaro
The human race is pathetic. A ridiculous collection of phobias, addictions and bad habits.
Most of us haven't got the guts to pack it in, so we slog onward, like a drunk falling
down a flight of stairs (apologies to Norman Mailer or whoever wrote that first). We are
fortunate that there are some folks around to define and satirize our foibles for us and
give them some awkward form of self-deprecatory dignity.
And so it is that some of us are lucky enough to hear a voice, a perfect high, gliding
alto, connected to a poetic vision and an intact funnybone; a brain that conjures up
accurate, moving reflections of life and at the same time, very wicked comic satire.
Its possessor has walked through the fires of our modern media mind-warp and has
come through the years tempered in the forge of introspection and catharsis. And,
oh yes, a musical sense and a finely honed guitar technique to bear all of these gifts
and lay them before you. It's Cosy Sheridan and she has some things on her mind
that you need to hear.
A consummate touring performing singer/ songwriter, her material is a fascinating
and humorous potpourri fashioned with the eye of a keen observer..
I had seen Cosy perform at the Fast Folk Café in NYC a couple of times during the
'90's and was very impressed. We got reacquainted at the Northeast Folk Alliance
Conference this past November. I could never forget her song about "The True and
Terrible Trials of Waldo the Dog" (sung to the tune of "Has anybody Seen My Girl):
Waldo lost his balls today / He does not want to go out and play…
Now if you run into Waldo's two missing little flowers /
he'd like to know why they had to go / he kept them clean for hours
Of course, there was a lot more than that, but that one was a real attention-getter.
It was a no-brainer to run a feature on her. During a recent interview, on a phone
call to Moab, Utah, where she lives today, I was thankful to have a digital recorder
to preserve our conversation.
Cosy's train of thought is analytical and fast-moving. Her mind moves speedily along,
and her speech strives to keep up.
Beginnings
Cosy grew up in Concord, New Hampshire. In retrospect, to this author, a folksinger's
life seems to have lain in wait for her. Her mother had given her father an inexpensive
guitar that sat in a cardboard box under the piano in the living room. The one her
grandfather played. Nobody ever played the guitar. "It kind of just sat there." Cosy
had a babysitter who lived across the street who played guitar and she gave Cosy guitar
lessons. "She was also the same person who taught me how to ride a bike, play tennis
and ride a horse. She was quite the babysitter. She was sort of a big sister/parent"
[Apparently Dar Williams did not corner the market on great babysitters.] This would
be when she was around nine years old &endash; 1972. The first song she learned was "Little
Boxes on the Hillside." She also learned songs by Peter Paul and Mary and Pete Seeger
("If I had a Hammer").
She made greater progress when she attended Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding
school in New Hampshire. Her uncle and her grandfather had gone there. It was there
that she met Eric Sinclair, who taught guitar and who still teaches there. "He was a
great teacher. He taught me for three years. In my senior year, he explained to me that
I could do a senior project. People did things called 'playing at open mics' in bars a
half-hour away in Portsmouth. I had never heard of these things. 'Let's have you make
a demo tape and go play an open mic.' So that's what I did in my senior year. It gave
me an idea that this was even an option for a career. If I hadn't gone there and met Eric,
I wouldn't have wound up doing what I'm doing. He was a pretty important fork in the
road."
During the Christmas break in her first year at Amherst College in Western Mass, she
went home and went to play some open mics. Harvey Reid was playing the open mic
at The Stone Church in New Market, NH. Harvey let her sleep in his spare room one
cold night in December.
Up to this point, she used a "brush/strum" in standard tuning when playing. In 1984,
she dropped out of college and moved to Portsmouth, NH. Harvey Reid became a
housemate for a while and another early mentor. He and a few other players in that
area were the ones who changed her ideas about how to play the guitar during the
mid-80's. She was introduced to the "third-hand" capo, an early version of the partial
capo. She learned about fingerstyle blues and open tunings.
During that time, Harvey told Cosy, "I need to teach you what's being played now in
contemporary folk music." He first played the music of Claudia Schmidt, Sally Rogers,
Pierre Bensusan, and Dick Gaughan. He spent a wintry afternoon playing modern
singer/songwriter music. It really opened my mind. I went back and dropped out of
school the next semester. I moved back to Portsmouth. It was a big move, somewhat
impulsive but a long time coming. I was burned out on the standard school situation.
Going to Portsmouth and meeting all the musicians felt like going to ancient Rome
and meeting all the senators. It felt like going to a living library in Portsmouth as opposed
to a dead library back at school. If I had it to do it again I wouldn't drop out of school.
It took me a long time to go back and get a degree. And it was important to me to get
one. There's a lot of music [near school] in Western Mass, but my fate, my guardian angel
wanted me to try it the way they were doing it in Portsmouth. Which was how you stand
in a bar for 3 hours and play a lot of songs for people. Learn how to entertain; how to
stand on a stage. You learn how to play your instrument a lot better because you're up
there so often. Playing 3 or 4 times a week for a couple of years gives you pretty good chops."
The Voice
When I asked her how her superb singing voice evolved, she responded: "I had a couple
of short episodes of teaching: my sister's first husband was an opera singer and he taught
me a couple of things when I was a teenager. I also went to Berklee College of Music for
a couple of semesters in the mid-80's as a voice student. I've also had a few lessons with
voice teachers sporadically over the years since then. In the past number of years I have
developed a warm-up/toning system - which started as more of a meditation technique -
that has seemed to really help open up my voice. My journey to acceptance of my voice
has been a bit like my journey to acceptance with my body: I didn't have the body I saw
in the media and so at first I rejected my body-shape and tried to change it. And, similarly,
I didn't have the voice that I heard in folk music and pop music and so at first I disliked
my voice and tried to make it sound like those voices I had heard. In both situations I
have had to find my own path - and have often felt a bit lost in the looking for it,
wondering about the worth of what I had because I didn't see myself reflected in the
world."
The Writing
Cosy spent around 6 years learning other people's songs because she wasn't writing
anything. The years from age 19 to 24 were years when she had "nothing to say."
She didn't think she could write, but was determined to have a career, so she found a
lot of original covers to sing. "It worked to teach me how to write a good song. If you
learn a lot of songs, you learn what makes a song compelling: Why did this song have
energy all of a sudden at the end of the second verse that made it go into the chorus?
Why did it pick up speed there?"
She asked Harvey Reid, "Why aren't I writing anything." He told her, "You could go
sleep in doorways for a couple of years and it wouldn't hurt your career," meaning this
was the time for her to LISTEN and that she had plenty of time. When Cosy teaches
songwriting, she talks about the first songwriting rule, which is "Don't write anything,
just listen."
She started writing in her mid-20's and put out a CD in 1990 called Late Bloomer,
which never made it out of the Portsmouth area much.
It wasn't until she released the CD Quietly Led in 1992 that things started to jell. That
was the same year she entered the Kerrville "New Folk" contest and went down to the
festival in Texas. She also entered the Telluride Bluegrass Festival contest and attended
that, too. That was a "magic summer" for her. She won a couple of songwriting contests
and met a lot of people from across the country. It opened her eyes to another horizon
she hadn't realized was there. Just as she had been woken up by the Portsmouth
community, she now discovered singer/songwriters who were traveling around, making
a living playing their music.
She describes the change in her like this: "In my mid-20's I started to have something
to day that was either somewhat original or I was starting to say it in such a way that
it was worth playing it on stage as opposed to playing a better song written by somebody
else. It took me a while that my songs were good enough that it was worth playing one
of mine as opposed to playing something by somebody else that was obviously better.
It started out, as with a lot of people -- I was writing love songs. There were people I was
in love with that it wasn't working out with and that was what I was thinking about most
of the time. I was able to write some pretty good ones. I did that for a while. Then I
floundered. I was thinking, because I wasn't sure what I was saying was worth listening
to. I spent a lot of time wondering if I was worthy of you paying a ticket price and sitting
down for 2 hours listening to it. The arc went from the love songs interspersed with --
It turns out I naturally had this ability to write satire and comic songs. So, I had love
songs and comic satire."
A Period of Personal Self-discovery.
"The arc, sometime in my 30's started moving more into the direction of songs about the
experience of women, specifically. This got me into trouble because people would ask,
'why should men be interested in this concert?' The real change came when I finally went
to finish school at Burlington College in Vermont and I needed a senior project. I was
fascinated by myth. My mentor suggested that I write a show that followed the myth of
women. I ended up writing a lot of songs and discovering that I really liked it. I've kept in
that direction of slowly writing more and more of the experience of women in modern
times with a mythic overtone to realize how our lives are mythic as we live now. Both
men and women, but mainly women. That's where the arc ended up. It's more of a storytelling,
mythic thing. And I stopped worrying so much about whether or not people were going to be
interested, because I finally found something I think is significant, that's worth telling people --
it's worth their time."
As a scholarly person, Cosy found the world of mythology to hold fascinating insights
in defining her demons. She states: "We're all living our lives at a couple of levels. There's
the surface level with daily lives. And there's a mythic arc to all of our lives. We usually
find it looking backwards. And saying, 'oh, where have I been?'"
"When I wrote my show The Pomegranate Seed I spent a lot of time looking backward
looking for a mythic arc to the life that I was most familiar with, which was mine, and
discovering it. And in doing so, reading a lot of books where I read that a lot of other
people had discovered their mythic arc by looking backwards and saying, 'Oh wow, look
at how I was led to this place.' We are led on our path. It's not always clear where we're
being led. It often looks like we're being led in the wrong direction. Something miraculous
occurs that wouldn't have occurred if you hadn't made that miraculous accident."
"The Losing Game," written in 1992 was the first song that dealt with her eating disorder.
It made her feel naked to sing it. It immediately connected with audience members as
none had done before. Women came up and said, "that's my story. Thank you for that
song." Men would come up and say "please sing that for my wife." It was an eye-opening
experience when she realized that nobody was talking about this --at least not in song.
And these people really wanted to needed to hear this. So she was providing a service.
"I was reflecting their life back to them in a medium that usually doesn't. The songwriting
medium in the late 80's and early 90's was reflecting back Madonna," she says. Cosy
does The Pomegranate Seed six to ten times per year. It's a lot to put on with a raised
stage, lighting and props.
She uses transformation in mythology to frame the idea of dealing with life's crises.
Hitting rock bottom, you "go down to the underworld," you are changed and return.
Both Persephone and Orpheus are mythological examples. In the performance, she's
trying to help young women with eating disorders get a handle on what's happening to
them.
A Heavy Hit of Cosy
Cosy's latest CD, Live from CedarHouse is a cornucopia of everything Cosy does in
her different types of performances. We learn a lot about her roots, too. Joining her on
a nostalgic trip back to a typical Thanksgiving, we find her late grandfather, George, her
musical mentor-- in his mid-70s-- in a gray suit and red tie, playing "76 Trombones Lead
the Big Parade" on the piano in the living room. The grandchildren are marching around
the room. When her grandmother leaves the room, grandpa begins playing songs with
dirty lyrics that he learned in college. The only one she remembers goes like this:
Get out your old rubber bustle and get out and hustle
'cause the rent is coming due.
While you're out there making money, I'll be waiting for you, honey.
If You can't get five [$], take two."
George used to ride on a flatbed truck in parades, playing "76 Trombones" and "Miss
Otis Regrets."
This is part of the heartwrenching song that follows, "George and His 88 Keys." Cosy
weaves all the old songs running through the old man's mind, around the sung description
of his final days and hours. In it, she sings about how her grandmother kept him company
-- helping him eat his lunch and stay with him during the long final afternoons. One can
only imagine the enormity of the loss as he faded and died.
Delving into the world of warped self-imaging and it's effects, she mockingly informs us
that we are on her "Midlife Crisis Tour," then launches into the "Botox Tango."
I am thinking of getting injected / Gravity's heavier than I expected
And it's pulling things out of place / My skin is getting longer than my face
No point in self-deceiving / Like Australia, part of me is leaving.
This continues with patter about the search for beauty and "Persephone's Beauty Cream,"
the equivalent of "Hope in a Bottle." She tells the legend of Psyche, who falls in love with
Eros. Psyche asks his mother, Aphrodite to help win him back. She give Psyche several
jobs, one of which is to go down to Hades and return with the aforementioned beauty
cream. Another is to separate seeds into three separate piles based on their type. Psyche
is overwhelmed and falls asleep. While she is asleep, ants come and do the dividing for
her. Thus, Cosy says: "When you're feeling overwhelmed, take a nap. Everything gets
better after a nap."
This in turn leads into the song, "Anthymn", which is also the basis for an illustrated
just-published children's book. The song demonstrates Cosy's feel for innovatively
expressing something so basic as the need for healing. In the song, six limousines pull
up and six groups of ants get out, each carrying a piece of a broken heart, which they
then reassemble. We hear, For a while there it looked like Frankenstein, but a heart
without stitching is hard to find. The ants sing ant-hymns and lullabies, and the scars in
that heart healed by and by. When the ants leave, a note is left behind which says, With
you we all abide… your heart has arrived.
Cosy loves ancient history. Combining that with her sense of humor, we get "Hannibal
Crossed the Alps." complete with Africans marching through snow in sandals.
"The Ladies Room" is a wry commentary on daily life and women's acrobatic use of
bathroom facilities -- all in the effort to avoid making contact with GERMS(!). One uses
one's foot to flush and elbow to open and close the stall door. The paper toilet seat cover
becomes a "butt gasket." And finally…
It's more complicated than you might think,
washing your hands without touching the sink.
Cosy will be travelling east with her partner/ sweetheart, T.R. Ritchie, a singer/ songwriter
himself (She bounces new songs off of him and they do his songs in concert also).
Whether it's a "normal" concert or a performance of The Pomegranate Seed, give
yourself a treat. See her… You'll never forget it.
Web site: www.cosysheridan.com
Upcoming concerts include:
Feb 1 Blue Door 2805 North McKinley Oklahoma City, OK
2 Uncle Calvin's Coffeehouse Northpark Presbyterian Church Dallas, TX
3 The Songbird Sanctuary Houston, TX music@songbirdsanctuary.org
6 Univ. of Texas Austin, TX- performing The Pomegranate Seed smcmahon@austin.utexas.edu
10 Austin House Cconcert Austin, TX ebpittman@austin.rr.com
Mar 8 The Ginkgo Coffeehouse Saint Paul, MN
17 Park House Concerts Aurora, CO www.parkhouseconcerts.com
18 Avogadro's Number 605 South Mason Fort Collins, CO
Apr 6 Minstrel Coffeehouse 21 Normandy Heights Road Morristown, NJ
13 8:30pm Me and Thee Coffeehouse 28 Mugford Street Marblehead, MA
w/ Susie Burke and David Surette $18
14 Simple Gifts Coffeehouse Nashua, NH
21 Cornell Folk Society Ithaca, NY www.cornellfolksong.org
28 Good Folk Coffeehouse Rowayton United Methodist Church Norwalk, CT
www.goodfolkcoffeehouse.com