THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

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I'm almost certain that, even without the presence of a Joni Mitchell cover, I would be recommending the CD Cris & Holly (H&C Records), just for its sheer historic importance. It is, after all, the very first time that Cris Williamson and Holly Near, long-established performers in the women's music movement, have ever recorded a CD together. I would probably be recommending it for the Cris's stellar rendition of John Bucchino's 'I've Learned To Let Things Go' or Holly's boundless interpretation of Jane Siberry's 'Bound By The Beauty.' The 'Memory Lane Medley' (which includes the Near compositions 'Imagine My Surprise' and 'Fire In The Rain' and Williamson's 'Sweet Woman' and 'Waterfall') alone is worth the price of the CD. But let me just add that Cris and Holly's incredible version of Joni's 'Tea Leaf Prophecy' is a moment as historical as the recording itself.

Currently embarking on their history-making national tour together, I recently caught up with Cris and Holly for an interview. Gregg Shapiro: This CD has been described as a 'premier collaboration'—a meaningful coming together of two like minds. What does it mean to have been able to create this project?

Cris Williamson: It is a premier, meaning first, collaboration. There's nothing quite so fine as working with people of like mind. That's the easy thing. I think the thing we're after is to try to get that music out to not only people who are of like mind, but people who aren't. That would be the great joy. We would have real revolution if the people we consider to be not of the same mind at all heard this music and were somehow not converted, but somehow changed, so that we could find someplace where we all come together. That's my great hope always. That there's some place which I always liken to a watering hole at a clearing in the jungle. Some place where all the creatures of the world can gather because they all need one thing, and that would be water. To me, music is like water. I think a world without music would be a sad, sad thing. I'm just happy to have made a little bit more of it.

GS: Music is a unifying force, like water, so there is great potential for that kind of thing to happen.

CW: Right. And there is a great thirst for it, in that same sense. Holly Near: For me, part of it was bringing what Cris has contributed over the years … there's something about the sound of her voice, that the moment she starts to sing, I get altered in some way. She could be singing the alphabet (laughs) and there's something about that voice that I've always really liked to hear. Cris has a very different kind of humor than I do, as well as a different way of approaching a lyric. It comes out the same place that I come out, but she comes through a different door to it, which to me makes for an interesting collaboration, so that you're not working with somebody where you're ending up at a different place and it's kind of at odds. You're arriving at the same place through different styles and different ways of thinking.

GS: You have both performed shows together in the past, but now you are doing this national tour. Which came first—the idea of touring together or the idea to record a CD together? CW: The idea for the shows came first. Then we thought, wouldn't it be great to have, and wouldn't it make sense, to have something that people could carry home. A way to take the show home and relive it and renew their hearts with the very thing they got in the show that night.

GS: There is nothing like a souvenir.

CW: Exactly. But even more than just a souvenir, which you get if you have programs or something like that, a CD is a constant souvenir. It will constantly call back the feelings that you had. It's pretty live in that sense. It doesn't sound too produced to me. We kept it intentionally simple.

HN: Aside from the fact that it's been fun doing the live concerts, I'm not sure she and I would have thought to do a CD if we hadn't been performing together. But the audiences have been coming out of the woodwork for the event. They see our collaboration as a celebration of the last 30 years. It means something to them. People have been affectionately calling it the 'Peace and Love Show.' Because Cris has represented to them some kind of romance and spiritual inquiry and I have represented a global peace perspective and long-term solid present activism. People have had some of each of that in their lives, so when they see us together, before they even know what the show's about, they're just coming to celebrate their own lives.

GS: Then the 'Peace and Love Show' is a very fitting title.

HN: It's fun, isn't it? It's kind of corny, but the fact is that it's kind of what it is. I obviously do love songs and Cris does peace songs. People come thinking that it's going to be nostalgia, and we certainly do a walk down memory lane.

GS: There is something so beautiful about the sound of your voices together, and it's fitting that you open the album by doing a Meg Christian song, as someone who was also integral to the early days of the women's music scene. Why was that one chosen?

CW: I think that was Holly's idea and I readily agreed. A) it's a gorgeous tune and B) it would be a great way to open with two women singing a love song about another woman. I think that's radical in itself, and yet not really. For us it didn't seem so much radical as just right.

GS: There are two other wonderful covers that I wanted to mention. Joni Mitchell's 'The Tea Leaf Prophecy' …

CW: Yeah, what a tune.

GS: … and Jane Siberry's 'Bound By The Beauty.' The magic that occurs on 'The Tea Leaf Prophecy' is not only due to the fact that your voice so beautifully matches Joni's, but with Holly picking up the 'Study war no more/Lay down your arms' repetition throughout, the song is taken to a new level.

CW: I picked both of those tunes. I was listening to a lot of music to bring to the table. I wasn't sure how we were going to do them, but Holly agreed that I should carry the narrative on that one ('The Tea Leaf Prophecy') and that she should carry the narrative on 'Bound By The Beauty.' I think they are both songs that may have missed the attention of some people. They carry their own weight with them and their own beauty. 'Tea Leaf Prophecy' certainly speaks to the endless hope to lay down the arms and absolutely study war no more and have real peace. There's something about it that says this always happens during war and in the background there is this plea to not study war no more and to lay it down, lay it down. It never quite happens, but it speaks to the constant dream of peace. 'Bound By The Beauty' is what artists are. It's why we do what we do. All artists—painters, dancers—anybody who does their work in an artful way. Whether they are writers or maids in a motel. If you do it in an artful way, you are making more beauty in the world. That's what I think we should all be doing in some way. Not making less. And I don't think war makes beauty in any way. But peace does. I never have been able to buy the anomaly. That we make war to have peace. Any of the things that this particular administration is touting—it is the exact opposite thing. In order to have safety in our land, we spy on each other. It's the fox in the henhouse kind of philosophy and I just don't buy it. For us, to live in truth is how you live in peace. You are able to say you make mistakes, you are able to say if you really want to free the people of Iraq, or if there are hidden agendas there. A lot of us think there are and they're just not being talked about. Yet, they seem to be glaring. I think it is the job of artists to be bound by beauty and to speak the truth everywhere you can, which is sometimes risky business, especially these days.

HN: When we went in to do the recording we thought we'd do more old songs, but we felt pulled by these contemporary times that we live, it kept demanding of us that we do something that has to do with now, that this was not the time to go backwards.

GS: You both do speak the truth about this issue with your own work. Cris addresses the current political climate with her 'We The People' and Holly does the same with 'In Our Little Town.'

HN: We had each written the songs prior to going into the studio. Cris had been working on her song as a result of leading a peace march on an Olivia cruise. There were peace marches happening all over the world and she couldn't bare the fact that she wasn't part of one (laughs) so she led one around the cruise ship. Several hundred women joined her. From that she wrote her song ('We The People'). The two women in the song are not her, but it was inspired by her realizing how many peace marches she had sung at but had never marched in one just to be marching. To do that on the cruise was very meaningful to her. Mine came from having my early introduction to war work being through soldiers. I was part of what was called the Soldiers' Movement during the war against Indochina, when soldiers in the military were resisting war and racism from within, which I thought was so courageous. And, of course, Vietnam vets who came back to this country and were very essential in letting people know firsthand what they had seen. That the war was not being fought for democracy, but rather was being fought for real estate and corporate land. They told a vibrant story. Now you see Israeli soldiers dropping out and saying, 'We can't do this anymore. We can't go and occupy Palestine. It's immoral.' Soldiers have been very important in my education about how to do anti-war work. So, my song came out of having been in a small town and seeing people bravely walk out and put up these signs on their front lawns that said, 'Question The War.'

CW: We felt compelled to be in the present and use our skills to address the issues but to do it in our own individual ways. I think 'In Our Little Town' is so Holly. It's so moving and she links it to Vietnam and all the wars of the past and to a little town. In 'We The People,' I talk about sowing dragon's teeth which is an old phrase that refers to Greek mythology. Where you plant dragon's teeth you sow the seeds of future discord. I think that's what's happening with all the wars that have happened; each one is a sowing of dragon's teeth. It never makes peace.

GS: It's an endless cycle.

CW: Right. And how to break that cycle? It's tough, but I think it can be done. We have to all realize that wars are made for money, they're not made for any other reason. It may be simplistic, but I do think that's what happens. Some people make an awful lot of money off of war, but they don't think of peace as lucrative. A change has to occur in the way of looking at things, and maybe even just for two hours in a concert we have a chance to create an atmosphere in which we all can live.