(This essay is from three years ago, in March 2021.)
"A midlife crisis is a transition of identity and self-confidence that can occur in middle-aged individuals, typically 45 to 65 years old."-- Google
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Many years ago, 34 to be precise, I was driving alone in my car along a familiar route listening to my favorite country music station on the radio, when a new song came on that stopped me in my tracks.
I pulled off the road to listen. It was a mournful but uplifting song from Cajun country with a soaring accordion, drum beat and lovely melody. The singer's deeply resonant voice told the story of a man down on the bayou, smoking a cigarette alone on a humid summer's night, drinking beer, imagining his lover's voice trying to shake him out of a bad mood.
I loved it at first listen.
Though I heard it a few more times over the next weeks and months, it soon faded from airplay and I didn't hear it again for 33 years.
Last year, as I settled uneasily into my retirement/lockdown routine of sorting through the daily news, writing an essay, publishing it on Facebook, I also started spending hours each day listening to music and interviews with songwriters on YouTube.
Some of this was pure entertainment (I'm retired so why not?) but some of it was research. Soon I began to append song lyrics to the end of each essay.
I began marveling at how vast YouTube's library has become; like its parent, Google, it just keeps expanding and deepening all the time. Both databases seem to grow at exponential rates.
One night last year I decided to search for that song I'd heard years ago. All I remembered was the phrase "C'mon Joe," so maybe that was the song's name.
After several nights of searching -- Bingo! -- I found a performance of the song, called "Come On Joe," at an early SXSW by the late Chris Gaffney. It was satisfying but it wasn't the version I remembered.
So from time to time over the past year I kept searching until two nights ago when YouTube finally turned up the version I remembered. It's by a Louisiana country singer and accordionist named Jo-El Sonnier -- his name suddenly came back to me the minute I saw it.
That version brought back all those old memories with a clarity only music can do, at least for me.
I'd been in the middle of an extended depression in the period when I fixated on that song. My sense was that literally everything about my life was going to have to change. I didn't know why; there was no obvious precipitating cause. It just was a restless feeling that welled up from somewhere deep inside and it could not be suppressed.
Though I tried.
It turns out that "Come On Joe" was Sonnier's only single to ever crack the country charts, getting as high as #17, so that's why I heard it back in the day. As I've played and replayed the song these past few days, Sonnier's voice from the backwoods not only takes me back to that period but brings me back from it as well, giving me comfort along the way.
Sonnier might find me a strange fan. I don't smoke cigarettes or drink beer on the back porch, and I'm certainly not from the backwoods of Louisiana, but Sonnier sings to me as clearly as any angel closer to home might do.
That is the power of art. And this post is sort of about the power of YouTube. Like Facebook, it has its positive aspects.
***
Epilogue: This past January 13th, just after finishing a show in Llano, Texas, Jo-El Sonnier suffered a heart attack and died. He was 77.
HEADLINES:
Insurers brace for multi-billion dollar losses after Baltimore ship tragedy (Reuters)
Baltimore port shutdown a major disruption (CNBC)
Arizona becomes ground zero for 2024 election misinformation fears (The Hill)
President Joe Biden’s son Hunter will ask a US judge to dismiss the criminal case accusing him of evading $1.4 million in taxes, arguing that prosecutors bowed to political pressure from Republican lawmakers investigating his father. (Reuters)
Former Sen. Joe Lieberman has died (CNN)
Largest cocaine shipment of the year seized in Colombian Caribbean after high-speed boat chase (CBS)
Trump mocks ex-RNC chair Ronna McDaniel for being fired by NBC (Guardian)
No One Is Above the Law, Except, Apparently, Donald Trump (NYT)
Donald Trump Selling Bibles Sparks Fury From Christians—'Blasphemous Grift' (Newsweek)
Church Attendance Has Declined in Most U.S. Religious Groups (Gallup)
Justices were skeptical of abortion pills arguments. Anti-abortion groups have backup plans. (Politico)
Domestic Political Pressures Widen Divide Between Biden and Netanyahu (NYT)
Benjamin Netanyahu Is Israel’s Worst Prime Minister Ever (Atlantic)
Israel is fighting a battle at home over drafting the ultra-Orthodox (AP)
Birds, bees and even plants might act weird during the solar eclipse (WP)
Inside the Creation of the World’s Most Powerful Open Source AI Model (Wired)
New robot called Figure 01 can speak and move like a human (Jerusalem Post)
The Fight for AI Talent: Pay Million-Dollar Packages and Buy Whole Teams (WSJ)
Report: You Were Supposed To Be Looking Something Up Right Now (The Onion)
***
"Come on Joe"
Well, it's a long, hot night
And the stars are shining kinda extra bright
Sitting on the back porch glidin'
Whetting my appetite
Well, I'm a six-pack high
And start missing the light of my baby's eyes
Wasn't it beautiful, the kind of a soul they said would never die
Well, it's muggy in the shack
And the backwoods are black
'Cause the clouds hid the moon away
The light from my cigarette flickers in the dark
The only way she knows I'm here
Then suddenly the sounds of the fiddles and accordions
Sweetly begin to play and I can almost hear her sweet voice say
Come on Joe, just count to ten
Pull yourself together again
And come on Joe, you gotta get hold of this mood you're in
Come on Joe, you gotta be strong
You're still young and life goes on to carry on
'Til we're together again
Hey, I know she's right
But it's hard to fight when you're hurtin' so
I tried to walk out of that door before but I just can't go
With the tears and the laughter in every rafter in every room
Wasn't it beautiful
Wasn't it the kind of happiness and glow
Come on Joe, just count to ten
Pull yourself together again
And come on Joe, you gotta get hold of this mood you're in
Come on Joe, you gotta be strong
You're still young and life goes on to carry on
'Til we're together again
Come on Joe
Hey, come on Joe
To carry on 'til we're together again
-- Written by Tony Romeo, Sung by Jo-El Sonnier
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