FERRON — In a Friend's Touch
by Sue Barrett
In the wind there’s a story, in the trees there’s a song/
In a friend’s touch there’s so much makes you want to live longer/
And do a little somethin’ that might soften the blow/
With your arms wrapped together you say, baby I know
(Ferron — ‘Never Your Own’)
Ferron was born in Toronto, Canada, grew up in Vancouver and now lives in the USA. She started playing guitar at 11 and, during her teenage years, listened to songs such as Janis Ian’s ‘Society’s Child’ on a transistor radio bought with money earned slicing bread at a bakery. After leaving home at 15, Ferron began performing publicly in the mid-1970s and a short time later recorded her first two albums in a video studio on a two track tape machine. In 1987, Ferron moved to the USA (following a friend successfully submitting her name for the “green card” lottery). Ferron appears on the Better Than Chocolate soundtrack (with ‘Stand Up’) and Sweet Honey in the Rock performs her song ‘Testimony’ in the 2nd season finale of The L Word.
When, and how, did you become a performer?
I’ve been writing songs since I was young. But the first time that I ever got up on a stage was when a friend submitted me for a benefit concert for the Press Gang women’s press in Vancouver in 1975 — I think I sang five songs. After that people asked me to sing at the women’s coffee house and I started singing around. The times were ripe — politics and songs were all connected somehow. The next thing you know, the room I was playing in was sold out, so we had to go to a bigger room, ’til finally I was playing five nights in a row in Vancouver. Then it started moving out — I got invited into the United States and played at the Michigan women’s festival.
It WAS difficult to get up to perform the first time — I was shy and unworldly, I had a stammer and I had no self confidence. But I just had this desire, I guess, to be heard or to do something like that. (Now I’m having this craving to make a book of real poems!) Somewhere around 1990, 1991, I hit my stride in terms of performing — I could write the work and I could deliver it in a performance kind of way — rather than just shuffling around on stage, singing the song, then shuffling off (and hoping that no one would throw anything at me).
I’ve always been rebellious — and so when we made Driver in 1990, we made it at home. They said, “You can’t make a record at home — people are going to hear the traffic and everything!” But I built a garage, we made Driver in it and it was #2 on Stephen Holden’s Top 10 albums of 1994 in The New York Times.
How do you go about writing your songs?
It’s a mystery — although usually there’ll be some kind of feeling. When I started, I was kind of like a hotdog thrown in a microwave — the potential for something erupting was always there. These days, I have techniques to prompt things — it seems like it’s slower now writing a song. But back then, everything seemed like it could be a song to me. When I was younger, I’d get sick because there was so much emotion charging through my body and I couldn’t handle it. But writing and then singing it seems to calm everything down — I guess it was like I was giving everything a house to live in, ironing out the creases, keeping on working at the things that was hurting or upsetting.
And, of course, my songs are not static. There’s some kind of change that often goes on inside the song — in an act of gentleness or an act of forgiveness or some kind of revelation. I know even now, if I sing a song, I can listen to it while I’m singing and a get whole new idea, a whole new feeling about it.
When, and how, did you become aware of performers singing songs about lesbian lives?
We had our own raging women’s movement going on in Vancouver and there was word out that there was an album out called, Lavender Jane Loves Women. Then shortly after that we heard of something going in San Francisco. At some point, I think it was Cris Williamson (in a velvet jacket) and Teresa Trull (in overalls) came to Vancouver to do a show. I had already been writing songs —and I had already been singing — but I don’t think that I realised until I saw them what was possible. After that I gathered a bunch of songs together and sent them down to Olivia Records. But, as it turned out, Olivia wrote me back a letter — saying there is nothing new or unusual about you, you’re just like every other white woman. It was like, “Whoa!” A couple of year later, I ended up at Michigan and it wasn’t exactly true that I was like everybody else.
Why do you write about lesbian lives?
Hmm. I don’t write about lesbian lives. I write about my life, my interior longings, failings and successes. I write about misunderstanding and unconscious oppression. My focus is not so much about the narrow topic of sexual preference but about the right to any preference that doesn’t harm someone else.
What seems to make people more receptive, or less receptive, to songs about lesbians?
Songs that lecture have never been that appealing to me. I want to hear a song and identify with the sentiments in that song, not be separated by definitions and qualifications.
In the 1970s and 1980s, to what extent were there risks associated with being an openly lesbian performer?
Shunning is a very powerful tool in communities. We always seem to be not too far from bed with the church and perversion is a very strong word. To love someone of your own gender is more of a crime in some states than murdering someone. I bet a person could get off from murder if they were murdering a gay person and could prove that it was a mental stress on them.
What advice do you have for emerging performers, particularly performers who don't hear their voices represented in mainstream culture?
Sing louder and longer.
Recently you provided harmony vocals for Diana Jones on her song, 'Pony'. Was that by chance or are you indeed First Nation?
Yes, I’m part first nation, part lesbian, part woman, part French Canadian, part poverty, part uneducated, part red head, part left handed, part butch. All these parts inform my reasoning.
What have you been doing over the past year? And what's coming up in the next year?
For the last year I’ve been facilitating writing workshops at a peace and poetry camp we opened up in western Michigan (www.thefensanctuary.com). I still tour and next year will probably be touring with Bitch in the US and Canada.
Select Discography
Albums
- Ferron (1977)
- Ferron Backed Up (1978)
- Testimony (1980)
- Shadow on a Dime (1984)
- Phantom Center (1990)
- Not a Still Life: Live at the Great American Music Hall (1992)
- Resting with the Question (instrumental) (1992)
- Driver (1994)
- Still Riot (1996)
- Impressionistic (retrospective) (1996)
- Inside Out — The IMA Sessions (1999)
- Turning Into Beautiful (2005)
More Info:
www.ferrononline.com
www.myspace.com/ferronmusic
www.thefensanctuary.com
FERRON was interviewed as part of the article, ‘Out There, Every Day: Singing of the Lives of Lesbians, Dykes, Queers, Gay Women…’. Read the article and other interviews (Madeline Davis, Skim, Gretchen Phillips (Girls in the Nose; Two Nice Girls), Ripley Caine, Nedra Johnson, Bernie Bankrupt (Lesbians on Ecstasy), God-des (God-des and She) and June Millington) here.
SUE BARRETT is an Australian music writer, with a special interest in women in music. She witnessed “the incident” at a Cris Williamson/Tret Fure/Judy Small concert that prompted Judy to write a coda for the song, ‘Lesbian Chic’.
© 2008
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