Ian shares “trust your talent” and “be brave”

 

Lauded musical legend’s

GRAMMY nominated album,

The Light at the End of the Line,

available at

Watch presentation with video retrospective and Janis’ acceptance speech.

 

– A Transcription of Presentation and Acceptance Speech –

Catalina Maria Johnson, Folk Alliance Interntional Board Member:

This year’s recipient is a 10-time GRAMMY nominee whose songs and performances have resonated with the public for over five decades. Much of her music has poignantly focused on social issues as a pioneer of both confessional singer songwriters music and social protest. Her first hit, “Society’s Child,” written when she was just 14, spoke empathetically about interracial romance. And her indelible song “At Seventeen,” remains the anthem for “ugly duckling” girls maligned by false beauty standards. Ian was also a pioneer of artist-run labels with her Rude Girl Records. And after coming out with her groundbreaking 1993 album Breaking Silence, she’s been a beacon for LGBTQIA+ awareness in the folk community. Recently retired from performing, tonight is the perfect opportunity to honor this living legend. Let’s turn our attention to the screens to celebrate the one and only, Janis Ian.

*****

Video narration:

“I believe in the power of art,” Janis Ian once said. “I believe it can heal the broken in spirit, give strength to the fragile, ease the weary soul.” For decades now, Janis Ian’s art has done exactly that for countless fans around the world. For Ian, songwriting began at the age of 12. Raised on a farm in New Jersey, Janis Eddie Fink was attracted to folk music and counted Odetta and Joan Baez as her earliest role models. She changed her name to Janis Ian when she was 13. When she was 14, a guidance counselor realized Ian was happiest when she was writing. “She told the administration I needed heavy counseling,” Ian remembered. “Then let me sit out side her office and write instead of attending classes.” In those sessions, Ian wrote a song about an interracial couple she’d seen on the school bus. Imagining the disapproval and hypocrisy of the woman’s family and teachers. She succeeded in recording and releasing the song, and soon left school to pursue a music career. That first release, “Society’s Child,” brought Ian early success but also taught her some sobering lessons about America. She endured negative press, disruptions at her concerts, and even death threats due to its depiction of an interracial couple. And the song was banned in many radio markets. But an unlikely ally turned up to help. Leonard Bernstein, the country’s foremost composer and conductor who invited Ian to perform the song on a CBS TV special about rock music. That introduction of the song to a national audience took the song to #14 on the charts and the album Janis Ian was nominated for a GRAMMY in the Folk category.

Ian continued to write and sing, tour and record, but she didn’t have another hit for almost a decade. As she later told the GRAMMY Awards, “I wrote my first song at 12, was published at 13, made a record at 14, had a hit at 15, and was a has-been at 16.”

Appropriately, her next big success was called “At Seventeen.” A song about the cruelty of adolescence, it made it to #3 on the charts. In October 1975, Ian performed it on the very first episode of a new sketch comedy show called Saturday Night Live. The song won a GRAMMY for best Pop Vocal Performance despite competition from Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton-John, and Helen Reddy.

Ian spent the next years honing her skills while touring, performing, recording, and writing. She wrote music for films like Foxes and The Bell Jar, and continued releasing albums and singles. They didn’t yield any more hits in US although in Japan, Australia, and elsewhere she charted regularly. Breaking with her major label, she effectively had a hiatus from recording with no US releases between 1981 and 1992, largely due to a series of personal and financial setbacks. But nothing could stop the music. She summed it up in an interview with Guitar Player, “Everybody can take everything away from me, but they couldn’t take my talent.”

Janis Ian’s talent is of course prodigious. Her songs have been covered by artists as varied as Nina Simone, Spooky Tooth, Celine Dion, Camel, and even her early idol Joan Baez. Her expressive singing won her that 1975 GRAMMY Award, along with many other awards and nominations. She noted that as a woman, she gets less credit than she deserves for being a brilliant instrumentalist and band leader. But she doesn’t let her bother her, as she told A&R Insider, “Chick Correa think’s I’m a wonderful pianist. Chet Atkins thinks I’m a wonderful guitarist. How much does the rest matter?”

Ian applied all these talents to her 1993 comeback album Breaking Silence. Sounding positive and empowered she tackled tough and traumatic subjects like spousal abuse, incest, and the holocaust. She also broke her silence about her own sexuality, confirming that “my tilt is towards women.” Her partner Pay Synder stood behind her and helped finance the recording. The two later married and remain together today. As she later said in a song, “I’ve led a fascinating life. Had a husband and a wife.” Breaking Silence earned another GRAMMY nomination and began a new phase of Janis Ian’s career. Working mostly with smaller labels including her own Rude Girl Records, she gradually came back toward her folk roots. Working with great producers and artists like Ani DiFranco and John Jennings. And with pioneers of Americana, like Willie Nelson and Chet Atkins. Her folk homecoming was signaled especially on her 2006 album Folk Is The New Black which Rude Girl called “a return to Janis’ folk roots” and “a true folk album sparse but tasteful instrumentation underneath powerful lyrics of social and political commentary.” Ian began exploring new vistas as a writer, publishing a regular column about queer life in The Advocate and several science fiction stories. In 2008, she published her autobiography, Society’s Child. The audio version won her a second GRAMMY for Spoken Word Album.

Janis Ian’s latest recording, The Light at the End of the Line, is intended to be her swan song. “I’ve never managed to make an entire album that felt like it lived up to the talent I was lucky enough to be born with,” she said. “That is until the light at the end of the line.”

“I”m Still Standing,” is like the opposite of “At Seventeen.” Flipping the bird to the mean girls and accepting wrinkles and flaws as evidence of a life fully lived. “Nina” is an intensely personal love song to Ian’s late friend Nina Simone. And “Swannanoa” bring Ians together with John Whelan and Nola Kennedy for an impeccable Irish style elegy to place. The album brings Janis Ian full circle, earning her 10th GRAMMY nomination which, like her first, is for Best Folk Album. “It’s a bittersweet moment” she says, “but a grand one.”

*****

Janis Ian, on accepting the 2023 IFMA Lifetime Achievement Award:

I don’t know how to live up to that. Really? I find that I have reached the age where people use words like “legendary” and “heroic” to describe me. And when I when I was coming up in order to be legendary, you had to be dead. And a hero was stunningly courageous. And to be truthful, in my life, when I have been courageous, it’s been accidental. It’s because I had no other choice.

When I suddenly lost my ability to sing last year, it was a shock. I hoped for courage, but I found I had very little. I’d always thought of myself as a writer first a player, second, a singer last. And yet, whenever anybody asked me what I wanted to accomplish with my work, I would say, “I want my work to be a voice for the voiceless.” So clearly, somewhere within me, I knew that, although everything stemmed from the writing, it was given birth through my voice.

I got a strange virus. I was sick for a couple of weeks. I had laryngitis. I saw doctors. I saw more doctors. Months went by. I kept trying to rehearse for my fall tour. I couldn’t intonate. I couldn’t hold my notes. I couldn’t phrase. I didn’t know what would come out. So when I finally got the diagnosis, it was both a relief and a heartbreak.

  The loss of a singer’s voice is a death in the family. And like any death, I feel it every day. I’m surprised that the sun still comes up. I am shocked that other people sing beautifully and admirably without me. To lose something this big is to join a very exclusive club and it’s only understood by other people in that club. Anyone who tries to console you by pointing out how lucky you are that it’s not worse, I’m not even going to say what I would do to them. They don’t realize that other people’s suffering is no consolation when you are suffering yourself. People don’t know what to say to me about it, but in fairness how can they when I don’t know what to say yet. It’s been less than six months, that I sing in the shower and what comes out shocks me. I learned to live with it. We all learn to live with things. But it doesn’t make me happy. One of the most frightening things is the realization how much time I wasted. And now I’ve created a body of work to be proud of, make no mistake, that beautiful presentation stunned me.

To see people I loved and have worked with like Chick or Cheddar, Shadow Morton or Brooks Arthur; people who changed my life. I can’t believe to tell you how much it moved me. And yet, I slacked off so much. I struggle with how heavily time weighs when I can’t do what I was born to do with the time remaining to me. Something that sets artists apart, I believe, is our perception of time. I think that artists are born looking at the hourglass and watching it run out. Everyone else measures time by births and deaths, by anniversaries, by weekends. But we measure time by whether or not we have accomplished what we feel our talent allows us to accomplish. Well, as the saying goes, “I now more years behind me than I have before me.” And in the midst of my own loss I want to say two things to my colleagues, who keep asking me for advice. You should realize by now that what I’m talking about is for you because things can change on a dime. And yet we go on. It’s the miracle of being human that we can go on.

First of all, trust your talent. Your talent knows better than you do. Whether it’s in business or creativity, trust your talent and when that little bell inside goes off, listen. Whether it’s a few words in a song that scare you … THAT’s where you’re supposed to go. Or somebody in business who unnerves you …that’s where you’re NOT supposed to go. Trust your talents.

And the second thing is to be brave. Be brave. You’re not born brave. If you can’t be brave because you’re afraid— and we’re all afraid—pretend to be brave. If you pretend to be brave long enough, you will BE brave. If you pretend to be a hero long enough, you will be heroic. And in our world appearance is everything. Be it the format of a song or the look we present, it’s the appearance that makes the first and lasting impression. So be brave, because believe me there’s more sleight of hand to this business of being a legendary, heroic person than one would imagine.

Thank you.