Sometimes good things really can come from bad.
Just ask Joe Crookston, who -- thanks to money extracted from major music labels after a recent radio payola settlement -- may soon be known as the "Troubadour of the Finger Lakes."
Crookston, a folk singer/songwriter from the Ithaca area, has received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to travel around upstate for the next year, learn the stories of its people and translate them into song.
Crookston sees the project as following in the footsteps of folk legend Woody Guthrie's 1941 journey around Washington state, which yielded classics such as "Roll On, Columbia" (now the state's official song).
That mandate would seem to be huge, but Crookston has a plan.
"What I'm really intrigued by, more and more, is taking my zoom lens and focusing in on one very, very small aspect of history or life as we know it, and magnify that one small story," he said.
"There's a lot of power in personal stories."
Crookston, 37, certainly has shown a talent for telling others' stories, as well as his own. His latest album, 2004's "Fall Down As The Rain," dares to confront the big issues -- life, death, love and growing old gracefully.
The CD was chosen as a "Top 12 Do-It-Yourself" independent recording by Performing Songwriter magazine, and two of his songs were runners-up in the folk category of the prestigious National John Lennon Songwriting Contest.
The album seems infused with the spirit of Crookston's mother, a guitarist and accordion player who wrote hundreds of songs before her death in 2003. Without her inspiration and encouragement, he might never have become a musician.
"Her belief was that writing songs -- writing music -- was a sacred, absolutely magical, important thing to do in the world," Crookston said of his childhood in rural Ohio. "In her mind, there was nothing more important than creating art and sharing it with the world."
The "Rain" songs explore themes of reincarnation and the circle of life (on the title song), how to honor the departed ("Don't Bring Me Flowers," which Crookston and his mother co-wrote), and what we leave behind (sold off during an estate sale in "The Good Stuff").
Crookston also digs for spirituality and deeper meanings, whether they're everywhere he looks ("The Sylvan Song") or in a reading of the children's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" ("Satisfied").
"I want to write songs that are timeless, that aren't about cell phones or the latest gadgets. How do I tap into that, so that every generation it still holds true?
That pretty quickly led me to death and dying," Crookston said. "Not in a morbid way, but what is the connection that links every generation on Earth? We're all born and we all die.
In some ways it's an attempt to tie a thread through everything -- whether you're Christian, whether you're Muslim, whether you're left-wing, blue, red, we all die."
But as proud as he is of those songs (and rightly so), Crookston is not a man to sit back and rest on his accomplishments. He expects his next album to be released in early 2007, with some songs (including a rootsy cover of Supertramp's "The Logical Song") already recorded.
Also among the new crop of tunes is the compelling "Able Baker Charlie Dog," the true story of U.S. Navy Seabees who constructed runways on Tinian Island during World War II.
None of them had any idea that their work would be the home base of the missions that would drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the conflict.
Crookston's grandfather, who was one of those Seabees, shared his experiences on Tinian Island shortly before he died at age 97. Crookston knew instantly that it would make a great song, but it took months for him to do research and process the story properly.
"For me, it touches on the idea of my personal family history, which is so important," Crookston said. "Then it also makes it relevant to today -- 'They never told us / forbidden to ask / they handed down the orders' -- it brings it into a universal realm, possibly the way we live here, kind of accepting things the way they are."
For now, Crookston has a lot of ground to cover for his "Songs of the Finger Lakes" project.
He's most interested in unique expressions handed down across generations that offer nuggets of wisdom. (His current favorites are "Get good before you get fancy" and "Don't hang your straight door on someone else's crooked wooden frame," each of which has a history and personality that goes with it.)
Wherever his explorations take him, Crookston said the goal of his music is clear.
"I believe in the power of how music connects people with stories. I feel it's really under the radar, out of the mainstream, and it can sometimes get overwhelming or distressing," Crookston said. "But for me it's not about the media attention or making a million bucks -- I just truly believe we can still connect.
"
Fellow singer/songwriter Pat Wictor is gaining a reputation in folk circles for his skill with the acoustic lap slide guitar as well as his traditional songwriting. His latest CD, "Heaven Is So High ..
. And I'm So Far Down," was released earlier this year.
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