'ONCE I WAS in Adelaide, Australia, and I was playing in a folk club and two young women came up to me and asked me could they sing. And I said 'of course', and they sang me a verse and chorus of The Last Thing on My Mindin Croatian, and I thought, 'wow you do get around, don't you?' And I thought what an incredible gift I was given when I wrote that song.
Tom Paxton is discussing how his songs travel through time and culture. Songs such as Ramblin' Boy, Peace Will Comeand I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Boundhave entered the folk song canon to such an extent that his authorship has been lost along the way. His daughter once told him of hearing a Scottish singer perform The Last Thing on My Mind. When he finished, she thanked him for singing a song her father had written. "No, he didn't . . . He couldn't possibly have written it. That's an old Scottish folk song I learned from my dad."
It's not just the Scots. "Paul Simon told me a similar story. Back in '65 or so he wanted to get away from it all to write and so he rented a cottage in Ireland. The housekeeper was cleaning up one day and he was singing The Last Thing on My Mind, and the housekeeper said, 'ah, that's a lovely old Irish song'. I love hearing things like that."
It must be the supreme tribute, even greater than the Grammy he received two years ago in recognition of his more than 50 years in folk music. Paxton, now pushing 74, still has a hunger for performing. “It is because I’m a ham. I love to perform. I love the interplay with people. It’s not as if I have to conquer a hostile crowd. They’re friendly, so you’re allowed to be friendly back. I particularly love the audiences in Ireland, Scotland and England. They know my music and they know me, some personally, so it’s not a tense situation – it’s a situation to be enjoyed.”
There was a little more creative tension when he started out among the bright young things such as Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs in New York’s Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. Following a path set by fellow Okie Woody Guthrie, he was drawn to the great folk-music revival of that time.
"They were singing the kind of songs I wanted to hear. I loved the old Francis James Child collected ballads. You can scarcely say those songs were holding the mirror up to nature – you know, Lord Randalland such – and yet they had a truth about them, maybe a romantic or poetic truth, that got me. There was a lot of protein in those songs; there was meat there. It gave me a connection to the people who had first sung those songs."
The folk revival was strongly linked to the American civil rights and anti-war movements of the time, and Paxton was then – and remains – a political activist. “I think it was [American humorist and commentator] Will Rogers who said that he was a member of no organised political party – he was a Democrat. And there is a real truth in that.
“But yes, I am without a doubt a big-D Democrat – I’m a member of the Democratic Party. I’m of the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party – you certainly have more conservative Democrats, though most of them turned into Republicans.
“I was just telling somebody earlier that my favourite bumper sticker of the last year was ‘Yeehaw is not a foreign policy’. And we [1960s folk singers] always kind of felt that way. That there was this cowboy, John Wayne mentality that runs very deep in this country. They see government as the enemy. We see government as the servant of the people, and a very helpful servant at that. They scream about socialised medicine – which we do not have, by the way – quite forgetting that we also have a socialised police and a socialised school system. I mean it’s so silly that we kind of let it go at times.”
“It is a very angry country right now. I think we have a lot of people who are extremely angry that we have a black president. They won’t say that, but the opposition to Obama is fanatical. The Republican majority in the house of representatives is unbelievably dedicated to giving Obama not a thing. Not a thing. If he was calling for a Congressional resolution that the sun would rise they would oppose it. So it is very difficult to get anything done.”
Paxton has no such problems. He continues to write songs and loves nothing better than to play them in front of an audience, though he now only undertakes short tours. His old songs are reborn each night. But how does he keep classics such as The Last Thing on My Mindmeaningful to himself? "All I have to do is listen to the song as I'm doing it and, I tell you, it is no problem at all. I still love to sing the song. I've no idea how many times I've done it – thousands – but it still works for me. I'll never do a show without it. I'd be arrested if I tried."
He has a word of advice for young songwriters. “Always listen to people whose music inspires you. And then do likewise.”
Paxton’s Ireland Peace, butterflies and The Irish Times
Tom Paxton has been a regular visitor to Ireland over the years, and has built up a close affinity with the country, including being a regular reader of this newspaper – "I have The Irish Timeson my Kindle".
One of his consistent themes has been the need for peace, as expressed in his song Peace WIll Come.
"I'll tell you a story about that song. I was in Omagh. It was about a year or so before that terrible car bomb. I can't remember exactly, but I think it was outdoors. This might sound like a load of rubbish, but I swear it is true: I was just beginning to play Peace Will Comewhen a little white butterfly – I can hear you saying 'oh no' – when a little white butterfly landed on one of my tuning pegs and stayed there throughout the song and then flew away. I couldn't believe it as it happened, and I can still see people's eyes roll up in their heads as I tell them this story. But it is true."
Tom Paxton plays the NCH tonight; the Village Arts Centre in Kilworth tomorrow; Galway Town Hall Theatre. tompaxton.com
