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Cheryl Wheeler - A Northern Girl’s Heart Songs
By Roger Kuhns - Peninsula Pulse (www.ppulse.com)
I caught up with Internationally renowned singer songwriter Cheryl Wheeler by phone while she was enjoying a beautiful Providence morning. Wheeler will perform at 7:30 on Saturday August 23 at the Third Avenue Playhouse in Sturgeon Bay. “It’s been having weird summer weather,” she said, “hideously humid, but today so far its sunny and pretty nice. Humidity is hard on you but its great for singing – it’s like getting a drink of water with every breath.”
A childhood Tom-Boy, a Maryland girl from Timonium outside of Baltimore, Wheeler moved north to New England in 1976. “I planned to visit only a few weeks, but stayed,” she said. She’s now lived in the same house for twenty years. “Its rural, kind of out in the woods,” Wheeler said. She is on the road most of the year but likes to spend summers at home with Cathleen, and their three dogs and three cats. The New England landscape and the rocky north Atlantic coast offer a clime that seemed to be a good home for her creativity. “I love to be in the water, love it, but was never that enchanted to be on it. I’ve never been a boat person – you just sit there in a chair floating on the water, and you got hours of work when you get home.” She laughed at that, and her sense of humor and a spark of optimism are hints of what her concerts and music convey to audiences who can’t seem to get enough of Cheryl Wheeler.
Tony Gottlieb, Wheeler’s manager and friend of fifteen years, said, “She’s brilliant, quirky, witty, fun and all the wonderful things. Cheryl is very unusual, she’s very giving and funny.” Wheeler needs the audience to be at her best; she is very much an in the moment person.
Wheeler’s loves most of the places she travels to in North America. “I always love California, especially the northern part – I’m always afraid I’m going to get lost in LA. I love Chicago, of course I like New York, but that’s only a few hours south of me. I used to really want to do that stuff (travel all the time), not anymore, I really want to stay here. Stay at home. My favorite place to travel is Alaska; we go in winter – February or March. Talketna is my favorite town in the whole world.”
She is a songwriter who has to work hard at her craft; songs are rarely spontaneously completed. Wheeler’s songs are carried to your ears and heart on her beautifully emotional voice. The guitar is clear, melodic, often backed with piano or strings. She’ll take you on a musical acoustic walk through the characters of her songs. And she pulls the views and chance meetings and experiences from the road into the Americana of her songs – the café visit, a storm, a chance encounter; a seasonal change.
Maybe she’s a folk singer, maybe there’s a touch of country, and fine contemporary orchestrations and arrangements – but really she is a communicator of the heart – the good, the bad, the ups and down, the funny stuff. Many artists have covered Wheeler’s songs, including Holly Near, Garth Brooks, Christine Lavin, Bette Midler, Peter Paul and Mary, and even Juice Newton.
Wheeler’s had her mid life crisis. She’s been around the block. She’s got a great dog (Border Collie named James), and like a best friend she’s written “Howl at the Moon” about a dog’s view of life, she writes, "sleep so sound, wake so nice, I'd keep real close to my own advice.” Wheeler told a fan the meaning about the line in the song “If I could carry your black and white.” She said, “What I mean is, if I could pull off what appears to be his complete lack of indecision. He seems so sure of the things he knows. He has no grey areas. He's thrilled when I get home. But he's sad when he sees me packing my bag and he's TERRIFIED of thunder and nothing I can say or do will move him in any sense from these positions. I admire this in him. I marvel at it. Then there is he fact that he is also physically black and white and I think he is so beautiful and graceful. I perceive this same beauty and grace in his dogged, uncluttered world view.”
In Cheryl Wheeler’s song “If It Were Up To Me” (on the 1999 Sylvia Hotel CD) she falls into a Dylan-styled talkin’/chant-like number, singing: “Maybe it's the movies, maybe it's the books / Maybe it's the bullets, maybe it's the real crooks / Maybe it's the drugs, maybe it's the parents / Maybe it's the colors everybody's wearin’.”
Wheeler created this song/poem after the Columbine shootings in Littleton, Colorado. She was driving at the time, talking to herself, and an image of a human trying to come to terms with all this insanity comes to mind. The reality is no one can really tell us the exact reasons why these kids resorted to such horrific violence on their classmates. But the song takes us through a stream of consciousness that asks oneself every single possible cause – every adult excuse: “Maybe it's the fast food, maybe it's the news / Maybe it's divorce, maybe it's abuse / Maybe it's the lawyers, maybe it's the prisons / Maybe it's the Senators, maybe it's the system” The fact remains children died, and as Wheeler has said, “If we can keep guns away from children, they can’t use them to kill others.” The song ends with: “If it were up to me, I'd take away the guns.”
Wheeler notes on her website that “the song lists possible reasons why the kids were angry. Regardless of the reason for the anger, the reason the shootings happened was because the kids were able to get their hands on guns. Our society has decided that adults should be allowed access to firearms. It then follows that adults should make sure that those firearms don't fall into the hands of kids.”
Wheeler is very much in touch with her audience, and I asked her what she thought about how America is doing right now, she said, “The people who come to my shows are of an (same) ilk (as me) all over the country. One time I was traveling through Kansas before the last presidential election…” she chuckles at the use of election, “…and everywhere I saw these Bush / Cheney signs. Oh my god, I was used to seeing Gore/Lieberman signs. I asked who are all these people? I went to the Denver Stock Show later that winter, and I thought, ‘These are the people’ and they’re just normal people who have a very different view on how things should be run. As for the people I run into in my travel usually have the same political leanings as me.” Wheeler is concerned about the country, and said, “I don’t have a good feeling about this Republican administration, and it’s a scary time - no doubt.”
Wheeler’s funny songs are almost never recorded. She feels they’re better live than recorded. Two favorites are “Estate Sale” and “Cow Pattern Clothes.” Cow Pattern Cloths was written about her trips to the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Rumor has it Wheeler was not in a good mood, and the audience was supposed to pick topics for songs – one idea from the crowd was to write a song about Cow Patterned Cloths. Again, rumor has it that Wheeler “was in a bad enough mood to actually attempt to write such a song.” When it came time to perform the comedic number at the “Songwriter’s Sweatshop Results” segment of the festival she realized no one from the session suggesting the song subject was in the audience.
Utah Phillips once said, “I’m called a folk singer – well you’re all folks and I’m singing, so I guess that’s so.” Wheeler lives in that realm – a storyteller, personable comic, a soul searcher. She’ll take you on that rollercoaster, as the evening magically seems to vanish. Her humanness comes through in her lyrics and clear, soothing voice.
Tickets are $18 for the Third Avenue Playhouse concert can be reserved by phone 920.743.1760 or on line at www.THIRDAVENUEPLAYHOUSE.com.
