I was in Evanston tonight at the nice SPACE venue for Corky Siegel’s Chamber

Corky Siegel
Blues, which is a bit of a Chicago institution. “Chicago institution” is hereby defined as a group that plays so often that the music editors at Time Out Chicago raise an eyebrow when the group is not in the proofs of the weekly listings and think that Someone Has Screwed Up. Siegel’s an excellent harmonica player and the string quartet + hand percussion outfit backing him has all sorts of sparkle and polish. It’s kind of a half-blues, half-classical hybrid. Snazzy.
Anyway. In the back of the room, leaning on the bar for support, stood a woman in her late 40s with dyed blonde hair. She was absolutely plastered, nearly dropped her glass (water by this point) a couple times, tried to engage random folks within arm’s reach in conversation, and waved her hands in the air like she just didn’t care. All of which is cool—SPACE has a bar, and if you have a bar, you are going to attract people who like what’s for sale at a bar.
Then, between songs, she called out a request. “Amazing Grace”!
The middle-aged women of Evanston (a few blonde dye jobs among them, too) standing nearby began tittering, and pointing. Yes, public intoxication can be funny. Yes, it’s fun to have fun at someone’s expense, someone who clearly has not adapted to life in this modern world as you have, what with your NPR bumper sticker and your comfy jeans and your stylish-yet-modest top.
But what you don’t do is then call out a request of your own for “Amazing Grace,” and mock this woman. Because then you show that you don’t know this song, and confirm my opinion that you really are as self-righteous as I thought.
John Newton (left) wrote this song in 1773, recollecting the harrowing years of his life spent aboard English ships active in the slave trade. In his time at sea, he acquired a certain amount of fame for his acrobatic displays of profanity, and was once censured by a captain not only for excessive profanity, but for going so far as to create new profane words, having exhausted the existing store of them. (Which is kind of cool in a Marlon Brando, “Whaddaya got?” kind of way, but doesn’t exactly imply a future of a Historically Signficant Christian.)
A near-shipwreck turned him towards God and the Christian faith, so he began studying theology in 1756 and quit sailing and the slave trade. And then in 1773, he penned the hymn, which was published in 1779. (Wikipedia has way more on this than I expected.)
That he needed saving, and that he didn’t deserve it, these are the salient points of the lyrics (link). He’s a “wretch,” he’s passed through “dangers, toils, and snares,” and the entire time, it’s been the grace of God that allowed him to overcome. This passage represents the essential turnaround that’s at the heart of Christian gospel. Whether your relationship with God and the Christian faith is 100% behind this, or complicated, or nonexistent, I think it’s still possible to think that this is ok, and a worthy and humane sentiment. If we all actually got what we deserve, we’d all be a lot worse off.
So, when a woman who’s drunk shouts for “Amazing Grace,” it’s easy to laugh and feel superior. What’s hard is to think that maybe she’s making an honest appeal. (I don’t think she was, I think she just wanted to hear the song, but a little bit of empathy never hurt anyone.) It’s hard to think that this person needs care, needs attention, and is here hoping to find compassion. This song so perfectly encapsulates the redemption that’s held out, that it seems wantonly cruel to scorn someone who wants to hear it.
Which is why it was so gracious of Siegel to play “Amazing Grace,” solo, as the first encore. His version started with a cadenza, hinting at the melody, throwing out the opening fourth here, the IV-I cadence there, and gradually revealing the song in its entirety. The women got it, the drunk and the stone sober. But I think the drunk woman enjoyed it more. She deserved to.
Cassandra Wilson only gets through one verse, but one is all it takes.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Uli_2UfAic