At the Anything Goes open mic on September 26, I marked the 249th anniversary of the birth of John Chapman — who planted thousands of apples trees from seed in the late 18th and early 19th Century in the Ohio River Valley — by playing 3 songs from my solo musical theater project, “Crossing Paths with Johnny Appleseed.” Chapman/ Appleseed was a much loved figure in his day, though regarded as more than a little bit eccentric for his passion for planting apple seeds and never grafting the trees, which meant that his apples were small and sour, much like what we think of as crab apples. But he was celebrated as a good and resourceful man, and folks called him Apple John. The pioneer settlers in Ohio and Indiana went ahead and did the grafting themselves, and had apples for cider, including hard cider, and for vinegar, which had uses in cooking and cleaning and medicine. Chapman created a large number of small orchards at locations along rivers where he cannily suspected that settlers would soon be arriving, and would find his apple tree seedlings useful as they built their new homesteads. Overall, Chapman was a savvy fellow about three things: the cultural, the commercial and the ecological.
For that evening’s open mic, I selected three songs from my collection of originals written for the Appleseed project: “Apple John,” which opens the show and establishes the largely positive feelings that people have for him and his “peculiar” ways; “Pearl Inside the Shell,” which invents a romantic relationship for him; and “Not Over Yet,” which is one of the songs in the show emphasizing the social and political climate of his time, that is, the first generation born after the Declaration of Independence. Back then, they were just figuring out their identity as Americans, and facing up to some of the same dilemmas and conflicts about “democracy” that we still grapple with today.
Video of the three Johnny Appleseed songs from Sept 26, on YouTube:
Audio of the entire Appleseed project in a version recorded in 2020, on Bandcamp:
https://jimnovak.bandcamp.com/album/crossing-paths-with-johnny-appleseed
For INFO on participating in Songwriters Open Mic as a performer or audience member, write JimNovakMusic(at)gmail(dot)com, and you’ll receive the Zoom link (it changes each week).
SONGWRITERS OPEN MIC started as a monthly event in Ann Arbor in 1996, and since 2020 has evolved into a weekly event on Zoom, involving a small group of regulars and occasional visits from songwriters joining in from a couple dozen states and several countries. Songwriters receive an mp4 video of the entire evening of songs and conversation.
An archive of over 200 half-hour, lightly edited excerpts of past sessions of Songwriters Open Mic, featuring songwriters from New York to Califfornia, and the UK, Canada and Australia, is at https://www.youtube.com/@songwritersopenmicannarbor7761/videos
