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MUSIC
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A girl on a road
Ferron’s never-ending journey
includes a stop in Portland this month
by K im S tephenson
n anticipation of my phone date with Ferron, I
listened to her CD Driver. I hadn’t done so for
a few years, and I quickly remembered why.
I cannot play Ferron and still function. 1
find myself being pushed, without my particu
lar consent, deeply into the couch. And there 1
sit, listening intently for the duration.
W hen my favorite song, “Girl on a Road,”
played, 1 did what I always do: cried for 30
minutes. I stopped the C D so I could squeeze
every last drop of grief out of me.
I can’t get the lyrics out of my head, so I ask
Ferron about the song. As it turns out, that
track represents her new direction and work.
She is polishing an autobiography titled Up and
a one-woman play excerpted from the hook
called What to Do While Makmg Bread. She
hopes Portlanders will find both works passing
through by next spring.
“1 was sort of amazed w hen 1 wrote
* ‘G irl on a R oad.’ T h e whole thing with
the family was just one line, and now I
have a whole play com ing out about it,”
she explains. T h e show is about her
own childhood, “w hich was no t very
pleasant.”
Ferron shifted toward o th er kinds
of w riting after a painful break with
W arner Bros. Records in late 1996.
She stayed at the Institute for Musi
cal A rts in Bodega, Calif., to heal
%
and gain support and ended up becoming its
W riter in Residence.
‘‘I never managed to get another CD out
after the Warner Bros, thing; it took the wind
out of me,” she sighs. “By the time it was over,
I was broke, and I basically traded my product.”
The singer sold the rights to Driver, Phantom
Center and Still Riot, “and so I had no product
and no agent for a while.”
1 f M fter years and years on the road, a quar-
; ter of a century,” Ferron states, “I started
i' 1 noticing that women had a political
voice but not a personal voice, still.
A fter...W arner Bros, fell apart, 1 was in a
quandary. So 1 stayed down at [the institute]....
They had to encourage the hell out of me to
get started, but once 1 got started I was really
moved by that kind of intimate work— working
with 10 or 12 women. 1 felt, and it still feels,
pretty important and what 1 enjoy doing—
seeing any kind of writing come out.”
Since 1997 Ferron has been urging writing
out of women with two workshops she
designed with her partner of three years, Marie
Papacostaki, who is also a writer and a teacher.
“Opening to the Muse,” a weeklong structured
class, includes exercise assignments and a 24-
hour day of silence. “W et Ink,” a less formal
workshop, includes meeting for morning medi
tation, working all day, eating dinner together,
then sharing the day’s accomplishments.
“We are trying to see what blocks us from
expressing ourselves,” Ferron explains, “so we
have opened it up to women who write poems
or stories or songs or who want to do water-
color or take photographs. It’s really about
what happens between you and you to get your
stuff together and done.”
Both summer workshops are at the couple’s
home in Satuma Island, British Columbia,
“where there are more sheep than people,” she
notes. Ferron grew up in and outside of Vancou
ver, British Columbia, and says the 300 residents
of the island have known her since she was a kid.
This spring the singer is beginning work on
the property to better accommodate the six to
12 workshop participants.
A nd in betw een, she still plays h er music
and imparts her wisdom for diehard fans. She
says it has taken h er a long tim e just to feel
alive and whole w ithin herself, to n o t be
striving for anything but her ow n definition
of personal excellence.
“1 feel 1 am running on some kind of inner
truth that doesn’t require me to be different
from anybody else,” she says. “It takes a long
time, you know. W hen you are younger you
find that your sense of excellence was n o t yours
at all but somebody else’s you adopted. I just get
closer and closer to what matters to me.
”jn
F erron plays 8 p.m . May 5 at the
St. Johns Pub, 8203 N . Ivanhoe St. Portland dyke
musician Lynn Frances Anderson opens. Tickets
are $18 from Ticketmaster. Visit Ferron at
www.ferromveb.com. To learn more about her
workshops, e-mail salonlaubergine@aol.com.
KlM STEPHENSON is a Portland free-lance writer.
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