Her name was Sandra Falon (see chapter 3) and she lived a few blocks from the Jazz club in a two-family with her mother and grandmother. She was waitressing at the club when one of the owners asked her if she wanted to work the bachelor party. She had been a stripper in bars in Panama City, Florida and, needing the money, this must have seemed like a golden opportunity to her.
Sandra was a raging crack addict. During the years we were together she was with a wide variety of other men and she nearly always used them as a means of feeding her habit. She could be capable of great tenderness but, in the end, these moments were secondary to or motivated by her addiction. We often met under the most appalling of conditions. She associated with other addicts, petty criminals and deviants. It was a world I had never been exposed to before.
Sandra’s background was not uncommon for this part of the country. She came from a family that had its roots in Kentucky. Some might have called them white trash. They all worked nominal jobs and were, to one degree or another, on the government dole. She never knew her father but her deceased grandfather had been a rum runner across the Kentucky-Ohio border during the Prohibition years. The extended family was a case study in dysfunction. There were nieces, nephews, aunts, babies, pets, fleas, along with an abundance of filth, ignorance, drugs, disease, and madness; the whole teetering mess being run by women. When a man appeared it was usually to buy or sell drugs or to have sex or to do a combination of the three.
Sandra Lamar Falon
I had my reasons for tolerating all of this and none of them were good. There was, however, an unexpected incidental consequence that came out of the relationship. The chaos in Sandra’s life dislodged the previous notions I had regarding certain unpleasant realities of the world and it provided the kick in the teeth that is, at times, so crucial for someone who aspires to writing or painting or doing any type of creative endeavor. Beliefs I once took for granted were challenged and ultimately changed. It forced me to look at things from another perspective and it made me listen to music and understand music in an entirely different way.
At some point during the years we were together, I was drawn back into the songs of the American past. I had listened to this music before but it never rang as true as it did during these times. The work of Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, the Carter Family, and Billie Holiday, for example, carried a whole new resonance and weight. As I got closer to this music, its influence swept into the songs that I had once again begun to write. I no longer found much value in following the latest record releases. For me, the past became the source of my creative energy.
Most of these new songs either directly or indirectly revolved around what I was going through with Sandra. They were musically simpler than my older material but the lyrics, while also simple, were much more rooted in a certain straightforward realism. I had no interest in trying to sound like any particular performer or composer. I was simply attempting to document and capture my experiences in an honest manner.
There were weeks when we never saw each other. I began writing during these periods and I tried to keep a sense of objectivity in the songs by turning what could have easily been maudlin ballads into narratives about specific events. The key was using small, unassuming details in a story line to imply broader emotions. For me, it isn’t necessarily the confessional quality of a lyric that communicates feeling. Often, complex emotions are more effectively described by references to actions or places or the way someone is dressed or what someone says without thinking. All of the songwriters I admire – from Cole Porter to Chuck Berry to Hoagy Carmichael to Smokey Robinson – use this technique. I was taking the same approach but adapting it to the world in which I had gotten myself entangled.
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© 2013 by Maurice Mattei
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