This isn’t meant to be high art. It’s meant to be the people’s art. — Peter Yarrow
On Saturday, April 2, 2016, Saint John’s Summit Concert Series presented a musical evening with Peter, Paul & Mary’s Peter Yarrow and his special guests, Mustard’s Retreat, at Saint John’s Lutheran Church in Summit, NJ.
Several hours before the concert on this picturesque spring afternoon, Mr. Yarrow strolled into Saint John’s carrying his guitar in one hand, a rolling briefcase in another, a smile on his face, and a pocketful of songs in his heart.
After handshakes and hugs for some devoted personal friends who had arrived early, Yarrow, ever the consummate professional, slipped into the church’s sanctuary for a soundcheck.
Like a master artist instructing his apprentice, Yarrow helped the young house audio engineer shape the sound for the evening’s performance. Walking through the sanctuary, Yarrow rattled off numbers of “cycles per second” and incremental “decibel adjustments” in a number of seat locations along the way. Clearly imagining what the audience would be hearing later in the evening, with each modification, Yarrow helped the young engineer improve the amplified version of his voice until the sound system faithfully reproduced his melodious natural tenor in a variety of stopping points from the front to the back of the spacious chapel.
Immediately following the soundcheck, Yarrow migrated to the church lobby where he sat at the merchandise table and pre-signed copies of his picture book, Puff the Magic Dragon; his latest music CD, 2016’s Never Give Up: Inside the Heart of Peter Yarrow; and other creative products. As he signed, he traded stories of the road with musical compatriots David Tamulevich and Michael Hough, members of Mustard’s Retreat, the Michigan folk duo who would serve as his warm-up group and vocal/instrumental accompanists for the evening.
In the “green room” — actually a church classroom painted a beautiful spring blue — Yarrow spent time with a few personal friends who came to support him with tasty homemade food and warm, friendly conversation.
There, he caught up with Sarah, a pre-school teacher from Pennsylvania, who has been a fan of Peter’s since she was a pre-schooler herself. According to Sarah, as a child, she once asked her parents to play her a Peter, Paul & Mary album solely because she liked the cover, but ended up loving the music so much that, by age six, she started “taking them” to see Yarrow and his collegues perform live. At first, Sarah says, she made it a point to bring flowers to Peter, Paul & Mary before their shows, but, later, decided to bring them yummy homemade goodies instead — and tonight was no exception. For this concert, she brought Peter a new recipe for his pre-show dinner— a delightful creamy chicken with spinach and pesto pasta — which Peter appreciated and enjoyed before the performance.
Yarrow also spent time with Tom, a retired New Jersey educator and school administrator, who first saw Peter, Paul & Mary when he was just a junior high school student. Now, decades later, Tom says he’s seen Yarrow perform over 200 times. Ever the caring friend, Tom helps Peter when he does shows in the New Jersey area just as he had done for PP&M for decades. According to Tom, one of his favorite pre-concert memories involves PP&M’s Mary Travers who, before a particularly warm performance, asked for a portable fan, and since one couldn’t be found, Tom found himself fanning her with a tray.
In the green room, Yarrow also ardently greeted Tom’s wife, Maggie. Since 1981, Maggie, too, has always been involved in PP&M pre-concert rituals by bringing a scrumptious homemade cheesecake for Peter and his stagemates to enjoy. Maggie especially remembers a time in 1986 when, for Mary Travers’ 50th birthday, she was asked to bring not one — but a dozen homemade cheesecakes — a challenging request she willingly fulfilled by baking them one at a time using her neighbors’ ovens in addition to her own.
Even as he tirelessly chatted with friends about life, art, politics, and more, ever the artist, Yarrow went through his creative pre-concert “zen” ritual of putting a new set of strings on his guitar. Although some in the green room were concerned that doing so would cause the strings to unneccessarily loosen on stage and go out of tune, Yarrow explained he had a time-tested method for preventing the problem which involved him carefully pre-stretching each string while engaged in the tuning process.
Once his instrument was freshly strung and ready to be played, Yarrow asked if he might premiere a new song for this small but dedicated circle of close friends. Entitled “The Children Are Listening,” Yarrow initially performed it for the group in the green room and then later, for the first time in public, for the audience assembled in the sanctuary at St John’s.
According to Yarrow, the composer of such revelatory folk pieces as “Light One Candle,” “Greenwood,” and “The Great Mandala,” this new song was inspired by the work of US Congressman John Garamendi. Garamendi feels that, sadly, the current situation in American politics has become more about inflicting personal attacks than it is about debating issues. As a result, he’s currently in the process of mounting a “campaign for civility” so that all adults can be kinder to one another because, as he warns, “the children are listening.”
Yarrow’s companions in the green room found the new song based on Garamendi’s phrase, “The Children Are Listening,” utterly compelling. The song also received a similar reaction when Peter performed it for the congregation gathered in St. John’s luminous sanctuary.
Also in the sanctuary, along with “The Children Are Listening,” during the first portion of the evening, Yarrow performed one of his most famous original compositions, “Puff the Magic Dragon.” For this song, however, he invited all of the “children” in the audience — defined as “anyone under the age of 70” — to come up and join him in singing it.
At St. John’s, however, two actual youngsters in the crowd came up on stage to join Yarrow — Isabel, 15, and Natalie, 12 — two sisters from South Plainfield, who had asked their mom to take them to enjoy this nearby Jersey cultural experience.
While singing “Puff,” however, Isabel started to become very emotional — gently weeping while performing it with Peter and all the other people on stage — which instantly provided many of the folks in the audience with an intensely emotional connection to this performance of the song. In fact, it was not uncommon to see both men and women in the audience drying their eyes at the conclusion of the song’s ubiquitous chorus.
After the concert, Isabel and Natalie revealed that when they were little girls, their dad used to sing the song for them each night as he put them to sleep. Yarrow has said many times that “Puff” is a song about the loss of childhood innocence.
Along with “Puff,” Yarrow performed more songs he helped to popularize over the course of his five-decade musical career including “Music Speaks Louder than Words” and the 1969 PP&M classic, “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” He also performed “Don’t Laugh At Me,” the theme song for Operation Respect, an anti-bullying campaign that Yarrow helped to create which is estimated to have reached over ten million children around the world in countries as diverse as the United States, Israel, Jordan, Hong Kong, Japan, Ukraine, and more.
As he explained to the congregation at St. John’s, the goal of Operation Respect is to “educate children’s integrity” and restore “our goodness of heart” through music and other activities which enable individuals to resolve conflict peacefully, celebrate diversity, and engage with each other in a spirit of caring, compassion, and cooperation. In response to Peter’s message, along with his performance of “Don’t Laugh At Me,” comments like “words of wisdom!” rang out among members of the congregation.
During intermission, instead of taking a break, the famous troubadour took time to meet with fans and sign autographs in the lobby. Then, he proceeded back to the sanctuary to perform a second set of material consisting exclusively of audience special requests.
Revealing to the audience that their suggestions give him “permission” to perform songs that he doesn’t always get to sing in concert, he treated the assembled to such folk classics as “Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” “Lemon Tree,” and “The Times They Are A-Changing.” Inviting Mustard’s Retreat to join him on stage for “Blowing in the Wind,” “If I Had a Hammer,” and a rousing version of “This Land is Your Land,” he left the congregation at St. John’s standing on their feet.
Afterwards, Yarrow zipped back to the lobby for more handshakes and hugs with old friends Sarah, Tom, and Maggie; his musical colleagues David and Michael of Mustard’s Retreat; and with many new friends who had come to St. John’s to commune with “the people’s artist” — Peter Yarrow.
For more information on upcoming peformances by Peter Yarrow, please go to peteryarrow.net. For upcoming programs at St. John’s Lutheran Church — including Members of the NJ Symphony Orchestra on May 22, 2016 — please go to stjohnssummit.org/concertseries.
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