Very
few records in my CD collection feel like they contain the entire life of the
artist. Canadian singer/songwriter and lesbian icon Ferron’s 1994 album Driver is one of those records, and it’s
also among the best. I’m surprised when I realize that it came out nearly 23
years ago now. It’s one of just a handful of CDs that I’ve returned to on a
frequent basis since its release, and in a way it feels as if it never quite
leaves my consciousness. The twelve tracks on Driver, the same number of hours on the clock and months in a year,
seem to have been written and recorded to trace the passage of time itself,
meaning that they’ve also been ingrained into the passage of time for me since
they were first put out into the world.
I
vividly remember hearing Ferron perform at a concert in Provincetown about 15
years ago now. The venue was the sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist
Meeting House, a beautiful old New England church that’s right in the center of
town. I was feeling a little bit sleepy that evening, so after the lights went
down at the start of the show, I decided to go all the way to the back of the
venue and stretch out alone in one of the pews there. I already knew the songs
from Driver very well, so whenever
she played one of those songs, I allowed myself to semi-doze as my mind floated
along on Ferron’s guitar and gently rough-hewn voice (accompanied by the
impeccable musicianship of her touring partner, Shelley Jennings), though it felt
less like I was dozing and more like I was traveling.
Fittingly,
Driver is about the necessary tension
between traveling and settling down, between solitude and companionship.
Relationships are at the center of the album, including the relationship
between the singer and herself, between the singer and her own history. The album’s
first track, “Breakpoint,” opens through quietly atmospheric instrumentation and
a line that’s both a warning and a seduction: “Let’s turn the outside way down
low and play with fire.” No matter how tight the bond is when two people meet
and fall in love (“To fall from a plane would make more sense, but who is so
logical,” Ferron jokes), every relationship takes place across a kind of fault
line, “your storm and my storm dissolving at breakpoint.”
And
it’s at the breakpoint between people that Driver
really departs on its second track, “Girl on a Road,” long known as Ferron’s
most autobiographical song. She ran away from home at fifteen, with only a
shopping bag of possessions: “I said goodbye to no one and in that way faced my
truth.” In addition to hinting at an early understanding of her gender and sexuality, her truth is mainly an artistic one. “I wanted to turn beautiful and
serve Eternity,” she sings, “and never follow money or love with greasy hands,
or move the earth and waters just to make it fit my plans.” The song is clearly
written not just as a memory, but also as an inspiration for all girls who left
home at a young age, something that I’ve always related to as a young gay man
who did the same.
I
think Ferron’s Driver has appealed to
me for so long because it’s equal parts street smarts and deep wisdom. That potent
combination is captured perfectly by a clever turn in “Cactus,” my favorite
track on the album: “You’re young one day but youth is rude, and while you
watch it walks right past. But hey, then you get your chance to think like me.”
Driver is filled with such pinpoint
lyrical observations, so precise that comparisons to Leonard Cohen and Bob
Dylan don’t really do them justice. “There’s a rhythm to the highway to match
the rhythm of your fears.” “There’ll always be gorgeous babes around, it’s the
nature of towns at midnight.” “And the coldest bed I’ve found does not hold one
but it will hold three.” “Still the odds fall sweet in favor to an open heart.”
“An open heart is a moving train.”
Openness
to diverse musical styles is abundantly evident on Driver, too. Although most of the songs walk a traditional folk
line (including the contemplative “Independence Day” and wistful “A Name for It”),
jazzy piano interludes find their way into songs like the sexy, playful “Call
Me,” a soaring soprano saxophone solo drifts through the midsection and close
of “Borderlines,” and Ferron breaks out into true country hoedown mode on the
celebratory “Love Loves Me,” complete with accordion, hooting yelps, and choral
clapping. The prologue and epilogue of “Sunshine” and “Sunshine’s Lament” also
feature classical viola and piano balladry, in order to convey appropriately the
heartbreak of those songs.
Driver’s
closing track and final destination, “Maya,” is named after Ferron’s daughter and
begins with an indelible image: “Last night I dreamed Joni Mitchell cut her
hair and changed her named to Gaia.” The song is about keeping house with a
lover and raising a child together, while also growing a symbolic garden. The
singer poetically reconsiders what has brought her to this place: “It was
always worry dolls and love’s back door and haunted halls to the ocean floor, where
I’d lick my wounds behind a rust-warped door and try to prove love
couldn’t find me.” “Maya” addresses the significance of the album’s title as well.
“It seems like I’ve been driving now for a long, long time,” Ferron sings. Then
she whispers, “Oh, the dance of it all,” and a swaying melodica carries the
song to its fading end.