Amelia

words and music by Joni Mitchell
published by SONY/ATV TUNES LLC OBO CRAZY CROW MUSIC

Reviews

A brilliant choice of songs…The way you made it yours, with all the subtle twists & turns that Miss Joni always provides. You move through & around them with the greatest of ease. And ultimately, as you know, DO I BELIEVE THIS SONG? is always the question. Answer: YES. Wonderful Doug. Keep stretching this way. It is exhilarating… —David B.

You have mined new feeling from this amazing song Doug and your arrangement was so beautiful. —Ryan H.

Wonderful…dreamlike. —Carol L. H.

I love the song, the singer, the creator, the aviator, and the banyan. —BJ L.

It takes a measure of bravery to sing one of her songs, Doug. Well done!! —Randy C.

It was superb and listening to your voice and the interpretation therewith – with your voice – was delightful. No worries a about being a man singing it….: – from 2 songs of Joni’s, are the words: “and humans are hungry for worlds they can’t share …as well as – “i see something of myself in everyone”… The accompaniment is also outstanding- did you do it!!? Anyway it would be a compliment to Joni I’m quite sure. Thank you! —Jude P. O.

Love the gender bender aspect…Joni has dressed up as a man on occasion and I think sometimes the interpretations by men of her songs can be enlightening… —Gerry O.

I’ve been immersed in THAT SONG! What a compelling treatment. I love the breadth of your arrangement and all of the little interesting surprises that tickle my ear. —Willard S.

I love it. Got chills and tears. Really masterfully done. —Regg U. G.

This is absolutely amazing! So much emotion!. Gives me chills. —Michelle W.

I absolutely loved it. You have a beautiful voice and yes, you’ve done it such Justice….the accompaniment, just lovely. [J.] and I want to come hear you play it sometime… Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful song beautifully sung. —Marianne R.

brought me to tears….thank you —Pam C.

2021 Notes

To keep my musical chi stirred up this year, I decided to do some cover songs from my most important musical influences. Joni Mitchell is in the top three.

I occasionally did a Joni song in my own concerts, usually “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” often in a coffee house setting. But I decided to record “Amelia” (from Joni’s 1976 album, Hejira), because I think it’s my favorite overall, I relate to it more than any other, and also—well, let’s just face it. It’s a perfect song!

When I was traveling around performing my own songs of life and love, I was in the middle of an iconic struggle: trying to reconcile my faith and my sexuality. It was my own hejira I suppose, during which I experienced some of the lowest ebbs and highest flows of my life. And I don’t know what I would have done without Joni’s songs. One small room I remember in particular, where I hung my hat for some six weeks during an extended Minnesota tour, and where I listened to her live album, Miles of Aisles, over and over. And over.

I loved “Amelia” from the first time I heard it, not long after Hejira was released, and I assure you, this is one Midwestern Baptist gay boy who could relate to it in all its particulars. He’d always admired its romantic and noble heroine as well as its author. And he certainly knew a lot about dreams of flying, false alarms and crashes.

To me, Joni’s songs were sacred. Though some of my audience might have thought it sacrilegious to speak of her in this way, it was absolutely true. Her lyrics were a lifeline. They made me feel—made me know—that I wasn’t alone in the world. Her tales of woe didn’t deepen my despair, they reassured me that other humans had traveled this way before, and that God was still with me. Her bejeweled, poetic lines were a perfection of sorrow, of unrequited love, of the human condition, of the search for meaning—and also of life and love.

Forty years later, when I moved to the Big Island of Hawaiʻi with my husband, David, I discovered another connection with Amelia when I learned how greatly Hawaiʻi had figured in Earhart’s accomplishments, and that she had actually planted a Banyan tree here in Hilo in 1935. The tree is gigantic as of 2021, and is a sort of touchstone—touchtree, I guess!—for me now. I get a wonderful feeling whenever we drive by it, which is often.

So here it is, my version of “Amelia,” dedicated to the wonderful Joni Mitchell Facebook group I belong to (whose 26K+ members are truly remarkable in the breadth of their knowledge and devotion), and to all of life’s well traveled pilgrims.

Music Notes

I became familiar with chiastic structure through some Bible studies a few years ago. It’s a literary device found in ancient writings, a schemata where the same ideas are presented forward, and then backward, all focusing on the center. “Amelia” has seven verses, and the more I thought about it, and worked on it, and sang it, it suddenly dawned on me that verse 4 is the crux, the fulcrum, the heart of the song. Verses 1–3 seem to lead up to it, and verses 5–7 lead away. Take the first and last verses, for instance. They both include desert scenes, jet planes, and geometry—geometry looked up to in verse 1, and looked down on in verse 7. I haven’t tested the other verses against this pattern yet…

But all amateur literary criticism aside, it’s simply one of the most beautiful songs every written. I’ve always loved Joni’s “chords of inquiry,” and this song’s constant motion from one key center to another builds the entire song on a restless foundation.

I had a great time developing the piano part, and I was going to keep the arrangement just piano and vocal, but that plan’s now moot. I just couldn’t do it: it evokes such a cinematic scene in my head. (The naughtier ones among you may be thinking: “And what else is new?”) Not that cinematic has to be complicated, mind you.  But in the end, I still tried to keep the focus on the piano, deciding to play off of that, emphasizing some of its aspects with strings, and other solo instruments, too.

As I said in my Joni Mitchell Facebook Group share post, I invited my good friend and “Joni soulmate,” Ann Doyle—who is a wonderful singer-songwriter I’ve collaborated with on several occasions—to act as my critic on this. She and I bonded over Joni’s Pine Knob appearance with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on May 31, 2000.

I felt some trepidation sharing this with that group of Joni-philes—partly because I may be the first man ever to cover the song, and partly because I knew others from the group undoubtedly felt as deep a connection with it as I did. So I passed it by Ann first, and she reassured me. So, dear listeners, I hope you take this as the tribute I mean it to be, to thank Joni for being such an important and trusted confidante on my own hejira so many years ago.

Cover photo, Amelia Earhart, 1937; New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons