Ferron

Today's story is the story of a woman who is ready for a comeback, whose music has been lost and found again and again. She has been both a lighthouse and the one lost at sea. Her songs are how she’s found her way home.

Ferron, born Deborah Foisy on 1 June 1952 in Toronto and raised around Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, learned to play guitar at age 11 and left home at 15 with a Leonard Cohen album in her backpack and not much else. As she herself wrote, "I started writing songs when I was 10, never saved them after some kids at school found them and teased me about it. I wrote songs and remembered them and when I forgot them I felt they were not important anymore. The next time I saved a song I was 18. It was 1970." In 1971, Foisy changed her name to Ferron when one of her friends had a dream in which she was called Ferron.

Ferron is an openly lesbian woman. She says, "I guess nowadays a lot of people are exploring their bisexuality. But I'm just one of those gay women. Fiercely, fiercely gay." She built her fanbase touring small venues and festivals, singing heartfelt, crushingly honest songs about everything from class and love to injustice, equality, and social change. She sang and spoke about her trauma, her troubled childhood, sexual assault and depression, and learned through her fans that she wasn’t alone.

While based in Vancouver, Ferron established her own record label, Lucy Records, and released her self-titled debut album in 1977. The album was recorded in a video studio on two-track equipment, and, as she stated, "the production quality was pretty poor". Nonetheless, all one thousand copies printed sold quickly. From that album, here's Bourbon Street Vision:

... And here's In Retrospect:

Shortly after her second self-produced album, Backed Up (1978), she joined forces with Gayle Scott, who would prove to be her longtime manager, executive producer, and partner in Lucy Records/Penknife Productions, producing the next two albums and launching concert touring throughout the states. 1980's Testimony was her first professionally produced album, originally distributed through Holly Near's [link] Redwood Records label. Testimony brought her much interest in the United States, particularly in the women's music community. The two most popular songs that were included in this record could also be found in her previous album, in a more "primitive" form. First, there's Testimony, the unofficial anthem for the post-folk women’s music movement.

"Somebody could say, 'What is the formula for writing a song like Testimony?'" Ferron says. "I don't know, almost die? Be very depressed and not know who you are and who your father is and where you're going and what is the purpose of life and why does everybody hate each other and why did they hurt me? If you put all that together and sit down somewhere and weep, you might write Testimony. It's not a craft. Survival was the craft."

Ferron wrote Testimony while in Toronto searching for her biological father. She says that she’s never been so achingly alone as she was there, and she channeled all of that into the song. It was written late at night, and when she woke up in the morning, she remembers thinking, "What the f--k is this?" It was so personal, she was afraid to sing it, worried that people might throw tomatoes at her onstage, Ferron says with a smile.

"The blessing of my life is when I’m that broken, just like Leonard Cohen says, the light comes in," Ferron says. "But I wouldn't have known that, I was in the process of it and it turned out to be, lucky for me, a process that was valuable to some other people. That's my job, to go right to the edge and look down the vast purposelessness of everything and make it become something."

The title track's strength comes from Ferron's ability to blend Janis Ian's folksy singing with Roberta Flack's commercial slant. It's a tremendous song with a stirring string arrangement that haunts. Here it is:

Then there was Misty Mountain. Ferron calls Misty Mountain, one of the fan favorites, her cry in the dark. She was 22 and depressed, holed up in a room in the basement of a friend, novelist Keith Maillard. She felt safe.

"I think I was suffering PTSD but I only knew that many years later," Ferron remembers. "It just seemed like I was kind of nervous and nutty. I don't think they really saw me much for about three weeks. I just slept and didn't give a shit really. Then Keith came down and he said, 'You gotta get up, you've got to care.' The only thing I cared about right then is would he please get the f--k out of my room."

He left, but it stirred her enough that Ferron got up and took her guitar into the windowless, mirrorless cedar bathroom. She strummed in total darkness, her preference for playing guitar - "You use your ears to know where you are, you can't trust anything else" - and she wrote the song.

"I just started singing it and it was, I suppose, a prayer," Ferron says.

Ferron moves quickly from balladeer to Dylanesque preacher on Our Purpose Here, though in much less caustic form than the '60s icon when she puts forth "It's a woman's dream/This autonomy."

The album closes with Ain't Life A Brook. This live version appears on the album Not A Still Life (1992):

AllMusic gave Testimony 5 stars out of 5, saying: "This music may have been confined to the gay and women's music markets, but it is as expansive as k.d. lang and worthy of reaching the masses. Would k.d. lang have had the opportunity if this work, Testimony, had not existed? There are some very excellent moments here worthy of contemporary airplay or rediscovery via cover versions by other artists."

Her 1984 album, Shadows on a Dime, received a rating of five stars (out of five) from AllMusic and four stars (out of five) from Rolling Stone magazine, which called Ferron "a culture hero" and the album "cowgirl meets Yeats...a thing of beauty." Shadows earned a place on renowned music critic Robert Christgau's "Dean's List" for 1984.

Snowin' in Brooklyn's elegant piano and guitars lightly paint a beautiful picture - "Sweet love has its chemistry / Sometimes it don't take...It's old human nature / It's cold or it's hot / I think of you often / I like you a lot."

The sentiment changes quickly with the uptempo As Soon as I Find My Shoes I'm Gone, but it is clear that relationships are the key to the stirring of this spirit whether the singer leaves or stays with the subject matter.

Proud Crowd/Pride Cried is an epic, the way Ian Hunter would provide Mott the Hoople with a thought-provoking Hymn for the Dudes, but Ferron doesn't have a powerhouse band to drive the message home, just her elegant guitar, impassioned voice, and marvelous production.

I Never Was to Africa creeps under your skin and goes all the way to your soul.

The title track here is the stunner, a diamond surrounded by a cluster of rubies and emeralds.

It Won't Take Long is the tour de force closer that is frosting on the cake, as powerful as the title track.

By 1985, the LA Times was predicting big things for the singer; the New York Times called her "one of the most respected Canadian folk performers for more than a decade" in 1994; a steady stream of comparisons to Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen appeared in various publications. Ferron was even signed, briefly, to Warner Bros., for two years in the mid-'90s. The contract was supposed to be for seven years and three records but was terminated early by the label. Despite it being the dawning of a "new" era for women singer-songwriters (Lilith Fair’s groundbreaking three-year run began in 1997), mainstream success eluded her. Or, she eluded it. Even Ferron isn’t sure.

Awarded a Canada Arts Council grant in 1985 to further develop her musicianship, she ended up taking several years off from touring and recording. During this time, she earned some of her living as a carpenter's assistant, bartender, and day care worker, before reinvesting in her music career. Ferron returned to the studio and the road in 1990 with Phantom Center released by Chameleon Records and produced by Joe Chiccarelli. The album featured backing vocals by a then relatively unknown Tori Amos and consequently is highly sought after by collectors. Later, in September 1995, Phantom Center would be re-released on EarthBeat! Records with a new mix of the song Stand Up featuring vocals by Indigo Girls. Since we've mentioned Stand Up, an outstanding track as well as the album's opener, let's begin with it:

The next song on the album is the introspective The Cart:

It is followed by another great song, Harmless Love, with a beautiful melody and thoughtful vocals:

"My dream is to die a lesbian, First Nations, Canadian," Ferron says, "and it’s happening." She talks about discovering her family’s Métis heritage: "It took a long time for everybody to come clean. There's been so much shame and wounding around that racism and I'm hoping that every time one of us does any healing step, it heals us all."

This is the next song from Phantom Center, Indian Dreams:

Heart of Destruction is a deceptively simple, but very effective song against self-hate and self-pity:

"But I won't be a heart of destruction

I won't be a part of the pain,

I won't play I quit, I won't be the obstruction

That gets in my way, just gets in my way."

Phantom Center also received a rating of five stars (out of five) from AllMusic. Here's the title track, its delicate sound augmented by the masterful use of strings:

... And here's the closing track, Higher Wisdom:

Resting with the Question (1992), her sixth studio album, is a change of pace for her. It is a recording of instrumental music, a  collection of new-age-style music without lyrics or vocals. It is melodic, but the compositions are not simply songs without lyrics. Here's the opening track, Anything We Want:

This is Old Haunts:

... And this is the title track:

During the same year, a live album called Not A Still Life (1992) was released. We've already listened to Ain't Life A Brook from this album. This is Shady Gate:

Between 1992 and 1994, Ferron released three albums on her own Cherrywood Station label (Resting with the Question 1992, Not a Still Life 1992, Driver 1994). Driver was highly acclaimed by critics as a masterwork and nominated for a Juno award in 1995. The atmospheric Breakpoint was the opening track:

One of Ferron’s most evocative songs is 1994's Girl on a Road. It’s almost impossible to listen to without crying, no matter how many times one hears it.

"I cried pretty hard writing it," Ferron says with a small laugh.

She wrote it fast, waiting for her turn to soundcheck in Chicago. She found a junk room with an old desk that reminded her of her childhood. She remembers squeezing herself into the seat and the song poured out. Everybody she played it for later that night burst into tears. When they recorded the song, she asked everybody to pull back from any kind of flourish, to find the core beat and not embellish.

"Even now, just talking about it, my hair stands on end. I don’t know what it is. It just killed us. Then we took it to the mastering guy and he cried. Nobody can say why they cried, we don't know why we're crying. Maybe we just hope that forgiveness actually can heal things."

The song has only one autobiographical line, Ferron says: "My momma was a waitress, my daddy was a truck driver / the things that kept their power from them slowed me down a while."

"That was all I had to say about it," she says. "I couldn't believe that, but that was enough. That was the same thing I was asking from the [session] musicians: say it and don't embellish it. And so that fascinated me. The tenderness of forgiving, and identifying and forgiving. You can't forgive like a priest. No, you forgive because it is you that's forgiveness."

The years haven’t diluted the song’s power, Ferron says. She’s still struck by its stillness.

"Maybe it’s like the tracks of a train. That grief and sorrow, and I grow up and I try to love somebody and I can't. At the end, you're just like, ‘Ughhh, I just want to be human.’ Deeply human and I have to define it myself. I have to live it myself and it runs there. Then on this track is all the dreams and all the hopes you have for yourself and what you think might save you," she finishes in a whisper. "And they just run together, naturally, and that’s your life. It doesn’t really touch and maybe that’s what makes us cry. You're going to say, ‘This hurt and this hurt and this hurt’ and then you're going to say, ‘I thought it would be different.’ But in the face of it not being different, let it be graceful." Here it is:

This is the bittersweet saga with amazing lyrics, called Cactus:

"It takes trouble, and it takes courage to be free / But you'll find, if you are soft enough, love will hang around for free / And the coldest bed I found does not hold one but it will hold three / I hope you never have to know what that can mean."

"When I was young I was in service to my pain / On sunny days you'd find me walking miles to look for rain / And as many times I swapped it all just to hop a moving train / Looking back, it was a most expensive way to get around."

This is Sunshine, in which Ferron is contemplating the end:

"Now from my eyes my light is fading as Time stops by to take my hand from you. In my life, your love has brought me close to all love and leads me to an open field of sunshine..."

This is A Name For It:

"There's no one to say that it all goes one way, but you notice the friends you admire seem to be light on their toes, they know what they know, they can separate water from fire."

... And this is Maya, the closing track, dedicated to Joni Mitchell:

"Last night I dreamed Joni Mitchell cut her hair and changed her name to Gaia. And she spoke to me in a confident air and said...'You better push the edge of Maya.' Well, it's either push the edge or fall off the ledge, that's how it feels this morning I've got my rouge-pink sky, my purple mountain nearby and it seems like a very good day to be born in. Oh, holy light...you push me through what I could never get through... do we call this a second sight?"

Following this success, Ferron signed to Warner Bros. enabling her to create Still Riot in the studio with producer db Benedictson for release in the fall of 1996. In this album, Ferron continued to explore life's detail with a sort of desperate hopefulness, repeating over and over on the title track, "There is a way through constant sorrow," and seeking that way while acknowledging that sorrow in the rest of the songs.

The album opens with The Chosen Ones:

In this album, she has reworked one of her best songs, 1978's Ain't Life a Brook, using denser arrangements:

This is I Am Hungry:

The album's closing track is Easy With Love:

Known as a women's music singer/songwriter, Ferron likes to throw her fans a curve now and then. This time, she creates a covers album by revisiting the pop music she heard on the radio as a teenager in the 1960s and early '70s. Generally, the arrangements suggest the original hit recordings without slavishly copying them. The album is called Inside Out: The IMA Sessions (1999), released as a benefit for the non-profit Institute for Musical Arts, dedicated to teaching and supporting women and girls in the musical arts. From it, here's her version of the Temptations' classic My Girl:

Here's Walk Away Renee, a hit both for the Left Banke and the Four Tops:

In 2002, Ferron gathered some of her earlier, then out-of-print recordings to create Impressionistic, a retrospective double album with a 24-page, autobiographical booklet.

Her next studio album appeared in 2005 and was called Turning into Beautiful. One of the standout tracks is Souvenir:

Already Gone is like a musical mirror to Souvenir, distinctly different chapters of the same book:

The title track was co-written by accompanist Brent Shindell and the singer, and it's a wonderfully dreamy ballad in the style of k.d. lang's Constant Craving, without the up-tempo drive.

Goat Path, co-written by associate producer DB. Benedictson, embodies that formula of insightful lyrics, exquisite musical passages, and restrained timing; at seven and a half minutes, it's as good as anything this superior songwriter has crafted in the past.

In 2008, Ferron released Boulder, produced by admirer/musician turned collaborator Bitch (with JD Samson for one song) on the Short Story Records label. Boulder includes guest appearances by Ani Difranco, Amy Ray and Emily Sailers (Indigo Girls), JD Samson (Le Tigre), Sam Parton (Be Good Tanyas), Tina G (God-des) and Julie Wolf. I couldn't find any songs from this album on youtube, but then Ferron and Bitch took their collaboration on the road and there are a number of live tracks available. Here's the wonderful Shadows on a Dime:

Here's another classic, Girl on a Road:

... And another one, Misty Mountain:

... And finally, It Won't Take Long:

A CD with live performances, Girl on a Road was released in 2011 and then Bitch produced the newest Ferron CD Lighten-ing released in 2013 with the film Thunder packaged as a two-disc set. From that album, here's The Pledge:

And here's a sneak peek at the accompanying movie, Thunder:

... and this is part 2:

But the last decade has been particularly hard on Ferron. In a Facebook post from 2016, she opened up about the painful effects of arthritis throughout her body (she can barely hold her guitar), her decision to make most of her songs from her 40-plus-year career free and, like many musicians who turn to Patreon or GoFundMe, she asked her fans for their financial support as she pursues the next phase of her career.

"I have more music and I need your support," she wrote via Facebook. "I'm boxed in and soon to be homeless once again. Please help me to lift myself up. I need to learn digital recording through a school. I need money to get a place to live in, as I do not qualify for a loan of any kind. I need a safe and quiet place to think and write."

Since that posting, things have turned around, at least a bit, Ferron says. She has a proper manager now, and she’s booked to play most of next summer. It seems like she’s due for a comeback. That she’s been passed over and forgotten for far too long - particularly in Canada - but Ferron doesn’t see it like that.

"You don't want anything that isn't real, or at least I don't," she says. "So if it hasn't happened - if, like, I'm in line somewhere for something, that's fine. When it happens it'll be real. I've had a great time and I'm so proud to still be Canadian, even though the Americans would like me to become that, no, I can’t do that."

At 65, Ferron doesn’t think much about her legacy. She’s not even sure what the word really means when it comes up. "The music, once it leaves the womb, it's not mine," she says.

But she does dream of her home on Saturna (a small island off the B.C. coast in Canada where she spends most of her time lately) becoming a trust and a place for women to go and rest and write.

"Without Saturna, without my foster parents, I don't know if I would've made it," Ferron says. "I wouldn’t have found a kernel of me, to save me or to save. But I did, and I did on that island, so I've got this little home and that's what I want to do. That it just stay available to broken girls like me."

I sincerely hope that your dreams do come true, Ferron. Like much of what you did in your life, they are about giving rather than taking. The mark of more than a great artist; the mark of an amazing human being.