I’ve had the privilege during the last few weekends of February to be involved in a variety of celebrations focused on music.
Last weekend, for example, I was one of dozens of local musicians who stood on the stage and sang our own versions of Bob Dylan tunes as part of the first ever Dylan Fest, an effort to applaud a man of prolific talent with a broad scope of influence.
The weekend before I stood on the same stage to sing and celebrate women and the wide variety of music that lives in us.
And then I moved down the street and shared the stage with those women as we celebrated songwriting.
The day before I had been in our capitol city celebrating North Dakota musicians. And after the awards ceremony, I gathered with my band on a small stage for an after party where we found ourselves surrounded by musicians of every genre singing along, collaborating and sharing that stage together in the name of camaraderie and respect for our work and an overall passion for words and notes and dancing along for the love of it all.
I have to say, for a woman who has been performing most all of my life, I continue to be surprised by the way music can gather people together of all different ages and backgrounds and stories and experiences and hold us there, connecting us in the moment.
It happened last weekend on a big stage and it happened for me on a smaller stage later that day where I found that I had collected a drummer and a lead guitar player from Bismarck and paired them with a bass player from Fargo and a steel guitar player from Minneapolis and we mixed it all up with a rancher from Western North Dakota and his daughter, the writer and singer who had the big idea for the whole shenanigan in the first place.
In that restaurant in Fargo in the middle of city streets in the middle of winter there were a hundred different stories and a hundred different reasons why we all found ourselves there—a birthday party, a gathering of friends, a drink after work, a chance to hear something new—but there we were, not just in the same room, but nodding our heads and clapping our hands and sharing our stories and toasting and drinking and living in the moment together.
And man did we have fun, the six of us misfits fitting nicely together up at the front of that room singing songs I wrote that some of them had never even played before that night.
And then old familiar tunes that we could all sing along with.
These experiences just keep getting better and more meaningful to me as an artist. And I’m not sure why except to say I have begun to realize how special they are, not only as an artist, but as the person who has sat in a crowd and found myself so moved by what someone else had to say.
Because not only did it make me feel like I wasn’t alone, but because it meant that they weren’t either.
And so I’ve been thinking lately about the value of that moment and how important it is for a community to cultivate it.
Because some of the best moments of my life have been built by music.
Some of the hardest have been processed through the same medium.
And if there wasn’t a song to reflect it all, well, then I have always been compelled to make one for myself.
My column appears weekly in newspapers across the state of North Dakota. If you’re interested in running my work, please contact me at jessieveeder@gmail.com
I don’t always participate in Throwback Thursday, but when I do, I make sure the photo is epically embarrassing, and drags at least one of my siblings/cousins/parents/best friends down the horrifying path known as Memory Lane with me.
No, that’s not Christopher Robin. That is my little sister.
And no. That is not Madonna. Madonna might wear matching socks over her stirrup pants and a scrunchy on the top of her head, but I doubt she would button the top button on her turquoise silk shirt.
That’s big points for modesty right there.
Big points for modesty and sisterhood and fluffy bangs and the first day of country school back in the day where my idea of fun was catching frogs in the crick below the house and sliding down cactus filled gumbo hills in the pouring rain.
But not before I changed out of my school clothes, for the love of spandex.
No, not a minute before.
Happy Thursday. May your memories be as sweet as they are mortifying.
(Sorry Big Sister, I didn’t think it would be fair to leave you out of this one…)
A few weeks ago I gathered a group of women together for coffee and a visit at the pioneer museum in town. I was asked to craft a story that featured farm woman advice for city girls and, while I had a few ideas, I thought it would be wise to get the conversation flowing from the minds and experiences of women of all generations.
So I called my friend Jan, who grew up with my dad on a ranch down the road, and she called her mother, the woman who raised her out there, and taught Jan enough about making chokecherry syrup and canning salsa that Jan could be of help to me in one of my “canning emergencies…”
The two women joined me, my mom and another three generations of women to talk work and worry, weather and washing machines and what it was like, and what it is like, to raise children and crops and cattle out here on the edge of the badlands.
Really, I could have stayed with them chatting all day and into the night. The history and knowledge, the fortitude and respect and connection to place was palpable. But so was the humility. They were all so humble when faced with questions about their accomplishment and hardships on a land and under a sky that could be so beautiful and so brutal all at once.
I asked them what they learned out there so far away from the conveniences of town, and what it was like without the help of today’s modern technology when there was so much on the line.
My friend’s grandmother, who homesteaded her place, and then helped her sister follow suit before falling in love with a town boy and moving him out to the farm with her, gave the end all answer:
“You just roll up your sleeves and do what has to be done. There is no other choice.”
And so this has been on my mind as I’m working to extract all the wisdom and lessons and strength in these women’s’ stories.
And I’ve been thinking of my own grandmother, and her mother, a first generation Norwegian immigrant who arrived at Ellis Island when she was only 16 and made her way west to Minnesota before marrying and moving out to their homestead in Western North Dakota when she was only 18.
She raised twelve children and lived well into her 90s.
I was a young girl when she died, but I do remember visits to her room in her nursing home, her teasing the grandkids with her cane and this photo that set on her night stand, the youngest on her husband’s lap added to the photo later to make the family complete. My grandma Edie, dad’s mother, is the girl in the middle with the bow.
I wish I would have been old enough to ask her things. I wish I would have known her.
Now all I have is stories and other people’s memories, my dad’s particularly, of a woman who used to call herself “Strong Man Johnson” before heading out the door of the house and pretending to lift it off its foundation at the grandkids’ delight and horror.
So that’s what this week’s column is about. My Great Grandmother Gudrun, Strong Man Johnson.
And now, after it’s been published, I’ve received a few emails from those who knew her, one in particular from a woman who cared for her in the nursing home and remember’s Gudrun’s story of baking five loaves a bread every day.
The spirit of these women drives me. It inspires me and it reminds me that I am braver and more capable than I think I am. Because it’s in this heart that pumps this blood, the blood of strong women.
May we raise them. May we praise them. May we be them.
Good Morning. I’m writing to you from my hotel room bed, instead of my comfy chair with the cat sitting on my keyboard.
I’m on the road in the eastern part of the state for the rest of the week singing for my supper. And it just happens to be gearing up to be the coldest days we’ve had all winter.
Yup, that there says it “Feels Like -32”
And I can’t wear my snow suit on stage.
I swear. That’s the hardest part about the whole music thing some days. Deciding what to wear. I mean, the pressure is just too great.
And so I bring everything…and then that creates another problem that has to do with getting myself in and out of hotel rooms in an efficient manner.
I generally have a rule with my packing when I’m traveling alone that goes something like: Only pack as many bags and shit that I can carry up to my room on my own in one trip.
I’ve spent plenty of time in my life traveling from hotel room to hotel room alone so I know how annoying lugging stuff can be.
Especially when that stuff includes a giant guitar, computer, camera, purse, and bags of clothes and coats and makeup and seventeen different giant bottles of hair care products and another three or four pair of boots, which sucks because I like need all of those boots, but they take up so much damn room.
But I can usually get it all: Three or four bags thrown over my shoulders, a purse in the crook of my arm, a pair or two of boots in my armpits, a wheelie suitcase behind me and my guitar in my left hand.
God forbid they put me on the far end of the hotel on seventh floor like they have today.
By the time I get up to my nook of the world, I’ve gone from freezing, to thawed out to sweating to panting to full blown aggravation with myself and society at the fact that we can’t just all agree on one uniform and go with it.
Would be so much easier.
Anyway, I’m looking around my room this morning before I make an attempt to put myself together for a four hour drive to the next town and am wondering how I got this all up here…because I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to give in and get one of those carts from the lobby and drag my world back downstairs and across the frozen parking lot and back into my frozen car.
Because I don’t have enough arms for this.
And then, when I get dressed tonight, I’m going to have to call my mother or my sister to reassure me that I’m not too old to wear sequins on my boots…or my skirt.
Because I feel like I might be too old it, but at the same time, I also feel like if a girl has a chance in her life to wear sequins, she might as well just wear it.
Right?
These are the conversations I have with myself on the open road, between singing along to my iPod, getting depressed about the disappearance of the Dixie Chicks, eating an unhealthy amount of Gardettos, and coming up with elaborate and unrealistic plans for music videos or writing projects or neighborhood sledding parties…
Anyway. Tonight Husband is meeting up with me for the North Dakota Music Awards, and so is the band and my parents, so I’ll have some people to help me carry my shit, and drink vodka with and talk me out of all of my plans….
In the meantime, don’t you just wish you were here right now? Singing on the back of a horse drawn wagon in the middle of summer on your way to eat a homemade meal behind a tree row in a field.
Me too.
But this weekend’s gonna be fun. It’ll be cold outside, but we’ll be warming it up with some great music and celebration inside. If you’re in the Bismarck, ND area tonight or Fargo, ND this weekend I hope to see you out and about!
Thursday, February 19
North Dakota Music Awards Belle Mehus Auditorium
7 PM
(I won’t be performing, but there are many great acts. Will be a fun night!)
18th Annual Celebration of Women and their Music Post Show Songwriting Round 9pm-11pm Studio 222
Fargo, ND With: Nita Velo, Jessie Veeder, Natalie Shaw (award winner), Reina del cid (with Tony Lindgren) & Chastity Brown
Last weekend we had an impromptu sledding party with the neighbor kids.
I just happened to be hanging out with my nephew building a snowman in 50 degree weather, so it was perfect timing.
Impromptu is always perfect timing for me. Especially in the winter when the days can get sort of long without a project or a visit or two from the neighbors.
We gotta stick together around here.
Stick together and then, you know, let small children push us down an icy hill into a quickly melting crick below.
It was fun watching my friends’ kids playing on the same hill where we used to play, sliding down with their dads, squealing the same kind of screams, laughing the same kind of laughs and pushing it to the limit they way we used to, you know, trying to see how many could actually fit on a sled at once without crashing into a pile of tears and bloody noses at the bottom.
There were rice crispy bars,
Snowball fights,
Soaking wet mittens,
Negotiated rides back up the hill…
And a failed attempt at a swimming pool sled…
It was the best way to spend a winter afternoon out here in the middle of all this snowy hills.
Last night over dinner Husband and I got to talking about marriage expectations. I’m sure I brought it up, because I’m always contemplating things out loud with no real direction. I think it stemmed from my idea for steaks, lobster and champaign on Valentines day and his luke warm reaction to my brilliant and sweet idea that I felt deserved something of an enthusiastic reaction.
But really, Husband’s never been known for over-enthusiasm. I know better, but you know, sometimes I fish.
“Well, there are certain expectations aren’t there, about Valentines day?” I asked.
And then somewhere between his reaction to that statement and my rebuttal, I said something like, “There’s expectations in a marriage too. I mean, you have expectations for me don’t you?”
And he said, “No. Not really. I mean, I expect you not to leave me.”
“Well that’s an easy one,” I laughed.
“And, I guess I expect you not be be a stripper.”
“Good Lord.”
“Yeah, so if you get down to it,” he finished. “I guess I expect you not to leave me to become a stripper.”
So I added: “And I expect that you will fix the things I break.”.
“And I expect that you will break things.”
We’re romantic.
And perfect for each other.I mean, because I would make the world’s most awkward stripper…
Happy Valentines Day weekend lovers!
And for those girls in love with their dogs, check out the newly released “A Girl Needs a Dog” Video starring YOU and your pooches!
It has been a true winter wonderland around here lately. Lots of fog and warm temperatures have coated everything in frost.
And then it rained. And froze immediately on the ground, so now this place looks like Ice World on the Super Mario Brothers III game and the animals and me took a slippery stroll through it all, because who could stay inside on days like these?
For most that means cheaper gas and a little breath of relief.
For us out here in a community resting on top of that oil, with men and women whose livelihoods depend on getting it out of the ground and selling it for profit, well, it certainly has us scanning the headlines.
I’m sure you’ve read the headlines yourself. There’s plenty of speculation on how this market might move, but no real answers. Journalists want to know how it makes us all feel out here. Might we have planned too much? Might we have bitten off more than we could ever chew? Are we being laid off and let down and given the run around? Are we panicked? Lost? Worried? Hopeful? Making new plans?
Everyone’s answer is a bit different, but I might add that regardless of oil prices, I don’t think out here we’ve spent a day without wondering: what the hell is happening here and what are we to do about it all?
High prices/low prices, it seems it’s all the same.
Winter showed up again this weekend. It was to be expected.
We watched the snow blow sideways across the sky and into the black trees.
I hunkered down on the loveseat next to my husband under the furry blanket and we watched “Legends of the Fall.” And then, as I do every time we watch our favorite movie, I got depressed about the plight of man. It was sort of fitting though, because it’s been on my mind for the last few weeks, the sort of struggle we face here, how even when we do our best, sometimes it isn’t good enough. Sometimes no matter how we wish and hope and pray and work, it just doesn’t work out the way we had imagined. We’ve all been there. Husband and I have been spending time talking about this lately, about people’s stories, about the news of the world and our community and how it’s hard to get facts straight these days, how it’s hard to distinguish opinions from the truth and how sometimes it’s a struggle to find any positive perspectives.
I worry that we’re getting disconnected from reality.
I worry that we stare at our cell phones and our television screens and we live our lives through photos and commentary instead of observing and wondering and speaking for ourselves.
I worry not enough people in this great country get their hands truly dirty or understand what it really takes to put food in our mouths.
I worry that we’re not spending enough time talking to each other and too much time talking at one another.
And then I worry that we’re not listening.
I worry that we’re getting harder instead of stronger…
These are things I say over lasagna at our kitchen counter with the news turned low on the television and a long winter night stretching out before us.
And then Husband reminds me that we are animals, animals who were somehow born with the ability to love and the ability to hate…and this gift of language and reason and religion and philosophy complicates and pulls at our simple instinct to survive.
The coyotes who howl outside my window at night and get a little too close to the house in the morning. these animals don’t know good or evil. They know danger. They know motherly instinct. They know what they need to know to survive. What a gift and what a burden it is some days to be human. To feel somehow responsible to these coyotes and to the landscape, to the cattle who feed there and to the people we know…and those we never will.
When I was a young girl, growing up and starting to realize that life wasn’t always a frolic in the oak trees, that most days your responsibilities were going to weigh on you, and that was what it meant to grow up, I remember wishing that I was one of those cows standing out in our pasture munching on green grass and knowing nothing different. Knowing no deadlines, or dirty dishes piled up, or the dull ache of your mistakes or the pain of losing someone.
I just wanted to be a cow. Well, maybe a cow in California where the weather never dropped below 70 degrees and sunny. Or a snapping turtle sunning himself on the rock in the beaver dam out back, the one who lived for a hundred years, and spent the winter sleeping.
Or the house cat sitting on mom’s lap concerned with nothing but getting a scratch behind the ears.
Because I knew it then, as I know it now. Some days the business of being human is overwhelming, and being that muley doe coming in for a drink at the dam at the end of a week-long January thaw looks about as close to peace as you’ve ever seen while living life in your human skin…
There. Now you miss summer too.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 
