CHRIS RAWLINGS
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Cookingfat Music
I’d already met and heard Chris Rawlings perform several times when
he came to do a concert for the staff of the summer camp I was working at in
the Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal in the summer of 1970. As I recall,
his first set was built around the kind of original songs – “Pearl River
Turnaround,” etc. – I’d heard him perform at Montreal coffeehouses like the
Yellow Door. His second set, though, was something entirely different: one
extended piece that held us mesmerized for close to an hour. It was Samuel
Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” first
published in 1798 (revised in 1834), as set to music by Chris and fellow
Canadian singer-songwriter Paul Lauzon.
(I haven’t seen or heard of Paul in many
years but a Google search quickly led me to the Acadia University School of Music site where I learned that Paul is now a professor of music therapy).
Later in the 1970s
and ‘80s, I heard Chris perform “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” several more
times – including at least once at the Golem, the Montreal folk club that I ran
in those days – and each performance was a mesmerizing as that first one in
1970, if not more so. So far as I can recall, I only saw Chris perform “The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner” solo (although I’d often see him performing in
those days with Gilles Losier
accompanying him on fiddle and piano, so, it’s possible I may have heard a duo
performance at some point).
But, over three
nights – February 28-29 and March 1, 1976 – Chris and Gilles and an ensemble totaling
17 musicians performed “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as part of an
extravagant production at the Bibliothèque National du Québec in Montreal. (I
didn’t attend any of those shows; I would have been at the Golem on the nights
of February 28-29 and have no idea where I was on March 1).
Years ago, when I
suggested to Chris that he record “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” he told me
that he did have some good recordings from that Bibliothèque production and
now, 40 years later, he has released “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” on CD.
It had probably
been at least 30 years since the last time I heard Chris perform “The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner” so all of it sounded new to me again – especially since I’d
never heard it with such elaborate accompaniment before. When I saw that there
were 17 musicians I was worried that they might get in the way of the singer or
the text but those fears were largely unfounded. And, thanks to the Internet, I was able to follow the dense text as never before by reading it while listening
to Chris sing.
I should note that
Chris and Paul’s score was augmented at the concert and on this CD by excerpts
from the instrumental composition “L’Abatross” by Jérôme Langlois, whose two groups, Lasting Weep and Maneige,
supplied many of the 17 musicians.
Although this
recording of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is broken into seven tracks –
with audience applause at the end of each – corresponding to the seven parts in
the text, I recommend listening to it as a whole piece when you can sit down
with it and just listen (or read along) to this still mesmerizing performance
of the tale of “an ancient mariner” who “stoppeth one of three.”
Pictured: Chris Rawlings and Mike
Regenstreif at the 2007 Branches & Roots Festival in Ormstown, Quebec.
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