Rolling Thunder

Musician Mary Lorson’s youth was marked by constant motion, with her mother and sisters frequently moving from one place to another. Over the last several years she’s been working on an epic song cycle documenting her childhood. She produced this excerpt of the saga for UnFictional. It’s about her father, who has always been a bit of a mystery to Mary. He’s really just a character in her mind, created from a handful of memories of brief interactions and gifts received.

Full script below:

BOB: UnFictional is a program of true stories, personal documentaries and radio movies, and always interested to find new ways of telling stories. On this episode you can add something different…. It’s a musical documentary written by Mary Lorson

BOB: Which is interesting because what I knew of you was as a musician, you were in bands that I had known.

[Madder Rose song plays]

Mary’s been recording music for a long time in bands like Madder Rose, Saint Low and the Soubrettes and under her own name.

MARY: Yeah, I was a writer long before the music thing. I loved playing music and always did, but I never thought that I could really do it professionally, that just sort of happened in my 20s. But at the same time, music is just one of the possibilities, it seems.

A NEW possibility for something Mary could try… A personal memoir set to music. It came to her mind while she was writing a screenplay

MARY: It was an historical screenplay about a famous vaudevillian named Eva Tanguay. She was incredibly famous in her day, but her fame didn't last. She was right on the cusp of electronic media. So vaudeville was her medium and she was larger than life. But she was also like a sex addict, and she was your classic over indulgent, crazy hypomanic pop star.

[Sound clip: Eva Tanguay]

MARY: She did not make the transfer into talkies very well. She made one movie, it only exists now in parts. I got interested in her because my great grandmother worked for her, turned out, and toured with her. I loved the idea that in my band I played in a lot of those old vaudeville houses. They are now on the circuit for rock bands

[Sound clip: Eva Tanguay]

MARY: I loved thinking about my great grandmother being in those places as Eva Tanguay’s employee, so I was writing that. Historical fiction is so interesting because you have to imagine the minuitest experience, the little moments, or that's the way I did with her. I was really curious about the texture of her life, the clothing that she wore, and the fabric... and what her body must have felt like after a really hard performance, as she was a crazy dancer and she basically beat her body up.

[Sound clip: Eva Tanguay]

MARY: She and I had a bunch of things in common, interestingly, Eva Tanguay. We were both the youngest of four, and we were both kind of hyperactive kids that nobody knew what to do with in a family with no father and and a pretty absent mother, and being a creative, hyperactive type. So those were the touch points for me to try to imagine her experience.

BOB: Mary wrote a musical memoir of her own life, and we’re going to hear a part of it called Rolling Thunder… it’s a section of a longer stage performance called Signals

MARY: ...Which is a full length performance memoir. It's an hour and a half long. We did it, I think three or four times in Los Angeles at small theaters and then maybe three or four times here in New York in small theaters. There are two video screens that play continuously, and the band is in the center, and I play guitar, piano or sometimes just talk.

It was such a pain in the ass for the band to learn because none of the pieces are like rock songs. They don't have a chorus in the same place every time, and they don't have the same types of patterning that rock songs or pop songs have. So my amazing band… they were game.

BOB: From KCRW I’m Bob Carlson and this is Rolling Thunder…. written by Mary Lorson and produced for UnFictional

Mom says: All you need to know is he walked away.

Dad said: Mom kicked him out that day, that he crammed his suits and stereo into the Mustang and rushed to the city for a meeting, paying a kid twenty bucks to guard the car, which was empty anyway when he came back out.

His answer: “There must have been.”

There in the cathode light, nobody beamed up bright

Enough for her to like noone to walk beside

Yeah, you hardly knew us

That was just our life/that was just our life

“Go ahead: give him a little kiss,” Mom said, and Ed reached out gamely, but I wound back and fired a fierce little first-grade kick right into his suited shin.

Today we'd say I was “acting out.” But back then, everybody just yelled. Then the grownups... went out. And the television...went on. And then: Ed DeSonne disappeared, changing the channel on a whole other level.

I wasn't glad Ed was dead, but I wasn't sad, either. I didn't know how much we lost.

Oh, what a beautiful morning

Oh, what a beautiful day

I’ve got a beautiful feeling

Everything’s going my way

Written and produced by: Mary Brett Lorson is a writer and musician living in upstate New York. Her most recent album was Madder Rose's "To Be Beautiful," released in late 2019. She is the co-producer of "Senior Year, the Podcast," which follows 12 graders through their final year of high school.

Editors: Carla Green and Bob Carlson

Episode musicians: Drums: Zaun Marshburn, lead guitars: Anna Coogan, vocals: Beverly Stokes, keyboards: Mike Stark, bass: Walt Lorenzut.

Band mix: Paul Smith

Managing producer: Carla Green

Theme Music by Alex Weston, with music help from Joe Augustine and Narrative Music, Musical saw + vocals by Krissy Barker