Love in Vain part 1

 

Of the three Robert Johnson songs I picked out as my initial choices, probably the most famous is "Love in Vain."  Not from his version, which has only been heard by his fans, and that is a small number compared to what many contemporary singing groups can bring in, despite appearing on a few albums that sold well and for years.  (I had read that a record company executive at Columbia, following the relative success of the compact disc set, wondered if he could go out on the road and do some shows, to take advantage of the sales.  Someone had to break it to him that the artist had been dead for several decades.)  Better known are covers by the Rolling Stones, who were definitely blues fans, the song appearing on both studio albums and live albums.  Perhaps Cream's version of Johnson's "Crossroads" has been heard more on radio, but maybe not.  The structure is typical blues, though the tune is a little slower, and almost has a country feel to it, a style of music that Johnson was familiar with.  The topic is very blues- the protagonist's woman decides to leave him, plans to take off on the local train to wherever.  Man accompanies the woman to the train station, carrying her bags for her.  He watches the train depart with her and her luggage on it.  The final lines of the song- "the train pulled out of the station, it had two lights on behind; the blue light was my blues, and the red light was my mind".  Very poetic and visual, but we are not using color in these prints.  I can come up with a black and white idea as well.

Back in 2014, I was drafted to run the Belmar Arts Council's exhibition, "Belmar and the Railroad."  New Jersey Transit has a train that runs through Belmar, stopping at the train station in town.  As part of this, the BAC was given the task of producing a mural for the train station, which was rotting away.  I was begged to submit an idea for the mural, and was promptly rejected.  I assumed that they knew what the wanted all along, and just wanted to hire someone else from the start, but had to go through the process of an open call to make it legitimate.  They chose someone who had some mural experience (so did I as well, which you can see on this blog back in 2007), who liked painting things on parachute cloth, which could be adhered to the walls, which did make it possible to paint indoors in our building, and stick the pieces to our newly built walls despite the cold weather and the popularity of the station with commuters.  But then they had another job for me- creating the postcard.  I based my design on vintage railroad posters (reproduced in calendars I had saved) and of course did it in woodcut.  This design also appeared in the weather proof banner that hung on our building, and for extra promotion, they also made a banner to hang across from the platform at the station itself. This was completed and installed before the mural itself, so for a while, mine was the only mural design there at the train station.    When I asked why I was being tapped for this, I figured it might be because sooner or later everyone had to take a turn running a show, but what I was told was that it was because I am a train artist.  This was news to me.  True, I was the only one who actually included a train in my train station mural proposal, and looking back through all my hundreds of prints, I did find several examples of trains in my art, which could be an effect of having lived within walking distance of trains most of my life.   The image I produced for the card can be seen below.

Since the train and/or the station are mentioned in every verse of the song, it struck me that I had to include a train image for my visual adaptation of the Robert Johnson song.   What I came up with was a passenger car of a train, pulled up to the platform.  A woman in a dress walks triumphantly toward a stairway, hands on hips, face tilted slightly upward.  Following her is a man carrying a suitcase in each hand, weighing down his arms, head tilted down in despair.  She's leaving him, and he still carries her bags to help her leave.  For the train itself, I decided to go with an older looking train car, if not authentic to Johnson's time, at least somewhat vintage.  Based this on a photo found on the internet, which is great for finding images.  Above the windows is the name of the train, a line run by the Illinois Central.  I believe this train ran through Clarksdale, MS, one of many homes of Johnson, like the old City of New Orleans line that ran between Chicago and New Orleans for years, the name now taken by an AMTRAK line that covers the same territory.  Of a more personal note, the tracks of the Illinois Central ran right next to the Glove Factory, the building that held all the student studios at SIU-Carbondale, and I crossed those tracks almost every day.  We had about 20 freight trains per day coming through, separating one half of Carbondale from the other.  If I heard the train whistle, I'd quickly decide if I had to be on the other side of the tracks any time soon.  If I did, I'd run for the tracks, because once that train arrived, the tracks could not be crossed until it had passed, and those freight trains were usually at least 200 cars.  The tracks and the freight line were bought by a Canadian company a few decades ago, after I left town.  It was also then that they put in a tunnel under the tracks, so cars could get through.  

One thing that makes this different from the last one is that this one is horizontal in design.  Tom told me the dimensions of the print, but never said if the 11" x 14" was to be horizontal or vertical.  When I later asked him in an email, he ignored it.  My solution is to do examples of both, based on what the idea calls for, and let him pick what he wants when I turn them in next year.  This train idea seemed to call for a horizontal piece, so that's what I'm doing.  Most of what I've seen from him are vertical, but who knows?  What I have so far is very rough- the figures, the train, the perspective, everything, so this is just my start.   All will be worked on more as I go forward, but this is my starting point, a reversal of what I sketched in my sketchbook back in the spring.  I will probably add a lot more detail as I go, but I haven't given much thought to that yet.

For music today, I went with my home burned copy of the Giant Sand compilation, Giant Songs, which pulls tunes from the early albums.  I won't say hits, because I don't know that they ever had any, but I do like the collection, which I have written about on this blog back in July, 2019.  When the disc ended, I decided it was time to go home.