Well. What a year of ups and downs this has been! It started with a bang – we went off to Tradfest in Ireland, where Ralph McTell and I were given Lifetime Achievement Awards by Minister of Culture Catherine Martin. Pat and I spent a glorious (though chilly!) two weeks in Dublin, including dinners with Mary and Joe Black, a wonderful interview recorded at the Séamus Ennis Centre with BBC Radio Ulster’s Lynette Faye, culminating in a tribute concert where I got to stand on stage and accompany twelve of Ireland’s finest, singing my songs. (You can still hear most of the concert at the RTE Radio 1 website.)

Honestly, I never thought I’d get to perform in front of a sold out house again, and to watch the tears in everyone’s eyes throughout… well, it was nothing short of a miracle.

Then home again and the reality that I can’t hold my notes now, or hit them with any accuracy. Down the black hole of depression (which some refer to as “the black dog” but I can’t out of deference to Gracie Mae). But just a little while later, we took the trip of a life time on a small boat cruise of the Galapagos, and that took some of the sting away. Or at least, distracted me.

Shortly after, I started working with the good folks at Berea College, planning the opening of my archives there. About 35 people trying to coordinate everything from websites to transportation, housing for 250 visitors on a campus that barely holds the current student body, special runs of CDs, extra garbage cans, welcome signs, laminates, gift bags, microphones, a private showing of Varda Bar-Kar’s film about my life and work, what an unbelievably complicated endeavor!

Then summer came, and I won’t pretend it was easy. In the past 60 years I’ve only gone through two summers without a single tour date – last summer, and this. I found myself uncomfortably envious as my friends posted tour schedules and released new recordings. That was hard. Painful.

I did get to do a few musical things – Grant Maloy Smith was finishing the third album in his “American Stories” project, this one about the Mississippi. Just for fun, I sent him a copy of “Memphis,”  which I wrote with Deanna Carter and sung with Willie Nelson. Grant decided that for the first time, he’d record outside material. Better still, he asked me to play on it.

I cannot tell you how that lifted my mood. It’s a funny thing, but knowing my talents are wanted on a project – no matter what “success” I’ve had in the past – goes a long way toward healing.

On September 21st we left for Berea College in Pat’s Honda, after making sure all the guitars and banjos we left at home were stored above two feet “just in case”. Visiting friends along the way, we arrived on the 26th, just in time for Hurricane Helene to hit the island where we live. At first, it looked bad, but not horrible. Our friends Jen and Jimmy even took their boat down the canal to check our house from the outside, and it looked okay from there.

No one was allowed on island for three days because it was so unsafe, downed power lines and sewage, so nothing much could be done. Once allowed, they went into the house – after crowbarring an appliance out of the way that had floated up and was blocking the storage room and garage door – and called us with the bad news.

The storage room was flooded. My recently completed workspace was inundated. The 1894 Hamburg Steinway upright I’ve had since 1991, the desk that fit my height, the antique 64-drawer library file I’d bought when I lived in LA back in the early 80’s, all drowned in 28-36″ of salt water.

Still, we were hopeful. It hadn’t hit the piano keys, and but for one guitar that fell over into the water, the other instruments seemed damp but all right. My worst allergy is mold, so our much-beloved neighbor Steve Kring (a contractor by trade who keeps trying unsuccessfully to retire) began ripping out drywall and remediating right away. Despite seeing photos of my expensive new couch sitting on the coffee table (expensive because I’d bought a good fold-out so colleagues could stay there when touring in the area), we began to relax. A couch, a couple of chairs, everything could be replaced, right? Our house sitter, Tammy, brought all the guitars upstairs, and I called Joe Glaser, who’d been through the Nashville flood and knew what to do. (Take them out of the cases. Fill socks with uncooked rice; put them into the sound holes. Let them dry slowly, without air conditioning. Change socks as needed. Just in case you needed to know.)

I swung into the Berea event, turning my Grammys over to the archivists, doing TV and radio interviews, and thinking the worst was over – until we started hearing a new hurricane had formed, and it was on track for Anna Maria.

Understand, we live on an island. We know that. We moved here by choice. When I drink my coffee every morning, sitting on the upstairs porch, I look out at mangroves. I watch mullet jumping, keep an eye on the local osprey nest, laugh as the little egret we’ve nicknamed “Mohawk Guy” chases after anything and everything that dares to intrude on his ownership of the canal. Even the giant herons flee when he starts squawking.

We’ve had have manatee at the end of our dock, and there are often dolphins within sight. It’s pretty idyllic. We evacuate when told to, keep anything of value two feet up, and take our chances. There hadn’t been a storm like this since 1921, when there weren’t even bridges to the mainland. Having been through major blizzards in the Northeast, and major earthquakes in the West, nature’s indifference isn’t new to me.

So, I continued working. Steve and crew moved the furniture outside to dry, protected by a big overhang, and tore apart structure as necessary. The upholstered things couldn’t be saved, but we were pretty confident anything made of wood or steel would be all right eventually.

And then came Milton, just 13 days later. The surge hit us hard. At one point, I’m told the entire island was under three feet of water. Just south of us, there were piles of sand up to fifteen feet high, driven several blocks on shore by the wind. All Steve’s work was undone, including everything he’d done for his own home.

Every bit of artwork took on condensation. The library file was soaked, again. My desk was soaked. Books, notepads, equipment, stage clothes, vintage gear, fountain pens, gifts like Zuni fetishes and crystals people had given me over the decades, floated away or were destroyed. My beloved ’98 Jeep (241,000 miles and counting) and “new” 2012 BMW convertible (only 38,000 miles) were beyond repair. Among the worst, for me, the piano music I’d inherited from my father, with his fingering notes and then mine, was all disintegrated beyond repair. And the worst of that was an old copy of Claire de Lune, the same copy he was playing from the first time I connected those sounds with his hands, the same copy I learned to play from a few years later.

Steve’s friends Karen and Bob rescued everything possible. They managed to find an antique inkwell my brother had gifted me, and Anne McCaffrey’s letter opener that sat on top of it, along with a little jade Buddha from Japan and some other keepsakes. They salvaged as much merch as possible, soaking CD sleeves in cold water and laying them out at their place to dry. They saved artwork and photos of friends like Odetta, but in the end, most of what I had was gone.

Well.

In sharp contrast, the Berea event was wonderful. I saw fans and friends I hadn’t seen in forever. My friend Beverly “Buffy” McCutcheon
, who saw me through junior high. Janey Street. Friends.

I barely got to see the exhibit because I was so busy doing other things: watching Richard Hoover, the “druid of guitar making”, talk about my Santa Cruz signature guitars. Dining with Peter Cunningham and other artists. A precious 90 minutes with Jane Hirshfield, time with Buffy, catchup meals with Lyle and Laurie Roelofs (former president and first lady of Berea) and good time with Ann and Carl Evans (whose generosity paid for the entire event and believe me that was a lot). Most of all, spending a bit of time with fans who came from as far away as Australia and Ireland; some of these folks have been “with me” since I was fourteen years old, making my very first record, and although it’s a cliché, I am forever grateful to them.

We had an actual ribbon-cutting ceremony, where Mayor Bruce Fraley declared October 16th would forever be “Janis Ian and Patricia Snyder Day”. (After which Pat, using her newfound power, immediately gave everyone the day off.) And the head of the drama department, Deborah Martin, took my mother’s Master’s thesis play Mama’s Boy out of the archives, then spent months working on it with her students until they were able to present it as part of the celebrations.

The event ended with another tribute concert, featuring my Irish friend and indefatigable booster Aoife Scott, along with a host of other performers. Silas House, Kentucky Poet Laureate, came out of his sabbatical year to emcee, and Liza DiSavino (chair of the music department) put together an absolutely stunning arrangement of “Better Times Will Come“. The first verse went by with her conducting the onstage students and faculty –then, suddenly, two more conductors stood up in the audience, with E. J. Stokes conducting the Berea Black Music Ensemble and Xiangtang Hong conducting the classical musicians! Watching the three work in tandem was one of the more incredible experiences of my life; Pat and I were in tears.

In the end, I saw so little of the exhibit that I’m planning to go back next spring and spend a few days, before they have to close it down and move it into the actual archives area. (It is, after all, taking up half the library floor.)

And then came the premiere of Varda’s film at DOC NYC, one of the most prestigious documentary festivals in the world. Two sold out theaters plus a sold-out online showing, top ten recommended films throughout. Catching up with James Reed, Arti Dixon, watching my life scroll by and marveling at all the wonderful people I’ve known. It was especially moving to see Kye Fleming, still the best lyricist I’ve ever worked with, incredibly open during her portion of the film. And watching myself turn onstage in Australia and grin at Arti Dixon, I remembered that some of the greatest moments in my life have been when I was playing with great musicians.

So… “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Feels like every time I turn around, I realize something else is gone – decades ago Pat bought me a replica of a Santa Fe General Store, and over time I’ve been “furnishing” it with miniature pots and pans, bottles, bags of “flour”, brooms, instruments. The replica was saved, the furnishings were not. Then I was packing for Varda’s film opening in New York and realized I had no business cards. (Never mind that I had no winter coat. The cards were what I thought about!)

And yet, we are so much more fortunate than many people, not just here but in the Asheville NC area, and Eastern Tennessee. Whole families are still camping out at the homes of friends and relatives (if they’re lucky), waiting for insurance settlements (ditto) or new housing (ditto). I deliver mail to some friends here whose home was completely destroyed; they don’t have the heart to come back on island yet.

But mixed with the bad, there’s always the good – just a few days ago, Pat found a bunch of moon snails she’d collected from Alligator Point decades ago. And yesterday I found one miniature cat that had somehow lodged itself in a corner of my Santa Fe piece. I took that as a hopeful sign for the New Year, which already holds some promise. Varda’s film will be showing at festivals including Florida and California before opening in theaters next March.

I’m talking with a club I love about doing a summer “residency” titled something like “Janis Ian Explains the World”, where people can bring any subject I might know about (or not…) and let me to discuss my experiences, whether it’s co-writing, finding a publisher, getting raked over by record companies, being an indie artist – or even how to find the best stage clothes without going broke!

Speaking of good things, a shout out to Jim D’Addario and Lloyd Baggs, who’ve replaced as much of my equipment as possible, and to Joan Baez and Harry Weber, who each sent new personalized copies of their books for me.

I’m hoping the workspace will be usable by February, and I’ll be able to find a lightweight desk with similar dimensions (26H x 28D x 56W, if you happen to own one!) and a couple of extremely adjustable chairs. Won’t be able to replace that piano, but I’m thinking about an electronic baby grand with Bosendorfer sounds and weighted keys, if I can find a used one for the right price. I’m cultivating a “forward” attitude; things will never be the same, but they can be different in a good way!

Here’s to the best of the New Year for each and every one of us.