Lorne, Victoria, Australia to the JCC, Vancouver, British Columbia.

1998 to 2018.

Having spent the day on the Great Ocean Road, we made our way towards Melbourne. In Lorne, we found a tiny eatery for supper: grilled scallops with avocado and grapefruit, served with King Island feta, the cheese some of the best in the world.

As the sun set, a man took a seat at a truncated keyboard. A 60-key piano that barely fitted in the space, jammed between the door and a window. With minimal fanfare he played for the few of us there.

The first song of his set was Marc Cohn’s Walking In Memphis. The opening riff whisking us over ocean, a continent, easing us into Tennessee grasslands, where the water’s no longer salty but a meandering Mississippi, its colour a spin of cottony grey and the slate-blue you might hear from a national steel guitar. The fusion of food on the table had nothing on this melange of sound: American Baptist gospel, written by a Midwestern composer, penned in New York, now shared on the lip of Australia, the Bass Strait agleam in low sun. Time and place never felt so ambiguous.

Fast forward 20 years, and I’m walking from our laneway home, a carriage house, across a paved parking lot to Vancouver’s Jewish Community Centre, where Marc Cohn is celebrating the silver anniversary of his most-famous song. The song we heard played half a world away. In those intervening years I attended stadium shows where Cher sang the song. Tom Jones as well. Each artist knowing the significance of this sliver of history.

The JCC show was a special one, too according to Cohn, coming back to his roots in more ways than one. And he shared the story of that miraculous song, how the words are all true, how he made that Tennessee trek to combat writer’s block. Which, he added with a laugh, succeeded. Hearing the Grammy-winner in person, sharing a song that defined him, in fact generations and genres, possibly faiths as well, felt as enlightened as a non-denominational chaplain sharing what they know to be divine. Spirituality of song, supplanting place and time. When lyrics and notes dissolve oceans, leap borders and eradicate decades.

Then I watched Cohn play his memoir, another man at a piano, this keyboard full-sized. No water view, no scallops or salad, just a story, a song, a new place. Yet I couldn’t detach that affiliation, an intermingle of sound. Yes, I could hear the songwriter, the album, the radio. But I heard Cher in there, Tom Jones beside her. And the man with an ocean behind him, tucked in a restaurant corner, a three-quarter keyboard, sharing that song. Each version distinct. Each version the same. Each version a slice of shared story.

Stereo Story #764

 See also Lisa Jewell’s story about Walking In Memphis.

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Bill Arnott is a songwriter, poet, and bestselling author of the Gone Viking travelogues. His column Bill Arnott’s Beat runs in several magazines, and for his travels he’s received a Fellowship at London’s Royal Geographical Society. When not trekking with a small pack and journal, Bill can be found on Canada’s west coast, making music and friends.