JD McPherson "North Side Gal"

In high school we took a class trip to Washington DC as part of a program called “Close Up.”  It was there I discovered the terrible truth about myself.

I had an accent.  A New England accent.  A strong New England accent.

One of the very smart, interesting things about the “Close Up” program, beyond showing you the sites of Washington, DC, was that they made pairs of kids share rooms with other pairs of kids who were from a decidedly different place.  The week we were there, we New Englanders were paired up with kids from California and Colorado.

Our accent became a point of discussion for the kids from elsewhere.  It was funny sounding.  Stupid sounding even.

I watched in our group discussions, as classmates who were making bright and salient points, could be dismissed for the “dumb” way they sounded, due to their accent.

I realized then and there that if I wanted a life beyond New England, if I wanted to be taken seriously, I had to tone down my thick, thick accent.

And in the ensuing years, I became hyper-conscious of the way I pronounced everything.  By the time I had graduated college, my local accent was mostly gone.

Little things did persist.  I could never get the hang of “drawer” so it didn’t sound like “draw.”  And “figures” remained “figgers” for a long time time.

But most vexing became the words that inadvertantly just made it sound like I had an accent.

A college friend pointed out that she would call it a “door handle,” because saying “knob” just sounded like a New Englander mispronouncing the word “Norb.”

Years later, I became a DJ, and much like being on TV adds 10 pounds, being on the radio has a way of amplifying your accent.

For instance, on my first day on the air, the station owner at WABN pulled me aside to help me straighten out the way I said the call letters.

“What is the first letter of our call letters?” she asked.

“W?” I answered, unsure if this were a trick question.

“Say it again.”

“Dubya,” is how I was pronouncing it.

She wrote the letter in cursive on the piece of paper.

“The letter is actually two ‘U’s put together.  It is a double-U.  Say it like that.”

To this day, it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard when I hear a professional broadcaster pronounce the letter “dubya.”  Or just really fumble any pronunciation.

And in my years in Virginia, I really had to guard against picking up that accent, as it was all around me every day.

It was easy to let words like "fire" rhyme with "car," and "pen" sound like "pin," unless you were vigilant, careful and conscious.

It's a practice I have to continue today.

Which is why I have so much trouble when I talk on the air about JD McPherson.

Initially, I just assumed you pronounced his last name “mick-FEAR-son.”  That’s a pretty common pronouncation.

But then I watched a Youtube video where he introduced himself.

He pronounces it “mick-FUR-son.”

So now when I say it on the air, I try to pronounce it, respecting his way.

But me saying “mick-FUR-son” for some reason sounds, to my ears, like it’s just me mispronouncing the guys name with a Virginia accent.

Listen to me on the air sometime.  You’ll actually hear me stumble, as the professional in me who's trying to say it right, is brawling with the kid in me, trying not to sound stupid.

JD McPherson performs this weekend at the Newport Folk Festival.  For artist previews and mvyradio's Newport Folk Channel, visit the mvyradio Bloggers page.  And hear full coverage of the Festival, with live sets from the stage, on mvyradio.com.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Run DMC "King Of Rock"

We were screwed.  Totally screwed.

They were going to pack us up, put us on a plane and send us home.

There was simply no way out of this.

I was 16 years old, and my friend Tip, and two guys we had just met, had trashed a hotel room.

This was 1985, and we were in Washington, DC at Close-Up.

I'm sure loads of you remember, and even went to Close-Up.  For those who didn't . . . Close-Up is a program for High School students.  You are sent to the Nation's Capitol for a week, and from morning until night you absorb the complex wonder of the City and our Government.

In a week's time, I would roam the halls of the Capitol Building, climb the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, wind my way through miles of the Smithsonian museums, experience the solemnity of The Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier, and even take in a night at the theatre (featuing Marlo Thomas!).

But at the moment, it seemed like none of this would happen.

One of the most genius parts of Close-Up is that they paired you up with kids from different parts of the country.  So within our group, there were city kids and country kids, wealthy kids and poor kids, East Coast kids and West Coast kids.

And you even shared a hotel room.

Tip and I were paired up with two guys from Southern California, which was pretty neat.

Naturally, conversation drifted quickly to music, and they introduced us to Run-DMC.

Rap music at that time was far on the periphery.  There were some kids in Newburyport who were into break-dancing, and I think we were all aware of "Rapper's Delight," but for the most part, Rap was not something anyone we knew listened to or cared about.

But I'd never really heard Rap, until I heard Run-DMC.  And I felt like I got it.

The big guitars and voices that cut right through made sense to me.

Of all the things I took home from Close-Up, surprisingly, the door to a whole new musical world remains the thing that has had the most profound effect on my life.  I would go on to buy Run-DMC's earlier efforts, and pick up their breakthrough record "Raising Hell" as soon as it came out, eventually riding the whole cultural wave that record brought on.

But again, I couldn't see that far ahead.  I could only see the splinters on the floor.

Sure, we talked about music.  But really, you put 4 teenage boys in a hotel room with no immediate adult supervision?  What are we going to do?

Play tackle basketball, of course.

We got a few pairs of our gym socks, and rolled them into a ball.  And we put trash barrels at the opposite ends of the room.  The socks didn't bounce, so there was no dribbling---you carried it like a football.  And full contact was the name of the game.  While you tried to put the socks in the barrel, I was trying to tackle you to the floor.

Well, to make a long story short, someone tackled someone else hard onto one of the beds, and the wooden bedframe basically shattered.  Wood cracked and crashed.  The mattress was now on the floor, over a pile of splinters.

The Close-Up folks did not mess around.  We had already been subject to multiple speeches about how there would be NO tolerance for misbehavior.  Break curfew?  We'll put you on a plane and send you home.  Wander from the group?  We'll put you on a plane and send you home.  Try to sneak a beer?  We'll put you on a plane and send you home.

They didn't specifically mention not trashing the hotel room, but we were pretty sure that they would put us on a plane and send us home.

I calmed down.  And concocted a plan.

Bed check would be coming up in an hour.  Someone from Close-Up would come to our door, take roll call with a clipboard.  We had to make the bed incident, look like an accident.

First, we cleaned the scene of the crime.  Barrels righted.  Clothes picked up.  Suitcases zipped.  Non-broken bed made.

Then we carefully, carefully, put the bed-frame back together.

The wood was cracked into pieces, but if we lightly rested the mattress on top, it would remain balanced there.

And that was the plan.  We rehearsed it several times.  And we waited for a knock on the door.

Knock-knock.

"Bedcheck!"  A couple of security guard guys stood at the door with a clipboard.

"PJ?"

"Here."

"Tom?"

Tip responded to his real name.

"Matt?"  And that was Matt's cue.

He was the biggest of the four of us, we were counting on him to really sell it.

Matt said, "Here!" and hopped on the bed, in the casual, jaunty way a young man might hop up on a bed.

Of course, the bed frame immediately crashed to the floor.

We all gasped!  Oh my goodness, Security Guard guys!  Did you see that!  He sat down on the bed in a perfectly normal way, and it crashed into pieces.  What poor construction this bed was made of.  My my.  What a curious accident.

Actually, I don't know exactly what we said.  But we did our best to sell the "accident."

The Security Guard guys seemed nonplussed.  But a little while later, a Manager-type came in to inspect the scene.  And again, we tried to sell it.  "The Security guys will tell you.  They saw it with their own eyes!  The bed just broke when Matt casually sat on it."

I don't know if he bought it.  Or if it was just 11 at night and he didn't feel like expelling four teenager to Dulles.  But he said okay, shrugged and left.   And that was the end of that.

I learned some pretty amazing things at Close-Up.

But who would have suspected that in the home of Democracy, I'd develop an appreciation for Kings.

Hear the song on Youtube.