Pride of Place

Bill Withers, Raggedy Ann, wolf politics, and barbed wire

First, a logistical update. Death, Sex & Money’s transition to Slate is humming along. If you go to your podcast feed, you’ll notice that a wonderful perk of the move is that, now, our entire archives are right there in the feed, going back to our first interview with Bill Withers from May 4, 2014. Go explore!

I’ve been thinking about the circumstances leading up to that first episode, when we were just piloting Death, Sex & Money. I wrote to his wife Marcia to see if Bill Withers might do an interview with me for the show, and hoped he wouldn’t be put off by my new project’s weird name. Turns out, he wasn’t. “If you reverse it, that’s the story of rock ‘n roll right there,” he says with a laugh at the very top of that first episode.

I got Marcia’s email address to send my Hail Mary pitch from my friend Michael Lipton. Michael’s a musician and writer who was also, for a time, my landlord when I moved back to West Virginia after college. And he was my very first editor. He asked me to write a piece for Graffiti, an independent newspaper he published for years, and that clip helped me make my case for my first job in radio about a year later…despite having no experience in radio, as I wrote about last week.  

Michael also founded and directs the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, which celebrates the range of musical talent that have come out of our mountains. People like Hazel Dickens. Avant garde composer George Crumb. Little Jimmy Dickens. John Ellison, who wrote “Some Kind of Wonderful.” (“I had just left this woman who I’d spent the night with, and I told her she was, ‘some kind of wonderful.’ That’s a true story.”)

Another WV Music Hall of Famer: Bill Withers, of Slab Fork, WV. 

Leading to the Music Hall of Fame’s first induction ceremony in 2007, Michael had never been in touch with Mr. Withers, and he wasn’t sure kind of response he’d get. Bill Withers had long stopped performing, and had already accumulated stacks of accolades. But Michael told me this week that when he was able to connect, he could tell it meant something different to be honored back home, and yes, Bill Withers traveled in from Los Angeles to be feted at the big party.

Country music singer Little Jimmy Dickens was also honored that night, and I can remember Bill Withers appreciating that they got to share the stage together. Little Bill had listened to Little Jimmy as a kid, he told the crowd.  

Bill Withers died in 2020, but I learned from Michael this week that a few years before that, in 2017, he had recorded one last song. It was his first release in more than 30 years. It was on a tribute album released after Little Jimmy Dickens’ death called, “The Rhinestone Hillbilly.” 

Withers doesn’t sing on his song – he speaks over music about a long-cherished Raggedy Ann doll in one family. And it’s that voice: clear, confident, a little playful and sneakily sad. So sneaky I was surprised to feel my tears well up when we got to the last verse. 

There’s something incredible that it was a tribute album for a 94 year-old mainstay of the Grand Ole Opry that brought Bill Withers out of recording retirement. It says a lot about the power of relationships forged around a shared place.

Our version of this in West Virginia is, of course, particular. We know people from there get it, and and it’s a protective pride, because we also know we’ve got to shield each other from the derision coming from everywhere else. 

I often miss that feeling of shared identity through place, now living in a bigger metro area. In a smaller community, it’s easier to come by that feeling of interdependence and common destiny. Maybe because in a smaller place, it doesn’t take very long for shredded social infrastructure to become totally unworkable.

I was thinking about this in another way this week, after I read this piece in the NY Times with a surprising headline: “What Can Americans Agree on? Wolves.”

As you may remember, wolf politics in the Mountain West are something my household has some up-close exposure to. My husband Arthur studies wildlife around the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, where wolves were reintroduced by the federal government in 1990s. To put it mildly: people did not all agree on wolves when that happened. It’s led to charged politics and polarized, competing narratives about wolves’ impact on landscapes. (Arthur has written about this, and also now advises policymakers on wildlife conservation.) 

But the piece this week suggested an emerging turn in those dynamics, as it becomes clear that wolves aren’t going away, and neither are people whose livelihoods are affected by them. There are more conversations now about how to plan and manage for conflicts that arise from sharing a place. One quote in particular struck me: 

In Montana the Blackfoot Challenge, a community conservation group, uses the metaphor of barbed wire to talk about finding shared values. It’s easy to focus on the barbs, but a majority of fence line is smooth.

I like that image of the barbed wire so much. Because if you’ve ever gotten tangled in a barb, you know they are sharp, painful, and not easily ignored. But the smooth fence line is there too, and it’s easy to overlook. 

When you’re trying to make you way through a barbed relationship, the smooth fence might be your shared love of a place. Or sometimes, it’s music that you can’t help but be moved by, like Bill Withers. 

Back when we were first piloting Death, Sex & Money, I made my pitch to Marcia Withers by explaining that I hoped the show would be something that “leaves you feeling less alone in sorting out life’s choices, and a little more sure about where to draw the line to protect what’s right.” 

I think that still sums it up, and it is work that doesn’t finish. And come to think of it, that’s kind of like finding your own way to the smooth fence, while getting help around the inevitable barbs. 

I’m excited to start back to making episodes for you, which begins with a team at Slate next week. In the meantime, if you’re feeling curious and click-y on this Friday, here are a few more things to check out:

• Michael Lipton’s long played guitar in the house band for Mountain Stage, the live performance radio show produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting. If you don’t know it, this video explains the show’s power. Yes, that IS R.E.M. on stage, a month after the release of their blockbuster album Out of Time. They were one of the biggest bands in the world at the time, and to promote that album, there was no big tour. Just appearances on Saturday Night Live, MTV’s Unplugged, and, in Charleston, WV, Mountain Stage. And 10 year-old Anna got to be there!  

• Speaking of Baby Anna, the video link (and my 2007 hair) got some attention last week. Here’s more where that came from, with me interviewing Mr. Withers for the first time in 2007, when he was in West Virginia to be inducted. That day I also got to interview George Crumb, who was a real sweetie pie. 

• From the Death, Sex & Money archives: Bill Withers, a Wyoming rancher and his wife on  what’s next when there’s no kids, a WV first responder on the opioid crisis in 2017, and my love story with Arthur and the wild Wyoming miracle got us back together after a breakup

• Shoutout for my current place — the Bay Area — which delivered some awesome and varied adventures this week.

In the comments, please feel free to shout out the places that have been meaningful to you, and what makes the people there special to you.

Until next week, 

Anna