The Beat of Black Wings

Today the Reds welcome Edith and friends to celebrate the amazing music of Joni Mitchell!

EDITH MAXWELL: Thank you, Lucy/Roberta, for helping us celebrate this week’s release of The Beat of Black Wings! We had hoped to have a grand release at Malice Domestic. Since that isn’t going to happen in a few weeks, it’s great to have an audience here to share it with.

This anthology of short crime fiction is a celebration itself – a bow to the genius and wonder that is Joni Mitchell and her music. Each story in the collection is inspired by a different song spanning her seventeen albums. The anthology was Josh Pachter’s idea and baby, and it hangs together beautifully because of his expert editing. 

Last year sometime I posted Youtube link to a Joni Mitchell song on my Facbook page. I talked about what a strong influence she’d had on my life. Josh saw my post and wrote to me, saying he was assembling this collection. He asked if I’d like to submit a story. Of course! I wrote back to tell him Joni’s music was the soundtrack of my young adulthood. 

I ended up writing a story inspired by “Blue Motel Room” from the Hejira album, which is one of my favorites of Joni’s albums. “A depressing blue Savannah motel room. A desiccated hand in a locked safe. A petty thief with the blues . . . and wanderlust.” But I could have selected any of dozens of others of Mitchell songs and picked out a tale.

I asked Josh about his inspiration to create the anthology.

Josh Pachter: For as long as I can remember, my favorite music has included the work of singer/songwriters. Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, David Bromberg, Carole King, Marc Cohn, Van Morrison, Jimmy Buffett, Billy Joel, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, Cheryl Wheeler, Kenny White, many more — their work has provided the soundtrack for my life. A couple of years ago — for an oddball reason I've explained elsewhere — I wrote a story based on Joni's song "The Beat of Black Wings." Right around the same time, I became aware of the publication of several books of short crime stories based on song lyrics, such as Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen, and I thought: Why not do something similar with Joni's songs? The result was The Beat of Black Wings: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Joni Mitchell.

Edith: I asked Josh and a few of the other authors which of Joni’s songs resonated with them at a particular time. Here’s what they said:

Josh Pachter: I'm going to pick a song that's in The Beat of Black Wings, though the story was written by the great Brendan DuBois, not by me: "Free Man in Paris." The Court and Spark album came out in 1974, just as I was entering grad school at the University of Michigan and simultaneously beginning my first teaching job, a half-time position at Ann Arbor's Community High School. Joni's lyrics — "I was a free man in Paris / I felt unfettered and alive / There was nobody calling me up for favors / No one's future to decide" — reminded me how much I'd enjoyed my first trip to Europe, two years earlier, and made me hunger to return. Two years later, in '76, I finished my graduate coursework, quit my job, and took off to visit friends in Amsterdam. I bought a motorcycle and met a Dutch woman and spent eight months tooling around Italy and Greece with her. By the end of '77, we were married, and I didn't return to the US to live until 1991. We were divorced by then. I'm happily remarried now, to an American woman, and Laurie and I go back to Europe almost every summer, where we feel unfettered and alive. Sadly, it looks like this year's trip to Spain and Portugal will have to be delayed. But with The Beat of Black Wings coming out, we'll spend the summer immersed in Joni's music, if not in sangria and tapas....

Barb Goffman: The holiday season, from the lead-up to Thanksgiving all the way through New Years, often is hard for me. All the celebrations of family and love remind me that despite the many good things in my life, in a fundamental way, I'm alone. Sure, I have wonderful friends and my dog. But I've never been married. Haven't had a boyfriend in decades. No children. In December I often will listen to "River," both Joni Mitchell's version and the wonderful cover by Robert Downey Jr. The song doesn't make me feel better exactly, but it's comforting all the same.

Sherry Harris: I confess that I didn't listen to a lot of Joni Mitchell music when I was young. I was always more of a fan of rock and roll than folk singers. Of course I knew her biggest hits like “Both Sides, Now” and “Big Yellow Taxi.” But as I went through her songs to pick one for the anthology, it struck me how timeless her lyrics are and what an incredible musician and storyteller she is. Being re-introduced to her music has been so interesting.

Alison McMahan: It would have to be “Both Sides Now.” I knew the Judy Collins version from the Wildflowers album. I grew up an expatriate in Spain. In the early 70s, TV and even radio were limited, so LPs were our lifeline to North American culture. In 1974, when I was a teenager, “Both Sides Now” seem to sum up the angst of being an American teenager growing up in a fascist dictatorship. It was a great day for me when, many years later, I got to see Judy Collins live. I was an adult before I found out Joni Mitchell had written the song. (Remember, we didn't have internet). That led me to discover Joni Mitchell's other work. But that was much later, when I was back living in the US. To me the song summed up the tightrope walk I had to do, to be an American and believe in democracy and at the same time grow up in Franco's dictatorship.

Alan Orloff: When I was a poor college student, I would go to garages sales and swap meets to buy vinyl records on the cheap. So I got a copy of Joni Mitchell's Ladies of the Canyon, and I remember listening to that album, quite frequently, as a backdrop when I studied. I think I drove my roommates crazy with how often I listened to it (but it had some of her greatest hits on one album!). I went on to buy more of her albums, of course, but I think that one stands out as my favorite--or at least the most memorable in my mind.

Art Taylor: The first Joni Mitchell song I ever remember hearing was “Help Me”—junior year of college, sitting in my friend Mary Ruffin Hanbury’s room, sunlight pouring through open windows, a sudden burst of springtime and us eating triscuits and cream cheese. Even in the moment, college felt like a time of general romanticism about the world, rampant emotions in a hundred directions and a giddy and exciting helplessness to those emotions—and “didn’t it feel good?” (to quote the song’s lyrics). 

Years later, though, another of Joni Mitchell’s songs stood out: “Coyote” with that lyric about two lovers who "just come from such different sets of circumstance.” The relationship I was in at that time was troubled, doomed really, even as it felt very exciting in the moment—and something definitely resonated with me about the forward-moving motion of that song, along with lyrics which were both keen-eyed and accepting.

For a couple of years now, I’ve been tinkering with a story, potentially a series of stories, about a young woman who so loves Joni Mitchell that bits of lyrics keep popping into conversation—words of wisdom that have fashioned this character’s outlook on the world. All this talk reminds me I need to get back to it. 

Edith: (Art apologizes for going so long – but I loved his whole answer!) 

For me – a Californian – all of Joni’s early songs resonated. During college and after, I was hungry for adventure, love, and travel. After I started traveling, of course “California” pulled at my heartstrings, but “Carey” also called me to hedonism on a Greek island. “I was a Free Man in Paris” drew me, too. When my American boyfriend and I lived in Japan in the mid-seventies, we had cassette tapes of Hejira and Hissing of Summer Lawns. “Amelia, “Refuge of the Roads,” “Coyote,” and of course “Edith and the Kingpin” – so many songs gifted me with deeply etched memories.

We all hope you find a copy of The Beat of Black Wings. Please know 30 percent of the proceeds go toward brain aneurysm research. While they won’t benefit Joni directly, we hope your contributions further the understanding of the medical event that struck our favorite singer/songwriter. And think of all the intriguing stories you’ll have to distract you from the outside world!

Readers: What’s your favorite Joni Mitchell song, and why? If Joni’s music isn’t yours, who is your favorite female singer/songwriter? Edith will send one of you an ebook of the anthology.

Josh Pachter is a writer, editor and translator. Almost a hundred of his short crime stories have appeared in EQMM, AHMM, and many other periodicals, anthologies, and year’s-best collections. Please find him at joshpachter.com.

Edith Maxwell, also known as Maddie Day, writes cozy and historical mysteries as well as award-winning short crime fiction. She hopes you’ll find her under both names on social media and at edithmaxwell.com.