A Real Mother For Ya

Or, Motherhood, Props from No Depression, Cream Tacos, and so much more

Feb 07, 2025

My mother, Alice Ashworth with her friend Joan Hamilton

Remembrance and Time Travel

Today is my mother Alice's birthday. Had she not completed the cosmic skip from life to life in 2017 she'd be 89 today. We will remember her life with us and for us, AND her cream tacos later this evening.

Every year on February 7th my sister Terri memorializes Mom and her cream taco recipe. Along with refried beans mixed with ground beef, there are tomatoes, green chiles and onions all combined with a slurry of Velveeta cheese. Dip a serving of this sticky goo into the tortilla of your choice and you'll be transported back to 1970. Best eaten while wearing paisley, Levi's, tube socks and Converse, or perhaps some bell bottoms and a halter top. (Continue reading Remembrance and Time Travel below).

The esteemed NO DEPRESSION blessed me with a fine review of Roots & Rhythm. As a writer, my favorite bit being:

"Roots & Rhythm possesses a rare quality for a music memoir: it has a high literary quality to it that’s at once engaging and revealing.” — Henry Carrigan, NO DEPRESSION: The Journal of Roots Music

In Other News . . .

I was so honored to appear on The Allender Center Podcast with the pioneering theologian and psychologist Dr. Dan Allender. What a major dude and huge influence in my life. Gratitude!
Likewise, the Shifting Culture Podcast is another worthy listen. I so enjoy the podcasts that swim deep waters. This sort of stuff: “We'll uncover the hidden history of his family's racial identity, explore the formative experiences that forged his singular musical talent, and trace the sacred dance between his spirituality and artistry. This is a winding, improvisational odyssey - filled with moments of reckoning, redemption, and the irrepressible drive to create.”
Not only was I fortunate to make the UTR Media year-end best 11 Albums, I’m in good company on the list of best gourmet songs of 2024 too. Thank you, I’m honored to be on the list and with such talented people.

Some of you may be wondering how I fared in crushing Sir Paul McCartney this week. I’m pleased to announce that my work here is done (thank you for your role in making it happen). He’s a wily one though. My guess is he’ll be passing me again soon enough.

Remembrance and Time Travel, Continued

My early childhood mom was wonderful. She was to me and Terri what I later saw her be with the grandkids—thoughtful, curious, loving and attentive. She was also a very young mother. There’s just a little over 20 years between us in age. The first time she came to my elementary school as a room mother the other kids were effusive with how youthful and beautiful she was. This was during the period Mom worked at her alma mater Yuba City High School in the book room—a kind of student store where you checked out your class books and could purchase such necessary items as #2 pencils and Pee Chee Folders.

In contrast to almost everyone on her side of the family, she was “educated”—having graduated from YCHS and also Yuba College with a two-year AA degree. Consequently, her parenting style was education first. This fit me well. From birth until my preteens Mom was a very present and loving parent. She was always a room mother, a den mother (Cub and Boy Scouts) ready to volunteer for anything and everything that might serve her children. When it was time to do the heavy lifting of grammar school memorization she was the one that got me to the finish line. She was never demeaning and always encouraging.

If you unpack the familial gifts that bent me toward songwriting, Dad is the music, Mom, the lyrics. She loved to play with words and was a master at limericks and quatrains (e.g., four line stanzas in ABCB form rhyming only lines 2 and 4—very common to songwriting). It was a familiar occurrence to come home from school and find a note on the counter, a custom poem for the moment in her perfect handwriting:

I've run out to the store for burgers and buns

Please begin your homework post haste

The sooner you finish, the sooner you’ll play

In short, there's no time to waste

In addition to my mother's gift of poetic forays, an equally important artistic influence from her family is dialect, accent, and the unique words they employed. Including, the melody of conversation, dynamics, and silence too. Mom's family was a very lively, often irreverent crowd. In contrast to the general quiet of my dad's parents, this crew knew how to have a good time. The older folks danced, drank, and chewed. Played a lot of cards and 42 (a domino game). Grandpa Marvin burst into song often. What I reckon were both improvised songs and tunes from the Okie/Texan canon (think Woody Guthrie and Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys).

Several family members used volume and modulated pitch as their principal devices for being heard over the din. All-in though, there was such musicality to their South-meets-Okie vernacular, laughter, and tone.

The family did on occasion experience the word Okie as pejorative and the young were eager to transcend any negative association and assimilate as Californians. Especially my mother. She was the 8th grade valedictorian at our local Tierra Buena grammar school. There's a recording of her speech complete with diction and tone like that of a sophisticated 1940s movie star.

Within the family circle of trust though, Okie represented grit, an accent, and gut-busting humor and goodness. Aunt Edgule could turn "Good God kid" into a three-note hook as sticky as any Nashville songwriter. Grandpa Marvin did the same with, "Well, better get a move on" or "That's the damndest thing I ever seen." To this day, I like to think I can flex a spot-on imitation of these two at will. In contrast, Ol' Bob Miller, my great-grandfather barely said a word. He may have been satisfied with the verbosity of his progeny and relations.

Another key element to the musicality of this side of the family was—actually still is—hyper-dynamics. For example, imagine my grandfather Marvin in the living room, leaning out of his chair, gesticulating toward my dad and yelling, "Now Bill, you know damn well that ain't true!" Then came dad's rebuttal, equal parts country and college with likely some vocab Marvin didn't know (like copacetic). Does Marvin comeback with more volume? No. He regains authority by reaching for his spit can, leaning back in his chair, and saying under his breath, "Still don't make no damn sense." Then he spits tobacco into the can and so ends the perfect verse and chorus.

At the height of The Civil Wars trip to the top of the pops someone asked me what I thought the secret to their success was. I answered without hesitation: "Hyper-dynamics. Loud louds and soft softs. They suck you in. You can't help but listen."

Happy Birthday Mom. I'm still listening.