Music Appreciation - Eva Cassidy

For those who love music….decompress with me a moment. It’s time for music appreciation 101, kids.

I heard the song “People Get Ready” for the first time yesterday while perusing I-tunes…a nearly nightly ritual. Anyone who knows me, knows I love music. I try to be open to all types, from classical piano, bluesy jazz, certain hard metal rock and nearly everything in between. It is my therapy, and the music played depends on the mood I need to assuage. But we’ve been over that before. This is nor the time nor place to rehash old blogs.

Eva Cassidy is a wonderful musician whose angelic voice is both piercing and pure. She was taken by Cancer (melanoma) at age 33 in 1996. Most all of her albums have been released posthumously and has had 2 new albums recently released from friend’s recordings and lost sessions. It took dying for her to become famous. There is a piece of advice a good friend of mine once told me when I was anguishing the fact that my paintings would probably never fetch a sale or be appreciated only by a small few. He said to me, “Hey, Red, Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime.”

Here is some of Eva’s music.

Anyway….this song had a powerful affect on me. I had a vision of hearing it for the first time and being in a place so beautiful that words couldn’t describe it. The slow beat, the tink of the cymbal, etc. I found myself doing the little toe tap and the tiny non-obnoxious version of the “Night at the Roxbury” head bob, all the while closing my eyes and imagining a long slow toke on a very sweet cigarette wishing for those happy gasses most grown-ups have experienced to which I, sadly at times, have not. The music alone gave me the buzz I was needing. Almost.

The connection I made with the words….

People get ready
There’s a train a-coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear diesels humming
You don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord
Yeah yeah yeah

People get ready
For the train to Jordan
Picking up passengers
From coast to coast
Faith is the key
Open the doors and board them
There’s room for all
Among the loved and lost

Now there ain’t no room
For the hopeless sinner
Who? Hard on mankind
Just to save his own
Have pity on those
Whose chances are thinner
Cause there’s no hiding place
From the Kingdom’s Throne

Ohhh people get ready
There’s a train a-coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear diesels a-humming
You don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord
Yeah yeah yeah

I’m getting ready
I – I’m getting ready yeah yeah yeah
Oh I’m getting ready oh – oh
I’m ready yeah



I’m not religious, so Faith doesn’t apply as the norm to me. She’s a tease. I let the melodies do their best healing. And maybe the roar of the el.

Along with a nice tall glass o’beer.