Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm sanforgo, so welcome to
Speaker 1: the show today. I am joined by the legendary Buffy
Speaker 1: Saint Marie. For more than half a century, Buffy has
Speaker 1: been telling her story through songs, although not just her story,
Speaker 1: but the story of her people. Born on a cree
Speaker 1: reserve in Saskatchewan, Canada, she was removed from her family
Speaker 1: at a young age. She doesn't know when exactly. She
Speaker 1: grew up with her adoptive family in Massachusetts. She managed
Speaker 1: as well as anyone could given the conditions. We get
Speaker 1: into all of that early in this talk. Come time
Speaker 1: for college. She attends the University of Massachusetts, where she
Speaker 1: earned double degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy. As she
Speaker 1: left school for New York City, she would inject those
Speaker 1: two majors into her songwriting. Part educational, part philosophical. Buffy
Speaker 1: began playing music that no one had ever quite heard before.
Speaker 1: By the early sixties, she was traveling the world, singing
Speaker 1: folk songs in concert halls and coffee houses like the
Speaker 1: Gas Like Cafe, alongside Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell.
Speaker 1: She did all this by the age of twenty five.
Speaker 1: From there, Her career has taken many shapes, with music
Speaker 1: always at the center. She wrote love song, protest songs,
Speaker 1: spiritual songs, a combination of which got her blacklisted by
Speaker 1: Presidents Nixon and Johnson. She won an Academy Award in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two for co writing the song up Where
Speaker 1: We Belong from the film An Officer and a Gentleman,
Speaker 1: making her the first Indigenous person to win an OSCAR.
Speaker 1: She had a five year run as a cast member
Speaker 1: on Sesame Street, where she was the first person to
Speaker 1: breastfeed a child on national television. Her music has been
Speaker 1: covered by Elvis Presley, ROBERTA. Flack, Johnny Mathis Share, and
Speaker 1: Barbara Streisan. In fact, it's next to a photo of
Speaker 1: Streisann that a photo of Buffy sits at the top
Speaker 1: floor of the new Academy Museum Here in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: The Wall of Women is dedicated to trailblazing talents that
Speaker 1: broke barriers and records, like Hattie McDaniel, Rita Moreno, and
Speaker 1: Sophia Lorene. There, Buffy seems to be receiving the kind
Speaker 1: of recognition that is long overdue from this country. So
Speaker 1: in celebrating national American Indian Heritage Month, and of course
Speaker 1: the legacy of Buffy's work. I wanted to have her
Speaker 1: on the show. She's now eighty years old and more
Speaker 1: vibrant than I am after two cups of coffee just
Speaker 1: sitting across from her in person. There's something infectious about
Speaker 1: Buffy's optimism. It's not blind optimism either. It seems hard fought,
Speaker 1: a woman who's seen it all and has had the
Speaker 1: courage and the talent to put her life into music
Speaker 1: for over fifty years. Today she shares the songs and
Speaker 1: the sometimes difficult, sometimes beautiful experiences that made them possible
Speaker 1: with us. I hope you enjoy, Buffy, say Murray, nice
Speaker 1: to meet you, Thank you, nice to meet to do.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling good now? Your music has taken
Speaker 1: you all over the world, a few places I haven't been,
Speaker 1: but I want to go back to you. At the
Speaker 1: age of three, it's my understanding that it's around that
Speaker 1: time that you discover a piano. It's my first memory
Speaker 1: I remember on finding the piano, and it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the most incredible toy ever, and it kind of still is.
Speaker 1: You know, I discovered music through play and I think
Speaker 1: it's made a tremendous difference in the kind of music
Speaker 1: that I write, in the longevity in my career and
Speaker 1: staying into it and motivated. And it was very, very
Speaker 1: weird for me as a child because I was told
Speaker 1: that I couldn't be a musician by whom well, when
Speaker 1: I went to school. I mean, they never heard me play,
Speaker 1: but you know they were trying to teach us and
Speaker 1: don't ramiba so and you know that middle C is
Speaker 1: where it's at on the staff and I couldn't re
Speaker 1: European notation. It was weird to be told that you
Speaker 1: can't be a musician when that's all that you think
Speaker 1: you are. I mean, you know, my identity. The one
Speaker 1: thing that I knew for sure was when I went home,
Speaker 1: I was going to sit down and play anything I want.
Speaker 1: At the age of three, you knew I'm a musician. No,
Speaker 1: I knew that this is the most fun I've ever had.
Speaker 1: And it has continued to be a lot of people
Speaker 1: who can read music, God bless them all. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's for me, there's three hundred and sixty degrees of
Speaker 1: ways to be a musician. To approach musician, and wherever
Speaker 1: you're coming from, you approach music in that way. But
Speaker 1: there's no money in some of the best things in
Speaker 1: the world, like natural musician, like being a natural artist,
Speaker 1: like like clean water, like breastfeeding, there's no money in it.
Speaker 1: Where does the money come out? You know, it almost
Speaker 1: doesn't exist in the world that we live in. It's
Speaker 1: not acknowledged. Just the idea of being shunned and shamed
Speaker 1: in music classes throughout my life a musician. I mean,
Speaker 1: it should maybe have made me mad or mean or something,
Speaker 1: but it just kind of makes me laugh. Because the
Speaker 1: natural things that we have, you know, they are ours.
Speaker 1: There's nobody can take them away. It doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: they don't see them. So growing up between Maine and Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: you had this daily after school routine. You said, I
Speaker 1: dropped my books at home, grab my skates, go down
Speaker 1: the hill to the lake, and skate until dark. In
Speaker 1: your head, you'd have a certain kind of music that
Speaker 1: I wanted to play for you here. Oh okay, So
Speaker 1: I'm like and have that playing in my head and
Speaker 1: I'd be sailing around them. It was great. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like having playlists in your head before
Speaker 1: we had phones that did that. You know, I've always
Speaker 1: been able to hear music in my head, music that
Speaker 1: you know, like what we're listening to, or what I'd
Speaker 1: hear on the radio, or if there wasn't anything, I'd
Speaker 1: just make it up myself. And it was as free
Speaker 1: as when you you know, if you take a bunch
Speaker 1: of little kids to the beach, they all make art,
Speaker 1: and our adults are just too lame to recognize it
Speaker 1: as art. They make sand castles and architecture. They use
Speaker 1: their imaginations, they make drama, they make up stories, they
Speaker 1: make up dialogue, they make pictures, they dance, they sing
Speaker 1: all naturally. And if only we can find a way
Speaker 1: to nurture that in every person, I just think would
Speaker 1: have a better world. Instead of that's what we have
Speaker 1: to get rid of. Let's get something that people pay
Speaker 1: for to substitute for it. That's kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the little itches that that I would love
Speaker 1: to scratch. It's funny because in your authorized biography you
Speaker 1: have this whole passage about parents encouraging their children to create,
Speaker 1: and it made me wonder, did your parents ever do
Speaker 1: that for you? No, but they didn't tell me to
Speaker 1: shut up, which is just as good. No. I was
Speaker 1: raised as an adopted child in a rather humble family,
Speaker 1: and people were not musicians. For me, the big thing
Speaker 1: is what was left out. Nobody made me take lessons.
Speaker 1: They took me to a music teacher and I was probably,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe maybe in grade one, you know,
Speaker 1: just young five or six. And the music teacher God
Speaker 1: bless and said, don't ever make her. Don't ever make
Speaker 1: her take lessons unless she begs for them. And I
Speaker 1: never did. And in a way, as an adult, you know,
Speaker 1: as a person who's had a professional career in music,
Speaker 1: I can see a lot of great things about reading music,
Speaker 1: and I wish that I could. But one time I
Speaker 1: was talking to Chet Atkins and I told Chet that's
Speaker 1: you know, I've always had a hard time. People give
Speaker 1: me a hard time because they can't read music. You know.
Speaker 1: The boys in the band would give me the business
Speaker 1: because they can read and I can't. You know what
Speaker 1: I tell people when they asked me if I can
Speaker 1: read music, I said no, Chet, what And Chet said
Speaker 1: not enough to hurt my playing. So that's how it
Speaker 1: is for me too. I wonder how much music served
Speaker 1: as refuge for you in your childhood, where you grow
Speaker 1: up with these adopted parents. Albert and Winifred. He was
Speaker 1: a mechanic. She was a newspaper copy editor. It was
Speaker 1: not an easy childhood, and it sounds to me like
Speaker 1: music was your safe space away from all that, well
Speaker 1: kind of, but it was a lot more than that.
Speaker 1: And with respect to my parents, I did have a
Speaker 1: hard time as a child, but not because of them.
Speaker 1: You know, they were pedophiles in the neighborhood and they
Speaker 1: were pedophiles in the house. But my mom and dad
Speaker 1: were both very nice and not my mom was My
Speaker 1: dad didn't pay that much attention to me because I
Speaker 1: was a girl, but my mom wanted me to go
Speaker 1: to college. My mom was part Migma. Nigma is what
Speaker 1: we say now, But when we were growing up, she
Speaker 1: used to say, yes that she was part micmac and yeah,
Speaker 1: I did. I had a hard time. But music. Music
Speaker 1: wasn't just a refuge, I can. I can see why
Speaker 1: everybody would think so, because a kid with a you know,
Speaker 1: with a rough childhood like that, I did hide away.
Speaker 1: I did take refuge. I you know when I was
Speaker 1: when I had the blues, I sit down and I
Speaker 1: played these tragic melodies. But you know, music, let me say,
Speaker 1: was Um, it wasn't just a refuge. It was also
Speaker 1: my joy. I'm very fortunate, you know. I've had two
Speaker 1: families and I've loved them both, and they've loved me too.
Speaker 1: And my second family is my Cree family, Amo Pie
Speaker 1: Pot and Clara Starblanket pie Pot and they took me in.
Speaker 1: And there's a Cree tradition that if a family has
Speaker 1: lost babies, children, they search for someone to replace that child,
Speaker 1: that person in their lives, and that's what happened to me.
Speaker 1: They adopted me, they took me in. And in case
Speaker 1: any of you are envisioning like a christening, a baptism,
Speaker 1: or a wedding, it wasn't like that at all. There's
Speaker 1: no there was no It's not like a ceremony that
Speaker 1: we could film. No. They just told me we were
Speaker 1: just in the home of my Nick Wemiss. Nick Wemiss
Speaker 1: is a Cree word and that's the person who names you,
Speaker 1: and so he became my name giver. And I was
Speaker 1: just part of the pipe Pine family ever since. And
Speaker 1: I still see my family who raised me, especially my sister,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, they became my family for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life. And my nieces and nephews,
Speaker 1: you know, I've seen them grow up from from babies
Speaker 1: to having their own babies, and it's really given. It's
Speaker 1: really really healed something inside me. I think that I
Speaker 1: was not even dreaming of as a child. I didn't
Speaker 1: even know I was missing it. But when you say home,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what really solidified it for me, was,
Speaker 1: you know, having a new family who may or may
Speaker 1: not actually be related to me. We really don't know,
Speaker 1: but it just doesn't make make any difference to any
Speaker 1: of us. I also have a sister in the same family,
Speaker 1: so they had two babies die, two little girls, and
Speaker 1: so Brenda, who's my sister now. Brenda was the first
Speaker 1: and then I was the second to heal the hole
Speaker 1: in their families, and it certainly healed a hole in me.
Speaker 1: I know many people listening right now at eighteen haven't
Speaker 1: had an experience like you're describing at any age, and
Speaker 1: I want to know how did that feel to heal
Speaker 1: in that way? In that moment, it was just something lovely.
Speaker 1: I already felt like I belonged with them anyway. I've
Speaker 1: been spending lots and lots of time with them. I
Speaker 1: knew that they want me to be a part of
Speaker 1: their family. I knew about that tradition. It's not as
Speaker 1: though the moment came and we did it. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like that. No, it was just a conversation, you know.
Speaker 1: And JB burned some sweet grass. He said some prayers,
Speaker 1: and Cree prayers are long, and my dad, Emil Pine
Speaker 1: said some prayers. It was wonderful, but it didn't really
Speaker 1: feel like a ceremony. I guess what I want to
Speaker 1: understand before we move forward is this sense of home.
Speaker 1: You know, all of us try to find it throughout
Speaker 1: our life. For some of us it comes easy. For
Speaker 1: some of us that comes later. And I wondered when
Speaker 1: you began to understand that your home was not so
Speaker 1: easily defined. When I'm out traveling, you know, it occurs
Speaker 1: to me that if I'm thinking about family and Saskatchewan,
Speaker 1: for instance, on the reservation right, they don't know what
Speaker 1: my life is like. I don't have a normal life.
Speaker 1: I mean entertainer. I travel all the time. I live
Speaker 1: in hotel hills and airports. I don't have some of
Speaker 1: you know, the things that I long for, like what oh,
Speaker 1: just being around for power? I was in birthdays and
Speaker 1: fun and you know, just to be able to go
Speaker 1: to weddings and funerals and special events and family things.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just not there. I'm just not there.
Speaker 1: I'm always in someplace else. So in a way, I've
Speaker 1: lived on the road for over fifty years. I took
Speaker 1: sixteen years off in the middle of my career to
Speaker 1: raise my son. But still my sense of home really
Speaker 1: is in Hawaii on my farm. I live with a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of animals. So I have a double life.
Speaker 1: It's it couldn't be better. It's not either or they're
Speaker 1: both wonderful. I'm so fortunate. But you do eventually leave
Speaker 1: both of your families for college in nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 1: It's there at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst that
Speaker 1: you begin playing your songs for classmates. How did you
Speaker 1: like playing for someone else, not just for yourself alone
Speaker 1: in a room, but in front of other people. I
Speaker 1: play in a funny way that kind of takes the
Speaker 1: trependatiousness out of it, in a way, because it's fun,
Speaker 1: and because it's not really for an audience. It's just
Speaker 1: for your friends. You know. It's like when you sit
Speaker 1: around a campfire with your buddies and if you know,
Speaker 1: everybody's plays a song on the guitar. It's no big deal.
Speaker 1: Can I add one thing, I've been around a lot
Speaker 1: of campfires. Yeah, it's not very good. If I was
Speaker 1: around a campfire and Buffy Saint Marie started playing, I
Speaker 1: think my jaw would drop. Well, people did like it,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't scary. It wasn't like stage fright kind
Speaker 1: of thing because it was real funky. It was just
Speaker 1: for my friends and I was around a fire or
Speaker 1: in the dorm or something. But when I started professionally,
Speaker 1: I wasn't trying to get into show business, is the thing.
Speaker 1: I had something else in mind anyway. It was going
Speaker 1: to go to India and become a saint as one
Speaker 1: does as one does. Yeah, And my major had been
Speaker 1: Oriental Philosophy and religion, so I was studying world religion.
Speaker 1: But what I was really studying was not the fact,
Speaker 1: so who did what? When I was just really hungry,
Speaker 1: like I'm hungry for music, it's just delicious to me.
Speaker 1: I have always found it delicious to talk with anybody
Speaker 1: about how they perceive the creator and the creation, and
Speaker 1: when it says, even in the Bible that we're made
Speaker 1: in the image of the Creator. To me, that's always matter.
Speaker 1: That's our green light for creativity. That's our green light
Speaker 1: to stop just sitting there and doing the same old
Speaker 1: thing every day. You can be somebody different every day.
Speaker 1: In my philosophy, everybody is ripening at our own pace,
Speaker 1: just like any seed or any flower, or any tree
Speaker 1: or any animal. We're all ripening, each one at our
Speaker 1: own pace. And that's why we don't have to judge
Speaker 1: each other. We can teach and share, but we don't
Speaker 1: ever have to correct our buddies. You know, I've known
Speaker 1: people who are really trolly and who if somebody makes
Speaker 1: a mistake, they just feel compelled to correct the person.
Speaker 1: But I feel as though if you let that go,
Speaker 1: it's like a big burden off your shoulders. None of
Speaker 1: us have to be correcting and trolling on each other.
Speaker 1: We don't have to do that. You've always had this
Speaker 1: generosity of spirit, and I think it applies to some
Speaker 1: of your music, especially when you get into protest songs,
Speaker 1: which you have this quote. I really like that. I
Speaker 1: want to read you said, because I never come from anger,
Speaker 1: I think my message has been clearer. Protest songs have
Speaker 1: to be more than emotional angry Indian songs or angry
Speaker 1: anti war songs. It's okay to do that, but anger
Speaker 1: itself is not necessarily effective in making change, which is
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do. And that philosophy you're talking about,
Speaker 1: I think it first seemed evident in the song. Now
Speaker 1: that the Buffalo is gone, why don't we take a listen?
Speaker 1: Really forever? George Washington sign he didn't do lady, he
Speaker 1: didn't you man, And it's pret easy being broken by him, damn,
Speaker 1: And what will you do for these? Why I feel
Speaker 1: about audience is the same way as I feel about kids.
Speaker 1: As a teacher or someone who who has some information
Speaker 1: to deliver. I'm not there to break your heart, to
Speaker 1: scold you, to make you feel bad, to insult you,
Speaker 1: or any of that. No, I'm just there to put
Speaker 1: the facts out there. Not only the Buffalo has Gone
Speaker 1: is a pretty easy song to write. All it is
Speaker 1: is a list of facts. But it's facts the general
Speaker 1: public didn't know anything about. They didn't know that the
Speaker 1: Seneca Reservation was being flooded in order to build a dam,
Speaker 1: for which there were three alternative sites. But somebody was
Speaker 1: going to make a fortune on this one, and they did.
Speaker 1: They evicted the Senecas. What they broke the oldest treaty
Speaker 1: and congressional archives that had been made in the time
Speaker 1: of George Washington. They broke that treaty, and here I
Speaker 1: am singing to people in New York who don't even
Speaker 1: know anything about it. I wrote that song because I
Speaker 1: thought if people only knew that, they would try to help.
Speaker 1: And in many cases they did, and I'm very proud
Speaker 1: that they did. You know, it's not only non Indian
Speaker 1: people who don't know what's going on under the covers.
Speaker 1: It's also us indigenous people. And when I say us
Speaker 1: Indigenous people, even that is deserves a little bit of
Speaker 1: an explanation. Since we're not all the same. It's not
Speaker 1: as though we were a homogeneous group. We're all over
Speaker 1: the place. I mean, I'm not a Seneca, but I
Speaker 1: was singing about the Senecas, and I was not trying
Speaker 1: to scold the audience. I was just trying to give
Speaker 1: them the facts. I feel as though when I stepped
Speaker 1: out on a stage as one was I guess twenty
Speaker 1: one or twenty two. I guess in New York, and
Speaker 1: I sang that song. The only reason that I had
Speaker 1: the nerve to even open my mouth and sing, because
Speaker 1: I didn't consider myself a singer or a great guitar player.
Speaker 1: Was because of the content of the songs. I was
Speaker 1: hoping somebody else had sing them. Judy Collins and Jumps
Speaker 1: weren't gonna sing my songs obviously, you know, they had
Speaker 1: their own, so I was stuck with me in the singer.
Speaker 1: I didn't think I'd ever have a career as a singer.
Speaker 1: Along about my second or third album, having been shocked
Speaker 1: at the cuts and the takes that Vanguard had chosen,
Speaker 1: where sometimes I wouldn't sing any in tune. Oh, I said,
Speaker 1: oh girl, you got to learn how to sing. So
Speaker 1: I started listening while I would sing, and I didn't
Speaker 1: used to. I would only be telling the story. I
Speaker 1: could have my eyes shut tight in the dark and
Speaker 1: telling you the story. But I think it's that ability
Speaker 1: to tell a story that caught people's attention in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen sixties, especially as you're performing at a place
Speaker 1: like the Gas Like Cafe alongside Joan Baias and Bob Dylan,
Speaker 1: and yet you really were learning on the job. It's
Speaker 1: around this time that you write a song called Universal Soldier.
Speaker 1: Now can you walk us through the origin of this song.
Speaker 1: You're in an airport on the way to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: What do you see. Well, the door opens and here
Speaker 1: come a bunch of medics in uniform. This is Vietnam time,
Speaker 1: and they were wheeling wounded soldiers and gurneys and wheelchairs.
Speaker 1: And I got to talking to one of the medics
Speaker 1: and at the time, we were being told that there
Speaker 1: would no war in Vietnam, and so talking to the medics,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, they're telling here there's no war,
Speaker 1: and he assured me yes. So I had been coming
Speaker 1: from Mexico is in San Francisco overnight waiting for a
Speaker 1: morning flight, and I just started thinking about that. Who's
Speaker 1: responsible for war? Is that these poor guys lie in there.
Speaker 1: You know, they signed up and enlisted because of I
Speaker 1: don't know, family tradition or to see the world, or
Speaker 1: a sense of patriotism or yeah, they have a certain responsibility.
Speaker 1: Then you know, the night goes on. I I don't not
Speaker 1: think any Wait a minute, what about career military officers.
Speaker 1: What about guys who spend their entire adult lives getting
Speaker 1: advanced degrees and how to make war better? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't talk about this very often. And
Speaker 1: in North America we have four very heavily funded, very
Speaker 1: serious colleges of war does the Royal Military Academy Annapolis
Speaker 1: at West Point, the Army College of War, the Air
Speaker 1: Force Academies, five of them. All these years later, we
Speaker 1: don't have one single college with the funding and the
Speaker 1: cloak and the seriousness. Who are teaching alternative conflict resolution?
Speaker 1: And alternative conflict resolution, I think, is really the key phrase.
Speaker 1: It's not and I'm going to march for peace. No,
Speaker 1: of course you are, but alternative conflict resolution can be taught.
Speaker 1: Gandhi changed the history of India and the British Empire
Speaker 1: with alternative conflict resolution, Martin Luther King, That's what he
Speaker 1: was doing. But we're not doing it. And look at
Speaker 1: this crazy world today where even our brothers and sisters
Speaker 1: online are trolling and fighting and backbiting and bullying, and
Speaker 1: we don't have to do it. We can let all
Speaker 1: of that go. We don't have to tear the system
Speaker 1: down in order to make it better. We just need
Speaker 1: to start making sense. I think so universal soldier, I
Speaker 1: had thought about the poor soldiers and enlisted men. I
Speaker 1: thought about career military officers, And then I started thinking,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, who is it actually makes the decision,
Speaker 1: you know, presses the button, the phone call that starts
Speaker 1: the war? Or horror the politicians general, Now let's get
Speaker 1: them there. They are obviously the ones. But you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes down to it, in a so called democracy,
Speaker 1: who is it who votes for the politicians? So it
Speaker 1: comes down to us. So Universal Soldier is a song
Speaker 1: about individual responsibility for the world we're living in. Well,
Speaker 1: then why don't we take a listen. This is a
Speaker 1: live performance of Universal Soldiers, the Universal Soldier, and he
Speaker 1: really is to playing. They come from him and you
Speaker 1: and me and brothers. Can't you see? This is not
Speaker 1: the way we put it into war? As the song
Speaker 1: comes out in nineteen sixty six. The good part is
Speaker 1: that the track is powerful and urgent. The bad part
Speaker 1: is that some people in the music industry took advance edge.
Speaker 1: What exactly happened here? When I went to Greenwich Village,
Speaker 1: I had never met a lawyer. I had never had
Speaker 1: a conversation with a businessman. I didn't know any of
Speaker 1: the rules. I didn't know you're supposed to kiss businessmen
Speaker 1: on both cheeks I had none of that. Are you
Speaker 1: supposed to? Apparently? Anyway, I was really really green and
Speaker 1: I was singing Universal Soldier at the gas like cafe
Speaker 1: and the highwaymen came in and they were coming off
Speaker 1: a number one worldwide hit called Michael Roh the Boat Shore. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They were, you know, a men's singing group, kind of
Speaker 1: a preppy singing group. They sang a lot of really
Speaker 1: actual folk songs. They needed one more song for their album.
Speaker 1: It was going to come out right away, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to record Universal Soldier and I said sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: And there was a guy sitting at the next table.
Speaker 1: The himewoman said okay, so who's your publisher? And I
Speaker 1: said what, I didn't know what a publisher was. You know,
Speaker 1: I was just right out of college. And the guy
Speaker 1: at the next table said, oh, and help with that.
Speaker 1: And so this guy, Elmer Jared Gordon, you know, I
Speaker 1: gave him the publishing for one dollar. That's how green
Speaker 1: I was. Ten years later, I bought it back, at
Speaker 1: least part of it, for twenty five thousand dollars. The
Speaker 1: good news is that I had the twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to do it. The bad news is that I
Speaker 1: had to do that at all, just by being, you know,
Speaker 1: from being so green, and that someone would take advantage
Speaker 1: of it like that when they knew that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to do one single thing. It was already sold
Speaker 1: to the hiringmen, you know. It's not as though they
Speaker 1: had to go out and find someone to sing it.
Speaker 1: That's how some people in any business are. It's not
Speaker 1: just show business. I'm not saying show business is all crooked.
Speaker 1: It's not. Any business attracts sharks and people who are
Speaker 1: after money, and they really get a kick out of it.
Speaker 1: They love it as much as I love making music.
Speaker 1: I learned from that experience never to do that again.
Speaker 1: Never to sell your song for one dollar, Never to
Speaker 1: sell my song. But in that purchase, didn't the musician
Speaker 1: Donovan begin to take credit for the song, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: Glenn Campbell recorded it. A few other people recorded. Donovan
Speaker 1: was a singer songwriter himself, and he only sang his
Speaker 1: own songs except for two Universal Soldier, which I wrote
Speaker 1: and Codine, which I also wrote, And people just assumed
Speaker 1: that Donovan wrote it, and Donovan's management never told anybody
Speaker 1: that I didn't, and he was much to know you know,
Speaker 1: much better known than I was. So people just assumed
Speaker 1: that he wrote Universal Cold during Codine. But he knows
Speaker 1: he didn't, and I know he didn't. You ever talked
Speaker 1: to him about it? Oh yeah, it's just no big deal.
Speaker 1: You know, people make mistakes. You don't take that kind
Speaker 1: of thing personally. I just do not hang on to grudges.
Speaker 1: They weigh you down. No in one ear out the other.
Speaker 1: It's a new day. Let's go. How do you do that?
Speaker 1: Just do it. I don't want to have bad feelings
Speaker 1: giving me nightmares. Here's a parallel philosophy. I don't read
Speaker 1: horror comics. I don't go to horror movies. I don't
Speaker 1: put that kind of stuff into my imagination or into
Speaker 1: my archives, are into my data bank. You know, I
Speaker 1: just don't. I don't inhale that kind of stuff. I
Speaker 1: keep my nose on the joy trail. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a model, you know, keep your nose on the joy trail.
Speaker 1: Follow the things that you love and that you know
Speaker 1: that are good for you. And if you're the kind
Speaker 1: of person who wants to be effective at something, keeping
Speaker 1: nose on the joy trail, don't follow some stupid you know,
Speaker 1: alcohol trail or you know, cheating money, thievery. You know,
Speaker 1: don't go down roads that you don't really love. Go
Speaker 1: down the roads that are really exciting and meaningful to you.
Speaker 1: Life can be quite simple. Actually, recently I had a
Speaker 1: zoom call with the Dali Lama and that was very,
Speaker 1: very wonderful. And what I love about the Dalai Lama,
Speaker 1: even though I'm not an official Buddhist, his philosophy amounts
Speaker 1: to two things. Really mindfulness, you know, just comment sense,
Speaker 1: pay attention, yeah, and compassion. Any question that you'll ask
Speaker 1: him will probably come through one or both of those concepts.
Speaker 1: Mindfulness and compassion. Those two things, looking back, have served
Speaker 1: me very well too. I pay attention and I don't
Speaker 1: inhale stuffs that is bad for me. Your ability to
Speaker 1: avoid the bad stuff, to stay on this joy trail.
Speaker 1: It's especially inspiring because of all the hardships you've faced.
Speaker 1: And yet I realize using the word hardship is maybe
Speaker 1: mischaracterizing how you actually process difficult situations. And I say
Speaker 1: that because in your biography, the author has this passage
Speaker 1: that I think is important. She wrote, at one point
Speaker 1: in this biography, I start a as sentence with the
Speaker 1: words tearing down, and in the editing process, Buffy crossed
Speaker 1: them out and provided this alternative, creating in spite of
Speaker 1: and beyond. Your work is not defined by tearing down systems,
Speaker 1: but creating in spite of and beyond? Is that fair
Speaker 1: to say it is? I really feel as though a
Speaker 1: lot of good effective work doesn't happen because people think
Speaker 1: that they have to tear something down. You have to
Speaker 1: tear down the school, the government, the curriculum. You have
Speaker 1: to tear it. You gotta tear it. You don't. You
Speaker 1: just provide something better and everyone's going to love it.
Speaker 1: That's it. I'll tell you here's something that I tell
Speaker 1: people off and it comes from a song that nobody
Speaker 1: knows really. Song was on some album I did in Nashville,
Speaker 1: Songs called Jeremiah. But the last verse of it says
Speaker 1: it says, some will tell you what you really want
Speaker 1: ain't on the menu. Don't believe them, don't believe them,
Speaker 1: cook it up yourself, and then prepare to serve them,
Speaker 1: serve them. See again. It goes back to being a
Speaker 1: teacher in love with the creator and creativity, loving the
Speaker 1: process of delivering something delicious, even if it's of a
Speaker 1: little bit of a a serious note, you know, a
Speaker 1: serious topic. Well, I guess we better play this song
Speaker 1: if you want to do Yeah. A pretty good song.
Speaker 1: It's not very well known. This is Jeremiah by Buffy
Speaker 1: Saint Maria will tell you tell you really won't really fail.
Speaker 1: Don't believe fail up bail. You're talking about making music
Speaker 1: that if you don't see it on the menu, you
Speaker 1: have to do it yourself. The music industry had preconceived
Speaker 1: notions about the kind of songs that you could make,
Speaker 1: or rather they had this idea that you can only
Speaker 1: make a kind of protest song or an indigenous song.
Speaker 1: And the great irony of your career, I think in
Speaker 1: some ways is that until It's time for you to
Speaker 1: go is actually the song that ends up getting you
Speaker 1: into some trouble, which is a love song. How does
Speaker 1: this happen? You are so smart. Almost nobody puts that together.
Speaker 1: Most people think that I got blacklisted by Johnson and
Speaker 1: Nixon because I wrote an Universal Soldier. No, it's not
Speaker 1: that cut and dride. I wrote Universal Soldier. Glenn Campbell
Speaker 1: recorded that Donovan had he hit it was all over
Speaker 1: the place. No, I got in trouble as you've said,
Speaker 1: and very few people were hip enough to know that.
Speaker 1: I got in trouble because until It's time for You
Speaker 1: to Go as being recorded by everybody and his sister,
Speaker 1: I mean, Bobby Darren and Elvis Presley and Barbara Streisan
Speaker 1: and Sonny and Sheriff Share recorded it twice, Neil Diamond,
Speaker 1: Chad Atkins, ROBERTA. Flack, Johnny Mathis, Arthur Fiedler and the
Speaker 1: Boston Pop's Orchestra. Everybody was recording until It's Time for
Speaker 1: You to Go, And all of a sudden, I was
Speaker 1: on The Tonight Show shooting my mouth off about Indian issues.
Speaker 1: That's what got me in trouble. What got me in
Speaker 1: trouble is that my song got famous and got me
Speaker 1: on television where I expressed information that certain people did
Speaker 1: not want known, like oh, just singing now that the
Speaker 1: Buffalo's gone. On the Tonight Show when Harry Belafonte was hosting,
Speaker 1: Now the Buffalo's gone. You know, we've already talked about that.
Speaker 1: That's about the theft of an inland by a bunch
Speaker 1: of slicks in hand in hand with government. That's how
Speaker 1: you do it, boys, that's how you do it. And
Speaker 1: I was saying things like that on live television. And
Speaker 1: the reason that I was on live television was because
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, until it's time for you to
Speaker 1: go was being recorded by people who thought quite differently
Speaker 1: from me, as well as may have agreed with me
Speaker 1: about political issues. I think it's an important point that
Speaker 1: you've made. It's not as though you have to be
Speaker 1: scared to write something like Universal Soldier. You don't. I
Speaker 1: don't like it when people think that Universal Soldier is
Speaker 1: what got me in all that trouble, because I think
Speaker 1: that's going to discourage songwriters from, you know, telling the
Speaker 1: truth and trying to be effective through songwriting, which I
Speaker 1: think is a wonderful you can be able to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have a whole lot of respect, By
Speaker 1: the way, for the three and a half minute song.
Speaker 1: If you can say something in three and a half
Speaker 1: minutes that somebody else has to have a multimillion dollar
Speaker 1: movie or a four hundred page textbook that'll wind up
Speaker 1: on the shelf. No, you're better off with a three
Speaker 1: and a half minute song. A song is portable. You
Speaker 1: can play it on any instrument, you can do it
Speaker 1: in different languages, It can be done in different styles
Speaker 1: and different genres, and it's immediate, you know, and it's replicable.
Speaker 1: So the song itself is an incredible tool for change,
Speaker 1: I think, and a lot of people I think look
Speaker 1: look at me, especially I mean in the US they do.
Speaker 1: In other countries they don't. But in the US, because
Speaker 1: I was taken out so early, you know, after the seventies,
Speaker 1: that people didn't hear from me, and my fans thought
Speaker 1: I'd retire or die or something. But in other countries
Speaker 1: they continued, and consequently, in the US it's a little different,
Speaker 1: and very often people will look at me like a victimized,
Speaker 1: you know, because of being indigenous, and because I've written
Speaker 1: some real strong songs. A lot of people think I'm
Speaker 1: real big because the Universal Soldier is kind of ballsy.
Speaker 1: So I would say that some of my songs have
Speaker 1: overshadowed the diversity of things that I write about and
Speaker 1: styles that I write in. And because I didn't have
Speaker 1: teachers or I didn't have peer pressure, I didn't know
Speaker 1: any better, so I didn't concentrate only on one genre.
Speaker 1: It's not as though I was in Nashville and you
Speaker 1: have to deal country. Right. When I was in Nashville,
Speaker 1: I was doing everything I was doing, some great rock
Speaker 1: and rolls, some wonderful country, and lots of love songs.
Speaker 1: But some people will will associate my name with victimization
Speaker 1: or tragedy, and they forget that the only money I've
Speaker 1: ever made has been because of love songs. But they
Speaker 1: don't know that I wrote until It's time for You
Speaker 1: to Go, And they don't know. They don't associate me
Speaker 1: with up where we belong. They don't know. So it's
Speaker 1: always interesting to cross the borders and to realize that
Speaker 1: people perceive you a little bit different. But it's all good.
Speaker 1: It's all good. I do think they ought to perceive
Speaker 1: you someone who also wrote these remarkable love songs. So
Speaker 1: why don't we play a bit from the track that
Speaker 1: would eventually get you blacklisted? Until it's time for you
Speaker 1: to go. You're not a man, You're a mind. I've
Speaker 1: got a queen. I'm a woman. Take my hand. We
Speaker 1: will make a space in the lives that we'd plan,
Speaker 1: and here will stay until it's time for you to go.
Speaker 1: What were you thinking about as we were listening to that?
Speaker 1: I kind of looked like you wanted to say something.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm glad to talk to you today, and if
Speaker 1: there's something, if there's one thing that that would make
Speaker 1: me real happy, would be if you know, there's some
Speaker 1: some up and coming songwriters coming up who, you know,
Speaker 1: wonder what it's like to have gone through what I
Speaker 1: went through in terms of the combination of being effective
Speaker 1: and speaking out as a songwriter. So you are an
Speaker 1: effective songwriter, which got you into some trouble when you're
Speaker 1: on the Tonight Show talking about these issues, Are you
Speaker 1: ever nervous? No? A matter of fact, I went on
Speaker 1: Good Morning America and I debated a congressman and one.
Speaker 1: But I mean things like that. It's not it's not
Speaker 1: the lyrics to Universal Soldier. They get me on a blacklist.
Speaker 1: You know, there are people, congress people even, who just
Speaker 1: don't want Indians or anybody else having anything to do
Speaker 1: with the control of all available lands and natural resources.
Speaker 1: They want those reservations, they want to put up condos.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's the kind of atmosphere that you're
Speaker 1: dealing with. It's like the heart and soul of now
Speaker 1: that the Buffalo's gone is very different from the heart
Speaker 1: and soul of why these people don't want Indian people
Speaker 1: to have control of our own destinies. What do you
Speaker 1: mean by that, I were to take too long to
Speaker 1: really get into the details of the continual land grabs.
Speaker 1: I mean, just the things that are going on. You
Speaker 1: don't talk to Winona LaDuke, by the way, Winona LaDuke
Speaker 1: from ont of the Earth. She and many other people,
Speaker 1: especially along the Canadian border up in you know, Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: not Dakota. They're dealing with Enbridge and other oil companies
Speaker 1: who are huge polluters and huge law breakers. I mean
Speaker 1: Standing Rock is an example of what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: and it's ongoing, and there are oil companies that'll just
Speaker 1: break all kinds of laws. I know too much about
Speaker 1: the oil industry fracking the Tar sands in Canada to
Speaker 1: be able to give you a little polite summary. We
Speaker 1: don't need anything polite on the show. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a very issue week time in our history. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. You know, between the climate change COVID and
Speaker 1: the political polarization and kind of kus that's going on
Speaker 1: right now, this is a very strange time. This isn't
Speaker 1: the way it usually is. And if there are Indian
Speaker 1: issues now, it's very very hard to get any column
Speaker 1: space on it. I just feel as th people are
Speaker 1: not aware of any of either the triumphs or the
Speaker 1: tragedies of Indigenous people. And as a school teacher with
Speaker 1: a guitar and a microphone, I'm just thrilled to spread
Speaker 1: that message. In Canada, we're dealing with terrible, terrible things
Speaker 1: and we're acknowledging them. You and the US are also
Speaker 1: dealing with similar, terrible terrible things, but you're not acknowledge
Speaker 1: you don't even know about them. Missing and murdered Indigenous
Speaker 1: women and girls is not a thing in the US.
Speaker 1: The residential schools, you know, the grave you know they've
Speaker 1: been exhuming the graveyards in the backs of the residential schools,
Speaker 1: and all these little dead Indian kids, you know, who
Speaker 1: are everything from just sex toys for priests and nuns
Speaker 1: and Indian agents. And I mean, the history of residential
Speaker 1: schools is so tragic. It's so tragic. It's all over
Speaker 1: the news in Canada and every child knows about it.
Speaker 1: And as a schoolteacher and a mom myself, you know,
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to provide is the alternative to that.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't talk about
Speaker 1: those issues. I'm saying, yes, those issues are being talked
Speaker 1: about and are very real and important for children to
Speaker 1: understand in a child friendly way, but we must we
Speaker 1: must also provide the alternative, strong positive information that nobody
Speaker 1: talks about. For instance, Okay, Britty Stone is going to
Speaker 1: be a NFL season, It's going to be the Super Bowl,
Speaker 1: it's going to be the Stanley Cup. Very few people
Speaker 1: are aware that team sports were invented by indigenous people
Speaker 1: on this side of the water. Team sports did not
Speaker 1: exist in the rest of the world. Even in the
Speaker 1: Greek Olympics, they were all solo sports. The concept of
Speaker 1: team sports that is huge. The Mayan ball game, you know,
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, they were already
Speaker 1: playing team sports. Stadiums with bleachers, goal posted either goals
Speaker 1: at either end, protective equipment like hip pads and kneepads
Speaker 1: and shoulder pads, helmets with animal logos. What does it
Speaker 1: sound like we invented that. Our kids should be able
Speaker 1: to claim that and celebrate that. And that's only one
Speaker 1: of the many contributions that are indigenous people if the
Speaker 1: Americas have made to the entire world. There are just
Speaker 1: a lot of inventions, you know, things like rubber rubber
Speaker 1: the rubber ball. That's why we had We had team sports,
Speaker 1: and you guys didn't maybe and rubber ball. You know,
Speaker 1: in a way, it brings me down in a way
Speaker 1: when I think about our kids who don't know these things,
Speaker 1: and it brings me down even a little further. When
Speaker 1: I realized that schools, systems for which I have been
Speaker 1: trained to work unaware of these things. I had a
Speaker 1: very very wonderful experience when I took a break after
Speaker 1: Sesame Street. I took a break for fifteen years to
Speaker 1: raise my son, and I really wanted to follow up
Speaker 1: on the idea that I've been talking about. I really
Speaker 1: wanted to write a new kind of curriculum, but I
Speaker 1: mean core curriculum that included Indigenous people. And most people
Speaker 1: don't know what core curriculum is. Core curriculum all the
Speaker 1: subjects that everybody agrees need to be taught in a school,
Speaker 1: like you know, science and geography and social studies, government
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and just like you don't have to
Speaker 1: tear anything down to make it better. I wrote up
Speaker 1: this curriculum including indigenous people, science through Native American eyes,
Speaker 1: geography through Native American eyes, government through Native American eyes.
Speaker 1: I mean, what does that look like? It means that
Speaker 1: in the US, kids in New York and kids in California,
Speaker 1: kids all over the country have to Matt. They have
Speaker 1: to be studying certain things at certain time in their education.
Speaker 1: So if your kid moves from New York to California,
Speaker 1: we have to know that at grade five, they're still
Speaker 1: going to be studying the principles of sound. And there's
Speaker 1: no reason why you have to teach the principles of
Speaker 1: sound just in a flat surface book that has a graph.
Speaker 1: What nobody noticed? How are you going to learn the
Speaker 1: difference between frequency and amplitude like that? I gave them
Speaker 1: sliders in their computers, so that like a little recording studio.
Speaker 1: I mean, once you play with two sliders and one
Speaker 1: of them is amplitude and is getting louder, he's getting
Speaker 1: soft and is getting louder, and it's getting solded. That's
Speaker 1: amplitude amplitude. You're giving Tim, our engineer a heart at
Speaker 1: time all he's diasauri. Tim. There's no reason why we
Speaker 1: have to teach frequency and amplitude and other sounds just
Speaker 1: through tubers and pianos and European instruments. You can teach
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing through a study of drums, flutes,
Speaker 1: an apache, feel, a mouthbow, singing rattles. So we teach
Speaker 1: core science through an indigenous perspective. The kids are rewarded
Speaker 1: with an indigenous people's jukebox where they can hear, you know,
Speaker 1: everything from a tribe called Red to you know, pow wow.
Speaker 1: And I had started a scholarship foundation in about nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, I guess then the Human Foundation for Native
Speaker 1: American Education. And in working with a lifetime of like
Speaker 1: minded people who are on a good trip, I've had
Speaker 1: the unique experience of working with a wk Kellogg Foundation,
Speaker 1: the Ford Foundation. They all supported my little Credible Board
Speaker 1: teaching project for a number of years and we modeled
Speaker 1: it in eighteen states and many places in Canada. But
Speaker 1: what's important is not the business, because I never tried
Speaker 1: to turn it into a business. I'm not good with business.
Speaker 1: I don't really believe in it. I think there's just
Speaker 1: too much room for corruption. And I think that many, many, many,
Speaker 1: many many businesses are only about, you know, take as
Speaker 1: much as you can get and give the least you can.
Speaker 1: I think that life in a circle, in an indigenous
Speaker 1: way is quite different from the hierarchical pyramid model of
Speaker 1: take as much as you can get and give the
Speaker 1: least you can, you know, keep those people under you
Speaker 1: working for you. It's just old fashioned. It's obsolete, you know.
Speaker 1: If life is in a circle, as you say, perhaps
Speaker 1: that's why you've dedicated so much of your time here
Speaker 1: with children, teaching them, encouraging them, paying it forward. And
Speaker 1: I wonder what do you think spending time with kids
Speaker 1: has done for you and also your music. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I got a chance, so I was interested in electronics.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in things like a kid is interested in things.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in anything I'll make noise, you know, banging
Speaker 1: on parts pans or playing a piano, or picking up
Speaker 1: something that has some strings in it. But maybe it
Speaker 1: comes from a different country, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: to do with it. Natural musicians, we can have fun
Speaker 1: with all that stuff, you know, and it's no big deal.
Speaker 1: And electronic music for me was the same thing. I
Speaker 1: approached it playfully. It was fun. I didn't have, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't have to pass a course on it. I
Speaker 1: didn't have to write code, and you didn't have to
Speaker 1: know what you were doing. You were experimenting and it
Speaker 1: was fun. And really that's all there is to it.
Speaker 1: It's as simple as that. Keep your nose on the
Speaker 1: joy trail and have some fun with music. It's not
Speaker 1: a chore. It's not work. If it is. If it is,
Speaker 1: you're not in the same business I am. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: know that there's different ways to go about music, but
Speaker 1: I like to play it in the sixties, when you
Speaker 1: were first starting out, you always have this quote, which is,
Speaker 1: I never thought it was going to last. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I never thought it would lead to anything. And as
Speaker 1: we leave, I'm thinking about how on the fifth floor
Speaker 1: of the Academy Museum you were there alongside these other
Speaker 1: trail plays women. Yes, we're an honor. You're going to
Speaker 1: see it for the first time tonight. It's kind of
Speaker 1: remarkable that you and I are talking before you do this.
Speaker 1: But how do you think you'll feel? Oh, I already feel.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm already I already feel honored by it.
Speaker 1: I found out about it, you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: months ago, so it's really really nice, and I was
Speaker 1: real sorry that I couldn't come in and really be
Speaker 1: happy with it. But Saturday night, I am able to
Speaker 1: participate in the honoring of my Academy award is going
Speaker 1: to be West Duty West. Last year he received an
Speaker 1: honorary Academy Award for his body of work, which of
Speaker 1: course is wonderful. Tantot Cardinal, who's one of our foremost actresses.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, she's an incredible actress. Robbie Robertson, who
Speaker 1: needs no introduction. Oh when I'm the fourth one we're
Speaker 1: being honored for as Indigenous people. And I was the
Speaker 1: first and for a very long time, the only Indigenous
Speaker 1: person to receive an Academy award, what they call a
Speaker 1: competitive Academy award wests is honorary. But Taiku Waiti, who
Speaker 1: so well known now from New Zealand, he now is
Speaker 1: the second Indigenous person. So for a long time I
Speaker 1: was the first and only Indigenous person. Now we have
Speaker 1: you know, the Academy is trying to open to a
Speaker 1: bit more diversity, thank goodness. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of good people, especially Bird Running Water, who are really helpful.
Speaker 1: You know, it's hard for a big institution like the Academy,
Speaker 1: or you know, any institution really to know the grassroots,
Speaker 1: to know the inner circle, to know the people who
Speaker 1: are really productive but might not be easy to find.
Speaker 1: So we have a team who have been doing that,
Speaker 1: and it ought to be really a lot of fun
Speaker 1: tomorrow night. I don't know what to expect. I don't
Speaker 1: have any expectations, so I know, have a good time.
Speaker 1: It's always better to not have expectations. Although I'm sure
Speaker 1: you're going to have a good time. And it's true
Speaker 1: you won that Oscar in nineteen eighty three for co
Speaker 1: writing up where we Belong, But this fullhearted celebration of
Speaker 1: you and your work, it's long overdue in this country,
Speaker 1: and it's this country that I want to sit with
Speaker 1: for a moment to do that. Why don't we play
Speaker 1: a bit from this song. It's one of my favorites,
Speaker 1: called America my home, I knew the favorite and far
Speaker 1: faring everywhere. When I'm beyond the stars my country and
Speaker 1: my life, my mother and in Hawaii with all of
Speaker 1: your animals and pets. You make me smile when you
Speaker 1: go back there. Yeah, you had a long search for
Speaker 1: finding home. Do you think you found it? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I love living where I live. It's not as though
Speaker 1: I'm a hermit, but um I live in nature. I
Speaker 1: live in the mountains in Hawaii. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: like I'm on a beach and Maui. It's not like
Speaker 1: that at all. And that really is home, and it's
Speaker 1: partly home because of what's not there. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm on the road all the time. I live in cities.
Speaker 1: I'm in Paris and Oslo and Sydney and la and
Speaker 1: you know, I'm all over. But my recharge really time
Speaker 1: to say, my recharge comes when I'm in nature and
Speaker 1: at home with animals and pets. I live at the
Speaker 1: end of the rain bill and for the last hour,
Speaker 1: I have to Buffy Saint Murray, thank you very much,
Speaker 1: Thank you too, And that's our show special thanks to
Speaker 1: Lauren Mealy, Jean Seevers, Lexi Dayton, True North Records, and
Speaker 1: of course Buffy Saint Marie. To learn more about Buffy's work,
Speaker 1: visit our show notes at talk easypod dot com. There
Speaker 1: you'll find a back catalog of over two hundred and
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Speaker 1: Of course, our show would not be possible without our
Speaker 1: incredible team. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Jannick Sobravo. Our associate producer is Kitlyn Dryden.
Speaker 1: Our lead editors are Andre Lynn and Clarice Gavara. Today's
Speaker 1: Talk was edited by Caitlin Dryden and mixed by Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Tim Moore. Out of Your Recording here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, California. Illustrations by Christia Shy, music by
Speaker 1: Dylan Peck, Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek gaberzach
Speaker 1: O'Ryan Wong, Ian Jones, and Ethan Seneca. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Patrice Lee, Kaylin Ung, Shiloh Fagan, Niki Spina, and Callie Syringis.
Speaker 1: I'd also like to thank the team at Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: Justin Richmond, Heather Fane, Mea LaBelle, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano,
Speaker 1: Carly Migliori, Maya Kanag, Jason Gambrel, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladow.
Speaker 1: I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to talk easy.
Speaker 1: Happy holidays to you and yours. I'll see you back
Speaker 1: here next Sunday. Until then, stay safe and solo.