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Ellie Gunn: Music that moves me as I keep on truckin'

Photo illustration: Rusty Rae##
Photo illustration: Rusty Rae##
##Ellie Gunn
##Ellie Gunn

A lot of my views of the world are connected to music. So this is my view of my life through my experience with music — one that really began with Buddy Holly, though I never saw him in concert, just heard him on the radio.

Bob Dylan recorded “The Times They Are A-Changin’” in October 1963, when yes, a lot was changing. And then came even more.

President Kennedy was killed in November 1963. The United States became involved in the war in Vietnam. The Beatles became the most popular band in Britain and the U.S. Dylan’s beginnings as a folk singer eventually shifted as other musicians created bands with guitars, keyboards and drums. But in 1963, when I wrapped up a three-year stint in Oregon and moved back to New Jersey, he was still playing folk songs nearby in New York City.

That summer, after a week of work, my friends and I would drive to Greenwich Village in my 1955 Chevy to listen to folk songs in cafes and bars. We took turns not drinking so a sober person would drive home.

Did we see or hear Bob Dylan? Maybe, but in those days, it was casual. Someone would play two or three songs, then the next person would do the same.

It was very special just to be there, no matter who was playing guitar or banjo. Those early days of music were very dear — so much so the memories are still with me 60 years later.

Another song of Dylan’s, recorded in 1962, is particularly meaningful for me: “Blowin’ in the Wind.” In it, he asks, “How many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died?”

I think too many people have already died — or been injured or suffered PTSD — from war. Yet it continues in too many places. And what are people fighting over — land, religion, power, politics, egos?

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to promote peace. At least we haven’t had a nuclear war, and I hope we never will.

In August 2003, during the Iraq War, I wrote these words after listening to “Blowin’ in the Wind” on the vinyl records we still have.

Lonely clouds drift east,

Tears rain with memory.

Birth, death, love, war.

The hope of peace blows by.

That reminds me of John Lennon’s song, “Imagine.” “Imagine,” he sings, “all the people living life in Peace.”

Music helps me live in peace, or maybe just helps me ignore reality.

Kate Wolf was a musician and songwriter from Northern California. Her album “Lines on the Paper” features some inspirational quotes I have passed on to many young people who helped in our garden or played cribbage with us during rainy days.

They were searching for a meaningful future after graduating from college. Kate’s advice was, “Find out what you really care about, and live a life that shows it.”

That’s a goal I have tried to embrace by helping people, growing organic food and working for peace.

John Denver’s song “Country Roads” was helpful to me in the early 1970s, when I hitchhiked often, having sold my car to cover my expenses at the University of Oregon. While standing by the side of the road with my thumb out, I sang “Country Roads” to myself, only I changed the lyrics to reflect Oregon instead of West Virginia, singing “almost heaven, Western Oregon, Cascade Mountains, green Willamette Valley.”

I hitched to San Francisco to hear the Grateful Dead in Golden Gate Park, Jefferson Airplane in the Fillmore Auditorium, and Janis Joplin, as well.

In more recent times, I was inspired by a song that Scottish folk singer Jim Malcolm played about people in Scotland, called “The Workers’ Song.” One line became the title of my first novel, “One Handful of Earth.”

Jim’s song “Lochanside,” about being welcomed to Scotland with devotion, inspired me to spend two months in Scotland to write my second novel, “I Promise to Go Wandering.” It reflects a line from Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

Now that the days are getting longer, I sing these lyrics to myself from Charlie Murphy’s song, “Light is Returning” — “Even if this is the darkest hour, no one can hold back the dawn.”

So now, in 2025, my motto — and favorite song to play when I need energy — is “Keep on Truckin’” from the Grateful Dead album, “American Beauty.”

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