Marcus

Marcus Hummon deftly winnows his earthly commission. “I’m a storyteller,” the Nashville-based songwriter says modestly. “My foremost job is to tell the tale.” Hummon’s Rosanna, a taut 10-song collection showcasing Technicolor narratives and lush dreamscapes, doubles down on the claim. Beware immediate impact.

“She was smuggled into the land of the free/With a gag on her mouth, roped hands and feet,” Hummon sings as his fiery six-string sparks the title track’s opening storyline. “’Please don’t hurt me,’ she said to the strange man/‘I’m 14 years old,’ she said, trying to stand.” Quick as a gasp, witness gentle beauty forever wounded by hatred: “We taught her how to get good and high/How to satisfy men who was willing to buy/Or put a gun to her head and have his own way/With a sister, a daughter, maybe a mother someday.”

Hummon elegantly reveals naked brutality’s swift depravation. Pay attention: the lyrically complex (and complicated) vignette ribbons deep into murky abyss with equal measures hope and heartbreak. Against odds, Rosanna (and Hummon himself) sifts sunshine from shadows. “One day we all have to cross the waters,” Hummon sings. “Just as sure as the moon swims the Rio Grande/One day she’ll walk through our door/Hallelujah, hosanna.” You notice a keen journalistic eye for good reason: The story’s no fictional composite. Hummon met Rosanna at Magdalene, a two-year Nashville rehabilitation program.

“Rosanna’s remarkable, an absolute light of a human being, despite everything she’s been through,” he says. “She was given an immigration hearing, but if you have a felony charge that has anything to do with drugs, you’re just gone. It doesn’t matter if you’re making a claim of human trafficking. There’s no documentation except cigarette wounds and knife wounds in your arm, and you see plenty on Rosanna. They deported her again, so the saga continues.” Key additions: Rosanna’s “marvelous and strong” daughter lives on domestic soil. Rosanna lives with a brain tumor.

Breathe. We’ve only scratched a surface. Passages grow brighter elsewhere.

You’ll recognize a few. Consider the A-list country stars who have topped the charts with these songs: Wynonna (“Only Love”), Sara Evans (“Born to Fly”) and Rascal Flatts (the Grammy-winning “Bless the Broken Road”) begin the roll call. Hummon’s rootsy (though no less energetic) originals restore unmistakable authenticity. Acoustic arrangements encourage dramatic lyrical peaks and valleys. Perhaps most memorably, Hummon’s hill country ballad “Cowboy Take Me Away” (a No. 1 for the Dixie Chicks) simply brims with wonder. He maintains a healthy relationship with each incarnation.

“When you offer an artist a song, you’re offering your own soul and artistry,” the 49-year-old admits. “The reality is that a lot of us singer-songwriters, our job is to be a taste-maker, a stylist within in the industry. I’ve always thought that was a beautiful thing in a way, particularly if the artist acknowledges your artistry. People like the Dixie Chicks are a great example.” Clearly: “‘Cowboy Take Me Away’ is one of my favorite songs on [the Grammy-winning album, Fly],” Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines said in 1999.

Twenty years in the songwriting community’s fabric, Hummon has steadily gained respect and claimed hearts along byways between Austin and Nashville. Mine further than the hits. Particularly poignant measures – “Amelia’s Missing,” say, or the emotionally buoyant “Like She Was Mine” – prove Hummon a songwriter’s songwriter, an artist acutely connected to rich creative wellsprings. His finest plotlines unfold as vibrantly as spooling celluloid.

Accordingly, Hummon’s passion demands multiple platforms. An accomplished composer/playwright, he’s staged productions at both the New York New Musical festival (The Warrior in 2005, The Piper in 2006) and the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Summer Workshop (The Warrior in 2005, American Duet in 2006), among others. Most recently, he and New York-based choreographer Abdel Salaam matched wits on 2008’s dance-oratorio Tut. “[Theatrical productions] are totally not commercial and absolutely fantastic and fun,” Hummon says. “As long as I keep a really strong place as an artist, then the general insanity of the corporate music world doesn’t get me down.”

“I have admired Marcus’ music for almost 20 years now,” producer-instrumentalist Darrell Scott, who also performed in Hummon’s Tut, writes in Rosanna’s liner notes. “In a town with the best of songwriters, singers and players, he stands at the top of the heap.” “Take to the giver, your heavy heart of clay,” Hummon sings on the effortless hymnal “I Need a River.” “Swing on the vine, letting go I know you’ll find/You’ve fallen into grace.” Go ahead, search fruitlessly for straighter lines southwest of Guy Clark or Townes Van Zandt.

His golden key: a Kristofferson-like worldly understanding. Hummon, a diplomat’s son who exhausted youth traveling from Africa to Italy and beyond, discovered “music committed to earthy truth” early on. “I like the idea of being a populist, seeing history from the ground up, not the top down,” he explains. “Primarily, I think of folk, roots, bluegrass, country – the world that I mostly inhabit – as truth by storytelling. I like parabolic speaking and parabolic thinking. My faith is locked in parables and poetry.”

Boy, faith’s everywhere, too. Hummon’s spiritual notions appear literally and figuratively, equally whispered and declared, throughout the new album. Recall Rosanna, now at the border, “kneeling down in the tall, dry grass, silent as a prayer on Easter mass.” “Would I feed Jesus with my own hand?” asks Hummon, serving as omniscient narrator. “Would I let Jesus step on my land, or poison my well, sick a dog on a child of God, like Rosanna?” Unsurprisingly, Christian labels courted Hummon years ago, but he chose a broader path. (He did, however, marry an Episcopal chaplain.)

“I was offered Christian deals, but I’ve always kept that at a distance,” Hummon says. “Even though I think of myself as a Christian, I have a sort of Universalist slant to it. I think my feelings about faith and ideas about radical love and the place of love and justice in our lives evolves really naturally. It literally finds its way into my music. I don’t have a special agenda. I don’t think of myself as evangelical in that sense, which is what made me think I wasn’t right for the contemporary Christian industry.”

In other words, spirituality remains a handshake between Hummon and artistic free will. It’s a fine meeting ground. After all, songwriters from Johnny Cash to Radney Foster readily acknowledge ethereal links between pen and page. What fool would argue against “Get Rhythm” or “Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)” falling from on high?

“Absolutely, I feel apart of the larger creative spirit when I’m writing,” Hummon allows. “I think when we’re deepest into the music and the storytelling, in some important way you’re actually in communion with the creator. I don’t want to sound overblown, but I feel a sense of purpose and joy when I’m really onto something that I love. The experience of writing ‘Rosanna’ was like that. It just felt like something I needed to do.”
– BTA

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