The Beane Family Singers

OK, kids. It’s December. Time to haul the boxes of CDs out of the cellar.

The Beane Family Singers did not exist until the Halloween party at the Manchester Community Center, 1991. I asked Arthur and the kids if they would like to sing, and how bout this? Swingin’ Dry Bones - the ankle bone connected to the …shin bone…complete with key change modulation as we proceeded up the body. They seemed OK with that. Dressed in our black turtlenecks, we brought the house down.

Well, OK then, I thought…how about some Christmas music? If there was a groan amongst the ranks, it probably came from Matthew (now known as Matt). After all, he was 17 and had every right to say, Oh God, mum…really? But he didn’t. At least I don’t think he did. I wasn’t listening.

Christmas is Coming

I whipped up a list of great 4 part tunes before anybody could object. We sang a bunch of them around the piano and I thought, this sounds so good, why don’t we make a recording?

There is something about the innocence of children’s voices.

Coventry Carol

Cecily, at 14, was a lovely sweet soprano. As was Owen, who was 13. Matt sang tenor. Arthur sang bass. Olivia, age 6, hid under the piano and refused to participate, no matter how much I tried to ease her into the thing. It WAS a pretty intimidating group! She feels so bad about it now, but I keep telling her, No! you were a spunky little 6 year old who knew your mind! What’s better than that?

Beneath it all, there was a strong undertow of sorrow. The Manchester Planning Board had just turned down our ‘no-brainer’ application for a variance to subdivide a very fancy house on the ocean - a house that we had signed a contract to buy 2 years before, with no contingincies, which is real estate talk for, Are you REALLY sure you want to do this? But the market was on fire. We couldn’t lose. As it turned out, we could. We had built a house of cards that we had been hoping to dismantle with this last project. It dismantled itself in much more dramatic fashion.

•••••

We practiced for about two weeks, then reported to an abandoned factory in Beverly, where a friend of a friend had set up a recording studio.

We had decided to start with Caroling, Caroling. We would get our opening pitches from the church bells at the beginning. Trouble is, church bells are full of overtones - so many pitches to choose from! John pressed record, we jumped in, sliding around, eyes wide with panic, looking for our pitches. John told us later that he thought, oh boy, a family singing Christmas carols…this is going to be a v-e-r-y long session.

We stopped. Got the right pitches and took off,

Caroling, Caroling

singing right through every piece in one take Cecily sang the descant (that she had learned that morning) on Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.

Oh Little Town of Bethlehem

As we came towards the end of The Holly and the Ivy, Owen gestured to me from across our semi-circle, pointing upwards, asking if he should sing up an octave at the end. I nodded, oh yes.

The Holly and the Ivy

Matt version of Riu Riu Chiu….yoips, he knocked it out of the park!

Riu, Riu, Chiu

A week after the recording session, I picked up the cassette tapes (a shoutout to The Tape Complex on Haviland St in Boston,which is still in business!) and headed back home, listening as I drove. I couldn’t believe it. Any of it. And when I heard Owen’s little boy voice singing In the Bleak Midwinter, I pulled over to the side of the road and wept.

What can I give Him, poor as I am If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb If I were a wise man, I would do my part Yet what I can give Him, give my heart.

In The Bleak Midwinter

We sat the kids down to say we were going to have to sell our house. Owen chirped, “Well, let’s get the sign out then!” Matt had one request. Could we put the Christmas tree right in the middle of the huge family room addition we had just built. You betcha. I got the tallest tree I could find. On Christmas Eve, we sat around admiring it, while Ron Della Chiesa played the entire album on his long-running radio show on WGBH.

Another friend, Jim Dodson (who went on to knock it out of the park writing golf and other sports), asked if he could write about this in Yankee Magazine.

Maybe it would prompt some CD sales. He wrote The Day the Hammer Fell, a tear-jerker of a piece. We put on our best sad faces when the Yankee Magazine photographer told us to look sad.

We sang at The Chestnut Hill Mall that Christmas. I had sent our CD to the guy in charge of booking, an older guy, a bit gruff. When I checked in, he said he really liked what he heard, except ‘the red side don’t play so good’. CD’s were a new-fangled thing in 1991, gone were the A and B sides of the old days!

Olivia may not have recorded with us, but when the Beane Family Singers made a star appearance at The Chestnut Hill Mall, she stood in front of a big audience and sang The Birds, a most beautiful Czech carol from the Oxford Book of Carols. Our job was to sing the Cuckoo part. Oh, how I wish I had a recording of that!

From out of the woods did a cuckoo fly. Cuckoo! He came to the manger with joyful cry. Cuckoo! He hopped, he curtseyed, ‘round he flew, and found his jubilation grew. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

None of us really know which memories will stick with us, what recollections will bring us joy, what part of our pasts will bring us sorrow. Nietzsche knew that even the difficult times enrich our lives. What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger. Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker. And of course, the line from the Aeneid that my whole Latin-crazed family knows well, in which Aeneas cheers up his exhausted, shipwrecked followers, (in iambic pentameter!) Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Perhaps one day it will be pleasing to remember these things.

And, in the end, let us all rise up and spread joy in the world. It needs it!

Rise up, Shepherd, and Follow

And that’s the truth. I’m happy to report that all the Beanes are thriving and PS, I still have a cellar full of CDs. Stop by if you want one!