THE STORY SO FAR: In early 1971, our heroine, Megan Sue Hicks, records an album of folk and folk psych songs, Maranatha, with Doug Rowe, lead guitarist of the noted Australian band, Flying Circus, at the helm. On the verge of turning 21, Megan flees the country before her visa expires. Back in the US, she virtually disappears from view. Maranatha, which has somehow found its way to Warner Bros, is released, in Australia only, with perhaps as few as 200 copies seeing the light of day. Over the years it becomes one of the great lost folk records, a collector’s item selling for up to $500, and is entrenched as a critical favourite. Megan Sue Hicks is blissfully unaware of all of this and eventually puts down her Martin guitars and 16 years after Maranatha is recorded finds her true vocation – storyteller. Something she does very well and very successfully.
THE INTERVIEW CONTINUES – TELLING TALES: “I know the minute I decided storytelling was my vocation,” Megan Hicks says. “It’s a story I tell. I was working part-time in the library at my kids’ Montessori school. I was the story lady. And I would read the picture books, turn the pages, do the songs, do the fingerplays. One day, my boss told me there was a storytelling conference at the public library in Oklahoma City where I lived at the time. So we took the day off and went to the storytelling conference. When we got to the library, there were no books in the room where the conference was to be held. So I was looking around for books. Instead, there was just two ladies and they got up and they started talking about a story telling renaissance in the US. This would be, I guess, 1987. “What I remember most about that event was when one of those women stood up you could see a little shift come over her. She took a deep breath and launched into a four-minute fairytale, The Shoemaker and the Elves. That was my favourite story when I was tiny little kid. Those four minutes, I was some place I’ve never gone before. When she brought the story to a conclusion my paradigm had shifted.
“Every decision I made about the direction of my life after that instant furthered my vocation as storyteller. So I went to graduate school and became a children’s librarian and I worked in a public library and I did storytellings. That’s where I learned to pull it out of your ass when you don’t feel like doing it. It’s also where I learned to take rejection because a two-year-old will let you know when you are bombing. They just wander off, you know. They aren’t polite but they are very forgiving and you can get them back.
“I hung my chops, took every opportunity I could, said’ yes’ every time anybody asked ‘can you tell a story?’ And I worked at it. I really did work at it for a good 20 years. In 2003, at the age of 53, I did what all the old hippies I know wanted to do – their life’s ambition – I quit my day job. I went full-time storyteller. It’s like being a musician. You don’t do it to get rich.”
Since then, Megan Hicks has recorded CDs, travelled the world telling her stories. It’s been a fine adventure and along the way she found her definition of rich and famous. “For me rich and famous is when you are good enough at what you love to do that you can make your living at it.”
To paraphrase the Grateful Dead, it’s been a long strange trip to get here. She doesn’t travel as much as she did 15 years ago but whenever a festival calls, if her calendar is clear at the time, then off she goes. “Damn straight! I’m not making a living out of it. I’m semi-retired. I turned 70 this year. As I’ve gotten older I’ve got way less ambitious. It’s like ‘okay, can I just rest; can I just sit here and drool for a minute’.”
While we are drooling, Megan suddenly says, “We have a Facebook friend in common … Jeff Lang.” We do. And this is a lovely story. Megan Hicks got to know the man who is arguably Australia’s premier roots musician – and a thoroughly lovely guy – through Maranatha. Sort of.
THE JEFF LANG CONNECTION “It was around 30 years after I left Sydney when I get a call from Doug Rowe’s old manager, John Sinclair and he goes [she puts on a suitably posh voice], ‘Megan, it’s John Sinclair!” I’m like ‘Why are you calling?’ Well, he called to see if I would let a musician he was managing stay at my house, for free, because he was travelling on a shoestring. I hadn’t heard from John since I left Australia; maybe a letter or two after I left but that’s it. “He vouched so highly for Jeff. He said, ‘Jeff’s a decent bloke, you can look him up, he’s got credentials, and beside that he’s a nice, nice guy’. So I drove two hours to the airport at Washington D.C. to pick up this guy. I was supposed to take him to the car rental place to get a car and then cut him loose. The car rental place wouldn’t rent to him for some reason or another. He was in his 20s and I don’t know whether it was his youth or that he was a foreigner but they wouldn’t rent him a car.
“So he had no transportation and he had all these gigs in Washington D.C. And, we’ve known each other for three minutes. I said, ‘ Well, I’ve got the week off, as it happens, so you can use my car. “As it turned out Jeff was just a treasure and a treat. When Jack, the man I was dating at the time, who is the man I’m married to now, got to meet Jeff, the two of them just bonded and it turned out that Jeff used Jack’s house where I’m live now [near Philadelphia] as his home base every time he came and did an east coast tour. And we still, now and then, get bank statements for Jeff Lang. This living room [pictured below] is where [Melbourne-based alt-country folk singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist and Jeff Lang’s wife] Alison Ferrier started learning how to play the fiddle. “The connections are tiny but very, very deep. He’s generous, but deferential; he knows he’s hot shit though.” And he’s never played the game. He’s never tried for a big hit single. He’s just gone along releasing excellent album after excellent album for three decades. Always doing it his way. “Yes, yes,” Megan says. “It used to drive John Sinclair crazy. He’d say, ’Jeff! Why can’t you write a hit single! You’ve got it in you. Why won’t you do it? “I love you, I want you I need you” – that’s the song you need to write.’ And I remember Jeff saying, ‘No, if I write THE pop single that’s all I’m going to be playing for the next 30 years. And that’s all I’m going to be remembered for.’
“I know storytellers who have such a tight, tidy niche that they do one kind of story. I know a particular humourist who does tall tales. They are excellent and he’s excellent. But whenever he tries to diverge from tall tales and humour his audiences get mad at him. He supports his family – and I could never support a family on what I’ve made storytelling – so he’s a much more successful storyteller than I am but he’s also locked into this niche.”
If you do that in music then that’s it. Limitations and niche-tagging have been the death of so many bands and artists. Lang is noted for his ability to span genres and for doing virtually everything on his own terms. And that you have to admire.
JEFF LANG: "SHE NEVER PLAYED ME HER RECORD'
So what does Jeff Lang have to say about this extraordinary character who leant him her car and gave him a place to stay when he was on the road in the US. He’s at home in Melbourne where he’s been handling the demands of home schooling his 10- and 12-year-old children.
“It’s great you’ve written this story and put it online because, as you’ve seen, the responses from the people who’ve known Megan for decades, are mostly, ‘Wow, I never knew you ever did this.’ I think it’s very sweet she is so self-effacing about it, and yet she clearly had an effect on people like yourself.” And we aren’t just talking about any old album. We’re talking about a record that is mentioned in conversations alongside other great folk rarities such as Linda Perhacs’ Parallelograms. “Mojo magazine did a great spread a few years ago on this type of thing,” Lang says. “It didn’t catch Megan’s album amongst its crop of great overlooked folk albums [or something like that] but there were some I knew about such as Shearwater by Martin Carthy. The feature looked at the less well-travelled corridors in folk. People know about Nick Drake and Richard Thompson and Linda Thompson and Sandy Denny. Linda Perhacs’ Parallelograms was one of the albums talked about and I was like ‘Ooh I must hear that’ and I did and really liked it.
“I actually knew Megan had made an album, years and years ago – she showed me the cover of it but she was very dismissive of it. She never played it to me; it was just in passing. It was in a circumstance where there wasn’t time to spare to push on it and say ‘no, you must play it to me’. I do remember thinking ‘I’d like to hear that’. But it never got mentioned again. She had kind of swept it under the carpet; to her it was like a youthful folly.”
Perhaps the strangest thing of all is that Megan Hicks never knew people all over the world had been chasing a copy of her record for the past 50 years.
“I know. Isn’t that amazing,” Jeff says. “It’s a complete surprise to her to find, out of the blue, that something she made in completely different circumstances and times is something people are chasing and spending $500 on. It’s really blown her out.
“It’s fabulous. I love that. You release recordings and go out there and they take on a life of their own in a way. What people decide is of value to them is up to the listener so you can’t make people think that what you do is great. But in Megan’s case the album wouldn't go away, be buried in oblivion. I mean, you heard it 50 years ago, still remembered it periodically, and have been chasing down a copy on and off over all those years since. At least the internet makes it easier to find whatever is out there these days.”
Even more remarkable is that perhaps, according to Megan, only 200 copies of Maranatha were pressed. “It’s interesting isn’t. It’s not like it was on an indie mail order label or the like, it’s on Warner Brothers. But she didn’t even do a deal with them. Didn’t sign anything, at all. It’s bizarre. I wondered what would have happened if it had really clicked and found a massive audience?”
And what if Megan Sue Hicks had stayed in Australia and Maranatha had clicked? What if she disappeared and it had clicked? Just as bizarrely, it was recorded under EMI yet ended up on Warners. And Warners Australia was only formed in 1973. How it got there is still a mystery. “It’s weird," Lang says. “If you wind the clock back a bit in terms of where the record business was in the early 1970s in Australia, compared with where it was at in the rest of the world, you think, well, it was perhaps the equivalent of the 1950s – a little bit wild west.
“Isn’t it all great though. You know, I hadn’t heard any of Maranatha until somebody posted two clips on line after you put up the story. I was talking to Megan yesterday and I said, ‘Well, you’re a bit cheeky not ever having played it to me.' And she was like ‘I’ve always been a bit embarrassed of it.’ It's like the record was a relic of when she had the chance to become a successful performer and famous and she felt embarrassed by it. Well she needn’t be because it has great value to people. They like it. And what a beautiful voice.
“What I’ve gleaned from talking to her is she found sympatico accompanists who knew how to bring out something that would provide a good frame and sensitive backing for the songs she was presenting to them. I like the way it sounds. I like the approach of having a bit of experimentation around the structures and arrangements and her pure, tremulous voice in the centre of the picture. “She also runs counter to conventional wisdom that you become comfortable talking to an audience over time. That confidence to be comfortable with talking to them comes from being comfortable with your musical presentation. "It’s unusual for her to find singing in front of people terrifying and an insurmountable obstacle [in part one Megan admitted to finding singing under lights and into the darkness an experience that left her hands trembling] and then become a professional storyteller where you talk in front of people because it is usually more scary. I’d certainly rather hear a recording of me singing a song than talking to people.
“But she’s ace. I met her as somebody who might be a connection that I was able to stay with when I was on tour in the US and ended up with a lifelong friend.”
TOURING TRUTHS So let’s go back to that. Megan has recounted the story of how you met and ended up using her car. “When you are going over to do a tour of the States, especially for the first few times, it’s on a wing and a prayer and the goodwill of strangers and it’s held together by duct tape and glue and thread," Jeff says.
“It’s always hard to find a way to tour overseas that is economical. I might be on my own but in the early days of touring there are weeks where you have four days off. You might only be spending $60 a night in a really shitty hotel but it’s a kind of miserable existence and you can’t afford it. So John said I have this old friend, from years ago when she was living in Australia, I’ll get in touch with her and see if it’s okay for you to stay with her for a few days off when you are travelling south through Virginia.
“I met Megan I guess in mid-1996/early 1997, because I didn’t go over to the States until 1995, and she was just great. She would have been exactly like she was when you spoke to her on the phone the other day. There’s zero pretence, zero facade, yet she's completely open, and has a wonderful curiosity about things. She’s no bullshit.
“And her husband, Jack, is the same. They are two of my best friends that I’ve had in life. Two of the best people I know. There’s usually a catch somewhere with people. I’ve yet to discover a catch with them. I’ve been at their place and I’m imposing on their space. I stay in their house so you are going to know pretty quickly if there is a catch with somebody. And there’s probably plenty of catches with having me stay at your house. It just shows how tolerant they are. Megan is just tremendous. She never made me feel like that they were putting everything on hold. That’s an awful feeling if you are staying at somebody’s house. She was just like ‘happy to have you here; feel free to do what you need to do’. It was always really easy.
“Her fellow, Jack, is the same. She said to me at the time, ’Oh my boyfriend, Jack, lives up in Philadelphia and he said if you need anywhere to stay when you are up there then you are welcome at his place. And I’m thinking, ‘Huh, who does that? But these people do that!’ There are people out there who are like that. There are generous, warm people who judge by their own standards.” In these times, it’s nice to see.
So that’s the untold story of Megan Sue Hicks, the 20-year-old would-be star who cut one album, Maranatha, and became exactly what she dreamed of being … but never knew. In 2020, it’s some kind of wonderful that, at a very youthful 70, the tale of Megan, Doug, Clelia, Orlando, Jeff, Jack and others is finally told in full.
The last word is Megan’s. She’s reflecting on the world we will find and, hopefully, work towards coming out of the virus. “We are all having to try and redefine our place in the world,” she says.” You know, we have a chance to do it better now [when we slowly get back to normal]. I just hope we don’t muck it up again.”
And Claudie her cat, who has been ever present through the past 75 minutes, wanders across the screen, again. (Read part 1 of the exclusive interview)
DOWNLOAD MARANATHA: Due to the massive global response to this interview, Megan Sue Hicks has kindly made Maranatha available to download on Bandcamp for a very small price. It is the first time it has been available outside the initial release of 200 vinyl LPs. What a wonderful outcome. Thank you! Visit megansuehicks.bandcamp.com. COMING SOON: Orlando Agostino on Maranatha, Fleetwood Plain with Greg Quill and 36 years of Tamworth.
Visit Megan Hicks at www.meganhicks.com
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