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Lynn Blakey: Somewhere in the Stars
A perspective from David Menconi
I have passed the days since Lynn Blakey’s death on Friday alternating between grief and rage. Grief because a kinder soul has never walked this earth, and rage at the cosmic injustice of her painful end from cancer at age 63. It all just seems so unfair.
I wrote an appreciation for Lynn in IndyWeek because that’s my outlet for stories like this nowadays, and it’s focused mostly on other people’s memories of her. But right here is where I’m going to indulge my own anecdotes from happier times, because she was a big part of some of the best moments I had in 28 years of covering music for the Raleigh News & Observer.
Top of list is an Alejandro Escovedo show at Cat’s Cradle soon after she and Ecki Heins were married in 2006. They were both in the audience, of course, so Alejandro introduced his song “Wedding Day” with a shout-out to the happy couple. I recounted this in the paper afterward, and Lynn told me they took it to Ecki’s green-card hearing as proof their marriage was real and not just an immigration scam.
I told her I’d never been more proud to be part of a real-life fairy-tale romance, because theirs was a true case of love at first sight. Ecki was Lynn’s opening act for a show in Germany, and he was smitten enough to hop a train and follow her to the next city on tour. Hearing their story, the immigration officer called it “a concert made in heaven.”
Lynn was part of a lot of heavenly interludes over the years. I’ve been a fan from the first time I saw her old band Sundowners at some local nightspot in the early 1990s, not long after I moved to Raleigh. Her voice just floored me, so pure and beautiful with a tone that felt like bathing in the first rays of a sunrise — like a smile rendered as sound. And as I stood there listening, someone elbowed me, pointed at the stage and whispered in my ear, “That’s who Paul Westerberg wrote ‘Left of the Dial’ about.” Which made her not only the coolest person in that room but probably on the planet.
She really was the complete package as a performer, starting with that voice. A wonderful singer with huge onstage charisma, she could seemingly do anything — murmur, belt, soar, ease into a groove a half-beat behind the rhythm in a soulful Southern way. That bell-clear voice could pull off any shade of pop, twang, spirituals, even classical. She was cantor at Chapel Hill’s St. Thomas More Catholic Church for a decade, and her 2018 holiday LP “Christmas” (with Ecki on violin, billed as “the Stolen German”) closed with a flawless take of J.S. Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”
Lynn was just as much of a star offstage, too, the life of every party. Even if you weren’t in her inner circle, she made you feel like best friends when you talked; not in a schmoozy insincere way, but out of genuine interest because she really listened. Her one-of-a-kind combination of goofy and cool lit up every room, and she had one of the most boisterous, rambunctious laughs I’ve ever heard. If you got her to laugh at something, she made you feel great about it. I don’t think I ever heard her just giggle, either, it was always throw back her head and guffaw. Chris Stamey, who recorded her often, told me he had to take precautions in the studio.
“She would be singing so softly and sweetly and intimately, and the mics would be set appropriately,” Chris said. “But then something would make her laugh with characteristically unrestrained joy, so loudly that the equipment would fly way into the red with distortion. We ended up putting a sign in front of her that said, ‘LAUGH AT YOUR HAND’ so she would remember to turn her mouth down and away from the mic when she laughed.”
Chris was kind enough to compile a Spotify playlist of Lynn’s greatest hits, and her discography is as amazing as it is unjustly obscure. She was phenomenal going all the way back to the early 1980s, when seeing R.E.M. made her want to pick up a guitar herself. In addition to making every record she sang on immeasurably better, she wrote a lot of fantastic songs. My single favorite song of hers is probably Glory Fountain’s moody “Rosary,” just for the way she sings and sells the line, “Got the scars to prove it.” Chills.
Still, my overall favorite part of Lynn’s body of work remains Tres Chicas, the supergroup with Tonya Lamm and Caitlin Cary, because it just seems the most “her.” A famous story is how they formed in the women’s bathroom during a show at The Brewery nightclub in Raleigh one night, after Lynn burst in and (in Tonya’s words), “just exploded when she saw us: ‘I have to sing with y’all. I just have to!’” They went on to make two exquisite records I’ll treasure forever, one of them (2004’s “Sweetwater”) with the first liner notes anyone ever asked me to write.
Their shows often seemed like standup comedy routines with a few songs in between. Touring with Tres Chicas, Sara Bell routinely found herself laughing along with the crowd.
“Caitlin and Lynn had this hilarious stage banter that was like the classic comedy duos,” Sara said. “Lynn like Gracie Allen to Caitlin’s George Burns, all impeccable timing and wit. It was a marvel to behold how Lynn had EVERYONE in every venue in the thrall of her endless charms by the end of the set.”
When I came to the end of the line with the newspaper business and left the N&O seven years ago, Lynn and Ecki were among those who played at my going-away “retirement” party at Kings, and that meant a lot to me. Last June, Alejandro was back at the Cradle to play a benefit show for the two of them as they both battled cancer. The organizers were kind enough to ask me to kick off the evening with a pre-show benediction — my first time ever onstage at the Cradle in 35 years of living here — and that meant even more to me.
I am also remembering some of the many times I interviewed Lynn, about everything from her latest record to how to sign up for the Affordable Care Act. Having studied the law and turned herself into an expert, she served as spirit guide for so many friends seeking health insurance. No surprise that, 40-plus years after dropping out of college, Lynn re-enrolled at UNC-Greensboro and was just a few credits short of graduating with a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies when the cancer struck. There’s talk of lobbying the school to award her a posthumous honorary degree, and I hope that comes to pass.
A lot of our so-called interviews were a lot more like conversational chit-chat, punctuated with laughter. Lynn and her bandmates used to joke about Tres Chicas as a funeral band because of all their sad songs, and she predicted the three of them would still be singing together in their 90s in wheelchairs at the state fair. Dammit…Got to admit, that brings me back to cursing the fates.
But let’s end this on a more positive note, if only because Lynn herself would want it that way. News of her death inspired an astonishing outpouring on social media this past weekend, as friends and fans and loved ones shared memories. There was also a shrine set up downstairs at The Cave nightclub in Chapel Hill Saturday night, put together by Sara Bell and other friends and bandmates. It’s been lovely to see everyone’s tributes, and a comfort to know I’m not alone.
It’s also good to see folks stepping up to help Ecki at this difficult time. When I spoke to him over the weekend, I asked if there was anything else the rest of us could do for him. He was heartbreakingly succinct: “Think of me and keep memories of Lynn. That’s all I can think of.”
When the new Salt Collective album came out a few months back, I wrote, “Whenever Lynn Blakey sings, an angel gets its wings.” And in death, she made one last gallant act of generosity by giving some lucky soul out there the gift of sight. Yes, she donated her eyes — and this after co-writing and singing “A Brief History of Blindness,” title track of that Salt Collective LP.
Her final work, and that’s one hell of a note to go out on all the way around. Thinking about those big beautiful eyes of hers still being in use somewhere in the world makes me happy despite it all. The sweetest part of bittersweet.
Farewell, Godspeed and rest easy, Lynn Blakey. You did more than your part down here, and I am so going to miss you.
“Viewpoints” on Chapelboro is a recurring series of community-submitted opinion columns. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work or reporting of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.
