Bored with quarantine, folk singer writes a song about it.
For decades folk singer/songwriter Tom Callinan has traveled the state and beyond performing at music festivals, anti-whaling protests, historical events, schools, senior centers and nursing homes.
After each performance, he always looked forward to coming home, for years to his shoreline house in Clinton and for the past dozen years to his 18th-century house at the Norwichtown Green.
Now, like millions of Americans, Callinan is stuck at home, all scheduled performances canceled and at age 73 considered more at risk if he is infected by COVID-19 virus.
His wife, Ann Shapiro, 69, is parttime executive director of the Connecticut Storytelling Center, normally based at Connecticut College and now “housed” in her dining room. She also performs in schools and local venues. Now, Shapiro alternates her time trying to schedule virtual storytelling sessions, applying for grants to keep the storytelling center afloat and being frustrated at the tangled web process of applying for unemployment and federal assistance for so-called gig performers.
Callinan said he started jotting down COVID quarantine musings for a possible song on April 15, the day Shapiro’s 90-year-old mother, Sue Shapiro, died of non-COVID pneumonia at the Beechwood nursing home in New London.
Last week, Callinan wrote “The Home-Sick Blues: Anthem of the Self-Quarantined” in one day.
“I’m cooped up in my house — the place I call home. If it wasn’t for my wife and cats, I’d be here all alone,” the song starts, and launches into the refrain, “and home-sick, home-sick, home-sick, I got the home-sick blues.”
The song plays on the paradox that home has long been his place of refuge, “where I work and play,” as the song says, but now he and Shapiro are itching to get back in front of live audiences. “I really miss performing,” he said. Callinan is considering just setting up in his back yard and playing for any neighbors within earshot.
“Now every cough, every wheeze, every sniffle, every sneeze makes me wonder if I’ve got that dread disease that’s left me feeling home-sick, home-sick, home-sick. I got the homesick blues,” the fourth verse and refrain say.
Callinan for decades was part of the Irish/sea music group The Morgans. Through the 1980s, he also sang in smoky, noisy bars. Shapiro urged him to quit the bar scene for the cleaner air and more attentive audiences of schools, senior centers, festivals, historical events and libraries. Callinan does about 200 shows per year as a state teaching artist.
His stint as the inaugural state troubadour lasted 18 months, but
Callinan never stopped writing songs about Connecticut people, places and events, historical and current. He has written more than 100 songs about Connecticut, including an entire CD for the Norwich 350th anniversary celebration in 2009.
“I’ve just been sitting around, self-quarantined,” the second verse goes. “An old road warrior, who’s not burning any gasoline.”
Shapiro, too, is getting fidgety. The annual Connecticut Storytelling Festival was canceled, and initially Shapiro resisted planning online virtual performances but said, “people were hungry.” Three storytellers performed in an hourlong online storytelling event.
“Everything online is so flat, and storytelling is so dynamic,” Shapiro said, “but I’m glad we did it.”
Prior to the COVID-19 shutdowns, Shapiro’s routine was to drive to work at Conn College and visit her mother at Beechwood in New London for the past three years. Her mother had contracted pneumonia and seemed to be recovering before she suffered a relapse. She tested negative for COVID but died April 15. Ann stayed with her for the last two days.
“I just feel like my whole entire world has turned around,” Ann Shapiro said.
Because of city hall shutdowns, limited hours and busy phone lines, Shapiro hasn’t been able to obtain a death certificate. Callinan wrote an obituary and sent it to family and friends, but they haven’t published it in the paper yet. They can’t plan for services.
“Everything is so abnormal,” Callinan said. “You just keep shaking your head and say, ‘What’s going to happen to me today?’”