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Post by the Scribe on Jun 8, 2021 9:38:51 GMT
Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands(2022) – Linda Ronstadt with Lawrence Downes
Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands Hardcover – October 4, 2022 by Linda Ronstadt (Author), Lawrence Downes (Author), Bill Steen (Photographer)
#1 New Release in Western U.S. Cooking, Food & Wine Best price See all formats and editions Kindle $26.49 Read with Our Free App Hardcover $35.00 2 New from $35.00 Pre-order Price Guarantee. Details Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Linda Ronstadt takes readers on a journey to the place her soul calls home, the Sonoran Desert, in this candid new memoir
In Feels Like Home, Grammy award-winning singer Linda Ronstadt effortlessly evokes the magical panorama of the high desert, a landscape etched by sunlight and carved by wind, offering a personal tour built around meals and memories of the place where she came of age. Growing up the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants and a descendant of Spanish settlers near northern Sonora, Ronstadt’s intimate new memoir celebrates the marvelous flavors and indomitable people on both sides of what was once a porous border whose denizens were happy to exchange recipes and gather around campfires to sing the ballads that shaped Ronstadt’s musical heritage. Following her bestselling musical memoir, Simple Dreams, this book seamlessly braids together Ronstadt’s recollections of people and their passions in a region little understood in the rest of the United States. This road trip through the desert, written in collaboration with former New York Times writer Lawrence Downes and illustrated throughout with beautiful photographs by Bill Steen, features recipes for traditional Sonoran dishes and a bevy of revelations for Ronstadt’s admirers. If this book were a radio signal, you might first pick it up on an Arizona highway, well south of Phoenix, coming into the glow of Ronstadt’s hometown of Tucson. It would be playing something old and Mexican, from a time when the border was a place not of peril but of possibility.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author Linda Ronstadt, one of the most versatile singers of the past fifty years, is the author of Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir (2013). Her four-decade recording career encompassed country, rock ‘n’ roll, the Great American Songbook, jazz, opera, Broadway standards, Mexican and Tropical music and Americana. Her worldwide album sales totaled more than 100 million records, with more than 30 gold and platinum records. She has won 11 Grammy Awards and is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She serves on the advisory board of Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy, which has taught Mexican folk music, dance and art to children in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than three decades. She lives in San Francisco.
Lawrence Downes is a writer and editor in New York. For more than thirty years, he worked in newspapers, including the Chicago Sun-Times, Newsday, and the New York Times where he was an editor and member of the editorial board, specializing in issues about immigration, New York City and state politics and government, disability rights, veterans affairs, and the environment.
Bill Steen is a professional photographer, specializing in the beauty and bounty of the Sonoran borderlands for more than three decades. Along with his wife, Athena Swentzell Steen, he is a founder of the Canelo Project, near Elgin, Arizona, a family-based community and an applied educational center that gives people hands-on experience with a lifestyle that aims to be sustainable. The Steens are the authors, with David Bainbridge, of The Straw Bale House, among other books. www.youtube.com/user/CaneloBill
Pre-order Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands for your Kindle today.
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App. Book picks for Easter baskets Product details Publisher : Heyday; 1st edition (October 4, 2022) Language : English Hardcover : 248 pages ISBN-10 : 1597145793 ISBN-13 : 978-1597145794 Item Weight : 1.74 pounds Best Sellers Rank: #169,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #24 in Western U.S. Cooking, Food & Wine #74 in Midwestern U.S. Cooking, Food & Wine #82 in Hispanic American Demographic Studies www.amazon.com/Feels-Like-Home-Sonoran-Borderlands/dp/1597145793/ref=rvi_9/132-6295108-3519559?pd_rd_w=JfM0n&pf_rd_p=f5690a4d-f2bb-45d9-9d1b-736fee412437&pf_rd_r=EBN3PBK5BBWKHJ9B2QH9&pd_rd_r=b2ea13b7-c4a4-4014-afe7-d48e799df22c&pd_rd_wg=ohSM9&pd_rd_i=1597145793&psc=1
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Post by the Scribe on Jun 8, 2021 10:14:10 GMT
Linda Ronstadt to Publish New Book with Heydayheydaybooks.com/linda-ronstadt-to-publish-new-book-with-heyday/
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA, March 17—Linda Ronstadt, the acclaimed, multiple Grammy Award–winning singer and author of the 2013 best-selling memoir Simple Dreams, is writing a new book that has been acquired by Heyday, an independent, nonprofit publisher founded in Berkeley in 1974.
Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands—a collaboration with Lawrence Downes, a former editor and editorial writer for the New York Times, and Bill Steen, a noted author and photographer whose grandfather came from the same Sonoran town as Ronstadt’s—is a love letter to Ronstadt’s Mexican American roots. It tells of her coming of age in the world between Tucson and the Rio Sonora region of northern Mexico, presented through stories, photographs, and recipes. It will also include watercolor illustrations by Linda’s father, the late Gilbert Ronstadt.
“There’s a Mexican story that isn’t often told,” said Ms. Ronstadt, “about the desert and the families who live there. It takes cooperation and ingenuity to survive and build a beautiful life in such a harsh environment. This is Arizona, where I was born, and Sonora, where my soul is anchored.”
“Heaven to me is a long ride with Linda and Bill from Tucson into Mexico and down along the Rio Sonora,” said Lawrence Downes. “There’s deep beauty and mystery in these borderlands, and those two know how to take you there. When you’re with them, you listen and learn, laugh and get hungry, and then you eat. If we could have done it, this book would have no words, just Linda’s voice, Bill’s photos, and plates of carne asada and frijoles and bottles of mescal bacanora.”
“Feels Like Home is an expression of my love and affection for the people, culture, landscape, and the traditional foods of Sonora,” said Bill Steen. “It’s a story that revolves around culinary traditions that are simultaneously simple and complex, that have evolved as creative yet practical responses to the harsh and arid landscapes of Sonora. The lack of pretense and conviviality present among friends at the Sonoran table, while sharing homemade flour tortillas, fresh regional cheese, chiltepin salsa made from wild chiles, dark sugar-roasted coffee, a shot or two of mescal bacanora, can render a glamorous feast totally unnecessary.”
Steve Wasserman, publisher of Heyday, commented: “We are delighted to welcome Linda and her team to Heyday. We look forward to publishing this exciting book in the fall of 2022. For me personally this project is a thrill and a privilege as I first met Linda when I helped play a role as midwife to the birth of her exquisite musical memoir, Simple Dreams, a decade ago. I’m honored that Heyday will be her home for her new book.”
Linda Ronstadt knows her roots. Long before she was a music legend, the iconic voice behind 100 million record sales across genres, bushels of Grammys, an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and an honor from the Kennedy Center, she was Linda Maria Ronstadt from Tucson, the granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant, and a child of the Arizona-Mexico borderlands.
In addition to her seminal work in rock, pop, folk, country, opera, and the American songbook, she has made blockbuster Spanish-language albums, starting with Canciones de Mi Padre, a collection of traditional Mexican songs that became the best-selling non-English-language album in American history. But beyond those beloved records and the early pages of her acclaimed musical memoir, Simple Dreams (2013), there is a deeper, richer vein of stories that Ronstadt has never before told in full. Feels Like Home is set in the world between Tucson and the Rio Sonora region of northern Mexico, in the land of her ancestors and her own free-range childhood in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s where vaqueros once herded cattle through cactus and mesquite. It’s where Linda learned to sing harmony and ride horses and cook wild doves, where she traveled with her father in search of the crumbling adobe home where her grandfather Federico was born in 1868. It’s where she sang hymns with nuns in a Benedictine convent, and joined her family’s lavish production (and consumption) of green-corn tamales and high-octane eggnog every Christmas. And it’s a troubled region where she has watched, with anger and sorrow, as shifting border politics have inflicted untold cruelty on immigrants and refugees.
Ignorance and fear have left America deeply estranged from its southern neighbor. Too few native-born voices has led to too little understanding. There is one picture that tends to dominate, of narcos and migrant caravans and desperation along a frightening and fortified border. Feels Like Home offers another perspective, one built on Ronstadt’s deep connection to a land lavish in natural beauty, old traditions, deep friendships, and delicious food. Feels Like Home will be a compelling confection of memoir, photo album, and cookbook that doubles as a traveler’s meditation on the singular beauty of a region and its people, one that will stand the test of time in your kitchen or on your nightstand or coffee table.
Linda Ronstadt to Publish New Book FEELS LIKE HOME: A SONG FOR THE SONORAN BORDERLANDS www.broadwayworld.com/bwwbooks/article/Linda-Ronstadt-to-Publish-New-Book-FEELS-LIKE-HOME-A-SONG-FOR-THE-SONORAN-BORDERLANDS-20210317Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands is a love letter to Ronstadt’s Mexican American roots.by BWW News Desk Mar. 17, 2021 Linda Ronstadt to Publish New Book FEELS LIKE HOME: A SONG FOR THE SONORAN BORDERLANDS
Linda Ronstadt, the acclaimed, multiple Grammy Award-winning singer and author of the 2013 best-selling memoir Simple Dreams, is writing a new book that has been acquired by Heyday, an independent, nonprofit publisher founded in Berkeley in 1974.
Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands-a collaboration with Lawrence Downes, a former editor and editorial writer for the New York Times, and Bill Steen, a noted author and photographer whose grandfather came from the same Arizona town as Ronstadt's-is a love letter to Ronstadt's Mexican American roots. It tells of her coming of age in the world between Tucson and the Rio Sonora region of northern Mexico, presented through stories, photographs, and recipes. It will also include watercolor illustrations by Linda's father, the late Gilbert Ronstadt.
"There's a Mexican story that isn't often told," said Ms. Ronstadt, "about the desert and the families who live there. It takes cooperation and ingenuity to survive and build a beautiful life in such a harsh environment. This is Arizona, where I was born, and Sonora, where my soul is anchored."
"Heaven to me is a long ride with Linda and Bill from Tucson into Mexico and down along the Rio Sonora," said Lawrence Downes. "There's deep beauty and mystery in these borderlands, and those two know how to take you there. When you're with them, you listen and learn, laugh and get hungry, and then you eat. If we could have done it, this book would have no words, just Linda's voice, Bill's photos, and plates of carne asada and frijoles and bottles of mescal bacanora."
"Feels Like Home is an expression of my love and affection for the people, culture, landscape, and the traditional foods of Sonora," said Bill Steen. "It's a story that revolves around culinary traditions that are simultaneously simple and complex, that have evolved as creative yet practical responses to the harsh and arid landscapes of Sonora. The lack of pretense and conviviality present among friends at the Sonoran table, while sharing homemade flour tortillas, fresh regional cheese, chiltepin salsa made from wild chiles, dark sugar-roasted coffee, a shot or two of mescal bacanora, can render a glamorous feast totally unnecessary."
Steve Wasserman, publisher of Heyday, commented: "We are delighted to welcome Linda and her team to Heyday. We look forward to publishing this exciting book in the fall of 2022. For me personally this project is a thrill and a privilege as I first met Linda when I helped play a role as midwife to the birth of her exquisite musical memoir, Simple Dreams, a decade ago. I'm honored that Heyday will be her home for her new book."
Linda Ronstadt knows her roots. Long before she was a music legend, the iconic voice behind 100 million record sales across genres, bushels of Grammys, an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and an honor from the Kennedy Center, she was Linda Maria Ronstadt from Tucson, the granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant, and a child of the Arizona-Mexico borderlands.
In addition to her seminal work in rock, pop, folk, country, opera, and the American songbook, she has made blockbuster Spanish-language albums, starting with Canciones de Mi Padre, a collection of traditional Mexican songs that became the best-selling non-English-language album in American history. But beyond those beloved records and the early pages of her acclaimed musical memoir, Simple Dreams (2013), there is a deeper, richer vein of stories that Ronstadt has never before told in full. Feels Like Home is set in the world between Tucson and the Rio Sonora region of northern Mexico, in the land of her ancestors and her own free-range childhood in the 1950s and 1960s. It's where vaqueros once herded cattle through cactus and mesquite. It's where Linda learned to sing harmony and ride horses and cook wild doves, where she traveled with her father in search of the crumbling adobe home where her grandfather Federico was born in 1868. It's where she sang hymns with nuns in a Benedictine convent, and joined her family's lavish production (and consumption) of green-corn tamales and high-octane eggnog every Christmas. And it's a troubled region where she has watched, with anger and sorrow, as shifting border politics have inflicted untold cruelty on immigrants and refugees.
Ignorance and fear have left America deeply estranged from its southern neighbor. Too few native-born voices has led to too little understanding. There is one picture that tends to dominate, of narcos and migrant caravans and desperation along a frightening and fortified border. Feels Like Home offers another perspective, one built on Ronstadt's deep connection to a land lavish in natural beauty, old traditions, deep friendships, and delicious food. Feels Like Home will be a compelling confection of memoir, photo album, and cookbook that doubles as a traveler's meditation on the singular beauty of a region and its people, one that will stand the test of time in your kitchen or on your nightstand or coffee table.
LINDA RONSTADT, the great-granddaughter of Frederick Augustus Ronstadt and Margarita Redondo of Sonora, Mexico, is one of the world's most acclaimed singers. Her six-decade career encompassed rock, folk, country, light opera, Mexican songs, and American standards. She has sold more than 100 million records, has won 12 Grammy Awards, and is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, just won a Grammy for best musical film at the 63rd Grammy Awards on March 14, 2021. She lives in San Francisco.genealogy companion threads: conservatism.freeforums.net/board/468/family-ties
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Post by the Scribe on Jun 8, 2021 10:15:18 GMT
NEWSLinda Ronstadt Taps Mexican-American Roots For ‘Feels Like Home’ Book The volume is due for publication in the fall of 2022 by independent, nonprofit publisher Heyday.
Published on March 18, 2021By Paul Sexton
Photo: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for AARP
World-renowned singer Linda Ronstadt is writing a new book that pays tribute to her Mexican-American roots. Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands has been acquired by independent, nonprofit publisher Heyday. It’s due for publication in the fall of 2022.
The news comes just after the acclaimed documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, directed by the Oscar-winning Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, won Best Music Film at the Grammy Awards on Sunday (14). www.udiscovermusic.com/news/linda-ronstadts-story-told-in-the-sound-of-my-voice-documentary/
Ronstadt is collaborating on the upcoming project with New York Times writer Lawrence Downes, and author and photographer Bill Steen. The volume is a personal narration of her raising between Tucson, Arizona and the Rio Sonora region of Northern Mexico.
Feels Like Home will be illustrated by Ronstadt’s stories, photographs, recipes, and a watercolor illustration by her father. The late Gilbert Ronstadt was a hardware store owner and civic leader in Tucson, who strove to preserve Spanish missions on both sides of the border. He was also a watercolorist and singer, and often appeared in local clubs and theaters. The narrative also features Linda’s mother Ruth Mary and siblings Peter, Suzy and Mike.
A rarely-told Mexican story
Ronstadt notes: “There’s a Mexican story that isn’t often told, about the desert and the families who live there. It takes cooperation and ingenuity to survive and build a beautiful life in such a harsh environment. This is Arizona, where I was born, and Sonora, where my soul is anchored.”
Adds Downes: “Heaven to me is a long ride with Linda and Bill from Tucson into Mexico and down along the Rio Sonora. There’s deep beauty and mystery in these borderlands, and those two know how to take you there…if we could have done it, this book would have no words, just Linda’s voice, Bill’s photos, and plates of carne asada and frijoles and bottles of mescal bacanora.”
Steen observes: “Feels Like Home is an expression of my love and affection for the people, culture, landscape, and the traditional foods of Sonora. It’s a story that revolves around culinary traditions that are simultaneously simple and complex, that have evolved as creative yet practical responses to the harsh and arid landscapes of Sonora.”
Heyday publisher Steve Wasserman enthuses: “We are delighted to welcome Linda and her team to Heyday. We look forward to publishing this exciting book in the fall of 2022. For me personally this project is a thrill and a privilege as I first met Linda when I helped play a role as midwife to the birth of her exquisite musical memoir, Simple Dreams, a decade ago. I’m honored that Heyday will be her home for her new book.”
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Post by the Scribe on Jun 8, 2021 10:15:46 GMT
americansongwriter.com/linda-ronstadt-to-publish-new-book-feels-like-home-a-love-letter-to-her-mexican-american-roots/ BY TINA BENITEZ-EVES 2 DAYS AGO
Forever in touch with her Mexican-American roots, Grammy Award winning singer and author Linda Ronstadt has penned her own love letter to her cultural history connection to two sides of the border in “Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands” (Heyday).
In collaboration with New York Times writer Lawrence Downes, and Bill Steen, an author and photographer, whose grandfather came from the same Arizona town as Ronstadt’s, the book is personal narration of her upbringing between Tucson, AZ and the Rio Sonora region of Northern Mexico, documented in Ronstadt’s stories, photographs, recipes, and a watercolor illustration by her father, the late Gilbert Ronstadt, a longtime hardware store owner and civic leader in Tucson, who worked to preserve Spanish missions on both sides of the border, in addition to being a watercolorist and singer—often appearing on radio and in local clubs and theaters.
A young Linda Ronstadt Ronstadt’s story is weaved around Gilbert, her mother Ruth Mary and siblings Peter, Suzy and Mike living their dual Mexican-American landscape.
“Heaven to me is a long ride with Linda and Bill from Tucson into Mexico and down along the Rio Sonora,” says Downes. “There’s deep beauty and mystery in these borderlands, and those two know how to take you there… If we could have done it, this book would have no words, just Linda’s voice, Bill’s photos, and plates of carne asada and frijoles and bottles of mescal bacanora.”
Steen adds, “‘Feels Like Home’ is an expression of my love and affection for the people, culture, landscape, and the traditional foods of Sonora. It’s a story that revolves around culinary traditions that are simultaneously simple and complex, that have evolved as creative yet practical responses to the harsh and arid landscapes of Sonora.”
Linda Ronstadt (Photo: Sam Sargent)
The granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant, Federico, born in 1868, Ronstadt, who previously penned the 2013 best seller “Simple Dreams,” went on to become a music legend with an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Grammys, and a multitude of honors throughout her musical career from her 50-plus year career since debut, 1969’s Hand Sown… Home Grown. Throughout her career, Ronstadt also worked on several Spanish-language albums, including Canciones de Mi Padre.
“There’s a Mexican story that isn’t often told, about the desert and the families who live there,” says Ronstadt. “It takes cooperation and ingenuity to survive and build a beautiful life in such a harsh environment. This is Arizona, where I was born, and Sonora, where my soul is anchored.”
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Post by the Scribe on Jun 8, 2021 10:16:21 GMT
I was fortunate to hear Linda sing FEELS LIKE HOME live in our own theatre-in-the-round right here in the Sonoran Desert. I have seen Linda live many times but when that stage stopped leaving Linda 5 feet in front of me she began to sing Feels Like Home. At that moment I felt like we were alone and she was singing it just to me. Everyone else in the theatre seemed to disappear. A feeling of warmth came over me that I never experienced from any other song live or recorded. I was brought to tears. (she once claimed it was her job to bring her audience to tears. it worked) The album by the same name became my favorite album as soon as it was released and has remained so ever since. It is such a wonderful expression of Americana in song. I am so happy Linda chose to use the title of this song as the imprint of her life's story and experiences growing up in the Sonoran Desert.
This song is a Ronstadt original recording, beautifully written by Randy Newman. There are many great covers including one by Bonnie Raitt and Bloom.
"Feels Like Home" Linda Ronstadt
This incredible song by Linda Ronstadt, written by Randy Newman, is from the album of the same name released on March 14, 1995 on the Elektra label. The background singer is the equally talented Emmylou Harris. The song was later included in the 1999 CD, Trio II, by Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt
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Post by the Scribe on Jun 8, 2021 10:16:52 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Jun 8, 2021 10:17:16 GMT
At times the Sonoran Desert feels like it is its own planet.
Desert Rain - Monsoons of the Sonoran Desert
The Sonoran desert has some of the most extreme weather and is one of the most biologically diverse places on earth.
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Post by the Scribe on Jun 8, 2021 10:17:52 GMT
This is my special corner of the Sonoran Desert...The Salt River Valley. In fact I live right over some of the ancient canal systems built by the Hohokam. My experience with this desert is quite different than Linda's with my childhood roots planted firmly beside the Atlantic Ocean on Long Island. Like the sea the desert can be tranquil and harsh and while being extreme opposites the similarities are numerous and easy to see if you have lived them both.
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 14, 2022 0:03:41 GMT
FROM AMAZON.COM
Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands Hardcover – October 4, 2022 by Linda Ronstadt (Author), Lawrence Downes (Author), Bill Steen (Photographer) Best price See all formats and editions Kindle $33.25 Read with Our Free App Hardcover $35.00 2 New from $35.00 Pre-order Price Guarantee. Details Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Linda Ronstadt takes readers on a journey to the place her soul calls home, the Sonoran Desert, in this candid new memoir
In Feels Like Home, Grammy award-winning singer Linda Ronstadt effortlessly evokes the barometric pressure of the high desert, a landscape etched by sunlight and carved by wind, offering a personal tour built around meals and memories of the place where she came of age. Growing up the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants and a descendant of Spanish settlers near northern Sonora, Ronstadt’s intimate new memoir celebrates the marvelous flavors and indomitable people on both sides of what was once a porous border whose denizens were happy to exchange recipes and gather around campfires to sing the ballads that shaped Ronstadt’s musical heritage. Following her bestselling musical memoir, Simple Dreams, this book seamlessly braids together Ronstadt’s recollections of people and their passions in a region little understood in the rest of the United States. This road trip through the desert, written in collaboration with former New York Times writer Lawrence Downes and illustrated throughout with beautiful photographs by Bill Steen, features recipes for traditional Sonoran dishes and a bevy of revelations for Ronstadt’s admirers. If this book were a radio signal, you might first pick it up on an Arizona highway, well south of Phoenix, coming into the glow of Ronstadt’s hometown of Tucson. It would be playing something old and Mexican, from a time when the border was a place not of peril but of possibility.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 12, 2022 10:27:38 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Jul 29, 2022 4:11:47 GMT
http://instagram.com/p/CgkpCTnLXnR
Feels Like Home: Songs from the Sonoran Borderlands * COMPANION CD *
a new compilation of Linda's songs in Spanish on the Putumayo label Feels Like Home: Songs from the Sonoran Borderlands-Linda Ronstadt's Putumayo Presents (Artist)
An uplifting musical journey through songs that inspired Linda Ronstadt curated by Linda and Putumayo to accompany her memoir "Feels Like Home", published by Heyday Books. The CD includes an album download card and booklet with an introduction by Linda Ronstadt, detailed liner notes and artist photos. Featuring legends and musical explorers like Lalo Guerrero, Linda Ronstadt, Ry Cooder, Jackson Browne, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Neil Young, Taj Mahal, David Hidalgo, P.D. Ronstadt & The Co. And Los Cenzontles.
Track Listings
1 Barrio Viejo - Ry Cooder with Lalo Guerrero 2 El Sueño - Linda Ronstadt 3 Palomas Que Andan Volando - los Cenzontles 4 Canadian Moon - P.D. Ronstadt & the Co 5 Across the Border - Linda Ronstadt with Emmylou Harris 6 The Dreamer - Jackson Browne with los Cenzontles 7 Naninan Upirin - los Cenzontles with David Hidalgo 8 I Never Will Marry - Linda Ronstadt with Dolly Parton 9 Piel Canela - Linda Ronstadt 10 Voy Caminando - los Cenzontles
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Post by the Scribe on Sept 9, 2022 22:56:05 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Sept 20, 2022 15:06:44 GMT
Exploring Linda Ronstadt’s Family Album In a new book, the beloved singer shares her memories of the lands that span the U.S.-Mexico border www.aarp.org/entertainment/books/info-2022/linda-ronstadt-feels-like-home.html
companion thread conservatism.freeforums.net/thread/10529/aarp-interview?page=1&scrollTo=20731
Clockwise from left: Lalo Guerrero, a family friend; Mariachi band Los Cenzontles; Linda Ronstadt on her appaloosa, Mischief; Ronstadt's family (Linda on the right); Ronstadt onstage around 1970; Ronstadt's parents in 1937. PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY LINDA RONSTADT AND BILL STEEN
EN ESPAÑOL www.aarp.org/espanol/entretenimiento/musica-cultura/info-2022/linda-ronstadt-libro-feels-like-home-song-for-the-sonoran-borderlands.html September 19, 2022
Multiplatform recording artist Linda Ronstadt is the author of a new book, Feel Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands. Cowritten with journalist Lawrence Downes, the book focuses on the emotional and physical landscape of Ronstadt’s childhood in the American Southwest, as well as on her Mexican heritage and the connections between the two countries. Following is a story as well as recipes adapted from the book:
The Río Sonora region is one of the prettiest corners of Mexico, a landscape etched by sunlight and carved by wind and softened by lush evergreens. This stretch of desert happens to be my foothold in the world. I believe in genetic memory, that sense of a place that lives in the bloodstream and passes down the generations. Wherever I’ve lived, wherever I travel, my soul is always winging it down the road, south over the border, back to my land and my roots in Sonora. I feel the pull like a summons from my father’s parents and their parents and grandparents, from a chain of ancestors, most of whom I never knew.
I am a daughter of that world, though I grew up in middle-class comfort in 20th-century Tucson, far removed from any need for desert self-sufficiency. I didn’t have to herd sheep and cattle, or make livestock fences from mesquite or rope from cactus fibers. And yet while I am not one of the 19th-century Mexican Ronstadts, I do have this in common with them: I love Sonora and feel rooted when I’m there. And my sense of connection to my ancestors is strengthened by my own vivid sensory memories of Sonoran things they also knew and loved, particularly those involving music and food. Those two basic human needs were satisfied together, wonderfully, by the pachanga, the all-day family picnic that was one of the greatest pleasures of growing up in that part of the world.
Agaves with Huachuca Mountains, Canelo, AZ A view of the Huachuca Mountains. PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY LINDA RONSTADT AND BILL STEEN
It is amazing that a place so roasted by sunlight and heat can summon life in such variety and abundance. The Sonoran Desert is fierce and forbidding, but it is also wildly, amazingly fertile. Self-sufficiency and sustainability can be hard to achieve anywhere, but it is especially challenging in a place where water is so scarce. And yet while rain is infrequent, in certain times of the year it arrives with ferocious power. We learned as kids to be alert for cloudbursts, even distant ones, because of flash floods. Any streambed, arroyo or irrigation ditch could be dry one minute and a deadly wall of rushing water, brush and boulders the next. That’s the desert for you — first it gives you too little, then too much, and it’s ready to kill anyone who isn’t paying attention.
I was born in Tucson in 1946 and lived there until I was 18. Our family was my mother, my father and their four children, of whom I and my older brother, Peter, remain. There are also many, many aunts and uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews and more distant relatives in Arizona and in Mexican Sonora. I’ve said that our family tree is more like an anthill, one that extends into two countries. For family and friends and holidays, I still go home to Tucson when I can. A big family gathering or holiday can get Ronstadts pouring out from all over town. No two of us are exactly alike, but when we get together, most of us will be ready to sing and play music and cook and eat.
But whenever I’m back in my hometown, after a few days, I get hungry for more. Hungry for wider skies and dustier sunlight, for paloverde blossoming in the arroyos and the giant columns of cactuses, saguaro and organ pipe ennobling the hillsides. Hungry for the five-hour drive southeast to the village where my father’s father was born. I’ll call some friends, and maybe some of my cousins or nephews and nieces, and we’ll all get rolling. We’ll head east and down, crossing the border at Naco, taking the highway to Cananea, then following the river all the way down to Banámichi.
Ronstadt's father (second from right) with his parents and brothers. PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY LINDA RONSTADT AND BILL STEEN
We will check in to our hotel, and at some point, when things get quiet, I’ll step out the door and walk across the empty street to relax on a bench in Plaza Miguel Hidalgo and think about my ancestors. Sitting here, it’s hot as hell. The desert sun in late afternoon hits you hard in the chest and face. The glare whitens everything. But it’s a lovely little plaza any time of day. The skinny cypresses and sycamores give it a formal look, like an Italian cemetery, though they don’t give decent shade.
If I sit on the bench long enough, though, I can watch the church bell tower, painted blindingly white, redden in the glow of dusk and turn to gold. The sun will set behind it, beyond the river, the crickets will start buzzing, and the moon will come out, then the stars.
Albondigas PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY LINDA RONSTADT AND BILL STEEN RONSTADT FAMILY MEATBALLS Albóndigas de la Familia Ronstadt
My great-grandmother Margarita taught my father to cook, but his mom was a great cook too. She made this dish most days for my grandfather when he came home from the hardware store for a hot lunch. I loved having it for dinner at my grandparents’ house. My grandmother set an elegant table, and these delicate albóndigas, made fragrant with mint and cilantro, were often the soup course.
Makes about 65 meatballs, or 8 servings
3 pounds ground beef, preferably flank and round steak 6 medium tomatoes, preferably plum ½ cup fresh mint, finely chopped ½ cup cilantro, minced 1 small garlic clove, minced 1 medium scallion, minced 2 tablespoons oregano Salt and pepper to taste ¾ cup olive oil or melted lard 6 cups boiling water Lime wedges, for serving
Put ground beef into a large bowl. Broil tomatoes just until the skin can be removed easily. Peel the tomatoes and remove the seeds. Puree in a blender. There should be about 1½ cups. Add mint, cilantro, garlic, scallion, oregano, salt and pepper to the meat. Mix well. Add tomatoes and knead mixture. Add oil or melted lard, incorporating it into the meat mixture by kneading. Test the mixture by forming a piece into a ball the size of a walnut. It should hold together. Proceed to form walnut-sized balls, and then drop a few at a time into boiling water. Cook for 5 to 8 minutes. Serve meatballs in the liquid in which they were cooked, with lime wedges on the side. Nutrients per serving: 450 calories, 36g protein, 3g carbohydrates, 1g fiber, 32g fat, 115mg cholesterol, 200mg sodium
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY LINDA RONSTADT AND BILL STEEN SONORAN CHEESE SOUP Caldo de Queso
This soup embodies what I love about Sonoran cooking: It’s deliciously simple. You can find the queso fresco, a light farmer cheese, at your local Latino market.
Makes about 10 servings
3 tablespoons vegetable oil 3 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed 1 medium white onion, diced 1 medium tomato, diced 5 green Anaheim chiles (also called New Mexico chiles or California chiles), roasted, peeled and cut into strips 1 teaspoon salt (or to taste) 6 cups chicken broth 1 cup milk 8 ounces queso fresco, cut into small cubes Salt and pepper to taste Flour tortillas, for serving Chiltepin chiles, for garnish
In a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed soup pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add potatoes and onion and cook, stirring, until onion is soft, about 4 minutes. Add tomato, Anaheim chiles and salt; cook another 5 minutes. Add broth and simmer until the potatoes are soft, then turn heat to low. Slowly add milk. To serve, put a few cubes of queso fresco into each bowl and pour soup over them, or stir all the cheese into the simmering pot. Add salt and pepper. Serve hot with warm flour tortillas. Garnish with chiltepin chiles. Nutrients per serving: 180 calories, 6g protein, 14g carbohydrates, 2g fiber, 11g fat, 20mg cholesterol, 1,050mg sodium
Linda Ronstadt is a multiplatinum recording artist and the author of the autobiography Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir. This story is adapted from Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands, by Linda Ronstadt and Lawrence Downes, copyright © 2022 Linda Ronstadt and Lawrence Downes, released October 4 by Heyday.
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A Visit With Linda Ronstadt The singer and author shares her thoughts on culture, home and family www.aarp.org/entertainment/celebrities/info-2022/linda-ronstadt-interview/ By Ernesto Lechner, AARP EN ESPAÑOL www.aarp.org/espanol/entretenimiento/musica-cultura/info-2022/linda-ronstadt-entrevista.html September 19, 2022
PORTRAIT BY JAKE STANGEL
It’s a breezy Tuesday afternoon in San Francisco, and on the north side of town, Linda Ronstadt waits in the living room of the unassuming home she shares with her daughter — a piano to one side, shelves loaded with books and mementos. It’s a luminous space; the singer clearly favors soothing colors and the kind of placid energy that fuels creativity.
Ronstadt relaxes, barefoot, on a recliner as we begin. Her speech and movements show subtle signs of the degenerative illness that forced her to retire from performing in 2009. But the feistiness that propelled her to the top of the male-dominated music scene in the 1970s still thrives, and soon enough Ronstadt, 76, is talking breathlessly — laughing, analyzing and reminiscing.
The occasion for our meeting is the release of her new book, Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands. Cowritten with journalist Lawrence Downes, the book focuses on the emotional and physical landscape of Ronstadt’s childhood in the American Southwest, as well as on her Mexican heritage and the connections between the two countries.
“There’s a specific area of the Sonoran desert where I grew up that has a border fence in it, but I didn’t particularly notice the division,” she explains. “When I go to Mexico now, the energy is still there, in full bloom. People in the little town where my grandfather was born ride horses because it’s so hilly. ... It’s a really interesting community down there. It seems almost enchanted.”
“I didn’t like living on the road — it was too lonely. It makes it hard to keep relationships together, because you keep getting interrupted.” — Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt (middle) performs as a member of the Stone Poneys in New York City in 1968. MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
Leading a musical life
For a cultural icon of her stature — hands down the most successful female singer of the ’70s, thanks to rare vocal talent, transcendent concerts and a slew of top-selling albums — Ronstadt is disarmingly humble. When I mention my music-journalist obsession with the three albums she released in 1967 and 1968 with the Los Angeles folk-rock trio the Stone Poneys, she chuckles. “Oh, God! We were terrible,” she says. “I don’t think I began to sing very well until 1980.”
The record-buying public had other ideas — the Stone Poneys’ 1967 cover of Mike Nesmith’s “Different Drum” reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and launched the band’s young singer on her stellar solo career. But it was in 1980, at the top of her stadium-tour success, that Ronstadt took on a surprising singing challenge: She played the lead in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta in New York City’s Central Park. And she crushed it. “Using my high voice gave me a lot more dimension,” she recalls. From there, Ronstadt collaborated with former Frank Sinatra arranger Nelson Riddle on a trilogy of Great American Songbook albums, before returning to her family’s roots with the 1987 Spanish-language album Canciones de Mi Padre, an international hit that is still the biggest-selling non-English-language album in the U.S.
“I knew these songs because they were on the old records my dad had,” she recalls. “What I wanted to do was not to copy the songs so much as emulate the feeling of great Mexican singers like Lola Beltrán and Amalia Mendoza. I wanted to get that feeling, so I recorded their songs.”
As a child, Ronstadt lived with her family in Tucson, Arizona, on the last 10 acres of what had been a sprawling cattle ranch. “I felt very connected to both my grandparents,” she says. She grew up on their ranch, the same land that they had lived on most of their lives. “We still lived like ranch owners, with horses and chickens. It was their way of life, and it became my way of life too.”
Stardom brought a different way of life to Ronstadt, and it didn’t particularly suit her, she says now. “I didn’t like living on the road — it was too lonely,” she admits. “It makes it hard to keep relationships together, because you keep getting interrupted.”
Ronstadt sighs. “Marriage wasn’t for me anyway.” Her high-profile romantic partners over the years included California Governor Jerry Brown, film director George Lucas and singer Aaron Neville.
An illness changes the future
But if marriage wasn’t in the cards for Ronstadt, motherhood was. Far less public than her relationships was her adoption of two infants, whom she purposely kept out of the limelight as they grew up. Mary Clementine, now 31, and Carlos, 28, are a constant source of joy to her, Ronstadt says, and her face beams when I ask about them.
“My daughter didn’t know that I sang in English until she was about 6. She had only heard me sing in Spanish,” Ronstadt says. “She is a visual artist and does strange things, like the paintings you see here,” she adds, pointing to an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe portrayed with the face of a cat. “I call her the Catalupe. I’m an atheist, but I love the Virgin of Guadalupe. She’s my special pal.”
Ronstadt’s son — who lives just a mile from his mother and sister — works in IT. “He has a really nice girlfriend that I like a lot, and they come over for Sunday brunch,” Ronstadt says.
When Ronstadt’s children were young, the family lived in Tucson, but they moved to San Francisco in 1997 for reasons both practical and cultural. “In Tucson you have to drive forever to get to where you’re going,” she says. “We were spending a lot of time in the car. But it was also the schools.” Once, when her son was in middle school, she overheard a friend of his ask what church the family attended. “We don’t go to any church,” the boy said. His friend responded that this meant he’d be going to hell — a place Ronstadt doesn’t believe in. She moved the family to San Francisco and put her son in a new school.
It was in 2000 that Ronstadt first began to experience the symptoms of the disease that would end her career: Her throat would tense up while she was singing. “I lost strength really fast,” she says. “I used to exercise on tour — lift weights, do yoga and all that stuff. But then I couldn’t do it anymore.” She was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and it was years before doctors were able to provide the correct diagnosis: progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare disorder that attacks the part of the brain that governs physical movement. There’s no cure for the disease, though treatment can alleviate some of its symptoms. www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-2019/yoga-for-fitness.html www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2022/early-parkinsons-symptoms.html
For Ronstadt, the diagnosis has meant a life far more circumscribed than the one she had been planning. “The things I expected to be doing at this point in my life — gardening, knitting, traveling for pleasure instead of work — I can’t do any of those things now,” she says. Still, she adds, the process of writing offered her a chance to travel in a different way — to revisit the places of her past and the beloved people, now gone, whose still ring in her memory. www.aarp.org/home-family/your-home/info-2019/get-started-gardening.html
Ernesto Lechner writes about music and Latin culture for Rolling Stone and other publications. He also cohosts the nationally syndicated radio show The Latin Alternative.
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Post by the Scribe on Sept 23, 2022 20:44:07 GMT
Linda Ronstadt on her new book, Parkinson’s disease, racism and religion: ‘I’m a practicing atheist’ www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/story/2022-09-22/linda-ronstadt-on-her-new-book-parkinsons-disease-racism-and-religion-im-a-practicing-atheist
Linda Ronstadt seated at a table in her home. Linda Ronstadt’s new book, “Feels Like Home,” is several things in one. It’s a valentine to her family and Mexican heritage, a cookbook, a cautionary tale about racism, and more.(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The genre-leaping music legend can no longer sing because of her progressive supranuclear palsy, an incurable degenerative disease. But her voice rings loud and clear in her heartfelt new book and companion album of archival songs BY GEORGE VARGA SEPT. 22, 2022 8:01 PM PT
Linda Ronstadt encountered a pivotal problem when she teamed up with former New York Times writer Lawrence Downes to pen a cookbook featuring some of her family’s favorite recipes.
“It didn’t come together because I don’t cook!” said Ronstadt, 76, a National Medal of Arts recipient, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and 11-time Grammy Award-winner.
“So, we decided to turn it into a book about the Sonoran desert and how it’s strikingly the same on either side (Mexico and the U.S.), even though they put that border fence in the middle of it.”
The result is “Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands,” which will be published Oct. 4 by Heyday and sometimes reads like several books intertwined into one.
Linda Ronstadt "Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands" (Courtesy Heyday Books)
Enhanced by the vivid photography of Bill Steen, a longtime Ronstadt friend, “Feels Like Home” is a celebration of culture, music, geography, food and family ties that know no borders. It is eloquently told by a singer who has devoted much of her career to transcending musical borders, from country, rock and jazz standards to Broadway musicals, opera and the Mexican folklórico music she grew up singing in Arizona with her family in Tucson.
The book — about which more in a moment — inspired a companion album of the same name, due out Friday from Putamayo World Records, curated by Ronstadt and Putamayo founder Dan Storper.
The 10-song collection features songs performed by her and such past and present musical pals as Lalo Guerrero, Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos and members of the Bay Area-based Mexican folk music group Los Cenzontles (The Mockingbirds).
“We worked on the album for many months because we wanted to make sure it was what Linda wanted,” Putamayo honcho Storper said.
“The CD includes a 24-page booklet with photos, some excerpts from her book and her comments about each of the songs. The way Linda expresses herself is the heart and soul of who she is.”
Luminous voice silenced
Linda Ronstadt and Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan, Dec. 19, 1987, Saturday Night Live SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE -- Episode 8 -- Pictured: Musical guest Linda Ronstadt performs with The Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan on December 19, 1987 -- (Photo by: Al Levine/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)(NBC / NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
Hearing Ronstadt’s luminous voice in full flight on the “Feels Like Home” compilation album will likely be an emotional experience for many listeners.
Her final concert was a 2009 performance of songs from her Mariachi music-celebrating 1987 release, “Canciones de Mi Padre” (“Songs of My Father”), the top-selling non-English language album in U.S. history. She made her last recording, a collaboration with Ry Cooder and The Chieftains, in 2010.
Ronstadt was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2012. Her condition was rediagnosed in 2019 as also having progressive supranuclear palsy, an incurable degenerative disease.
Under either name, her singing career came to an abrupt end and her life was profoundly changed. Previously simple tasks, such as eating or brushing her teeth, are now challenges that require considerable concentration for this genre-leaping vocal legend. Walking is difficult and she uses hearing aids, although she attributes the latter simply as a sign of growing old.
“I can always harmonize in my head, even without music playing,” Ronstadt said, speaking by phone from her San Francisco home. “That’s all I can do. I can’t sing.”
Happily, her voice rings loud and clear on nearly every page of “Feels Like Home,” which was both a labor of love and a labor.
“I can’t type,” she said matter-of-factly.
“That’s another reason I needed a lot of help with this book. I have a lot of involuntary moments because of Parkinson’s and progressive supranuclear palsy. So, it was slow going. It wasn’t this bad when I was writing (her 2013 memoir) ‘Simple Dreams,’ because my condition wasn’t as advanced as it is now.”
Downes, the co-author of “Feels Like Home,” elaborated on Ronstadt’s condition in an interview from his New York home on Long Island.
“Linda can type, but very slowly and her fingers tremble,” he said. “She has an iPad and a Mac book that she types on, but it’s hard for her.”
Writing side by side
Linda Ronstadt in concert at the Forum Dec. 23, 1978.(Los Angeles Times)
Even so, Ronstadt was completely hands on as she and Downes wrote and honed “Feels Like Home” side by side in her San Francisco home.
“I wasn’t ghostwriting or taking dictation. It’s her story and she wrote it in her voice,” he said.
“We went over the manuscript multiple times. I had my laptop and she had a print-out in a three-ring binder. We went through it page by page, and then we’d do it again — and again.
“I was never with her in the recording studio. But based on everything I’ve heard, the way she did this book is very similar to how she made records. She’s very particular about her singing voice and her written voice. She could have been a great writer.”
Does Ronstadt envision doing another book?
“No!” she said. “It’s too hard.”
While “Feels Like Home’s” focus goes far beyond culinary matters, including some heartfelt political commentary, the book does features 20 of Ronstadt’s favorite family recipes. They range from traditional Sonoran cheese soup and chiltepin salsa to carne asada and a more contemporary dish called tunapenos, which are jalepenos stuffed with tuna.
“I learned about them from my sister-in-law, Jackie. ‘What is this gringo food?’ I asked her. I was just shocked,” Ronstadt writes of her first encounter tunapenos. “And then I ate one and I went: ‘Okay, I am eating up the whole plate.’ ”
Letter to the Pope
The book also includes a chapter entitled “Wait a Minute, Your Holiness,” which recounts the letter she and her friend, Reverend Mary Moreno-Richardson, sent to Pope Francis seven years ago.
“When I learned in 2015 that Pope Francis had apologized to Indigenous peoples for the brutal harm done to them by the Catholic Church in colonial times but was also about to canonize the Franciscan missionary Junípero Serra, one of the brutalizers, the dissonance was too much to bear,” she writes.
The letter concludes: “Our concern is that to canonize him would not only be an affront to the California Indians that survive, it would tarnish the images of the saints we cherish. We implore you to reconsider the canonization of Junípero Serra.”
Serra was indeed canonized later in 2015. Did Ronstadt expect Pope Francis to respond to her written plea?
“I’m sure he never saw my letter,” she said. “But I felt I needed to write it no matter and put it in the book.”
Ronstadt sputtered good-naturedly when asked if she was no longer a practicing Catholic.
“I’m a practicing atheist,” Ronstadt said. “But I like this Pope and I think he would do more if he could. I think he’d let priests marry and would (OK) gay marriage.”
The subject of indigenous peoples is near and dear to her heart.
Ronstadt’s grandfather, Federico José María Ronstadt, was born in the Sonoran town of Banamichi. He migrated to her hometown of Tucson — about 200 miles to the north — in the early 1880s.
Her new 218-page memoir is a valentine to her family and the Mexican heritage she has long celebrated in words and music.
Growing up, Ronstadt and her family traveled often and freely between southern Arizona and northern Mexico. The physical landscape was the same on either side of the border and so were many of the people.
“For me,” Ronstadt writes in “Mi Pueblo,” “Feels Like Home’s” fourth chapter, “Spanish was the language you got scolded and praised in, and the language you sang in. Since I always sang in Spanish, it was always more natural for me to sing it than to speak it.”
But Spanish was not, she continues, a language embraced in her hometown or its schools, including the Catholic school she attended.
Passing for White
“You might ask why a place as indelibly Mexican as Tucson would punish schoolchildren for speaking the local language,” Ronstadt writes. “Or how members of a family like mine would mostly lose their mother tongue after my father’s generation. The Tucson of my childhood was segregated, both by law and hardened practice. The divisions by color, race and class, though not always talked about, were sharply drawn.”
Discrimination was rampant in Tucson, she writes. But because of her complexion, she was not subjected to the biases that her darker-skinned Latina friends and classmates encountered on a regular basis.
“If you are White, it’s different,” Ronstadt said in response to a question about her ability to pass. “I had very light skin and a German surname, so it was easy for people to think I wasn’t Mexican.”
By design, “Feels Like Home” also provides Ronstadt with a platform to deliver her cautionary tale about how a great nation that once welcomed immigrants now treats them as invaders to be feared.
In the most impassioned moment of her book, she takes aim directly at the actions initiated by then-President Donald Trump on Feb. 15, 2019.
“The forty-fifth president declared a national emergency at the border,” she writes, pointedly declining to identify him by name.
“It was a fake crisis, meant to stoke panic and anger over Central American migrants, many of them children, who were walking to Texas seeking refuge from murderous violence in their home countries. They posed no threat to the United States, but that meant nothing to the administration.
“The border ‘emergency,’ like the fortified border wall, told a very different American story. It said to people who are from south of here: ‘We fear you and hate you and we will do all we can to keep you out’ It would be more honest if we called our country the United States of Who the F--- Are You?”
The use of that word is all the more powerful for the fact that Ronstadt has almost never been known to use any profanity, at least not in the countless interviews she has done since earning her first Grammy nomination in 1971.
The fact that an editor at Heyday, the publisher of “Feels Like Home,” voiced concerns about the potentially jarring impact of her uncharacteristic use of the f-word — which, for the record, appears one other time in the book — did not dissuade Ronstadt in the least.
“I didn’t go back and forth,” she said. “I was adamant. It was the right word for the story.”
Does she use the f-word much in her day-to-day life?
“I use the word as a noun, a verb, and an adjective!” Ronstadt replied puckishly.
Co-writer Downes chuckled when told of her response.
“Linda doesn’t go out of her way to sound consciously, aggressively fowl or raunchy,” he noted. “But if she’s annoyed or angry, and the word is right, she’ll use it. Before this book ever got started, the bulk of our conversations were about immigration.”
Road trip!
Downes was an editorial writer for the New York Times who focused on immigration issues. He and Ronstadt became friends after his 2013 article about her, “Linda Ronstadt’s Borderland — A Road Trip Through Ronstadt Country.”
In 2019, the two reunited for a similar road trip. This time, though, they were accompanied by her longtime musical pal, Jackson Browne and the Bay Area Mexican folk music group Los Cenzontles (The Mockingbirds), which counts Ronstadt as a key board member and benefactor.
Also along for the ride was a film crew that chronicled her return to Banamichi, the Sonoran Desert hometown of her grandfather. The resulting documentary, “Linda and The Mockingbirds,” won acclaim after its release in 2020.
“I stayed away from the film crew,” Downes said. “I was there to do research for the book.”
How easy or difficult was it for Ronstadt and her co-author to weave together the array of different themes that course together throughout “Feels Like Home?”
“Well, it was hard,” she replied. “But it was a true collaboration. People are just on the other side of the border (in Mexico) and and it’s a wonderful culture with wonderful people, food and music.”
Asked what message in her book she hopes will most resonate with readers, Ronstadt replied: “That (Mexicans) are just people, really nice people, especially in that particular (Sonoran Desert) valley.
“And that the whole idea of having a border fence is ridiculous, because people will get over it. If you can build a 20-foot-fence, they’ll build a 21-foot ladder. Most ‘aliens’ fly in and overstay their visas. The border is is an expensive tragedy.”
Ronstadt’s well-documented history of political activism dates back to the 1970s. A proud liberal, she realizes “Feels Like Home” could offend those with a more conservative point of view — assuming they read the book in the first place.
“Most of those people aren’t open to any kind of reason, but you never know,” she said. “You just put it out there and don’t have any expectations for it. I just did it together with Lawrence and I’m really proud of it.
“I just put in what I felt like and if anybody doesn’t like it, too bad. The politics are a real important part of my personal life.”
And if her life were to inspire any noted film directors and actresses to seek her approval to make a Linda Ronstadt bio-pic?
“There’s nothing I can do about it,” she said glumly. “They can do it whether I would like it or not.”
Has she been approached?
“Oh, yeah, a lot of times,” Ronstadt replied.
“I can’t keep it from happening, I can just not cooperate.”
Her reason?
“Because all bio-pics are terrible!” she said. “Except the one about the Queen of England, ‘The Crown.’ I liked that.”
Linda Ronstadt bonus Q&A: She discusses her singing, politics, why rattlesnake tastes bad, and more www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/story/2022-09-23/linda-ronstadt-bonus-q-a-why-rattlesnakes-taste-bad-and-more Sept. 23, 2022
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Post by the Scribe on Sept 23, 2022 21:09:40 GMT
Linda Ronstadt bonus Q&A: She discusses her singing, politics, why rattlesnake tastes bad, and more www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/linda-ronstadt-bonus-q-a-she-discusses-her-singing-politics-why-rattlesnake-tastes-bad-and-more/ar-AA12aQRW George Varga - 3h ago
Support journalism
As a longtime social activist, would Linda Ronstadt ever consider going into politics?
"Never," she replied.
Why not?
"Because I'm not qualified for it. I'm qualified to be a singer."
That said, the 11-time Grammy Award-winner has never hesitated to speak her mind on a variety of subjects, musical and otherwise.
Witness her absorbing new memoir, "Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands,” which will be published Oct. 4 by Heyday. The book covers a lot of ground, including culture, music, geography, food, racism, her Mexican heritage, immigration policies and the family ties that transcend borders.
Ronstadt, 76, spoke with the San Diego Union-Tribune for nearly an hour last week. Here is our bonus Q&A with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee.
Q: Do you recall the classic Bo Diddley song, "Who Do You Love?"
Ronstadt: Yeah.
Q: He makes several references in the lyrics to rattlesnakes, but none to eating them. In "Feels Like Home," you write that you ate snake as a girl but didn’t like the way it tasted. What kind of snake was it?
Ronstadt: (laughing) Rattlesnake!
Q: So, even though you later write in your book: "I’m not here to argue, but I still believe in lard," lard can’t make a cooked rattle snake taste good?
Ronstadt: No! Its got a bad, fishy film.
Q: My only disappointment with your book is that it does not include a photo of you and your horse, Murphy, inside your house eating ice cream together on a hot summer day.
Ronstadt: (laughing) That happened a lot!
Q: You make two references in your book to "the 45th president," Donald J. Trump, but do not name him. Why not?
Ronstadt: Why don’t I name him? Because it is he who must not be named, like the bad guy in "Harry Potter," Voldemort.
Q: You were a Kennedy Center Honors recipient in 2019. At a dinner the night before, you had an exchange with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. What happened?
Ronstadt: In a reference to my work, he wondered aloud when would he be loved? I answered that he would be loved when he stopped enabling Donald Trump... Ordinarily, I wouldn’t do something like that because it's not in good manners. But this is an emergency, man. We have our rights and our democracy at stake, and need to speak up.
Q: We last spoke in 2004. We discussed how polarized the country had become and how half the audience booed and half cheered when, on your concert tour that year, you dedicated your encore of the Eagles' "Desperado" to filmmaker Michael Moore and hailed him as "a great American patriot." Does 2014 seem like a more innocent time now by comparison?
Ronstadt: No. I knew they would boo because San Diego is a very conservative city. But I didn't care. I felt Michael Moore deserved a lot of credit for what he did.
Q: Did you ever consider going into politics?
Ronstadt: Never.
Q: Because?
Ronstadt: Because I'm not qualified for it. I'm qualified to be a singer.
Q: When we spoke in 2004, you told me: "I never listen to anything I do after I finish (recording) it. If I do, it can ruin my week. I think: 'Ugh, that sucks!' " How about now? Are you less of a hard critic of yourself?
Ronstadt: (laughing) Oh, I think everything I do is terrible. If I'm working on it, I can always improve it. Once it's done, you can't improve it, even if you want to."
Q: Does music mean something more, or different, to you now than before the pandemic began?
Ronstadt: No. But the pandemic changed my life forever. I don’t go out anymore.
Q: You grew up in a very musical family in Tucson and moved to L.A. in your teens to pursue a singing career. Did you ever have any doubt you would not be a musician?
Ronstadt: No. It's all I knew how to do. I didn't think I was going to be famous. I thought that if I could make my living playing music and just be able to pay the rent, I'd be fine.
Q: So, how did you react when you did become famous?
Ronstadt: I was dumbfounded.
Q: Was it easier before you became famous, in that there were no expectations placed on you? Did it become more difficult after you achieved fame, because there were expectations to repeat and expand your commercial success?
Ronstadt: There was a lot of pressure on me to not do my Mexican music record and my big band album with Nelson Riddle, I was advised, sternly, not to do it. But, to their credit, when I put those albums out, the record company got behind them, even though they thought it wouldn't sell. They could have buried those records, but they didn't.
Q: Of all your albums, which are your proudest of?
Ronstadt: The Mexican music one, "Canciones de Mi Padre" ("Songs for My Father"). I worked really hard to make it be what I wanted it to be, which is pre-World War II ranchera music.
Q: Did you take more pride in the fact that album sold so well and made history?
Ronstadt: No. It doesn't matter. The work is what matters.
Q: When people read a music history book 100 years from now and get to your name, what do you hope to be remembered for?
Ronstadt: I hope that, 100 years from now, there will be a group of humans to read something, I think it's dicey; we may not be here a hundred years from now
Q: Does music give you hope?
Ronstadt: Music is there when hope is gone.
This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/story/2022-09-23/linda-ronstadt-bonus-q-a-why-rattlesnakes-taste-bad-and-more
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