Port Arthur Texas? They had giant oil rigs. And it was her hometown. That’s all I knew about the place back then
I was a kid, sneaking through the lush, dark snapping bushes that surrounded an outdoor concert venue north of Chicago because she’d be singing that night. And I’d heard things about the way she sang. Tonight backed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. And they were hometown guys. So we knew there’d be some reason to be there. We didn’t know that it would be her.
Then she began to sing. And the world shook. Not having the words at 16, I shook too. This wasn’t just the blues or rock and roll. This, I learned across the decades, was a set of songs that told the story of pain. And because she could sing about that pain, she could somehow capture and hold it and make you believe you’d be strong again.
Nobody sang pain like she did.
Touching what’s most terrifying, bleeding red raw and alone.
Janis found what hurt most. Like tonight. In Port Arthur. As the water rose to the top of the cots set up in the evacuation center. As Houston wept. As the country got quiet.
As the first responders, the neighbors, the military, the cops, firemen and all those who do helicopter rescues from roof tops at night in the rain; as they all left us dazzled.
As our common connection to this national tragedy rose to the surface. As the water kept coming, as the years of recovery ahead flashed in the empty moments of waiting that make up so much of survival, as the water rose in Port Arthur—that home town woman faced off against our common pain.
And when I listed to her tonight, I hoped they were listening in her hometown, in Port Arthur.
I hoped they heard her music standing up to all that pain