On the first listens to Amy Grant’s new single, The 6th Of January (Yasgurs Farm), I thought it might be an attempt, somewhat belated, to protest the attack on the US Capitol building in 2021. A logical conclusion given the title of the song and the lack of other significant events on that date in history.
However, after doing a cover, and going back to the Joni Mitchell song, Woodstock (that provides a few of the lines in the song), I’m not so sure.
Amy is singing the words written by Sandy Emory Lawrence, who is hard to track down on the internet, but did win an ASCAP song writing award in 2014.
For those not familiar with Amy Grant, she has sold over 30 million albums and was one of the few Christian Music artists to successfully move to, and make a career in, the secular pop music scene. This release is her first new music to be published in ten years.
During the 80s, Amy’s music was the soundtrack to almost every Pentecostal Christian child’s life. So seeing this song pop up sparked my interest.
Obviously the words are Sandy’s, but Amy chose to sing them, so was this a softly-softly attempt to talk the US down from its Christo-Fascist ledge under the absurd Messianic guidance of Trump? As anyone who has engaged Trump supporters knows, as soon as you take any tone of criticism, they won’t listen further; so it stands to reason that any attempt to reach them through a song would need to come at the problem slantways.
She says maybe it’s the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
60’s playlist and a beer
I’m suddenly 16 again
What’s the future hold in store
What’s it hiding up its sleeve
All that wide-eyed hope
Were we so naive
The first verse of the song lifts directly from the second verse of Joni’s song. Looking back at being 16, drinking beer and having a naive view of the future. In Joni’s words the ‘Time of Man’ probably references the humanistic underpinnings of the 60s revolution that led to Woodstock, but the use of the phrase in this song isn’t so clear. We know the song is looking at Woodstock, with the Yasgur’s Farm (not the first song to be written about the location for the Woodstock concert) referenced in the chorus, but Joni was writing as it happened, this song is 57 years later. It could be that this author is listening to Joni’s song in the present day and thinking about where we have come to, and where we are going.
Verse two muses on the fact that supermarkets play John Lennon’s Imagine, but the instrumental version. This mention of Lennon has already drawn many a hate comment from Christians who clutch their pearls at the thought of imagining a world ‘With no Religion’. What is the reason for putting this in the song? Sandy mentions John Lennon as an inspiration, but there is a subtext here implying that an artist who tries to say something shocking is likely to find that over time their message is diluted down to nothing.
The Chorus:
Where’s the road to Yasgur’s farm
He stares at me with pity and alarm
Says that crowd left here long ago
Scattered all to hell and Harper’s Ferry
On the 6th of January
The chorus, to me, is one of those pieces of writing where you hum along happily thinking that you know what it is about, because it sounds nice. But when you actually stop and ask what it means, that becomes a little tricky.
Is Sandy saying that the Woodstock crowd went to Hell? And how does it relate to the 6th of January Capitol riot? My initial take was that this song was mourning the fact that we have lost the ideals of the million people that went to Woodstock, the ones who were supposed to create a future of love, freedom and hope. But that reading can’t be supported by the words.
Harper’s Ferry is nowhere near Yasgur’s farm, the use in the song is most likely a reference to John Brown and his raid on the Armory there in 1859. Is John Brown the Capitol rioters, and a prediction that their actions will lead to Civil War as John Brown’s did?
Another reading here is that the children of the flower power revolution generation are exactly the ones that got sucked into Q Anon nonsense and raided the Capitol on January 6th. The crowd left the ideals of Woodstock and raised monsters.
And we’re driving home and the radio plays
What’s goin’ on? Marvin Gaye
Is it right on red or left on MLK
I look ahead and realize we’ve lost our way
The bridge at least provides the clear statement that we have collectively lost our way. And the previous line poses a left or right choice, but the options are unclear. The Marvin Gaye song isn’t just referenced to make the rhyme, that song is a plea from the Woodstock hippies asking to be listened to and not beaten. If the choices are Martin Luther King or Red (Communism), neither of those map to the choice currently facing the US. That choice is the rules based order and the power of congress and the court to hold a President to account, versus a dictatorship where young women are shot in the face for talking back to men, and both the media and the administration lie about it.
In conclusion, I don’t know what this song means, or if it was ever intended to have a meaning. Did Amy and Sandy just know that putting ‘6th January’ in the title would spark some discussion?