The Kitchen Musician ~ April 2026

Hello Friends,

This month I have the honor of a posthumous collaboration with Malvina Reynolds, one of my folk heroes. Join me as I sing “Today is the Day I Grow Old.”

Index

  NEWS:
  THIS MONTH’S MUSIC: “Today is the Day I Grow Old”
  UPCOMING SHOWS
  FEATURED NON-PROFIT: Indivisible

With Seth Connelly and Jackie Damsky
Parish Center for the Arts, Westford, MA, Photo: Margo Smith

News:

I continue to sing at various political actions near Boston. The NoKings III protests were amazing – a reported 8 million or more protesting the lawless behavior of the current administration. I sang for the events in Wellesley and Needham, MA. I am also supporting the Wednesday and Thursday rallies at the I.C.E. Field Office in Burlington, MA. More info here and here.

Upcoming Shows

April 26, Sunday, Marlborough, MA, 12:00 noon: I will perform a 50 minute program entitled “(Mostly) New Topical Songs” at the New England Folk Festival. The festival runs from Friday through Sunday. This is the 82nd annual New England Folk Festival, and although I lost track, I believe I have been on the program for about half of them.

June 21, Sunday, Dedham, MA, 3:00 pm. Some friends and I are organizing a very special event entitled “Fight Back with a Song.” I can’t spill the beans yet, but I think that this will be one that you won’t want to miss. To be sure that you are among the first to learn the details, I suggest you subscribe to my mailing list.

August 21, Friday, Jaffrey, NH, 7:30 pm (Time may change). Cosy Sheridan and I have the honor to share a presentation at The Amos Fortune Forum, at the historic Jaffrey Meeting House. We will perform our original songs and discuss the songwriting process.

All show details can be found at upcoming shows.

This Month’s Music: “Today is the Day I Grow Old”

“Today is the Day I Grow Old”
℗© 2025 Peabody Hill Publishing (ASCAP)

I have long admired the music and “attitude” of Malvina Reynolds. She started singing old folk ballads in college, and writing a few songs, but only became known as a songwriter outside of the folkie and leftie community in her fifties. That’s when Harry Belafonte recorded her song “Turn Around”, which was also the sound track for a popular Kodak television commercial in 1961. Malvina Reynolds stands among the likes of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and other important figures of the American folk revival. I only saw her live performance once, and that was late in her life in the 1970’s; but her tiny figure on stage at the Hampshire College Folk Festival only confirmed my respect for her timely, intelligent songs and authentic, unassuming performance.

It is my good luck to be friends with Malvina’s daughter Nancy Schimmel via the Children’s Music Network. Like her mother, Nancy has had a notable career of making music for children. Malvina was a prolific songwriter and poet, so when Nancy told me that she was preparing her mother’s library and archives to go to the Southern Folklife Collection of the University of North Carolina Libraries I asked if perhaps there might be any unpublished poems or half-done songs that she would be willing to share with me. My hope was that there might be something there which I could help finish or turn into a song. Nancy did share some unpublished poems, but said “I don’t think many would lend themselves to that, though you’re welcome to try.”

Indeed, many of her unpublished poems didn’t lend themselves to being set to music; but my attention kept returning to “Today is the Day I Grow Old.” Malvina must have written it late in life while thinking about her own mortality. This is a theme that hits close to home as I recently was granted the privilege of turning over my 77th year, the same age as Malvina when she died. To make sense of one line of this poem, you need to know that Malvina had striking white hair even as a young woman, and many people commented on it. It was a challenge to find a melody but I think it fits the emotion of the poem. I also wrote an entirely new second verse that imagines Malvina’s tough spirit and dedication to writing songs for social justice and progressive causes, even as she saw the approaching end of her own life. In a way, I think of it in the same way I think of Pete Seeger’s “To My Old Brown Earth.”

For those who are not familiar with Malvina Reynolds, I suggest you watch this terrific 9 minute retrospective by Scott Alarik, released when Malvina was posthumously awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 by Folk Alliance International. (If you want more, here is an intimate but rather poor recording of “Love It Like a Fool“, a 28 minute documentary directed by Susan Wengraf, released in 1977.)

“Malvina Reynolds – International Lifetime Achievement Award 2017”
Folk Alliance

Here is Malvina singing a song that would be an excellent addition to any program commenting on the recent “war of choice” that is being fought in Iran.

“We Hate to See Them Go” by Malvina Reynolds
As appears on her self-titled 1970 album

In the Malvina Reynolds documentary “Love it Like a Fool”, she ruminates about death and then sings her song “This World“, the final verse of which is:

Somebody else will take my place
Some other hand, some other face
Some other eyes will look around
And find the things I never found
Don’t weep for me when I am gone
Just keep this old world rolling on
This world, this world, this world

We are trying, Malvina!

Tom

(If so inclined, I invite you to leave a comment by scrolling to the end of this page.)

Featured Non-profit: Indivisible

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When you join Indivisible, you join a movement, not a nonprofit. There are more than 2,000 local, volunteer-led Indivisible groups in urban, suburban, and rural communities across every state in the country.”

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