September 29 - October 3
Ferron's songs are autobiographical in the purest sense. The experiences are rendered with such emotional and artistic perfection that her songs become mirrors to the soul. While the outer events unfold as a story, the inner, deeper landscape beckons us to the realm of fate, choice, paradox, and sensuality. Her singing combines the hard edge of life with the tenderness of unbounded love. Although highly crafted, the result is direct and intimate.
I like to take people who can't write at all and help them to realize their own precious story, their own point of view. There's a lot of fun seeing what matters and how it matters. I like the idea of people discovering their voice, their palette of memories.
Take a week from your life to live the life of a writer, working in a focused way with the company and support of other writers, with the guidance of a gifted writer who has also learned she loves to nurture others in the creative process. Ferron is a passionate, empowering teacher, and she welcomes any kind of artist, whether writing or water color. In the mornings, after a great breakfast, we'll meet and do some speedwriting exercises meant to open up to the immensity you hold inside. Or Ferron may have some other exercise up her sleeve that morning to get you going. You'll be invited to commit yourself to a drawing, a paragraph, a page, a song. After lunch you'll work alone with the time to focus deeply on one piece. Then we'll have a fine dinner together, after which we'll share or show the work we've been doing with each other. Rowe will be having Work Week while we meet, so Thursday evening we'll have a built-in audience with whom to share our work, and Ferron will share some of her own works-in-process. Twice the length of a normal weekend, this retreat only costs 50% more than your usual fees. The workshop begins with dinner at 6:30 on Monday and ends with lunch at 12:30 on Friday.
Raised in a struggling working class environment near Vancouver, Ferron left home at 15 to work and to develop the music that was growing inside her. As she performed, she continually put her heart on the line. By the time Rolling Stone magazine had given Shadows on a Dime a 4-star rating, she had already gained a nearly fanatical following. Ferron's deeply introspective, sometimes oblique lyrics and the hushed, splintered grain of her voice invited comparisons with Bob Dylan. The Boston Globe claimed that "someday, they will call Dylan the Ferron of the '60s." She toured with the Indigo Girls on and off from 1990 to 1996, yet she's remained something less than a household name, but something more than a legend.
- Ferron
"Ferron's workshop was the most outstanding of the six I've attended at Rowe, and that's saying something! Deftly, firmly, she led me on a journey that drew out a song expressing something I've needed to say for decades, and I witnessed others having similar life-changing, artistic experiences. Her workshop is about writing in all its forms, not just song writing, for she taught us to court the Muse through valuing our own experience and tapping our personal imagery." - Sarah Buchholz