“From the smallest root, we will grow back. If disturbed, we will proliferate. We may be weeds, but we’re beautiful just the same.”
Kathy Mar, “The Dandelion Conspiracy”
Dandelions are notoriously persistent. Ask after their reputations and you’ll get different answers from different people. Some will call them a nuisance; some say a useful and versatile herb. To many of us, they represent nostalgic times, long summer days, and wild wishmaking. What folks can agree on is that dandelions, above all else, are tenacious.
It’s this quality that first led to the association of dandelions with filk music. Decades ago, at a time when science fiction conventions and fandom spaces were often less than filk-friendly, Kathy Mar and Lindy Sears started an informal movement with the dandelion as its symbol. To this day, filkers embrace it as an emblem of adaptability and of beauty growing in humble and unexpected places.
In 2016, at my second Ohio Valley Filk Festival, Kathy Mar decided that I needed to meet Lauren. So Kathy took us to dinner and made introductions. With that single gesture, she scattered a couple of seeds to the wind, and wouldn’t you know it? They took right away. That night, Lauren and I found a few of our mutual friends and settled in a small room where we shared songs until breakfast time.
One bittersweet thing about home away from home: eventually, you have to leave. For as long as life is willing, there are returns, but between those reunions we must bide our time. Some of my closest friends live thousands of miles away. I feel so lucky every time we get to share space in person. I may need more than one hand to count the number of times I’ve shared space with Lauren, but not by much.
And yet–and yet. I have come to love some people I might get to see once a year.
I have sat in song circles with Lauren and experienced her singular talent. We’ve had the chance, a few times, to engage in spontaneous harmony. I’ve known from the start that Kathy was right.
Last year, Lauren Oxford released her self-titled debut album, recorded and produced at Sidekicks Studios with the same crew I am so privileged to be working with now. You can read my review of Lauren’s album here. Hearing that gorgeous work of art was a huge contributing factor in my excitement about the opportunity to make an album of my own. When I started planning and thinking about the people I’d love to work with, the first person I thought of was Lauren.
I’ve always had this feeling that our voices would fit together. I’m so grateful she agreed to collaborate with me, and I can’t wait to share what we’ve created. Lauren lends her voice to three songs on the album and plays her banjo on two of them. Being in the studio with my friend was something I’ll never forget. As much as I treasure the music we’re making, I am at least as glad for the time we got to spend just getting to know each other better.
I laughed more than I have in a long time. In the middle of the week, we took a breather at the seashore. It was, among many things, a great photo opportunity: Lauren is as fine a photographer as she is a musician, and we had a ton of fun running around Cannon Beach!
You took me in, my dandelion friend
There by your side I would find
There is shelter in the wind
One night we stayed up talking until dawn, and I think I treasure that most of all. It deepened our bond as well as my understanding of the things I admire so much about Lauren: her fierceness and courage, her wisdom and resilience.
When I thought of working with Lauren, “My Dandelion Friend” was what I thought of first. It’s a song that was always meant to be shared, and hearing her sing it back to me was everything I had imagined and more.
I wrote the song about the friendships we find and cultivate in the filk community and elsewhere, anywhere we feel free and safe to be ourselves. Not just tolerated, not just accepted, but welcomed and celebrated–welcoming and celebrating–because we have known how it feels to be turned away. Because we see each other and value each other. Because we belong together, in all our misfit multitudes, and we gather to give the lie to the word “unwanted.”
Breaking perennially through the cracks in the sidewalks, with a will to live and a drive to create that cannot be contained.
That’s what I think of when I think of my friend.
…also, possums!
Lauren Oxford is a songwriter, folksinger, multi-instrumentalist, and filker who lives in the mountains of East Tennessee with her wife Emma & their three cats. Her debut album combines heartfelt, vulnerable lyricism and lush, thoughtful orchestration.
She is also a member of four-person queer folk group The Starlight Darlins, whose first EP (The Winfield Sessions, Vol. 1) is also available on Bandcamp!
bio from laurenoxford.bandcamp.com
Summer Russell 
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