Leonard Cohen 30-Day Tribute ... Day 8: Janis Joplin and the Chelsea Hotel

Day 8: Elegy to Janis Joplin ... Chelsea Hotel #2

From Rolling Stones article about how Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin met:

In the spring of 1968, the Chelsea Hotel was far more famous than its occupant in Room 424. Leonard Cohen had forsaken his life as an established novelist and poet in Canada for a place in New York City’s flourishing folk singer-songwriter scene, and so far the gamble hadn’t paid off. In an era when “don’t trust anyone over 30” was a common mantra, the 33-year-old’s early auditions often concluded with dismissive variations of “Aren’t you a little old for this game?”

Though the intellectual pedigree and the dense lyrical thickets in his music drew the inevitable comparisons to reigning rock poet laureate Bob Dylan, his 1967 debut, Songs of Leonard Cohen, was met with limited success when it was released the previous December. Adding insult to injury, a legal technicality cost him the copyright to three of his best songs – including “Suzanne,” which had recorded by Judy Collins.

A New York Times article from the period captured his malaise as he anxiously struggled to construct his new identity: “He puts up at the Chelsea or the Henry Hudson Hotel, rarely mixes with the local litterateurs, and sometimes spends whole days in front of the mirror trying to figure out where the lines in his face came from.”

The Chelsea Hotel

While Cohen’s gloomy, gritty and romantic mythology was still in its nascent phase, the Chelsea’s was fully formed. Situated at 222 West 23rd Street, the imposing redbrick ruled the block with a gothic grandeur. Its four hundred rooms had housed literary luminaries including Mark Twain, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Jackson Pollock and Arthur Miller, who offered a succinct summation of the bohemian ambiance: “No vacuum cleaners, no rules, no shame.” Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey while in residence there, and Jack Kerouac pounded out On the Road in his room. Sid Vicious and girlfriend Nancy Spungen’s tragic visit was still more than a decade off, but poet Dylan Thomas entered his fatal coma during his Chelsea stay in 1953. 

By the Sixties, the Chelsea Hotel had become a headquarters for the emerging rock elite, hosting Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead and Dylan himself. Some paid tribute to their temporary digs in song. Joni Mitchell’s “Chelsea Morning” name checks the hostelry, as does the Lou Reed–penned “Chelsea Girl” and Jefferson Airplane’s “Third Week in the Chelsea.” 

Cohen old SongTalk in 1993, "It was a grand, mad place. I love hotels to which, at 4 a.m., you can bring along a midget, a bear and four ladies, take them to your room and no one cares about it at all.”

When Cohen and Joplin saw each other again, years after their one night fling, she asked him, "Hey man, you in town to read poetry for old ladies?"

Janis died October 4th, 1970, of a heroin overdose. 

Click here for the video:

Lyrics from the article:

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel

You were talking so brave and so free

Giving me head on the unmade bed

While the limousines wait in the street

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel 

You were famous, your heart was a legend
You told me again you preferred handsome men 

But for me you would make an exception


And clenching your fist for the ones like us 

Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty 

You fixed yourself, you said, “Well, never mind
. …
We are ugly but we have the music” 

Cohen later described the highlighted lyrics as locker-room talk and said they were "The sole indiscretion, in my professional life, that I deeply regret.” He was sorry for identifying Janis Joplin with that line.

Leonard Cohen 30-Day Tribute ... Day 7: With Judy Collins

Day 7: "Hey, Thats No Way To Say Goobye" 1976 with Judy Collins

Judy Collins welcomes Leonard Cohen to her PBS TV concert performance in this video clip from January 1976. They perform Cohen's song, "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye," which Judy had recorded for her 1967 landmark album, Wildflowers.  

Judy met Leonard before he, or the world, knew that his poems could be songs. In 1966, they met and he sang her three songs: "Dress Rehearsal Rag'" "Suzanne," and "The Stranger." She recorded the first two and says she will someday record the third.

Click here for video of Cohen and Collins:

 

Judy Collins has a 2-part interview about the beginning of her collaboration with Cohen:

Part 1 here.  Part 2 here. 

Here's Judy singing Dress Rehearsal Rag:

Leonard Cohen 30-Day Tribute ... Day 6: Hallelujah and more

Day 6: Hallelujah!

No, Leonard ... we are NOT going to stop singing and listening to Hallelujah.

Here's an interview with David Whitwell about the song which Cohen asks us to stop singing for a while and which almost didn't get published in 1984. It is now a favorite around the world and has been recorded by 200 or more other groups. Click here for interview:

One of the many movies that have incorporated the song was Saint Ralph, a 2004 Canadian comedy-drama film written and directed by Michael McGowan. Its central character is a teenage boy who trains for the 1954 Boston Marathon in the hope a victory will be the miracle his mother needs to awaken from a coma. The movie is about miracles and giving everything you've got to make something happen.

In this movie there is a verse (there are apparently 84) that I had never heard and wish someone would record:

Remember when I moved in you,

The holy dove was moving, too

Every breath we drew was Hallelujah.

I did my best. It wasn't much,

Couldn't feel so I tried to touch,

I told the truth, I didn't come to fool you.

And even though it all went wrong

I'll stand before the Lord of Song

With nothing on my tongue but

Hallelujah!

Click here to hear the original version.

Click here to hear the K.D. Laing version.

Click here to watch the trailer for Saint Ralph.

Click here for the final race scene and song. 

 

Newsweek put out a list of 60 versions of Hallelujah so you can pick your favorite. They picked John Cale (I'm Your Fan, 1991) as their #1 but I prefer Jeff Buckley (Grace, 1994), about which they wrote:

So many of the song's fans believe Buckley wrote "Hallelujah," and he may as well have, in a sense: He reimagined it in remarkable ways and brought it to popular light, even if he never lived to see the effect. Buckley's unforgettable recording, which serves as the centerpiece of 1994's Grace, opens with a literal exhale and closes with Buckley dragging out the titular exultation for 10 soaring seconds. In between, the singer deconstruct's Cohen's song as a trembling, achingly raw solo performance set to lilting electric guitar figures. There are highlights: the way Buckley's voice threatens to crack on the "Cold and broken" phrase, the way his murmur rises suddenly to a shout around the six-minute mark, the way the ebb-and-flow guitar arpeggio first enters the track 47 seconds in. Buckley described the song as "a hallelujah to the orgasm…an ode to life and love," and his version is a dreamlike gift that guarantees a lasting legacy for the late performer. —ZS

Here's the Buckley version:

 

YouTube Leonard Cohen playlist.

Leonard Cohen 30-Day Tribute ... Day 5: That's how the light gets in

Day 5: "Anthem"

Probably Cohen’s most beloved lines come from his song “Anthem,” released in 1992.

 

Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in. 

Click here for YouTube video and song.

Story from the blog titled "That's how the light gets in"

 Leonard Cohen once explained the meaning of the song as follows:

That is the background of the whole record, I mean if you have to come up with a philosophical ground, that is “Ring the bells that still can ring.” It’s no excuse… the dismal situation.. and the future is no excuse for an abdication of your own personal responsibilities towards yourself and your job and your love.

“Ring the bells that still can ring”: they’re few and far between but you can find them. “Forget your perfect offering”, that is the hang-up, that you’re gonna work this thing out. Because we confuse this idea and we’ve forgotten the central myth of our culture which is the expulsion from the garden of Eden. This situation does not admit of solution or perfection. This is not the place where you make things perfect, neither in your marriage, nor in your work, nor anything, nor your love of God, nor your love of family or country.

The thing is imperfect. And worse, there is a crack in everything that you can put together, physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where the light gets in, and that’s where the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things.
–  from Diamonds in the Line 

Howard Jacobson discussed this lyric recently in the Independent:

Those great lines from the song “Anthem”. Ring the bells etc. Forget your perfect offering. There’s a crack – a crack in everything.

It’s like a reprimand to people of my temperament – life’s complainants, eroticists of disappointment, lovers only of what’s flawless and overwrought.

Could he be singing this to me? You expect too much, mister. You are too unforgiving. Not everything works out, not everything is great, and not everyone must like what you like.

I’ve been taught this lesson before. I remember reading an essay by the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa in which he argues for the necessity of vulgarity in serious literature. Thomas Hardy said a writer needed to be imperfectly grammatical some of the time. Mailer told an audience that not everybody wanted to ride in a Lamborghini. And now here’s Leonard Cohen saying the same thing. Forget your perfect offering. There’s a crack…

And then comes another, still more wonderful, clinching line – “That’s how the light gets in.” Savour that! At a stroke, weakness becomes strength and fault becomes virtue. I feel as though original sin has just been re-explained to me. There was no fall. We were born flawed. Flawed is how we were designed to be. Which means we don’t need redeeming after all. Light? Why go searching for light? The light already shines from us. It got in through our failings.

 Another article from Quartz adds more nuances:

Cohen, who didn’t like explaining his music, reportedly made a rare statement about “Anthem” on The Future Radio Special, a special CD released by Sony in 1992. (Quartz hasn’t been able to independently verify the transcript, which was published on a fan sit

The future is no excuse for an abdication of your own personal responsibilities towards yourself and your job and your love. “Ring the bells that still can ring”: they’re few and far between but you can find them.
This situation does not admit of solution of perfection. This is not the place where you make things perfect, neither in your marriage, nor in your work, nor anything, nor your love of God, nor your love of family or country. The thing is imperfect.
And worse, there is a crack in everything that you can put together: Physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where the light gets in, and that’s where the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things.

In dark times, poetry and music often become more important to us, providing the kind of transcendence we need to interpret painful events in a wider context. And Cohen wrote “Anthem,” one of his most beautiful and hopeful songs, in a tumultuous global period.

The Future as an album is full of references to traumatic historical events, including Hiroshima and the Second World War. While Cohen was writing Anthem (it took him 10 (years) to eventually complete the song), the Berlin Wall fell—on the same day, November 8th, that Donald Trump would be elected to the US presidency 27 years later. But that year, 1989, also saw a massacre of students in Tiananmen Square.

Cohen was known for a habit of seeing things “darker” than others. Even the fall of the wall wasn’t exactly a sign of hope for him, he said later.

Since Cohen’s death, in an anarchic week in the US, the lyrics of “Anthem” specifically are resonating across the internet.

The song itself contains a characteristic mixture of what David Remnick, in a recent New Yorker profile of Cohen, calls “the marriage of the sacred and profane.” Christian imagery—the dove, the bells—infuses it. Though Cohen was Jewish, he studied Zen Buddhism deeply, becoming a monk for several years, and was fascinated by other religious traditions.

Cohen didn’t like dissecting his work. ”As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one’s life or one’s work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now,” he told Remnick before his death.

Cohen and Rebecca de Mournay

But there are glimpses into what “Anthem” meant to him. He was in a relationship with Rebecca de Mournay during many of the years he was writing it, and told an interviewer (again, from the fan site) that she had helped him through the worst doubts in writing the piece:

“I’ve been playing this song for many years and I knew that I was on the track of a really good song. I knew it stood for something clear and strong in my own heart. And I despaired of ever getting it and I was playing it on Rebecca’s synthesizer, and she said ‘That’s perfect just like that.’ And I said ‘Really?’  She said ‘Yeah, let’s go down to the studio now!'”

Ultimately, he stood by it fiercely. “There’s not a line in it that I couldn’t defend,” he said.

Here are the words in full:

The birds they sing, at the break of day
Start again, I heard them say.
Don’t dwell on what has passed away
Or what is yet to be.

Yes, the wars, they will be fought again
The holy dove she will be caught again
Bought, and soul, and bought again
The dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

We asked for signs. The signs were sent
The birth betrayed. The marriage spent
Yeah, the widowhood of every government
Signs for all to see.

I can’t run no more, with that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places say their prayers out loud
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up a thundercloud
They’re going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

You can add up the parts; you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march, there is no drum
Every heart, every heart to love will come
But like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen 30-Day Tribute ... Day 4: Democracy is coming to the USA

Day 4: Democracy Is Coming to the USA

We need this song ... may it go from Leonard's heart to God's ears.

Cohen was a Canadian singer, songwriter, poet, and novelist. He had received positive attention from critics as a poet and novelist but had maintained a keen interest in music, having played guitar in a country and western band called the Buckskin Boys as a teenager.

In 1966, Cohen set out for Nashville, where he hoped to become a country songwriter, but instead got caught up in New York City's folk scene. His first album was classified as contemporary folk. (Wikipedia)

Lyrics are shown below.

Full Leonard Cohen YouTube playlist here.

Click here for Democracy video.

It's coming through a hole in the air
From those nights in Tiananmen Square
It's coming from the feel
That this ain't exactly real
Or it's real, but it ain't exactly there
From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the USA

It's coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
From the staggering account
Of the Sermon on the Mount
Which I don't pretend to understand at all
It's coming from the silence
On the dock of the bay,
From the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of Chevrolet
Democracy is coming to the USA

It's coming from the sorrow in the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin'
That goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat
From the wells of disappointment
Where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here
And the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the USA

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on

It's coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It's here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it's here they got the spiritual thirst
It's here the family's broken
And it's here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the USA

It's coming from the women and the men
O baby, we'll be making love again
We'll be going down so deep
The river's going to weep,
And the mountain's going to shout Amen
It's coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the USA

Sail on, sail on

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
That Time cannot decay
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
This little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the USA

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen 30-Day Tribute ... Day 3: First album - the story of "Suzanne"

Click here to hear original "Suzanne."

Songs of Leonard Cohen is the debut album by Canadian folk singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, released on December 27, 1967 on Columbia Records. Less successful in the US than in Europe, Songs of Leonard Cohen foreshadowed the kind of chart success Cohen would go on to achieve.  -- Wikipedia

"Suzanne" was one of his biggest hits and hearing his young voice takes me back a zillion years.  Here is the original version and a concert version from years later where he alludes to the incident where he had some of his copyrights stolen, saying:

"It was a song that people loved and fortunately the rights to it were stolen from me. I thought that was perfectly justified because it would be wrong to write this song and get rich from it, too.

"I'm happy for that friend who put that piece of paper in front of me and said, "Sign this." So I said, "What is this?" And he said, "Oh, it's just a standard writer's contract."

"So, I signed it, and it was gone."

Click here for"Suzanne" in concert.

Notes from the YouTube video:

Perhaps his most memorable song from Canadian poet/songwriter & performer Leonard Cohen. Cohen specified, notably in a BBC interview, that the song was about encountering Suzanne Verdal, the then wife of sculptor Armand Vaillancourt, in a Montreal setting. 

 

Indeed, many lines describe different elements of the city, including its river (the Saint Lawrence) and a little chapel near the harbour, called Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours (literally Our Lady of Good Help), which sits on the side of the harbour that faces the rising sun in the morning, as it is described in the song. 

 

Suzanne Verdal was interviewed by CBC News's The National in 2006 about the song. Verdal claims that she and Cohen never had sexual relations, contrary to what some interpretations of the song suggest. Cohen himself stated in a 1994 BBC interview that he only imagined having sex with her, as there was neither the opportunity nor inclination to actually go through with it. 

 

She says she has met Cohen twice since the song's initial popularity; once after a concert Cohen performed in the 1970s and once in passing in the 1990s when she danced for him, but Cohen did not speak to her (and possibly did not recognise her). In any case, its lyrics first appeared as the poem "Suzanne Takes You Down" in Cohen's 1966 book of poetry Parasites of Heaven, admittedly because of lack of new material (lyrics to a few other songs from his subsequent 1967 debut album were also printed in the book).

Leonard Cohen 30-Day Tribute ... Day 2: Happens to the Heart

Day 2: What Happens to the Heart

Not only does Cohen have a last album, he has a last book: The Flame. (available on Kindle)

Amazon's write up:
“There are very, very few people who occupy the ground that Leonard Cohen walks on.” ―BONO
The Flame is the final work from Leonard Cohen, the revered poet and musician whose fans span generations and whose work is celebrated throughout the world. Featuring poems, excerpts from his private notebooks, lyrics, and hand-drawn self-portraits, The Flame offers an unprecedentedly intimate look inside the life and mind of a singular artist.

A reckoning with a life lived deeply and passionately, with wit and panache, The Flame is a valedictory work.

“This volume contains my father’s final efforts as a poet,” writes Cohen’s son, Adam Cohen, in his foreword. “It was what he was staying alive to do, his sole breathing purpose at the end.”

Leonard Cohen died in late 2016. But “each page of paper that he blackened,” in the words of his son, “was lasting evidence of a burning soul.”

***

"What Happens to the Heart" is on the album and in the book. For me, his voice is such a crucial piece of who he is that I prefer to hear him. However, when I read this poem in the book yesterday, I could hear his voice in my head.

Here's the video ... enjoy!

What Happens to the Heart

Leonard Cohen 30-Day Tribute ... Day 1: Thanks for the Dance

Day 1: Thanks for the Dance

This morning a friend told me about an NPR interview with Leonard Cohen's son talking about the posthumous album that has just been released. In the interview, Adam Cohen said something that helped me understand why Leonard Cohen has always touched so many of us so deeply: "He (Leonard Cohen) invites you into your own inner life because he takes the inner life seriously." 

Listening to the NPR interview made me want to reconnect, not only with the new work but with his entire body of work, so I will be posting a 30-day tribute to say thank you to this musical genius.

Sometimes a man dies but his words, his poetry … his spirit … lives on and gives birth to something new in the world. Leonard Cohen is one of those spirits who will gift us for years to come.

His last album, “Thanks for the Dance” is the result of a lot of people collaborating for  three years after his death to extend the magic, the music, the legacy of a unique human being. Thanks to everyone for this gift.

 Rolling Stone calls the new album a “posthumous grace note … a work as alive, challenging, and essential as anything issued in the artist’s lifetime."

This video shares the beautiful love story of the creation of this new album: 

 Also listen to: NPR’s Terry Gross interview with Adam Cohen about the last book and last album of his father.

Love Letters to my life #17: Roots by choice

Persimmon Tree (Photo: Kansas Forest Service)

by Joyce Wycoff

(We know the day we were born, but most of us do not know the day we will die. This love letter to my life is written on the day I've designated as my death day, the 17th of every month,
and reminds me to be grateful for my incredible life.)

On the 13-acre “farm” where I grew up, there was a young persimmon tree that offered a branch perfect for climbing. It was my tree, my place. The fruits were small, hard and puckery while green, sweet and comforting when they turned that odd persimmon orange. I’ve been thinking about that place in southeastern Kansas, that lonely life on a farm outside of the village, outside of the town, outside of the world it seemed.

 
This isn’t my tree. I didn’t have a camera then and I don’t know if it still lives, but this is how I remember it, standing at the edge of an open field, giving me a bird's-eye view to the house, the road, and the woods behind me. Beside it, a thorny hedge apple tree dropped its strange baseball-sized, pebbly green fruits every year to animals who weren’t interested.

The woods behind the fields, though, offered a banquet: two mulberry trees, one purple and one white, a hickory tree where the squirrels hung out, and a black walnut tree with nuts so rich and sweet I always felt sorry for people in California who had to eat the bland English walnuts that we bought at Christmas time. My dad later sold that walnut tree for an amazing sum that was about four times what they paid for the whole property when we moved there.

I am currently working on a book about my two years in Mexico with photos and art from that time. There are so many memories and moments of beauty from there and so few remembered from my childhood. One theme of the book is family and roots, as well as my perceived lack of them. That persimmon tree is a memory that persists.

What is beauty?
My current project is an art, photos, and stories book:
Kaleidoscope of Mexico ... a journey homeward
Why I moved to Mexico ... what I learned there ... why I left.

Abundance surrounded our tiny, never-quite-finished house. Beyond the trees in the woods, there was a prolific pecan tree near the house and a tiny orchard with one each of peach, pear, and apple. Blackberry bushes ran along the fence row although picking them meant braving the ticks, chiggers and copper heads. We raised chickens, one pig and one calf. My dad butchered the calf but my mom had fallen in love with the pig who had to be sold when she had piglets (don’t remember how that happened) and became too much to handle. In our overly ambitious garden plots, we had corn, tomatoes, green peppers, onions, peas, carrots, green beans, potatoes, and so many watermelons that we cracked them open in the field and just ate the hearts. Had we been a real farm family from pioneer days, that tiny farm could have fed us.

What strikes me now is how little I appreciated that abundance and beauty. When I searched for a photo of the persimmon tree to refresh my memory, I found that it was native to southeastern Kansas and only adapted to the eastern slice of the state. 

For some reason, the thought that “my tree” was rooted in that land by choice shocked me. It wasn’t a transplant; it might not even have been planted at all. Somehow a seed, perhaps from a passing bird or squirrel, had dropped onto fertile soil and sprouted, sinking its roots, growing tall, providing open arms for a lonely little girl. 

I’ve had trouble finding my place and wonder if this “quirky by choice” biggest little city in the world might be what I’ve been seeking. Reno is set in a broad valley with the sparkling Truckee River running through it and the snow-capped Sierra as the movie set back drop. It is also base camp for Burning Man which comes and goes, dropping huge pieces of art behind as it leaves. 

The Gathering (part of a piece from Burning Man)

The Mod at Riverwalk

This high desert town with its history of gambling, divorce, and prostitution, now thrums with art and murals, music and festivals. It has become a magnet for the scattered pieces of our small, wandering family, so I hope it is where we will remain, allowing our roots finally rest in this stunning land.

Art Towns: Elko, Nevada paints the town!

Gertrude Stein once said,”there’s no there there,” about her hometown of Oakland, California.

Elko, Nevada, definitely has a "there there.” Long known as one of the top western towns in the US, it is quickly becoming an art town of note. 

For 35 years, the Western Folklife Center’s annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering has filled the town with music, poetry, stories, dancing and workshops focused on the old and new West. In July, the town celebrates its Basque sheepherder culture with a Basque festival, and the oldest rodeo in the state, the Silver State Stampede. 

Building on its heritage, Elko embraces art

Elko Courthouse

Ruby Mountains, Sierra Club photo

Art and beauty are part of Elko’s heritage: natural beauty from its location on the Humboldt River and surrounded by the Ruby Mountains (often called the Alps of Nevada), and architectural beauty including the shallow, copper dome of its Neo-classical courthouse which gleams in the sunlight and can be seen from many parts of town. Elko’s Arts and Culture Advisory Council, however, continues to build on this legacy.

When the New York Port Authority offered pieces of the 9/11 rubble to cities and towns across America if they would incorporate the pieces into monuments, only five entities stepped up to the challenge of creating a perpetual remembrance. One of them was Elko which dedicated the sculpture Freedom on September 11, 2012.  

Freedom

Information about Freedom

Boots and Murals

In the past few years, the town has begun to fill up with boots … giant, painted cowboy boots … 56 to date. 

And, in September, 2019, the council worked with Art Spot Reno to create the Elko Mural Expo, which, in five days with 43 local, state and international artists, painted the town a  thousand colors. Here is a sampling of the 61 incredible murals:

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

I'm in Elko, too ... come see me!

No ... come see me ... I'm bigger!