Furthermore, you represent and warrant that you will not allow any minor access to this site or services. This website should only be accessed if you are at least 18 years old or of legal age to view such material in your local jurisdiction, whichever is greater. In this world, at this time, can love really join the tribes of man? It was not a question when the Judds asked, “Don't you think it's time?” Naomi knew the answer all along.You are about to enter a website that contains explicit material (pornography). It was so beautiful and artful, he thought it was a Broadway song. I once sang that song at a piano bar, and a man in the audience approached me afterward, impressed by the song (probably not by my performance). The lack of animosity between us reminds me of that line in “Love Can Build a Bridge,” perhaps Naomi’s crowning achievement as a songwriter: “Love and only love can join the tribes of man.” When my husband and I moved to Philadelphia and they stayed in New York, we continued our campground reunions, and there was never a camping trip without a Judds singalong around the fire, under the starlit Pennsylvania sky.īoth couples have since divorced, and I have remarried - making sure to impress an appreciation of the Judds upon my new husband - but we all remain close and in touch. Soon we two couples became inseparable, taking camping trips together several times a summer. I had to go to all the way to New York City to find my country people. One night a Judds song came on, I forget which one, and one of my new friends began singing along. There, I cultivated a new circle of friends, many of them also from Michigan. Like Naomi, I had persevered and made it out.
I went off to college, got married (well, committed - same-sex marriage wasn’t yet legal in those days) and ended up in New York. When cancer visited one of my leg bones after my senior year in high school, I thought of Naomi and her hepatitis diagnosis. Naomi’s single motherhood, a nurse trying to score a recording contract, clicked with my view of my newly widowed mother, another country woman, trying to keep it together while still raising children. And would Ashley have made it in Hollywood without her mother’s support?Īs I grew older, the story of the Judds impressed me, and I saw bits of it in my own life. But without Naomi’s harmonies and stage presence, I doubt her daughter ever would have become the one-name star she is. Wynonna was clearly the bigger voice of the duo.
For a lonely gay boy in the rural Midwest, they were a calling card, and a lifeline of sorts. But I still always think of my grandpa.)Īnd after my father died, I wanted to be at that breakfast table they sang about in “Love Is Alive,” soaking up all the love that sat there. (The song has since lost its luster for me a bit - the good old days weren't really that good. When I was a preteen beginning to reckon with my sexuality and dealing with bullies, and the Judds sang “Mama He’s Crazy,” I understood the narrator's insecurities - why would anyone want me?Īfter my grandfather died, I listened to “Grandpa” over and over, crying that he would no longer be able to tell me about the good old days, which he actually used to do. My first (and only) sighting of them is forever etched in my mind.Īfter word Saturday of Naomi's death, I'm now realizing how much I've been through with them. I’m not sure what it was, but for me and for most people, the chemistry between Naomi and Wynonna and the feelings they stirred inside the listener were almost tangible.