Choked Up

There are hazards to putting your Ipod on shuffle and listening at work. Some unexpected rocking favorite might come on and you'll get caught pumping your fist, making coworkers wonder if you've gone insane. But worse, "Miriam" off The Honeydogs album "Everything I Bet You" might come on.

Miriam is the only song I know that makes me cry every time I hear it. In fact it just came on and tears are currently welling up in my eyes.

Adam Levy wrote the song about his grandmother. It was 1993 and Miriam's husband had died a year earlier. She was about to follow him. Her house had been sold off and her family, which she was once the leader of, is now scattered out across the country.

Adam is sitting at Miriam's bedside remembering the dress clothes she bought him and encouraged him to wear. She thought those clothes would lead him to success and presumably away from his rock and roll life style.

Miriam's clothing advice never stuck, but the lessons she taught Adam did. Adam's family is Jewish. And she told him the story about how in 1923 a cross was burned in the front yard of a black barber who lived down the street from her. Her father told her "That cross was burned for you and me" too.

Miriam looks up at Adam. She can't speak because she's pumped full of morphine. But in her final days, she says something while in a dream that's a lie. Adam doesn't say what it is. But he tells her goodbye.

I met Adam Levy at a Honeydogs show several years ago. I told him that hearing Miriam sent me over the bend every time. He thanked me for the sentiment.

I couldn't bear to ask what the lie was that Miriam told Adam. I figure that's just between Adam and Miriam and nobody else.