Narrator: On this episode of "State of the Arts", the legendary folk rock singer and songwriter Richard Thompson plays an intimate show at the Tabernacle in Mount Tabor.

Thompson: In the style that I play there, that you can -- you can play solos.

Narrator: A decade of work by artist Clifford Ward in an electrifying two-part exhibition at Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton and at Artworks in Trenton.

Ward: Art allows you to express things that you might not want to say otherwise.

[ Music plays ] Narrator: And CavanKerry Press, they publish poetry and creative nonfiction that explores the emotional and psychological landscapes of everyday life.

Doty: I was not afraid to see the flames licking along both sleeves of her flannel robe.

Narrator: "State of the Arts" going on location with the most creative people in New Jersey.

Announcer: The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, encouraging excellence and engagement in the arts since 1966, is proud to co-produce "State of the Arts" with Stockton University.

Additional support is provided by the Pheasant Hill Foundation, Philip E. Lian, and Joan L. Mueller, in memory of Judith McCartin Scheide, and these friends of "State of the Arts".

[ Music plays ] [ Applause ] Man: Whoo!

[ Music plays ] Thompson: [ Singing ] Says Red Molly to James, "That's a fine motorbike.

You know, a girl could feel special on any such like."

Says James to Red Molly, "My hat's off to you.

It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952."

[ Talking ] As a songwriter, you accumulate like a catalog and some of which you're not ashamed of.

I've got, like, 500 songs and having a lot of songs.

And having a lot of songs, you also forget what you've written, so it's a nice surprise sometimes to come back and say, "Oh, good, I'm not as stupid as I thought I was."

You know, I actually have an ounce of talent.

Thank God for that.

[ Chuckles ] [ Singing ] I'll give you my Vincent... to ride.

Narrator: He started in 1967 with Fairport Convention.

Ever since, the British folk rock singer and songwriter has been building his catalog over the course of 20 albums.

Thompson: [ Singing ] If I could hold her in my arms today.

Well, I wouldn't want her... Narrator: Known for both his lyrical storytelling and powerful guitar work, Richard Thompson has long been covered by recording artists from R.E.M.

to Emmylou Harris.

Thompson: [ Talking ] As a performer, now you're visiting all points of your career.

You might have a song you wrote last week cheek by jowl with a song you wrote in 1967.

Sometimes they're happy bedfellows, so sometimes they sit fine with each other.

Thompson and Phillips: [Singing] But you don't want me.

You think I'm something tainted.

Narrator: After touring together with a full band in 2024 for his new album, "Ship to Shore," husband and wife Richard Thompson and Zara Phillips revisited some of his songs, both old and new, with a stripped down approach in the intimate setting of the Tabernacle in Mount Tabor.

Thompson and Phillips: [ Both singing ] Thompson: [ Talking ] It's nice to have Zara along, if she's available, to sing harmony.

For me, it adds another dimension to shows.

Phillips: [ Talking ] Richard is such an amazing songwriter, so he's so good at storytelling and pulling you in.

Thompson and Phillips: [ Both singing ] Philips: [ Talking ] But there is that great feeling, too, of being on stage when you're singing a particular song and you can feel that the audience is connecting with it.

Thompson and Phillips: [ Both singing ] Phillips: [ Talking ] And it's special.

Thompson and Phillips: [Singing] On the wall of death.

All the world is far from me.

On the wall of death, it's the nearest to being free.

Phillips: [ Talking ] You know, in a band, and when we're recording, you can hide a little bit.

Thompson and Phillips: [ Singing ] The switchback will make you crazy.

Beware of the bearded lady.

Phillips: [ Talking ] Playing somewhere like The Tabernacle, I have to nail those harmonies because people are going to hear everything.

Narrator: Many of the folk and rock legends who've played inside this unique Victorian era meeting house love coming back.

Philhower: We're finishing our 27th year, and the whole idea was it's a listening room, a strict listening room.

You can hear a pin drop.

And that's the important thing about this place.

Simonson: You walk in, and the first thing you do is look up at all of this open beam structure, which was hand-built back in the 1880s.

It's basically modeled on an old revival tent with a -- some people call it a cupola.

Architecturally, it's called a lantern at the top.

It allowed a lot of ventilation because these buildings were used in the summer.

Philhower: So the acoustics in the Tabernacle are extraordinary because that's what it was designed for.

It was designed for traveling preachers.

Thompson: Thanks very much.

Ooh, you're very quiet.

Sort of reverential.

I like it.

It's good.

[ Laughter ] Simonson: We're based around acoustic music.

And so Richard coming in doing a solo show is really fitting for At The Tabernacle.

He's a musician's musician, so a lot of the people in the audience are really serious listeners, and this is a serious listening place.

Thomson: [ Singing ] This cruel country has driven me down.

Thompson and Phillips: [ Singing ] Teased me and lied.

Teased me and lied.

Phillips: [ Talking ] There was a wonderful energy in there, and all of that helps, I think, when you're singing.

And what's so lovely as an artist is when you're playing and you know people are really there to literally enjoy and lap up the music.

Thompson and Phillips: [ Singing ] My dreams have withered and died.

Thompson: [ Talking ] It's an intimate venue, which is great fun to play.

And the nice thing about the Tabernacle audience is they're very respectful and they're very responsive.

[ Applause ] Simonson: This is not the easiest place to see a show.

You are sitting in 1800s pews.

There's no lobby to go out to, you know, to go on out to the lobby and -- [laughs] and take a break.

Phillips: Just the whole area outside the Tabernacle -- the houses -- I mean, it's like a storybook.

It's so beautiful.

Philhower: It's general admission.

And so the very first show that we did here, I wasn't exactly sure how the line was going to happen.

I assumed that the line was going to go down the hill, and they instinctively went up the hill and have ever since.

There's a camaraderie on the line that -- that happens.

It's very special.

And they come back and they come back and they come back.

Simonson: So it's not the performer alone.

It's not the lighting.

It's not the sound.

It's not just the audience.

It's all those things coming together.

It always makes some kind of magic.

Thompson and Phillips: [ Singing ] But her love is a mystical thing.

I swear I hear choirs celestial sing.

Her love doesn't come every day It comes like a bolt from the blue, burning and blinding and true.

Phillips: When I first met Richard, I said to him, "I'm never going to sing with you, and I'm never going to play guitar [Laughing] in front of you.

Thompson and Phillips: [ Singing ] Her love is a mystical thing.

Phillips: [ Talking ] And he was like, "You really need to get over that."

So now here I am, singing with him.

But I was, you know, intimidated.

Thompson: "Singapore Sadie" -- I wrote it about Zara, but it's heavily disguised.

I mean, the whole Singapore thing is a bit of a red herring.

It's a song that probably tries to play up her good points.

Thompson and Phillips: [Singing] Burning and blinding and true.

Burning and blinding... and true.

Phillips: [ Talking ] I started as a singer about 40 years ago, with pop bands in the UK in the '80s, and then had my own bands, so I was really a songwriter for a long time.

[ Singing ] Somebody's daughter.

Narrator: Zara's experiences growing up as an adoptee inspired her to speak up and create, including writing, producing a film, and performing a one-woman show.

Phillips: [ Singing ] Somebody's daughter.

[ Talking ] We as adoptees can feel that no one really understands what we go through.

I was now in the adoption community, and I realized that I wasn't alone -- a lot of people struggled with these feelings.

So I wrote the one-woman show, and I had songs that I had written which I knew would be perfect for the show, and Richard helped me a lot.

Thompson and Phillips: [Singing] Love is worth every fall.

Narrator: While Zara and Richard consider the UK home, they've both lived in the US for decades.

When they married in 2019, New Jersey became their second home.

Thompson and Phillips: [Singing] Even to beg, even to crawl.

Phillips: [ Talking ] He teaches me some really hard harmonies, but it pushes me, and he's also open to suggestion, so I feel it really is a two-way thing.

Even on his material, I'll say, "Well, how about this or that?"

Just making out that.

It works well.

Thompson: [ Singing ] I'm walking on a wire.

I'm walking on a wire.

As a solo acoustic guitar player, one of the challenges is to make enough noise.

[ Music plays ] So I play kind of a pick-and-fingers sort of hybrid finger style, which also helps to get the sound bigger.

In the style that I play there, you can -- you can play solos.

[ Music plays ] During a set, you might play stuff that's louder.

Thompson and Phillips: [Singing] She twists the knife again.

When I get up off my knees, she twists the knife again.

Thompson: [ Talking ] One of the nice things about playing acoustic and about playing in a small venue -- If you throw in a quieter song, you can almost feel the audience kind of leaning in.

[ Singing ] Dutch courage is the game.

And the ghost of you walks.

The ghost of you walks.

The ghost of you walks.

[ Talking ] I've got a song that I play -- "The Ghost of You Walks."

I really think of that as a leaning-in song.

It has that quality to it, and it's also down sometimes to the kind of stillness that you can create, almost the silence you can create in the room so that you can hear a pin drop.

[ Music plays ] It's quite rewarding to get that kind of stillness and get people listening in that way.

At the end of an evening where you can do that a couple of times, then you'd be very happy.

[ Applause ] [ Music plays ] Narrator: From the legendary to the visionary -- up next, Clifford Ward is an artist making up for lost time.

[ Music plays ] Warlick: Now, you know that whatever imperfections you don't -- you know, that you have on here that you don't particularly care for, you can get rid of.

[ Music plays ] [ Music plays ] Okay.

Ready?

Ward: Mm-hmm.

[ Music plays ] I'm free!

Warlick: [ Chuckles ] Ward: Wow.

Oh, my God!

Warlick: What do you think?

Ward: I think it's great.

Warlick: Yeah.

Ward: Wow.

Warlick: You could just fill this in.

Ward: Right.

Warlick: And just a little bit here.

You could either make it solid, or you can leave holes in it -- however you choose.

[ Music plays ] Ward: I am making up for lost time right now, because there's so much that had been suppressed over the years.

I'm trying to compensate for what I don't know about myself.

[ Music plays ] Art allows you to express things that you might not want to say otherwise.

[ Music plays ] [ Music plays ] When art is cast, it's cast in pieces.

The pieces have to be reassembled so that you wouldn't know that it was ever severed.

A good metal chaser is the person that would connect the pieces together.

[ Music plays ] I took that lesson into my own life.

[ Music plays ] I was brought up in a housing project called Marion Gardens in Jersey City.

I lived in the ghetto.

[ Music plays ] As a kid, we were always taught anything associated with Africa or darkness is bad.

[ Music plays ] African-Americans have been severed from the continent and dispersed around the world in the largest migration in history, which is the African slave trade.

The older people would get together, and they would start talking about -- they call them Geechees, people that are still holding a lot of the African traditions off the coast of like North Carolina, South Carolina.

I hate to say it, but I was almost ashamed.

Like, I didn't want to be who I was.

You watch the "Tarzan" movies -- you know, you see barbaric individuals, almost inhuman.

Girl: Help!

Help!

Ward: And then you have this white savior.

I mean, I grew up for a long time wanting to be lighter, wanting to have straighter hair.

Your antennas are activated at that time.

But it wasn't until I read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" that changed my entire way of looking at who I am.

Malcolm X said that we will do anything to our bodies to change who we are, that we are not of African descent.

It was at that point where I just started to re-educate myself.

I was reading everything -- I was reading all of Ball, and I was reading Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes, Ivan Van Sertima -- "They Came Before Columbus," Diop -- "The Origin of Civilization."

And it's the act of putting these pieces together that inspired my work.

I had all this creative energy, so many ideas.

It's like a lake trying to get through a pinhole.

I was hired at the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture, and we learned on clients' work in order to transcend it into my own work.

I felt free.

Okay.

All right.

Now, where do you go?

Smalls: Okay, so let's talk about the exhibition.

You know, I was blown away right away.

It immediately struck me that this is someone who I was shocked not to have heard of.

And I was like, "Where have you been hiding this guy?"

My mission has always been to realize a pathway for marginalized artists to come into museums.

Ward: I was denying that part of my being by trying to fit in and adapt into the corporate world, and I was never happy with it.

It never worked.

I was really restrained.

I was inhibited, and I had no direction until I found my art.

Smalls: So often, when we see Black art in major institutions like this, the work can be centered more on trauma and our difficult histories.

This work kind of breaks that paradigm.

They're joyful, you know?

They're beautiful.

Ward: I want the people to say they haven't seen anything like this before.

[ Music plays ] [ Music plays ] This project, called "I'll Make Me A World," has taken 12 years.

I use my face quite often.

It's a starting point for 24 figures, 12 pairs... winged messengers... generals... gossipers... guardians of past histories.

[ Music plays ] The sculptures talk to me, connecting everything together.

I really think I'm being controlled by my ancestors.

They seem to almost creep into my work without me knowing, So I allow myself to just remain a vessel.

I use nails based on the minkisi power figures of Angola and Central Africa.

Cowrie shells.

The slave collar.

I've never been to Africa, but my goal is to get there.

And I won't be satisfied until I actually visit Ghana or Cote d'Ivoire or Senegal, Gorée Island, Timbuktu.

This is my world, and I never felt so proud.

[ Indistinct conversations ] Vincent: You know, this is the "I'll Make Me A World" prologue show.

We couldn't fit the entire body of work into this building.

This was, by far, one of the crowning jewels of my career.

I've known Cliff for about 10 years now and known his work.

And I know he's been working on this.

And I'm always like, "Cliff, when are you going to show your work?"

And he's like, "Ah, I'm not ready.

Ah, I'm not ready."

So, yeah, we're really excited.

[ Cheers and applause ] Ward: Hi.

Hi.

John: My name is John... Ward: I've been approached by many folks from Africa, who, before I start to talk, ask me where I'm from in Africa.

How are you doing?

Nice to meet you.

To hear that I look African is, like, the biggest compliment.

I really feel the ancestors when I'm working.

Because it's a -- Man: You can feel it.

Ward: You can feel it.

I've embraced my skin... [ Music plays ] ...my melanin... ...my destiny.

[ Music plays ] [ Music plays ] [ Music plays ] [ Music plays ] Narrator: Next, CavanKerry Press has a mission -- to connect readers and writers through honest explorations of everyday life.

Handler: A painter can sell his work or her work, but usually needs a gallery.

We need people in the middle to bring our work to its readers.

[ Music plays ] Cleveland: I am Gabriel Cleveland.

I'm the executive director and managing editor of CavanKerry Press, the largest nonprofit poetry publisher in the state of New Jersey.

I coordinate content editing, copy editing, graphic design, proofreading, printing, and distribution -- a lot -- a lot of things to juggle, but it's good -- you know, keep things moving, and we end up having beautiful books to show for it, so no regrets.

Reyes: My name is Dimitri Reyes, and I'm the marketing and communications director at CavanKerry Press.

Our distribution center is with the University of Chicago.

So every time a book gets published with us, we keep some in our own stock while we're moving books through events such as the Paterson Poetry Festival or AWP.

But the University of Chicago also houses the majority of the books, and that's how we are still able to get a boosted signal for our authors through places like Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, local bookstores, museums, other university libraries, et cetera.

Kelley: My name is Tina Kelley, and two of my books have been published by CavanKerry Press.

I was adopted at birth, and...

I was at "The New York Times" for 10 years.

I did feature stories, and I got to do a lot of nature stories.

"Trains Running After Storms" -- it's a headline from "The New York Times."

And those were the times when I'd get lots of material for poems.

"I had to commit flight.

I had seen too many birds escaping, flying off to the sides as if I were evil.

In the east, the rumbling called me, kept ahead of me..." CavanKerry is special, partly because it's flavored by Joan's interests.

She cares a lot about health and psychology and people's daily lives and the meaning that can be found there.

So I vibed with it because I'm a journalist and I don't like abstractions -- I like the facts.

[ Chuckles ] And I find great meaning in the facts and great poetry in the facts.

Handler: Because I'm also a psychologist, I knew what was needed.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because I dealt with people all the time in my office, and I knew they weren't getting what they needed, So I...

I said, that's going to have to be one of the points of the press or the -- the concerns of the press -- focusing on the honest truth about illness.

Bell: I watched greeting cards pile up -- pale pink and sparkly -- blessing, little angel, princess, precious.

And then the crumbling would appear again, like a mudslide caving in a village.

Cleveland: It so clearly articulated her experiences with postpartum depression, all the complicated emotions that that brought up -- the anger, the despair, the -- the hope.

Bell: My mother said, "Maybe you need more sleep," after the OB said I would be fine, though I couldn't imagine fine while the world chanted: "Love the baby, love the baby."

Cleveland: Our number-one priority is, can you access this?

Can you step into someone else's world by way of this book?

Carreira: "Tanto Tanto," which is Portuguese for "a lot, a lot" or "much, much," is a collection of work that centers around the relationship between two women, two queer women, and they're both daughters of immigrants.

"Between noon and 2:00 p.m., I think of mangoes, how I've never seen a mango tree in real life, how I want so bad to eat a mango straight from the limbs of your grandfather's farm, the sweet fuzzy juice sliding down my chin, between my breasts."

Reyes: What started out as an idea for Joan and her friends self-publishing together became something that is a household high-tier name in the literary community.

So my job is to continue Joan's mission and making sure that we are a big press with a small-press feel, because everyone at CavanKerry Press is also an author, and we want to make sure that the authors we publish are treated the same way we want to when we publish.

Doty: I've known Joan since we were both youngish poets.

Just -- you know, we would read together, sometimes run into each other sometimes.

And she called me and said, "I have -- I have created a press.

Do you have a manuscript?"

That's where my life took another turn.

This is my "Grandma" poem.

"Mischief made her lift her arms and turn with such a look of wonder on her face that I was not afraid to see the flames licking along both sleeves of her flannel robe."

Cleveland: I can't underscore enough just how much a gift Joan has given to the world to say, "Here is a place for you to be heard.

Here is a place where we will listen closely and read your work attentively and understand you the way that we all deserve to be listened to and understood."

Doty: "And Grandma, naked, jubilant, winked at me as the kettle rushed its way to boiling dry, and sent me from some far hilltop in her far world a vision of what it was certain I'd become -- wild-eyed and crazy and blazing like a six-gun, nothing at all to be met with shame or fear.

So this is for her, who now has long been ash, a chronicle the last word of which is 'oh.'"

[ Applause ] Narrator: That's it for this episode of "State of the Arts."

Explore more stories about the powerful artists working in New Jersey on our website -- StateoftheArtsNJ.com.

Thanks for watching.

[ Music plays ] Thompson: [ Singing ] Says Red Molly to James, "That's a fine motorbike."

You know, a girl could feel special on any such like."

Says James to Red Molly, "My hat's off to you.

It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952.

And I've seen you at the corners and cafés, it seems.

Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme."

And he put her on behind.

[ Music plays ] And down to Box Hill... they'd ride.

[ Music plays ]