You can now see a clip of Lucy performing here


A Transcript of the Interview

Bryant: Folk singer Lucy Kaplansky watched from her Greenwich Village living room as the twin towers crumbled before her eyes. Six months later the images and memories of that terrible time remain fresh not just in her mind but in her music too, specifically in her new song Land of the living...Lucy, good morning

Lucy:Good Morning

Bryant: When you sat there and watched on 9/11 from your Greenwich Village apartment did you feel compelled to write a song

Lucy: Not at all, it was the last thing I would have thought of. I never planned to write this song, it kind of happened by accident

Bryant:what do you mean, how does a song happen by accident

Lucy: well, songs often happen by accident, but this one was born out of an image. By the way I wrote this with my husband Rick Litvin. I was at Laquardia airport and I saw taxi drivers kneeling and praying right by the taxi stand in the middle of everything and the image was so arresting I wanted to do something with it and never related it to 9/11. And then a month later, in October, I thought maybe they're praying for us all. And then I started writing down the things I'd seen in my neighborhood the days after the attacks, like the memorials by the firehouses, the posters of the missing, and then i had this incident with this cab driver

Bryant: Well yeah that's not a very pleasant incident but you chose to include it, why did you think it was so important to include

Lucy:I guess I felt like it was an account of a witness, like this was history, and i was a witness to history

Bryant:In this witnessing is there a message or is there a mission in this song

Lucy:Yeah, I mean i think, the message is... first of all it's an account of the things i saw and of the collective grief and mourning which was everywhere and of that sense of community that came up that i've never experienced before, this bond between us as people and new yorkers between strangers. But also there's an image in the song of the Statue of Liberty looking over Manhattan still. And I think part of the message fo the song, is, you know, what the Statue of Liberty stands for things like freedom, opportunity, embracing of immigrants. Those are the things that America stands for and those were under attack And yet she's still standing and they're still standing

Bryant:Why dont' you play it for us

Lucy:Sure

Bryant:Lucy Kaplansky, the song is called Land of the Living

(promo picture of Lucy while the song starts up)

Lucy sings with images of ground zero, the firehouses, the statue of liberty, etc. showing on the screen. They cut back to her face every once in awhile



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