By Michael Swanger michael@dmcityview.com

Veteran singer-songwriter BeJae Fleming prefers the road less traveled

There are days when BeJae Fleming locks herself in a room and plays guitar for hours on end until her fingers wear out in a futile attempt to cool her creative fires. Those days don't occur as frequently as they used to, but when they do, they are more rewarding for the veteran singer-songwriter, who has embraced the autumn of her career.

At age 55, there's a genuine smile in Fleming's Southern drawl, but there are no stars in her eyes. She doesn't fear the cool police or our culture of youth. Nashville isn't calling, nor is Los Angeles, and that's fine with her. She remains, as Jack Kerouac once advised writers of modern prose, "submissive to everything, open and listening" and has "no fear or shame in the dignity of her experience, language and knowledge."

"I've been doing this for a long time and seen the cycles," Fleming says. "All I want to do is play guitar and write songs and I've wound up at this incredible point in my life where I love what I'm doing more than I ever have before."

Fleming's happiness can be measured in many ways. The Greensboro, N.C., native spent part of the '70s honing her craft in Texas at the persuasion of Townes Van Zant, who she befriended early in her career, but has found comfort in Ames' liberal university setting for the past 12 years. She works part-time at the Ames Public Library and gigs as often as she can in clubs, as well as at some of the unlikeliest of places you'll find live music, with her trio that includes veterans Jackie Blount (bass) and Al Clarke (guitar). She has a first-rate new album out on Trailer Records, "Destination Unimportant," a co-op of like-minded artists who she admits has influenced her. And perhaps most important, after having spent more than 30 years in the music business touring the country and enjoying modest success, Fleming understands the world doesn't owe her a thing - one of many lessons she shares with listeners on "Destination Unimportant."

"A lot of its songs deal with where I am as a musician," she says. "I do this because I want to. There's no big career for me. There's no five-year plan or something big for me to achieve except to keep doing this thing that defines who I am. And I think the same is true for Jackie and Al, though they have careers outside of music.

"The fabulous thing about sort of failing at making a career in music is that you go back to it for the reason you started doing it, which is you love it. Only now, we're better at it than when we started and we can enjoy it."

Such facts of existence are cruel irony for young artists who entertain thoughts of becoming stars, but never realize their dreams. Then again, success means something different to everyone. Often just being able to pay the bills doing what you love is reward enough. And sometimes success happens when you least expect it, though Fleming isn't holding her breath.

"There's not much room for that in the music industry," she says. "That's the kind of thing David Zollo tried to overcome with Trailer Records, that very injustice. Business-wise, it's an injustice if you're a late bloomer - forget it. But the actual playing is so amazing once you get rid of the notion you have to succeed at it. Once that's done it really opens the door."

"Destination Unimportant" is a clear-cut example of Fleming walking through that door and reveling in the freedom of such discoveries. A highly personable album of honest and spacious songs that meld country, folk, blues and rock, it is as much a retrospective of Fleming's experiences as it is a soul journey. And to help capture that feeling, she recruited producer/keyboardist Zollo, drummer Steve Hayes and engineer Steve Brickel.

"It has a particular feel to it I like," Fleming says. "It has the feel of the band instead of a treatment of the songs that doesn't reflect what the band really sounds like."

"Destination Unimportant" is also at once Southern and Midwestern, though its creator says she is rooted by music, not by place. "Hurricane Season," a prophetic ditty in light of the devastation of New Orleans, is as regionally insightful as is "Memphis,"
"Earleton" (Earleton, Fla.) and "Rudy's," co-written by Brother Trucker's Andy Fleming (no relation). Fleming attributes the songs' authenticity to years of touring, proving home is merely a state of mind.

"I've spent most of my life as a touring musician, so I'm not writing about places I haven't been to or played," she says. "As a touring musician you have that connection to places, you have stories from there. When you travel you become hyper aware of a place."

Fleming might be writing about places far away from Iowa, but "Destination Unimportant" brings her one step closer to the "Iowa sound." It's a sound, she says, that is fueled by traditional blues and resonates with her more clearly than that of the claw-hammer banjo-style bluegrass music she grew up with in North Carolina.

"I think of Bo Ramsey as the quintessential 'Iowa sound' guy," Fleming says. "It's a roots sound. Iowa music is influenced more by a traditional black sound, where North Carolina is a Scottish-Irish sound. I like the blues and early rock 'n' roll sound a lot better, though I did my time playing banjo and old time music."

Fleming credits Ramsey and fellow Trailer Records recording artist Joe Price for inspiring her music, though it may not be obvious to the listener.

"I love what's happened to me musically in Iowa," she says. "When I lived in Texas I didn't appreciate the feeling of space that I get here. It has affected the way I play and write. It's probably responsible for the way I feel about music now."

The singer-songwriter is so enamored with her new-found lease on music that she plans to record a new album in the near future at a friend's studio in Ames. She credits Brickel and Zollo for making her previous studio experience a comfortable one, an issue she has struggled with in the past. Once it's completed, she hopes Trailer Records will release it.

"Trailer has given me a sense of community," she says. "David has given me that as a gift because there's not much I can do for him. I don't sell a lot of records or make them a lot of money. But it's never been about that for them or for me."

For Fleming, music is too personable and important to be measured by money or popularity.

"It's hard to express how rewarding my career is now," she says. "I never thought I'd get to this place, even though I started out as one of those musicians playing eight hours a day and couldn't put the guitar down. Now I'm back to loving it. It's a fabulous obsession. I play what I want to play and that's a great thing." CV

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