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Profile of the LTL Singer-Songwriter

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This profile below, based on everything proposed in the previous pages 1 - 6, tries to synthesize some known facts, some logical deductions, and some outright speculation about the female singer/songwriter responsible for the Light the Lanterns demo, believed to have been penned around 1962 - 1964 in Fort Bragg or Mendocino and recorded circa 1968 - 1969, either up the north of California or in San Francisco or even LA. It considers the harsh commercial realities of the music industry and the psychological profile needed to survive it. Using the criteria of the A&R men and talent scouts of the era, it helps to understand why she became untraceable, and this dictates how we must now search for her.

Origin and Accent

Our singer sounds most like a Pacific North West native with a neutral accent that lacks any country twang, southern drawl, or other detectable regional accent. Her voice is natural and unforced, entirely free of the any hard-edged rrrr coloring that many Americans have. She's not "putting anything on".
Her voice accent -- but not its sinhjng tone --sounds of similar to other Californians of that time like Grace Slick, Signe Toly Anderson, Judy Sill.
She is certainly not exhibiting any of the other defining 1960s vocal styles -- there is no Nashville or Texas twang (eg, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynne, Emmylou Harris); no nasal NY Greenwich Village or Tri-State folk (eg early Baez, Carole King, Phil Ochs, Dylan); no Neil Young "Ontarian"; no Appalachian Mountain Folk or Delta Swamp Rock (eg John Fogerty). And despite what some online claims suggest about LTL being a mid-80s LA track, her vocal delivery shows absolutely no trace of Hollywood "Brash", Valley-Girl uptalk, or vocal fry.

Timeline and Age

Belonging to the Baby Boomer generation (born approx 1942 - 1948), I'm suggesting she was 16 - 20 years old at the time of the song's lyrical composition (1962/64) and 18 -25 at time of recording (1968–1969). This would align with high school graduating classes of 1961–1966. If still living, she could be 75 - 85 yo now.

Local Presence

My deduced origin of the LTL story is in the Fort Bragg/Mendocino area. I suggest she was either a native local (Fort Bragg or Mendocino High School cohort approx 1961 - 1965) or a transient "outsider" who settled locally during the North Coast counterculture influx of 1959 - 1970.
Her residency in north California where she heard Grace's Farallons tale about the shipwreck is more probable than around San Francisco. It makes her invitation to Grace's intimate illumination night by Delpha more plausible than if she'd lived in San Francisco and they'd both made the 190 miles, 5 to 6 hour trip up and back. And, if the singer was intending to take over the legacy, she must have had plans to stay around the area for a while.

Mendocino Counterculture

She was possibly a known figure in the local youth social scene, frequenting or even maybe working at Quong's Riviera Cafe or The Welcome Inn in Fort Bragg (the site of Grace's drinking night), which closed in 1966, further proving that the narrative (but not the recording) was sparked before 1966.
All through the 60s, Mendocino was the vanguard of the alternative scene outside of San Francisco. It was first settled by alternative types, well prior to the "Summer of 67" after which the prevailing hippie spirit in San Francisco crashed.
It was then that a second wave of "communards" migrated north to settle around Mendocino. From 1960 on, there were artists and musicians galore, sometimes crossing swords with the conservative, traditionalist, redneck, timber industry types found in Fort Bragg. This would explain the odd mixture of our story's characters. And it will also make identifying our singer-songwriter extremely difficult as just one aspiring musical poet in that growing milieu! But I'm working on it.

Social Venues

In addition to Quong's and Welcome Inn Chinese -- which were a hybrid establishment between the straights and the alternatives, the young and the old -- Mendocino also had in those years other places which would have suited our "outsider" singer songwriter, such as:
The Sea Gull Cellar Den, an imitation opium den;
The Caspar Inn, served as a community center for the rural population and those living in the woods.

The Art Center Theater, hosted "Hootenannies" and folk circles. The most "respectable" venue for a young artist and a likely place for someone with an "arty" or college-bound profile to perform.
The Totem Pole, reputedly a performance space for folk music and art;
The Well, an underground/basement coffeehouse and music venue known for a darker, more intellectual atmosphere, catering to the "beatnik-to-hippie" transition.
Pudding Creek Beach and Glass Beach, outdoor gathering spots for Fort Bragg "unconventionals" to have beach fires and play acoustic guitars.
The Frog & Peach, an alternative deli/cafe hangout, a daytime gathering spot for the "outsider" crowd to discuss philosophy and music.
The 10-48 Club in Ukiah, the primary music venue for the inland Mendocino County music scene. If she migrated toward the college scene after high school (Mendocino or Ukiah Arts Colleges), this is where she would have seen and potentially opened for touring San Francisco acts.
The House of Seven Gables (Ukiah), a coffeehouse and music venue that hosted folk singers and hosted open-mic style gatherings for the local youth and student population.

Migration Path

After high school she may have pursued arts or intellectual interests in addition to her musical bent, possibly migrating to the Ukiah arts/college scene or the Berkeley Bay Area for college to pursue her music career more seriously.
The possible migration of the artist from an isolated North Coast down to the San Francisco Bay Area between 1963 and 1970 places her directly within the magnetic pull of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival circuit. This annual campus event served as a critical intellectual and creative incubator where a developing acoustic hootenanny strummer could transition into a plugged-in, electric-folk player. Because the festival’s true vitality thrived outside the official billed rosters -- manifesting in unlisted topical song circles, informal hootenannies, and spontaneous workshops across Sproul Plaza, the Faculty Glade, and Pauley Ballroom -- it provided the ultimate testing ground for expositional new material. Performing in these informal campus spaces allowed her to sharpen her electric edge, as well as meet creative peers and players she could collaborate with towards her demo cut, without the commercial compromises of the Los Angeles industry.
A fully digitised 33,500-item Berkeley Folk Music Festival Archive at Northwestern University represents a concrete repository where any low-profile administrative trace, correspondence file, or field recording from her time in the East Bay counterculture underground would be physically preserved. I'm presently looking into it.

Core Persona

She fits the perfect image of 60s "hippie chick" and singer/songwriter.
She was clearly an idealist, mildly ambitious (but clearly naive about self promoting her demo tape!), a non-conformist who felt "on the outside" of her conservative, small-town community, ie Fort Bragg, even more so than Mendocino at the time.

Intellectual Engagement

The lyric "I wanted to be what I wanted to be" directly echoes the specific vernacular of the 1960s Humanistic Psychology Movement -- specifically Abraham Maslow’s Self-Actualization, which saturated global counterculture from 1967 onwards. Its peak was 1966 - 1972.
This confirms the singer's engagement with the intellectual currents of the pre-counterculture era, popular at the time in Mendocino communes.
This self-described tag may have existed at the time of the meeting, or may be a later lyrical insertion after later SF influences.

Relationship to the Atkinsons

The relationship between the singer, Grace Atkinson and her eldest daughter Delpha Andrade (nee Atkinson) was more of a transient acquaintance, (lasting only 2 - 3 years), than being family or a close friends. For the singer not to know why Delpha missed year #2, would indicate they weren't close confidants.
The connection seems somewhat transactional and driven by convenience. It might be deduced that Delpha sought to "dump" the legacy upon our singer, and that the singer exploited the story as a future musical vehicle -- athough, her idealistic heart comes through in the song.
The singer's phrase "crazy ladies in gingerbread houses" is more likely a flippant caricature of the oft-reported, difficult lives that remote island lighthouse women had to endure along America's rocky coastlines ... unless she evaluated Grace to be a bit crazy! Considering that the singer would never have visited the Farallons herself, she would have had a romantised and detached perspective of the island women.

The Rainbow Girls

A possible new avenue of connection between the 3 women has arisen through my discovery of the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls. This is a Masonic youth service organization for young women aged 11 to 20.

Thomas and Grace Atkinson were Freemasons. Delpha's involvement in the Rainbow Girls or Jobs Daughters whilst living at Point Cabrillo in 1939 - 1944 is presently unknown. But so much about their MO fits perfectly with our singer -- the universal light symbolism, an annual lanterns ritual, the reverence towards a shipwreck rescue. But I believe our singer would have later broken away from the Rainbow Girls puritanical values to pursue an individualistic musical career in the big city. [See the deeper evaluation of this link within the story].

Social Access

Our singer must have been specifically chosen by Delpha Atkinson to witness the secret ceremony and inherit the tradition from her mother Grace. The lighthouse keeper's family must have viewed the songwriter as both an outsider and an ally; someone detached enough from their familial trauma (loss, alcoholism, military history) but still with a ceremonial mindset and respect for their tradition. The singer's own family may have had a military service connection that linked her to the Atkinsons' particularly militarist family tree -- 5 out of 5 Atkinson males went into the services in 2 generations.

Emotional Distance

She exhibited emotional detachment from the song's subjects, singing as an idealizing storyteller rather than a close friend. Her perception was of a romanticized "magic island", which ignored Grace's reality of a hard life on the Farallons.

Motivation and Intent

Her motivations stemmed from her idealism and probably a compassion to help the situation -- dearly wanting to prevent "the lights extinguishing".
The cryptic lyrics (omitting specific names and locations) were no doubt a conscious artistic choice to protect the family's privacy and to create poetic universality by transforming local history into a broader piece of Californian folk mythology. There is clear anonymising of the story. She did not want her characters nor her own identity to be discovered.

Genre and Date

The song is a simple Folk-Pop / Electric-Folk ballad, a generic attempt to emulate the San Francisco Sound of 1968 - 1969. Its style went quickly out of vogue even before 1972. Her singular musical recording effort was riding the wave of the time. She clearly didn't evolve her musical talents into the emerging musical genres of the 70s. Or if she ever did, such efforts obviously met the same fate of obscurity.

Vocal Profile

She is an alto, with a satisfactory but not outstanding voice. She lacked the bankable X-factor (power, unique tone, range) necessary for commercial stardom. Her upper harmonies were weak, unsure. She was not a professional duet singer. She had good pitch, and a sincere but not overdone emotionality in her singing. She didn't have one of those crystal voices like other contemporary luminaries such as Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Mary Travers, Mimi Farina, Carolyn Hester, nor the power of Grace Slick,

Instrumentation

She was the primary rhythm acoustic guitarist (steel six-string, open chords, standard tuning, keys of D and A major), suggesting she was the true songwriter who owned the tune. She performed the classic country-folk strumming of a decade earlier (Hootenanny style) with no backbeat, and no finger picking.
See here for the Light the Lanterns chords. Note: They are ALL major chords except one, the F#m. There's not even any 7ths. Real basic, 1960s Hootenanny style.
No dropped bass E to D like Joni Mitchell popularised around 1965. Even Dylan was using a dropped D from 1962. But not our girl here. Why? Hootenanny style 60s guitar chords were nearly always natural tunings. I was taught around 1967 that non-standard guitar tunings were unconventional "to the normal ear" and muck up your other chords.

Band and Recording Status

There are obvious mixed skill levels going on in the song. A more skilled bassist and slide guitarist versus the mediocre drums and vocals, suggest either a college-level ensemble or a singer who went into a budget studio and got gifted some spare musos sitting around that day. This is not a polished band nor professional session players. It's either a semi-pro studio or a garage-level recording quality.

Commercial Fate

Industry rejection of the Light the Lanterns demo was undoubtedly due to a lack of commercial "X-factor" or, as Joel Selvin called it when I sent it to him for dating, "pretty generic 68-69". For those who remember those days, let's face it, there were LOTS of such songs, both released and unreleased. The Light the Lanterns demo was probably her only one and only shot at a professional music career.

Post-Light the Lanterns

Like so many 60s kids did after the 60s -- and like so many aspiring musicians still do today when their artistic aspirations get knocked back by the mainstream gatekeepers -- our aspiring singer-songwriter likely underwent an identity transformation after failing to secure a record deal, by embracing a conventional life (eg, motherhood, a "better paid" career).
Or maybe she suffered a drug misadventure in the heavier 70s. Any of these fates would explain her complete untraceability in music records.
But then, perhaps today she's an active grandmother, blissfully unaware of her musical near-miss. I do hope so.

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Where To Go Now?

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If you'd like to delve deeper into the full story about the song and the nuts and bolts of my 6 years of Research Archives, return to the Main Menu and read through pages 1 -12.