InnerSpeace

Best Grief is Tongueless

2011-11-28T22:24:00.004-06:00

I have never been a quiet girl, but I have been forced into such a space. I have acute laryngitis. I am healing, I've been to the best doctors, there is nothing damaged, but 13 days ago I woke up and nothing came out. My singing voice is definitely healing and I've done a few shows successfully, I'm just lowering keys and being very gentle on my voice as I sing myself back to health. Its the talking voice that's ragged, so I'm just not doing much of it. I'm not a quiet girl. I'm also not a patient girl. And the healing involves patience. Because my vocal chords are swollen and, along with a few things I can do and some medicine and avoiding certain foods and drinking a lot of water, really, the one thing I need right now is patience. Because it will come back. I just need to let go. Letting go is not easy. Let go of results, let go of timing, let go of all expectations and allow that as long as I do the things I'm supposed to do, my voice will come back. When it is ready.

I've been toying with this as metaphor. Like Saul/Paul the apostle struck blind. I once was blind but now I see? Maybe in the quiet hours I will find my voice, a truer voice? And I'm not talking about singing here. I feel like I've been on the path of truth-seeking for a while. "Who isn't?", you might add, but I've been like a warrior on this quest. Stumbling and tripping over myself and others, doing my best to stay directed like a flashlight at the hope for clarity. Or something in the near vicinity.

The throat chakra is Vishudda and when it is opened it is said to transform negative experience into wisdom and creativity. When it is closed, it is grief and death.

I've been writing a lot lately. Songs, stories, letters I won't send. Grieving things I'm letting go, grieving the road not taken. I remember loving that Frost poem. My grandmother would read Frost to me and I'd think of myself as a warrior child: that I'd be the one to take the road less travelled by. I knew I would. My grandmother lived long enough to see me not only take it but to earn enough success on it so that she could rest easy, knowing that I would eat and pay rent by it. I never thought that the other road, the road of stability and family and children and a mortgage and routine, might also live in the 'less travelled' by stanza. Mostly, I can with confidence say that I wouldn't change a thing. And yet, there are times when the grass might seem greener and I regret things, missed turns, lost friends. I spend my life driving and flying to shows, mostly alone, sometimes with others. And I am passionate about what I do and I am blessed to earn a living from my 'bliss'. But, there are days when it is too quiet and after the gig and the silence in my hotel room is hard to take and, at least for right now in my self-imposed solace, that there's not someone calling to check in and say goodnight is my reminder of my aloneness: the shadow of loss like a bedtime prayer. When I sometimes long for weekends of playing with children in leaves, shopping for a family dinner...I can even mythologize the water cooler conversations at office jobs. The grass isn't really greener over there. It's just a different plot of grass.

In the midst of this silence and solace, and an admitted financial crisis that kicked my knees out from under me for about a week, came the death of an old friend, Michal Friedman. A sudden, shocking, completely tragic death. Which, just as my legs were getting a bit stable and I was healing the voice, kicked it all out again.

I say old friend. My friend died in childbirth, leaving twins (healthy) and a husband I never met, didn't know existed. You see, this was a woman who was a friend of mine in a particular time of my life. Her sister was my better friend, but when she moved to NYC, she was also a musician, we were the same age, we played the same clubs, we temped, we'd go out and I seem to recall drink wine and talk about boys and music and clothes and Buddhism and she was sharp and smart and intimidating and tiny and stunningly beautiful like a cartoon character and seemed stronger than I. My then-husband was smitten by her and loved her music and we were all part of this loose gang. My best friends at the time were my fellow Expanded Arts Theater Company actors and her sister was a fellow actress. I was just beginning my journey into music and was starting out in the clubs in NYC. So was Michal. We were broke and idealistic and loud and competitive and she was single and I was married (but not rooted and clearly unhappy) and we spent time together. Not a lot. She wasn't a 'good' friend, nor a 'close' friend, but she was a friend and she was most certainly an integral part of that time for me. I realized, upon hearing of her death, that I hadn't talked to her or seen her play in over 6 years. I started touring full time in 2005 and once that happened, I saw my theater friends once in a while. My day-to-day friends became my band, the fellow troubadours on this winding road. My theater friends kept at it, plugging away, some kept with it, some left to do other things. And eventually, they got married too and most had babies and I lost track of if they were even acting anymore. Michal kept at music and though I didn't talk to her or keep up with her, I'd see her on Facebook or I'd hear about her show from my now Ex husband, who loved her music. Or I'd get curious as to what she was doing and I'd go searching. I knew she was acting and doing voiceovers. I didn't know she was married. I didn't know that she was pregnant.

This happens. Life moves forward. One path goes one way, the other the other. Just different shades of green. At some point, I looked around at with whom and by what I was surrounding myself, felt increasingly like I was on a train bound for a brick wall, and, growing weary and feeling older, I lit a match and burned it all down. Moved out. Got a divorce. Left a band. Left a label. Left management. Meditated. Started yoga. Felt the right thing come into my life on many levels and followed those winds. Moved south. Started over at 41. Lost track. Let go. Grieving the old. Wrote an album about all of it. Was proud and happy of that birth-giving, and have watched its stuttering journey through the world as it lingers, well received but not necessarily changing anything. I have watched that halting movement with pride and grief. Questioning...

And then, silenced by a swollen throat, still channeling the warrior, this time gently singing myself back, I hear of this untimely death of a girl who should not have died. A girl who was part of my world for a brief but very very important part of my life. I feel like I should not even be writing this, as it is her husband, her sister, her family, her real friends that remained, that grew with her, that ate Sunday dinners together and struggled to make ends meet 10 years later -- those are the real grievers. Maybe my grieving isn't for a loss that's mine, but for their loss. For the loss of this water sprite with a big howler of a voice who laughed easily.

But its also the loss of time and choices and I recognized with a deep kick of a growing pain that life is short and as I'd say, "Oh, I'll see them all next time I'm in town" there is sometimes not a next time. I'm reminded of my father and his twin, my beloved uncle, their 70th birthday dinner a few years back. I was offered a very important show during the Sundance Film Festival and instead of joining my entire family at the birthday dinner celebration, I took the show. Which ended up being far from important. It yielded nothing but a dent in my credit card. I said, though, "Oh, I'll make the 75th dinner. THAT will be something." My uncle passed away a year later, suddenly, of a heart attack.

One of my deepest regrets in life is that I missed that dinner.

And I do my best to not miss important dinners anymore. I learned the hard way that No Gig is that important.

So to the quiet. And the solace. It gives me the opportunity to see the connections. To accept and acknowledge the connections from my uncle to my friend to my financial woes to my voice to what I love and what I put time and energy into and this long road I keep running up and down, rock heavy up the mountain each time, falling back upon me, still lifting it wearier yet fighting the negative to the light and hope. I'm not getting off the wheel. That's not what this is. But perhaps the mute is like a flag waving: pay attention.

So I will. I will pay attention to whatever this is supposed to mean if anything. And I will make some very long overdue phone calls to people I love. And I will not regret that I stood on a high peak and spoke of a true love, regardless of the outcome. And I will meditate on all of this and let it sift through grieving and doubt and fear and lonely and pride and anger and loss and love.

And I will wish Michal a safe journey to wherever she is going and hope that her husband and her twins and her entire family and current community will grieve and mourn and then grow and find light and love again and have a beautiful life.

Excuse me, I'm going to go call some people, voice or no voice.

A Time To Talk

Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road

And slows his horse to a meaning walk,

I don't stand still and look around

On all the hills I haven't hoed,

And shout from where I am, What is it?

No, not as there is a time to talk.

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,

Blade-end up and five feet tall,

And plod: I go up to the stone wall

For a friendly visit.

'I have not yet forgot myself to stone'

2011-10-27T12:30:00.005-05:00

Clementine: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon.

Joel: I know.

Clementine: What do we do?

Joel: Enjoy it.*

The other day I hit the return button on my laptop while trying to figure something out on Facebook, committing to something before I was ready for the commitment, and whoooooop -- in a moment I was erased. Completely. My personal profile: gone.

[Side Note: before the helpful hint comments begin, let me explain. I was trying to merge my so-called Friends, all 5,000 of them, from my Personal Profile to my Music Page and then recreate a Personal Profile with only real friends and family, so that when I post something it doesn't go to strangers. I tried doing that at first: when I got a request from a name I didn't recall, I'd send a nice brief message: "hey, if we had a conversation, shared a beer, met in passing at a festival, please remind me..." but honestly, it just took too much time. Time that I wanted to be spending writing songs. Not that I really care that much about having strangers (or fans) be Friends, but my niece is getting to that age where she may start wandering onto my Facebook page and I want to protect her from certain elements, like the creepy "Friend" that IM's me asking what I'm wearing who might find her and do the same. I mean, I know I can defriend them, and I do, but its become a bit of a pain and I felt the need to go into a bit of hiding. I had downloaded all the info on my Profile Page before doing this, so all was not lost. But it did feel like a petite mort...]

At first: panic. I wanted to retract. To get myself back. I spent hours (literally) wandering through the labyrinthian so-called Help section. Which was no help. The Community Pages are a bleak terrain of shared ignorance. Because nobody knows how to fix anything, everyone's confused and lost and the folks who might actually get paid at Facebook to help out this global community sit drinking their Lattes and don't answer us. And keep changing the terrain (and redefining privacy without asking our opinion).

Its like an acid dream where you are stuck in Oz's chamber, nobody behind the curtain, screaming "IS ANYONE OUT THERE LISTENING?" and then all of a sudden you are swept into "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and you can't un-erase your erasing.

I'd thought about this step. I'd been talking to other friends who went underground, creating clever pseudonyms and re-friending real friends. Not any of these friends are famous in the global sense of fame, but they are musicians out there touring, one was on a national TV show, and even in the non-famous world of folk music, boundaries and privacy are a concern. Facebook has been increasingly feeling this way to me and to some of my friends. We kept joking about turning it off. Walking away. A few had. One even encouraged me to take the leap off the cliff into pseudonymetry.

I'd challenge myself to not open Facebook until my morning routine was complete (meditation, journaling, yoga, a bit of writing, emails that were important, etc.). I could waste hours there, following threads of friends of friends conversations, peering into photo albums of old classmates, real friends, ex friends, ex lovers, current lovers of ex's, until I felt like Pandora and felt like I'd snuck into a stranger's underwear drawer and found secrets I'd rather not have seen. I think every one of us has had some moment of personal relationship drama upon seeing someone else's post, or changed status, or photo. I spent a whole day in an airport reeling, fighting anxiety and fear about a post on someone's wall, waiting to have the phone conversation to clarify something and believe me, I felt like a childish asshole starting out with "Ok. I know this is gonna sound strange, and I know its gonna sound petty and childish, but I saw something on your Facebook page..." It has already been written about by better writers than I that our false sense of community has lulled us into complacent connection. We all stumble around snippets of strangers and almost-friends, checking in on loved ones, peering through the veil. It can feel sneaky and dirty and sexy and claustrophobic in that maze.

There's good there, too. I'm not just complaining. I found new friends, reconnected with old friends. I got invited to parties. I found out about shows I'd not have known about. Found new music, read cool articles, felt a collective tug of belonging as we all complain about the stupid posts going about. Kindling and rekindling. I felt a real loss once I was booted out. I felt like the world had gone on without me and I wasn't able to get to the party. It was weird. I missed logging on and seeing the posts of people I kind of knew but liked from afar; I felt close to people I barely knew. You get a sense of someone's style from their posts. Their quips. Their sense of humor. Their spirituality, sometimes. Their pathos. Their sarcasm. I loved checking in on Susan Werner, who in real life is an acquaintance, in that I like her, she likes me, we've maybe had two or three brief conversations before shows, but because we shared about 500 friends and she saw my posts and I saw hers and we'd comment back and forth, I felt like we'd skipped a few steps in the dance of friendship and perhaps one day, in real person, we could hang out and drink wine and laugh together like old friends and I'd say "oh remember when you posted to my wall...." Of course, there's good and bad to the skipping of the dance. The dance is part of the fun.

So I re-emerge on Facebook as another name. And this time I can define the parameters of who I want to be in my conversation. But after having 4,980 friends, having only 11 right now is feeling thin. I admit: I feel left out. And that's an old feeling that goes back to being picked last for the Kickball team in elementary school. And the truth is, I can still connect through my Page, where I'll post this. But I have to say, I do feel freed of something. And only by deleting myself, albeit accidentally, did I realize how tied (perhaps, addicted) to my own sense of belonging I was. To let go...to TRULY let go...has been a real lesson in what I was holding onto.

I’m collecting my strength, one day I shall manage without her,

And she'll perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me.

(from 'In Plaster', Sylvia Plath)

* dialogue from the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"

The Karaoke King

2011-09-24T22:51:00.004-05:00

I'm in Flint, Michigan at the Super 8. They apologized when they told me that this is the place they were putting me up. They said, as if it were a shrug, "We got you reservations at The Super 8. Its not super classy, but its nearby." As if it were an apology. Like, "She's got an...um...GREAT personality..." But did they know? Did they know what a vortex of awesome they threw us into?

We were hungry. We asked. "Is there any place that will still serve us dinner at 10pm? We drove straight from Nashville. 9 hours. With a time change. We didn't eat." (well, that's not true: we stopped for a moment, or ...it was supposed to be a moment...at a Subway in Nashville, Indiana...yes, that's Nashville, Indiana...however, the moment was to be just that --a moment-- but the woman behind the Subway counter--perhaps, 19? 18? 25? Let's just say, her future in sandwich-making is suspect. It took her 30 minutes to make a 6" turkey-no-cheese-light-mayo-sub)

They said, 'well, at this hour, in FLINT, there's, um Applebee's (immediately, I remembered that everything there is fried and the veggie sides are always broccoli--FROZEN and then STEAMED--ick...watery and really really chewy...yick.)' I shake my head, 'Anything else?' They say, 'Oh! Next to the Super 8 is a Wally's, a family restaurant. Oh and connected to that is a bar/grill.' Thomm, who wants a beer, says 'perfect!'

We drive the 3.4 miles to the Super 8. We see the place. Wally's. Then, even better: The Firkin Fox. A kind of British Pub. Sort of. In Michigan. In Flint. Oh yeah. I want a glass of wine. Thomm wants a beer. I'm hungry.

Bonus: Its Karaoke night. We settle into this place, booths, but red velvet as if we're in Shropshire or London. But decorated by the ex-designer for TGIFriday's after they took the flair down. Seriously. Karaoke. Big screens. Loud. An MC Hostess. Some dude grabs the mic. The wireless mic. And dances his hip-hop-singing-Usher-pretending self over to some pretty lady at the bar and lays it on thick. THICK. With a really good voice. Seriously. Like, not totally in tune, but I'm sure with monitors and a bit less whiskey, the dude would sound great. Thomm and I watch, as if this is a 3-D movie and we are just there, like watching The Boy In The Plastic Bubble or one of those After School Specials where you sort-of relate, but sort-of are glad you don't live there... He's good. This Karaoke guy who I'm sure comes here every weekend. I sure hope if that's not his girlfriend he gets lucky tonight. He deserves it.

So to Karaoke and the subject of that. Thomm says, "What's your position on karaoke." And I say, definitively, "I don't do karaoke." End of the discussion.

Now, I love singing. Its my greatest joy. Second only to lying in bed with a lover and reading the New York Times Sunday edition, section by section, with nothing to do the rest of the day but just that, and cuddle and more, and make coffee and nap and watch football. But I digress....

I love singing. I don't love karaoke. I feel like an ass. The keys are always wrong. So I'm singing out of my range. And I don't dance. I play guitar for a reason. I like standing behind the guitar. I don't like dancing. I don't want to dance. I'm no good at dancing (well: that's patently untrue. I love dancing and in my fantasy-land uber-self I'm an excellent dancer. But I will never live up to my ideal of the greatest dancer in the world. Debbie from my college class. Cute Deb, who I remember for a time became one of those Doctors-Without-Borders-Saving-The-Planet and I thought....really Deb? really? You had to do THAT? You couldn't just rest on your "I'm the cutest girl who's non-threatenening and EVERYBODY likes me AND I stand in the center of the dance floor and you will stare in awe at my dance moves. Really, Deb? You had to go save the world and be perfect? Leave the rest of us something, ok?)

I once tried Karaoke. I was in Port Jervis, NY. Kal and Dana and Rob and I had gone to Port Jervis to tube down some river with beers in a cooler in its own tube. We drank a bit and decided to not drive home to Hoboken and instead, stay in Port Jervis, get a room or two, eat a good dinner and go to .... a local Karaoke bar. Good idea, right? Well, for Rob, yes. Because Rob is one of the smartest people I know. He's a scientist. He's a professor. He's good looking. He's tall. He's funny. He's ascerbic. And in his fantasy-version of his life, he's an actor. So he says, "YES! Karaoke! I'm doing "Thunder Road". I realize we're gonna be there for a while. (seriously? who does Thunder Road at Karaoke...?)

There's a guy there. Everyone watches him. He's in a 3 piece suit. Sears. Shiney greyish blue. With a red tie. Tall and skinny. Slick, black hair. He sings "Sweet Caroline" with 3 girls with enough Mousse between them to float the Parthenon, who sing the backup parts and dance in too-tight acid-washed jeans. Flourescent green shirts shirred at the bottom, showing just a touch too much belly around the button, if you know what I mean. The Karaoke King. He's there. He's always there. Rob's wife Dana pushed me out there, had signed me up for some Sheryl Crow song. I admit: I'd had a few tequila shots. I sang. I was out of tune. In my own head. But I was laughing and it was fun. All I wanna do....

So...afterwards, I excused myself to go to the ladies room. The 3 KK's backup singers were there, spraying their feathered bangs. I say hello. They start in on me. You've got a good voice...you can sing...you should do this...etc. At first I simply say thank you, while drying my hands, but then I feel like an imposter, so I confess. Say, "Oh this is what I do. I'm a singer." And they stop, mid-spray. Like as if in a movie. Look at each other. Smile fakely. "ooooooooooooooh" They say in a three part harmony arc of discovery "ooooooohhh". I smile and leave. Go to my friends. The Three Muses scurry out, scoot to the 3 Piece Suit. Whisper in his ear. His head whips to me. They point. I'm laughing with my friends. And then it happens:

I'm called out by the Karaoke King.

I sense a presence. A shadow. Stetson wafts over me. I look up. There he is in all his greasy glory. He taps me on the shoulder. I look up.

"So...I hear you're a ringer."

"Excuse me?"

The Three Muses nod and twirl bits of their Ogilve perms.

"I've been told you're a professional."

"Singer?" I ask.

"Yes. Ringer. Singer. Yes. From New York." He threatens. His pointed Capezio toe taps, in exasperation.

A beat.

Another beat.

His eyebrow raises. I try to not laugh. Or burp.

"Um...yeah...but .... really... I'm...well, I make NO money...I'm EMERGING...." I try to explain....

He is having none of this. And he looks at me with complete indifference.

"I'd better not see you in Wilkes-Barre next week for the $500 prize. You get that? You get it?" And then he leans in, finger wagging at my face: "Wilkes-Barre"

And so, ladies and gents, my story of having been threatened by the Karaoke King in Port Jervis, NY. And why I will never, ever, ever sing Karaoke. And that's why I sat and ate my Mushroom Swiss Burger and drank my house cabernet at the Firkin Fox in Flint, Michigan, listening to the good folks of the bar make their attempts at 20 year old songs like that bee girl song by that band I forget their name but it was really sad because the lead singer committed suicide and I never liked that song anyway but the video with the bee girl was hard to not love... or one of my favorite 90's songs by DeLaSoul or Arrested Development. And then I think, why doesn't someone bring back Arrested Development, because that album, that first album with "Tennessee" on it is, um, kind of relevant today. Isn't it? Or is just me being nostalgic.

In my show, I talk about getting off the major highways in order to find better food options than Cracker Barrel. But what I love is getting to go to a place like this tonight and check out the scene. And it may seem like I'm mocking. But I'm not. At all. I heard some amazing voices tonight. Seriously. And I heard old songs I miss. And there was a scene there. I can imagine those 4 guys who are good singers meet there every weekend to sing.

In high school I was in show choir. Oh yeah. I've got the photos of me in the red and white sweater with my name embroidered into the bust. Very Mickey-Mouse club. Or, now, Glee. Oh yeah. I was that girl in Glee. I wanted ALL the solos. I was pretty damn amazing at the jazz hands, step-ball-change. I sucked up to Mr. Gallup and Ms. Herrick to get the part of Maria in "West Side Story". I wanted to beat out Stephanie Sikora for that. It was my life's ambition. She was good. Stephanie was a great singer. I was kinda jealous of her. Seriously. And tall. And thin. And beautiful. And I was short and didn't feel pretty. I could sing. But I wanted to sing like Stephanie. So when I got Maria and she got Anita. I have to admit to a very petty feeling of superiority. Hell, its 25 years later, so I'll forgive myself, and I'm pretty sure, although I haven't seen Stephanie in 25 years and I don't know what her life is like (I hear she's a veternarian), she probably didn't care as much about that as I did. But yeah. I've seen a few episodes of "Glee" and saw myself in there. And I went to high school in a small, cloistered town. And I haven't really been back. And my 25 year reunion is in a few weeks and I doubt I'll go. Even though, I have to admit, I kind of want to...just to see....

The Karaoke King. At least he knows he's the King of something. Most of us are lying in wait to sit in confidence at our own royalty.

Ten Years...

2011-09-10T22:09:00.007-05:00

Somwhere, in a box of rolls of undeveloped analog photos there is a roll I never developed. It might be in one of those forgotten boxes full of knickknacks and bits of nostalgia, hastily packed in the upheaval of separation and moving. I'd love to find that roll of film. There would be my friend Amy, her blonde hair and blue eyes against the blue blue sky. Out of focus, blurry, twin streams of smoke over a wide river, black fog cutting into blue sky behind her head. Hazy, like my memory of that day.

I was living in Hoboken, New Jersey. At 1116 Hudson Street, one block off the river, across from the 20's in Manhattan. I was playing music, not yet for a living, but certainly working towards it. For a living, I worked as a temp secretary in NYC law firms. Downtown and uptown. Monday night football ran into double overtime and that night, I remember having a ... well, now I might in retrospect call it a premonition...then, it was more like a mental hitch. A little voice that suggested I call in 'sick' to my temp job, play hooky, take the day off. So I did. I remember the quiet argument that ensued the next morning when Kal woke early to shower and get ready and I lingered in bed, making excuses. He worked about a mile away, in Weehawken, in a glass office on the river with a clear view of Manhattan. He walked to work. He left around 7:30 am and I remember his annoyance. It was a usual silence between us. We were navigating the uncomfortable non-fitting of each other after a few years, neither of us ready to say aloud what was creeping around like an undercurrent.

I got up, made coffee. Our two dogs, Clyde and Siggy, needed to be walked and our dog run was in Elysian Park, on a hill overlooking the river. I took my time with this part of my morning. I loved our kitchen. Black and white tiled backsplashes, an old 60's era refrigerator, wood floors, a 4th floor fire escape overlooking the courtyard. I drank my coffee slowly, enjoying the idea of a full day off. Then I took the dogs down the 4 flight of stairs, down the block, across the street to the park to the dog run and let them go. A familiar woman walked toward the run from the edge of the park, closest to the river, and with a concerned look said to me, "Where is Kal?" I said, "At work." She said, "Where? He's in finance, right?" I said, "Yes" she said, "where?" I said, "Weehawken. Why?" Her face was ashen. She said, "A plane hit the Trade Center. Call him." She might have said planes and centers, plural. I can't remember. I got my dogs and ran to the edge of the park and saw the smoke and then ran back to the apartment, ran up the stairs and turned the TV on. My downstairs neighbor, Amy Fairchild, another singer-songwriter, heard me bounding up and came running up as I turned the TV on.

To be honest, I don't remember that much. I remember we watched TV together for a while. I'm not sure what we saw on TV and what we saw in person. What was happening was happening a stone's throw away from my open windows. The TV seemed surreal. I remember the newscasters talking about a small plane, then terrorists, and then Amy and I grabbed our cameras and headed to the river, just across the street and down the curve of the road a bit.

We joined a small crowd that had gathered. About 20 people. Someone had a transistor radio, Bloomburg radio I think. I barely remember. I could swear as we sat there we watched a tower, maybe both fall. I remember that moment, the silent scream inside my throat, caught in the lump, looking up at the sky, wondering when the sky would fall. I remember someone saying something like "there goes thousands of people". I remember the urge to laugh. To really laugh outloud in that shock-wave kind of giggle that happens to me when something out of the bounds of understanding punches me in the gut. The completely inappropriate laughter that masks a keening wail.

It was only the week before that I had ridden the elevator up to the top of the Trade Centers, to put my face against the glass at Windows on the World, to look down, the air around me closed in and I experienced a wave of vertigo. In the years I'd lived in NYC, I'd only gone to the top once and it was the week before they disappeared.

I don't know how long we sat there, but both Amy and I took photos and neither of us have those photos. Neither of us ever printed them.

I remember walking down Washington Boulevard to meet my friend Karen who worked in the towers but was, thankfully, late to work and didn't make it in that day. I sat with her in her apartment with another friend for hours. Then we walked up the boulevard, men and women in business suits caked ash grey and wet from being hosed off as they disembarked the ferries that dropped them in Hoboken. The bars in Hoboken were full and silent of these chalky faces. It was a beautiful, warm September day.

We walked to the hospital to give our names to give blood.

We made a list of everyone we knew who worked downtown. We tried to call people but our cell phones wouldn't work.

I sat for hours alone later that afternoon, staring at the black streaks in the sky.

I thought about the stores underneath, the greek man who sold me coffee in those blue paper cups and a pre-buttered raisin bagel wrapped in cellophane for $1.50. The man at the flower/newspaper kiosk where I'd buy tulips after working at one of the law firms in the towers. I thought of those people I'd seen on days I'd temp, crammed into the elevators, crammed into the lobbies.

Later that night, we went to my brother's apartment in Hoboken as our gang gathered, waiting to hear from all of our friends who worked in the Towers, a bottle of Jack Daniels was passed. We were all sober-drunk. Nobody was crying. We were all in shock. We waited for Harry. I remember waiting for Harry, who was the last to show up, at midnight, piss-blind-drunk, in complete shock.

Kal and I walked home to our apartment after that. Silent. There was already a crack in our earth, but that day opened the ground below us into a canyon we wouldn't quite understand nor recognize for years.

I remember that I had a cough that lingered for month. A bronchial infection. There was an acrid smell to the air for a long time, a burning. We went to the city as soon as the subways opened up again. We went to the Union Square makeshift memorial where photos were taped to a wall, where candles and flowers lay. Where "Have you seen ...." notes were taped anywhere and everywhere. We awaited news of rescues that never came. I remember how New York City wrapped itself tighter around itself like a hand-knit scarf on a chilly Autumn day, including all. I remember noticing that people looked each other in the eye from that day forward. There was kindness everywhere.

What I wrote that week, the only thing I wrote was this:

I just watched Dan Rather break down on tv tonight. Of all the things that I've witnessed and heard about this terrible and unbelievable week, that was the most jarring to me. Its like seeing your father cry. It makes the world less safe.

I didn't go down to that area of the City for a full year. Then one night, I was driving home from a gig and got lost on my way to the Holland Tunnel and found myself driving down near the huge holes in the ground and looked up to two towers of light, illuminated from the ground up, dissipating into mist in the starless sky.

Ten years....

The Kindness of Strangers

2011-06-11T12:54:00.002-05:00

There are days…I’m sure we all have them in each of our chosen fields of work…or our relationships, with our family, our friends, our community…or our bank accounts…you know those days when you find yourself whining, even softly to yourself so that nobody can hear, even with an outward smile of “Everything’s fine here. Nothing to see. Move along.” But internally you are throwing yourself a ticker tape parade of a pity party. The ‘why me’ the ‘how did I get here’ the ‘when does the monkey get off my back?’ days. Everyone has them. I just read something in a beautiful book by Pema Chodron called “When Things Fall Apart” that we NEED those days. We should lean into those days. Those moments. Of course we should. Duh. That’s where growth happens. But still, in the midst of those days, don’t we all just want to jump off the treadmill we’re on and say “UNCLE” to the skies? I did yesterday. I’ve been off the road for a few weeks, home, counting my spare pennies, worrying about the paucity of my (cough cough) savings account and the future of that in this lovely world of Folk music where, as the joke goes, ‘there are hundreds of dollars to be made’. I got in my car yesterday, admittedly an hour later than I’d have liked, to drive a few hours to Eastern, Tennessee for an outdoor show. Late. I figured I had about an hour to spare, I’d be fine. That is, until I hit I 40E and the parking lot it had become due to an accident or Bonnaroo..who knew. All I knew is that I’d NEVER make the gig. Karma, I thought, karma for being late. Karma for being distracted while packing. Everything was going wrong and I couldn’t even possibly get my ass out the damned door on time. Karma. And the dark clouds started to pile up above my head. I got off the highway, found a winding road that seemed to be leading absolutely nowhere, and my GPS lost the trail and I was just about to scream Uncle when signs to I 40E appeared. I’m not a big pray-er. But in that moment, I put my hands on the top of the steering wheel, palms up, looked up at the blue sky and whispered, “Ok. Help. Please.” And as I veered off the ramp onto 40, the road was clear. Somehow, I’d diverted around the parking lot of stuck cars, and I was free of it all and doing 75 towards Jonesborough, TN and I was going to make it in time to this show.

That was the first sign.

Then a phone call. And angels come in unlikely places. Terri Hendrix was calling me. Do you know Terri Hendrix? She’s one of the most open-hearted songwriters I’ve ever met. She and Lloyd Maines are a great duo and we had the pleasure of working together at the Iron Horse in Northampton, MA a few years back. I’ve maybe spoken a few sentences to Terri. I can’t claim to know her well, but I sure do like her and Lloyd and they are always very friendly to me. I can remember the first time I met them, at the hand washing trough at Kerrville. We were both playing the mainstage that night and I had never seen her perform, but I knew her name (she’s a big deal in Texas). I was wearing my embroidered hippie jeans with a tank top. Didn’t realize that was Terri’s signature outfit (how embarrassing for me). She and Lloyd came up to me and introduced themselves to me and told me they had my CD (it was “Songs For Bright Street”) and that they really liked my music. I was floored. I was floored that anyone I’d heard of had heard of me at that point. I knew they were well known here in Kerrville and this would be my first time playing that stage. They made me feel at home and welcomed. So yesterday, out of the blue, it was Terri on the phone. And remember, I’d looked up to the sky and pleaded for a bit of mercy. Just a break in the clouds in my head. I won’t tell you our whole conversation, and I really hope I don’t embarrass Terri by telling you this, but she simply called to connect, to tell me that her lines were open should I ever need anything, it was the simplest gesture of an open hand of friendship and I could have cried right there. I told her I was having a bit of a hard time with ‘all of it’ and she kindly and with humor told me if I ever thought of quitting she’d come and find me. Then she reminded me why I do this in the first place. And its not like there is any way in the world Terri Hendrix would have known I was having my doubts. She’d just called for her own reasons. But there it was. A brief reaching out that meant the world and turned my day completely around. Might have turned more than one day around for me.

As if that isn’t enough, I pull into Jonesborough, TN where my show was last night. A series called “Music on the Square“. I got there 15 minutes before the show was to start. There was Steve Cook, the promoter, with a huge smile on his face, helping get me to the little stage. Everything was already set up. Sarah Jane on sound was right there to help. It took about 3 minutes to do a ‘sound check’. There was a big crowd of people too, from senior citizens to 20 something hipsters, healthy babies and people in wheelchairs and a wonderful young woman named Summer who told me stories of when she met Amy Grant and Vince Gill and she kept hugging me. Something Terri said connected and I looked out and I was able to find that thing in me that wanted to do this so long ago. I don’t know if it was my best show, but it sure felt good to me. And afterward, I met Summer’s mother, and the man who showed me the photo he took of his father in full military dress visiting a visiting display of the Declaration of Independence, and my host for the evening’s brother who had just moved here from Texas after losing his wife a year ago, and people who had lived near the town I grew up in, and people who asked about my father after hearing “Peace by Peace”.

Later that night, back at the Franklin B&B where I was put up, I sat and drank a glass of wine with Dona and Chuck and the two women who were visiting from Murfreesboro and Nashville, and I heard stories of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, and the history of Jonesborough. And I slept better than I have in about a week.

This morning, I took a run along Main Street and saw the Farmer’s Market and gorgeous little cottage houses with gardens that ran along a creek and couples young and old strolling the brick sidewalks. I had breakfast with Dona and Chuck and the two TN women and a pair of sisters, one of whom told me stories of taking her children on around the world trips, staying in host housing all along the way, staying with families two nights at a time, sometimes being on the road for a full year, sheep shearing in New Zealand, staying with older people in Bulgaria, getting homesick in Spain. Over strong coffee and the fluffiest Quiche I’ve ever had (“Heavy cream,” said Dona, somewhat apologetically), Chuck told about being a little boy visiting New York City, staying in a hotel on Times Square and being astounded by the lights. “But back then,” he said, “the lights flashed and strobed but they were just black and white. No kaleidescope colors like today” and I had to excuse myself soon thereafter to run and fetch a pen and my journal so that I could start writing the verses that were spilling from my head about “Times Square in Black and White.” And Chuck’s story elided with some of my own father’s — his childhood memories that he is writing for a course on “Sharing Your Story with Your Grandchildren” at the local community college that I keep begging him to send me. I’m reading them slowly and the stories are living now in my head: I can see him bareback on the horse in the backyard of the farm with his brother as the blue sky overhead turns black the day the planes flew over low, heading out for D Day. Kaleidescope skies, once in black and white. Photographs. Memories. Stories.

And as I took a post-breakfast walk, I happened upon the National Storyteller’s Museum, smack dab in the middle of this little town. Of course I did. And I remembered that storyteller we had in elementary school back in Minnesota when they took the 6th graders for a week to Camp Isabella up near Lake Superior in the heart of winter, to learn to read a compass and wander the snowy woods in snowshoes, and make igloos and rappel off rock climbing walls and at night, we’d gather with hot chocolate by a big fire and this bear of a man in a red and black buffalo plaid with a huge beard would tell stories of Grizzly Bears and Indians and Fur Trappers and Scandinavians and loons and elk and I was enraptured and I think that’s when I caught the bug that I wanted so badly to be THAT whatever THAT was…an actor a storyteller a musician a writer a whatever…

And so, again, I reconnect with where it all began. The reason.

And I think about the tour bus that carries musicians who make much more than I do and that tour bus winds down interstates at night, depositing their crew onto the stages of small and large towns just in time for the soundcheck. Those musicians sleep on that bus or in nice hotels. And those musicians make a lot of money. They might not sit on their front porch like I do, counting the pennies, wondering how to pay their bills. Maybe they do. But its at a different level. And I’m not saying I wouldn’t love to have one month where I’m not working it all out on a daily basis with a calculator. I’d love a bit of a cushion for sure. But in the meantime, I get to stay with people who tell me stories, who share photos of the house they renovated. Who sing me Irish songs because they want me to learn their favorite one. People give me ideas for songs, they offer me lyrics and history. I don’t play Carnegie Hall, but I play Music on the Square. And for now, I like it that way.

Its a funny thing what the universe will offer you when you surrender and whisper a plea.

Standing on the side of the stage in admiration...

2011-05-11T22:01:00.000-05:00

Opening shows for other artists is a funny thing. It can be a real master class. For example: Judy Collins. Shawn Colvin. Alejandro Escovedo. Ian Hunter. And it can be a slap in the face of the reality you really don't want to see--the person you don't want to end up as--the music you don't want to be making (no kiss and tell here).

Then there are the acts you open for and you stand aside, not quite as peers at least on the ladder-rung-level of success, but you feel a kind of equanimity kinship backstage in that there aren't separate dressing rooms, they don't have the star thing going that makes you feel like you can only put your bag in the teensy corner of the room that doesn't disturb their shit. The cool folks who share their Rider (i.e., popcorn and bottles of wine) with you, who say "oh, definitely try the Tempeh Thai salad...it rocks! Do you need to borrow some purple eyeliner?" without missing a beat.

I opened for zeitgeist It Non-Couple The Civil Wars last week at The Grey Eagle in Asheville and I'm here to report: wow. Just fucking wow. A) they're the nicest people on the face of the earth. B) Joy recommended the Tempeh Thai salad and she was right C) they're the nicest people ... and D) they BROUGHT it. Two voices and one guitar and they BROUGHT it. I walked out onstage before them to a veritable sea of 20 somethings. The youngest, largest crowd I've played for. Hipsters and hippies, drooling on the lip of the stage. And they were even nice. They didn't yawn through my 45 minute set (which, truth be told, I wished had only been 25 minutes. I really believe 6 songs is enough for an opener. 45 minutes pushes 8 songs and that wears the waiting crowd down, even if you're spectacular. I prefer 25-30 minute openings myself). They actually sang along, got quiet, moved their heads, bought CDs. It was amazing. But then, the Civil Wars walked onstage in their black gothic Americana outfits--Joy in teeteringly high heels and a short-skirted ballgown; John Paul in a black Billy Reid outfit. They looked spectacular. And to be honest (and if you know me, you know I'm a huge critic) they were incredible from the start. Beautifully fluid voices that were meant to sing together. Arty songs that made me wonder how the hell did hipster 20 somethings find these guys, cause although they have a few very commercially obvious (and in a really good way) songs, including well placed TV soundtrack stuff, they also have beautifully elegant almost-Parisian Jaquel Brel like Art songs. I don't get it and I'm so glad that somehow its caught fire, because it IS fresh. Someone said to me, "I dont' believe it", meaning, I'm sure that these two aren't a couple and the chemistry although perhaps underlying is real is perhaps exploited for show...who knows. What I know is what I see. And I saw passion and emotion bursting into flames and dripping all over the stage and I don't care that these are two separately married people making music, having been put together. I woulnd't care if they were the Backstreet Boys' 2nd cousins. I just felt something like a shiver watching them, thinking, wow. I haven't seen this.

That's the thing. Its simple. 2 voices. One guitar. A whole helluva lot of sensuality. Dress it up or not, its pretty cool to watch from the sidelines.

New York, New York

2011-05-11T08:28:00.004-05:00

The mix of the streetsmell is what first hit me with that longing that feels like a growing pain, the one where the imaginary band around your heart tugs a bit too tight and feels good and bad, sweet and sour at the same time.

The charcoal from the grilled chicken gyro cart on Seventh Avenue. A bit of exhaust fumes. Dank air rising from the subway grates. Orchids and $6 2-dozen roses, multicolored gardens wrapped in plastic under a green awning deli on every corner. Someone's hand-rolled cigarette, stamped out but still wafting underfoot.

Coco Chanel could roll all that into one oil and call it Manhattan. Or Paris. Or London. Just exchange the food from the cart. Add in a few taxi horns, and some chatter, and you've got yourself a strange mystical perfume.

I miss this City. Not always. But I do miss it. I don't miss the schlep. I don't miss the small indoor spaces where for 18 years I always felt claustrophobic (and didn't even know it) and longed for a bit more room for my books. Where I didn't necessarily ever just come 'home' to my 400 square foot apartment, take my shoes off and want to hang out all night. I always wanted to leave, to wander the sidewalks. The apartment was not a place of landing, more of a place to change your shoes, grab a coat. I don't miss the constant noise. I do miss the hum. Different than noise. I miss the people-watching, the walking, that slightly arrogant feeling you get after finally getting your city feet under you and helping out a tourist, that "Oh yeah. I'm not FROM here but I KNOW this place" cocky confidence. I miss the food. I miss that food is available even after 9pm. I miss the languages, the accents, the skin colors. And I miss the edge: the anger or the impatience, the hurry, the moment of kindness in the edge.

Not that I don't love where I landed but it doesn't yet fit. I get back to the Village and I breathe in the fumes and feel like I'm 23 again. Or 33. I'm beyond that and I don't belong here now. But it gets in your skin and stays like a tattoo or like an old scar that you can run your hand over and feel the groove. A mixed tape from an old boyfriend that even though the love is long faded, you can't bear to throw the tape out, warped and inksmeared.

A dinner with a friend on a familiar street playing catchup. A drink in the cafe I'd pass on the way to therapy every week where I'd think "I want to stop there sometime and linger". A pair of boots I can't afford at one of my favorite shops. Yankees hats and street hot dogs.

I miss it here.

Princes and Princesses

2011-04-28T22:59:00.002-05:00

So I've been reading Jung. I admit it. It sounds kinda highbrow, but hear me out: my therapist and my 'groups' keep offering me all these readings with easy-peasy titles like "He Loves You, He Loves You Not". Seemingly facile ideology from the pop-culture phenom craze of my parents' generation. Truth is: a lot of these tomes are actually steeped in good, literate, intelligent psychology and not so psycho-babble spirituality, drawing from Jung and The Upanishads and Buddhism and Yoga and Melodie Beattie and AA and loads of philosophy. So there's worth in the paperbacks I'm given. But this morning, as I sat in my sanctuary (cause a girl's gotta create a sanctuary and mine is my porch with chimes and hanging plants and comfy 1/2 price off Target club chair deck furniture from off-season, and my $50 vintage find of an antique plant rack with my herbs and begonias and violets and petunias, an old fake-persian rug where my dog June will lay spread in front of me, facing Fatherland, with my greeneries of Cardinals and Robins, songbirds and crows...) reading, meditating, journalling, I decided to read some Carl Jung and went directly to the back of the collected works, to "Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" and was schooled, maybe a bit too early, the coffee hadn't settled in. But it got me to thinking about Princes and Princesses and taffeta gown and trumpets. And soul mates.

I remember the last big 'Royal Wedding'. I'd been grounded severely. My whole family had gone off on vacation somewhere. A beach, probably. Who knows. But I was grounded. Probably for insubordination. That's what it always was with me. I fought the law. The law always won. But I kept fighting. Usually I was talking back ("sassing" they called it) to some moronic elder with a playground sense of justice. I'd call out the injustice. I'd get cut down by "you shouldn't talk back to adults" and I'd counter with "if the adult had something to Say..." and of course, I'd get punished. Truth be told: nine times out of ten I was right. But who likes a smart-ass 8 year old? So I'd get the punishment. This time: I was sent to my cousin's house. My mother's cousin. My godmother Mary Ellen. Now, Mary Ellen's house was no punishment. Mary Ellen and her husband John were the coolest. Washington insiders, they were intellects, and later I'd find out that, at least John, was the sole liberal (amongst myself) in my extended family. So I could talk to them. And in their house: Reason ruled. So there was debate about Right and Wrong. And I loved my cousins, Mary Ellen was like my Aunt, but my favorite Aunt. My Mom's childhood best friend. And her husband John was smart as shit and funny as Robin Williams and really really liked me. Made me feel like I belonged and cared. He was like the coolest Uncle ever. He was like a college professor, smoked a pipe, drank scotch, wore suede padded tweed jackets. Knew the President. And their kids, my 3rd cousins, were awesome. All Irish red and freckles.

So on that weekend, I was grounded, I remember being woken up at like 5am or something, coffee being served and we all parked ourselves in front of the television (no cable at this point in the 80's, just rabbit ears). And I remember the dress: the pooofy sleeves, the red of the carpet. She was ordinary. I loved it. I had her haircut. Bangs and short hair. Brown in a really dirty water way. She was nothing special and that's what made her gorgeous to me. An ordinary girl. Like me. And she was a princess. He was nothing special. Who really cared anyway about Prince Charles. It was Diana we all wanted to be. To be like. To be.

My sister got married in 1997 and the after party of the wedding was at our hometown's Sheraton bar and I was sitting in the booth with one of the red-haired freckled cousins, my brothers and my soon-to-be-husband and the news came on that Princess Diana had died in a car accident. The shag carpeting of my Virginia cousins' house where I watched her wedding came back and I felt sad for time passing and sad for a life, a waste really of time and so much, gone in a tunnel chase. I missed that girl with the brown hair and the bangs. I'd stopped caring once she became a glamour queen.

So to tomorrow's wedding. I won't wake early. If I had a daughter, I'd probably not wake her. Fairy tales are nice, but they can screw you up. Jung wrote his essay, which reads like empirical truth, on the wake of a late life affair with a younger woman. Of course he wanted to break apart the 'myth' of the Soul Mate. Its best to read the Greats with knowledge of where they were coming from in their personal lives. Sometimes Great Insight is really just the rantings of a pissed off lover dumped.

So I may not watch the wedding and certainly my belief in fairy kingdoms and castles is long gone. As is my belief in the 'soul mate'. That was a sad one to let go, and I don't mind admitting that. We all make our choices and we find ourselves in lives we didn't expect or anticipate or plan for, but here we are nonetheless, and there's no use in building sand castles. All kingdoms crumble. Its for the best and doesn't have to be a nihilistic argument for not caring and not trying. But if we know that really, under the poof and taffetta, there's just two people who survived a few breakups and getting back together, two ordinary people with some money who will do their best. And that's enough right? We do our best, knowing our own flaws, our own misguided beliefs in false fairytales, but also, knowing the wanting those myths to be true guides our poetry.

Oh hell. I'll put the coffee on early...

Ally and Amy

2011-04-25T22:18:00.001-05:00

A seriously bad obsession with Ally McBeal is in full swing and I admit it. I didn't watch this show when it first came around. I was younger. Oh man. Way younger. And it didn't speak to me. All these white, whiny lawyers, hot and rich, anorexic and quirky, lusting and looking for love. I was busy with my Life. Finding my Life. Finding the things that, well, they were all trying to find. But I was on the ground running. I was the Elaine, the legal secretary (albeit one with a little ivy degree) running in between acting gigs and music gigs and directing gigs and Lainie Kazan gigs. And dating men who were not my soul mates, but oh constantly wondering 'is this HIM? Should I stick with it? Is there something here I'm missing? What if I miss it?" Oh. I thought I was so outside the Ally realm.

Here I am. 43 years old. In my mid-life and wondering if this is part of the proverbial crisis. But I now finally, oh man, am I about to write this? RELATE to this skinny, whiny, exhausting, big-lipped bitch. I do. I admit it. Looking for love. Wondering if she found it and let it go. Or if she found it and it wasn't available to her and she should, well, wait till it is, exhausting her friends with the angst of all that. I admit it. Here I am. In the age where most women my age have kids going off to college or at least to high school. And I'm single. No kids. With a dog who just had surgery who's banging around my rented house in my new town in a plastic collar. Wondering what the meaning of life is. My best friends range from 19 to 65. Most women who are my closest friends are single without children. And searching but still somewhat content with where they are. Most are middle class. Some are poor. A few are rich. One is a CEO.

I looked in the mirror while Chelsea was doing my hair today and wondered about that crease, that thick crease between my brows. And the lines around my mouth. I wondered if its all starting to show. Finally. I feel like I've been cheating age. Looking younger than I am. And I wonder if its catching up finally.

And here I am, watching a 29 year old whine about the love of her life, who's just bleached his hair, divorced his wife, sleeping with his secretary... And yeah yeah I know, Billy's about to get a brain tumor and die and its gonna make me weepy. I tend to find sitcoms and these kinds of shows 15 years after they are off the air. I'm behind the times. Happily. Because if I was with the times, I'd be glued to "Jersey Shore" and some cooking show.

But yeah. 29. 43. Aren't we all just looking for the same thing?

Battened Hatches

2011-04-17T01:17:00.004-05:00

When I was a kid, I was a big crier. I cried as a baby. I cried when Mary Beth Mulligan seemed to prefer playing with my little sister over me, even though Mary Beth was my age and should have been my friend. I cried when my sister didn't share her toys. I cried in public: in 4th grade Mr. Tembrull (Mr. T we'd call him in our 1970's public-yet-posing-as-a-hip-boho-private-Montessori-like-grade-school-with-raised-carpeted-platforms-and-bean-bag-chairs-and-teachers-we'd-call-Mr. T-or Miss B-giving-us-the-false-impression-it-was-all-free-to-be-you-and-me elementary school) had us do multiplication tests on the chalkboard. He'd pit two of us against each other for time. I was a) not great at math b) very slow at math and c) a crier. So you can imagine. It was akin to wetting your pants in the playground. Completely uncool and completely humiliating. My mother would say "there are people worse off than you" in order to give me perspective and stop the tears, but still, they'd fall and I'd cry. Let me assure you, reader, at this point. I was a fairly healthy kid both physically and mentally in a stable family with the requisite amount of normal disfunction. Which is to say, nobody was beating me and there were no really big dramas that would be some underlying cause of the crying jags. I was just a blubbering kid. I was far from cool. I think the public crying stopped by the time I hit 7th grade. By that time I'd discovered bras and boys and was equally concerned with popularity, getting straight As and Nick Caringi.

Tonight I'm going to confess something. I was not nice to a stranger. I wasn't a bitch. But I was short and snippy, I was tired, and I could have been nicer. I would take it all back if I could. The late night hotel clerk. I'd requested a non smoking room. I lugged my heavy luggage and guitar up to the 3rd floor to find a smoking hall and a disgustingly smoky room. Lugged everything back down. Told her. She said the hotel was sold out. I said, 'is there anything you can do? I have asthma (true)' She found another room, gave me the key. I went to the room. It was freezing and the heater/air conditioner was stuck and wouldn't work. Went back. Now, it was 1:30am, I'd driven 5 hours, done a gig, did a radio show, and gotten to the hotel. As well, yesterday I'd driven 5 hours, had a horrible conversation on the phone that left me grieving and exhausted by the side of the road with about 10 minutes to get myself together before I was to be live on air for a radio show, done the radio show, still numb from the personal earthquake, survived a tornado (I'm serious), done a show, cried myself to sleep. So. It was a bad few days, or, rather, a challenging few days. And the third room the hotel clerk gave me seemed fine, so I unpacked, got into my sweats and then the high pitched short beep of the carbon monoxide detector started in and I realized the device was broken. I called the clerk. She mispronounced my name "Mrs. Speechy". And I just asked her (perhaps I was cranky, its possible) to either move me to another room (again) or come up and help me tear this stupid device off the wall if it wasn't going to stop beeping.

The knock on the door came fairly soon thereafter and the clerk, a large woman who could have been anywhere from late 20's to late 30's came into the room, stood on one of the beds to reach the alarm, and fiddled with it for 20 minutes. All I could think about was my last few days and I was barely holding it together, emotions threatened to spill uncontrollably out of my pores that weren't appropriate nor were they wanted, but there they were, knocking on my chest and behind my eyes and in my gut and I thought I was going to lose it. And then....she fixed it. And I softened. And as she came down off the bed, and I was profusely thanking her, and even apologizing for my tone, giving all sorts of excuses, she turned to me very graciously to say 'thank you' and I saw that tears were backing up in her large, sad eyes. And I said, 'are you ok?' and she had her hands together in a clasped wringing, the "I'm barely keeping it together" gesture that I know very well. She shook her head and nodded--both no and yes at the same time -- and smiled that kind of "If I say anything I might just cry so hard I won't ever stop" apologetic smile of the broken-hearted. I tried to stammer something of comfort and she said, 'God will provide. He always has. I am praying for strength and I believe I will have it' and I thought how brave of this woman to just tell me this, and I had a thought of my own pain, and that whatever hers was was larger, more enveloping, and then I had that feeling that we are all in the same boat. The same damn, sad, lonely, jubilant, sometimes blissfull, sometimes heartbreaking, thank-God-we're-all-together boat. And I wanted to hug her but my legs wouldn't move and she let a tear or two fall and then nodded to me, as if to say "I see the same in you and we'll be fine" and I thanked her for coming to help and she went out the door and back to her desk, wiping her eyes.

My own sadness was just wiped away by this woman, who came into the room to fix the alarm of some bitchy, tired, stranger.

Life lessons come in strange wrappings. I wish this woman a week of peace. A month of serenity and ease. I think she'll make it through. She has that kind of grounding, I could see it.

Candlesticks and battened hatches

Deck of cards and waterproof matches

We'll stay warm through the storm

Come what may

We've got all we need, no reason to complain

When the world's been raining, raining, raining

Cats and dogs

When the world's been flooded, flooded

All the dry land is gone

All we've got left

Is each other and this boat we're on

(Chuck E. Costa, 'Battened Hatches')

South By Southwest 2011

2011-03-21T15:43:00.002-05:00

Street tacos at 2:30am. That's the photo I choose. Mostly because the rest are blurry. But also because there's something about that taco truck that encapsulates the flurry that is SXSW. A quiet respite in the middle of the night in a parking lot with a huge neon "BINGO" sign above, picnic tables alongside the highway, $3 for-real-tacos with spicy pork and chicken and some hot hot green sauce and Pineapple soda, trying to line our stomachs after 12 hours of walking up and down Austin to hear bands, to play shows, our ears ringing, our calf muscles stretched to sore, feet throbbing.

SXSW, Austin. Music week. Last year I tagged along as an observer with only one pair of sneakers and one pair of jeans and few t shirts, and was given the rare opportunity to stand onstage at Antone's alongside The Posies and Evan Dando and members of Big Star to honor the late great Alex Chilton, having caught a ride to Austin with some friends and a manager who didn't think I should go, thought I should stay home, take the week off, as I didn't have an official showcase, and I argued with him, "sometimes you just show up and magic happens." Sadly, magic happened only because the world lost a great talent. This year, I had reason to be there. A new record, an official showcase, my Nashville band in tow. Into the swirling sea that is SXSW.

I heard there were 30% more people this year. Makes sense. I've been going to SXSW since 2005 with a year or two off in between. It was crazy then, and I've watched it grow, but it was corporate and big in 2005. Its bigger and more corporate now, but there's still reason to go. Still little moments of indie magic and moments of indie crap. And moments of corporate crap and moments of corporate righteousness. Its all there, a big swirling mardi gras of the best and worst of the business of art.

The darkside first, just cause its fun and gross like a carwreck like Snooky: drunken craziness, parades of spring-break like kids with beads around their neck, no official wristbands ($165) or badges ($500), just a swarm of kids who come for the party, to walk up and down 6th street and eat street tacos and drink margaritas till they pass out on the San Jacinto Sidewalk. Girls gone wild madness where my maternal instinct went on overdrive as I saw way too many drunk scantily clad bombshells held up by equally drunk boys, worried about their safety, their choices, wanting to tell them all that drinking until you pass out in the street is a recipe for danger. I saw a few disturbing things: a girl bent over while a boy behind her held her up, she was digging in her short-shorts trying to pull her thongs out of her shorts without taking anything off and the boy was laughing. Ick. And in line at a ladies room bathroom with 10 other women who were hopping from foot to foot, the need to urinate a kinetic urge, and a couple emerge from the handicapped stall, the girl--head down, hiding; the boy, head up, proud. A few snaps in a circle and an exclamations: "Oh yeah. Believe it." I'll leave the darkside with one more image that encapsulates this shadow edge of it all. 3am. Driving the van to the hotel through sidestreets the headlights shine on a possum in the middle of the road, standing in a pile of puke, dining on this, looking up at the approaching van, looking directly at us inside as if to say "Dudes. I'm not moving. This is good shit" and then going right back to lapping the puddle up. And we have to go around the possum because he is not moving. Its nasty, I know, but then, SXSW has the nasty side.

The magic: Driving through the downtown mess of bumpertobumper traffic in the van with the band, trying to get to a gig, filled with anxiety of honking horns and garage rock bands echoing off the tall hotel buildings, we are stuck in a jam out in front of the doors to the Hilton Hotel, where a beautiful wisp of a girl is strumming a classical guitar through an amp, another girl is playing brushes on a cookie sheet snare on her lap, one microphone is amplified through a tiny beat up amp. They've set up there on the corner like buskers. And the girl is singing in french, this lovely melody and its like Edith Piaf right there, and its so different and quiet and REAL and TRUE and something from the depths of her heart, unlike the throngs of skinnyjeans-chains hanging from the left pocket-long sideburns/handlebar mustaches-boybands punkrocking along 6th Street (god bless anyone with a dream and I love music, but I heard the same band about a thousand times, whether it was the 5 piece rockband breaking down the last chorus to its bland emotional center or the acoustic pileup in the center of the room thwarting the soundsystem like every Mumford & Sons follower, but regardless of the sameness, god bless those who follow their passion and at least throw their dream into the wind to see what catches...I'd hate to be an A&R person these days. I'm content in my little world just trying to write something real from what moves me, just me, not everyone, but me). So this girl, our car stopped, Neilson rolls down the window and wants to leap out and get her CD, wants to record her right there, in front of the Hilton, and just as we are about to all do a Chinese FireDrill out of the car, the traffic opens up and we have to go and we lose that one bit of magic. We don't even know who she was. But I hope some jaded record label person wandered by, his or her ears buzzing with distortion, and heard her in her quiet little shadow space, and stopped and was as moved as we were.

I saw great shows. Flogging Molly playing their set as the clock struck midnight on the early morning of St. Patrick's Day as if every song was an encore. Apache Relay's lead singer stands on the monitor and has an exultant rocknroll moment of in the middle of the song calling out "one, two, onetwothreefour" and jumps up and the drums crash and the band kicks into an even higher gear and my skin shivers. Ben Sollee with Tracey Bonham and Phoebe from Belleville Outfit on strings, improvised jam of beautiful songs, a soulful voice, full drum kit rock but layered with classical strings and cello in a 20th Century musical mezcla of Benjamin Britten meets Copeland meets Ray LaMontagne meets The Carter Family...not even sure what it was, but Ben moved me more than anyone this weekend. Watching the Ron Sexsmith documentary, being brought to sobbing tears as his parents' watch the television set in their home of wood-panelled walls lined with baseball caps and lazyboy recliners to cheer their son's win of a Juno (Canadian Grammy) award.

I had great drinks. The Bloody Mary to die for with Joan and Tamara and Jeni on South Congress at Enoteca. The late-night-escape margarita at the Driskoll Bark with Chuck E. Costa. Some local vodka concoction at the Thirty Tigers 10th Anniversary Party at Swan Dive.

I ate well enough. I've mentioned the street tacos. There was duck at Boticelli's with Cary and David. There were enchiladas somewhere with the band.

My own official set was satisfying. I was happy to get through it, to not fuck it up too much, to just relax and play the songs and feel like I was grounded enough to be true and real. And to have good sound and to be able to follow Josh Ritter and be followed by Ron Sexsmith - well, a girl couldn't ask for anything better.

Its fun, this circus, walking up and down the streets looking for good music, hoping to be moved. Because that's what I really believe is at the heart of it all. Sure the execs are worried about sales and placements and money. But what we are looking for, in the end, is something, One Thing, that moves us.

And to be able to hear that in a quiet french song by a girl strumming a nylon string guitar on a loud, loud street in the heart of a mayhem mob is what moves us.

Jack and Julie

2011-03-13T00:44:00.003-06:00

Its fitting that I find out about one friend's passing while staying in the home of another, both I can now call mentors. One was an active mentor. The other had no idea.

I am in Virgina, in a sleepy town of well-spaced farmhouses, stone walls, hand-lain, in a craggy-hilled hollow of a town, filled with artists who have made fortunes big and small. It is not a place for the struggling. It is a place where composers and sculptures and Philharmonic conductors live amongst a Ye Olde Inn that has Michelin stars and She-Crab soup, where songwriters meet patrons and wine flows well. I love my friends who live here and I love to gather here yearly to play someone else's music, to joyfully sing amongst the linen clad, well heeled, who need music and rhythm as much as those of us struggling to keep our lights lit. We all need art. Even those wearing pearls suffer. A few years ago a mentor of mine passed and I hear from her in the wind. I have a hard time with the concept of God or Goddess, Higher Power or even the idea of anything outside of what I can physically lay my hands upon. But when I need something beyond, this image of my friend, this impish 60 something woman who seemed to have a grasp on what is Important and could Bestow Truth upon those of us younger, still seeking, this blue ribbon curls in the wind woman comes to my beckoning and I hear her voice, or if not her voice, I can see that glint in her eye that says "you have ALL that you need in your heart; just trust" as if Yoda himself had come out of the ether and danced into my hallucination.

Julie Portman. You are missed. You are still here amidst.

And so, here, in her house, sitting outside on the weather-worn bench in the late winter sun, trying to glean some Truth from the wind in the pines, I find out about another passing.

Jack Hardy.

Can I even call him a friend? I decide I can. I remember the moment it changed. He winked. I was sitting next to him at a circle at Camp Coho at Kerrville and I sang a song. I think Jack Williams was there. And Jack Hardy snapped after I finished. And sank his head back and said, "bellisima!" Now, I'm not so foolhardy to disregard the whiskey or my own youth and Jack's impish delight at young women, but I also know full well that no matter the carve of the leg, Jack suffered no songwriting fools, no matter how much Jamison's had gone down the gullet. And the moment Jack nodded at me, I knew something had changed for me. I felt invited. Not arrived. That's a whole different thing. But at least I knew from that moment on, the chair was open and I could come in. Jack was the gatekeeper and yet he was kindly. He was a critic, but never critical. He told you when you did right and kept it to himself when you didn't move him. It made my day when I got a nod from Jack Hardy, because Jack Hardy was a Great Songwriter. There aren't that many of those amongst us. Jack LOVED great songs. His heart great big and bursting with pain and love and joy and sorrow in front of all of us. Jack had a voice of the boy who sat outside your window to sing you down the oak tree to dance with you in the yard in the rain. Jack the romantic. Jack the crank. Jack the hipster. Jack the drinker. Jack the tribal leader. Jack the cowboy poet. Jack the cook. Jack who poured. Jack who watched the hummingbirds.

I am gushing. I never gushed to Jack. I wanted to. I wanted so much to thank him for welcoming me. Jack Hardy had a Monday night hang at his West Village apartment. He'd make a pot of pasta. We'd bring wine and a new song we'd not debuted in front of an audience. It was a tiny apartment that reminded me of the biographies of Dave Van Ronk and Dylan. The shared bathroom in the hall. The kitchen barely separate from the living room. Not enough room for more than one or two guitars. I was there a few times, with Abbie Gardner. Jack made Pasta Puttanesca. We brought wine. I'd been told about this hang for years and was too intimidated to go. It took knowing Jack a few festivals to get there. When I did I brought a song, "The Fortunate Ones". I remember I sang it, scared that Jack wouldn't dig it. He did. He said "that's a good song" and the next time I saw him, at Falcon Ridge, he sang it with me. Every time I saw him, at Falcon Ridge, sharing a round at Folk Alliance, at Camp Coho, Jack nodded at the empty chair near him, inviting me in. The thing is, Jack was more about that gesture -- the invitation -- than touting his own horn. I never heard Jack say anything self-promoting. He'd mention other songwriters to me. Not himself. He'd tell me Irish songs I should learn so we could play them together. Not his own songs.

The news of his death was a complete shock and I'm a bit numb by it. I keep looking on Facebook to see what others are saying because I want to hold someone's hand in this and just figure out what's going on. I wouldn't think Jack would consider me a 'friend', enough to think I'd want to say goodbye. But friendship in this community of folk singers is this odd thing and Jack's passing makes me want to make sure that the people I consider friends, integral people in my life, regardless of how many times a year I see them, that those people know how important they are to me. We see each other in passing on the road or under tents and we think "oh, I'll see them next year".... but those of you I pass in the hallways in Memphis, and I see and hear briefly at the crossroads in front of the octojohn or in the mud in Hillsdale, or on status updates on Facebook... I hope you know how much you all mean to me...

I won't see Jack Hardy next year. I was at Kerrville last year for about 48 hours and I spent the one night I decided to run around the camps, not running around, but sitting next to Jack Hardy at Camp Coho listening. I didn't want to play. I wanted to hear music and sit by Jack. I regretted then that I couldn't stay for longer, but I was running to another festival. I thought, oh, next year, I'll be back. I'll stay for a week. I'll camp at Coho and learn more Irish or Scottish ballads and harmonize with Jack and bring some new songs to play.

I thought when I played Falcon Ridge this past summer I'd have enough energy to trudge to the top of the hill to visit Jack's camp. But I didn't. I was tired. It was raining. I thought, oh, I'll see Jack again.

The thing is, I hope Jack, who died a few days ago, knew how well he was loved. I haven't cried yet. I still believe he'll be there when I get to Coho this year. Or walk up the hill at Falcon Ridge. I think of the people I associate with Jack, Gary, Jack Williams, Byrd, Karen Mal, Lisa and Bruce, Woody and Michael, the hummingbirds, the bottle of Jamisons, Frank, people I don't even know in the legend of Fast Folk, the famous, and even Felix McTeigue who first invited me to Jack's hang years back....

My friend Julie is in the rocks in the St. Vrain river. And in the wind in the pines in Little Washington, Virginia. And in the blue of the scarf I bought when she was still fighting cancer and we all decided to imagine her in Persian Blue in 2022. And in the song I wrote for her. And I talk to her when I need guidance and so far, I haven't heard back but maybe someday. And Jack, I think I'll bring new songs to him for a while too. Just to see....

Folk Alliance 2011

2011-02-22T01:13:00.002-06:00

Every year we gather in a hotel room, musicians and folks who book us and play us on the radio and write about us and want to hear us. We gather in a frenzy of shows in small bedrooms where the beds are pushed back and chairs fill the room and holiday lights are thrown up over the curtains, wine is served, chips and peanuts and we play unplugged for sometimes 30 people squeezed tightly in that small room and sometimes just a few, to play new songs, to try to get noticed, to continue being noticed, to make new friends and keep the old, to run and play ourselves into a lather of acoustic bliss until the sun comes up or our voices give out, whichever comes first. I left Nashville on Wednesday with a suitcase full of boots and strings, lyrics of new songs and schedules. We drove to Memphis at 80 miles an hour, passing cops and trucks and signs for Loretta Lynn's truckstop. We pulled into the Marriott with 2 minutes to spare before our friends' Welcome Margarita Party would stop pouring the drinks, ran upstairs to catch the last of the pour, saying hello to a blurred sea of friends and strangers, my guitar strapped to my back. Its like a college reunion. Faces who's names are vaguely remembered or contextually confused (like the radio DJ who you can't place but you know you hung out last year at some point in some small town talking about Leonard Cohen... but here in a hotel in Memphis you just can't remember George or Justin...thank goodness for nametags). There were panels to attend and be on. There were showcases to play and be in the audience for. There was new music to ingest like lightening. There were friends to drive-by hug running past them to the next showcase. There was bad fried food and good (but oh so bad) fried food. There were gatherings of friends in the bar, hiding in the back to share a quiet glass of wine for a moment, a stolen moment. And we barely saw Memphis, but we felt its presence and I will miss Memphis when this circus flies north across the border to Toronto.

Here are highlights in no particular order:

1. John Fullbright. A ridiculously soulful and talented 22 year Okie who gave me shivers from my ankles to my neck. No one that young should know how to write a lyric that deep. And thank god he does. Thank god or the alien planet that birthed him that he exists to remind me that some people are blessed without the 20 years of crafting and that's what makes me believe in a God of some kind.

2. Jon Byrd's showcase late at night in the Beaver Suite, dancing in the back and harmonizing with Corin Raymond to "Wild Ponies".

3. Singing Ron Sexsmith's "Galbraith Street" with Ron Sexsmith playing guitar. To his own song. Filming that for PBS. And not fucking up the lyric. I can't even speak about it -- a dream that I fell into half asleep but totally wide awake.

4. Playing showcases with the amazing Thomm Jutz on guitar, each time the songs evolving more and more, having nothing but a complete blast whether there were 3 or 30 people in the room.

5. Dayna Kurtz singing a song that took all words out of my mouth. Now I just wish I remembered the name of the song....

6. Meeting this girl who was volunteering in the Instrument Check In Room, talking to her briefly while I changed my strings. It was her first conference and I told her I liked her bangs. Later, I was doing a radio show with Ron Sexsmith and he mentioned he'd been up jamming 'in some room till 5am' the night before but that he'd heard this cool chick sing and he really liked her voice and her presence and her song and described this girl I'd met, down to the "cool bangs". Later that night, I ran into her again completely randomly and was able to pass along the compliment and she was so flabbergasted as she's a huge Ron Sexsmith fan that I felt like I'd done my good deed of the day for the entire year. I was so happy to have been the conduit for that girls' good fortune on her first ever conference.

7. My posse of ladies: Mary G, Holly, Joan, Jeni, etc. Fried chicken and laughter galore....

8. Amy LaVere's bathing suit/dress that barely covered her ladies parts. Badass sexy mama.

9. The Steel Wheels. Just love them.

10. Chatham County Line. See #9

11. The New Red Mollies. :)

12. The round with Nels Andrews, Brad Yoder and Robby Hecht. With the Red Mollies in the audience harmonizing from the hotel bed.

13. Dinner with Rich Warren and friends, not getting much dinner, but getting loads of great advice.

14. My 2nd annual meeting of the minds over red wine with my dear friend John Platt. We go deep, dude.

15. Abbie Washburn and Mary Gauthier. They take me to school again and again.

I'm sure I can think of a thousand more moments...the round with Danny Schmidt and Sally Barris, a few moments in elevators with Sally Spring, Anya's red high heels, Cliff Eberhart and Laurie McAllister harmonizing, Sid Selvidge's showcase with terrible sound but man, is he a master, Grace Pettis--all grace, all joy and how much love exudes from that angel face?....

I love folk music. I know folks in the 'real' industry disparage it and its commercial relevance but what other genre of music can you make a living playing in people's living rooms, without the publicity machine, doing it yourself, all about the song, all about the song, all about the song. What other genre of music can you run around a hotel lobby and run into the dude from the open mic AND Gurf Morlix sharing breathing room... Its a circus of freaks and geeks and its a place of love and acceptance and I feel at home here in this acoustic den.

And now, its time to sleep for a week.

On small towns and folk music

2011-01-23T00:15:00.004-06:00

(forgive the mis-spelling, bad grammer and typos, as I wrote this at 2am, half asleep and wide awake...)

There've been times when I meet people, or re-meet, whether its a family or college reunion, or just re-running into folks from my past, or meeting new people, who ask what I do and I say "I'm a folk singer-songwriter" and they get that look on their face, the screwed up one that you know means they're trying to make sense of the fact that you've just said that what you DO for a living is in a profession where you are evidently not FAMOUS and how is that possible because pretty much that's their compass for success in the performing arts. Its simple. Famous = wealthy (for the most part) and succesful. Not famous=you've got a dayjob as the fry guy and you're pretty much in a suspended state of adolescence and they can't tell whether to politely step back slowly from the lunatic dreamer or to say something slightly condescending, even if they don't really mean it to be, like "good luck". What so many people don't understand is that, well, you can eek it by in the arts and still be under the radar of the mainstream. There are journeyman actors and playwrights and singers and songwriters and all sorts of us who ply this trade for enough money to make our monthly payments, put a tiny bit aside, and its up and down but we'd rather be doing this than anything else. And you may NEVER hear of us. Unless you are one of the few hundred fans who attend folk festivals. A very tiny percentage of the general population. Hell, my friends Red Molly are practically rock stars in some circles. But totally unknown in most. That might change. Maybe. And maybe it won't, but I know my girls in RM pay their bills and do just fine with their little corner of the kingdom.

And its places like Wellsville, NY that make the difference. Its not New York City or Austin or Nashville.

Its towns like St. Paris, Ohio where a lovely couple with a large log cabin invite a folk musician into their home, set up a simple sound system, move some furniture and put up about 40 chairs, make some coffee and invite the neighbors over to bring wine and beer and desserts and pay pretty much what they'd pay to go see a movie to hear an intimate concert and mingle with their friends. And the troubadour can make enough money that night to pay for the gas it took to get there and pay their rent that month. And the troubadour might be tired and might not sometimes wish for the dressing room to escape, but in the end, there's that one connection, that one conversation with the kid who's come because he's in a band and he just wants to connect, to get a bit closer to the action, and that one conversation after the gig changes both the folk singer and the kid. And makes it all worth it.

Its Wellsville, NY which is lucky enough to have a couple who bought some raw space, transformed it into an art studio/school with a cooking school/restaurant with an attached coffeehouse/performance space just because they love art and music and food and wanted to share that with their community. And by the power of just saying "yes" to an idea, they made it happen. And thus, I was able to go to Wellsville tonight and play a concert and enjoy a wonderful dinner of duck and local wine and buy a few pieces of pottery from a local artist and sell some CDs and share a glass of blueberry wine later on and hear tales of world travel and the fluidity of life.

There aren't 700 people at these shows. Nobody's making it rich here in these small rooms. I don't even have much of a following in these small towns. If I had a dime for every person who, after the concert, said to me, "Wow. And I have to be honest with you, I'd never even heard of you"....

This is how you do it. You show up. You play for the 30 people who came out. And the venue booker most likely is a volunteer, someone like Mike at Cafe Veritas in Rochester, who is a musician himself, but now has a family but wants to keep connected, so he runs a folk series at his Unitarian Church and the sound person is Kyle, the volunteer who is also an Opthamologist. And the people who set up the chairs are volunteers. And you play regardless of the fact that as you walk in there are apologetic comments about ticket sales ("Oh, we're so sorry, the weather has kept people inside") and even though you have a right to wish that weren't the case, you get up and play to the 30, or the 15, or the 4 people, because that's what you do and you love it and those 4 people will hopefully come back with 10 more the next time.

And, yes, you've been doing this a while, and yes you've played to thousands at festivals and opened for famous people and yes, you have that moment of almost shame, like damn, you really should be able to draw more than 15 people after having been doing this for so long. But really, in the end, it doesn't matter. What matters is there is a place for you to play in a small town somewhere. And its there that you may make a friend in a booker or in the sound person or hear a story that might change you.

And one day, you come across a place like McCook, Nebraska, a small town, an unlikely town to have a venue for folk music. And the venue is sold out, standing room only, and you wonder where these people came from. Because, well, you're NOT FAMOUS. And yet, you went to McCook and you learned to fly a plane not because that's what you went to McCook for, but because everything was a SNAFU and the most extraordinary things happen when everything goes wrong.

And one day, you go to a town like Edinboro, PA and you meet Renee who runs a small coffeeshop and you play to a few disaffected kids not paying attention, but you meet this lovely woman artist who makes jewelry, little pieces of silver that enclose something organic, like shells of a birds' egg. And she tells you of how she kicked her husband out of the house by putting the couch on the street and locking the door. And you can see the couch and see the lines around her young eyes and you relate. And so you come back every 6 months for a few years to play Edinboro, not for the money, but to find out how this woman and the sheep farmer and Renee and the town are doing while you share some tequila at the smokey dive bar. And then 10 years go by and you don't see these people but their stories remain etched in you and you think, hell, I might just swing by for a glass of something and see if they're all still there.

And that's when you turn to the Andy's and Mike's and Barbara's and Renee's and Dale's and all those folks in the corners of the country that love this music and you thank them for being part of the great underground railroad of marginalized music because its not your playing for 5 people or 900 people that has made your life rich, but the stories they told you and the lives they led that brought you to these stories. You'll make your living by stringing together these small places and peppering in the bigger, more lucrative shows until one day you'll tire of the driving or the lucrative places will be the norm. Either way, you haven't lost time chasing a dream. You are inside the dream, just not champagne and cavier, but rather, Wal Mart and Costco. And that's good enough.

Just saying.....

p.s. Wellsville, NY. Try the duck. I swear!

Kairos

2010-12-27T22:58:00.002-06:00

I found myself on the Eve of the Eve of Christmas really having no plans and being torn between ideas: to stay home alone with my Dog and just ignore the holiday; to fly to the home of my family and be surrounded by holiday cheer when I wasn't really in the mood to add to the cheer and I certainly didn't want to detract from cheer that was there; or to fly to a new country with strangers and spend money I didn't have and do yoga and write and be in a beautiful new place, but knowing really I'd be putting myself into debt that was irresponsible, and quite possibly in the service of running away. So I put it up to the universe and said out loud, "Send me a sign". Then I called my mother for advice and it was my father who answered, saying with enthusiasm, "I'm ready to come pick you up at the airport tomorrow! When is your flight?" and the choice had been made and it was as clear as a slap across the face and as welcome as the snow that fell that next night. So I got a last minute flight, boarded a plane with one bag, and headed to my ancestral home of Maryland (not so ancestral, but where we Speace's were all born).

I found myself on Christmas Eve with my father at his church, a Methodist church in the woods, my brother with us, at the 11pm service. Having been raised Catholic, it still seems like a sneaking to forgo Mass for a 'foreign' service, even though I am an outspoken agnostic who has no interest in organized religion. But I chose my Dad's service mainly because the music is far superior and the church is warmer, smaller, more 'country', and less rigid. I'm always interested in what will be said, even if its not really something I believe in. But the pastor, a heavy man, hands folded on his very large belly, with little metaphor and poetry save a short, and somewhat --to my mind -- unfortunate attempt at relevance with a DVD clip of "I Love Lucy" (relevance?), had some things to say that made me sit up and pay attention. Which is rare for me in church and much rarer after Christmas Eve dinner at my sisters with the generous pouring of Wassail.

This portly, overstuffed man talked of time vs. Time. Chronos vs. Kairos. Chronological time, as in 'what happens next' vs. readiness as in 'the right timing'. Made me scratch notes in between the death notices and the offerings of pointsettas on the church bulletin. He talked of the darkening season, of two people on a mule in the darkest night walking around trying to find a place to sleep, finding shelter in a rudimentary barn. Not a Hilton but a Super 8 at best. An older man and his obviously pregnant not-yet-his-wife-child-bride. Questions and stares and judgements and silence. And how out of this chaos, this complete adversity came something beautiful.

Now no apologies to Glenn Beck and the ranters and ravers of why keep "Christ" out of "Christmas" (oh boy, don't get me started), but I don't think of this story much when this Chronos comes along. Its a story, a mythology. Not sure where I stand on the truthiness of it, but its important. However, the Wonder has left the room for me. Its the dial on the clock. Could be that its because I don't have children to remind me of the "W" in the wonder. And I do enjoy the holidays, but its not like its a HUGE deal to me. I love spending time with my family, but certainly there's a lot about the holidays to remind a lot of us what we don't have as well as what we do have.

So, in the spirit of Kairos, I'd like to give a little gratitude list for 2010, of things that have changed me, kept me in the "readiness" or just moved me forward a bit on the path to enlightenment. Santa did me good this year. In no particular order:

1. Dick Trail and my flight lesson in McCook, Nebraska, including the good people of McCook and the Bieroc Cafe who took me in, stinky and unmad-eup and made me feel like I was at home.

2. My few days of hangtime at Rocky Mtn Folks Fest Song School this year, renewal, laughter and inspiration. My morning "runs" with Vance Gilbert. Trading clothes with Jonatha Brooke. Laughing my tuchus off with David Wilcox, Justin Roth, Nate Borofsky and Jonatha. Margaritas with Paul Reisler...

3. New Years Eve 2010 with good friends at the best dive bar in East Nashville doing Karaoke until the snow started falling.

4. Learning to ski moguls in Alta with Rebecca Eaton. "Be the wind"

5. Ronny Cox as my nurse during my bout with H1N1. xoxo

6. Alex Chilton Big Star tribute shows. Honoring a hero and making new friends.

7. My Amherst College reunion. Remembering why I loved the people and the place so much.

8. Making "I Should Be Blue" with Sid Selvidge in Memphis!

9. Writing and recording "Land Like A Bird" with Neilson Hubbard in Nashville.

10. My friends who held me up and who let me do the holding when they needed someone.

So to all of you who read this, thank you for sticking with me... more to come!

xoxoxo

Amy

The View From the Back Seat

2010-12-20T14:10:00.002-06:00

I am rarely the passenger. Mostly, I drive. And I mean this literally, at least in terms of where I am sitting right now while typing, but, of course, like most posts, I also mean this in the largest sense of the word. I am not a comfortable passenger. This is my achilles heel. I'm sure if I felt like sharing I could outlay all the reasons from my past, from my years of digging, why I need to hold the reins. But those are boring and personal and beside the point. Its not really about the reasons in the end. Its just about the thing itself. The days of allowing someone else to drive, while I try to enjoy the view and not look at the map, not program the GPS, not suggest the alternate, faster or more direct route, not take matters into my own hands. Just sit and listen. Its not from some arrogant place of "I know best" because, believe me, I know I don't. I'm a willing learner. Sitting in the passenger seat is like that dream I have of being in the front seat of the roller coaster and they've forgotten to strap me in and the bar isn't locked and we're about to do the loopdeloop. I KNOW danger is ahead and there's no stopping it. And really, this is where I need to go back for a masterclass. With all my yoga and meditation and therapy and self-exploration and even my days and years of songwriting and poetry and blogging and yapping through my confusing journey here on this earth, I would love to have a personal guru, like the Dalai Lama, who could sit in miniature on my shoulder and whisper reminders to me. "Lean into the conflict. There is something to learn." "Detach" "Keep firm boundaries" etc. Sounds like dribble from a mid-90's self help book. But I could use the tshirt with the logo sometimes. Couldn't we all?

So I sit in the back seat while my friend drives. He gets distracted and looks at his phone and looks out over the landscape and the car wiggles and maybe he drives a bit too slow or a bit too fast or a bit too close to the truck in front. And my shoulders tense and I watch, my foot actually sometimes presses against the floor of the backseat, the kinetic memory of pressing the pedal myself. And so to write this is to remind myself that to my right are the snow covered Blue Ridge Mountains and valleys and to my left another valley and I can listen to music or write this blog or read a book or just take a nap. I can meditate or think about my dog lying waiting for me at home. I can make a list of things that bring me joy. I can choose to be a calm passenger and trust that, although danger might lurk ahead, right now, in this moment, there is nothing to fear and everything to take in.

Balance

2010-11-30T23:10:00.002-06:00

I've been flirting with yoga for many years. In acting school, at 7am, Lisa the ballet/allignment teacher took us through a genius routine that I had on tape and I wish I still had: a combination of ballet, yoga, pilates and meditation that set us up for a day of being centered and exploring character and our inner psyches and outer muscles. It hurt and I loved it. Then, living in the Village, I found the Hatha Yoga center on 12th Street and went every day for a while. It wasn't really that strenuous physically, but I found a calm there I knew I craved. In Jersey City for a while I found a nice studio on Grove Street I went to a few times. I'm pretty sure I still have about $50 in sessions there to use. Then I moved south and bailed on yoga. Not that I was ever really a devotee. I was more of a runner who used yoga on off days. I never developed a practice, although I felt like I should, or that it suited me. Here in Nashville, I bought a road bike, a Cannondale, and began to ride for an hour, then two, then sometimes three. My legs got stronger, the desire to run waned, and then I found a yoga studio down the street, only 2 blocks away and I went a few times to a Vinyasa class. But it was this thing called Hot Yoga that intrigued me. I like sweating. I'll admit it. I like to know if I'm working--a physical outward manifestation of the inward grunt. I don't like to walk away clean from exercise and I will never understand a woman who comes to the gym in pink or in makeup or jewelry. Give me dripping wet grey and black, hair pulled back tight, sopping slick skin. That's an hour well spent. So hot yoga really drew me in and there I was, finding a studio in Nashville that specialized in this zany thing. And I went. Every day for a week. And I was hooked. And now I do my best to go as much as I can, and I still ride the bike. I swap off. And my body is happier than its ever been. I feel strong and it calms me.

But today I had The Best Yoga Class Ever. And I had to rejoice. I'd worked to my edge. I felt like I wanted to throw up a few times. I had to bail on a few poses. Sit in child pose. Breathe. But I kept going once I got my balance back. Then at the end, when in meditation pose, breathing in and out, our teacher, Leia, I think, who has this gentle calming voice and reminds me of a rock climber in Boulder with a body I'd kill for and I'm sure she's younger than me but I love her class, Leia had us breathing and she was talking about the soltice and the darkening hour and preparing for our greatness and possibility and deepening our intenion--

--let me interrupt here. I am a person who this language, this jargon, made me cringe. I did the Landmark Forum. I drank the juice for 3 days and got a lot out of it and walked around NYC for a month like a blissed out zombie until I woke up and thought--holy cow, they had me drink the juice and now I'm talking in jargon phrases that don't fit in my mouth. I cringe at hippie shit like this, even though in my heart of hearts, I am a hippie rockclimbing chick living in Boulder, CO or Santa Fe, NM totally centered with long blonde hair strumming a dulcimer....too many Joni Mitchell CDs from my youth--so yeah, any of this 'intention' and "possibility" bullshit just makes my skin crawl...until it ... well, makes my skin crawl in a kind of amazing and good way---

and as I was there breathing and relaxing the spent body I live in, a wave of Great Emotion came up and I found myself breathing harder and longer and deeper than I ever have and, do you know that twinge you get in your chest sometimes in breathing that feels like a combination of grief and growing pains and love and longing and deep sadness and blissed out pulling? I had that. And tears fell down my face and there I was in a freaking hot yoga class on a Tuesday late afternoon in East Nashville having a catharsis on my back, with my intention of "letting Love come into my life in whatever way it comes" and I felt that, felt that bigness of Love, come in and fill me and I almost moaned outloud, but was worried that the guy behind me who was wearing only shorts (and that kind of, honestly, grossed me out) would misread my moan. And then I was back to earth, still emotional, still grateful, and still moved, but my toes and fingers were tied to me and I wasn't spinning so much.

And I left that class dripping with more sweat than I've ever had come off my pores and came home and loved on my dog and made myself a nice dinner and talked to a few friends and did nothing of real consequence. I didn't change the world. I didn't change my life. I wrote nothing sacred or amazing or even insightful. I just listened to the sound of the chimes in the wind, the heater billowing up from the basement, the dehumidifier hum.

And I realize now, hours later, I have not felt this calm in a long time.

So many moments of our days are like unseen fingers trying to push us off our center of balance, challenge our confidence. We fight them constantly. Fight each other. Fight ourselves. Its nice to know there's an hour and half that will right that imbalance. For less than the cost of a movie.

Ghost

2010-11-22T22:31:00.001-06:00

Jessie Scott from MusicFog woke me from a sleep during the Americana Music Fest this past September. I'm always happy to be rousted by the MusicFog gang for many reasons, great boots and great whiskey are only 2 of them.

Here's a new song recorded that morning. Click on the title of this Blog to connect to the link.

Insomnia and Poetry

2010-11-10T01:16:00.002-06:00

Failure has its blessings. When we realize we have failed ourselves or the people we love we find ourselves at the bottom, right? Eating dirt, faces in the mud, cheek on the porcelain tiles, lying prostrate before our God or no God, pleading inside and out for forgiveness, to wipe it clean, to take it back, to eat our words we regret. And then the night ahead looms dark and lonely, the never ending turn of the wheel, replaying the tape again and again until the sound of our own voice is maddening, the mistake a loop we can't escape. The night doesn't come or go calmly, it sticks to your skin like cobwebs, itching at the edges.

And then the light cracks through and a hush before the shiver of the day and you ask and grace appears or is given or you reached into the pit of it all and grabbed grace for yourself, tired of the headbanging. And with hindsight, you can look back at your stumblings and start the Great Teaching Speeches: how can you get up without falling down? its what gives you strength. what won't kill you...

But the reality is these trippings hurt. Badly. They ache and rock and roll you away from sleep and its only in the blindspots can you shake it off, stop the tape, shut down the critic.

Is it better to have reached for something just beyond your grasp, fail and fall, then never to have made the attempt? That's what poets say. But maybe sometimes the stretching just plain hurts and sometimes you wish you didn't even see the dream. But then, that's what a heaven's for...

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mind.

Meanwhile, the world goes on.

--Mary Oliver

Something New, Something Blue, Nothing Borrowed, A lot of Old

2010-11-02T22:15:00.003-05:00

I'm so excited to announce that Wildflower Records releases "Into The New: Alternates, Leftovers & Orphans", an 8 song mostly acoustic EP of old songs and a few unreleased. I'm so excited about this release as many of these tracks are much loved "b sides" from The Killer In Me sessions. Plus, the cover art is a painting by my very talented beloved 10 year old niece Alexine Payne Platz (getting her artistic talent from her super fabulously talented artist father and her super fabulously talented businesswoman--oh yeah, she drove a hard bargain--mother, my sister).

Here's what's on the CD.

1.' The Killer In Me'. A completely acoustic version of the title track of my 2009 release. I play acoustic and sing, there's upright bass and fiddle. I love this version. Its stark and dark and I think illuminates the song in a new way

2. 'Into The New'. A song I wrote a few years back inspired by a story by my niece's cousin Madeleine Ides, who told me when she was 5 years old that she "once was a blue dog". I couldn't find a good 'home' for this song on a full album. I'm thrilled that it found its way as the title to its own. I want to dedicate this song to all the people, young and old, who continue to share their stories with me that inspire me to write.

3. 'After The Flood'. A song I wrote after Hurricane Katrina that was recorded for but chopped from the final lineup for "Killer".

4. 'I Met My Love'. We set up a mic in the center of the room at the Fidelitorium and invited our good friends Ted Lyons and Sally Spring to come join The Tearjerks. This is the pseudo newgrass version of this song, which on the album is a very drunken Faces-like rocker. You'll hear producer James Mastro who was behind the controls in a different room while we were recording this (oh, yeah, this was one take) run into the big room with his harmonica and take a solo. He was too pumped up to be left out of the action!

5. 'Before The Leaves'. This is a song I wrote a while ago. I think it was the sketch song for "Haven't Learned A Thing" the hope before the fall...

6. 'Piece By Piece'. This is the demo of this song. James, Jagoda and I holed up in The Pigeon Club, Hoboken, NJ one snowy day in January 2006 and recorded demo's for my new songs, and mapped out the framework which would eventually be "The Killer in Me"

7. 'Weight of the World'. The band version. Which didn't make the record. But was recorded for our video.

If you want to order your copy, send an email to amy@amyspeace.com and we'll give you instructions on how and where to send payments.

xoxo

Amy

New Orleans

2010-10-07T11:12:00.003-05:00

There is art everywhere here in downtown New Orleans. Even the burnt hulls of buildings are canvases here. Melody and color seep out of the cracked uneven pavement of The Bywater and Marigny, the neighborhoods I spent the last few days exploring. Unlike The Quarter, the buildings don't ooze of last night's beer and hurricane-puke, street-washed foam that hugs the sidewalk walls till noon, till the sun dries up the vestiges of the night before.

My plan was to give myself an adventure--the present of wandering somewhere new, without spending too much money. To refill the heart and the imagination. I finished the recording part of the next record last week. Sang my last harmony, and had a few days off and needed to get out of town. My next show would be in Pensacola, Florida, so New Orleans seemed a good place to park my imagination for a few days. I asked around, got a gig and headed south. My favorite thing in the world to do is to wander. As a junior in college, I spent a few weeks wandering alone in Madrid, in Paris, in Seville, in Toledo, in Nice and a certain wave of the breeze, bringing along steam and garbage and maybe the cigarette of someone at an outdoor cafe will mix into a memory cocktail and I'm right back there in Madrid, the world a wide open landscape.

I rented a bike and rode each corner of The Marigny and Bywater, sent there by a friend who told me this was the place I would feel most at home. Funky and slightly dangerous. Reminds me of parts of the East Village of NYC about 15 years ago, Williamsburg Brooklyn before the Investment Bankers with Rock Star Haircuts took over, East Nashville and parts of Austin.

Here's what I did and what I highly recommend:

I stayed at The LaMothe House on Esplanade in a tiny room that was perfect.

Rented a bike from Michaels on Frenchmen Street for $30 a day. Best idea ever. I left my car in the lot the whole time and at night after dinner and after the music, I loved riding through the Bywater back to my hotel, the streets dark and quiet.

Played a set of music at The Three Muses on Frenchmen Street with Kristin Diable, who's hosting a Monday night songwriter showcase. This was her first and it was packed. They fed me and the food there is outstanding. Little plates (a thing here): quail and butternut squash ravioli and salmon and great wine...

I ended up each night late at The Spotted Cat on Frenchmen to hear traditional New Orleans music played by young bands. There was dancing in the streets. Literally. Abitas at the bar and women with tattoo-sleeve arms dressed up like 40's pinup queens singing like Billie Holiday and joyous swing dancing by hipsters my age and younger. Meschiya Lake. Great voice. Great style. She looks fragile and tough at the same time and I think I have a girl crush.

Best meal: Elizabeth's in the Bywater. BBQ shrimp, softshell crabs, osso bucco, collards and red beans and rice and cabbage with bacon and fried grits and great wine. All for under $50. You wouldn't think it from the looks of the place, but it was the most exquisite meal.

Vaughn's in the Bywater. Best jukebox in a great funky dive bar. Drank Abita Restoration. Yum.

Mimi's in The Marigny. Great tapas bar. Wonderful music. I heard the Sarah Quintana trio and she was incredible. Young and pretty, she plays an archtop guitar too big for her tiny frame, strums it fast and sings in an Edith Piaf-like voice, standards and her own originals. I bought her homemade (as in duplicated on a blank CD in her computer and Sharpie-written on) CD for $10 happily. Ate fried goat cheese balls dripped with honey and drank Cabernet.

The Roosevelt Hotel's bar, The Sazerac. I rode my bike over to Lafayette Square to hear a free concert with Dr. John. Felt very Parisian, riding in my vintage dress and motorcycle boots and my hair in a long braid, my purse in the basket. After the concert, I rode to the Roosevelt. I figure if you look like you belong, you can get away with almost anything, and so I rode my bike straight into this elegant lobby, straight up to the Concierge and asked him if I could put my bike into storage for an hour and he smiled and took my bike from me. Smoothed my hair down and walked into The Sazerac and took a stool at the bar and ordered the Sazerac, a rye whiskey concoction I was told was a "must". I'm not much of a whiskey drinker, but I felt very sophisticated slowly sipping this lemony drink. The bartender was crushing blackberries for a concoction he called "The Southern Gentlemen", a drink he'd made up with mint and blackberries and Maker's Mark and he made me a little so I could taste it and THAT, my friends, was a drink! I had pulled out my IPad to read a book and 5 people asked me if I liked it, kept coming up to me and asking to hold it, to see how light it was, researching if they would buy one. Funny how these things go. A slightly tipsy gentleman in a business suit began a conversation about the IPad with me, offered to buy me another drink (I declined) asked me if I had dinner plans (I told him I did), gave me his card "in case you're ever in Cleveland". He asked what I did. I told him I was a songwriter. And he said, "I figured you were some kind of artist. You didn't seem like everyone else here." And he got that slightly drunk look on his face of a traveling businessman stuck in a world of sameness. I think if he sat down at Vaughn's in The Bywater, some hipster pierced, tattooed woman might do the same to him. Exotic is a matter of neighborhood.

Had lunch at a corner shack. Domilise's Po Boys and Bar. Had a fried shrimp Po Boy for $10 and a mug of Miller High Life for $2. Best sandwhich ever.

Sitting at Cafe Rose Nicaud on Frenchmen writing this and just heard this.

"Who dat?" laughter from the man as he back-slaps his buddy who smiles broadly and says, "who dat?" Big gutteral laughter.

"Fuck it man, they trying to .. what? you hear?"

"I know, I know, brother..."

"I mean, what we spozed to do, heya? Take it to the streets, man, thas right."

"Musicians. No home, that's what I say. No respect."

"I blow it in the streets. That's what I do, you hear?"

"Yeah. I hear it."

"Well, you gots the gig. So there's that."

"Thass right. The gig. I got it."

"So there's that."

"Yeah. There's that."

Laughter.

Channel Surfing

2010-09-06T15:25:00.011-05:00

Lately I've been obsessed with colorful photos taken by strangers on other people's blogs. Feel like its my modern scrapbook of the Life I Do Not Have But Will Borrow For The Moment. Like a snippet of a conversation heard from the table next to you at the cafe on the busy street. I blogstroll...

Like bigBANG studio's Nashvegas Guide...photos of my own neighborhood, the place I'll go on Tuesday night's to hear music and eat Shepherd's Pie.

My favorite brunch, Marche, a mere walk from my house, Paletas -- yummy popsicles on a very hot day...

Or The Sartorialist, a fashion photographer's site, where he posts beautiful photos of real people and many unreal (a.k.a. Models) people, and random things from Florence and Milan and New York and London. Makes you see beauty in the most likely and unlikely places...

Or my old friend Launa's blog with photos and stories of a real life in motion.

Actually, truth be told (and I know Launa will agree), we were good acquaintances in college, not necessarily friends in that I don't think we ever sat alone together under a shady tree on the quad and shared secrets. She was the best friend of one of my best friends, and then later, the girlfriend of a semester-boyfriend of mine, and then later she married that boy. And so she was part of my landscape, but not really someone I took time to get to know. I knew her, I liked her - a lot - in that way you like the friends of friends in college. But here's the kicker, she and her husband and beautiful girls took a year off, went to France, and she blogged about it, complete with the aches and pains of it, but also with photos and recipes and, now that they're back Stateside, the blog continues and she writes about life in all its complexities. Granted, she lives a very good one, with healthy gorgeous girls and a husband who clearly adores her and both of them grow more and more beautiful as the lines and wrinkles and grey come, but she writes with eloquence and beauty and humor and wonder. And that thing about friendship, sometimes you find it on the backend--through letters, or by watching someone from far away and admiring their path...

These are a few of my favorite places to visit and dream awhile...

My Big Fat Feminist Betrayel

2010-09-04T22:56:00.002-05:00

Labor Day weekend, when 65% of America has packed up the SUV with kids and toys and bug spray and SPF to celebrate the proverbial end of summer (which, I might add in my best crank tone, doesn't really end for another couple of weeks, and for those of us without kids and toys and SUV's and the schedule of the public school system, we might just extend that vibe a bit, if its ok with the rest of you...). As my calendar doesn't revolve around a school system, or even 95% of the world's work week, as my Wednesday might look like your Sunday and my Sunday might look like your Thursday, I spend Labor Day "weekend" laboring. Not laboring in my usual way, which might look like a typical tour day. But laboring in that "ahhhhh...I have a few days off the road/ the studio, so I think I might actually measure the windows for some curtains and spend the majority of my friday running from Target to Home Depot to KMart to West Elm to price curtains and by 4pm when the rush hour traffic begins, I'll trek home, purchase in hand ready for my "Saturday" which will entail an uninterrupted period of time where I can drill and measure and vaccuum and clean and bag and decorate and then sit, at the end of the day, with my glass of wine, unshowered still, and admire the job I did.

Alone.

Which is exactly what I did on this Labor Day weekend, as tomorrow-Sunday, and Monday- the day most of you are off, I will be tracking vocals in a studio for 12 hours.

However. Not as smooth sailing as I'd thought.

And for this, I must apologize to my fellow feminist sistren. I am a lousy feminist when it comes to home repairs. I suck. I fail. Forgive me. I wail and weep and fall and falter and nail my own damn finger to the wall and wish I could call my ex-husband and beg of him to take me back for 8 hours, so that I could take advantage of him, ask him to hang my drapes, build my CD shelves, tell me how to drill a hole into a wall that won't give, measure and level and hold shit aloft I can't reach, figure out Target shelving where the instructions are a pictogram that makes little sense. I would buy him all the MGD he'd want and allow him to watch PGA and NASCAR as much as he wanted if he'd help me. Or really, anyone. Anyone taller than 5'10".

The world of home repair is prejudice against the single woman. Or the single short man.

I am proud of a few things I did. I am TERRIFIED of spiders, and yet, today, I donned gardening gloves and tore the ivy off my walls, cleaned the raingutters and broke apart every wolf spider web I saw, and there were a lot and those spiders are huge, let me tell you. I put the damn draperies up, despite the fact that I broke 3 drill bits into the wall-that-wouldn't-budge. They might not be pretty if you look too closely, but standing back a bit and fuzzing out your eyes, you dont' notice the rods are a bit, well, saggy.

And I put together the World's-Most-Complicated-CD-Shelving-System, brought to you by the good people of Target, who are just a wee bit better than the Swedes at Ikea. Both give you nice cartoons, woodenesque pieces labeled with the alphabet. And yet, there's always that ONE piece that won't go, which sets the whole enterprise off askew. Well, screw it. I got mine together and shoved it against the wall and even managed to mangle the wall-holder into the damn Wall That Ate the Drill bits.

I missed my yoga class. I had to bail on a dinner plan with some girlfriends. And forgot to eat. But I got it all done. Alone. Cursing my single fate the entire way, with side-of-the-mouth confessions to Andrea Dworkin and my old college roommates who were always much better Feminists than I. Yes. I wished I had a man around for a few hours. I'm proud I did it alone. I'm convinced the gods of home repair care not for the small percentage of women-over-40-who-choose-to-remain-single.

I had a dream last night that stuck with me for a long enough time for me to know it was more than a dream. I was in and out of college, in that dreamlike way where sometimes you're in your college dorm with your friend Kennan living 2 doors away, and sometimes you're in a room lottery choosing a dorm room, but the dorm doesn't look like the one from your yearbook and you are clearly in your 40's going back, but you can't tell if anyone else from the dream knows that you are time-travelling. My dream involved Kennan and Sasha, perhaps my 2 favorite people from college. And a few people from now who are the most important people in my present. And Professor Pritchard, a real professor from whom I never took a class. But there he was, and I'm not even sure his first name is William, but in my dream he was clearly "Bill". And I was on the eve of the first day of class but with a group of people from past and present at a picnic table, discussing the party that would start soon, a "kegger" or something like that. Yet, I had to read "Crime and Punishment" and write an essay. And I'd skimmed it, and began an essay right there, starting with some relevant quotation I'd found in "Bartlett's Quotations" -- phoning it in, writing some bland essay destined to win me an "A" but be forgotten in my own education. And this person from my present said, "you know, you already graduate Magna cum laude...there's nothing you have to prove here. Why don't you write something Real?" And I hesitated, thinking it was an insult and then realizing the challenge. To write one or two sentences, or paint a picture, or knit something, but not to write the kind of essay I was going to write....

...which reminds me of a story someone told me recently. Miles Davis had hired this young sax player and the sax player was in the studio with Miles and the band and he was lightly blowing the solo he might play when his time came. Miles walked over to him. Said, "Man, you know that thing you're working on?" The kid said, "yeah?". Miles says, "when the solo comes, play anything but that."

Which is to say, stop rehearsing. Stop thinking. Play something else.

So in my dream, I think I handed in a 2 sentence essay. Which would have been, in my college day, probably a minor personal revolution.

But I woke and there it was, this dream, this challenge posed, screaming at me. And my day was planned. Instead, I picked up the drill and the hammer. I hung drapes. I built a CD tower. I nested. Then I cooked. I labored on the day most people aren't.

I sometimes think about time passing and wonder who's watching the clock and who's putting together the photo album here. My father stacks photo albums in our house for every season. I'm alone here. Me and June. Which, for now, makes me happy. But single women: do we keep photo albums? Not really.

So, all my feminist friends from college are married or partnered. And I sucked at feminism back then. Still do. Still think being alone as a woman is a temporary thing. Once in a while I get a glimpse that this could be a choice. And not such a bad one. Not that coupling isn't a lovely thing. But I did it for all the wrong reasons too many times before. If I do it again, I promise my heart I will be awake and aware. Until then: couldn't I just rent a 6 foot man to help with the windows? Will that betray my sistren?

Back in the Studio Again

2010-08-27T16:52:00.003-05:00

This week was the un-official start of The Next Record (as of yet unnamed). Monday is the official start date as the other players show up. Drums have been set and sounds got. But really, we've been at it for months, so we're already a quarter way in. So it feels funny announcing the Start Date, like there'd be a cannon going off, or party streamers. We snuck into this one, having started demo'ing songs a few months back, only asked to demo two, but we kept going. We were having too much fun. Then we started writing together. Neilson (Hubbard, the producer) would show up at my house in the morning with bagels. I'd have coffee on. We'd talk about life and bitch about whatever there was to bitch about for about an hour, and then we'd write a song. Pretty much everytime. It was a kind of magic that had nothing to do with "hit songs" and "music row" but was about reaching for something real. That sounds a bit highbrow, writing that down, but that's what we were doing. And then, it snuck up on us, that we were inside a record being formed and there was no going back and we started demo'ing those songs. And then the Approval came to go forward and finish the record. And so here we are on the edge of the weekend before we begin.

Yesterday we were laying down a duet vocal to a song called "Real Love Song". Neilson decided the only possible way to record this was to, as he said, "'A Star Is Born' this motherf..." --Streisand and Kristofferson at the same mic. So we stood on either side of the mic and sang it at the same time, no separation. This morning I listened back after Neilson had put it with the guitar track. Yeah. This is real. Last record too. Warts and all. "Killer" was recorded with a band I'd been playing with for 6 years. We were well-rehearsed and we went in and just played together, all at the same time, most of us in the same room. Bled into each other's tracks and just didn't give a shit. This record is different as we're building from the ground up. Different producer, different players, different studio, different town. But then again, I'm a different me now. Same philosophy though. To make something real.

Wish us luck.

Kenny Edwards

2010-08-26T14:44:00.004-05:00

Sometimes you have lots to say.

Sometimes not so much.

And sometimes you yield the field to the ones with eloquence. Click Kenny's name in the title to one who writes with grace and beauty. I shared music with Lila once in a small upstairs venue in Maryland and we exchanged emails about meeting up in California or New York or someplace in between. I shared songs with Kenny for a lovely week under the Colorado moon and again a few times in hotel rooms and conference halls. I didn't spend enough time with him. You know the people you meet who just reverberate with kindness and goodness and truth and honesty? They change you, even if in passing...

Rocky Mountain High

2010-08-18T09:48:00.002-05:00

Every August for the past 8 years I've landed for a week in Lyons, Colorado for a thing called "Song School". Its a 4 day camp for songwriters, adults and teens, professionals, amateurs and those who've never written a song but dream of trying, that tags into the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival on the most beautiful plot of land that is wrapped in an embrace by the St. Vrain river and the red cliffs that are the hint of Rocky Mountain National Park just a few miles up a winding road to Estes. I've been teaching there for a few years now and performing as well. Last year I made my mainstage debut with The Tearjerks, a thrillride if there ever was one. This year, I played a set at the Wildflower Pavillion, but was moved to spinning and churning by music I heard pouring out over the stage as I sat, grasping hold of friends' hands, Vance Gilbert, Jonatha Brooke, Justin Roth, undone, heart broken wide-breathing-open by sets that inspired and awed, kicked my ass and kicked my gut, and left me gasping for air as I was brought to that religious place where a song can teach you about yourself and about the sky and about love and about laughing and playing and dancing. David Wilcox. Darrell Scott. Need I say more? I'm just sorry I could only stay the one day.

This is me, Vance Gilbert and Jonatha Brooke with our asses handed to us after Darrell Scott's brilliant set.

Fallstreaks

2010-08-05T01:00:00.008-05:00

It's called Virga. Wisps or streaks of water falling out of a cloud but evaporating before reaching the ground. A dry microburst. Like a tantrum cut short.

We wake with plans. We wake thinking our day will go a certain way. We plan for these plans. We make lists and schedules and abide by rules and we have dates and dinners and deadlines. We allow for chance and change. Or so we think. But rarely do things blindside us. Truly blindside us.

I woke this morning having no idea I'd be here at the end of the day, in wisps of wonder.

I had 3 hours of sleep, frustrated by plans being delayed, travel not running smoothly the prior night. I woke in a rush, 25 minutes to catch an airport shuttle after a night that went later than I'd wanted and too little sleep for comfort for the long day ahead. At the last minute thought a shower might wake me up (how prescient). I wore my most comfortable "sleeping on a plane" outfit, hues of greys and browns, baggy and invisible. I'd packed my overstuffed bag of everything but the guitar and the backpack holding the essentials and the laptop. No extra clothes. No medicine. No guitar gear. A well-thought out travel plan: a flight from Baltimore to Memphis, a tight connection to Omaha, pick up the rental car, drive 4.5 hours to McCook, have 2 hours to spare to nap, shower, change, soundcheck, do 2 sets of music. Easy peasy. Cept the flight was late getting into Memphis due to storms and I sat at the back of the plane watching people slowly get their gear and amble or saunter off the plane, as I waited and waited for my guitar to be brought off gate check, the minutes ticking, as I realized my flight to Omaha had left without me, as I went to plea my case to the Delta ticket agent, Ursula (I won't soon forget her) who informed me she couldn't help but pointed apathetically to a bank of phones under a "Customer Service" sign. I went to the phones and none worked. Ursula came over and slowly (I mean s-l-o-w-l-y) tried each and said "Huh" as if surprised (did she not hear me?), "These do not work" and then shrugged and went back to her desk. I was busy on my mantra "Don't make it worse, don't make it worse" so that I wouldn't get all Jersey on Ursula. I called from my cell to find a lovely operator who helped me, insomuch as she couldn't possibly redirect me to any flight into either Omaha or Denver earlier than late afternoon, making it totally impossible for me to make the show. Plus, I was adamant that I had to be on a flight where my bags would be able to make it WITH me, as I'd be leaving Omaha (or Denver) to drive 4 hours to the middle of nowhere so I couldn't risk having delayed bags. I was defeated. I accepted that I'd be stuck at the Memphis airport for 5 hours, waiting on the afternoon flight to get me to Omaha without enough time to get to McCook and make a show I was really looking forward to (as I'd played there last year and had a great time) and I slunk to a restaurant to get coffee, to wake my sleep-deprived and getting cranky body. I called my manager to deliver the bad news. He made a joke:

"Well, you're going to Nebraska. Isn't there some cropduster that can take you there?"

When I called the owners of the cafe I'd be playing to tell them I wasn't going to be able to make the show, one of them said, "Maybe there's a private pilot that can help out. I'll make some calls and get back to you."

An hour later, I had the name of a pilot who'd be meeting me in Omaha to take me on his private plane to McCook. Dick Trail. A stage name if I'd ever heard of one. Dick Trail is John Wayne's best friend in a movie set in Utah or Wyoming. Dick Trail is the trusty sidekick who's always got the answers, has the fastest horse, the best gun, never leaves your side, will bloody up some enemies for you. I'll never forget this name.

I got to Omaha to meet a smiling gentleman about my father's age, in a red, white and blue button down who carried himself with the sturdy deportment of an ex-military man, patriotic and steady. Dick Trail. He carried my guitar, was friendly and direct. We went to collect my bags, which I'd been informed were "certainly on the plane ma'am, I eyeballed them myself" said the steward in memphis at Gate A16. However, no bags showed, and I was back in the Kafka-esque nightmare. Dare I add to this saga that my monthly cycle had begun and mine comes on like a hurricane: all gale force winds and tempest storms, both physical and emotional and at this point, I ducked into the ladies room to make a call to a friend to collapse emotionally. I blamed the night before. I blamed Delta. I blamed myself for taking too much on, for trying to do everything. I blamed my love life. I blamed my parents. I blamed everyone and fought the darkness and splashed water on my face and walked outside faking it. No gear. No merch. No clothes. No toilettries. And Mr. Trail would be flying me to the middle of nowhere. I got 25% sassy and the Delta baggage claim dude promised me it was coming in on the next flight and they'd deliver it to McCook in the middle of the night, and Dick Trail offered his address, this stranger who reminded me so much of my father, was taking me under his, em, wing.

So we drove from the Omaha airport to the smaller private airport, Dick pointed out Warren Buffett's hanger, and we went to another where his Piper was lodged. And I almost fainted. I'm afraid of heights. Not all but some. And I've got a small fear of flying, no matter that I fly all the time. And I'm definitely a chickenshit when it comes to small planes. This would be by far the smallest plane I would be in. A 2 seater (w/ 2 jump seats in the back), Dick handed me a pair of clunky headphones w/ a mic and told me I'd be co-piloting. He said, "you'll be getting your first flying lesson today" and I was astonished. What? I said. Then he went onto tell me his history. Born in 1937, graduate of the first Air Force Academy class, tours of duty in Vietnam, a commercial pilot, a lifelong teacher of flying. He wasn't kidding. I'd be working on this 1 hour 58 minute flight. There was no time for nerves. Dick Trail was a man on a time frame. The engine started, the propellers started and we were taxi'ing down the runway and I was learning immediately how to steer with my feet and Dick took his feet off his pedals and allowed me to steer us down the runway to our takeoff point. He gave me a few quick lessons in reading the instruments, what was essential, what the feet control, what the hands control, fuel gauge, etc. and vrooooom, the plane took off and we were up there, in the sky, the blue blue sky, over the rolling green plains of Nebraska, our shadow below us, up 3800 feet into the columns of cloudpuff. Dick let go and I was steering the plane by myself. He pointed out the line of dust that looks like a horizontal cloud but is really particles, the line where the heat is captured. Told me of how thunderclouds form, how to read them, how to read the air and the mists and the bumps of the sky. He pointed toward a tophat cloud and said, "Go through it!" I said, "really?" he said, 'Yep" and then, I was pointing the plane directly at this large white pufffield and we were INSIDE THE CLOUD and for a brief moment everything went white and I couldn't see and then we were through to the other side and I let out a 5 year old "Whoooop" and tears ran down my face. I'd never ever ever even entertained a flying fantasy. Never had that in me. Never thought about it. It wasn't on my bucket list. But there I was, piercing a cloud with this small plane, coming through the mist and the blue of the sky burst open and the ground below rolled by and I was floating on air, literally.

And so the hour and fifty-eight minutes went by and we followed the North Platte River as it wound around the plains and Dick pointed out where Lewis & Clark were and I imagined looking down at bountiful plains of plenty with animals and grasses and no roads and no buildings. I watched the sky change, I watched the ground go by, towns go by, and soon we were near McCook and I was rocking the plane back and forth, rolling it down the descent, comfortable now with the feel of the wingspan. We talked of history and life and Dick asked me about my life as a musician and said, "Now see, we're the lucky ones. We found our passion. Yours is music and mine is flying and I've been flying my whole life" and I immediately thought I want to stay in touch with this man and his family. And then, safe and sound on the ground, I was whisked to the show, just in time, in the same grey-hued clothes I'd been in all day, no makeup, not a brush on me to smooth my hair, no jewelry, nothing fancy. No tuner or mic or DI. No set list. No anything but my bare face and my unadorned guitar and a sold-out crowd of people waiting for me.

It might have been the best show of my life.

And the following day, today, I went back for my second lesson. This time on a smaller plane. A champ. One that felt thinner and more vulnerable, but more...I don't know...'sporty'. Like that scene in "Out of Africa" where Meryl Streep is sitting in front of Robert Redford as he flies her low over the Kenyan grounds, antelope herds below them, the shadow of the plane trailing behind and her scarf waving in the wind. That was my plane. We flew low over the grasses, the earth opening up in fissures, rolling hills with crevices. We flew over creeks and lakes, flew over Dick's parents' house, where he grew up, his elementary school, his house, his neighbors' house (where we flew low and pretended to be landing only to bank upwards at the last minute, laughing). We flew over trees and over bare earth and over water and up to the sky and down again, low enough to see the sunflower fields and the shadow always there, like a movie scene. I didn't close my mouth the whole time: it was set somewhere between a laugh and a cry and sheer joy. That kind of joy you got when you jumped on a trampoline or went on a roller coaster. And today, I landed a plane. Three times. I also took off. Three times. I landed a plane on a grass runway. Me. The girl who was afraid to fly. And Dick Trail presented me last night at the show with my Pilot Log Book, signing for my hours of my 2 lessons on the first page. I met his wife Ann and hugged her as if she was my own family, as he'd told me stories of his great-grandparents homesteading there in Nebraska and her own family's farm and their life together and children and land and history. Mr. Trail's hangar has his Champ, a wall of photos of his history, his first car (a 20's Model T), and looks about as sacred a space as my music room with my guitars hanging on the wall, my piano, my photos of inspiration leaning against windows and walls.

In the end, I never got my luggage. I still might not find it. And there are things in there I need, but I spent two shows not thinking about what I looked like or what I was going to play and instead enjoyed myself even more in the moment. I laughed and stayed present. And just maybe I'll get home and get rid of some things. In the end, I turned around to see the batallion of strangers and friends following my plight and offering to help, or helping, or just offering solace. I had strangers in a small town in Nebraska calling friends and strangers helping me. And I had a stranger teach me something until 24 hours ago I thought wasn't essential in my life and now feels as natural as breathing.

And as I was flying over the ground I thought of love and how wonderful it is when it comes and fills your skin with breathing and no matter the challenge of it, when it comes full like that and natural and fits in that way that you just know it fits, that regardless of the circumstance, you celebrate it and move toward it and allow. I remember when my Dad said to me, "Life is short. Follow love." And I feel like in so many ways that's what I am trying to do with my life, with my choices. How appropriate that a man who reminds me of my hero Dad, Republican and strong-minded and patriotic and funny and full of life, was the one to help me ride the sky.

The rain bursts above our heads in the highest part of the sky and falls just a bit and evaporates before landing. Or changes into hail. The rain goes its own way, making trails of cloud or dustspray, like curtains against the blue. We think we have it all figured out, or at least we hope we are in the query. And then something blindsides us. Or someone. Someone unexpected. Someone we don't expect who washes in like a big tsunami and changes everything and suddenly all plans are out the window and life rearranges itself into something unrecognizable and sometimes unmanageable but always always wonderful. And so it is with weather. And so it is with love. And so it is with clouds.

And then...the sun shines through the clouds...

2010-06-26T00:50:00.002-05:00

And just for those of you that might have thought I was complaining.

I proffer Example A. Please refer to the chart to your left.

I had a cancellation from a "Nationally-Known Club" too late to fill with another booking from a Nationally Known Club leaving me gigless on a weekend night, which is where I make my living (do these Nationally Known Clubs even CARE that this is how we make our living? or do they think by the sheer choosing of this kind of thing as our living we are batshit crazy and deserve to go penniless on a Friday just from sheer lunacy?).

I send an email out to my dear Fanlist, expecting nothing. A fan that's a fan because a fan, who was a woman just showing up at a gig one night who became a fan, then a super fan then dragged her own friend who became a super fan, who then proselytized to all of her friends which eventually led to someone, basically a stranger, emailing, bravely, to say "hey, I can do this. You have an open night. Let me try to host a House Concert" and only 4 days later, Voila, a House Concert with amazingly cool people who listen and respond and talk back and we are all exchanging this great energy and its vastly different from last night's apathy and my faith is renewed not just in people but in music as a builder.

And as the last guest left, saying, "I never knew these kinds of things existed. Call me converted" I realized how happy I am in a stranger's home who is now no stranger but a friend.

Don't tell me a song can't change the world. One basement at a time.

On the Underside of Silver Linings

2010-06-25T00:22:00.005-05:00

...and there will be nights where there is no profundity to be discovered, no poetry to cull from the absurd. There will be a night of straight ahead "this sucks". I lost money. I can't do this anymore or else I'll have to go back to having a day job and I won't do it I won't do it I won't do it...

And so -- after the night in the awesome club of very few people and the post-show drive of insecure inner-ramblings only to discover a greater truth and meaning in the Awkward -- and so -- after that night, comes the next night. Which, if this were a Tale or a Movie starring that newly popular and ubiquitous wide-eyed blonde 20 something who looks like the daughter of the high forheaded blonde from that late beloved but truly annoying show "30 Something" -- and not the true tale (or, in my case, probably a movie starring Snark Queens Janeane Garafalo or Lily Taylor as me) of the night that followed, if this were that Fairytale night, I'd end up at Town Hall in NYC or The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, backed by a band that included Buddy Miller on guitar, Emmylou and Patty Griffin on backup vocals and it would have been sold out and filmed for a PBS Special or for Austin City Limits.

But this is the real tale. Where it was just not worth the drive. And if you know me, I have never said that. I've thought it. But never said it. Not an appropriate venue for me. Of the crowd (and there was a crowd but they were either loudly talking, seemingly used to background musicians, or they were outside scoping each other out), 2 guys were listening very kindly. Which was nice. But there was a crowd that included the booker. Who was barely listening. I'm sure tons of folks love playing this place and god bless them. It doesn't make the place a bad place. Its just inappropriate for me and what I do. There's no lining here that's silver. Its just the wrong piece of fabric.

And, as my therapist says, learning boundaries isn't just about our personal relationships, its about our work and our definition of ourselves.

However: I didn't need an $11 gig to teach me a boundary. I knew the boundary. I just ignored it.

So I'm sorry hacky-sack-trustafarian-rockclimbing-hemp-wearing-proust-reading-not-quite-a-mountain-town-student-hippies. I know you love your hang. Have at it. I think I'll head to Decatur. But thank you to the nice man who sat there at the empty table and bought me a beer and bought my CD. And thank you to the man who sat at the bar listening. And thank you to the blonde guy who came in late and sat next to the man at the bar and loudly said, "Hey, she's really good" in a way that was clear he was surprised, and he seemed to like my yodel.

See, now, in the end, this night doesn't really bug me. I'm back at the motel happily watching reruns of "The Housewives of New York City" because crap like that makes me really happy about my own life. But I think I wanted to write this because someone needs to stand up against this and for -- not me, but the girl or the guy who's playing tomorrow night. You might not like their music and that's cool. But if there's live music in a room and there's a tip jar, how about a few bucks for them? And hey, owner, how about setting an example?

Shhhhhhhhhhh

Or just get a jukebox. And fill it with Jack Johnson.

Embracing the Awkward

2010-06-24T00:37:00.004-05:00

I'm solo on a tour that was not supposed to be solo, that was supposed to be a duo show, a show that we'd wrapped our guitars and voices around and were just getting the groove of it all when --at the last minute, unexpectedly (and totally understandably)--the duo tour was not to be and rather than cancel and leave holes in schedules the decision was made to soldier on solo. Which is fine. I do this all the time. Most days, rather nights, of my life. And its not like I don't have files of set lists, lists of songs, songs in groupings, lyrics and charts and new ideas for sets, all on a file on my desktop here on my Mac. Its not like its the first time at this rodeo...

And yet, tonight, honestly, it felt like the first time at the rodeo and the bull kicked my ass. My clown ass. My unpadded, big shoed clown ass in the afternoon show.

This isn't a bad thing. This is not a complaint. Its just rare to have done something for a long time and then have a moment where you feel like its your first time out there, naked and unknowing and uncertain and flying on hope and faith alone. Rare.

I had a weakly attended show. I'm not too proud to admit that. I have had great luck in my life. I've played to thousands. Tonight, I played to about 6 people. It started out as 2. A couple who came in and paid the door price, got their beers and sat charmingly in the center part of the 2nd row. And I began. Introduced myself and got their names, because hell, who wants to pretend in that case. It was them and me and Joe on sound and the owner and the bartender. So at this point, I look at my carefully crafted set list and think through my well-thought out banter and say ---

Fuck it

-- I ask the couple how they got here and they say they listened to me online and liked my lyrics. So I said, "Cool. Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. Do you mind if I throw out the 'show' and just play songs that make me happy?" And as I went through the songs that make me happy, a few more people dribbled in. The thing is, I was playing a guitar I rarely play with a sound I'm unused to. I was singing through a new microphone. I felt exposed. As if I was up there naked with no makeup. Warts and all. Nothing sounded clean. Nothing was easy. Nothing was polished. I kept thinking of what Neilson says to me -- in a gesture where he circles his gut with his hand -- which is to signify, give them truth. Fuck the sheen. If you don't believe it they won't. And I kept trying to push away the fear of the naked, and just thought to myself, 'I love this. I love singing even if my voice feels faraway. At least I'm not behind a cubicle.'

And I got through and I sold CDs and I played for 90 minutes and played some new songs and served the old ones and I don't think it was that bad and I don't even think the owner was that miffed at the lack of big turnout, considering this was not to be the show.

But driving away I thought of how uncomfortable I felt up there. Awkward. And I remembered something Pema Chodron said in one of her lectures about leaning into the awkward. Not running away from what's uncomfortable but staying with it and allowing it to teach you something. And so I stayed there until a clear memory of my closet from Williamsport came to me and I remembered the contents: a pair of Keds, flip flops, hiking boots, a pink satin "Pink Ladies" jacket my Mom sewed the cast of "Grease", 2 debut gowns from my cousin's debut in Argentina that I wore for District Choir. And the mural on my wall. And the shag yellow carpet. And then at midnight I woke my mother up calling her because I just wanted to hear her voice and hearing her voice made me miss her and my Dad, really miss them, and when I hung up I realized I was crying a bit. And I went through the cycle of insecurity: Do I suck? Do I need to take time off to learn guitar? To improve guitar? Write better songs? Write funny songs? Learn a different instrument? Am I wasting my time... all the insidious questions that like to peer inside our little brains when we allow a bit of space for doubt. And then I righted myself and thought:

You had an off night. It happens.

And kept driving alone with my scary book on CD talking to me until I started getting sleepy near Flat Rock and got a highway motel to sleep for a few hours.

So what did I learn? I did learn that I would like to improve my playing and learn some new covers. I learned I can perform solo, but that I don't always want to. I learned I sometimes miss the band I was ok with leaving behind. I miss the friendships and the laughter. I learned that some towns won't have throngs come out for folk music on a 98 degree summer weeknight.

And I learned when to stop. When to stop leaning into the uncomfortable, just give into the sad, and then shake it off, and stop to sleep.

Go With The Flow

2010-06-07T10:32:00.006-05:00

Poor Sisyphus. Condemned by Zeus to push the damned rock up the mountain over and over again, only to have it roll back on him over and over again. Like the mouse with the cheese thing. The definition of insanity. When is persistence blind insanity? When do we give up the fight? How do we know when the fight is out of our hands and ceases being a Great Cause or Great Passion and starts being, well, crazy. When do we reach the limit of Enough is Enough and we leave the rock at the bottom of the mountain and just walk away?

************************************************************

I got to Kerrville with, what I thought were allergies, but was most likely a low grade virus. My voice was cracking, flaking out on me, and Fun was all around me. Stinky dusty Texas hippie fun. Fun I used to revel in. Late late nights around a bottle of something red or smoky, swapping songs in the dim light of dawn, harmonizing on cowboy songs under a hummingbird tent in the meadow. I couldn't do it this time. Didn't feel well enough to rage. And so I planned to only be there for a few days, 2 nights of camping in the shade of a parked rusted school bus and the gig and the hotel and then flying away to another gig far far away. Only a short landing would I have there. But that night, the rain and the wind came, the lightening tore a hole in the sky and the tents went flying in the swirl and everything was soaking wet and I ran for the shelter of a real roof and a long sleep and, instead of dipping into the scene, I floated above it, too sick to fly, too sick to land, just hovered quietly, caretaking my voice. Good thing, too, because what wasn't there showed up just on time, like a gift, and I was able to sing for my set on Friday night, later than I'd thought I'd go on, but just in time. Nothing goes as planned it seems. The next day after short farewells to the ranch, I hopped a plane to Boston, spent a full day pushing a personal rock up the hill to no avail, only to have it fall back on top of me until I put on the meditation app on my I Phone (how modern-zen we are) and let the rock go for a while. Got in later than I'd hoped, couldn't sleep, watched Juno and cried and just wanted Home, tired of the rock, tired of the mountain, feeling like I lost the reason I was pushing and pulling anyway.

Woke up too early to a rainy cloudy sky in Boston--the storms again. Put on the happy face and prayed for sun, both in and out. And although the sky poured, the sun came out inside the tents. My noon set for the WUMB MusicFest I'd brought along the wonderful Adam Michael Rothberg, an incredible musician and just a joy to be onstage with, and the dark of the day lifted in the musical cloud we created for ourselves. Tents, again, were collapsing and people were running for their cars, I was soaking wet again. Tornado warnings, pelting rain--the storms had followed me. And I thought I'd left that rock in seat 24D on the flight from Baltimore to Boston. I hadn't, but I chose to ignore it a bit for a few hours while playing songs and listening to others. Dala, Les Sampou, Winterbloom, Cliff Eberhart...

Woke this morning in a purple bed to sunny skies, thinking maybe today would prove easy...maybe. I'd purchased a bus ticket online, proud of my frugality. $28.00. Arrived on time at the Framingham, MA PeterPan bus terminal only to be told that since I didn't print out the ticket, I'd be charged an extra $5.00 for the printing. Disgruntled, but not ready to argue, I was about to pay that when the gruff woman behind the plexiglass informed me that this did not guarantee a seat, as I hadn't called her that morning to reserve one. What? I'd paid for a ticket online. I had the proof. Not enough she said. You also must call to reserve. This information was not on the website, I argued. She shrugged, as if I was the 10,000th person to have told her this over the course of her esteemed career, and she waved me away. Dismissed me. I asked to see her supervisor and she shrugged. "Its only me." I said, "This is bullshit", losing my cool a bit, and she then stood up, completely affronted at my use of profanity and said, "Now you've had it. You will not get a seat at all." And there I stood with my proof of American Express purchase. The bus came, I asked the driver about this and he said, "No call. No seat. Not my problem." [A common thing, this "not my problem"]. Nothing to do. This rock was not going to budge and I HAD to get to NYC by 3pm for a radio interview. So my generous friend raced me to the Boston Amtrak station and I had to buy a train ticket for $125, and I still had paid that $28 for the bus (non-refundable, by the way) ticket. It wasn't even about putting the rock down and walking away, I just had to deal with the rock, somehow, or just carry it. Like the too heavy bags I schlep around the country, along with the guitar on my back.

A man asked me "is that a guitar?" and the usual conversation followed that I find myself in like a deja vu. The business man, in white starched shirt and tie, who owns a Martin D-28, who plays a bit of guitar on the weekends, maybe he played in a bar band in college, knows James Taylor songs, maybe he even writes a bit. The business man's eyes light up, he holds a styrofoam coffee, Wall Street Journal tucked in his armpit, his briefcase balanced between his feet. We talk of Richard Thompson and Shawn Colvin or The Faces or whomever he's listening to and I recommend a few new voices and he types my name into his Blackberry to find my CDs online and offers to help me with my heavy bags. I decline, saying 'This is basically what I do for a living, carry this load.'

In travel, in touring, in life, storms follow. I get wet. Soaking wet some days. A perpetually angry Jamaican woman reigning over her tiny Peter Pan Bus kingdom in a Boston suburb does her best to undo my calm. I lose money. I spend more money. But here I am in a train with a plug for my computer and Patty Griffin on loop in my ears and the ocean is off to my left speeding by and I'm not driving and I'm dry and the sky is blue. So goes it. The load is safely above me and I'll have to carry it later, but for now I've got a few hours without it. Its enough.

Reuning

2010-05-30T23:11:00.005-05:00

I should be sleeping. Maybe I am, and this is a sleepwalk, this wide-awake half-dream I'm in, back in my own adult life, reflecting on returning to a place I spent 4 years of my youth. I am certainly sleep-deprived and, admittedly, still a bit hungover (thanks to Liz Garland's reprovement at about midnight that I was way too sober for a 20th college reunion, as she led me to the large bottle of Cuervo). But the haze is worth the price of admission for the past few days of tripping and stumbling down memory lane.

Reunions have the capacity to make anyone shrivel into a ball of self-doubt, no matter how much false bravado worn like red lipstick. We throw hand-shadows at the walls of our old dorms, proving -- mostly to ourselves but also to others -- that we deserved the cap and gown, we were bright young things and we have made Something of Ourselves. And then we watch the shadows we create play, grow, perhaps get out of control and move independently of our fingers and we wonder what is real and what is parlour trickery? We measure ourselves against our former selves, then we backslap and handshake and measure this mirrored thing against their mirrored thing until we're all just walking down runways. Or at least that's what a reunion has the capacity to create. Shallow conversations, clustering years into a blurb, asking someone how they are without really hearing the answer. This is what we expect from a reunion. That, and free booze. And dancing to "Rock Lobster".

And perhaps that's what is done at the early reunions, 5 years out, 10 years out, parading our jobs and careers and cars and wives and children as proof of our consequence on earth, post-college.

What I found this weekend was quite different. A measure of...well...measure. Connection. A sense that this community is a vital one and an important one to me, not just for those long-long-ago brief years before my knees creaked, but now. And maybe, the wonder and blessing for me is, that most especially now.

I remember the 5th Reunion. I was 27, adrift professionally and personally, wanting to Matter, surrounded by people already (seemingly) on their way, whether in graduate school or professionally. I still hadn't heard my calling yet, and was lonely. And the posturing was fairly evident. I was still fairly freshly out of this environment, still missing it somewhat, the people, the ease of the day, the rigor of the reading. I remember dancing joyously, ecstatically, almost dervishly, hoping the whirl of our movements might slow time, rewind. I missed the 10th. Returned with my then-husband to the 15th. There were babies of others' by then, we'd all multiplied, a bit more stable and rooted in our adult feet. More real that time. We had sunk further into our becoming. I still felt adrift and not yet anywhere.

So to my 20th. In some ways I've always been a bit of a late bloomer, and these past 5 years have felt more like a quickening. Certainly this time, I could return to my college armed with a career and accomplishments, not having to suffer the "So, are you still doing that music thing?" At this point, most of us could (whether the accomplishments were quiet or loud, personal or professional). I also returned armed with failure and acquiescence, clarity and acceptance of the murkiness. And from brief and strong encounters with my classmates, I felt we all did. There was a realness this time. Shedding of the skin. We have famous and extremely accomplished friends amongst, we have classmates who have amassed a great amount of wealth, we have classmates who lead quietly devotional lives, who have had great conversions, who have failed and fallen, who have raised children and devoted their time to their families, we have classmates who have suffered cancer and run marathons and we have classmates who we lost along the way. There's something about a small college experience, where faces are as familiar as rain, when returning to see those faces older, thinner, lined with joy and pain, you feel a homecoming serenity. Might not have liked all of them, but without these faces, most of whom you barely knew, the landscape wouldn't be right. Look across a tent decorated like a wedding cake, and see the 40 year old faces of the 18 year old you'd pass every morning in the hallway, muttering a polite hello, or the boy you once thought you could love now with his beautiful wife and children, or the beautiful girl who intimidated you still beautiful but the hardness softened....

Maybe the days of the puppet shadows are passing. Maybe as we have been bruised in our quest up the hill, holding on tightly to the spouse or the children or the career or the friends, we return to a very small portion of our past, such few days together, really, in the scope of a lifetime. But what days....

Big Star Tribute, Memphis

2010-05-19T23:38:00.006-05:00

May 19, 2010

I drove to Memphis on Friday to rehearse for the Big Star Tribute Concert at the Levitt Bandshell on Saturday May 16. Its an easy 3 hour drive (if I can go 70 + the whole way) from Nashville. Got to the hotel in just enough time to check in and gather my guitar for the rehearsal. Jody Stephens met me and Brendan Benson (and wife Britt and 3 week old baby Declan!) to drive over to the private house we'd be rehearsing in. A beautiful house with a private studio in the back, the owners were kind enough to lay a spread of food out for all of us as we arrived. Jon and Ken of The Posies came, Rick Steff (of Lucero) was there, Van Duren came in. We ran through the songs we were all going to do, drank wine, ate barbecue, got to know each other a bit more, and then went back to the hotel to crash. I stayed up a bit too late writing, as just being with all those musicians inspired me, so getting up to run was hard, but I squeezed in a 3 mile run before meeting everyone at Ardent Studios for the run through there. I walked in partway through the rehearsal to cameras and film crew, lights and sound, all sorts of people...gotta say it was a bit mind-blowing. I saw John Fry, the owner of Ardent, whom I'd met a few years prior when I was doing a "Live At Ardent" show. Was tickled to see Sondre Lerche through some glass walls, pacing the halls with a J-45, running through "I'm In Love With A Girl". Saw Mike Mills at the coffee area, we exchanged hugs. Met Susan Marshall, who I'd heard about but hadn't met yet. She was super nice and said she'd heard great things about me through Sid Selvidge and heard our record. I didn't get a chance to run through "Try Again" but I wasn't worried--it was a really spare arrangement. Although I waved at Ken and Jon and Jody and they said, "Can you do the harmonies to 'Thank You Friends'?" and, without really knowing the song well, I said, "yes" and ran to the hallway and praised god I had the song on my I Phone. Learned the harmonies in about a minute, and was led into the studio with Susan to be the "doot doo" girls, which is always a blast (my next band: I just wanna sing backup and shake a tambourine and let someone else sing lead). I was singing harmonies with Jon and Jody on "Give Me Another Chance" as well. There was so much going on it was a bit overwhelming, between the amazing music, the star power and the cameras, that I found myself just hanging with Brendan who I'd hit it off with the night before, and I followed him into Studio C, where there were more cameras. They'd put up the original Big Star trax on the console and sat Brendan and I down, put mics on us, and we were able to listen to the original masters of "Radio City" and solo up tracks. We were obsessed with the background vocals, the handclaps and the sound of the overhead drum mics. The documentary folks were asking Brendan "Do you hear anything inspiring or new in there?" hoping for some educated rockstar answer. I liked Brendan even more when he simply said nothing, jaw agape, just said "Its just...amazing...I can't believe I'm listening to this..." And as the cameras shut down he leaned into me like a confession and said, "I'd really like to take this shit home and just sit in my room in the dark and quietly listen. I don't want to commentate." I wholeheartedly agreed, feeling like anything I'd say would just sound stupid.

Then we all got to the bandshell for a quick soundcheck. Backstage was decked out with Rendevous bbq--ribs, sausage, pulled pork, baked beans, greens, rice, it was incredible. Wine and beer and soda and whatever we wanted back there. Jon Davis of Superdrag showed up and soundchecked with the band. Sondre kept walking up the hill to hear the sound from the house. Mike Mills was listening from stage left. I was wandering around, just taking it all in. The crew was getting worried as there was a storm brewing, so the opening band's set got cut to only 2 songs and then they projected a film on the side of the bandshell of what I'm assuming was Big Star from the 70s (maybe 60s?), a black & white movie of Alex Chilton singing. And as that movie faded, Jody Stephens, Jon Auer, Ken Stringfellow took the stage with "Back of A Car. Jon Davis started the night out with a loud HOWL, tearing through 3 songs, blindsiding me with pure rockstar energy, very different from the mild and sweet man who I'd met a few moments before.

Here's the rest from Ken Stringfellow's blog, because he said it better:

Next Jon (Auer) led the three piece on “I am the Cosmos” playing Chris Bell’s Gibson 335. Jody sang ‘Way Out West’ and I thought…last time to play this amazing bass line. Van Duren howled (wonderfully) thru ‘Mod Lang’, which we’d never played live before. My version of ‘Daisy Glaze’ was very well received. Mr. Mills came out for ‘Jesus Christ’. Jody’s brother Jimmy came out to play his awesome Fender bass on ‘For You’–in fact, it’s Jimmy who played on the original version. I played Chris Bell’s vintage Gibson J45 acoustic. Jimmy had offered to let me use his precious instrument for the rest of the show, so I used it on a never-before-done-live version of ‘Give Me Another Chance’–me on bass and singing, Jon on guitar and BVs, Amy Speace and Jody also on BVs. By the end of the song, the rain had started to pour. I quickly ran back to the wings to give Jimmy his bass back and took the rental out. We huddled and Jon wondered if we should skip ‘Lady Sweet’ but I said, no–skip nothing. I asked the crowd if they were ok, and if we should skip any songs…YES and NO were the resounding responses. So, we brought out Rick Steff to play accordion on ‘Lady Sweet’, great version. Then Sondre came out to play a solo version of ‘I’m in Love With A Girl’ (Brendan Benson came out and held an umbrella over his head), and then Sondre sang ‘Ballad of El Goodo’ with us, both excellent. A sad but sweet version of ‘Thirteen’. I rocked out ‘Feel’. Mills came out, with Susan Marshall and Amy Speace (the Dut-Do-ettes) to do ‘Thank You Friends’. Then, Jon, Susan and I did a spooky version of ‘Nightime’. Jon, Amy & I did our almost bluegrass harmony ‘Try Again’. The set closed out with Brendan Benson on guitar fronting us for awesome versions of ‘O My Soul’ and ‘September Gurls’–of course, Mills and Sondre and more came out to sing BVs. End of set.

The whole thing was incredible. There was such an amazing sense of camraderie, no nerves, no one upstaging anyone, anytime someone came offstage the rest of the gang were there, watching from the wings, to high five and backslap and "rock on man!" each other. It just was an incredible show. The crowd never left. As I sang "Try Again" the rain fell steadily and it was perfect. At one point, while Jon was taking his guitar solo and I was over with Ken, playing to each other, I raised my face to the sky to feel the wet on my face, just amazed that I was there, in that space, in that sky, joyous. Later, the best moment of the night came for me when Chris Bell's brother David came to me, introducing himself with tears in his eyes, hugged me and thanked me for singing "Try Again" saying that he loved that song of his brothers and that I made his late brother proud with my rendition. I was speechless.

Brendan and Sondre and I (and Brendan's manager Emily) were tired and chose to not go to the late-night hang at Ardent, but instead went back to the hotel, finagled a few bottles of red from the bartender, and sat up till the wee hours having a nice, quiet, intimate hang, where we talked about music and A Ha and what's real and what's not and it just felt like the perfect coda to a perfect day with perfect music in this imperfect lovely lovely world where you meet your heros and they invite you to dance with them.

Sid Selvidge -The recording of "I Should Be Blue" 2010 (Archer Records)

2010-05-10T22:08:00.000-05:00

After the Flood

2010-05-10T20:32:00.004-05:00

I am home today after 11 days journeying through my past. But today, I landed: Home. Really--Home. It sunk in with a capital "H" like nothing has for a long long time. Nashville. How did that happen that this southern place that in 2007 I attempted a move toward, which gave me hives, which freaked me out, which made me call my friend Dave Crossland crying "I can't do this..." and now, 3 years later, it has sunk into my bones and blood like I've been called here. Is it simply a land swollen by water and loss that my heart aches for? Is it the people who I have followed by emails and Facebook and Twitter for the last week, wishing I was on the ground, my feet muddy, part of the community I crave? Or is it just this rightness of soil and music and friends and smallness and love and a sense of the whole of it all?

The rains fell while I was talking to one of my best friends, stuck late in a job, the rain cracking at the windowpane a few floors up. "Its getting bad here," they said to me, a slight tremor I sensed from a history of tornado losses. I didn't think much of it as I slept. But then I woke to voicemails and texts. I was in Massachussetts, on dry land, in sunny skies, a day ahead of coffee and mountain biking and leisure before a late show. I could tell from the urgency of the messages something was wrong. Very wrong. Streets were impassable. Flash flooding. People asking if my beloved dog, June, was ok. Was my house ok? Was I ok? Friends texting: new friends. Friends I'd recently met who were texting me like I was part of the immediate family--their hands reaching across the fiber optics, grasping mine, pulling me into the Community. I felt a part of something so far away. I turned CNN on to find nothing. I could find very little about my town, my home, my friends. All of a sudden, this new place to me, this foreign land of southern food and the music of my father's people and 'bless your heart friendliness" became very very dear to me and I needed to hear about its safety. And there was radio silence. Thank goodness for Facebook. Seriously. That is where I got my news--from the minute by minute postings of friends and neighbors. Thank god for my East Nashville list-serv that a week ago annoyed me with its postings of garage sales and questions about spiders, that was now giving blow-by-blows about floodings in Inglewood, people needing shelter and clothing, where to sign up to help with the volunteering. From far far away, I fell deeply, madly, truly in love with Nashville. I finally watched the news catch on, sort-of. I was in New York City and bought a $2.00 NY Times to see the only mention of the flood was on page A-17 at the bottom, a brief 3 paragraphs, as if 11 deaths in one day in a random flash flood weren't worthy. As if someone's guitar collection, the history of the music we cherish, wasn't worthy. As if Opryland under water wasn't an historic occasion. I wondered if that were the Hollywood sign felled by an earthquake, would it be buried on page 17? I felt even more loyal to my new town.

The days went by and the nation caught on, but as I played shows, and brought out an old song, newly urgent, "After The Flood", and heard post-show comments like "So, I hear Nashville got some water damage..." I was disheartened. I just wanted to go home. To hug the town. To put my northern feet deep in the mud of the Cumberland and root myself right here on the East Side of the South. To help clear Shelby Bottoms, my beloved park. To get out to the areas where people lost everything--homes, fathers, soil, cars, daughters, dogs, horses.

So I am home now and the waters have receded and I thought I'd see something flying in over this land. I came home and the town is different now and I missed the change. Tomorrow I'll get in the mud. I remember walking to another river on a blue Tuesday 9 years ago where smoke wafted from 2 towers and I watched with a friend and a handful of other observers. That time: I watched buildings turn to dust and although I saw something I never thought I'd see, I still wonder if I saw it for real or I remember it from television. I also remember how quickly strangers became comrades and a town without pity became a town full of family. I remember wandering around the photos tacked to a makeshift board on 14th Street with a candle, just a few days later, in awed silence, feeling very close to everyone who's eyes I caught with mine.

I have moved so much that its hard for me to call anyplace home. I was born in Baltimore. Left when I was 8. Went to Minnesota for 5 years. Then Pennsylvania for 6 years. Then Massachussets for 5 years. Then New York City and Brooklyn and New Jersey for 18. I landed here, in Nashville, in October. On a whim. A well-educated whim. A whim brought on by faith and hope and love.

This town has dried out, mostly, and it will survive and thrive, but the last time I felt so proud to say "This is my home" was about 9 years ago. A long time coming...

6 Degrees

2010-05-08T00:59:00.005-05:00

I'm forever astounded by surprise. Does that sound strange? Can you be thrown sideways by being thrown sideways, because if you can (grammatically speaking, that is), then color me thrown. Over and over again.

This is my life: I get booked into a place I've never heard of. I get the contract and I skim it, look at the relevant details like the money (I'm being honest here), size of the room, area of the country, if the gig calls for side person-hiring, etc. I trust the good people I have put my trust (and percentage of what I make) into--manager, agent, etc. And I put the date in my calendar and then deal with it when its about a month away, knowing mostly that the details are being taken care of (the sending of the posters, the publicity, the technical stuff, etc.). I travel so much that I tend to forget where I was last week. Tours blend into each other so that when someone asks me "how long does this tour last?" I think that is -- well, as someone said to me once in a really snippy annoying way -- an "imprecise" question. The real question is "how long until you've got a few days at home," as I've been on a tour now for, um, well, since 2002. I can't see a way around it and I like it, actually. Gypsy life suits me. To a point. I love my time at home. I love my dog. I love my house. I love my friends. I love doing laundry (I really do). But I do love travelling. So back to this description of my life.

I get booked to a gig. I know the relevant details. I follow my GPS voice to the place I need to get to for soundcheck. Sometimes, not often, I stay with either the person who booked the show or what is commonly called a "Host Family" (which always reminds me of Foreign Exchange Students). I stay with friends of the person who booked the show who have a good, clean, cat-free guest room. Strangers with big hearts who love folk music or are just generous kind-souled people with a big empty nest.

So. Tonight. I see that I'm staying with a host family in this tiny town where I'm playing a series that I've never heard of for people I don't know. I mean, seriously. This kind of life is wide open for assault. I could show up, play to nobody, and make absolutely no money, have driven 5 hours for nothing, get frustrated and have an awful night. I could find that the hosts are awkward or awful or they have cats hidden behind every door, ripe for my allergies. I could be walking into The Shining. Who knows. Its all a faith-based life here. I have faith that people who love folk music are good people and they have faith that I'm not a drama-laden diva who will trash their homes and drink all their liquor like a let-loose-teen.

Without all the details, let me write this. The hosts? Amazing people. Funny, creative, charming, interesting. I could have stayed up all night long talking about life and projects and learning about what they do and have done. Amazing food. Like truly amazing. Fresh and local and healthy. Great wine. Great conversation. I felt like I wanted to take them home to Nashville with me and make them part of my real life, not just the "one night stand" life I feel like I have. I have this all the time: these one-night-stands where I meet these amazing and cool people and I can't get over how lucky I am to have this life that brings me into their world and allows me to meet new and fascinating people every day. And then I'm onto the next town and I meet similarly extraordinary people in the next town.

I guess what I'm trying to write here at almost 3am when I really should be in bed because I have another town to drive to tomorrow morning, is to thank these people, from Susan from Princeton to the woman who owns the yoga studio in Houston to Neale & Laurie and Sherry & Steve to Mart in Elba, Alabama to all the people who allow me into their lives and tell me their stories and uncork a bottle after the show is over and cut to the heart of the matter. Life is short, man. That's what I think about on these drives. I could worry about this or that that I want and can't have but time will just keep moving on, regardless what my plan is. So its good to stop at the end of the racing night to clink glasses with a stranger and listen to their real story, the one where worlds can collide and we realize the less-than-six degrees of separation we all have to each other.

My Vote For Waiter of the Year Award, 2010

2010-04-26T13:16:00.004-05:00

Let me tell you the story of someone who is doing right by the world in a very small way.

Michael C. -- A waiter at a restaurant in an airport. Now, being someone who spends a very large proportion of my days in airports, I'm familiar with airport food service workers. It seems like a low-rent job. I'm not sure how much it pays, but I can imagine it can't be that great to get out of your bed in the morning and show up at an airport to be a bartender or a waitress. I was both at one time. A waitress at a busy business-luncheon place, a Famous Steak House, in Brooklyn, where men in expensive suits ordered on their clients' dimes and no matter how much work I put into my smile, into my enthusiastic rendering of the Daily Specials, it was a rare moment to see more than a 10% tip. Seriously. And as a bartender in hip music bar in a Jersey town that sat on the Hudson River, I made pennies. Pennies. For hours standing up and listening to the rants of ex girlfriends and stoner rockers. Not worth it, I say. Give me an office temp job any day. But to work in an airport? You don't find many bastards cheaper than travellers, and I should know cause I'm definitely one of them. After I've shelled out the 25% more for the rental car than I'd planned because of some airport taxes that have just been imposed (the "You're in Houston so we'll just charge you $10 more for being here" tax), after having to be charged per bag, per pillow, per shoe I want to wear on my feet (seriously? are we coming to this?), you'd be hard pressed to find a generous tipper in a regular business traveller. I love business travellers. Did you see "Up In The Air"? They nod to each other with their matching Samsonite bags. Do they notice that amidst and among their breed are we musicians who hold bagazillions of frequent flier miles as well, but perhaps not the most expensive luggage. They get to put their meals on the client. We pay our own way. So this is the culture into which I want you to enter for this chapter of my saga. The tired, bedraggled, going home fliers OR the excited, distracted, chattering "did I forget my IPhone in the car, honey?" fliers who are en route to some long-planned destination. I realize airport restaurants are expensive. All food here is. Mostly I try to eat and drink beforehand, but a great once in a while, I feel the need to splurge. If I've got the time, I might take a table in a restaurant (a table???), order a nice glass of wine and eat a REAL meal. Yes, and spend money, but sometimes this luxury is worth the price of admission, even if the food mostly sucks and the wine is not top shelf. Its worth it to not eat something wrapped in white paper.

Like today.

Houston Hobby Airport. I'm flying Southwest Airlines. I have 2 hours to kill, and I haven't had a real meal in 2 days, so I decide to take a booth seat at Pappadeaux, some pseudo Cajun chain, I figure. The waiter approaches--a cheery 30 something blonde man, big bright smile, too happy for a Monday at noon, but there's something quite genuine about him. A salesman, but a salesman you like despite knowing all you know about salesmen. He spots the guitar (they all do) and instead of asking me the regular question "What's the name of your band?" he says he has his grandfather's Fender Strat but he can't play it (I'm calculating the age of said guitar and inwardly drooling ... ). He leans in, elbows on table. Have you been here or to any Pappadeaux? he asks. I say no. His eyes light up. "Well...." and he points out 2 fish items and says, 'seriously, we do fresh here. I mean fresh like they were swimming 48 hours ago fresh. And if you go with the Tilapia, I'd recommend the Napa Sauvignon Blanc"... I find myself charmed and I'm no sucker. And so, yes, I say "whatever you say" and proceed to have the BEST airport meal I've ever had. Seriously. The fish was perfect. The beans weren't frozen or if they were they were masked well. The wine was light and crisp. Mike C seemed to have his beat down. He owned the four tables around me, enjoying brief yet genuine conversations with each of them as he passed by, checking on them. One couple, well-dressed, Hispanic, in linen pants and gold bracelets, sat across from me. They'd waited in line and requested to be seated in a section so as to be waited on by Mike C. Seriously. They'd been here before. Who does that? This guy, Mike--I've never seen anything like this. He created this conviviality between people who were not inclined to be convivial: frequent travellers used to keeping their heads in their Wall Street Journals and their fingers and thumbs on their Blackberries. One table had a couple that were retired Army band members. She was the lead clarinetist, still playing in nursing homes and VA Hospitals. He was a retired trumpeter. They were both originally from Long Island, heading home. How do I know this? Because Mike introduced us. Because he knew them: they travel from here all the time. As they left, he asked, "When will I see you guys again?" I'm usually the one with my head in my I Phone, checking emails, not particularly friendly. I hate the questions about the guitar, or the meek "good luck with that"s that occur after I answer the questions that lead to "I'm a folk singer" or, worse, "Are you famous?" But here, in this Pappadeaux (what the hell does that mean anyway?) there was this brief camaraderie. A kindness. A gentility. Nobody seemed to invade anyone's space for too long, but a brief nod or a "where are you heading?" as if, captained by Mike C, we were all on the same ship. This kind of person is so rare, I think. I hope not. I hope there are Mike C's everywhere, who recognize that a big broad smile and a bit of fun while waiting on a plane make a world of difference to someone who spends way too many days away from her own house, her own dog. So, I beg of you, if you are travelling through Houston Hobby Airport on a Monday - Thursday, on Southwest Airlines, go to Pappadeaux and ask for Mike C. Remind him of the girl with the Gibson guitar that I let him look at. Tell him I sent you. Tip him very very well.

Here's another thing. I love New York and I love New Yorkers and I love the honesty and brashness about the Northeast. And I'm wary of the "bless your heart" niceties of the south. All bullshit. But I wonder, even if Mike C. wasn't really that happy or that interested in everyone, is it so PollyAnna of me to think that maybe throwing a bit of southern bullshit charm around into the Karmic atmosphere can be a better energy (regardless of the veracity) than the aggressive, honest, "take it or leave it" brazenness of my previous area of the country? All I know is that my shoulder tension is gone now. 18 years of it and its gone.

Or maybe its that 1pm glass of Sauvignon Blanc.....

Dragonfly

2010-04-19T20:12:00.004-05:00

To be perfectly honest, sometimes I wish I could cancel the weekend ahead of me of shows and stay home, stay in fleecy sweats, cook and read the Sunday New York Times (my favorite thing to linger over for hours) and share the couch with June. I'm not complaining. Everybody dreads work. I bet the Pope dreads Mondays (well, lately, I'm sure more than ever before). But isn't it odd and wonderful that when you just show up, the nagging, naysaying critic yammering in your head and all, the beautiful and the unexpected happens.

For example. Elba, Alabama. Where the hell is Elba? I'm not even sure. I just followed Linda, my GPS guide and 6 hours south of Nashville, I was driving along bucolic windy country roads, through "front porch" towns--2 blocks in length with stores strung together in rotting wood porches and flat fronted signpost roofhats. I expected to see someone on a rocking chair with a harmonica. A place you feel like is stuck in the dustbowl era -- and almost missed Elba, the size of a postage stamp. These are the places you drive into as a folk singer and you think 'uh oh...this MUST be a mistake.' How could this deep southern town with dusty empty streets and an apothecary and apocalyptic billboards hold even 30 folk music fans? Someone must have made a mistake. The thing is, as I've learned while writing my song "Manila Street", its not just beauty that hides in the shadows. You can never judge a town by its billboards. Here in this sleepy small town lurks a host of music fans who can sing along to Jean Ritchie and John Stewart songs and who will work to get state funding to allow a troup of 6th graders to sit in the front row to a concert that doesn't include a former American Idol alumni. There's decent mexican food and a bed & breakfast with a wide front porch populated by whitewashed rocking chairs, ripe for the late night decompression. I met some amazing folks in Elba, AL, people who live there, people who were visiting. I talked to a man about the importance of clean water and water purification, a basic right and one that becomes increasingly scarce in this season of hurricanes and earthquakes. I felt like there was something at work beyond just a paycheck and a 2 set gig.

I woke the next morning and shared weak coffee and grits with a bunch of these folks who have a more wicked and droll sense of humor than even the British, twisted and honest and sharp, but with an accent thicker than sourghum. Filled with food painted by the same swath of the colorwheel, I pointed my van north to Montgomery, heading to Hank Williams' grave, to pay homage. Driving through these small roads lined with waving tall grasses and bending pines, drooping crimson clover and bright flourescent yellow flowers that dotted the grasses, I felt this wave of the River. The flow. My friend Rebecca would say I felt in my bliss. I guess that's right, but my skin tingles at crystal-talk. But yes, ok. I felt bliss. The sweet spot of the sun. I felt love. I felt life. I felt warm. The sun was out. I was doing what I loved so much. I was alone, driving, listening to a really interesting 11 CD volume book on CD on Abraham Lincoln, and sometimes stopping to listen to the same Joe Pug song over and over because I love it so much. But I was in a flow.

I found myself in front of Hank Williams' grave in this small cemetary in a rundown neighborhood of Montgomery. Two tall rectangles of slate carved with Aubrey on one and Hank on the other. Carvings of western wear: boots and hats. Someone or ones had left empty bottles of rye and whiskey and tequila. Plastic flowers stood in a vase. I sat on a bench in the 80 degree April sun and thought of lyrics to songs I know. I pondered the brevity of his life. How is it possible that he only lived 30 years with that body of work that still exists. My friend Jon calls it writing "copyrights", as in "don't write for what's on the radio today. Write a copyright." Write something that lasts long after your death. Like Hank. To be perfectly honest, I never feel anything at all at gravesites. My favorite person in my life so far was my grandmother Roro and I stood at her gravesite and felt cold. Nothing. She wasn't there. It was just theater, this visitation. So why would I feel different at a stranger's. No different. I just felt obliged to stop by and somehow nod at the grave. Acknowledge it and him and his importance and that time passes and we pass and we dissolve and in the flow of the river we pass those who have gone before us and its just respectful to nod, even if there are no tears.

Last night I played a small show in the mountains in Georgia and it was an unexpected delight. A bit chaotic, as it was being broadcast on the internet, live chat along with my set along with the small crowd who were physically there. Again, it was one of those situations where I thought it was going to be a possible disaster, but in the chaos, there was beauty and truth and it all came together as it should have come together and I felt, again, dipped in the flow. I made a mention of my Uncle Will, who passed away a year ago. Who I miss. Some days with a real strength. Wishing I'd had more conversations with him, the wise one, the quiet one, the one of truth and integrity and peace. I said that I wasn't sure I believed in heaven. The truth is, I don't believe in heaven nor hell. Its all just here and we recycle or we don't or I'll never know but I doubt I'll go into the clouds of the great beyond and meet anyone from this lifetime. I said, If I come back as an insect, please let me come back as a dragonfly. It was off the cuff. But writing this, reflecting on happenstance and opening up to what might be and then being offered what is, darting in and out vertically and horizontally of the flow of life and love and emptiness and chaos, greatness and smallness, there's something to be said about the brief life of a dragonfly, watergills then bursting through a shell to breath air for a brief few months. That sweet spot? There was nothing extraordinary in my weekend. But something lifted my head up, as if to say, 'pay attention' and I did and I was blessed with meeting love and stories and passion and mission and music and nature and history and soil. Like that insect, the flying pattern is quite erratic, turbulent and brief but in its small smallness, extraordinary.

The Chronicles of Trixie

2010-04-19T01:23:00.004-05:00

Trixie. Rich Feridun, or Rico as he's been called, red-haired smooth guitar player of the Tearjerks, bought me this air freshener a few years ago at a highway truckstop. Rich and I would have this game where we'd spend a few bucks on each other and buy surprise truck stop gifts. We both have an impressive collection of sculpted eagles with American flags or loinclothed native americans and bears and turtles all holding aloft some patriotic symbol. You know: those $1.99 snowglobes or paperweights you find next to the rack of monogrammed keychains or shotglasses with state flags? I'm sure I bought Rich once a pink truckers' hat that said "I love Jesus" and he bought me a pamphlet on Sin & Repentance. I love truck stops. So Rich decided that I needed a hula girl, a hula girl with moxie. So we named her Trixie and she has driven with us all over the country. I've decided I should have a Trixie column for this blog. Where is Trixie now kind of thing....In this 2nd photo, Trixie is in Blue Ridge, Georgia, hanging out on the porch of the cabin where I'm going to play a concert... In the 3rd, well, she's just enjoying happy hour...

So stay tuned....

Alex Chilton

2010-03-23T22:06:00.004-05:00

It was probably 1990, Fall. Might have been late Summer, like August, just as the new students are pulling in with their parents' station wagons and U-Hauls, unloading boxes and stolen milk crates of essentials into small dorm rooms. Anticipation of a new life in the air...embarking on some journey, unknown yet, who will I met? who will I become? who will I make out with or fuck in my new freshman dorm room in the first few weeks of school? how fast can I get rid of my parents before the kegs start amassing? I was out. Graduated. But lingering. No plans. No idea, really. Just lingering for love. I can hem and haw and hedge but the truth is: I remained in my college town for a year after graduating with high honors for one simple fact: I was in love and that was more important to me to explore than graduate school or a new town or a new job. So I was fine with hovering. I embraced the hover.

This will all relate to the music soon, I promise.

I met a boy my first few months of college who was fascinating and confident and a rockstar kind of guy, smelling of patchouli and incense and pot and I told him straight off: you will want to marry me someday. I was a kid. Then again, so was he. But I was a kid with foresight. I chased that boy 3 years later not knowing at all that he was committed, nay, living with someone (and as strident as I was in my pursuit, I will forever feel bad to Traci about that, and I barely knew her, but karma can kick you in the ass, even years later, and yes, Traci, touche it was). This boy was in a band. This band was amazing. Was the soundtrack to the last year of my fantastical college year of working way too hard, writing into the wee hours, smoking a lot of pot and drinking a lot of espresso and feeling very full of my own poetry and potential. I have previously written about this boy. The boy is not the point here. The music is. I remember the music clearly: I think one writer called them the Indigo Boys, which was so unfair. They were acid dropping potheads with high IQs who played on the edge of their lives as if this was all they had. Matt wrote languagelooping lyrics ontop of melodic grunge, pre-grunge. They had long greasy hair and all lived together in a house they'd named and threw parties in and created a marketing brand without commercial instincts. Just a bunch of boys who wanted to live their own Woodstock. Or Big Pink. I was a girl in love, with admittedly naive taste in rock music. Well versed in opera and jazz and classical and broadway melodies and folk, but with no real backbone in the conversation of the Family Tree of REM, which hung on their fridge. I was in love. Love makes you listen. I was an artist. I see that now, but an artist without a medium. I was in search of my medium, my voice, throwing shit at the wall to see what stuck whether it was poetry or plays, baking bread at 6am or singing jazz, to running away to NYC to study acting just to find something that was all mine.

But I remember this gig. Matt out in front of the big rock noise, strumming his Takamine (I think it was red...). "I'm in love with a girl...." He sang it to me. I'm sure he didn't, but I knew he did.

I remember the nights in his room, which became our room once said girlfriend left (oooh, feels awful admitting that, but I was young, he was young, she was young, I'm sure we are all happy and better off now), headphones on, listening to music. Big Star. Alex Chilton. I remember the conversations where Matt would dismiss someone with a condescending sweep of rock history, "You don't know who Alex Chilton is?" I took that on myself later. The world was divided by that. Were you on board with Big Star or not? Did you recognize the seminal genius of this melodic music, the swirling madness of the 3rd record, so spare and difficult. Did you get it?

We broke up. Years later I was the girl with the guitar. A folkie. Devouring Dylan and Cohen and the Texas 3-named troubadours. But I still had my Pixies, Lemonheads, Smiths, Big Star, Replacement records. That band of boys in the woods grew up, got married one by one, had babies, did music or didn't. I did music. I threw myself body and soul into the music. Chose to not have the happy domestic life. Chose the melody. Found a like-minded guitar god who got what I did and collaborated with him. He shaped me while I was figuring out how to write for a band. We put the band together. He produced me. Took me under his wing. Said, "We should cover a Big Star song" and on long drives to gigs, the #1 Record/Radio City was the disc we played as our soundtrack. I never did learn that cover.

Last year, I was playing in Memphis for the Folk Alliance Conference and was invited to perform a small acoustic set at Ardent Studios. I was told someone would pick me up. That someone was Jody Stephens, drummer for Big Star (and studio manager for Ardent). He was kind and really interested in the whole folk alliance thing. At one point he said, "oh I was in this band..." as if, and I can't really tell for sure, he thought perhaps because I was a folkie, I might not know and I had to interrupt him and say, "yeah Big Star. Huge fan. Total honor to meet you." And I thought of Matt and the college band. Turns out Jody, as much of a rock star in my eyes, a totally nice, down to earth human being (many are) and we just hit it off, about music and whatever and I felt like I'd met someone real, someone who just so happened to be in a seminal and fucking ridiculously cool rock band that influenced most of the boys who taught me to play guitar and write songs.

I went to Austin this year on a whim. I wasn't scheduled for a regular showcase at SXSW. In fact, I was to be in the midwest on 2 dates, one of which was cancelled, making it impossible for me to afford the one-off. We cancelled. I hitched a ride to Austin with a friend, got a free place to crash, figured I'd eat street tacos and see music and just be in the swim of it, see what happens. I love live music, so I figured I'd spend 4 days listening to music and being in my bliss. Big Star was playing. I knew I'd be there. Wednesday night I was standing outside my hotel and saw Jody walk down my sidewalk and stopped him with a hug hello and he just looked at me blankly. "Alex died today." Everything changed. What do you say? "I'm so sorry for your loss" sounds lame. I just stammered, unbelieving. Its not like I'd ever met Chilton. He was, and will remain now, a black and white photo on the sleeve of the vinyl, a rockstar stopped in time. An icon. Not a living breathing bleeding crying hurting agonizing loving living human. But this was my new friend and this was his long long long time friend and the show would not go on now. Not any of it. Not the show. Not the music. Not the life. And it hit me as if it was someone I knew and as I left Jody, I dialed Jim's number and left what I'm sure was a swirling dialogue of tequila-hazed information. I tried to find Matt's number. Didn't have it. Facebooked him. Which sounds so lame. But I was trying to reach these people who gave me this music to say, "hey. I'm sorry for YOUR loss."

The next day I got a call and was invited to participate in the tribute concert to Big Star. I have to say, initially I thought it was a prank. I was completely shocked. But I loved the music, someone wanted me there, and I knew a song I thought I could offer in the emotional celebration. I thought of The Vestrymen singing "Kangaroo". I thought of the melodies that were out of time, out of synch with what was out there on the radio at the time. His voice, ethereal and ghostly, pitch-perfect lunacy and dagger to your heart dead on. I listened to "Holocaust" about 10 times on Thursday, shivering on the inside of my skin. I'm not sure if I can wrap my thoughts yet around what that was like--that concert. It was a haze, a whirlwind, I felt in my body and out of it all at once. I felt starstruck and startled, stared at and starry-eyed, the flash of the photographers blinded me and my heart beat fast in my chest for a grief I didn't necessarily personally feel but I could feel it in the room and it was like a river that flowed above the heads of the crowd that I could dip my finger into. And the grief for me was more directly about the music not the man but I was with people who were grieving a man, a collaborator, a friend, tears streaming and I wanted to just, as they say in meditation, Hold the Space. I didn't know what I was doing there. But I would do my part in Holding the Space. Backstage, Sondre Lerche looked stunned but graceful. Mike Mills was trying to keep it light. Stamey was speechless. Quiet and internal. I felt most connected to M. Ward as we both seemed to feel just graciously stunned to be there, but didn't know Chilton personally so we left the air to breathe amongst those who were personal friends. There was a definite air of reverence and joy, shelved grief and distortion, both internal and external. I've never been so proud to be a part of a show. Evan Dando, disoriented and dizzy, saying "fuck" before he started his song. The empty center microphone, unplanned but poetic.

As I stepped onstage though, and my name was called, and the previously cheering crowd for all the "names" had a kind of stuttering applause, like "who IS this?", I brought onstage with me in my heart Jim and Matt and Timo and Chris and Traci (who I never really knew anyway but I'm guessing was much more of an early BS fan that I was...she was cool enough probably to find them herself without the need of a rocker boyfriend to point the way) and Jody and Robert and Holly and people I know who knew him, the town of Memphis that I'm growing to really love, Ardent where it all began, and this state I've adopted as home. It was rough, it was underrehearsed, it was quick and brief and was finished right as soon as it began. Just like many things. Imperfect but filled with heart. It was the best kind of Tribute. And for me, it was a tribute to the people who got me there.

Put yourself in the river and see what happens. Chilton was an artist. A troubled artist, but an artist. I would much rather have been watching him from the audience than singing his song from the stage.

Fan Letter

2010-03-04T02:40:00.004-06:00

I'm a pretty unflappable person. I learned the art of the unflapping when I was 23 and working as Lainie Kazan's personal assistant, fresh out of acting school, never met a famous person in my life. In the course of my first few months working with Lainie, I met Gregory Hines, danced with Bette Midler in a nightclub in NYC, shared an elevator ride with Dan Rather who asked me all about myself, got ass-pinched by Tony Randall (who, frankly, was an ass, rest his soul), had drinks with Rex Reed, did a movie with Abe Vigoda, Connie Sellica, Joe Bologna and Renee Taylor, met mobsters and crooks, dancers and divas and by the end of the year, I'm sure if I'd met Bob Dylan I might have just said, "eh, can I get you an Evian?"

The other night Ray Wylie Hubbard and I were hanging in Memphis, doing a showcase together. I was going to be flying to CA to open some shows with him and his wife called to say "I know you're pretty cool around famous people, but I should let you know. Ringo might show up at your LA show for Ray. Just in case you see him, I wanted to warn you." Ringo? A Beatle? Seriously? Ok. I would be flapped, I admitted. But, Ringo was a no show (or if he showed, I did not see him; then again, I heard that Chris Robinson was there and I didn't spot him, so who knows). Regardless, I was unflapped. Out of sight....

Tonight. Call me flapped. Big time. And I was flapped by someone who, quite frankly, I was pretty unfamiliar with.

Eric Taylor. I just shared a co-bill with Eric Taylor. Who I'd heard of, of course. How can you be a folk musician with a love of Texas folk music without knowing of Eric Taylor. Contemporary of (but a few years younger than) Townes and Guy, Steve and Nanci, etc. But I wasn't really familiar with his music except for the songs Lyle and Nanci had covered. I try to educate myself as much as I can on all things GREAT about songwriters, but some things slip through the cracks and Mr. Taylor had slipped. I'm grateful that I was shoved straight in front of his music tonight.

Let me just say this. I might have 'shared' the bill with Eric Taylor, but it was me who sat at a Master Class after I was done. I was just happy to get through my set, having just been flattened by the Flu (the big one) for 8 days, completely out of my mind sick, sicker than I remember ever having been, and this being the first time I'd be standing up straight for more than 15 minutes since being sick. And I'd have to stand up straight, play a guitar, sing, stand in front of stage lights AND have to remember my own lyrics. It was tough. I'm just happy I made it.

But then, I got to watch Eric Taylor. Who is unlike anyone I've ever seen perform. Theatrical, dramatic. Slow. Space. Stories that wound around and back again, repeated lines like mantra, slow and steady like a One Man Show. Stories told while fingering a riff, leaving me wondering where the song began, if it began, or when it might begin, but being drawn straight into the center of the story that seemed to have no point. More of an observation: Johnny Cash's mother sold beachtowels and thimbles by the side of the road. The history of a county and a river in Texas. Then the song, that wound back to the observation, sometimes repeating the same phrase or word, sometimes just a repetition of an image "sugarcane" or "Sammy Davis Jr". I couldn't tell what was going on, or where he was going. Did he have a setlist? Had he written these stories as monologue or was he riffing? 2 full glasses of wine and 3 glasses of water on his pedastal. Was he drinking too much? Was it authentic or an act? He told a story of meeting Johnny Cash in an AA meeting, he punctuated his story by sipping wine out of the glass. It was all of the above and the thing was, I was riveted, schooled in space and time. Maybe it was slow, methodical, at times plodding, but it was always riveting. And his songs... there was one: "Peppercorn Tree" that almost brought me to sobbing. There's a thing that the Great Texan Songwriters do that nobody else does and its based in blues and picking and that glorious thud of the thumb back and forth on the E and A or D string, with a deep drop D. The way they wrap their drawl around the end word, so that 'where' sounds like 'whar' and the gruffness of the dropping of the syllables "d" and "t" so its almost like a Bayou drawl. Nanci Griffith does it. Eliza and Lucinda do it. Its not just for the old men. Even Mary Gauthier does it. Its something I could never do, this Baltimore girl would sound like a pretender. But there's some kind of true grit in that inflection that I wish I could borrow. And there's a repeating mode, a fearless emptiness that I hear in Eric Taylor's music that I also hear in Eliza and Mary and Guy and Townes. A drowning void.

And honest. He is who he is and is unapologetic and cranky and admits to his ego-filled failings when he was younger (tells a great story of how Kate Wolf brought him down to earth). He rags on people unabashedly. Or he might be taking the piss out, but you just aren't sure. I love that he's not gonna blow smoke up anyone's ass. He said to me: "that song, that one where the line is "killer in me loves the killer I see in you"..." I said, "yeah, "The Killer In Me" He said, "where'd you get that line? where'd that song come from?" I said, "No where really. Turn of a phrase and I just let that carry the lyric" and he said, "Cool shit. Don't tell anyone. That's fucking cool." Then just as I was feeling pretty damned good, being complimented by Eric Taylor for your songwriting is a pretty amazing thing, he said:

"Yeah. That's a great line. You got a pretty good song out of it."

Bam. Not a total compliment. I heard the subtext. But that's cool. I appreciate that he spoke his truth and I kind of like him more for it. Bastard.

I have sat at the feet of giants and had the privilege of hearing my heros sing my own songs. But I would like to sit at the feet of Guy Clark and Eric Taylor and Ray Wylie Hubbard and ask them to show me what they do. Ask Ray to teach me how to play the blues. Ask Guy how to wrap a story around 3 chords. As Eric to show me about space and detail and fearlessness. I was emailing with my friend Abbie today about how we both want to go to music school, but of our own making. Learn other people's songs, really study them, really figure them out. I think I might have found my next lesson.

Pebble

2010-02-26T01:55:00.002-06:00

This loose pebble

Under my bare toes

On a Fourth of July driveway

Kicks away

From the bike

I rode in 1970

Sunwarm and sad

Part of more than what I was

And still am

To The Wishing

2010-02-26T01:40:00.002-06:00

(For Alexine)

She watches me with eyes

Wider than the flying range

Of the gull who lands

On undulating sands

I tell her of the magic

Raging water upon fabric

No thicker than her hair

Sea-light and barely air

She asks me of the stars

I tell her there's an art

To the wishing

Feverish

2010-02-24T00:21:00.004-06:00

There's nothing worse than being sick and not being home. It helps to have a friend with a guest room that's quiet and tucked away and keeps me from feeling like taking an extra day to rest is in my friends' way. But I'd like to be home in my bed with my dog with my blanky with my tea in my bathrobe. Free to cough out what I need to cough out and throw the kleenex on the floor. I wish I could sleep for 5 days. But I'm on tour and this is a good tour, a big tour and I can't afford to be sick. No one ever can, who WANTS to be sick? But now is a bad time, so I need this croup to flee my form. Tomorrow morn.

I'm writing in rhyme. I just noticed that. Maybe its the gunk in my head but I've been feeling a bit dull lately. I need to be reading better things than I am. I need to turn off the TV. I need to read poetry. Or learn French like I'd planned. I feel my days are passing by without me filling my head with important things and stories. I'd like to hold a vat of beauty in my brain, vast and wide like the plains, filled with phrases borrowed from Yeats or L. Cohen. I'd like to read something esoteric just for the knowingness of it. But I've been trolling the web, posting status updates like that would match what's in my head, but it fails to reach the thing I'm trying to reach beyond. Maybe its the aspirin tonight, makes my head spin and feel lighter than a balloon weighted with feathers where the feathers are soaked in wine, sticky like a brine...

That gathering of minds in Memphis was a tickler. I wish some of these great and wonderful musicians lived near me and we could gather each week at one of our houses and learn each other's music, or just read outloud Dante until it got boring. Break through something more than just the dithering around of refrains on my own here in this borrowed bed while I lay sick so sick I'd like to just play dead for a week and ignore the sunshine outside the window, the ocean so close by....

Folk Alliance 2010

2010-02-23T13:29:00.005-06:00

Imagine a hotel filled with banjos, dulcimers, acoustic guitars, upright basses, percussion instruments, lap steels, mandolins and harmonicas, 4 elevators with only 1 of them working by Saturday night, Red Bull and Bloody Mary stations, constant activity around the clock, no sleep, swapping songs, saying hello in hallways whilst running to the next 20 minute showcase in a small bedroom on the 19th floor with the beds pushed up against the wall and makeshift decorations, new friends and old friends and people you want to jam with and people you want to impress and musicians who make you want to put the guitar down and start all over again and musicians at the beginning who are just figuring it out and you want to lead them to the Wine & Nut Room to go hear Bill Kirchen jam at 4am.... Memphis, 2010. Thursday through Sunday. About 6 years ago someone heard me playing at Makor Club in NYC and literally demanded I go to a Folk Alliance Conference. Pretty much paid my way and I had no idea what I was getting into. The doors of the hotel room that day opened and it was a barrage of constant fiddling and picking and it was completely overwhelming, terrifying and exhilarating all at once, and I felt like I'd been invited into this not-so-little community that, until then, had been hidden from me. I've been back almost every year since. Now, I have to admit a love/hate relationship with conferences and "all things industry". I love the music. I love reconnecting (even briefly) with friends. I hate the chasing of the golden ring part of it. Over the years, I've developed little strategies of my own to push through, knowing that there will be great moments of joy and great moments of insecurity. Who wouldn't when surrounded by extraordinary talent at each turn. I usually dread the whole thing the day before I get there. There's a Home Depot thing that happens to me when stuck in a hotel room with that much energy and buzz. Its like you go into Home Depot for one thing, a shovel, perhaps, or a can of white paint. And you get in there and the lights and the high ceilings and the orange banners and aprons get to your eyes and then you are wandering in a daze, seduced by rakes and lightbulbs and wood blinds and 2x4's and you've forgotten what you came for in the first place. This is Folk Alliance to me. You need to be in Room 1924 at midnight but along the way, all these things just distract. I wouldn't be surprised to see Alice and the Rabbit at one of these things, holding out their "Drink Me" potions in the Red Bull cans....

But I have to say, this year was incredible. Maybe the best so far. Still a frenzy, but I felt calm and centered and I had a lot of shows to do, but I had time to hear new artists and I have to say, I was floored. Here's what I loved:

My roommate for the conference, Ana Egge blew me away. A quiet confidence, deep deep deep stuff, sensual badass guitar player, she moves like water, tall and loose, with a voice barely above a whisper. Words that betray a depth beyond their complete simplicity.

Anais Mitchell. Of whom I am always in awe. Her brain scares me. But it was her heart this time that poked a whole in my calm. I heard "The Shepherd" and maybe I had deep wells of something bubbling and didn't realize it, but I left the room and ran into Nels Andrews and started to weep. I had to go play my own showcase after that and I felt out of my own body, still affected by the beauty of that song. She makes me want to start over again. Or dig deeper.

Martyn Joseph, who I'd been hearing about for a year was a powerhouse of passion. Beautiful voice and playing, his songs slayed me. Richard Thompson-ish, tall and gorgeous and Welsh.

Danny Schmidt. See "Anais Mitchell". Same thing. I feel like someone slipped me into the cool club by allowing me to be on the same booking roster as incredible writers like Danny and Jonathan Byrd.

Others who I've known but loved again and again: Jonathan Byrd (as always), Sally Barris, Sally Spring, Jack Williams, Anthony DaCosta, Shelly King, Raina Rose, The Bowmans, StoneHoney, Dan Navarro, Kenny White, Doug & Telisha Williams.

A few of my favorite moments... My own showcase in the round with Sally Barris and Jonathan Byrd with John Abbey on upright bass was downright magical. I'm not sure what spell was in the room, that was packed but silent, but we stayed in a mood and let it carry us and I felt transformed by that show and I can't even claim my part in it because I'm sure it was Sally and Jonathan and I was just allowed to be there in the same musical space as them..... A quiet glass of wine with WFUV's John Platt, a longtime supporter of mine, where we stole away and got to know each other beyond music a bit more, which was just a lovely lovely thing .... An impossibly stolen moment with Rachel Klein from Ralph Jaccodine Management-- a REAL moment of connection with chaos swirling about us and we held strong as if in the center of the storm, determined to have a true conversation and we did....getting to hear a bit of Charlie Faye's showcase in the Wine & Nut Room, popping my head in for one Jim Boggia song, Ray Wylie Hubbard's formal showcase...Jon Vezner's showcase of all new songs with Dirje on cello playing beautifully....drinks and fun with Mary Granata and Joan Kornbluth....lunch at Cozy Corner BBQ with Sid Selvidge and Ward Archer and John Laird...swapping songs with Chuck Mead, Sid and Anais at the Center for Southern Folklore....actually getting 6 hours of sleep on Saturday night, emerging from my shower at 7am to have Ana and Melissa Greener and AJ Roach and Nels come in from their night that was still continuing, missing all the fun, but knowing I'd made the right decision for my health....

It makes me so happy to be able to have this wonderful world of whatever the hell FOLK means as my community. Especially in a world where everyone argues over genre distinctions and what this means and what this doesn't mean, its so refreshing to be in a place where a Genre can be an umbrella or a net that catches all sorts of stars that fall, from Sacred Steel to Bluegrass to Rock N Roll and to be able to be one little dot on that galactic map, finding my place out there, holding onto the others around me.

Weights and Measures

2010-02-16T00:01:00.002-06:00

I haven't seen "Up In The Air" yet. I haven't seen a movie in a theater in, oh, about a year or so. But I saw the trailer and I have been thinking about the Clooney monologue about unpacking your metaphorical backpack that would be filled with all of the things you have, the things you own, the places you've been and all the experiences you've had, the people you've barely known, the strangers you've passed, the people you've liked, the people you've loved for a time, the people who are your best friends and lovers and family that starts, "This is going to be a little difficult so stay with me." And asks:

How much does your life weigh?

The slower we move the faster we die.

In light of my recent post about anger and diffusion, conversations and confusions, I should see this movie, I think.

I have a hard time with faith. With belief in anything past nothingness, past randomness, but anyone who works in the creative world has to have felt Grace and has to have experienced Mystery and Magic. So this I wonder about. Are things put in our path to challenge us, for us to learn and relearn and relearn, to stumble and fall and to do it all over again until either we get it right or we walk down another road? Do we feel like we have the same conversation again, over and over, like a Deja Vu? Have the same relationships but with different faces? I know, this is the stuff of Jung and Patterns. But is it greater than that and by Greater I am not really talking about God. I heard on NPR a story of a woman who was in a coma (I think...it was Morning Edition and the coffee hadn't kicked in) but in her state she felt a Euphoria she connected with a total Oneness with the universe, a kind of Ecstatic peace. The interviewer kept trying to connect that with a sense of God and the woman kept saying, no, it was all about synapses. That she'd only had access to a part of her brain that was a more universal part, not the half that deals in details (and forgive my paring this complex interview into barely a coherent explanation, I'm almost embarrassed, but its been a day of cleaning the house while watching endless reruns of "Housewives of New Jersey" just for fun and then finishing up tracks in the studio and then drinking some good wine while cooking, so I'm not at my fullest of intellectual abilities tonight). And she wouldn't say it was God or religion. Just science. Brain science.

So maybe brain science puts us in places, with people, in conversations we need to be in, in order to muddle through the muck of this life, in order to get to the next level.

Or maybe we keep trying to haul that damned rock up the hill only to fall back a few steps and keep running into the same people with their own rocks, up the same damned hill, tripping on that same crack in the ground.

Well, my backpack is as heavy as yours I'm sure. And it keeps getting heavier and heavier, which slows down the walk. I looked across at the yellow chair that's empty that sits in front of my fireplace tonight. I was watching "The Time Traveller's Wife." I needed a good chick flick. A love movie of star-crossedness to wring out the stuff stuck in my throat. And that movie did it. Just made me weep. Its not a great movie but it was good timing. (p.s. a great movie for the heavy weeping is "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"). And in that chair I could just see my late grandmother, the owner of that chair, who I feel is still hovering somewhere in the molecules above, lightly tripping up and down those hills I am still trying to climb.

Chill Pill

2010-02-12T19:15:00.004-06:00

It took about an hour an 15 minutes to breathe. I think I just learned something though, and you'd think after 41 years and 9 days on this planet I might have learned this earlier, but I really think that tonight I passed a threshold of self-awareness. I might have just learned how to let go of anger, how to get to the other side. I might be able to throw out that emergency bottle of Xanax I barely use.

Here's what happened.

An abruptly ended phone conversation that shouldn't have ended so abruptly, that sent me spiralling into the whirlwind of what ifs and doubts and assumptions. A conversation-end that I didn't control. And that pissed me off. I wanted it to end MY way (although, admittedly, I had no idea how the "my way" ending would, well, end, but I had Important Things To Say--or, truthfully--I had not-so-important-and-quite-honestly-already-been-said-thrice Things That Needed To Be ReStated, and I didn't get to ReState Them again). And then they shut their phone off (not against me, but to deal with whatever it was that was taking their attention away from me at the moment), so as I tried to call back, I couldn't reach them. I thought about texting. Stopped my fingers. I sat at the computer and wrote a long ranting crazy-woman's email. Thank god I didn't send it. I went to my dog and yelled at her. Then hugged her. I started to cry. Didn't even know why. But something was boiling up and I was about to go into a full on rampage. I was angry. I was affronted. I wasn't being treated well. I was being taken advantage of. I was going to drive my car until it went too fast and bashed a tree. Or I was going to never talk to this person again. Or I was going to move far away, to California. Or Tibet. I was I was I was I-I-I-I-I-....

So I sat on my bed, trying to reason out why I was angry. What was I angry about, exactly? What wasn't being said? What didn't I get the opportunity to express? How could I change this to make me happy? What about this was under my current control? And then, I just cried. Not loud wailing. Just tears, rolling down my already-reddened-from-anger cheeks. My bed was strewn with sweaters from trying to find the warmest one this morning, and I was grateful for the wool and cashmere and angora pile to hang onto like a toddler's blanky. I cried and pouted and felt sorry for myself. And somewhere in the crying, I remembered to breathe. And I breathed slowly. And the world stopped swirling and that voice in my head shut up and I stopped feeling unloved and untaken care of and alone and I just felt, well, calm.

So, after all this, which took the better part of the hour, of huffing and puffing and blowing my proverbial metaphorical house down, I wiped the tears away, walked over to my dog, fed her, sat down here at the desk, saw I had some emails to answer, began to go through them one by one, until another 15 minutes passed and

VOILA

I am not angry anymore. I am, in fact, calm. I gained...perspective. I saw that I had turned pretty much a little tiny bump in the street into a large peak of the Rockies. And luckily, I had been unable to reach said friend in order to share my bigass Mountain of Grief with them. And so, after stomping my feet around alone (well, with June to witness, but she already knows I'm a lunatic) for an hour, I got that out of my system and now I feel, well, centered. Clear. Back to ground zero.

I am not pissed at my friend. Sure, I had a few gripes, but nothing that can't be communicated later on in a calm way. But I am even now. Remember that post earlier about wanting a normal year? Having HAD it with Drama. I think I might have turned a corner on drama tonight. You've sometimes got to allow the drama in, cause it shoves its way inside like a nosy neighbor with a casserole. Or better, like a kayak barrelling down class 3 rapids on a West Virginia river. But if you fall into the river, you can let the boat go, choose to not cling onto the side, going over the Falls with the damn thing. Let things pass through you, not over you.

I know. This is the stuff of Life 101. But believe me, I think I might have skipped ahead and missed out on some really important stuff in those early grades. Me and Anger have a long history together. She's in there, but I just gave her a blanky and told her, 'thank you for the information and I'll take it from here'.

Birthdays

2010-02-07T00:32:00.004-06:00

February 7th, 1:32 am in a friend's attic guest bedroom in suburban New Jersey, only a few miles from the apartment I left in the hands of a friend in October; a few miles from the apartment I shared with a man I still love but from whom I am de-coupled; a few miles from the river I crossed 10 years ago to leave the East Village to move to the wilds of Jersey; a few miles from the trains and subways and bridges and tunnels that were once home to me that are now not. It is eleven hours before I turn that next year over and wake to a new age, another number, one that is just that - a number - just a clock that ticks steadily, a reminder that everything moves on and as the moon rises the sun sets and as the moon sets the sun rises. I place little stock in numbers. I was never good at math. The reason that college on the hill let me in with my inadequate SAT scores and my lack of lineage and money was that I hoodwinked them with an essay that justified my poor math scores with poetry. And so I am back in the northlands, in a cold cold February snowscare. Blizzards are trailing me north and south. I rode the subway north to 100th Street and remembered that summer I first stood there, with the rumblings under my feet, riding from W. 99th to Houston and Prince every day to do ballet at 8am and study Stanislavski and Checkov and Shakespeare and dance and sing and move and emote. My skin shivered with the memory so close as if the me that was then hovered around the me that is now like a penumbra. I sat in my plastic molded seat in the crowded C train, my guitar, my gear suitcase, my purse, my scarf and hat and coat all pulled in tight around me to not take up too much room, as the hunched and scrunched people around me emitted a congestion of annoyance and frustration. I tried to see how long I could study the features of someone before they'd notice my staring and find my eyes. I tried to listen to Bon Iver and keep my energy light, keep air in my field of being, maybe give off some southern light here inside this dark crowded train. I thought of all of my fears of that move, that first one, so long ago, so afraid of citynoise and rumblings, and think the thing for which I am now homesick is a lightness, the space between people, the large hollow chimes of the tree on Russell Street.

So, on the eve of this turning, I am fine with the page that I've passed. Its been a big year. A good year. I made it to the stage of a major festival I've watched from the sidelines for almost a decade. I made it to Mountain Stage, a show I've listened to for years. I got to meet some heros of mine, got to sing with Nanci Griffith and have a drink with JD Souther and have dinner with Ian Hunter and listen to Judy Collins sing a song I wrote. I watched the snow fall with my parents in my new house in a southern town and I watched my nieces and nephews grow and smile and laugh and stumble and get up again. I spent a lot more money on shoes than I should, but I walked a lot of miles and I wrote some things I'm proud of.

So, later this same day, I am in another's house, and, although I have played in the largest venues of my career this year, on stages near Broadway, thousands of people in gold gilded red velvet seats with Playbills and black and white photos rustling in tiered balconies, tonight I rest in a strangers home, having played to a handful of friendly Pennsylvanians who had never heard of me, because their neighbor or sister or daughter or friend is a fan and had invited me into her home to play a small house concert. And I shared things I'd never eat in my life like tomato pie and little hot dogs in croissants baked in an oven. And I played a song about a boy who dies while a 3 year old girl in bright green danced in front of me and I could hardly bear the beauty and oddness of it all and so I closed my eyes and thought of the unbearable lightness of it all, stealing a phrase from one of my favorite authors, and thought of how far away and how close sometimes perfection is.

January

2010-01-04T09:47:00.005-06:00

I was listening to NPR this morning as I drove my friends to the airport after having them here through the last few days of this long and challenging holiday. Two things struck me. The first was a conversation about privacy issues and Facebook -- a place we all post endlessly trivial and sometimes moving pieces of flotsam and jetsom from our daily lives in efforts to keep up and connect. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Some of us use Facebook as yet another tool in our promotional toolbelt, advertising where we play or where we sell our wares, sharing a bit here and there like Gypsy Rose, just a flash of the wrist to lure. Some of us post every moment, what coffee we are drinking, where and when and how and why. Is it a way of us reaching out or in? Sometimes it feels like Facebook (and Twitter by extension) are less about communing with others and more about rooting ourselves in ourselves. If I can tell YOU what I'm doing, then maybe I'm actually doing it. Authenticating our breathing, in essence. I find it fascinating. And truly, if someone is giving away a bit more than the wrist, say, a shock of the elbow, or the cleavage, or in some cases, full on striptease, maybe it is a bit much, a bit desperate, but perhaps it allows us all to collectively peer in the mirror as a group. Look at him, he took off his clothes...hmmmm, maybe I can do that too. Craving bravery, we stand at the scene of the 3 car pile up staring and looking for ourselves in there. Is that any less valid than standing in line for communion (with all due respect and apologies to my Catholic family, who will hate that metaphor). Maybe we could all use a bit more of the shouting from the mountaintop our deepest passions? Recently, I've had the experience of doing just that and getting a big fat truckload of silence back that, to be honest, stung. I think, though, I've come to feel like it was never about the receiver who didn't receive. Dropped pass in the end zone kind of deflation. But moreso, it was about me needing to hear my own truth outloud, big and echoing and reverberating in the clouds, to say THIS is how I feel, come what may. I'm going to own that bravery for a moment and not really worry about the wide receiver who was probably distracted by the crowds or the weather and didn't really stretch for the pass. It wasn't about that. There's a place for privacy. There's a place for shouting (or posting) your status, so that you can see it yourself. And if its TMI, then you have the free will to turn off the tv or opt to not catch the pass.

The second thing that struck me on the radio at 7 am was a brief monologue by Ben Mattlin, a writer with Spinal Muscular Atrophy who has lived -- far beyond his prognosis -- a full and rich life, married with children, a writer, but of course, strewn with challenges. His segment was simple and to the point. A brief memoir-ish status update kind of posting. What he said that stopped me:

Don't get me wrong. I don't see myself as a modern-day Tiny Tim, cheering everybody up. No thank you. I reject holding myself up as a triumph of the human spirit. At home, I grouse and kvetch all the time...Plus life is rough...So yes, I do feel lucky. 2009 wasn't anything special. But it was blessedly drama-free. And that was enough to make it a good year. Sure I hope for better in the new year. But even if I don't get that, I'll still say I'm lucky. Because sometimes, just normal is enough.

I was driving back from the airport. It has been bitter cold this week in Nashville and I opened my front door this morning to snow flurries. The past few days with my friends, old and new, we had laughs and fun and I was happy and relieved, as this holiday has been a special kind of hell I'm glad to see over. I'm sure we've all got that, no matter our family status or circumstances. Every turn can be a new adventure of joy, or a reminder of choices and regrets. I'm single and childless in a time in my life where I thought things would be different. I'm in a new state a new town a new culture with just a handful of friends and I never thought I'd be here. I haven't quite figured out things like the recycling schedule or where to get my haircut or the yoga class where I won't feel like a loser. I've found a few things that are grounding. Good coffee. My 4 mile run. My favorite grocery store. The nearest Target. I got my license. But this holiday, I've hated that self-reflection moment that has come unnanounced like a train whistle--where I'm staring in the figurative mirror, questioning my motives.

2009 was Dramatic in a Major way. Two moves, three major deaths, many losses, a few heartbreaks (all of them still echoing), broken furniture, van trouble, career shakeups and changes, anger and sadness and joy and elation and hope. I made a few new soulmate friends. I wrote a few songs I'm proud of. I shed some weight, physically and psychically.

So think of this as a Facebook status update - a real one. Not the usual one we all love to post: the sleight of hand ironically funny with a modicum of truth that lets a sneak of you in. How about this. I am confused and rattled and grounded and floating. I am in the center of the seesaw, testing the gravity, slipping many times, catching the balance and then losing it. I could use a calm year. Normal sounds nice right about now.

Think I'll go walk my dog around my neighborhood now and listen to the birds and my neighbors' wind chimes as the flurries fall....

The Blizzard

2009-12-11T01:01:00.003-06:00

I woke in Nashville this morning at 6:00am, hit snooze once, untangled my bare legs from the down and the cotton, turned the bedside radio on to NPR, stumbled down the hall to the kitchen to the coffeepot to hit "on", having prepared it last night, shoved my sleeping body into the shower, and, coffee made and in hand, triple checked that everything was off and opened the door to the 35 degree chill, and the peach sun streaks over East Nashville, the bat-eared building rising from the end of my street across the river like a beacon.

And the light burned inside, shining down through the snowfall
God it was cold and the temperature droppin',
Went in for coffee and shivered as I drank it,
Warm in my hands in the steam as it rose.

Luggage had been carefully packed last night and placed next to the door. I am nothing if I'm not organized. As my life has turned into a revolving series of the transfer of garments from bag to laundry to bag to laundry, I now keep lists. I am obsessed with luggage. I am obsessed with having the One Perfect Thing to make the tour more pleasant, whether its my well-worn Patagonia 'down sweater' jacket with the silver tape holding the down in the little hole I made when I tugged it on a nail last year, or the lavender travel candle that goes with me everywhere, or the Right Book, or the Right Boots. I forget things that make me happy from one tour to the next (hell, I just plain forget things, but I remember the oddest things: I cannot for the life of me recall where I was 2 weeks ago but I can tell you the name of most DJ's in this country that play folk music, their station, the call numbers and sometimes even the name of their show and what time it airs on what day. I can remember my first phone number when I was 7 years old. I can say the States in alphabetical order. But I can't remember what day of the week it is).

I think I got sidetracked on the forgetting and the remembering part.

I'm a private sort of person but a blizzard is a blizzard,
And somehow I found myself saying you'd left me,
Tellin' him everything I wanted to say to you.

I make lists. I organize. I plan in advance. Because I know its in my nature to be scattered, to lose myself and then wish I'd had better boundaries. And so, like a soldier, I strategize and defend myself against myself. And then I leave it all to chance and hope the journey is at least interesting.

But this is not about me. This is about the weather.

And the snow fell

and the night passed

And I talked to the stranger

while the blizzard blew.

It was sunny this morning in Nashville and then I arrived in a whiteout in Grand Rapids, Michigan to play a benefit concert for my friend Ralston with Kenny White and Judy Collins. We played in a chapel, on a stage that was a 3/4 thrust stage, which meant you had to twirl constantly to see each part of the audience and while you were talking to one side, the other had a great view of your ass. The snow raged all day and all night. But the chapel was stuffed full with people. They were there to support Ralston and to hear Judy. Kenny and I were like the rosette icing petals, a nice surprise but really, you want the cake. It was a gorgeous night inside and out.

The sky trembled with frost and inside Judy Collins sat at the piano and sang "The Blizzard", one of my favorite songs of hers, a long tale of a long night stuck in Colorado during a storm. As she sang I looked at my friend Ralston, going through his personal blizzard, and had that kind of moment where you see someone for the first time although you've known them for a few years. Without hair, tired and thin, Ralston is one of the most beautiful people I have the privilege to call friend. I was content there in the sanctuary to listen. A shiver went up my arm, there, Judy at the piano, echoing the night in her song. Then she went into "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and I watched this woman on the aisle, 5th row from the back, slowly wipe tears away that dripped off her nose, down her cheek, joyous in her heartache, and I'm pretty sure she was remembering her own youth. And at the end of the night, Judy invited Ralston, Kenny and me onstage to join her to sing "Amazing Grace". She took my arm, pulling me close, I held her hand, Ralston on the other side and Kenny there too and we sang. At first I admit to a bit of nerves: how do you sing that song with that voice? I chose a lower harmony to let her voice soar. Then after a few verses, she told a story that made me want to open my throat to the heavens, and so we all did, and I went high and then low and Judy sang loud and I heard Kenny going for the high harmonies and we stood in the center under the purple and pink veils of silk that hung from the ceiling and I pitched my voice through the ceiling out to the darkening skies to the snow-filled night, wind-whipped and brittle, and felt that Grace that the song celebrates.

When the world leaves you shivering
And the blizzard blows,
When the snow flies and the night falls
there's a light in the window and a place called home
At the end of the storm.

In a snowstorm, an audience filled the room. I wish you all had been there to see it.

(lyrics from "The Blizzard" by Judy Collins)

Everyone's gotta have an opinion

2009-12-09T10:30:00.002-06:00

Climb on a back that's strong....

I was thinking about what made me pick the guitar up this morning, while the wind whipped through my trees and crashed the chime bells together like ship rope and metal clanging in a harbor. Sitting here in the warmth with a slight creeping chill around my ankles from the cracks and creaks in this old house, warm coffee, a day to write and recover from a cold, send things out, wait for things to come, pack to go, unpack to stay, breathe and sit still...

I picked the guitar up finally for good at age 26 in the bedroom of my Morton Street apartment in the West Village of NYC. I should say that first. But I'd tried earlier.

In a house on a hill in my last year of college that I shared with a few really good friends that have stuck, some people I liked but never got to know and a few total strangers, we'd stay up with our stereos blasting, finishing our Theses, making sardonic jokes peppered with latin phrases like Rite and Summa, coming up with post-modern catch phrases for having sex, the inside clique of smarter-than-thous. Someone brought me "Steady On", vinyl, Shawn Colvin's debut. I remember taking Billie Holiday off my turntable for the first time in months (I was writing my thesis on her) and turning the lights off and listening. I was deeply in love with someone at the time who was completely unattainable and completely unavailable (at the time--he became available soon, but that is not part of this story. Its the longing that's important. The impossibility of the dream). He was hovering in my world like a teasing raincloud and I ached for That Which I Could Not Have and to distract from the constant tug and pull of my heart, I strung all-nighters together like a debutante's add-a-pearl necklace, living on Jolt Cola and coffee and bourbon and wine and whatever Mark down the hall was brewing. I was writing. Truth be told, I didn't even know what I was writing. I was writing around the heart of it. I was spiraling my own intelligence--trying to locate it like a miner, using Billie Holiday as my flashlight. I felt alternately puffed up with my own bravado and crushed by insecurity. And then there was the boy, in the corners, watching, hovering, not landing, going home to the girlfriend, but still flying around my skies.

It was the perfect moment to discover Shawn Colvin. She writes the way I think. Around things. Not bluntly. Not so flourid that I can't find it. But skirting the edge of the emotion so that when she lands, it shoots me directly in the right vein. I wore out the grooves in a month. At the time, I was a singer. I could play piano. I knew music - I saw the world through music. But I could not write a song.

In a few months, I'd graduate with honors and a few latin words next to my name in the program, with my proud family there. With the boy there, still wading in the shallow water, hanging around, curious. I'd choose to go study Shakespeare that summer in the Catskill woods, dive into the deep of the language, immerse myself in something I wasn't sure I was good at but I needed to try. A few months later the girlfriend was gone, and returning from the dark forest, I put my own life on hold to go live with the boy and test those waters. [Note: Not to sound defensive here, but putting my own life "on hold" was easy to do at that time. I had no idea where I wanted to journey next and sitting in someone else's dream was a way of taking a breath for 6 months. A time out. Sometimes lack of direction is a good thing]. I'd watch him play guitar, steal a few chords here and there, find my fingers on the frets in patterns like constellations. I bought a guitar that year. A Seagull. For $300.

In a year I'd have moved out, moved to Manhattan to be an actress (or so I thought). I wasn't sure where I was going but I was sure that if I stayed there holding his hand and his dream I'd never find mine so I lept off the highest dive I could find and landed on concrete, hard, with a subway token in hand and the sound of taxis honking and recycling trucks backing up at 3am. In a few years I let go completely of his hand, right thing to do, wrong way to do it, but regret is easy in hindsight. Not only did I "get a song out of it", I had landed on the back of his dream, that dangled behind him. I landed so hard, I tore off the tails of his coat, took his dream, while he went another way, found a wife, found a life, found another career. I bought "Fat City" and learned a few songs, found my way to a gig then a record then a signing then a tour then a career and now, years later, I'm here, in Nashville, listening again to "Shotgun Down The Avalanche" and remembering the day that I could strum that rhythm with ease, after 10,000 hours of practice.

A few nights ago after a show, someone offered their opinion. It happens. They thought my silly song, the easy stuff, Defined Me and wondered why I didn't play more of that. My 'joie de vivre' they called it. Why write the dark songs when I smile so easily. I didn't feel offended by the question, because we all want what we want. I can't give him the easy laugh all the time. We all want what we can't have. I countered that my dark songs have a crack of hope at the end, that I look at what is my truth. I'm not speaking for him, unless he hears it in between the lines. I think back to Shawn Colvin, who I have sung backup for by now, who I have shared the stage with, who I sat backtage with watching silly videos on Youtube. I wanted to say to her the fan thing, the "you are the reason I bought my first guitar" thing, but I held back, kept that my secret. But her music this morning, I'm hearing that thing I'm reaching for. The aching longing, the sadness, with the glimmer of sky at the end. So things seep in and pour out and its shocking to me that its been 20 years since that day Kennan gave me the record.

So I'm just gonna sit here for a while and let the record play and try to recall what it felt like in my fingers to hear this music without having any idea how to form the chords. The itch of the need. The wanting what you cannot have. Now I am older and I know that sometimes what you want that seems out of reach finds its way to you. In its own time.

Cure for what ails you

2009-12-01T15:06:00.002-06:00

There's little that a 13 mile bike ride along a river won't cure. That, and "Shoot Out The Lights" at top volume. Just saying...

Skybursting

2009-12-01T00:02:00.002-06:00

There are some nights that are harder than others. Some nights when silence is best. Or loud music. Or an entire bottle of wine. Or a good friend, some popcorn and "Dr. Zhivago". And then tonight, I was doing what I should ease myself off of--the bad habit of re-reading emails. And I had written one and included this poem, which I sent to someone else. Funny how we write to others things that we are really writing to ourselves...

Landscape

Mary Oliver

Isnt it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky--as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings

Midnightspiration

2009-11-30T00:25:00.003-06:00

I should be asleep. Really I should. Not only do I have a morning writing appointment and I should get up early and maybe...um...write a bit...or at least gather my ideas around me like a blanket to warm me from the cold cold first 15 minutes of the co-write, always an awkward date.

Also it's raining, little peppering pellets on my roof here, dribbling streams down my driveway, better than 100 sheep leaping over imaginary fences of my imagination.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the Advil PM I took. Its bad news to take 2 of these and then fight the drowsy. It makes for restless REMs and bad dreams. Believe me.

But I'm home for the first time in more than 2 weeks and I like the sound of the rain and I like the creaky silence of my house. And I'm trolling the web, discovering new music.

I spent a few years doing the singer-songwriter contests. Rite of Passage. Finalist in all the major ones. A few I won. A few I lost. [side note: I always felt like the goal was to reach the finals. The end result of who won and who placed 2nd and 3rd etc. just seemed sometimes too arbitrary to wrap my ego around and so I just decided early on to try to reach the finals, sing the best I could on that day, and leave the rest to the sky (and 3 judges) and smile and be happy for the results but not attach too much meaning, good or bad to the number at the end of the day--and when I've been a judge, I've done my best to pass that along]. It's been a few years, so now I watch from the side of the stage and remember the tremors. I usually can't watch a whole contest. Makes me nervous. I hated them myself and I remember I never did my best work in the span of a 2 song set with judges with notebooks in front of you not watching, but writing. Tonight, however, I thought I'd go and listen to some that either won or were finalists in these contests. The ones with the buzz. The ones where people say "Oh yeah, he's really great..." I wanted to hear them.

There's nothing like the goosebumps of hearing a really really good voice, natural and open and honest. And emerging. Someone who hasn't heard the buzz. Or has and isn't embodying it. It was a really really nice thing tonight to just be a fan of singer-songwriters, trolling the net, listening, learning, enjoying.

So Advil PM be damned. I got inspired. And tomorrow, maybe the midnight rain will have dripped some ideas through the ether of my dreams and I'll have something to sing about.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-27T10:50:00.002-06:00

I was going to start this with a list of things I'm thankful for on this day-after-Thanksgiving-reflective-windy-grey-cold sort of day. But I think I did that in my last blog, so I'm going to sail on a different pond today.

I woke yesterday to the smell of coffee brewing and children playing. I admit, I woke up slightly dreading the day. My first Big holiday "officially" single, rather than those others where nobody really knew what was going on with me yet I came uncoupled. Big holiday=Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Years. Little Holiday=4th of July (see my previous post). Even Little Holidays can provoke panic attacks in those of us facing our 40s uncoupled, decoupled, never-coupled. And even more so unchildrened. But with a good year of therapy and meditation under my belt and a confidence that my choices this year have been right (for me), I was going to face this day with joy. Damnit. Even if it killed me. So I started the day by writing. A purging kind of journalling that I do most mornings. Then I decided to go for a run, my first run in over a month. And it was a hard run, although a very short one. The first mile was all uphill and my breathing was just not cooperating with my legs, nothing felt easy, my heart felt like it was struggling out of my skin and it was all I could do to make a metaphor of this attempt at cardiovascular activity being directly related to my psychological grasping at centeredness. I kept repeating the mantra "Do what is directly in front of you. The next thing. The next step." And I pushed past the aching knees and the clipped breathing until the run got easier, the breathing flowed and I was on the next mile, breezing past woods and A frame log houses, and the clean air scent of a stone fireplace. The sky was grey but a patch of blue opened up over the field where a horse was grazing on a stack of hay and I passed a couple of runners, struggling up the same hill I'd made it over on my way up. We waved our sweaty hellos. I said "Happy Thanksgiving." He said, "And after this, we can enjoy it!" and I smiled, widely, and then looked out over that field with the horse and felt this sudden burst of total joy. Grateful for the healthy use of my own body, that I was able to run, that I would be surrounded by family later. Just deeply grateful.

Of course, later, there were moments surrounded by family where my joy would sink a bit. Small moments of fighting the feeling of being the alien in the midst of the earthlings. Everyone coupled. Everyone with their 2.5 children. Beautiful children. Healthy and playful. And everyone with "ordinary" jobs. I know that my "career" is awkward for some people to wrap their heads around. I've had good friends from college question me, confused as to how is it possible to be making a living doing music when ... well, to put it bluntly, I'm not famous. Because most people don't know about the middle class of the arts. The Upper Class=famous. The Untouchables=that guy who dropped out of college to make it as a rockstar, got signed to Sony for one record that never came out, got dropped by the label, picked up a coke habit, and is now either teaching guitar at the local record store grumbling about his one shot at fame, opening for Dylan on one gig, OR, more likely, got clean and went to law school and is now a 3rd year associate at some white shoe law firm in Chicago. But this Middle Class land of journeymen/women musicians is a mystery to so many. There are many of us who make a living patching it together by concerts and teaching, and we are not famous (well, maybe famous in Slovenia, but not in the U.S.). As a friend says "We don't make a great living but we have a great life." Its hard to explain that to questioning relatives over a holiday meal, who seem to feel sorry for a woman in her 40s who is childless, husbandless and who travels so much it seems impossible to have what they like to think of as a normal life. "Oh, you travel so much...it must be so (tilt of the head) hard...." they say. And I say simply, "No. I love it." and then drink the wine and change the conversation. Its ok. How would they know? Its impossible to explain the fullness of a life lived as a gypsy. But at the same time, these concerned relatives do touch the fear nerve in me and all of us. Of course we wonder (all the time), did we do the right thing? Will we ever have enough in the bank to retire or will we have to be doing 180 dates at 70? Will Carrie Underwood ever record our song and allow me the cashflow to take a month or so off to write? Am I working hard enough? Am I working too hard? We all think this. Even those of us with "real" jobs. So if we're all constantly embroiled in the same questions, the same anxieties, then I choose to believe I'd rather be doing what I love and what I feel called to do, regardless of my paycheck, than simply choosing something that would make more sense at a family reunion. And maybe I read into what I perceive are the questioning looks from friends and family. Maybe they are proud. Or maybe a bit envious, as sometimes I am envious of them in their houses with their 2.5 children and PTA meetings.

And so, Thanksgiving came and went and there was much joy, and a deep sense of pride that my family is large and close and we gather each holiday to celebrate ourselves and those that passed before us. And we celebrate (and illuminate) our differences, sometimes arguing and sometimes avoiding the issues, sometimes stumbling on our attempts to reach out. But we always gather.

I started the day with that run, like a meditation on where I was in my own body, in my own skin, and that moment when the run got easy and my legs felt stronger than any 16 year old, and in my sweat and matted hair I swore I was happy. I don't believe we all have the unalienable right to happiness. Rather, we have the right of the pursuit of it. So I pursue happiness with zeal, grasping for it in dark corners, in quiet conversations, in crowded gatherings, by myself here writing and listening to the wind whistle through the few leaves left on the birch outside this borrowed bedroom window. I pursue happiness while letting go of relationships and ideas of myself that are illusions. I pursue happiness in the grand gesture and in the simple non movement of one breath. And yesterday, while I was running and ruminating on whether or not I believed in God, the sky opened up and great joy passed through my skin and I thought, whatever that was, blessed be.

November Happy List

2009-11-15T12:01:00.003-06:00

A list of things that are currently making me happy.

Marianne Faithful's version of "Its All Over Now Baby Blue"

Homemade Apple Wine from my hosts in State College who capped a bottle for me

Creamy tangy blue cheese from England

Bare treetop branches that reflect sunlight as if covered in ice

Tremolo pedals

New Zealand Pinot Noir and vegan soup that Pat Pattison made

My Berklee online Songwriting Class that's kicking my ass and keeping me in the zone

Emily Dickenson poetry

Chuck Brodsky's new song about sleepwalking

Drew Nelson's latest CD

The thought of wandering the West Village for the next few days

The dream of a pair of Fiorentini & Baker boots (not gonna happen)

My 9 year old niece Alexine Platz playing guitar!

Constantly tinkering with the new song, trying to get it right, while playing it in front of people

High school football games in a small town

Flannel sheets

Christine Kane's blog

Thanksgiving with my entire family, cousins and all

Telling the truth (and hearing it, even if it hurts)

Old friends who make me laugh and will fly south to spend New Years with me so I'm not alone

That Dairy Queen has a "happy hour"

The Turnip Truck in East Nashville

Karen Mal's voice near a fire in northern Michigan

The french horn in the intro of "You Can't Always Get What You Want"

A sunburst Gibson J-200

the Delaware Water Gap

People who host house concerts and people who give us a bed for the night

Tea For The Tillerman

The smell of wet fallen leaves on earth

Speakers Corner, Phoenixville, PA, where a tired girl blogs from a musty old motel room on 23 West

2009-11-13T12:15:00.005-06:00

This is an unabashed, unashamed plea for your loyalty.

It's also a call to arms.

It can be both at once. Self-promotional and hopeful universal.

There is nothing wrong with Taylor Swift. Except that she doesn't speak to me. Nor anyone I know. The world of music lovers doesn't have a ceiling at 25 years old. To be honest, when people ask me, now that I'm in Nashville, if I moved there to "go country" I giggle and say "Look at me. Look at the CMAs. Seriously?" I love Folk Music. I love Americana Music. For many many reasons, not the least of which is that those genres not only allow graceful and poetic and relevant aging, they embrace it. Buddy Miller and Emmylou Harris are the posterchildren of Americana. We in the folk world think Pete Seeger and Joan Baez have more to say to all of us, kids and adults, than the 20 somethings (or even 40 something) so-called Emerging Artists.

We complain that the world is too commercial. That our radio waves that we grew up to listening to and discovering rock & roll and folk & country and talk radio are being cluttered and clankered by dreck, by 360 deal Disney "artists". There is room for The Jonas Brothers. But not to me. The Jonas Brother will never speak to me (not that, as a 16 year old, they would have spoken to me then. Back then I was in my full on Madonna vs. Cyndi Lauper war, but I'd also discovered The Stones and The Beatles). I do admit to an 11 year old moment of Shaun Cassidy, which, looking back, was pop trite. A glamourous girlyboy dressed up to appeal to the Teen Beat sensibility. That's cool. I practiced kissing my pillow thinking of Cassidy. I have no shame about it.

We can stamp our feet and demand our XM/Sirius, our Paste Magazines, our No Depressions, our podcasts and Little Stevie's Underground archives. We can dust off our The The records and wallow in a beautiful despair, just like we did in 1988.

BUT. We fail ourselves and our world at large when we don't accept that the music industry, the art world, the theater, the movies, the books are all dumbing down not in spite of us, but BECAUSE of us. Its our fault.

We are not getting off our asses and going to live shows.

We are not pledging a bit of money to community-run radio stations.

We are not finding the local art gallery and checking it out.

We are failing our local bookstores by shopping online.

Just sayin....and this is for me. A reminder. To not sit at home and be a dumbass.

Live venue ticket sales are at an all-time low. Many are closing.

Festival sales were 30% down this year.

Many radio stations are being forced to change their formats to all-classical/all the time and get rid of the volunteer-run specialty shows we love (think Vin Scelsa).

I tour the country all the time. I'm grateful for every show I do, for every single person who gets out of the house to pay the small amount of money to come support me and hear me sing. If I don't thank you personally and directly, please accept this as me on my knees thanking you for my career, for me being able to do what I love the most in the world and share it with you. Yes, I'm talking to YOU. You there in the coffeeshop, you over there, feeling a bit awkward because its raining and only 4 people showed up and 2 of them seem to be old friends of mine, so you feel exposed there, a stranger in a tiny audience, feeling a bit sorry for me, having taken a chance on a poster and an unknown artist. Thank you for doing that. (and p.s. just so you know, yes, its disappointing and sometimes difficult to play passionately for a tiny house, but be assured that I've done it and been surprised at how sometimes those shows are my BEST and those nights are the memorable ones)

And for those of you who email me the next day saying "Damn, I wish I could have come but... Just let me know when the next time you come to town" I want to say something and I hope this comes off grateful but truthful. There's a chance that I might not be able to come back because of my 50 fans who really wanted to come but it was raining/something was on TV/etc., only 5 showed up and the reality in our world is the venue has to make money on me, not lose it. So I won't be invited back and there might not be a next time, no matter how many Facebook/Myspace friends I seem to have. So please, next time, if you like what I do and I'm coming your way, please come join me.

Nicole Atkins, a kickass rockstar of a girl from Asbury Park, who has toured with The Avett Brothers, recently stopped by to play a show at a bookstore/venue owned by a friend of mine in Baltimore called Cyclops. Andy Rubin, my friend the owner, has been booking amazing folks to come through and play shows. And the audience is trickling in. And if you hear Andy tell of the night Nicole Atkins played, this almost famous chick sat down with a guitar and personally serenaded the few people that were there. She has played the Big Club in town. But on an off night, she played this bookstore. How cool for those 4 people who trudged out in the November night. And how sad for those that saw the poster and thought "Hey, that might be cool, but you know Grey's Anatomy is on so I think I'll just go home...."

I've been lately really into the Local Food Movement. Granted, I live in my van, so "local" is relative to me, and I haven't yet been able to implement it into my life in a daily way, but I'm fascinated by it and think it makes at least philosophical sense. How about a Local Art Movement. I lived in the NYC area for many years, my last address being Jersey City. Every October there's a Jersey City Artist Studio Walking Tour. LOCAL! But there are neighbors who said they'd never done this, never heard of it. I knew of a metal sculpture studio down the block. I never went. Shame on me.

Local community theater companies keep art local, keep it small and cost-effective. Give the community a way of creating something together.

Local art galleries showcase local artists.

Local live music venues showcase local musicians. And national musicians, who are bringing their music directly to you.

If you go to a show and you like the music, buy the CD directly from the Artist. The money you give them goes to them. If you wait, and buy it on I-Tunes, the money might go to a 3rd party (a label, etc.) and never really trickle down to them. EVEN BETTER: buy it in advance of the show at the small, local CD/Record store (My favorite: Tunes in Hoboken!!!!) -- even if the Artist might lose a bit of money to the label or the distributor, you and the artist are teaming up to keep that small record store alive. A place that probably has the $1 bin where you could come across an import of "All Things Must Pass" for $6, a place with a turntable and headphones to preview your purchase, where you can linger by the comic book section and meet like-minded music freaks. Of course, if the artist isn't coming to you, then by all means, surf Amazon and I Tunes to your hearts content. Just so you get the music in your hands.

But if the artist is coming your way, support them. Go to the show. Take a date. Take your 16 year old daughter. Take your mother.

We can't blame the destruction of the music industry on Rich Men in Suits Who Run Major Labels, or The Taylor Swift Phenomenon, or Clear Channel. We can point the finger in the mirror as a call to arms.

My good friend Paul Reisler's mission is to teach songwriting and music to children to encourage them to be "Creators not Consumers". I believe this. I believe that even if you can't pick up a guitar and write a song, by sharing in the community of live music, going to a show or pledging $50 to a .org radio station at the far left end of the dial, you are joining the Creative Community in your own way.

Go see the grassroots acts and then watch the grass grow. I.e. Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Ani DiFranco.

Ok. I'm stepping off the bucket in the corner of Hyde Park and taking a nap now.

With love and respect, your adoring fan-

Amy

The Scrapyard

2009-11-06T22:25:00.004-06:00

I'm way up in Harbor Springs, Michigan at Lamb's Retreat for Songwriters, a cool weekend 'retreat' where some of us are here to teach and some are here to learn and all are here to write a song in 72 hours. John Lamb gives everyone very evocative songwriting assignments and then we're off to the races, in the time-spaces in between presenting (and attending) the classes and the meals and the hanging and connecting and reconnecting and walking along the lake as the sun sets and the sky explodes into pinks and greys. I was here teaching 3 years ago. I'm happy to be back. But I'm a fairly slow writer. Some songs fall into my lap quickly. They are rare. Mostly I wrack my soul in torment over a song until its done, staying up late into the night if a song catches me and puts me into a vice grip, not allowing sleep nor conversation nor any coherent way of walking through my life until the damn thing is done with me and I can emerge, spent, from my cocoon haze of writing. Even the sucky songs do this. And believe me, if someone is challenging me to write a song in 48 hours, then 75% of the time it is gonna land on the suck side of the fence. But those songs, the ugly children, deserve to come out too and I do my best to finish them, warts, crap cliches, stolen melodies and all. This one is emerging from the stone of my tired tired brain. I'm dragging on few hours of sleep and so far, I've turned over 3 different styles of how to approach this song. I started in 1930s Disney. Then went to 1970s Townes. Now I'm hanging out in Grey's Anatomy-soundtrack land. I think I'll stay here, cause I don't tend to write in the key of pop.

I should be asleep. But its taken hold, this damned song, hooky piece of stinky pile of poo that it is so far. Like a soursweet mountain of rubbage, I'm hoping if I keep digging, I'll find something useful.

Had to write something other than rhyme for a bit to get me out of the lyric for a bit. I'm reading to put on the fins and mask again.....