The rocky coast of Maine was exquisite. Fog sat patiently above the water while tiny children in polka-dot swimsuits waded. They jumped into the air in ecstatic synchronized dances and screamed with glee. Moby crept slowly up the east coast on Route 1. Kenny slept, McRae stared out “Bart” the blurry patch, Soucy studied the map, I typed this entry, and as usual, Delucchi drove. The 70-mile trip from New Hampshire to Maine was a creeper for two reasons.

1. Traffic was a nightmare. Throngs of people claim Ogunquit as their weekend getaway.
2. We had to time interviews with rest stops.

You may not know this, but most touring band interviews take place from payphones in the middle of nowhere. Today, we had to wait outside a payphone for half an hour so I could do an on-air radio interview WMVY to promote our show in Martha’s Vineyard. At noon we were passing through a toll booth when Soucy (with his stealthy birdwatcher’s eye) spotted a pay booth on the side of the road. Excitedly, he pulled out the map, “This might be the last time we’re near a phone for the next hour,” he reported. Delucchi pulled up 50 feet from the toll plaza and I inspected the phone to make sure it had a dial tone. I camped out directly in front of the booth to ensure nobody snagged it when 12:30 rolled around. I tried to catch some rays but mostly caught exhaust and stray dirt flying off accelerating cars.

At the time of the interview, I opened the booth’s accordion-style doors and wedged myself inside. It was splattered with some brown beverage—coffee or Coke, who knows. I’d come prepared. I had $20 bucks of quarters wrapped in a bandana which made me look like a cartoon bank robber from the 50s but I’d done my math. A ½ hour call to Martha’s Vineyard from Maine was gonna cost .75¢ for the first minute and .35¢ each additional minute for a grand total of approximately $10.15. Hearing was a challenge with truckers changing gears, 18-wheelers screeching to pay the toll, and the boys playing Frisbee and cleaning out the cooler in the background. Frequently an automated voice would interrupt the DJ: “Please, deposit an additional one dollar and five cents for the next three minutes,” it would say and I’d embarassedly fumble with my bandana, fish out the funds, and apologize profusely.

The next interview at 2:00 took place in a shack called “The Road Kill Restaurant.” Where a payphone was stuck on a wall near the bar. “Come on Eileen” was playing pretty loudly and I plugged one ear to hear the interviewer’s questions. The smell of fried food clung to the walls, and the yellow, mafia-style lighting etched a sort of sad ambivalence into my conversation which otherwise I thought went well enough.

We were exhausted when we finally arrived at Soucy’s cousin Fritz’s house. Fritz and his wife, Tammy met us at the door and proudly announced they’d been drinking alcoholically in preparation for our arrival. We wondered what Soucy told them that would lead them to sacrifice their livers for our pilgrimage until they explained that for every $40 spent on booze at their local watering hole, they scored one free lobster at something called “Lobster in the Rough.”

“I hope you’re hungry,” Tammy rubbed her hands. Together, they’d managed to secure 16 lobsters in 3 months—since Soucy told them we might be stopping by—and probably damaged their bodies beyond repair just for our picnic. The least we could do was don a bib, crack a claw, butter up our fingers, and listen to the ripe stories Fritz and Tammy earned in pursuit of our lobster feast. With a belly full of beer and crustaceans, I raised a toast, “Here’s to Fritz and Tammy, their lobsters, their watering hole, and their livers for hosting us up here in beautiful Maine.”

In a historic venue that fits 700, there were only 10 people at our show (3 of which were the opening band).

It was raining—Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle—all three days we had off in Cleveland. No one wanted to go outside so we instead, amused ourselves in the hotel. Brian and Kenny shared room #776 and both Chrises and myself took #772 with a foldaway. We watched mind-numbing movies, made phone calls, worked out, swam, did group facials, and made a ritual out of the Denny’s next door for dinner.

The morning of the 24th was a Tuesday. I was having a bitch of a time uploading last week’s ‘Tales from the Road’ to the world wide web. For anyone interested in the process I get to go through to feed you these fascinating little gems of insight into our captivating lives on the road (insert note of sarcasm here) I’ll first tell you, it ain’t easy.

Uploading “Tales from the Road” from a Hotel Room:

• First, I call down to reception to get the hotel’s www login credentials.
• Next, I plug my trusty ethernet cable into the phone jack and boot up my operating system.
• Next, I check my network settings to make sure they’re configured to obtain an IP address automatically.
• Then I open an internet browser (I use one called Netscape Navigator) to test my connection. This rarely works on the first try. I’m usually, pulling my hair out, unplugging the ethernet cable, reassembling their phone line, and calling the front desk at least 4 times before I get my laptop to connect.
• Once on Navigator, I log into my AOL account and diligently copy and paste each episode I’ve written into an email addressed to my webmaster, Dan Beach.

The whole process takes approximately 2 hours (if I’m successful in launching the browser in the first 4 tries and the service is fast enough for the email to go through). Then, I cross my fingers and hope to see my writings appear on www.sallytaylor.com in the coming days. Most of my writing is done in transit—in the van between gigs. Soucy, the educator he is, checks each entry for my inevitable spelling and grammatical mistakes. He’s so multifaceted. I don’t deserve him.

Our plan Tuesday was to hit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and, while there, have a ceremony where by Kenny would award our mascot “Skunk Buddy” to Brian for making last tour’s greatest faux pas. Brian won the honor of drinking the hot skunky beer when he ended a song 8 bars early the night we opened for Big Head Todd and the Monsters. In the decapitated silence that ensued after his error, I heard Brian whisper in back of me, “…I’m drinking Buddy.”

This particular Budweiser was going to be extra skunky. It spent not only the duration of our entire West Coast tour but most of our three-week break in Colorado, in a hot van in a hot cooler. I was sorry to miss the ritual but the guys could see (by the clumps of hair I was holding in my hands) that I was going to upload these gigs to the internet or die trying. They promised to video Brian’s reaction and left me in the dusk-blue floral-patterned room to my digital nightmare.

We loaded into the Agora at 6 PM and sound checked. The joint smelled of urine. Old, yellowed news articles were laminated on tables and walls. We went out to grab a bite. Waiting right outside the entrance were 7 people who were eagerly waiting for doors to open so they could get a good seat for our show. Little did we know they’d be the only people to come.

The streets were empty but for some rats pretending to be humans in trench coats and hunched shoulders. A pretty craked-up-looking guy approached just outside the venue. He told us he’d just been released from the penitentiary and tried to sell Soucy a brass ring he insisted was silver. Soucy did not buy the craked-up-looking guy’s “silver” ring.

Needless to say, the show was a bust. Kenny played his butt off though and we ended up chalking it up to good experience. The 7 people that were lined up early for the gig—already had our CD and sang along….which made us feel less terrible about playing to a hollow room, but also meant no CD sales after the gig. Dean, the owner, took pity on us and gave us the OK to abbreviate our second set.

I can’t pretend The Agora Show is worth the ethernet hassle of uploading. But I’ll do it anyway. No show is a bad show. They all contain lessons. The lesson from The Agora is undoubtedly about humility.

Every tour we take along a single Budweiser and make it our mascot. We dub it “Skunk Buddy.” Over the course of a run of shows, the cooler heats up and cools down quite a lot making our Budweiser mascot SKUNK. The longer the tour, the skunkier our mascot gets. Whoever makes the biggest faux pas during the trip has to drink the beer. It’s become quite a ritual. The person who got “Skunk Buddy” the tour prior hands the Bud off to the next “screw up” at the end of the tour. Kenny was the first to drink “Skunk Buddy” after his little ‘peeing in a cup accident’ at The Howling Wolf in New Orleans.

I could hear our mascot rocking back and forth in the hot empty cooler as we got off I-75 for the 12. Detroit looked like a war zone. The buildings were boarded, gratified, barred, and locked. The streets were potholed, empty, and littered with detritus—cans, wrappers, glasses, and ghosts. Chaos crowned the eyes of children and loud echoing yells bounced off bricks and beams without apparent origin.

Here’s what was weird. Just when we’d come to terms with the likelihood we’d be playing in some abandoned warehouse to an audience of wolverines, we pulled up to Inter Mezzos. The street it was on was an oasis in the city— lined with trees, and smiling, laughing faces. Inter Mezzos was like a flower growing through a crack in the pavement. As we pulled up, the sweet aroma of Italian cooking—oregano, yeast, tomatoes, and peppers—came wafting out at us.

Inside, the venue was sparkling clean—a sea of mahogany, old-world furniture surrounded by brick and mirrors. With a sigh of relief, we loaded in. A crew of young, handsome, African American men had assembled to help us and they enthusiastically hoisted our monitors and amplifiers telling me how much they loved my father’s music. I thought it outstanding that my middle-aged folk-singing father had made an impact on these young men from the inner city of Detroit but didn’t give it much more consideration until our soundman approached the stage.

“Where’s the singer gonna stand on stage?” he asked me.
“I’ll just stand here,” I said. He looked confused and respectfully tried a different angle,
“So, where’s Sally gonna stand?”
“I am Sally.” What ensued can only be described to those who’ve witnessed confused pugs.

Finally, the engineer said “But…but aren’t…I must be thinking about a different band…I… I thought Johnny Taylor was your father?”

Johnny Taylor, as it turns out, is a very prolific and very promiscuous blues musician. Apparently, he’s fathered nine known children with different mothers but I, so far as I know, am not one of them. I felt immediately apologetic that I wasn’t who the crew were expecting or hoping for.

“Um, well,” I said, worrying the venue booked us under the assumption I was someone else, “My ol’ man’s name is James Taylor.” I studied his expressions trying to estimate whether that was an acceptable alternative to Johnny Taylor. Finally he said,

“Oh, well that explains why you’re not black,” and we all laughed. “We were just told that Johnny was your pop…..OK, that’s all cool.”

But I still felt uncomfortable. I didn’t know how the venue had been advertising the show. What if everyone was coming to hear The Blues? Nick Capone, the owner, showed up an hour later and reassured me that we were, in fact, the band he’d intended to hire. He treated us to a grand dinner in his beautiful dining room. I ordered the halibut which Brian ate after scarfing his own meal down. That boy is always hungry.

Since the hotel was only two blocks away, we figured we’d check in, shower, and get back with plenty of time before the show. But boy was I wrong. At the hotel, as I self-consciously did my vocal exercises in an overly crowded lobby, Delucchi fought with the hotel manager who insisted he had no rooms for us. A newlywed couple stood beside him, in full suit and gown apparently unable to get a room either. It was hard to imagine that in a 70-floored hotel, there wouldn’t be a single room available. But what we didn’t know was that the annual “African World Festival” was taking place in town. We ran directly into the gridlock of it rushing back to the venue with 15 minutes to spare.

Entire neighborhoods were sardined into buses and young men, hanging out of cars were catcalling and shining flashlights on young women’s behinds walking down the street. Children, crammed in backseats of family vehicles, made faces at us through their windows. This wouldn’t have been nearly as awkward if we’d been moving any faster than .00001 miles an hour. We were late. The two blocks between the hotel and venue took us 45 minutes and with all the butt-flashlight shining and scary face-making kids, none of us were too eager to get out to walk.

I was ruffled as we rushed through our packed crowd to the stage. When I caught my breath and settled into the gig, I made a hysterical but potentially detrimental mistake. I introduced ‘Sign Of Rain’ and talked about how the song is about memories and how the rain plays a role in remembering my childhood.

1…2…3… Brian counted the song off, and without a second thought, I started playing “Waiting on an Angel.” I thought…’ boy, this is faster than we usually play “Sign of Rain.”’ I didn’t even realize I was playing the wrong song until I opened my mouth to sing “Seagulls circle ’round the shore line…” and ‘Waiting on an angel….’ came out. What’s worse is that ‘Waiting on an Angel’ is in the key of A flat and Sign of Rain is in E. I motioned to Soucy and Kenny, who’d recognized my error the second I started playing, that I’d just play the song by myself. But they were so on top of it that they’d already figured out how to transpose the song.

Needless to say, I am now the primary contender for this current tour’s “Skunk Buddy.”

The winds of August have had their way with July and are leading a violent revolt against September.

I find the sky at its very tallest in fall. As a child, growing up on the Northeastern Island of Martha’s Vineyard, I used to delight in watching nature’s ceiling grow deeper and darker as the calendar pages flipped from one month to the next. I imagined the sky, an upside-down swimming pool, growing darker blue as we moved from the shallow end of spring to the deep end of winter.

At Shuba’s, we ate our comped meal the crowded, sunny patio. I opted for a salad that came with an exuberant amount of creamy Italian dressing. The tails of fall breezes tangled in the hair I’d tried to tie back off my face. I had to rescue strands from my mouth between bites. College Boys in backward baseball caps, looking fresh off Abercrombie and Fitch shoots, cruised by in red convertibles. They ogled and cat-called pouting, glossed-up girls in outfits copied verbatim from last week’s episode of “Friends.”

Kenny’s sneezing fit began as he was finishing a plate of fried chicken. Furious, food-expelling sneezes erupted from his face in consecutive expulsions. I joked that he must be allergic to bad pick-uplines. His eyes watered and glowed red. The antihistamine I secured from the club stopped his allergies but put him into a zombie-like state for the rest of the night. He was hardly out of place, we were all a little out of it after our marathon drive from Boulder. I was slightly worried we’d forgotten how to play— it had been 3-weeks since our last gig.

I wrote a set list on the back of a receipt: WAIT, 40 YEARS, IN MY MIND, MARCH LIKE SOLDIERS, DEVORIN, WITHOUT ME, ONE STEP, RED ROOM, CONVINCE ME, FOR KIM, HAPPY NOW. I was shocked that the majority of what we now play are new tunes, not those on Tomboy Bride. I’d written the music on Tomboy Bride throughout my life. It’d taken 10 years to compile all the songs on that record. The contents of the next album will have been written in less than 6 months—birthed in backstage rooms and motels with glued-down furniture. It’s time to go back into the studio…November maybe, December.

In the dressing room upstairs, I agreed to let Kenny and Brian dress me for the gig. They insisted I needed to look more “rough-rocker-chick.” They had me try on four outfits before agreeing I looked “tough enough.” Next, Brian instructed me on my hairstyle — “Tie it back…now get some little wisps coming down on either side….no not too big….yeah that’s good…YEAH THAT’S GOOD!!!!” Brian and Kenny were very pleased with themselves as they studied my reflection in the mirror. Before I hit the stage, they added a pair of sunglasses.

The show was spectacular. Shuba’s got a stellar crowd and one of my best friends, Kate, drove all the way from Nashville, just to surprise me! Post gig, there was a two-hour-long line for CDs. I stood next to the merch table signing each disk by candlelight but my “rough-rocker-chick” heels were killing me. Gallantly, Jayson Sites (my dad’s lighting engineer who’d come for the show) gave me his leopard skin flip-flops and walked around barefooted the rest of the night. What a gentleman.

Toward 1 am, some very drunk guy came over, kissed me sloppily on my shoulder, stared at me through red glossy eyes, and walked away without a word.

It’s really good to be back on the road!!

The Sod Museum was the highlight of our day. We stopped for gas at exit 211 in Nebraska and stumbled upon it, right there in the parking lot of the Texaco. It’s not that The Sod Museum is a wonder to behold or anything—save, anything that isn’t 100s of miles of flat road becomes wondrous in Nebraska.

A tiny, tightly wound woman met us at the museum door. Her hair was the color of Sunny Delight and her dark jeans were abundantly pleated in the front. She wiped lunch from the corners of her mouth with a cloth napkin and invited us in. She pointed out artifacts and posters and talked a mile a minute. “Those two jackets up there are bear skin,” she said, “and that one on the far right, that’s buffalo!” She laughed at our perplexed expressions. “All three of those coats are well over a hundred years each and that there is a giant mammoth tooth,” she pointed to a Rubix Cube-sized rock, “And all these artifacts were found right here in Nebraska, except those moccasins there. Those are from somewhere else I can’t remember. And outside you’ll see a giant buffalo sculpture made out of 4-miles of barbed wire and a house of sod with a roof of cactus. Go on out and have a look-see.” I love it when people say ‘have a look-see.’ Many find it redundant, but I find it endearing. The five of us thanked our hostess and drifted like tumbleweeds through Nebraska’s predatory heat to go ‘have a look-see’ at the house of sod.

It’s hard to believe we just finished a stint of 3 weeks at home—was it just a dream?—It feels as though we never left the road. While it certainly was a luxury to play a show and drive home, to my own bed, my own plants, my own books, my own closet with my own clothes in it, and to be able to take a bath without wondering who was in it last or to listen to music without headphones because no one else will hear it and tell you to turn it down, I missed the road.

In the 300-plus miles we’ve traveled thus far, away from Colorado, toward Chicago, we seem to have fallen pleasantly and without resistance into our comfortable road lives.
Kenny’s driving. Delucchi has his head propped against a pillow in the front row.

Soucy and Bri are eating junk food on the back bench….

and I’m riding shotgun.

There are bugs on the windshield and cramped, cold legs folded under me. The smell of cole slaw (or whatever it is that Kenny ate for lunch) permeates the air and Steely Dan’s “Here at the Western World” is on the stereo.

I am grateful— grateful for my life, my van, my band. I’m grateful I get to make music for a living and I am grateful that Brian is in the van and not on the road with Freddy Jone’s Band. I was worried he’d bail, but he’s good to his word and that means a whole heck of a lot to me.