There aren’t enough days in February!  I’m running on empty trying to juggle shows, placate my boyfriend, and find new bandmates for a tour that’s only 2 weeks away. I’m more than a little exhausted. 

This weekend I played a masquerade ball at The Foundry with The Women From Mars gals. It’s an honor to be part of this band of local, badass, musical babes who perform monthly to benefit breast cancer research.  Backstage, before the show we painted flowers on each other’s cheeks, picked out feathered masks to match outfits, and sprinkled each other’s hair with glitter.  The night was juicy with feminine energy and it was heart healing to be surrounded by my mountain sisters: Wendy Woo, Jude, Nicole Jamrose, Liza Oxnard, and Libby Kirkpatrick.

It happened when I was onstage. I was singing my guts out, celebrating my womanhood, and embracing the crowd when I saw my boyfriend get sucker punched in the eye near the back of the club.  I don’t think I gasped audibly but it was a shock.  He yelled at me about it as I tried to pack up my guitar after my set, as though I’d had anything to do with it.  I didn’t have time to argue.  I was late to open for James McMurtry at The Fox.  I left Kipp with a rapidly blooming black eye in a haze of gold glitter and partridge feathers. As I apologized for leaving he yelled after me “It’s obvious music’s your priority and I’m last on your list!!”  I hated to admit it to myself, as I pulled out of one club and headed to the next, but he wasn’t wrong.  I’m moving so fast these days that the Roadrunner would have a hard time keeping up. 

I don’t know how it happened but miraculously, we managed to patch the gaps in our sinking band.  Chris Dellucci, recently unaffiliated after Zuba broke up last month, agreed to be our sound man and HE IS AWESOME!!!!!   Not only is he talented at amplifying the individual ingredients of a band, he delivers a holistic musical meal to an audience. If that weren’t enough, he insists he loves driving vans! and doesn’t mind taking late-night, long stretches behind the wheel. 

The morning ‘Dellucci’ agreed to go on tour with us, I took him out to breakfast at Dot’s Diner. Over cheddar-soaked hashbrowns, he unfurled a road map. On it, he’d marked his favorite vegetarian restaurants around the country in black Sharpie.  Together we traced highways with our fingers, agreeing on routes that took us passed interesting road side attractions and cultural activities. Finished with the map, Delluchi slid a rubber band around it’s coiled waist and hauled a “Fairfield Inn” directory the size of a phone book onto the red lanolium table top. He said he had friends who could get us deals on hotel rooms for us for $45-60 bucks a night. “I can also advance shows if you want!” I nearly died and went to heaven.  I can’t overstate what a win Chris Dellucci is for our band.

On Saturday Brian, Kenny, and I auditioned guitar players all afternoon.  Four of them were contenders and following our last audition, Brian, Kenny and I, convened in a crowded bathroom to discuss our takes.   Disinfectants and mops hanging by a string to their poles, threatened to topple at our every move.  Brian sat on the toilet to give Kenny and me more room and started stretching his exhausted forearms.

“What’da’ya think?” I whispered as we huddled in the privacy of the cramped space.  It might be MY band but we all have to have a say in this choice.  We’ll be living in tight quarters for months on end after all, and it’s no good, my hiring someone I like, that might piss another player off and make him want to quit.  

“I thought that first guy had a good pocket,” said Brian. 

Kenny chimed in. “Yeah, I thought the first guy was good but that guy out there now, the kindergarten teacher, Chris, is that his name?”

“Yeah.  Chris Soucy,” I said.

“Yeah, Chris Soucy.  He’s the one.”

Chris had been awesome.  He was solid in all the right places.  He came to the audition prepared with all the songs memorized, a great sense of rhythm, little to no ego, a stellar attitude, and the willingness to climb in a van with a group of strangers to travel the country for little money and no promises.

“I agree,” I said, relieved Kenny and I were on the same page about the kindergarten teacher.  With one hand on the nob, ready to seal the deal, I raised my eyebrows, “Bri?” There was hardly a moment to spare.  With Brian’s buy-in, the band would have itself a new guitarist.

“Yeah.  He’s the one.”  Said Brain

I threw the bathroom door open with a smile. “Chris.  Quit your day job.  You’ve got the gig.  Can you start rehearsing right now?”  And with that, the Sally Taylor Band ship was afloat again and pointed toward the west coast.  We rehearsed all night.

Who knows what the future has in store. All I know is we’re ready for our first national tour. America, here we come!

….But first, a few more gigs in Colorado to test drive new songs and get our road-dog sea legs under us.

I slept amongst moth balls last night after our Breck show in our sound guy, Howard’s basement. Howard is probably the nicest guy I’ve ever met but his windowless, cement, cellar walls reminded me of a prison cell. I fell asleep to The Door’s, singing “This is the End.” Plumes of ganga smoke made phantom, puppet-like shadows against vibrant red and orange hallucinogenic posters stuck to the wall with masking tape.  In the night, the cold crept between the felting in my supplied wool army green blanket like an unwelcome lover. As I struggled to recall the events of the show earlier, I regretted taking that final hit off of Howard’s Alice In Wonderland-looking hooka pipe.

The drive to Breckenridge had been breathtaking I recalled, with arrow-sharp switchbacks, each offering a new angle on a jagged sky.  Silent mountains stared disappointedly down at us like overdemanding parents wondering what to do with a wayward child. 

Zuba, Kipp’s band, played Joshua’s the night before and we choreographed a meet-up at the Frisco “Loaf & Jug” to exchange Zuba CDs for my best friend Nisa.   Colorado Bands are constantly crossing tracks through the mountains. Occasionally we ask favors of one another like “Hey, we sold out of CDs last night at the venue you’re playing tonight.  Can you sneak into my ol’ lady’s shack on 12^th and Pine and pick up a case of 30 for us.  Try not to scare the dog.”  or “Our bass player’s girlfriend’s sister’s hairdresser needs a ride from the gig in Vail to Telluride.  Can you swing by Eagle and grab her after your gig in Aspen?”

Early for our rendezvous with Zuba, I peed between two cars in the parking lot.  We slow-strolled “Loaf & Jug’s” isles, loading up on chocolate-covered pretzels and machine-milked mochas.  The sun was riding the horizon low, like a cowboy in a tired saddle.  We kicked at dirty islands of snow parked between 18-wheelers as we waited for Zuba to appear.  When their rust-red van pulled next to Moby their band poured out like crinkled socks from an overstuffed drawer.  We exchanged hugs, recent gig war stories, and a case of Zuba CDs for my best friend Nisa.   Nisa looked adorable in her ironic polyester Lily Pulitzer pants, fuzzy orange sweater, and butterfly hair clips.  Our bandmates mingled for a tailgate smoke and a coffee then, once again, we were ships in the night.

After soundcheck we grabbed all-you-can-eat linguini at “Rasta Pasta” and Howard took us back to his place “Camp-Smoke-A-Lot-A-Ganga,” where we all got naked and took an epic hot tub under newly hung stars surrounded by a playground of untouched snow.

The place was packed when we got back to Joshua’s to play at 10:00 PM.  Annoyingly, no one had been collecting money from the door so by the night’s end, we only broke even after paying Howard and our bar bill.

I think it’s fair to say our first set was…. hum….. challenging. There was a distinct split between audience members who might be future fans and those who just out to get piss-stinking drunk. Our second set was much better and Howard said we’d gotten a great response for our first time in Breckenridge. He reassured us, “Breck’s listening crowd only comes out to Joshua’s about twice a year and they came for you.”  It made us feel better.

We played the “Fly Me To The Moon Saloon,” a low-ceilinged, mine shaft of a venue tucked under the fluffy white skirts of Telluride’s main street. It’s known to book the best bands the state has to offer and It’s the first spot I ever cut my teeth (I played there solo opening for Acoustic Junction at Jazz Fest 1994 while my dad played the main stage). “The Moon,” as it’s known by the locals, is where I wrote “Red Room” and it is the “saloon” my Tomboy Bride “..walks in the backdoor” of in verse one. 

Telluride was home to me all last year and became the backdrop for many of my songs.  I named my album after reading a book by the same name by Harriet Fish Backus, a pioneering woman who came to Telluride at the turn of the century with her husband to forge a new life.  Tomboy is a ghost town now.  Its boarded windows and sunken roofs haunt Telluride from 3,000 feet above its ski bum head.  But once, it was home to hard-working gold miners who imported wives from places like New York and Califonia to tend their houses while they went off to extract ore from the mountains.  These new brides would be left for months at a time to fend for themselves 11,500 feet above sea level, under 7 feet of snow. 

I identified with these women when I moved to Telluride and Harriet (Hattie) in particular.  I fancied myself a modern-day version of her if I’m immodest, leaving home, venturing alone into the snow-covered mountains, wild-eyed at the mercy of the unknown.  I wrote the song “Tomboy Bride about Hattie, about us.  About all pioneering spirited ladies who dare to cut their own paths across the wilderness with fearless hearts.   

Here’s some backstory about Tomboy Bride’s chorus:

“With her long hair, waterfall down” references Bridal Vail Falls, a hike with a waterfall above town that looks up, like a lover, at the town of Tomboy.

“And her wild ways, wind through the town” is about the whipping wind that busts through Telluride’s wide streets straight through the continental divide. Getting hit with a gust is like a toast made to pioneering-spirited women.

“And her pipe smoke, clouds in the sky” is about clouds that sit on the town in the mornings and remind me of a smoking badass babe who doesn’t care who she offends.

“Please marry me, be my Tomboy Bride.”  These will be my husband’s lyrics when he comes to ask for my hand.

I’d been looking forward to the show for weeks. My local friends were coming and I knew the room like the bottom of a beer can but… No one told us we were playing during “Arizona Days.”  Once a year, the mountain runs a week-long “ski free” special for Arizonans,’  who are bussed into town, wearing Aztec multicolored blanket coats and leather Akubra hats.  With more style than grace, they dive straight down steeps which churn them up and spit them out at the bottom.  Local hospitals and bars are equally full of our southern brethren during “Arizona Days” and despite casts and splints, these people want to dance.  We, my friends, are not a dance band.

The wind was hollering when we arrived in town.  I was last out of the van and managed to lock my corduroy jacket in the back while trying unsuccessfully to unstick my static-clinging skirt from my unshaven leg hair.  Guitar in hand and teeth clenched I bent my head into the wind and headed toward the saloon. 

Backstage in the green room, I scrawled the lyrics to the song I’d written there, “Red Room,”  on the wall. When we took the stage at 10:15, we were greeted by a crowd who, unable to use us to dance too, treated us like we were invisible.  They smoked and smoked and smoked and got drunk and yelled over us.  Nobody listened and nobody cared we were up there. Often no one noticed a song had ended. 

At set break, I had to run into all the boys I kissed last year (which was a few more than I’d accounted for)  In Telluride, the saying goes “You never lose your boyfriend, you just lose your turn.”  As we took the stage for a second humiliating act, the manager, Rodney pulled me aside.

“I was just told you have 45 minutes left.  That’s wrong, right?!?!”

“No, I mean, yes, we do only have 45 minutes left,”  I told him

“No.  You have to have more.  Didn’t Kipp tell you?  You’re doing 3 sets – 45 minutes a piece.”  The idea of staring out at a sea of smoke and Aztec print and old flames and beer goggled eyes for an extra set made me want to tie my guitar strings in a knot.  Instead, I said, “I guess I could ask the boys to do a 30-minute jam.” My eyebrows lifted like crane wings over my incredulous expression. Rodney simply replied,

“Yeah, do that.  It’ll help cover your guarantee.” Ouch.

At the end of an ego-bruising 30-minute jam, Rodney handed me $300 bucks plus $105 we made in CD sales and charged us for the beer.  I need a booking agent.

On the ride home, we stopped at a Safeway.  I bought carrots, hummus, and Pons blackhead strips. The whole band got in on the act.  I love my guys.