I Thought I’d give you a day off to catch up on some of the gigs you might have missed up ta this point. We’re headed west on Monday.
The one about finding my pet hedgehog in a pile of trash…
The one about playing with my pop…
The time I turned a man into a bubble bath…
And one of the most recent and heartbreaking…
Enjoy and I’ll see you on the West Coast!
“What’s this we ‘ave ‘ere?” Said a cop with a southern drawl oozing masochistic delight. Kenny and I stood at the passenger side of Moby in air the texture of a horror film — misty and dead quiet. The overweight officer stepped out of his patrol car in slow motion, taking 100-pound steps toward us. I could tell he wanted to enjoy every second of this. The dim light of the dirt parking lot made the scene black and white.
Moments before, I’d been backstage at The Ice House changing out of a red sparkle stage outfit into overalls and a messy bun. I was rushing to pick up a hurricane of belongings; makeup, shoes, guitar cases, the discarded outfits I’d tried on before the boys OKed the red sparkly one and a clear plastic cup containing one last sip of Chardonnay. McAlister was the last show of the tour and we’d played a good set against the backdrop of an absolutely gigantic American Flag. Mindlessly, I gathered my things, thinking of little more than getting the heck back home as soon as possible.
The night was warm like the part of a smoker’s breath that never gets fully exhaled, just recycled and tumbled and heated up again and again in the lungs until it turns into exhaustion.
Delucchi spotted a cop driving past the backstage window and yelled out “Cop….You guys be careful out there….we don’t know what the laws are out here.” It didn’t help his nerves any to have just picked up a pound of weed from The Ice House’s owner.
Hearing Delucchi’s warning, it still didn’t register I had a glass of wine in my hand and I headed toward Moby with my stuff dragging all over the ground behind me. Kenny, a full case of Anchorsteam beer in one hand accompanied me, scooping a trail of my fallen lipsticks and socks as we went. He stashed the beer in the cooler and went back for a pair of undies I’d dropped. I threw my things onto the passenger seat and placed my sip-o-wine on the stairwell when from behind us we heard:
“What’s this we ‘ave ‘ere?”
“What’s this we ‘ave ‘ere?”
“What’s this we ‘ave ‘ere?”
Kenny and I froze. Delucchi and Kyle, rushed back into the club to find the owner. The officer strode toward us, his cheeks the size of hamburger buns and his skin the texture of red, callused deli meat. He picked my cup off the stairwell.
“Looks like we got ourselves an open container here boys.” He shouted over his shoulder in what sounded like slow-motion vomiting. He gripped us with his steely eyes like vice clamps on tea cups. At that point, three other cops stepped out of the patrol car. But clearly, this officer was just getting started. He called for backup on his CB.
“I’m sorry officer,” I said, “I wasn’t thinking. I—”
“Didn’t you have a drink in your hand too boy?” he pointed a beef jerky like finger at Kenny and shone his flashlight down the dress of the van, illuminating her front cabin with straggling half drunk water bottles, some dirty towels, and our kraft mac & cheese box.
“Nnnnnno,” sputtered Kenny feeling the full weight of his blackness against the southern officer’s bleach-white glare.
“License and registration.” He said with a middle finger in his tone. I flicked through my wallet and produced my license. He looked at it and said:
“Y’er from Colorado?” I nodded.
“McAlester, Hellava place to come to get arrested.”
Not another word was said. The mist came down like gnats, flying around our faces, in and out of the cop’s headlights and flashlights. I was nervous but Kenny was terrified and had every right to be. What had I gotten us into? He had his eyes closed, his black head resting against the white van.
I imagined us both behind bars at the local county jail which, in my mind, looked a lot like the Andy Griffith Show set but with the roles of Andy Taylor and Barnie Fife played by these monsters.
I watched Barney’s hand move toward his waistband, the one with the handcuffs and just as I thought all hope was lost, the owner of The Ice House appeared. Chris strutted toward us like a superhero, all strong and confident and silhouetted by the cop cars that had just pulled up as backup. The officer gripped my license and bent it back and forth in the palm of his hand, nervous, like a villain when the superhero arrives on the scene and says something like: “Unhand them you fiend.” Well, Chris didn’t say “Fiend,” or “Unhand them,” but he got his point across and somehow (using the Force, I think) got the cops to let us drive away unscathed.
For me to say it was a close call is one thing. For Kenny to say it, is another. For me to say I’m relieved I didn’t land Kenny in jail in Oklahoma is an understatement. Thank you, Chris. You are our O.K. superhero and we won’t forget this.
Ever.
The Vineyard was just what I needed and while I felt a pang of anxiety when the boys pulled away, leaving me at the airport, I was glad to miss three days of Missouri, “Roller Coster Haven,” and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
On The Vineyard, my mama and I drank chai tea and curled up on her couch. Between her velvet throw pillows, she triaged my shredded heart and we laughed between my tears. She taught me her beauty secrets, “always put a streak of highlighter down the bridge of your nose to make it look slender” and, “use your taupe eyebrow pencil as a lip liner.” She toured me through old photo albums and we listened to sad songs and I wrote a few of my own. Mama absorbed my tears and brushed the hair from my forehead while I told her what a fool I’d been to fall for Sam.
At the end of Memorial Day, when I came downstairs with my overnight bag and a guitar case full of new songs, my mama was awake. Her hair was piled into a little spiky nest atop her sweet head. She greeted me in the kitchen, in her soft robe, a spatula in one hand and a plate of her famous shredded apple Swedish pancakes in the other. We ate with our hands. She poured me a giant glass of grapefruit juice and sang to me, my own lyrics to remind me just how strong and capable I am of getting through this. I hugged her and told her (because it’s the truth) that she’s the absolute best mommy in the world.
On the plane to meet up with the boys, I listened to one of the new songs I wrote and tinkered with the lyrics. It’s called Disaster.
I broke my own heart
For the good of my pride
For my own piece of mind and
Left my soul deprived
Now there’s sleepless and sky and
my memories to ride and
A picture of you left on my bedtable side
You’re a distraction to my lonelieness
While I’m in ink jotted
On your “To Do” list
But there’s love in your words
And there’ll be one last kiss
Goodbye and I’ll miss you and
Whatever this is
Now out of this picture, you smile in my face and
The image of you bellow me, I’ll erase
Now I’m a disaster and you’re a disgrace
How funny that this should be “love”
There’s something about this pain
That makes me feel happy
Happy to feel anyting at all
I’ll listen to sad albums and
Cry all day long to
Get you out of my system
One more track then
I’ll move on
Now out of this picture, you smile in my face and
The immage of you bellow me I’ll erase
Now I’m a disaster and you’re a disgrace
How funny that this should be “love”
Missouri was a scorching 95° when I flew in to meet back up with the band. I shaved my legs in the airport sink (sorry, I know that’s gross) and slipped into some stage clothes in a stall feeling like some B-list superhero. I hoped the slip dress mom let me borrow would be appropriate attire for the heat but when I arrived at the club, the air conditioners were cranked to sub-Antarctica, and traversing through two clashing climates for load in made me convinced I was catching a cold.
I remember one summer when Ben and I were kids, my dad took us out on the road and there weren’t enough bunk beds on the bus to accommodate both the band and two little kids. My dad set up a couple of cots on the floor for us and being 6 and 9 we didn’t much mind camping on the floor of the bus. However, the AC was on full blast and my brother’s cot was directly in front of one of the vents. One morning, after a particularly long overnight drive from Pittsburgh to Illinois we woke to find half of my brother’s face frozen and as the day continued, it wasn’t thawing. The poor bugger couldn’t blink let alone take a sip of water without it dribbling out the left side of his mouth. Turns out, my brother had Bell’s Palsy. He spent the rest of the summer with one eye patch over his eye which I tried to make him believe made him look like a cool pirate.
The show went all right. Cicero’s is sort of a jam band gig. The walls are plastered with posters announcing coming bands named: “The Kind,” and “The Shwag,” etc. I don’t mean to stereotype the place. It was clean, (intensely) air-conditioned, had ultra-friendly employees, and filled up pretty nicely for a Wednesday night.
The best part of the show for me was catching up with the band in the green room (literally just a bathroom with black walls and a handwritten note on the door that read, ”Not a Public Restroom.”) Inside the “Not a Public Restroom,” of a green room we elbowed our way around empty gear cases crowding in with us like extra players waiting for show time. Kyle sat on the toilet and warmed up his wrists against an empty drum case, “Thrum thrum thrum.” While I washed my face I listened to Kenny’s excited retelling of each and every roller coaster they rode in my absence. Delucchi laughed at Kenny’s “wooshing” reenactment noises, reliving the experience through Kenny’s vivid retelling.
I was grateful to secondhand smoke their memories, to be getting ready to play another show, to be Sam-free going on one week now, and most of all, grateful (after 5-weeks out) to see Boulder on the horizon.
Ani Difranco’s label “Righteous Babes,” is in Buffalo, and Craig, our stage manager at The Tralf said the folks there were interested in meeting me. “Would you all want to head down there after sound check?” he asked. Of COURSE we did and it did not disappoint. Righteous Babes was full of righteous babes with slightly stoned smiles and purple highlights in their hair. It was inspiring to see what Ani’s created under her own steam and the landscape she’s managed to clear for women in music is vastly beautiful. Frankly, Ani’s my idol. She’s exactly what I aspire to be: an artist with a thriving record company, grown from scratch. Righteous Babe is a RIGHTEOUS place!
The stage at The Tralf sounded GREAT and Buffalo really showed up for us, even on a Wednesday night. A few parents managed to smuggle their kids into the show and I insisted they come up on stage and dance to “All This Time” with me.
As we packed equipment at the end of the gig, Craig instructed us to drop what we were doing and follow him down to a predominantly gay dance club on the ground floor.
“Word on the street is that you’re nursing a broken heart,” he looked me up and down like he was going to guess my weight before he opened the door to the club. “You straight?” he asked. I nodded. He waved his hand apologetically and said he’d introduce me to the “right” people.
The men were beautiful! adorned in pumps, pink boas, gloss to match, and huge, bulb earrings (I was pretty sure had once belonged to a Christmas Tree). These gorgeous men lip sank to Madona and took turns strutting the length of the red-carpeted stage. They stopped now and again to bite a dollar out of someone’s flirtatious hand and Kyle, delighted, filmed the whole thing.
I just wanted to dance, to sweat away my sadness and rejection. I lost track of the time to glitter and Abba and some pretty powerful teal-colored drinks a handsome guy (who wasn’t Sam) was only too happy to ply me with. Tonight was supposed to be the start of Sam’s and my reunion weekend and I imagined him, instead of with me, night swimming under stars at Lake Havasu while I swam in lights from a swirling disco ball and the sweat of strangers.
Incidentally, I booked a flight back to Martha’s Vineyard tomorrow. If I couldn’t be with Sam on Memorial Day, I wanted to be with my mama who knows better than anyone how to turn a broken heart into a life raft of songs. Besides, I couldn’t stand the idea of spending 3 days in Misouri with the rest of the band who had their hearts set on riding rollercoasters and eating fried dough. That was no way for this gal to heal. No, I was dedicated to spending the weekend with my mama, writing music that might extract the poison from my system and get it down on the page. Mama said she’d be my kerchief and there is no one on earth I’d rather shed tears on.
When the clock struck midnight, a man dressed in a fringed yellow leotard, canary heels, lemon stockings, and a canopy of red curls took the stage to announce the upcoming contest we were about to witness; Ten men, scantily clad took the stage and one woman got up there too. The contest was (and parents, you might want to skip to the next paragraph to spare your children’s innocence) a competition to see who could “fuck the inflatable lamb’s ass with a pink plastic strap on the sexiest.” Each contestant, took the spotlight, strapped on the strap on, and went to town on this poor inflatable animal. The crowd went wild. Kenny, out of nowhere appeared beside me. “This is fucking awesome,” he said, mesmerized. The yellow fringe leotarded emcee was ecstatic — a virtual electrified Big Bird of a man. He egged everyone on quipping into the mic “Does this lamb look happy to you?!?!” and the audience went nuts.
The girl won. She was sexy as all hell and hella ballsy for getting up there in the first place. It was definitely time to go and Kenny and I searched for the rest of the band in a sea of feathers, flinging arms, and purple drinks. We found Soucy, wide-eyed eyed coming out of the women’s loo. “You OK?” I asked. “Ya,” he shook himself, “some fourteen-foot dude just came up behind me at the urinal and asked me ‘What’s your flavor honey?’”
It’s become our new favorite catchphrase.
Detroit is broken — broken down, broken into, and broken-hearted. I empathize with this city from the back of the van, a guitar in hand. I’m writing a song about heartache. Somehow, between Buffalo and Akron, I managed to break my heart on a boy, not 1/2 worthy of my time.
We’d fallen in love earlier this spring. He was handsome, something I’d intended to be a distraction from missing Kipp. But somehow it became serious after the boy in question, let’s call him Sam, drove 1,000 miles from his home in LA to Boulder just to take me out to dinner. When Sam drove home to LA the next day he turned his car around when he hit the coast realizing he couldn’t stand to be without me another second. After this (slightly insane) 3,000-mile round trip he booked a flight to New York where Mike and I were mixing the following week to profess his love and hold my hand while I finished the album. Yes, yes, I didn’t mention it because really, it was such a silly love affair—so cliche and Hollywood and I’d only ever intended to be another roadside attraction…. not a 90-degree detour.
But in New York, our energy was so intense we were electrifying people around us left and right. One day Sam made us a picnic lunch and I serenaded him in Sheep’s Meadow. People throughout the park started pulling their blankets around us so intoxicated were they by the love we were giving off. When we strolled to coffee on Madison Ave each morning, people shouted from their windows “Don’t let her go.” “Don’t let her get away!” and “You were meant for each other.” It was a fucking romcom for god sake. I gave myself to the sea of his adoration.
When we parted, me for left-hand coast, he for the right, it was excruciating. We promised to see each other on my first break from tour, over Memorial Day (May 28-30). However, when I called him to shore up logistics, he was in LA on his way to the desert to go water skiing on Lake Havasu, with some guy named Eric.
ME: “Hey baby, I’m soooooo stoked to see you. Do you want to meet me out here on the road or would you prefer I come out to where you are? I’m happy to pick up plane tickets either way.”
SAM: “What are the dates again?” We’d been over dates already. Nightly actually, as we pined for one another after every show when I called him from the van or some halogen-lit hotel room and we’d dream up our reunion.
ME: “28th, 29th and 30th.”
SAM: “Of May?!?!”
ME: “Yes.”
SAM: “Ok, 28th, 29th and 30th…” He repeated slowly. I could tell I was on speakerphone. I heard the car door slam and then, when he was sure Eric was within earshot, he asked again “Of this month?”
ME: “Yes.”
SAM “No, no, no I’ll still be in Havasu hun.” HUN!?!?!?!
ME: “Ok… Well, what about the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th of June?”
SAM: “Uh… OK.. Uh… Oh… No, nope. Can’t hun. I’m throwing an annual bash on the 5th. It’s a really cool party. Everyone dresses in ’80s attire.”
I sat there for a second, the sun streaming in on me from the passenger side seat at a stop light in Clevland, and felt like a slowly deflating pool raft. I was disgusted with myself thinking, I’ve rearranged my tour for this guy. I’ve offered to fly out or pay his way to come see me. If this guy loved me ½ as much as he says he does, he’d be on the next flight, not making excuses like skiing in Lake Havasu or some 80’s bash he didn’t even invite me to. My heart broke into a million pieces as I found the voice to say:
ME: “Well, then I guess I’ll see you in LA when we tour up the West Coast.”
SAM: “…Yeah, yup, that’s what it’s looking like.” I could feel my heart cannibalize itself. I wanted to puke.
ME: “Why are you doing this? I don’t understand.” I could hear Eric listening in to us in the background, the way Sam undoubtedly wanted him to. It was clear he needed Eric to think I was some demanding, uncompromising, egocentric bitch who wouldn’t leave him alone or let him have any sort of freedom.
SAM: “What?!? Are you mad at me for having a party that I have every year —” He was going to go on but I stopped him right there. My pride wouldn’t hear another word of it.
ME: “OK, I’m hanging up now. I don’t get why you’re doing this but I’m going. Good bye. I hope you have fun at Lake Havasu.” Click.
And just like that I knew I was hooked. He was the drink I couldn’t put down. I was addicted and I knew I needed the sort of abstinence from him I was incapable of. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. Being on the road I was undoubtedly at my most vulnerable and therefore most susceptible to addiction. How did I let this happen? And there I was in a car full of bandmates in Clevland, strung out and in need of a hit I couldn’t get.
Now, two days later, I’m strung out and in withdrawal on my way to Indiana. Little translucent bugs flit around near the window. We picked them up accidentally in Cleveland after the mostly empty Peabody’s show where a rave competed for our sound space on the floor above.
I’m watching Detroit’s city lights through the back window, blurred by drizzle and pothole smoke. Kicking my Sam habit in this hopeless, heartbroken city makes me feel like I’ve been second-hand smoking Cuban cigars– like I’ve taken the wrong luggage from an airport tarmac and opened it to find someone’s porn collection. I feel dirty and deflated and drowned from within.
I’ll write a song about it from the lonely back seat of the van. It’s gonna take a lot of lyrics to save me from this heartache. No time like the present to start to swim back to the surface I guess…
Call me up from LA
On your way to the desert
On Memorial Day
Our communication
Is slipping away
We say words
without their implications
My best friend (Nisa)
Hears the news
And tells me that she’s glad
That you’re gone
That she never did trust you
I explain I am blue
Like the room that we stayed in
Where we made our first love
Now it’s fading
Now I’m in too deep
And my heart has stopped sleeping
But I can’t stop dreaming of you
And I’m in too deep
And you’re hurt my last feeling
Every time that I breathe in
To you…
The gig today was a teaching gig. Delucchi and I got a 7 am wake-up call to ensure on-time attendance at Trumansburg High School’s opening bell. Unaccustomed to any day that starts before 10 am, I followed my sleepy hand down the hotel corridor in search of complimentary coffee in the lobby. My pajamas and messy bun inspired disapproving looks from the business men and women dressed in suits and pinned up coiffure but, luckily, I was too tired to be ashamed.
The drive to school was gray and drizzly and when the first period bell rang, a twinge of panic shook me back to my own high school days. The stale stench of paper and the residue of dreams in which I turned up naked for my SATs haunted me. Exams, insecurities, and self-doubt (“oh my!”)–Each gripped me like a hormonal hangover.
My first lesson was a music class full of sophomores sitting in a semi-circle. Some probably know more about music than I do I thought as I entered the room. Self-conscious about my music-reading illiteracy, I took a seat among them and watched their eyes dart to their classmates, wondering if their questions were important enough or smart enough to ask.
With energy fueled by coffee and sheer unpreparedness, I told them what I knew about writing music.
Next, I told them some tips and tricks for performance….
As the class winded down I spelled out the logistics of getting a band on the road and told the class how difficult yet rewarding it is to be a musician.
“Life is an interpretation,” I told them “no one else on earth is going to see the world the way you see it. Therefore you owe it to the rest of us to share your world by creating art so we can be expanded by it.”
Still, after class someone wanted to know: “How do I get famous?” and I looked into her cute insecure face all covered with fragile poreless skin and I saw myself in the audacious twinkle of her eye.
“Write this down,” I told her, “sit down with a pencil and a paper and write out all the reasons you want to be famous. Be honest about it. Next, write down what you think will make your life successful. Then make sure they’re in sync with each other.” She seemed content with my response though I knew I wasn’t answering her question.
“Keep that piece of paper, OK?” I said as I turned down the colorful graffitied hallway—with the scrawls that read, “I love so and so” and “fuck high school.” Passing students plastered between staunch blue lockers, I saw through anxious expressions into the depths of shining souls, and what I saw is that they, just like the rest of us, just want to be loved…
To be truly, truly, loved.
New York Route 7, headed west in the van, Chris Soucy (Guitarist) reporting
From the Best Western Rensselaer Inn in Troy, New York it’s only a fifteen-minute drive to Valentine’s in Albany. But Troy is a historic city. Perhaps not experiencing its glory days right now, but once upon a time…
Sally and I had breakfast with her stepfather, Jim Hart, and his son, Amen, at a greasy spoon called Duncan’s, where everything seems to be served with a side of bacon whether you order it or not. Eggs over-medium are served over-easy and runny just because and the coffee is the color of a goldfish tank in need of a good cleaning. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it needs to be, too.
Jim spent some college days here a while back. He actually painted the polyurethane finish behind the bar at Holmes and Watson, where Sal and Kyle had lunch yesterday, which also happened to be Kyle’s wedding anniversary. (Sorry to keep your hubby away from you, Traci, but his services are required on the road here with us for a while longer.)
Jim told us a little of the Albany/Troy area history over breakfast. Once a thriving industrial area, its iron ore and textiles traveled to other cities via the Erie Canal in horse and ox-drawn barges. It’s the birthplace of “Uncle Sam.” Uncle Sam was the name of a meat packing company that shipped food supplies south to Union soldiers during the Civil War, and the name Uncle Sam has been synonymous with patriotism ever since. Troy is also called the Collar City because back in the day when shirt collars were produced separately from the shirts onto which they were clipped, they were made here in numbers great enough for the city to build its reputation on them. Beautiful old brownstones and big granite libraries and courthouses line the streets, but most of the industry is now gone and empty storefronts seem to be the order of the day. That’s what we learned over breakfast this morning.
Last night’s show at Valentine’s once again proved the old saying that you can’t judge a book by its cover. It seems to be a phenomenon we encounter over and over again on the road this year. We walk into a club at five o’clock to set up our gear, look around and say, “Yikes, another dreary black box of a bar.” Then of course it turns out to be a great gig.
Apparently, there’s a little bit of construction going on at Valentine’s. A large corner of the room just next to the stage is blocked off by raw plywood. Maybe it has always been that way, but it has that “Men Working, Please Wear Your Hardhat” look about it. I imagine that most nights there’s a pretty heavy rock band taking the stage at Valentine’s and thrashing at an earsplitting volume while young rockers, dressed like vampires, tattooed and pierced in urban tribal fashion drink, cruise, pose, scam, deal, and fall down the stairs. But last night they set up chairs for a somewhat tamer, older crowd and a triple bill of acts fronted by acoustic guitar-playing songwriters.
The opening acts were terrific. Two guys named Tao and Johnny played first. They’re from the Northampton, Massachusetts area and they played a blend of old-time roots country, blues, and bluegrass with some modern touches. Our new favorite guy is Stephen Kellogg, who played in the middle spot. Stephen is also from Northampton. He’s a terrific singer, a great songwriter and we all became instant friends with him and his girlfriend, Kirsten, who bravely ran the merchandise table all night. Stephen and I chatted over the relative merits of different types of pickup systems for acoustic guitars all night. Sally invited him to join us on stage to sing a verse on our cover of the Stealer’s Wheel tune, “Stuck in the Middle with You” and on Sally’s “Happy Now.” Stephen happens to be a terrific kazoo player and he and I joked about having him whip it out for a solo without telling Sally about it beforehand, but we felt it was best for him to maybe leave the kazoo in his pocket after all. I’ll bet a kazoo solo would sound GREAT on “Happy Now,” but these kinds of intricate complicated parts played on such sophisticated instruments need to be carefully rehearsed, you know. Next time.
The loudest and rowdiest contingent in the crowd last night was a bunch of folks from the Hatch family. Once upon a time, years ago, I worked as an elementary school teacher with a fiery, crazy woman named Gigi, who happens to be from a huge clan of brothers, sisters, and in-laws spread out over the continent. Gigi and her family members Nanette, Natalie, Joseph, others whose names I can’t recall, their assorted boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses, and drinking buddies have now come to many of our shows: Hoboken, Saratoga Springs, a few different shows in New York City and again last night in Albany. Gigi came to gigs of mine in New Mexico back in the day. I even did a recording session with her husband, Jon, once. These folks have been great fans of the band. The fact that they are a whole family of gorgeous blondes and redheads (except maybe for Joseph) doesn’t seem to bother any of the boys in the group either. Thanks for all of your support. I think we’ll just set up and play in your living room next time, as long as you promise to take it easy on the martinis and stop shouting for guitar solos before the show even begins, OK?
We’ve been taking lots of photos these days pictures of the musicians, fans, and staff we meet at various venues, snapshots of 28-pound kitty cats named Jerky that live in Boston, pictures of other kitties that live in bars, more and more photos of Kenny sleeping in the van with a book on his chest. We’ll try to post some of this craziness on the website soon. It may help you begin to understand just exactly why we are the way we are and why we behave the way we do. [From the road, Chris Soucy, Guitarist/elf/resident smart-ass]
Writing from St. Mary’s emergency room….
I woke up in Troy New York after the Iron Horse show feeling awful….never mind what kind of awful, just awful — Awful enough to want to go to a hospital and sit in an emergency waiting room for more than a couple hours.
To make use of my wait, I went over the budget of the album and calculated what I needed to recoup my losses. The exercise, while monotonous and slightly depressing, was clarifying and reaffirming.
Apt. #6S = $69,112 to make
Distribution and marketing will run $60, 265
PR (Ariel Hyatt) will = $20,000 a year and
Touring will cost me $130,000
I rounded the totals which showed my needing (a whopping) $279,377 to get me through the year. To break even, I’ll need to sell 18,625 CDs at $15 bucks a pop. Of course, this doesn’t take taxes or income from gigs into account (but the two pretty much cancel each other out anyway).
70K in the hole and leaking thousands daily, I muddered under my breath to no one. I could feel my 26-year-old shoulders stutter under the weight of the task at hand and wondered if I was capable of doing this all on my own. But a record contract (as sexy as it might look on paper) is really just a high-interest loan I reminded myself. I signed back into my hard black plastic waiting room chair and closed my eyes looking for some inner strength. I’m lucky and grateful to be an indie artist — footloose and fancy-free, I repeated like a mantra, folded the yellow notepad into my back pocket, and visited the vending machine for a Pepsi and a flavorless bag of trail mix. Outside, it was raining, just like yesterday and the day before and I started feeling soggy all the way through.
The show at The Iron Horse in Northhampton MA last night had been great. Short, but great. Little lights flickered from vanilla-scented candles on every table. Middle-aged women lounged into their lover’s laps who stroked their hair and listened with closed eyes and opened hearts.
Delluchi was antsy from driving all day in the rain to the gig and we were late for soundcheck. While he, uncharacteristically yelled at me to get on stage, a reporter insisted she get pictures of us before her 5:30 deadline for our cover story in Yankee magazine. I felt wet and frazzled.
After soundcheck, scared of approching Delluchi for a ride, I hailed a cab to Amherst College for a radio show. My driver, a young scraggly looking kid with sunglasses and pale, scaling skin, waited for me while I did my interview, and drove me back in his ashtray of a back seat through thick, graduation weekend traffic. I was late for our comped dinner in the greenroom and my overalls stuck to my legs like a wetsuit.
The boys were gone but had saved me what was left from the meal—a single leaf of lettuce on which Kenny had drawn a smiley face. A note next to my “dinner” read Hi, I’m your mascot, “Leafy Johnson.” Enjoy your meal. They couldn’t have known I was starving. I ate “Leafy Johnson.”
We stopped for sushi after the show before Kyle navigated us to Troy. The scent of flowers and soy sauce and raw fish and sneakers crowded the van. It was a dark rainy drive and the only light came from Soucy’s computer as he returned emails to our fabulous fans from our band account. As I fell asleep I remember thinking about how much I love my boys and how much I love this journey that we’re on. What a wildlife this is.
Looks like I can see the doctor now.
I was so gassed when I went to sleep last night I almost slept through the 3 am fight some noisy couple had outside my door. I was so choofed that when the cleaning lady came in at 8 am I almost let her make the bed with me still in it, and when the drilling and hammering started next door at 9 am, the ear plugs and pillow over the head trick almost worked…..but it didn’t, and I have, once again succeeded in adding another restless night to my score card. But I knew playing New York’s famous Bottom Line with my mama would help me find chutzpah enough to pull through.
When the band pulled into the city, our first stop was a Post Office in Chelsea. Soucy had word a package from Cuba was waiting for him in New York and though it was harder to find than fur on a rattlesnake, Chris’ curiosity kept us searching for the obscure location. Chris’ package turned out to be nothing more than a letter from an acquaintance he’d met down there, saying “I hope you didn’t have to go through too much trouble to get this letter.”
While we waited for Soucy (in the heat, in the horn-honking traffic of New York) I told the boys I needed to find a bathroom and hopped out of the van. I walked up to 16th and then headed downtown. I couldn’t find a restroom anywhere but I did manage to find a shoe store (my kryptonite). Within 10 minutes I was back in the van with a brand new pair of faux-lizard-skin shoes and had all the boys laughing at me as I modeled them. I still had to pee.
The Bottom Line was just as I’d imagined — dramatic in an understated way. Mom said, when she arrived, that the dressing rooms hadn’t changed a bit since she’d played there with my dad in ’78.
The box of a backstage was linoleum filled with a bulb-lined mirror. A fan rotated in ungraceful, arthritic movements. We were the headlining band in a lineup of four acts playing as part of the “Nightbirds” series. All the bands were led by female vocalists and all of us were sharing a green room the size of a van. The roster included: Denice Franke, Christine Ohlman and “Cecilia,” a band with a really cute celtic fiddle player.
After sound check Mom & I ventured out onto the muggy Greenwich Village streets where people strolled, sipping cool drinks from red straws—kids sat on church stairs smoking weed — bodega owners stood outside their shops staring out of wet, sequined eyes —teens in baggy jeans threw slang at one another like bitter fists.
The rain didn’t start until 7:00 and even then, it wasn’t torrential. The tornado warnings didn’t begin until 8:30 at which point my mother began to get nervous. I tried to point out how much the club resembled a tornado shelter to no avail. She was anxious. By 9:00 the rain was coming down like a Broadway curtain on closing night — heavy, determined, and devastating.
When it rains like that, nobody goes out to see live music. But somehow we managed to get a decent-sized crowd — mostly friends or diehard fans who’d flown in to see us from out of town and couldn’t have foreseen the tempest. For what we lacked in bodies at the front of the stage, we more than made up for in the backstage. The green room was busting with — four bands, 16 guitars, sprawling makeup bags, cables, that freaking wobbly fan, and odd friends of friends who thought they’d just drop back to say “hi.” It was a madhouse — a bouquet of elbows.
Despite the mayhem it produces, The Bottom Line has a strict performance protocol. Each band gets 25 minutes for a first set. As they run their gear off stage, the next band is introduced with zero time to set up or plugging in. Each act, then has to wait until the lineup starts over again to play their second set. It’s lunacy and slightly dangerous (with all those guitars in the dark). t’s hectic as hell but no doubt the audience enjoys the circus of it.
My Mom was such a trooper. I idolize her. She sang backups on “Split Decisions” during our first 25-minute set and then waited, stage left, with me and all the other claustrophobic bands for our second sets to begin. Together we hovered in the dark getting bludgeoned by swinging guitar necks and strangled by flying bass cables. Mama, between songs, in whispered tones that sonded more like lulabies, recounted fantastic tales of the club in its heyday. She is the coolest mom on the face of this earth and after the show, she helped me sell my CDs!
The rain finally quit pounding as the last of the merch got sold, the gear packed and the fan finally died. My mama kissed me goodnight and sailed through the side door with a flourish of her slender fingers. Under a New York street lamp Kenny and I shuved the last of our instruments into the boot. Before I loaded myself into the back seat, Allan Pepper, Bottom Line’s owner (who coincidentally booked my mother when she used to play here in the 70s) pulled me aside and asked, “Will you come back?” and I said, “Allen, it would be an honor.”
The alarm went off at 6:30 and my eyes opened into a house of hanging plants and warm, honey-still sunshine. Rachael and Billy, a couple of friends of a friend, put us up last night, along with an assemblage of people who’d come from far and wide to see us play Boston. The couple’s 27-pound orange cat spread himself out like a slab of peanut butter across a sunny spot on the floor.
Still fully dressed from last night in Adidas sneakers and a sparkling champagne-colored tube top, I rolled over on my right to find Soucy, open-mouth snoring next to me. On my left, I discovered my pal Heidi from Martha’s Vineyard snuggling and gently prodding me to wake up. “Get up,” she whispered, “you’ve got Good Morning America with your mom in New York.” I rubbed my eyes and slid my hand along the wall towards the bathroom.
Scattered bodies, packed in colorful sleeping bags, littered the floor. Everywhere I stepped there was another sleeping form to navigate and I wondered how I’d gotten lucky enough to score the futon.
Delucchi too, had lucked out on bedding. I found him in a side enclave, curled up inside a red puddle of blanket, trapped in the quicksand of a slowly deflating blow-up matrice. “D., I gotta get to the airport,” I rolled him like pie dough but Delucchi wasn’t coming to the surface of the day anytime soon. Handsome Joel, a friend of mine who I may or may not have kissed during my Brown rowing days (honestly, I only recall wanting too, not whether I actually did or not), woke up and generously volunteered to take me to Logan to catch my Delta shuttle to New York City.
The show at Boston’s House of Blues the night before had been sold out and my dad showed up unannounced to play a song with me.
After the gig, we moved the party out of the green room and back to Rachel and Billy’s house. There, we drank (too much) wine, listened to Al Green sing “Let’s Stay Together,” and stayed up way past “When.” Now, I’m on a plane on my way to New York, on 2 hours of sleep in the same outfit I sang in last night, to be filmed for Good Morning America with my Mom, Dianne Sawyer, and my brother Ben.
Funny how dream-like everything becomes on a diet of 2 hours of sleep.
