Northampton, MA – “70K In The Hole” – May 19, 2000

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.