This is my last week of college! For graduation, I bought myself my very own cell phone! A potential drummer named Brian McRae was the first person to leave me a message on my new voicemail. He said he’d be interested in working on my demo. This cell phone thing is the greatest.
I did vocal exercises on my way to rehearsal with Tinny Yellow Ducks who sometimes sound really good and sometimes awful. Last night was awful. Dave, the bassist, decided he wanted to pull out of the gig opening for The Samples because “it’s not even going to pay for gas to the gig” and frankly I’m done with this whole garage band scene. The late drunk nights, the cold, the ringing in my ears, the drums so loud that I can’t even hear my voice coming out of my mouth. I’m sick of the crackheads that jump when the motion sensor lights betray their efforts to break into our cars. I’m sick of the ceiling stain which drips again. I’m sick of the infighting, the other bands in neighboring garages that compete for airspace with their never-ending jams. I’m sick of driving home dodging deer and worrying the gigs I’ve lined up for us (Like these with The Samples) will be gift horses looked straight in the mouth. God, Please send me my own band. FTS.
I drove to North Boulder yesterday. My lovely purple Rav 4, balloon animal of an SUV purred along the edge of the continental divide. I was late to meet up with Wendy Woo, a local musician with great street cred connections to both musicians and local studios and effortless style. Wendy was sipping coffee out of a broad-rimmed mug near the drafty front door of “The Other Place,” an uncreatively named coffee shop across the parking lot from the garage where I rehearse with Mary Sister Reload/Not Eric/Tiny Yellow Ducks. One cup of bitter grounds later we drove up to Wendy’s studio in Lyons an hour away. On the way, we listened to my demo tape. Her knee bounced along to my untammed drum tracks and ½ way through each song she already knew the choruses and sang harmonies along with them in perfect 3rds.
“Sky Trails Studio” was in a house nested in a canyon up a 2-mile-long dirt road lined with tumbleweeds and crumbling boulders. The low ceiling space was small but light. It looked more like a living room than the fancy studios I grew up doing homework in circa 1980 in Times Square. but I liked the place and I liked the people. They played me a recent track of a local gal named Michelle something who’d just finished her CD and used Wendy’s house band to record. It sounded really good.
Driving back, I was all but determined to use Wendy’s musicians as my band until I called my pop and he convinced me of two things.
#1 I need to find my own players.
“Your songs are great Sal and you’ve been working on them for a long time and you know, even though it’s a self-released record or a glorified demo, it’s still The Release of these songs and the players on it are going to make all the difference (wise words).
#2 There’s no rush to do this fast.
I should take my time. Once I put out the first recording the countdown starts on my second.
But all the same, there are butterflies in my stomach itching to dance with lightning bugs in my head and my intuition screams: “IT’S Time!”
At $200 bucks a day (not including engineer, recording tape, or musicians) at Wendy’s studio I’m looking at approximately $6,500 to do my demo. Not out of budget and I could probably still get my touring van.
Candles winked flirtatiously across tables tonight at Dandelions restaurant. Kipp and I joined up with some musical friends for dinner and everyone agreed “Wait for your musicians!” How frustrating! They don’t come in the mail ya know guys!
Sally’s To-Do List:
Finish writing my final term papers.
Study for finals
Find a drummer.
Find a bassist.
Find a keyboardist.
Find a rhythm guitarist.
Find strength in my music.
Sing on stage as much as possible.
Decide what songs I want to record.
Rehearse
Copyright my songs.
Get over my fear of flying.
Graduate from College
Rehearse to go on the road with Not Eric to open for The Samples on the 3rd.
Get good at guitar.
Look at other possible studios.
Breathe.
The opposite of success in music is not failure, it’s silence. I won’t be silent.
I successfully handed out all 10 copies of my rough demo of songs on my trip to LA. Some of the songs I recorded with “Not Eric,” now calling itself “Tiny Yellow Ducks.” Others I recorded on my 4-trac in my apartment which feature the scratching skills of Fatty J who likes to get in on the action. I felt weird about handing out my cassettes with their handwritten song titles. It was so self-promoting and forward but when I was sure I was going to die on the airplane back to Denver I kept chanting through hyperventilating breaths “Everything is gonna be OK” and “Your babies (songs) are out there.” And that made me feel reassured.
I woke up to an enthusiastic message from Mom. Overly enthusiastic in fact. She was raving about my music. “I just got the tape this morning and it’s so amazing. I’ve only listened to the first 4 songs but I love ‘Complaints’ and ‘In My Mind’ is great and ‘Sign of Rain.’ The line about Alex liking when the weather matches how he feels inside is fabulous.” It was sweet of her to overzealously compliment my music. Before I put the cassette in the mail to her I told her how much her opinion meant to me and how vulnerable I felt about sending her my “Babies.” She was excited for me but in my heart, I disbelieved her enthusiasm. It felt too expensive and perhaps too elusive to claim.
Dad met in Boulder for lunch at “Dot’s Dinner with a bunch of my pals, musicians, record company execs, and Kipp, my new boyfriend. Clustered into a red pleather booth inside the makeshift gas station, we bribed waiters for egg white omelets and talked shop.
Back at Dad’s hotel room #300, I played him a couple of songs: “Cowboy” and “I Meant To” which he tweaked and twanked but said he liked a lot. “I’m blown away by what you do with your voice.” He told me, “Your soul really comes through in your music.”
“That means a lot to me pop.” I said and of course, that was an understatement.
He asked me if I wanted to take Ben’s route into the music business: “You know, find a manager, a record label, and a booking agent and go all in?” he asked, elbows on knees watching the floor like it were a taro card. I Couldn’t tell if he was offering to help me or not. “You’ve got what it takes to make it in the industry though I’d never wish this career on anybody.” He said. “Being a musician, it’s a blue-collar gig my Sal. It takes a ton of elbow grease and grit and it ain’t easy on relationships either” He said.
It was the first time I actually believed such a thing (a big famous-filled career with all the glitz and all the shit) was possible. As I peered in at the possibility in the cloud bubble above my dad’s head, the idea looked not so appealing. Too big, too scary, too fast. Too many sharks swimming in the icy dark water. So I said “No. No pop. I think I want to go it alone.”
Leaving Dad and walking back up the hill to my pad it hit me, I don’t really know all that goes into a music career. You think I would, having grown up with two legendary musicians as parents but frankly, I don’t even think they fully know.
As the sun dipped below the surface of the day I realized I wanted to create my own label. I want to find my own band, I want to book my own gigs, and do my own PR until I know how much I’d pay someone not to have to do those jobs anymore. I want a hands-on music business career.
My pace picked up as the night grew sweater-worthy and I passed by the Fox Theater where people qued in Birkenstocks to see Zuba in concert. The first thing I’m going to do next week is make a better recording of my demo tape, next, I’ll find a bunch of band mates and then. I’m going to buy a big ass van.
So I guess I’m staying. Boulder, its flatironed red mountains stabbing at the sky, holds something mysterious for me. I rented a 2nd-floor apartment at 9th and University and converted the porch overlooking the cemetery into a makeshift bedroom hanging some found fabric on the windows. The first night I moved in, there was a mound of rubbish outside my front door. As I moved my furniture in, I moved someone else’s garbage out. My desk in, someone else’s broken TV out. My CD collection in, Someone else’s smelly hefty bag out. As I was nearing the bottom of the stack of trash something in a glass terrarium moved. I thought it was a rat and nearly fell down the stairs backward. But it wasn’t a rat. It was a softball-sized hedgehog some a-hole had abandoned.
“People do that,” explained the vet I rushed the spinny orphan to. “They buy hedgehogs as novelty pets, over feed ‘um and when they realize they can’t pick ‘um up or play with ‘um they abandon them.”
“Well that sucks,” I said.
“This one is about two times the size it should be.” She said, donning gloves and retrieving the critter from the terrarium. “They’re supposed to curl into a ball when they’re scared but this one is way too fat.” Indeed, as she hoisted the little guy up he gave what looked like a lazy abb crunch but nothing that much resembled a ball.
“He’s got parasites too, see? He’s losing a bunch of quills. You’ll have to buy a pair of gloves and feed him a dropper of medicine every day.” So, I took the pathetic little beast back to my new apartment and named him “Fatty J” after the all-night stoner pizzeria down the street.
The floors in my living area are so wrapped that after a day of classes (I signed up for at CU Boulder in an attempt to finish my college credits) my furniture migrates into the center of the room. Fatty J is always buried in the center of the pile and I make a game of finding him while peeling back tables, armchairs, and rugs to their original positions. He’s a free-range hog.
I took the gig with “Mary Sister Reload” and we’re now calling ourselves “Not Eric.” Rehearsals are weekly. I’ve since washed the orange plaid jacket from the ceiling insulation and wear it with pride every freezing practice.
Last week we recorded an assortment of songs at The Red Door Studio. As we arrived at the back-alley studio, ½ frozen flakes the size of watch faces were just starting to litter the air. We took turns laying down tracks, stepping over each other’s semi-reclined bodies to get into the clenched fist size of a control room. There we drank skunked beer and re-listened to parts we’d just played. We made up band names. Steve, engineering the session suggested, “Big Head Sally and the Monsters.” Dave offered “Naked Trout” and Rob suggested the alteration “Just Trout.” Names were thrown around like spaghetti at a wall: “Emotional Blender” “Sounds Good Naked” & “Spudboy”. We laughed, we ate, we drank, we recorded, and repeated until 12:30 at which point I was wasted, exhausted, and back in the damp snow.
No one knows me here. I like it that way. I often feel my parent’s names too tight around me, like a corset or a wool turtleneck sweater. Here, in this new town of Boulder, Colorado, I feel anonymous, naked and free. I don’t know if I’ll stay or drive back east yet, but I’m here now and loosely dipping my toe into the music scene around the mountain town.
Right now, I’m sitting behind the wheel of my Rav 4 playing guitar in the parking lot of a “Buffalo Exchange” second-hand clothing store. It’s cold. I’ve been sleeping in my car the last couple nights as I recently broke up with the boyfriend I moved to Colorado for. My tiny storm purple Rav 4 is packed to the gills with my life. Boots and empty coffee cups and baseball caps and hairbrushes roll onto the pavement whenever I open the door.
This parking lot outside “Buffalo Exchange” on Walnut Street is perfect for me, despite a scary vagrant knocking on my door asking for a light every now and then. It’s the only spot in downtown Boulder that’s both abandoned at night and well-lit. It’s also, conveniently right around the corner from “Robb’s Music,” where I go in the morning (after gas station pretzels and black coffee) to harvest tabs from fliers of bands “looking for lead singers.” I’ve already auditioned for three since I got here last week.
The first two weren’t right but the group I played with tonight has potential. They call themselves “Mary Sister Reload.” I have no idea what the name means and I’m not sure they do either. I showed up to their rehearsal garage at seven, after eating a very messy falafel inside my car. Their rented space was one in a strand of 10 garages on a dark lot littered with industrial garbage just down the street from “The Bus Stop,” The only strip joint in town. Each garage door seemed to struggle to contain a different indi-band’s music. As I approached the strand of garage bands, a salad of screeching feedback, bluegrass, infighting, and grateful dead cover tunes could be heard bleeding out into the dry cold air. Some roll top doors were opened and inside I could see bandmates practicing drinking beer more than songs. They held drumsticks and guitar necks in one hand and bottles and joints in the other as they called out to me salaciously when I pulled up.
A fiercely handsome frontman passed me on his way out of auditioning for the same gig I was going for. I knocked feeling slightly self-conscious about my unwashed hair and brushing falafel crumbs off my flannel. Jeff, Dave and Tom introduced themselves inside the frigid rehearsal space and launched into a cover of “Brown Sugar” which luckily, I knew the words to.
After a few more familiar tunes, the boys talked amongst themselves while I shivered on a raft of dirty carpets. I noticed an orange plaid coat stuffed into the ceiling insulation above my head patching up a beige leaky hole. I asked if I could wear it to get warm. “’’Snot ours, sure, keep it.” As I pulled on a loose sleeve a pinata of mouse shit and roofing came down on me. Gross. It is a testament to the state of my depravity that not only did I still wear the coat, but I am also still wearing it now.
I got the gig though I have no idea what “Mary Sister Reload actually plays (besides loudly). They did suggest they’d like me to write some lyrics to some of their material which seems promising. They also seem to be open to a name change which seems even more promising.
So now I’m here. Cradling my guitar vertically, like a lover in the front seat of my Rav, trying to figure out whether to drive back home to my family on the East Coast or plant my feet in the soil out here. I’m writing a song about my recent breakup. I think I’ll call it “Happy Now.”
