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!
The Vineyard was just what I needed and while I missed the boys as they drove away, leaving me at the airport, I was glad to miss three days of Missouri and “Roller Coster Haven.” While the band drank Pabst Blue Ribbon, my mama and I drank chai tea and curled up on her couch. Between her velvet throw pillows, she triaged to my shredded heart and we laughed between my tears. She taught me beauty secrets like “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, my overnight bag and a guitar full of new songs in hand, 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 its 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 arrived. 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 to reunite with the boys, 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 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.
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 that 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.
I’m driving back to the studio when I pass my old address, 135 Central Park West, the one with the flat my new album’s named after (#Apt. 6S). The doorman outside is unfamiliar and though I’m seriously contemplating looking for a parking spot and trying to go in, I wonder how I’d explain myself to the austere new doorman. I imagine myself approaching under the iron-clad awning in overalls and green Patagonia fleece and saying something ridiculous like, “Hi, you don’t know me, but trust me, I used to live here and I’d like to go to the 6th floor and take a little look at my old childhood stomping grounds if that’s OK.” The idea seems absurd but before I know it, I’ve parked, slipped my little red camera into my pocket, and locked the door.
The gray-blue stairs of my childhood feel narrower underfoot than I remembered. The last time I walked them they’d hosted at least a dozen voracious paparazzi trying to wrestle my image from my face. My brother and I were adept at the camera dance and knew to take cover under hoods and collars to avoid them, as though they were a sudden rainstorm.
Today there are no cameras, nothing to fear or avoid. But I feel more uncomfortable than ever confronting the tall, Slavic doorman in the lobby. “I’m making an album named after an apartment here that I grew up in, #6S,” I gulp when my intro is met with a suspicious sideways glance. “I don’t know. Would be possible to let me up for just a second? I’d love to take a picture of my old door for my liner notes. Would that be OK?” I’m sure he thinks it is not OK. But, you can’t judge a book by its cover. The new Russian doorman not only believes my story but is delighted to know I’m naming my album something relating to the building. He calls the new tenants and sure enough, I’m invited up.
As I walk through the mosaic hallways lined with the same strip of red carpet, memories flood back. I recall practicing cartwheels with my friend Lark Previn, one of Mia Farrow’s kids, after ballet lessons. Once we’d navigated the grippy hands of the paparazzi outside, we’d uncover our jacketed heads and in long braids and peach leotards, do round-offs and back handsprings down the broad red carpet to the elevator. Lark, second eldest after Soon Yi, always accompanied me to the 6th floor so we could practice our moves a little longer in the 12-foot floor-to-ceiling mirror outside our door.
Waiting for the elevator—the same elevator where I used to measure my growth by the numbered buttons I could reach—I look up at the crystal chandelier still awkwardly missing gems my brother and his friends used to jump to knock down for their shiny, clear teardrop collections.
The mirror on the 6th floor still warps in the center, making me appear slimmer and taller. I ring the back doorbell and it chims its familiar (still-broken) chime, “Ding, futz,” “ding, futz.”
A small, Latina house cleaner wearing distrust across her brow lets me in even though her boss is out and she wonders out loud about the consequences of her actions. She follows me closely in her head tilted, small-stepping way as I tour my old home in what I hope is the least threatening way possible. I don’t touch walls or handles and let the cleaner reveal what she thinks prudent to show me.
My old room has been converted into an office but still has the white shelves that once housed my dolls. The back alley view from my old window with its cast iron grate looks the same as usual as does the long white built-in closet but none of this is mine. I packed up my memories long ago and I realize I am only a ghost here. Most likely, a ghost that’s making the cleaner nervous.
I thank her and leave Apt. #6S with its view of Central Park and slimming mirror and chandelier with its missing prisms and as I thank the doorman and descend the paparazziless steps I feel a little hollow but at peace.
At the studio, Mike and I work late (till after 3:00 am). Neither of us in any shape to drive back to the city, we set up an impromptu slumber party on Whitney’s white, leather couches. We use our jackets as blankets and elbows as pillows. Morning comes too soon but we open our eyes with determination and enthusiasm for This is it. The finish line. This is our last day in the studio!
…..Of course, there’s still more to do—mastering, artwork for the CD, The creation of a press kit and launching of a PR campaign, booking a new tour to promote the album (with our BRAND NEW BOOKING AGENT JONATHAN SHANK!!!!), Getting CDs pressed and getting our new drummer rehearsed. But the album, for all intents and purposes, is finished.
I am the proud mama of 13 new bouncing baby songs. And I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. Something nobody yet knows. We’re gonna combine “How Can I” and “Bicycle” to make one long 12th track and throw in a hidden “sally as a little girl ‘pumpkin song’” in between, just to give people something fun to find if they leave the CD running too long. So now you’re in the know! Thanks for following along on this record-making journey. Enjoy…
I grew up on the Upper West Side of New York City with a sprawling view of Central Park from apartment “Success.” At least that’s what I heard my parents say when they directed the local grocer for deliveries or their fabulous, bangle-wearing friends for parties. It made sense, after all — my famous parents lived in an apartment called “Success.” Of course, they did and, of course, my brother and I lived there with them; born into success, not owners as such, but entitled squatters. It was only when I started writing pen pals that my understanding was shattered.
“In the return address,” my mom dictated, “you’ll write Sally Taylor, 135 C.P.W Apt #6S NYC 10023.”
“How do you spell ‘Success'” I asked.
“A-P-T period. The number 6 and the letter S,” she directed, unaware she was shattering a belief I’d held since birth. Alas, apartment “Success” was only ever apartment #6S (Floor 6, Southern facing apartment). “Success” was as illusory as the great and powerful Wizard of OZ. #6S was The Man (woman and children who lived) Behind the Curtain; A real address with real lives and problems and joys and failures and, yes, successes too.
I’ve decided to name this second album after my birth address “Apt. #6S” to remind me where I come from; both a delicious, outrageous illusion, and a geographic address as real and permanent as its bricks and mortar.
This CD is a dedication to making success where you live.
APT #6S will be released in early May and will be available online from this website and at shows.
I flew home to Martha’s Vineyard on Monday. The winter landscape was purple and honey and the water undulated in a metallic cerulean dress. We rehearsed all week, my mother my brother, and I, for a concert in New Orleans that’s scheduled for tomorrow. My mom doesn’t like to perform period, so rehearsals are mandatory not only to tighten up the band but to loosen up the mom.
While I’d hopped a United economy seat to Boston before a two-hour Peterpan Bus and a ferry to The Vineyard, I was leaving the island in style. Yes, indeed. I’m currently writing from the belly of a cush private plane en route to NOLA. There are platters of cheese & crackers, sushi, and mini omelets. There’s champagne and linen napkins and seats that, not only recline but pivot 180º. I feel VERY spoiled. There are pros and cons to having famous parents. This is a pro. The plane parts the sky like a comb through straight hair and the pilot addresses us personally when he tells us what we can expect from the flight.
But as clutch as my surroundings are, while I’m writing it doesn’t much matter where I am physically— I could be anywhere; in the back seat of Moby, the Alaskan outback or the waiting room of my dentist’s office because I’m not where my feet are. I’m in my own little world. I spend the majority of every day here; daydreaming, remembering, foreseeing, creating, conversing with my better angels, and conspiring with my little devils. The world I escape into is sort of like the “I Dream of Jeannie” bottle. It has velvet cushions and taffeta drapes and is built from a lifetime of amalgamated fragrances and fabrics and love scenes I once watched on TV. In my head, I’m always in luxury because I really love my life, even when it’s challenging, it’s always got cheese platters, 180º swivel chairs on demand, and duct tape to fix almost any situation. It does not, however, have sushi so I must admit, it’s a total plus to come out of my Jeannie bottle, grab a little California roll, and a smidge of wasabi before heading back into my bottle for the next paragraph.
I’m excited about Mom’s gig but it couldn’t be coming at a worse time. The record is left unfinished back in Colorado. I feel it sitting inside me like an unmade bed. It’s hard to leave a project undone and unchaperoned, especially in that zoo of a home studio back in Boulder. But I’m crossing my fingers and toes that nothing bad will happen in my absence and that I’ll be refreshed and ready to dash to the finish line when I return.
There is a draft in my heart. I try to shutter the door against it but the cold gets in. I am pregnant with a sorrow that tosses in my belly, kicking to be born into song. I go through Kipp withdrawals 6-7 times a day. Sometimes they manifest when I’m feeling lonely and instinctively want to call him to tell him something funny or ask his advice about something I’m unsure of. I miss him at bedtime. I miss him in his kitchen at Timber Trails making breakfast and matte. I miss him at night, out on the town dancing his unique straight-arm dance. Most of all, I miss the man who was my best friend—the one I shared my time, secrets, fears, joys, body, dreams, and life with for the past two years. Now, he’s gone, and I hide in the studio, away from the ghost of Kipp who still lingers in my home. Ugg, my home with its unmade bed, unwatered plants, sleepless nights, and screaming phone. Ugg, my kitchen with its haunted faucet that drips, drips, drips into my subconscious, blending with an assortment of hums, mumbles, and sighs.
To make the situation more confusing, in the midst of losing Kipp as my boyfriend, my brother has decided to take him on as his manager. I have no idea how to navigate this situation.
Thank God for my mama. She’s been there for me through all of this. All my instability, regrets, fears, anger, and insecurities. Last night, she stayed on the phone with me until my tears sealed my eyes shut, then lullabied me into a stream of dreams. She managed to give minimal advice—just comfort, which is all I really wanted, not a cure. Definitely not a cure. A cure would require energy I just don’t have right now. This morning as the dull winter light haunted my room, she called just in time to distract me from my impending woes. She told me she’d found photos of herself in the studio from when she was pregnant with me. One of them had a speech bubble she’d written at the time that prophetically read, “Hey mom, let me out, I’ve gotta sing my song.” She read me old-school reports from when I was six as I drove north up Broadway, and stayed on the phone making me laugh until the mountains around the studio ate our cell reception.
In the newfound silence, I was consumed again by my grief. Boulder was white—like frozen breath, blank sheets on the bed, Clorox, sheep, sightless eyes that cannot sleep. There was nothing outside except white, as though someone in charge made a typo in the morning and ended up whiting out the entire day.
I grabbed my guitar from the trunk and walked, coffee in hand, through the narrow parking area towards the studio. I was looking down at my mug to make sure I didn’t spill when I walked straight into a 13-foot pole saw tied to the roof of Chris Wright’s midsize Mitsubishi. For anyone unfamiliar with this style of tree-trimming device, it’s a combination of a scythe and saw attached to a long pole used to reach high limbs. These tools are notoriously sharp in order to accommodate the user’s lack of leverage from the ground. The blade struck me right between the eyes and before I made it through the door I could feel blood pouring down the bridge of my nose, cascading down my chin and dripping into my mouth. Soucy put ice on it and some lavender oil. Chris Wright arrived as Soucy was patching me up. He was in striped pajama bottoms slurping milk from a bowl of Captain Crunch, and between bites mumbled something about “gotta watch where you’re going.” It’s official; I hate Chris Wright.
We’re working on vocals for “Without Me,” which seems appropriate. It’s a song about how lonely and hollow it feels to be loved when you’re disassociated and without yourself.
I know there is a day outside
A night or a starless dawn
I’ve seen her out there smiling
Just off the front porch lawn
She’s sitting up impatiently
In her best wedding gown
She’s waiting for the spring to come
And though she has no voice for song
I feel she enjoys listening
And sometimes hums along.
The Great Aunt Stella Center is a church and a beautiful one at that, full of light, stained glass, pews, echoes, and a plush red carpet. I rushed to grab our video camera to record its magnificence but as I opened Moby’s trunk, Chris’s pastel blue coffee press flung itself out at me like an exuberant participant at a surprise party and crashed to its demise at my feet. I was in shock, filming the disaster, when I heard Delucchi shriek from behind me, “N O ! ! ! ! !”
I whipped around in time to catch his distressed, palms-to-cheeks expression. We held a quiet band memorial for the press over the bathroom trash can. I apologized to Chris for my part in the tragedy. He said it was all right, but I knew it would be a while before he got over the loss of his old friend.
Every day I’ve known him, Chris has followed the same morning ritual—first gas station of the day, while Moby guzzles fuel, Delucchi “borrows” hot H2O and 5 paper cups from the station’s coffee center. What follows is a 5-10 minute wait whereby the rest of us clear the van of yesterday’s chip wrappers and apple cores. When Chris reemerges through the swinging station doors, it’s with his signature bouncy step, the sky blue coffee press held aloft like a trophy, and an exuberant “Who wants black juice people?!?!” It was the end of an era and I felt terrible about causing it. I vowed to find him an even better press.
The venue couldn’t accommodate a full band so I’d agreed to do the opening act solo for David Wilcox. But I was nervous. I hadn’t played a gig on my own in a long time and didn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of David Wilcox’s audience. Soucy, watching me pace backstage, knitting needles in hand, agreed to join me for a few songs near the end. Still, I bit my nails to the quick in hospitality, picking at trays of fruit and chicken salad.
I donned my mama’s vintage skirt, sewing the ripped seam with dental floss with it already on. The skirt, I knew would bring me comfort. It’s something she used to wear for luck throughout her early career. The boys wished me luck from behind the organ and pushed me out into the pool of light on the stage.
As nervous as I was, I was delighted by how easy it felt once I started playing— akin to the first time I rode my bike without training wheels. After the fifth song, I announced cheekily, “Is there anyone in the crowd who knows how to play guitar and coincidentally, also knows all the chords to my songs?” At my rhetorical question, the audience laughed and Soucy flung his arms in the air like a crazed muppet, screaming, “Pick me! Pick me!” and rushed down the aisle like a contestant on “The Price Is Right.”
It goes without saying, that David Wilcox put on a GREAT show. I studied him on stage like an art student trying to capture the lines of a nude. His act was a work of fine, artful storytelling and soul-bearing music. I was captivated.
Some college friends of Soucy’s approached after the show and asked if we wanted to spend the night at their camp. I was game to save a couple of bucks on a hotel room and we agreed to follow their car out into the middle of nowhere down some mile-long, god-forsaken, briar-lined, back road that scraped Moby’s paint like nails on a chalkboard.
Mike and LG’s camp was an actual camp! complete with tire swings, a pond, a pool, volleyball nets, and cabins with creaky slanted floors. We were so far off the grid that the stars were bright enough to navigate by, even without a moon in the sky.
Our hosts told us there were enough beds for everyone, “but two people will have to sleep in the cabins across the pond.” The rhythm section—Bri and Kenny—drew the short straws. “Are there any snakes around here?” asked Bri with a nervous giggle, staring at his dwarfed stick.
“Sure are,” said Mike, “Copperheads. Big ones.” Brian’s face went white, his lips hung limply under his nose like wet noodles. Brian and Kenny insisted on a second beer before agreeing to let us drive them across the pond over to their accommodations.
I’ll never forget the homesick look on their faces when they discovered there was no electricity out there. Mike handed them each a flashlight and told ‘um not to make any sudden moves if they heard a bear.
As we slowly pulled away on the flatbed of Mike’s truck, I called out to them “You guys didn’t see Blair Witch Project, did you?”
“Not funny, Sally. Not funny,” shouted Kenny as the night closed around them and a mysterious bird sang a sad two-note song.
I remembered the green room from our show 3 months ago at the Mercury Lounge. It was the worst backstage accommodation I’d ever been in and it remained largely unchanged now. Here is what I wrote about it from our June 11th gig:
The Mercury Lounge is a dark, black box of a venue so while on stage, I was unaware how large our crowd was. When the lights came up, I was delighted to find so many of my NYC friends who’d somehow heard about the show without my direct interference. I was glad my publicist Ariel Hyatt was in attendance so I could congratulate her on promoting the gig so successfully.
My best friend from kindergarten, Rachel Zabar, embraced me with golden glittering eyes and her huge smile which has always seemed to me, to escape the perimeters of her face. Jim Hart, my stepfather, had heard about the show from a colleague at work. A bunch of people from high school, Boulder and Brown were present, and a trickle of people who insisted we’d met before and ‘did I remember their names?’ were there.
This game of “Do you remember my name?” is always embarrassing and no one comes away from it looking good. I learned early on from my dad to lead with context when approaching an acquaintance.
Ex. “Hi, it’s Sally Taylor, from Martha’s Vineyard. We went to camp together, you might not remember, it was a long time ago.”
And to re-introduce people to each other leading with context as well.
Ex. “Hey Dad, you remember Kate, my freshman roommate.”
This way, even if there isn’t immediate recognition, the person can say something like “Of course, now what have you been doing since then?” and no one has to feel embarrassed.
My friend Adam (Yes, Adam Natusch from The Boogies) used to love to make prank phone calls (these were the days before people got caller ID boxes). I’d be at his house and, with his red phone already off the hook he’d say, “Give me a number.” One day I gave him my mom’s digits and when she answered the following, now infamous, conversation ensued:
Mom: “Hello?”
Adam: “Is this Carly?!?!”
Mom: “Yes.”
Adam: “You’re never going to guess who this is.”
Mom: “Who?”
Adam: “It’s Sylvain”
Silence.
Mom: “Who?”
Adam: “Sylvain Brown. Don’t tell me you don’t remember me. I’m already on the ferry on my way over to the Vineyard to see you. You wrote a song about me.”
Mom: (Sounding worried) “I did? What was the song?”
Adam: “You’re Sylvain!!!!”
Mom: “Hmmm…I’m not sure which song you might be—”
Adam: (Singing You’re so Vain) “You’re Sylvain, you probably think this song is about—”
Mom: (Click, dial tone).
Adam and I rolled around laughing on his floor for a few minutes before I tried to call her back to apologize for the prank (Side note—Do not feel sorry for my mom. She is the queen of pranks and practical jokes and can dish it out as good as she can take it). But she’d taken the phone off the hook, clearly to avoid another call from “Sylvain,” who definitely thought this song was about him. The next day when I went to call her, she’d already changed the number. Mom laughed hysterically when I told her later, that the caller had been Adam and to this day calls him ”Sylvain Brown.”
Midway through signing CDs at the Mercury Lounge, someone dropped a slice of paper on the table in front of me and disappeared into a blur of faces. Ariel and I squinted at the serrated square which read “I ENJOYED THE SHOW. YOU ARE ALL GROWN UP!” and was signed ‘Oren Segal (3rd grade).’ “WHICH WAY DID HE GO?” I shouted to Ariel. “THAT WAY,” she yelled back and pointed toward the front exit “HE HAD A WHITE T-SHIRT ON!” I didn’t have time to explain Oren had been my first crush. He’d bought me a porcelain doll for my 7th birthday and I was sure the gesture meant he wanted to marry me. The delusion of this early proposal dissolved over time but I kept that doll through adolescence displayed up on a shelf hoping someday Oren and I would meet again. It’s sort of disappeared since we left our apartment in New York, but I’m sure it’s somewhere, packed in mothballs and memories, somewhere between the center of the earth and the tips of my fingers.
Outside, the hot streets offered a miraged horizon of blurred red, yellow, and green lights. I marched myself up to the first white T-shirt I saw and said “Hi” just hoping it was Oren, but it ended up being one of those people who insisted we’d met before but whose name I did not know and ‘Did I remember their name?’ I never found him.
Dejected, I walked back to the venue. There, a very pretty woman named Ann Taylor (no relation) introduced herself. She’d come across our web page in the most unexpected, roundabout way. “I was looking on a search engine for Sally Taylor Orchids,” she said, “did you know there is a flower called The Brother Sally Taylor?” I said I hadn’t known but was delighted all the same. “Well,” she said tossing a blond lock behind an ear, “I was searching for this flower when the engine came up with your web page and I clicked on it. I’ve been following your Road Tails ever since and that’s why I’m here tonight.”
This internet thing is amazing!?!?! Until recently, I’d assumed I was shouting into the void. But maybe my words are actually making it through the abyss. Perhaps real people are reading this and enjoying it and what we have to offer. Maybe they’ll consider coming to a show or listening to our music in the future. I can’t believe it. My mind is legitimately blown. Now back to vocal rest and on to Rhode Island.
