Martha’s Vineyard – Sally Taylor

Block Island, RI – “Heros” – Captain Nick’s – August 11, 2002

It’s 2:30 am. I’m with four 21-year-old guys with shaved heads trying to break into my third-floor hotel room with a knife and an expired credit card. One of the boys is kneeling on the floor with a dinner knife wedged into the door jam. Another is pushing with all his might while the third and the fourth are balanced precariously on adjacent windowsills banging on a small rectangular window over-the-door. The four of them are arguing over who gets to break into James Taylor’s daughter’s room.

Though I’m not in any danger (these guys are employees of another hotel on the island) I’m, never the less glad Dean made me pack that bottle of pepper spray for the road. How on earth did I end up in this situation?

The day started tamely enough. I woke up on Martha’s Vineyard in my childhood bedroom, surrounded by dolls on shelves and James Dean posters on walls. I’d flown in the night before, leaving the band and Moby back in Quincy, MA. When I left, they were busy indulging in the accidental discovery of a new “culinary masterpiece”: pretzels dunked in flat beer (don’t ask).

I was scheduled to record a rendition of “Anticipation” for a Heinz Ketchup commercial with my mom, brother, and cousin and but hadn’t quite sorted how I’d make it to Block Island for that evening’s show.

Enter my hero, Uncle Liv. Liv, licensed pilot extraordinaire, offered me a ride to my gig in his two-seat single-prop airplane. He took the long way, flying along shores lit up in the fading pinks and ruset golds of sunset. I tell you, there’s no better feeling than owning the skies—or, in my case, having an uncle who does.

The band greeted us at the airstrip. They’d walked over from sound checking the club, Captain Nick’s, which was only a spitting distance away.

Liv, the ultimate showman, grinned at the group and asked, “Want to watch me take off?”

“Sure, Uncle Liv!” they hollered like a bunch of excited kids.

Liv wadded himself into something resembling a discarded memo and wedged himself back into his seat. Leaning out the window, he shouted some music business advice, inaudible over the puttering of the engine. We waved as he took off to the West, into the sunset, as all heroes do.

I picked up my blue guitar case and slipped off my shoes. Together, we walked straight from the tarmac onto the stage and, with sandy toes and all, launched into our first set. The vibe of the club was electric. Though we’d never played Block Island, Captain Nick’s was packed and people knew our songs and sang along with them — a surreal and heartwarming experience.

After the set, I lingered at the club while the rest of the band headed out with some locals to a bar. While not intentional, it’s fair to say I’ve been avoiding the guys since I made my peace about turning. How do I tell them I’m quitting my own band? What if they ask what that means for them and I don’t have an answer. I’d warnet a guess that I haven’t made direct eye contact with any of them since the gig at The Iron Horse. I sense, in my back molars, that they know the fat lady has sung and I secretly hope they’d rather not talk about it yet, either.

Around 1 a.m. at the club, it hit me—I had no idea where we were staying. No key. No cell phone. No band. But I was just tipsy enough to believe I might stumble upon the right place eventually if I cased enough parking lots looking for Moby. Outside, on an empty Ocean Ave, I stared up at the silver full moon. It looked like a porthole in a giant black ship. It shone as if someone shot a hole in the skin of the universe and tomorrow was draining into the night from the wound.

I wandered dimly lit paths from one potential hotel to another, softly calling, “Soucy? Delucchi?” in increasingly desperate tones. Suddenly a young hotel attendant with matching stubble on his head and upper lip appeared, possibly summoned by my lunacy.

“I’m sorry,” I said as he approached “I’m a little lost –”
“Oh, hey, Sally Taylor,” he said, ““I saw your show tonight—you were great.” (Ah, the benefits of playing on a small island).

“Thanks,” I replied. “I’ve, uh… lost my band and don’t have a key to my room.”

“And what room are you all in?”

“Well, I don’t exactly know.” I admitted, “We might not even be in this hotel.” Even tipsy, I realized how ridiculous I sounded.

He raised an eyebrow and invited me to the staff barracks, where a full-blown employee party was underway. The floors were a sticky mix of sand and spilled beer, faces glowed green under harsh halogen lights, and everyone, having attended the show, treated me like family. That’s how, at 1:30 a.m., I found myself at the mercy of four slightly stoned, collegiate, superheroes attempting to break me into a locked room at a hotel I was rumored to be staying.

“If I only had a rope,” murmured the guy holding the knife to the door. “I could swing around the outside to the window.”

“Where’s Spiderman when you need him?” I laughed.

Then someone else chimed in, “Wait, I know a guy with a ladder. We could put it on the awning.”

Though clearly a bad idea, the-ladder-on-the-slender-awning plan seemed like a winning solution and we trotted down to the parking lot. There, just pulling in, sparkling like my knight shining armor, was Moby. She navigated the lot in seeming slow motion—an eternal second anchoring time to a moment. My band of heroes stepped out of Moby’s big white belly. They readjusted their belts, stretched their backs and casually waved upon seeing me with a sea of boys as though it were just another day at the office. Delucchi presented me with a roomkey along with a bouquet of flowers someone left for me at the club. My band couldn’t have known what a sight for sore eyes they were. They couldn’t have known I’d been through a legendary odyssey.

The world is full of unsung heros. Folks like my uncle Liv, the Block Island bellboys, the audience that sang along to my songs and of course, my band of musical brothers. I wish I had time to write each of you a song to memorialize your heroics but this road tale will have to do. My time as a traveling minstrel grows short and besides, I’m much too tired to stay awake for another second.

Thank you to all you heroes who’ve saved this damsel in distress tonight and for the last five years along the road. Only some of you know who you are.

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Boulder, CO – “This is The Last Time I’m Falling in Love” – Trilogy Wine Bar – June 30, 2001

“I’ve never seen so many capers in my life,” said Soucy, staring at the top shelf of Trilogy’s pantry/greenroom sagging under the tremendous weight of condiments in bulk. Trilogy has no official backstage, something I discovered the first time I played here with my Brother (Read about that gig here). A year and change later, little has changed. The venue still houses bands in their overstuffed pantry with it’s jars of fava beans and salsa. It’s not bad really. We sit on cartons of fruit and barrels of wine and snack on garbanzo beans and pickled beets. We tune our guitars and rehearse harmonies while dodging the bare bulb that hangs low between us.

I’m particularly buoyant this night and the boys want to know why. I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m in love. No, no really in love. Not obsessive compulsive Sam love, or spring fling Jack love but real to GOD, I want to get married in love — with Dean Bragonier. How did this happen? the boys groan as if I’d managed to fall into an open manhole and not for the first time. Their disappointment makes me giggle. They’re convinced my heart is accident-prone as I explain the circumstances surrounding what they consider another mishap and I consider true love.

Here's The Story:

I flew to Georgia to play a show with my Mom on Amelia Island.  I had a day-and-a-half layover in Martha’s Vineyard on the way back.  It was a warm summer night and my bass player, Adam, from my old disco band, “The Boogies,” asked me to join him for the opening of a new restaurant called “Balance.”  So, in a striped aqua blouse and a brightly colored hat that I borrowed from my mama, I danced glitteringly into the town of Oak Bluffs. 

I saw him the second I walked in.  The handsome, no-named stranger I’d admired throughout my teens.  The one I frequently oogled at end-of-the-dirt-road-parties we both washed up at at the end-of-the-night on summer break.  The one who occasionally smiled an unreasonably broad grin my way but never spoke to me.  The one who lifeguarded on the nude beach I went to as a 16 and 17 year old naked girl.  The one who now, as a dashing young man of 27, I was ready to meet.  I kept track of him loosely as I went about the party, catching up with old friends.  It wasn't too hard.  He was tall and seemed to glow with an inner radiance.

When I noticed he was keeping track of me too, I thought I could relax my harnessed gaze when suddenly he was gone -- Nowhere to be seen.  With a single night on the island I wasn’t going to let my chance slip away.  I strolled outside to “get some fresh air” where I spied Adam and his girlfriend under a street lamp having a smoke.  I sauntered toward them, using their company as an excuse to scan the area for him without being painfully obvious.  When he was nowhere to be seen, I sighed, and decided it was not meant to be.

“I’m gonna head home,” I told Adam when from behind I heard,

“Do you think I could get a lift from you?  My ride left without me.”

I turned to see Dean standing just inches from my face.  His smile illuminated like a strand of brilliant diamonds.  I caught my breath.  I could see my future in the umber of his eyes.

At this point, the band rolls their collective eyes. They’re so over it. I continue.

“Of course,” I said, I may have stuttered.  “Where do you live?” I asked.

“It’s on your way,” he assured me.  Interesting, I thought, so he knows where I live. 

“That’s not interesting,” interjected Soucy, “that’s just frightening.”  I ignored him and went on.

We floated to my parked car and made small talk on the drive.  I was sure a kiss was in my future when he said, “You can just drop me off here on the side of the road. I can walk from here.”  I was stunned, a little embarrassed and slightly confused.  Was his request for a lift really just that?  The need for a ride? 

“Don’t be silly,” I retorted, “I don’t mind taking you to your door.”

“Thanks,” he seemed somewhat surprised, and I wondered how I’d so badly misread his cues.  “It’s this right,” he pointed to a paved turnoff.  His crushed clamshell driveway glowed in the moonlight.  My motor running, he opened the passenger side and stepped out of the car.  This was it.  He was going to wave goodnight to me and go inside without me!!!! What the hell?!?! I thought angrily.

“Thanks for the ride Sally,” he said, then hesitated before closing the door.  “I’d love to have a drink with you sometime if you’re not too busy,” he said.  The world froze around us, the moon sat still on the dark ocean and a smile crested like a wave in slow motion across my lips and at the very bottom of the deepest most luscious breath I’ve ever taken I said,

“What about now?” 

We were inseparable for days.

The band groans again.

“No, not like that, we just were intoxicated in each other’s company. He really is The One, guys. This is me, falling in love for the last time.”

This does nothing to quell the band’s disbelief in my stupidity and they all but throw up their arms when I say, “Dean’s embrace is where I surrender.”

“Naw, Sally!” Kenny says. “Not again,” Soucy drops the neck of his guitar. Delucchi looks at me disgusted, like he’s rehearsing the act of picking up the pieces of my broken heart again and Dean Oldencott (our new drummer) looks anxious, unsure of who or what to believe.

To the band, I’m the girl who cried “love” like the boy cried “wolf” and they’re sick of my adrenaline junkie, buggy-corded dives into relationship time and time again. There’s no convincing them that this time it’s for real, so I leave it at that and dictate a set list which the boys scribble down in purple ink on the back of their garbanzo-stained napkins.

“Nisa, SOS, Sign-o-Rain, When We’re Together, Wait…” then we go out and crush it, and Dean Oldencott is fabulous and the whole world falls into place like the last piece of a complicated puzzle.

Mark my word people, This is the last time I’m falling in love.

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New Hope, PA – “Bye Sister Sledge” – February 2, 2001

There’s a 4:00am wake-up call on Martha’s Vineyard from my brother Ben, who journeys over to my cabin in the woods with a cup of chai and a tired, no-lipped grin. He waits patiently for me to shower and pack, then takes me in the white Volvo through the blue, snowy, Vineyard roads that lead down to the ferry. These twisty roads are more familiar to me than the childhood I spent traveling them.

The boats in the harbor tremble to and fro in the bitter, shivering water. Ben throws my blue guitar case on the upper level of the luggage rack. This is the brand of winter I identify with. It’s not a soft quiet snow, or a decorated Christmas tree. It’s a bite in the air that makes me squint and clench my shoulders toward my neck. It’s the blue that covers everything and gets under my fingernails. It’s chapped hands and lips and frayed thoughts. It’s hissing evergreens buckled into their roots in a windstorm. It’s the ghoulish vapor that quiet coffee makes, the smell of flapjacks that dad bakes. It’s the goodbyes hollered from loved ones at the mouths of trains and boats over the wail and grumble and churn and bolt.

“Gu bye brother luv,” I say reaching up to give Ben a hug.
“Bye Sista Slege,” He hollers across the parking lot as I board the ferry.

Thus begins a day that threatens never to end.

When the ferry pulls into Woods Hole I take a car to the Amtrak station in Providence, a 9:58 Train to Trenton NJ, and at 3:00 PM, a car picks me up and drives me to “The Lambertville Inn.” The Lambertville Inn is in New Hope, PA, and couldn’t be a nicer, homier place to stay but for one thing — There’s only one room and in that one room, there’s only one bed and, when I arrive, I find one Christopher Daniel Soucy looking very uncomfortable sitting on the edge of that one bed. It’s not as if we haven’t had to sleep in the same bed before. Over the first year of touring I recall sleeping head to foot at least one time with each band mates. But it’s not my favorite thing in the world (no offense Soustopher, you know I love ya.)

“Darnit,” says the promoter when I get him on the phone after the 3^rd try, “we thought you guys were a couple,” “Duo, not couple,” I correct. “Shoot, the hotel is all booked up at the moment,” he apologizes and Soucy and I go out for dinner resigned to our sleeping arrangements. Luckily, the Inn had a last minute cancelation and Chris, wound up in his own room.

The Show was cool. It was in a high school. We opened up for John Sebastian of “The Lovin Spoonful” (Who, coincidentally, my father once opened for in the early 70’s). Our dressing room–a converted classroom, was guarded by some of the kids. They who carried our gear and stood outside our “backstage” door, protecting us, from what I’m not sure. But we never got shot or killed in any way so I guess they did a hell of a good job. One of them was in a band called “Urban Funk Monkeys” and he slipped me a disk to listen to. Not bad Sam.

Sally (Middle) Michael Park (left)
and Todd Rotondi (right)
Photo credit: Gene O’Brien

After signing some CDs and taking some pictures, we went on the town with some friends who’d come up from NYC to see the show.

White tinker bell lights hung from rafters. Snow blew from white shutters and the wind whipped and stung as we walked around the quaint town of New Hope.

We ended up at a local club called John & Peters. The place was stuffed to the gills with handsome women and men wearing Peruvian wool sweaters, slung over chairs like dirty laundry. We didn’t make it home ‘til 5:00 am (I told you it was a long day). The wake-up call came with a ring so loud it tripped me out of my dreams. “Could you possibly call me back in 5 minutes?” I said desperately to the automated wake-up voice before realizing it was a recording.

Ouch!

On our ride to the Philadelphia airport, Soucy and I reflected on how quick, easy and lucrative to our mini-tour had been. But something had been missing from it—something important. When we climb into Moby as a band in Colorado and make our way to the crusts of the nation, there is a commearadery forged between us. When forced to sleep in one bed, laugh at the same billboards, help each other through a hard time, subsist on gas station food, load in each other’s instruments, pick out each other’s stage cloths—that’s when the real music happens as far as I’m concerned. We are bonded as a band under the pressures of the road. While the limos, separate rooms and plane rides were luxurious, I missed the struggle and connection that comes with less. It’s interesting, I thought as I took a seat next to Soucy on the plane, that what makes the road hard is what makes it good.

“Homeward bound,” I said, perching a blue pillow between my head and the plane’s oval window. To which Soucy responded with Simon & Garfunkel’s,

“Home, where my thoughts are na na.

Home, where my de do de da.

Home, Where my la las waiting silently for me.”

I laughed but then the tune got stuck in my head and any time either one of us mentioned the word “home” we’d break into song. Unfortunately, neither of us could remember the lyrics and were forced to do “na na’s” and “do de’s” in place of lost words. By the time we reached Denver, the utterance of the word “home” was banned and if one of us slipped up and said it, it was followed by the universal, fist shaking sign for “I’m going to strangle you if you we don’t stop singing that song.”

None the less….It’s good to be home…“Na na na na la la de do da hm hm…”

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Buffalo, NY – “Heir Force” – October 30, 2000

The People article came out today. “Heir Force,” the headline reads. A photo of me, arms stretched like an airplane cruising at altitude, was taken against the canvas of my mother’s gazebo on Martha’s Vineyard this spring. While the tagline is regrettably cheesy as all get out, the piece is flattering and praises the independent path I’ve chosen to take in music. In many ways, the it’s exactly what I’d hoped for — public recognition of my musical capabilities propelled under my own steam and on my own terms. But the headline makes it painfully obvious I remain in the shadow of two musical giants and ride the pages of People magazine, not on my own merits, but on Heir Force One. Folding the rag in half, I decide the piece is both a victory and an embarrassment and choose to focus on the victory. Next, I grab the boxing nun and challenge Kenny to a match. I need to let out a little steam.

I found the puppets- – “boxing nun,” “boxing rabbi” and “boxing devil,” at a gas station back in Albany and they’ve become the band’s go-to entertainment during long drives. Our boxing matches are not fun in themselves but the band’s sordid and inappropriate commentary make for great comedy. I admit it, I’m the least sportsmanlike of our brood when it comes to boxing and if puppets could bite, mine definitely would. Kyle’s commentary on my fights are my favorite:

“… Usually, before long, Sally resorts to illegal head butting, hair pulling, and grabbing the other puppet’s muumuus for which the ref, time and time again has to reprimand her. He will not hesitate to take a point away if such behavior continues Sally!!!!”

The show at the Tralf was decent enough. My voice held and Tom’s desil leaking 80’s Mercedes Benz managed to get us to soundcheck on time. After the shock of watching my lyrex’s pornographic debute at the throat doctor’s office, Tom drove me back to Buffalo, but half an hour into the ride the car started smelling funny. Worried it might be leaking carbon monoxide into the main cabin we stopped at my pop’s place in the Berkshires to check it out.

My dad’s no car expert, but he jumped under Tom’s hood like a well-oiled mechanic. After careful analysis, he decided it could be remedied with some dental floss (his goto tool for almost any project).

His fiancee, Kim, and I made soup and veggie burgers for our burly dental floss-wielding technicians. Pop and Tom returned, covered in oil, their faces blackened with assurances the carbon monoxide situation was abated. But as we waved goodbye and got back on the highway, I was more nervous about the repair job than the possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning. But we managed to survive the rest of the ride and as we pulled up to The Tralf I was starting to wonder whether dental floss might be the cure for all the world’s woes.

—

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Boulder, CO – “Vanity Fair”- Between Tours – August 30, 2000

After the John Cafferty show I flew to Martha’s Vineyard for a family photo shoot with Annie Lebowitz for Vanity Fair. I know, this is a huge honor and how dare I mention all this privilege in one sentence. It’s disgusting—an embarrassment of riches — and I should hate myself for normalizing it and I do, believe me, but it gets worse. In the following days, People and US magazine sent reporters to the island to do stories on me—Just ME!!! and I got all caught up in my ego’s sparkly spiderweb. The attention made me drunk and blind and disgustingly ambivalent about it all. Make-up artists curled my eyelashes, lighting specialists lit angles I didn’t know I had and cameras snapped mechanical bites off my soul.

But as the fog of attention lifted and I made my way back to Colorado on the 25th, I felt a brutal hangover from drinking so much false love. I was worried about how easily I’d given myself to the adrenaline and glitter of being celebrated. Didn’t I know better than to get high off that kind of affection? Hadn’t I gone to therapy for a year, for god sake, to ensure I wouldn’t get hooked on applause and yet there I’d been—no resistance whatsoever—guzzling for the cheap buzz People and US and Annie and Vanity Fair offered. I wondered, as I wandered past first class, to my coach seat in row 16B, if my recent heartache had something to do with how readily I’d welcome the drug of artificial affection.

Thankfully, Boulder brought me right back down to size. Rehearsing for a week in a rundown, grungy garage warehouse sandwiched between a homeless shelter and “The Bus Stop” (Boulder’s local titty bar) will bust even the most resilient of egos.

Tonight was our last practice before we leave for the West Coast tomorrow. The warehouses were quiet when I arrived at 7:30 but within the hour, 20 bands would fill North Boulder with a soup of colorful sound—Thrash, Bluegrass, Punk, Rock and Reggae would all blend in the humid air outside our open garage doors until the neighborhood was a brick of impenetrable noise. There would be bad covers of “Brown-eyed Girl,” bad covers of “Blinded Me with Science,” and bad covers of “Fire and Rain.”

While I strung my guitar, musicians skulked like skinny, crooked shadows in the slick, wet parking lot — smoking cigarettes and waiting for their drummers to show up.
Some of them actually live out here in the warehouses — those who can’t live off their gig money or tour too much to justify paying rent on a real apartment. Kyle, our own drummer, used to be one of them. He showed us where he’d made his bed in the very space we were practicing in. “Unit #50 costs $35 bucks a night whether you’re rehearsing or sleeping,” he told us.

Even though it was raining, we left the door open, like the rest of the bands, to avoid the musty, dank, moldy stench that grows on you if you hang around one of these spaces too long. The fan was on and I came up with the brilliant idea to spray my gas station imitation Drakkar into the spinning fan blades to make the room smell better, but when I spritzed the fan, the imitation Drakkar flew directly back at me, into my hair and eyes. The guys howled at my idiocy and I laughed along with them.

We rehearsed for a couple of hours just to polish intros and outro’s and then, loaded up the van. We leave for Salt Lake City in the morning. As I helped Delucchi shove the last guitar into the boot under a yellow street light I thought back to Martha’s Vineyard just days ago — how fast I’d gone from feeling like the bell of the ball to just another struggling musician in a van. I hugged my guys goodnight and drove home to get one last good night’s sleep. I crawled like a hermit crab into my bed and dreamed of the road ahead. It’s good to have my feet on the ground again.

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St Louis, MO – “Disaster” – Cicero’s – May 31, 2000

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.

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.

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Martha’s Vineyard, MA – “Gig with Mom” – February 27, 2000

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.

What it feels like to go into my writing world

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.

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Martha’s Vineyard, MA – “Sharing Mom’s Spotlight” – Hot Tin Roof – August 28, 1999

This stage is where I had my first taste of the spotlight. Back then I knew, curled around my mom’s stems, shaking from head to toe with nerves, I never wanted to leave. I’d sung backup “Lalas” on a song called “Jesse” for my mom’s most recent album and she invited me to join her on stage for a live performance of it.

Sally on the “Lalas”

I was both terrified and enticed by the invitation. I thought “Maybe, if I’m good enough, I’ll get a record deal and go on the road and get to skip school and my friends will like me because I’m famous and not just because my parents are famous and then I’ll feel worthy of being my parent’s child and not have to feel ashamed of being unworthy of the life I was born into and try to make myself invisible or people please to make up for not being good enough, pretty enough or talented enough.” I probably didn’t have words to go with these last thoughts, the nuances of those would come to the surface only after years of excavation in therapy, but that was the spirit of them. I stood in the shadow, stage right waiting for Mom to say my name, and then finally…

“For this next song, I’d like to introduce my daughter Sarah Maria, or as we call her ‘Sally’ to the stage.” The Hot Tin Roof was packed to the gills. A roaring cheer erupted from the crowd as I stepped into the spotlight and took my first hit of off the stage light. It electrified me like cocaine. I knew immediately, the way a junkie knows the first time they taste their drug of choice, I’d need more. My eyes adjusted to the light as I approached my mom. She’d pulled her mic off the stand and held it to my mouth. I said something nervously like “hu-llo,” which lit up the crowd with laughter and more applause and made me wish I’d said more cause it felt so damn good to feel their attention and adoration.

Mom counted off and I stared up at her waiting for my cue. There were other performances, other “lalas” on other stages. But after the Hot Tin Roof, I was only ever chasing the dragon. That performance was the closest the stage has ever brought me to seeing God. It was an out of body experience. I felt my feet go numb, my breath caught in the butterfly netting between heartbeats, the room spun and all the smiles in the audience were pumped, like one big jucy hit of cold air into my tiny 4-year-old body.

Now, it was my turn to hold the spotlight at the Hot Tin Roof and invite my mom to the mic. It was one of those moonless, chilly, fall nights and trees whirled their leaves like pompoms in the dark. The venue was packed to the rafters with familiar faces and I joked between songs, “I think it’s fair to say I’ve either kissed most of you or that we’re related.”

When I introduced Carly Simon, the applause came in deafening waves. She sauntered out swinging a strut so familiar I almost forgot we weren’t back at home in our living room. I was so proud to have her on stage with me and imagined how she must have felt, 20 years ago, watching little Sally, wander into her spotlight. Mom was as shimmering—perfect, gorgeous, dazzling, and mesmerizing as ever. We sang in perfect harmony, hamming it up for the crowd and dancing in moves we rarely displayed outside of the privacy of our backyard. Being together on stage, on THIS stage in particular, was the most fun I’ve EVER had, and at the end of the night—after the stage lights were cut, and the doors had been kicked open and the scent of wood fires filled the air, and the August winds rushed around the club like a Tasmanian devil, I was still intoxicated from the buzz of the stage.

The leftovers from the crowd huddled around the bar, in patches of ferrydust-filled halo lighting. It was just like old times. As a summer job at 18, I used to take tickets at the Hot Tin Roof and I remember sitting slumped over, shoes off, throwing limes, and slinging beers down the bar to the other staff after the last encore had been sung. It was nice to see the post-show tradition lived on.

Footnote:
Jeremy Lichter—the guitar player who didn’t work out—was there. He said he was playing in a cover band called “Weed.” While we’d parted ways under not-so-good terms, there were no longer any hard feelings. Just goes to prove time does heal all wounds.

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Amagansett, NY – “Days off with Mama” – Stephen Talkhouse – June 9, 1999

My two days off with my mom on Martha’s Vineyard were delicious. She fed me on memories of her childhood, tucking them around me like feathers in a nest. Like a thirsty plant, I drank her history in gulps letting her sensory-rich imagery add new coats in scene-by-scene detail. She painted a picture of herself as a young girl, growing up in an apartment building in Greenwich Village which her father bought to house his entire extended family. There were grandmothers living together on the 3rd floor and naughty uncles in the basement. There were crewel aunts with voodoo dolls, cousins who organized family choral groups, and doormen who shuttled them between each other’s lives. She was a free-range child in this colorful building of characters, visiting different familiar portals whenever she got tired of her current settings.

She described how she used to steal jewelry from her mother, like Robin Hood, to give to her nanny Allie 2 floors down. It became a joke the grown-ups had as they watched Andrea Simon’s jewelry carted out in little Carly’s heavy pockets each morning to be returned by Allie before dinner as they all laughed behind their hands at young Carly’s early Socialist instincts. Mama described her sister Lucy’s love for bread inspiring her to hoard and, later for others, to discover molded glutenous stashes in the back of drawers and under beds. She gifted me visuals of her mother’s high pompadore hairstyle and shoulder pads which bolstered her 5’4” frame to what my mama considered Amazonian proportions. She described her mother’s wide toothy grin and charm bracelets that tinkled when she came to kiss her goodnight in mink stoles before the theater. She recognized her father’s charm, creativity, and depression. She remembered his last days huddled in a topcoat in an overheated room pulling down the shades on the windows and locking the doors as a means of shutting death out. We drank tea, our long legs tucked under us like deer hooves, laughing in bathrobes and leotards meant to inspire some form of fitness that never came to pass.

Despite the restful break at home, I found myself missing the road and my band even more. My pal Heidi, who’d already planned to attend our NYC show, offered me a ride and on a overcast morning, picked me up down my long, puckerbrush-lined, dirt driveway. In a reversal of roles, I kissed my mom fairwell and headed back on the road.

We were on track to meet the boys on Long Island well ahead of schedule, but just before exit 1 on I-495 N, Heidi’s check engine light illuminated. “Check Engine?” Heidi mused aloud before panic set in and smoke billowed from under her hood. Something metal inside the car screamed and green coolant splattered the windshield. This chaos was exacerbated by our convertible’s top being down. We pulled over, wet and coughing, and I called AAA.

Our rescuer, Dave, towed Heidi’s vintage Aston Martin and, charmed by Heidi’s beauty, repaired her car on the spot. We expressed our gratitude with a CD and a dime bag of weed and made it to the Long Island ferry just in time.

Stephen Talk House at first glance, looked like your run-o-the-mill Long Island bar, but inside, lining the walls, were photos of every famous musician you can think of. It was surreal to think I’d be playing on the same stage as legends such as – Jimmy Buffett, Paul Simon, Taj Mahal, Ronny Wood, Keb’ Moe, Luther Allison, Koko Taylor, and Kris Kristofferson just to name a few. Unfortunately, we hadn’t publicized our gig very well and The venue was quiet, save for a few delightful fans and sports enthusiasts there for the NBA playoffs, their occasional cheers reminding me of past gigs played under the shadow of televised sports.
Despite the mixed audience, we had a memorable night, hoping for a return – ideally, after the Knicks win an Eastern Championship.

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Pittsburgh, PA – “Uncle Liv” – Three Rivers Festival – June 6, 1999

I’m up in the air. Uncle Livingston is flying. He lets/makes me take off and fly the plane for a couple of minutes, under his supervision. I’m scared, and who could blame me after my plane accident in Peru, landing on the PanAmerican Highway and hitting a car. *(See plane accident here. Be sure to scroll).

My voice is scratchy, and I’m exhausted after an all-night drive from Ocean City, MD, to Pittsburgh last night.

We’d rushed loadout and departed at 2 am after the gig. In the door light of the passenger seat, I changed out of my pink top and tight black skirt trading them in for green sweatpants and a pair of knee-high orange striped tube socks. Starting a road trip so late at night reminded me of road trips we used to take from New York City to Martha’s Vineyard when I was a kid. Since my mom was not fond of flying we’d drive up to our summer home in an old 1978 New York City Checker Taxi my dad bought and painted white.

We’d slip out of our apartment on 135 Central Park West after the scary paparazzi that swarmed our stoop from noon til night had all gone home. I remember the coldness that bit at my exposed skin as my father bundled me in a duvet and escorted me from the building to the chubby car. I remember the empty streets and the traffic lights that turned from green to red for no one.

Inside the Checker, my dad would have laid two massive cushions from our couch upstairs into the foot well on either side of “the hump” and that’s where Ben and I slept while my mom and dad took the front seat and blinked back sleep to drive through the night. My mom would wake us when we got to The Woods Hole Ferry.

Those mornings on the water, the first boat of the day, sipping clam chowder from styrofoam cups, feeding gulls oyster crackers off the bow of the deck. Those moments with my mom and dad still together, before the sky shook off the stars, before the haze lifted off the shoreline, our eyes still coated in dreams- those were truly the best times of my life. I can still feel the excitement of summer just beginning, barely opened, like an unwarranted gift.

Back in the van, I propped a hard-cover book behind me to support my lower back and pressed some yellow earplugs into my ears. Brian drove the first shift and somewhere outside of D.C., stopped for gas. In the parking, Bri made silly pig faces and grunting noises at me which I videoed through 4 a.m. blurry eyes. We sang “Happy Now: …stopped for coffee on the way….” when he returned from the gas station with two pipping cups, one for each of us. Our singing woke the rest of the band.

https://open.spotify.com/track/51ceJsSfdfW96uCpYScj4O?si=75a96b0b02774cce

We all swapped seats and Delucchi took the wheel. Having secured the comfiest seat for the first stretch of the drive, I agreed to the least comfy seat for the second. The least comfy seat is the one directly behind shotgun. It’s wretched because you have to sleep with your knees propped into your chest in a vertical fetal position. Somehow as the drive continued, I managed to maneuver into a horizontal position with my feet against the door panel but when I woke up at 6:00, Soucy’s butt was on my ponytail stapling my head to the seat, so I just went back to sleep.

When we arrived in Pittsburgh it was sweltering. The haze was thick and it was as muggy as the inside of a shower stall. My pants stuck to my legs as the five of us birthed ourselves from Moby’s womb and slugged through The Three Rivers Festival fairgrounds. Dazed from the all-night drive, we wandered past cotton candy and fried dough stands and shacks advertising “Chick’n on a Stick’n” and “Veggitarian’s Delight All Pork Hotdogs.” For breakfast, I chose a $4 Chick’n on a Stick’n” and a cherry snow cone which melted immediately in the heat into a pool of cherry slush.

Our outdoor arena featured a giant lawn and a big stage with a white clamshell dome where we found my glorious, tall, and very awake, Uncle Livingston. He was a sight for sore eyes and his Taylor-isms made me miss my ol’ man. I was delighted to introduce him to my band who fell in love with him on the spot, mesmerized by his interminable energy and captivating storytelling. When I mentioned we had two days off he offered me a ride to Martha’s Vineyard on his plane in the morning. I took him up on it.

Now, halfway through our 3-hour flight, and almost at the bottom of a thermos once full of coffee, Liv excuses himself: “Can you hand me that gallon pee jug in the back?” I giggle as he puts the plane on autopilot and turns himself around in his seat. But half an hour later I’ve got to use it too!

The clouds are curdling up here as we float close enough to skim them like foam off the top of a latte. The peacefulness of the untouched sky is unmatched save for some of the snowshoed forevers I’ve been privileged enough to meet.

Thanks for the ride Uncle Liv.

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