GOODBYE LIMBO

Part II - Things Get Better

I’m trying to sleep in a bedroom in a row house in Liverpool, but there’s a party raging below me.  I smell cigarettes and alcohol and I finally give up and go down to the kitchen in my pajamas.  There are several hardcore partygoers left who I recognize from the show earlier that evening.  This was a living room concert where the audience filled half the room and our "stage" was a bay window shared with a Christmas tree and large screen TV.  I’d almost convinced the jaded Liverpudlians that I was some kind of rocking chick, but as I drink milk and eat a mince pie these drunken stragglers can see me for what I really am - the uncool kid at the slumber party who just wishes everyone would go to sleep.  Luckily they're too wasted to notice.  My band (Tony Thewlis, Yan Quellien and Rob Coyne) and I need to leave in a few hours for the drive back to London, and they are sacked out in various locations throughout the house but I can’t relax.  It’s the dawn of the first day of the rest of my life and I must know it.

All year I’d been feeling like things were about to change for me, but it didn’t really start to kick in until the end of August.  I’d made it through winter, spring and summer in Cleveland.  Looking through my journals from the past year I can’t believe how much time I spent writing “must figure out how to make money” and “need to get some cash” and “look around for stuff to sell.”  When my album came out in late August I was finally busy the way I wanted to be busy, with shows lined up and constructive things to do - no time for moaning and cursing into lined notebooks,  though the financial situation has hardly improved.  I'm more and more aware that the cost of touring - gas prices, hotel rooms, plane tickets, van maintenance, etc - keeps the pay somewhere around the equivalent of working fulltime at Burger King.  But I still love going out to play.  Doing the record release at the Lakeside was a highlight, reminding me of East Village days of old as my brother Michael and I ran down Avenue B carrying guitars and foil trays full of hot dogs.   I managed a bunch of band shows with Dennis Diken, Sal Maida and Jon Spurney in the back of my minivan.  Fit a few of Hazel’s college visits in there too. 

I made it down to Texas for a few solo shows, including a night spent on the Gillette brothers’ ranch in Crockett and a chance to hang out with my friend Sharon in Austin.  Steve Goulding, Sal and Spurney met me in Chicago for an action-packed night at Schuba’s.  It culminated in me trying to catch the driver who sideswiped my van and then took off - here’s to the young woman in the Jeep who saw me running and took me on a high speed chase which ended fruitlessly but was captured entirely on Steve’s cellphone voicemail. 

Hazel accompanied me out west (more college visits) and I even had a good time in L.A., and doing a house concert at Adam and Jen’s in Visalia, and visiting with the gang at KPIG, then Claremont, then Santa Cruz.  Flew back to Ohio to tape Mountain Stage at Ohio University in Athens (my choice for friendliest college town) where I got to meet the lovely Julie Lee and actually sing next to Alison Krauss who was charmingly goofy.  The Mountain Stage people are nice people, and the band rocked with me on a few songs.  A half dozen college professors thrust their cards at me by the merch table, insisting it was a good school for my daughter.  Forget her, I want to go there!

I headed back out west and got to hear Joyce Maynard do a short reading in Berkeley, which was a real treat for me as I’ve been a fan of her essays and fiction since we were both teenagers.  Played at the Ivy Room, my new favorite dive, with Dave Gleason and my “brothers” Pat, Mike and John.  Made it to the Rockrgrl festival in Seattle in time to hear Patti Smith’s speech which wisely focused on dental care and got to play a short set and then hang out with Rosie Flores, Holly George-Warren and Dr. Norma Coates.  A real highlight was hearing Johnette Napolitano.  I participated in a panel on humor in music (which, as might be expected, was not funny at all) and tried to give encouragement to young women who wonder if it’s possible to tour and raise a kid at the same time.  At this point I'm just about ready to pass the "She's A Mom, and She Rocks!" mantle on to the younger and more hormonally viable.  I'll spend the next few years being simply a musician and writer while I prepare my "When The Grandkids Come Over - Bringing Out The Press Clippings" panel for SXSW 2021.  Met  Kathy Valentine (who a lurking fan had earlier mistaken me for, thrusting a Go Go’s album into my hands to sign.  When I corrected his mistake he had the good sense to blurt “Well, you look a lot younger than her anyway”) and writer Deborah Frost.   Caught up with Sara Hickman who has recorded “Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again” for her two CD ode to motherhood that comes out this spring.  Hell, I put in my time -  might as well ride that mother-ship as long as possible.

But back to the UK, and my post-Liverpool visit with Wreckless Eric in Norwich which really hasn't ended as I write this.  He is wonderful.  We first met on stage in Hull several years back when the promoter of my show invited him to DJ, knowing that I'd been playing "Whole Wide World" in my set sometimes.   He had a green guitar just like me and I wished I could be his girlfriend.  Met again on stage with Yo La Tengo at one of the Hannukah shows in 2004 where the Shams sang backups on his version of the "The Boat That I Row."  I’ve been a fan since the Stiff days but his version of Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” convinced me he was a genius.  Of course, our performance of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Je T’Aime” at 2005's Hannukah show may indicate otherwise but nevermind!

Marti Jones and I have been out playing our Cynical Girls shows  - we wanted to do something closer to a theatre piece even though neither of us has any experience in theater.  It’s challenging - sometimes the scripted parts fall flat, sometimes the audience participation moments go nowhere, as witnessed at World Café Live in Philadelphia:

M & A - “Does anyone have anything they want to ask us?”

Audience - Mute silence

M&A - “Nothing you’ve been wanting to talk about, discuss with a group of your peers?”

Audience - silence

Woman’s voice from the back of the room - “What about death?”

Of course we have songs and some musical performing skills to fall back on, and it’s a pleasure singing and playing together.  Having Wreckless Eric on several of the shows added a whole other element - it’s been a while since I’ve heard angry yelling from the crowd, or seen one audience member dump a beer over another’s head.  When did we all become so middle-aged?  But what fun to play “Take The Kash!”  And to sing the Roches “Married Men” with Marti.  I forgot how much I love to harmonize.  Getting to play the 12-string on Don’t Break The Heart makes me feel like Roger McGuinn.  And I do more of both next month - some shows in England with Eric, where we make like Serge & Jane only get it right this time, and Cynical Girls gigs out west.  Meanwhile Hazel’s working out where to go to college and it’s a sunny day in Cleveland.  It took me months to get it together to write this - I think I was too busy being...happy?