Chapter Nine

Ups and downs of my first UK tour, back in the year 2000

Includes a clip of Wait Til I Get You Home from The Sugar Tree and a little interview snippet, from an archive recording of The Tom Morton Show on BBC Radio Scotland

Rode Hard from The Sugar Tree (as of last week, this album is finally available to stream on Apple Music, Spotify, etc )

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Chapter nine You're not really obscure until you're nobody in someone else's country, I thought, as I leaned back in the shotgun seat of a right hand drive council van. We were headed up the M one, or maybe it was down the M three motorway through the middle of England. For almost two decades I'd played in bands and then as a solo artist. In my late teens and then again in nineteen eighty one, I'd spent time and even lived in London. I'd been an anglophile since my parents bought me Talking Stacy, Barbie's British chum from Swingin' London, who thrilled me with exotic phrases like I think miniskirts are smashing and let's have Barbie over for tea. Music, Elton John, The Who, and any punk record released between 1976 and 1982, literature, painters like David Hockney, TV shows, Monty Python, no honestly, rock follies, films and fashion. I'd eaten up anything the British served, even though their cuisine back then left a lot to be desired. I wished I'd started touring there at a younger age. America was wide, but Britain might be impenetrable. The mere act of covering lots of miles in the US meant you were likely to catch on somewhere or at least look impressive trying. The UK was so small you could go in and set the place alight immediately, or struggle for years thinking, shouldn't it be easier in a place this size? May 2000. With my new album just out, I'd flown from Nashville to Atlanta to London and headed straight from the airport to rehearsal with Western Electric, a British outfit led by American musician Sid Griffin. Sid was a forefather of Alt Country with his Los Angeles band The Long Riders. He'd lived in London for years, played in various combos, and wrote for music magazines like Mojo and Uncut. He had a thorough knowledge and deep appreciation for early American country rock, birds, burritos, and Bob Dylan. I'd met him in what felt like another lifetime, back in Williamsburg at a party thrown by mutual friends who lived in an old funeral parlor near the BQE. I'm not sure who hatched the idea for me to open shows for his new electro country outfit, using them as my backing band, but I didn't have the necessary cloud or profile to book a tour of my own in the UK, and it seemed like a good way to test the waters. Even though I'd just done a run of shows opening for Warren Zevon, playing solo and going over well with large audiences, I didn't think people would take a chance on seeing me without a band, when my records all had full arrangements and impressive players. It's a common singer songwriter's conundrum. You write your songs alone, but it takes a certain level of confidence to go out and play them that way, especially when some judge your worth as an artist by the level of player you attract. I spent my first night in London at Gina Birch's flat in Monmouth Road, the very street where I'd lived in a squat back in nineteen eighty, eighty one. The area called Notting Hill was coming up, its once grimy pastel terraced houses sporting a sheen of new money. I'd kept in touch with Gina since the punk days. She was one of my early heroines with her pioneering all female band, the Raincoats, who'd come and played Tier III, our homemade Manhattan Club way downtown. We'd put the band up and in turn she'd bequeathed her old room in London to me, and had been a good neighbor and friend my solo year there. It was gratifying when Kurt Cobain rediscovered and spotlit the raincoats to the world at the peak of his fame. And then I'd been excited to see Gina lead her own band, the Hangovers in New York a few years back. Now she was married to Mike Holdsworth, a publicist for Matador Records, the Shams one time label. In the year 2000, the world of Indy was still a small and cozy one. I felt like I'd come a long way, staying with Gina before I headed out to play gigs of my own in the UK. Back in the early days of our acquaintance, I'd been a breathless fan who wouldn't have imagined being on tour and out promoting my album. Now it was my life. Sid and the band and I drove out of London in a van courtesy of the pedal steel player's day job with a London Borough Council, the perks of socialism, as renting a van of similar size would likely have cancelled out any tour profits. At least this way Sid and I could pay the guys and come close to breaking even. First stop eight hours to the north, Glasgow had a gritty charm. Loading into basement club the thirteenth note, I'd learn over the years it's almost all basement clubs in Glasgow. I thought how we could be in New York or St. Louis or any American city, as I breathed the familiar smell of stale booze and bleach, and stepped around beer crates sacked at the side of the stage. We set up, sound checked, and ate a hasty meal at an Italian cafe around the corner. Laura Cantrell, a radio DJ friend from New York who was just coming into her own as an Americana artist, was over in the UK doing her first tour and had come for the show. I played the first part of my set solo and then a half dozen songs with the band. On stage things magically gelled after only one rehearsal, and I felt a connection with the small audience. They get me. They really get me, I thought. That feeling would keep coming back again and again, playing the same size clubs to around the same number of people for many years to come. I didn't know this yet. In my mind I was paying my dues on the lower steps of the ladder. What are you looking at, fucking bitch? In the ladies' room after my set, I made the mistake of catching a girl's eye in the mirror. I thought that's what I heard her say, but couldn't be sure. The Glaswegian accent was impenetrable. The threat of violence was a shock, and it occurred to me I wasn't in New York or Philadelphia. I wasn't even in Boston. The world was a complicated place, and I knew nothing. After Western Electric finished their set, we loaded our equipment out of the basement, and the guys dropped me at a bed and breakfast in the city, while they headed off to stay with friends on the outskirts, where the van full of equipment would be safer. Glasgow was an edgy place, not the quaint land of tea and tartan Americans imagine. A friend had collected the key for me from the landlady, no late check-ins at these establishments. I took the opportunity to use a payphone in the front parlor room. I leaned against the red and black patterned wallpaper in my short skirt, tall boots and leather coat, guitar propped against the mantelpiece that might have once been posh. I felt almost glamorous for a minute. Look at me, on tour in Scotland. I used my international calling card to dial a series of access numbers, pin codes, and finally the area code and phone number to speak to my daughter for a minute, left a message for Paul. I made my way through a darkened breakfast room and up a rickety set of stairs to a back hallway. My room was simple and tidy, a single bed and kettle, sink and toilet, with shower down the hall. Shortly after climbing into bed, I heard banging on the stairs, heavy boots, two pairs, four pairs, then female laughter and the sound of bodies slamming against the thin walls of the hallway. They were speaking something that sounded sort of like English, but I couldn't make out a word. I read my book and tried to ignore the noise of a party in its early stages. A half hour later they began pounding on my door, calling me girly and lass, shouting at me to come out and have a drink. Just a little earlier on the phone in the hallway I'd felt worldly. Now I was pushing a dresser in front of the door, feeling very alone and vulnerable. I didn't know whether the drunks in the hallway were serious or joking when they yelled We know you're in there, but there was no way to call for help. I wondered if I could crawl out the window. I vowed to never return to Scotland, Glasgow anyway. I put headphones on, covered my head with a pillow, and cried myself to sleep. Next morning, I avoided the breakfast room, afraid to face whoever had been terrorizing me in the night. I found a half eaten neutrograin bar in the bottom of my bag, and pictured my daughter at her dad's apartment off of Nolansville Road back in Nashville. Did she miss me like I missed her? I dragged my case and guitar downstairs at checkout time and complained to the landlady about how unsafe I'd felt in her establishment last night, and what was she going to do about it? She chuckled. Ah, the football, she said. Scotland versus Ireland today. But I sputtered, I felt unsafe. The woman walked off to clear plates from another table. Pre yelp or trip advisor, I imagined myself writing a strongly worded letter of complaint to the B and B, and pictured the staff and maybe even the group of unruly guests having a good laugh when it arrived all the way from America. Scotch helped. So did beer. I couldn't understand why everyone drank copious amounts of the Belgian brew Stella Artois when the UK was known for its beer. Stella was extra strong, worked faster, more bang for your pound. There was so much to learn. In Aberdeen someone told me these people really like you. They don't usually laugh so much. They were laughing.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Mamie's with me now. Amy, I have to ask it about um the way that you dissect relationships and deal with the sort of problems faced by, you know, a a single mother basically, reading a child and then having to live and trying to live the fullest kind of aesthetic and cultural and just physical life.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

Well, thanks. I I guess that felt like there was a little bit of a void there that I could maybe step into. Um it's something maybe dealt with in movies or or uh books, but not in records. So that seemed like something that needed to be addressed in in music.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

You've often been described as a New York singer-songwriter. You no longer live in New York, do you? Right, I've done. You came from Pittsburgh originally. Uh-huh. It's a big tough town, then um New York. And now Nashville. Steve Earl told me that um the thing about Nashville is you no longer have to worry about drug dealers as far as your children are concerned. You have to worry about Baptists. That's right. I'm just wondering as the mother of a teenager whether that's the case.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Well, my my daughter has been invited to several churches, you know. Um I think they kind of see us as maybe being a a little bit on the heathen side, uh, because we haven't chosen a church yet.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

In Hull, often its own little cul-de-sac in the northeast of England, I felt oddly at home. The people displayed a comfortable humility and deadpan humor. The crowd at the borderline in London groaned with amusement when I mentioned Hull, and I saw how that small northern city might be the Pittsburgh of England, Preston, Nottingham, Sheffield. The audiences were small. Some people actually had one or two of my albums, which felt like a diplomatic achievement. Every club's schedule listed night after night of tribute bands, Think Floyd, The Rolling Clones. This was the stuff that packed these places. Original music felt like a niche endeavor. Sid and I discussed how what we were doing might be anachronistic, like a tinker rolling into town. Did young people still want to do this? Did they still need to? We'd come of age when picking up a guitar was a statement of intent to be not like our parents, to be free. The gulf between their generation and ours seemed a lot wider back then. Now our heroes, the ones who'd survived, were old enough to be grandparents. The glory they'd achieved was a far cry from the reality of Preston on a Tuesday night, loading into a cold room above a pub, setting up and sound checking, eating whatever passed for dinner and playing the show, selling merch and talking to whoever hung around after, loading out and standing around a convenience store for ten minutes, deciding between biscuits and questionable sandwiches. Or was it on a night off, Sid took us all to see Chris Hillman, one of the architects of the country rock genre with the birds and the flying burrito brothers, and an early inductee into the rock and roll hall of fame, play a small room in Southampton. He was still movie cowboy handsome with that thrilling voice. To sit just a few feet away for his solo performance, then actually meet him and shake his hand felt precious, like we the audience were part of a privileged club. He'd climbed as far as you can go, reach the top of the mountain, but still had to find something to eat after the gig on a Tuesday night in Southampton. It was enough to make you cry or laugh. And so we laughed, wondering how often did grown ups get to have this much fun, even if it sometimes felt pointless. When I said goodbye to sit in the guise of Western Electric, I missed them before the van pulled away, even though a week earlier in Leicester I'd been convinced they were trying to ditch me. Maybe it was Leicester, but mostly it was me, the typical artist mess of ego and self-conscious insecurity. There's no easy way to come together as a band. Loyalty has to be either earned or well paid or both. I wrote none of this for the tour diary I'd begun keeping online in 1998, sending my updates to the fan who knew HTML and had offered to maintain a website for me. I remembered a fellow musician friend's advice when anyone asked how your tour went. However many audience there were, double it. Yes, what happens on the road stays on the road. The people back home only need to know you were out there. I left out the Glasgow B and B, the fears and doubts. At the end of it all, what's important is I showed up and did my best. I toured the UK. Back home in steamy Nashville, through jet lag and a cold amplified by weeks of damp weather and smoky pub air, remember smoking in bars and pubs? I pulled out my dog eared USA Road Atlas. A new agent was offering to book fall dates for me. I wondered if it made sense to start in Cleveland, knowing how hard it could be to get an audience there. Not quite as hard as Preston in the north of England on a Tuesday night. Maybe New York? That was only a seventeen hour drive away.