Chapter Twelve

Still hanging out at the artist door - late night TV, lots of touring; Patti Smith's backstage rider.

Songs in this episode: 

• Cynically Yours live on Late Night with Conan O'Brien
• They Don't Know live at Village Underground Jan 2001 (you can find that recording along with other old live & demo tracks on Faulkner, Dylan, Heinz & Me

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Chapter twelve. I'd achieved one of my biggest dreams, a publishing deal, just a little over a year after moving to Nashville. There were still gigs to play though. I'd gotten a foot in the writer door, but was still pulled towards the artist one. It had yielded just enough to keep me in the sometimes dank vestibule where booking the show was only the first step and attracting an audience was never a given. The new album had come out and reviews were good. I had a run of dates booked for the Northeast when a call came from the talent booker for late night with Conan O'Brien. Their scheduled musical guest had cancelled. Could I be in New York City at 2 PM on Thursday? I was scheduled to start the tour in good old Cleveland on Wednesday night. Luckily, Thursday's gig was in Manhattan at Joe's pub. No need to cancel either show. I hate to cancel when someone's had enough faith in me to book a gig. We could stop and sleep for a few hours after the Cleveland show, drive the eight hours to NYC, set up and sound check, do the TV taping in front of a live audience, then head downtown for a line check and gig at eight PM. No problem. Maybe it's best when opportunities sneak up on you, so there's no time to fret about them. Just a couple of tour stops, playing Beachland in front of thirty people, conan in front of two million. Business was as usual at the beach land, a combination of why do I bother with I love these people and never want to do anything else. We drove a while afterwards, checked into a motel on the Ohio, Pennsylvania border, and slept for a few hours. At six AM, Paul, guitarist Steve Allen, bass player Lauren Rawl, and I were checking out when we saw a weary looking Paul Seabar checking in. The Milwaukee based musician was on his way to Chicago after a gig somewhere back east. We all wished each other well and laughed blearily as we piled into the Aerostar. I'd made a point not to gloat. Yeah, good luck with your club gig. We're going to be on national television. Things could just as easily have been the reverse. We ploughed across Pennsylvania and New Jersey straight to Manhattan, thankfully arriving between morning rush hour and afternoon gridlock. The numbered streets and avenues, stoplights and taxi horns greeting me like family. I stopped at my old band maid Amanda Uprichard's clothing shop downtown on Lafayette Street. The guys sat in the van with the motor running while I ran in to pick up a dress to wear, and Amanda gave me an encouraging hug and wished me luck. We worked so hard for such a long time to get somewhere with our band, the Shams. Wearing one of Amanda's creations on TV would feel like having her hand on my shoulder. There was a deluxe spread of sandwiches, fruit, and cookies backstage at the late night studio. They could only work one of my musicians into their studio setup. So I asked Steve Allen to accompany me on Cynically Yours. The late night band, Max Weinberg, Jimmy Vivino and company, had worked up a note for note recreation of the doo-wop style backing on the album version of the song. I was amazed how good they sounded when we did a brief run through. What prose they were. I put on the dress, sheer black chiffon with subtle pink polka dots, then waited and waited backstage for hair and makeup. It felt like showtime was minutes away when I was finally called in. And what was the thinking behind this? The hairdresser held a wispy piece of hair between his elegant fingers, as if bad layers were catching. He twisted it this way and that, fluffed my two short bangs, tried to poof up the back and let out a huge sigh. He widened his eyes at his own reflection in the mirror. I will do my best. I hadn't known when I got a bad haircut the week before that I'd have to go on TV. It can take a while to find the right hair cutter when you move to a new town. Or it can take a while to figure out who you're reinventing yourself as when you relocate. I was in a kind of Malcolm in the Middles Mom crossed with Graham Parsons moment. And in five minutes I was on television holding a green Greco guitar as Conan introduced me. We launched into Cynically Yours and I felt magically composed, like I was in a trance when the audience laughed at the punchline at the end of the first verse. It was a sound I'd heard all my life from the other side of the TV, the studio audience, and I had them. For a second I felt like Rodney Dangerfield. I didn't think I could ever experience anything so perfect again. Or maybe I hope that this was only the first of many experiences on live television. Clearly, Conan would decide to have me as a regular on his show. We glided through the song, and then he invited me to sit on the late night couch. I kept wishing my mother was still capable of watching late night television. When I eventually asked my dad if he'd seen the show, his only response was, Why didn't you play one of your nice songs?

SPEAKER_03 5:51

You know I love you 100% of the amount I'm capable of loving you. And you know I need you to the fullest extent It's feasible for me to be meeting you. I believe in us as much or maybe more than I've ever believed in anything before I'm sure But you don't suck so I'm still ugly It's true I mistrust you But don't take it the wrong way I'm more gullible than I've ever been And if they held a contest for the person most likely to fall for your bull I'd probably win The thought of us together doesn't fill me with dread I can picture being with you till one or both of us is We packed up after Conan admired the Greco and brought out his prized Gretsch to compare.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

I told him how when my brother bought the Greco down in Tennessee, we'd been so clueless about guitars, we thought it was a Gretsch, and the salesperson in the pawn shop hadn't done anything to dispel that notion. Then it was down to Joe's pub, where I think we played a pretty solid show, never easy without a sound check. Afterwards, in Ray's Pizza on Sixth Avenue, I saw myself on the wall-mounted TV, strumming my green guitar and the black dress with pink polka dots I was still wearing. Another customer looked up at the TV. Huh, that's you, he said. Then turned back to the guy behind the counter. Give me a slice, make it hot. Just another day in New York City where they see it all all the time. Later, back in the nice midtown hotel room I'd booked at a bargain rate through Priceline, Paul and I lay next to each other in strange silence. Out on the road, beyond the bubble of Nashville, where he was the old hand and I was the novice, the balance was tipped, and it wasn't exactly an aphrodisiac to be your boyfriend's boss. I felt bad he didn't get to play drums with me on TV, and maybe we weren't comfortable enough yet as a couple to roll with a weird workplace dynamic, but it felt like something shifted. And before we'd even fully started, we'd been through Thanksgiving, Christmas, his birthday, my birthday together, our romance was doomed. By morning we were laughing and joking. Paul was a truly funny, entertaining guy, but my awkward ambition crossed with his occasionally brooding Welsh temperament spelled trouble ahead. My band and I played Boston, Philadelphia, and then suburban DC, with Sid Griffin and Western Electric. It had only been a few months since I toured with them in the UK. We greeted each other like old army buddies. I remember Preston and Sheffield, God, that was hard and cold. But I still wouldn't trade it. It seems the more underwhelming the gig experience, the more profoundly musicians relish the memory. When you were suffering, that's when you really knew you were alive. Out west to California with a completely different band, and back through the Midwest with Paul and the guys, and then a southern tour with Will Kimbrough and his band. They were all great players, younger than me, but with years of experience. Will hazed me one night by offering to change the broken guitar string on my acoustic midset and returning the guitar with one of my gold slingback shoes hanging from the headstock. I was developing a few necessary survival skills. Don't take yourself too seriously, and be prepared to laugh through the embarrassment. Things I should have learned but hadn't quite gotten the hang of growing up with four brothers. New York City, January 2001. West Third Street was covered in snow. Not the bright, pristine blanket that cheers up the whole city, but the crusting with grey kind that sat around for a few days too many. I didn't mind though. I was just so happy to be back in New York. There were seasons down south, but the winters weren't cold enough to really punctuate the beginning of a new year. I missed the enforced camaraderie that followed a good snowstorm. I pulled the Eurostar into a loading zone outside the Village Underground Club and put my flashers on. I could imagine Bob Dylan and Ramblin' Jack Elliot hanging around on the sidewalk out front, and remembered meeting Odeta at Folk City just next door back in the early eighties when last roundup played one of the music for dozens nights there. Even twenty years ago I'd gotten the feeling we were just one more layer in the musical strata of the city. There'd been folk and punk and new folk and indie and antifolk all right here on this street. I still like to think I was part of that continuum. My band, Paul, John Grayboff, Pat Sanson, and Joe McGinty had begun this run with a rehearsal in the city, then worked our way up to the New York gig with shows in Northampton and a ski resort in Vermont. We'd clicked as a team now and easily started unloading equipment and hauling amps, guitars and drums downstairs into the club. Then the manager led me upstairs to the dressing room at the back, enthusiasm about the incredible Patty Smith show the night before. Patty and her band here? I asked. The last place I'd seen her was Central Park in the mid-90s. Her onstage return to New York after years in Michigan as a wife and mother. Newly widowed, she'd held the crowd spellbound in hate and humidity. So intense Patty stopped her set on hearing a baby cry out to ask if baby and mother had enough water to drink. I'd realized seeing her back then how much I'd missed her. As an artist and performer, there was really no one like her, a poet, rocker, shaman, and also a mom. Artists are markers for our own lives. Could I ever be that for someone else? I hoped so. I carried my suitcase upstairs to the dressing room and was stunned by the gorgeous floral arrangement. White roses, hydrangeas, dusky greenery. For me? And there was a deli tray, cheese, bread, cold cuts, and a massive fruit bowl. I grabbed a banana thinking, at last I've arrived. All those years playing shows while living in New York, it took moving away to merit such a luxe spread. I deserved it, didn't I? Then I noticed the meat seemed to be curling at the edges. The flowers drooped slightly, and the assortment of chocolates looked picked over. The manager swept in with a busboy and started removing the trays. Sorry about all this, he said. Like I told you, Patty Smith was here last night. Whoever was working the show didn't get in here to clean up after, so let me just he dumped the deli tray into a big black trash bag. He saw me looking wistfully at the fruit bowl in the bouquet. Hey, you can keep the fruit and flowers if you want. Oh, and there's some bottles of water for you in the fridge. I parked the van in a garage, gasping at the big city prices. Locals prided themselves on knowing every side street and regulation, so they never have to pay for parking. I remembered how having your vehicle towed for not paying the inevitable tickets that piled up was almost a badge of honor. In New York, life was always save a penny to spend a dollar or save a dollar to spend twenty. My band and I set up and later that night played a great set to a full house. The warmth of the New York crowd wrapped around me like our favorite thrift shop overcoat. When they called us back for an encore, we winged our way through a version of Kirsty McCall's They Don't Know. It had been hard to come to grips with her tragic death just a few weeks before. I was still young enough that losing people I looked up to hadn't become a regular occurrence. I'd always felt a kinship with her through the humor in her songs and the mix of strength and vulnerability in her voice. Reaching to hit that falsetto note in the bridge of her song was like a salute to the heavens. It was one way to say thank you. After the show, I stuffed fruit from Patty Smith's rider into my bag, but left her flowers behind. What was I gonna do? Prop them on the dashboard of the van? We had a long drive back to Nashville. Heading out of Manhattan late that Saturday night, just Paul and me, having left the rest of the band there in the city where they lived. The stop and start of traffic into the Holland Tunnel felt as familiar as breathing. When we climbed the approach to the turnpike in New Jersey, I took a last look at the Statue of Liberty, the lights of downtown, and the Twin Towers, and wondered if I'd ever get used to seeing them in the rear view mirror.