Chapter Fifteen

Going out of print...the end of one thing and the beginning of another.

My daughter's growing up, how does that work?

Song in this episode from Til The Wheels Fall Off

Chapter Sixteen coming next week.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Chapter fifteen I received word from the record label that all three of my solo albums were going out of print Diary of a Maud Housewife 1996, Middle Essence, 1998, and The Sugar Tree, which had come out only the year before. The hatchet I never knew existed had fallen. I'd bought cheap discs and cut-out bins before, but hadn't known the feeling of being cut out myself. Cartons of my unsold CDs were slated to be smashed by a machine they kept in the cotch warehouse for expressly this purpose, to free up space on the shelves for albums deemed to have a future, like an old horse being sent to the glue factory, but without any byproduct to show for it. The smasher would reduce the music I'd poured my sweat, tears, and probably actual blood into, to useless shards and finally powdered crystals. I remembered one other time when I thought the record business might actually kill me, when the album Last Roundup recorded in Nashville back in the mid-80s was deemed not worthy of release. The disappointment was so intense, the injustice felt so grossly unfair at the time. Even the physical pain of childbirth couldn't compare, because at least there'd been the miracle of baby Hazel at the end of that. The label had done Last Roundup a favor. Years later, I saw that this shelved album wasn't the lost classic I'd imagined it to be, but rather the sound of a band and an awkward phase between charmingly primitive and fully realized. I'd learned some hustle and survival skills since those early days. The best way to handle the pain was spring into action mode. I worked out a deal to buy my discs back from the label for one dollar apiece. One day in early 2002, in the middle of a run of Northeast gigs, I drove out to Long Island and liberated my discs from the cotch warehouse. I was hungry and thirsty by the time the exit for Port Washington loomed. I'd passed the Jones Beach exit what felt like an hour before. Jones Beach were in 1988 Will and I took ten month old Hazel to see Bob Dylan with Steve Earl opening. Now Will played drums in Steve's band. Hazel was almost a teenager, and Will and I were officially divorced. Things change, time moves on, but Bob was still on the road, a stable point we could measure everything else against. I stopped at a deli, drop a can of orange juice, coffee regular, pollin' spring bottled water, plain bagel with butter, New York in a brown paper bag. I wound my way around the office park roads that led to the Koch complex. I remembered coming here just before my first album release. I'd met the folks who worked for the label, and together we'd hashed out a poster in CD's single artwork. Now Koch mostly worked hip hop and Pokemon releases to cash in on the video game craze. I'd joked with Hazel that I would no longer be label mates with Pikachu. I backed the van up to the warehouse, and a helpful employee who happened to be a fan led me to the pallet where my discs were stacked up in cartons. I wrote a check, and as I pulled away from the massive warehouse, I half expected two guards to come running after me in flak jackets and rifles, trying to stop me from taking control of my own destiny. But there was only a bored seagull watching from a lamppost. So this is how dreams end, I thought, not in a burnout blaze of glory like Chris Christofferson in a Star Is Born, old and washed up, smashing his sports car in the desert. Just a practical move by a middle-aged lady in a minivan. A moment that felt like a defeat was actually a step towards liberation and self-sufficiency. Too bad I couldn't see it yet. Koch asked me to put together a best of album. A little embarrassing because, well, three albums don't exactly demand a career retrospective. Still, my trio of solo albums wasn't a bad run, and I came up with a decent list of songs to include. Though are any of us the best archivists of our own material. I added the original demo of Magicians, which captured the essence of the song better than the full-blown production on the Sugar Tree. There was also the demo of Keep It to Yourself. Those two added up to the bonus tracks that were supposed to lure in fans who already had my albums. I gathered up photos from the last half decade for the CD booklet. I was still young enough to think five years was a long time ago. Another photo session for a cover pick, this time with photographer Bridget Carillo, whose husband, songwriter Gwill Owen, was a frequent David Olney collaborator. I loved taking pictures with Bridget. I liked how she saw me through her artist's eyes. But when I look back at the photos, I wonder if I was looking for artistic success or a date. Hair colored and flipped, lips glossed, I pose on couches and beds, or plop down on a grassy bank and gaze yearningly into the camera. I'm in a camisole or halder top here, a slip dress there. A few times I tried for something more business like a pinstripe jacket, a trench coat. Was it fashion in the early 2000s or just me that didn't know who or what it wanted to be? If only I'd realized that the best way to feel cool and strong was to pretend to be a member of the Velvet Underground. I could have saved myself so much agony. Early 2000s fashion was fitted on top with low slung jeans. Shoes were spindly, feminine, pointed toes, kitten heels. Back in New York I'd wanted to stand out. In Nashville, all I wanted was to fit in and not call attention to myself. I was afraid of appearing to be a freak, an outsider, even though those were attributes I used to aspire to. Oh the ego rush, when the owner of the place told me she loved my music, she cut and styled some of the biggest names in Nashville. After she gave me the coolest haircut I'd ever had in my life, she told me to take a deep breath and then handed me the bill. Was it worth it? It was without a doubt the most I ever paid somebody to look like somebody. For certain women in Nashville, beauty and hair care were practically a religion. They were perfect looking, even on the hiking trail at seven in the morning. I'd catch a whiff of perfume and hair products, and then jump out of the way of two or three ladies who'd looked like they'd gotten up an hour early to shower, shampoo, blow dry, apply light makeup, and choose coordinated exercise wear. I felt like a mangier, greasier species. The women's voices sounded like expensive birds in the Radner Lake State Park. I envied them. They never walked alone. I did find more friends though. Sherry Rich was an Australian rocker who landed in Nashville and married one of the best musicians in town, Rick Plant. She made punky garage band records back in Oz and had recently made a solo album with Jay Bennett from Wilco. When we met, she just had a baby, and that inspired the first lines of her song idea, Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again? Life's become one great big list of things to do and buy and fix. I remembered the feeling so well from back when I was married. The rest of the lines flowed out like dictation from my past, but the idea was all Sherry's. We got a couple other songs going that we never finished, but aside from sex, the best thing we did together was form a cover band called Apple Scruffs, Sherry and me on guitars, Audrey Malone on bass. She was married to Dave Rowe, who played bass with Johnny Cash, then on a roll with his American recordings. And Dave's son Jerry, Jerry Reed's grandson, on drums. That was Nashville. Pedigrees Everywhere You Turned, in addition to pure talent. Jerry Rowe was just a kid but so good. We covered Teenage Fan Club, The Ramones, and Flame and Groovies, and only played a handful of shows that were amazingly well attended. A sure way to attract a crowd in Music City was to play covers. Guilty Pleasures and the Long Players were a couple other groups who filled rooms with the writers, artists, and side men who were often just too busy or tired to go out to shows. When I need some time to myself, I book a gig in Nashville, the great songwriter David Olmy said. We were all carrying the weight of our dreams, and maybe listening to original songs was too much pressure. Applescruffs rocked without the need for validation. Like me, accept me that overcame me when I played my own gigs in town. It could be hard to find an audience who weren't all busy doing it themselves. Applescruffs recorded a few tracks before becoming too busy with our individual projects to carry on. There was no doubt living in Nashville was a sure way to get better at writing, playing, and singing. You couldn't help but absorb something from the mastery all around. And if you were competitive, feel spurred on to improve. And co-writing was fruitful and fun. I was supposed to turn a modest number of new songs into Welk over the course of the year, and they did begin to pile up. There were 18 tracks on eighteen again, but the double meaning of the title wasn't a coincidence. I may as well have been a teenager. I was that hormonal and self-conscious. My skin even broke out again. Maybe I was regressing as Hazel was growing up. We'd been a team, shopping at Target, splashing together in the fake surf at wave country. But as any parent prays and wishes for, she was making friends and starting her own trajectory in life. I took my daughter to her first big show, dropping her at MSouth Amphitheater to see Blink 182. She'd been to so many gigs with me and were her dad, but this night was her choice, her friends. Way before every teen or tween had a cell phone, I worried how she'd let me know if she needed me. I drove the twenty minutes back home, entered our empty house, and thought, great, at last, some time to myself. Then I was immediately at a loss as to what I was supposed to do. I walked around the place like a zombie. Should I do a little cleaning? Then I remembered back when Hazel was a toddler who still took naps. I disciplined myself to take advantage of that time to work on music. I picked up my guitar and a line I'd written and a notebook popped into my head. We've been circling each other like a couple of planes at O'Hare. I channeled my yearning for love and my detachment. Why couldn't I make it work with Paul? Into a feel and a melody until there was an entire song. And then it was time to drive back to Am South. I found Hazel in the dark, crowded parking lot full of youngsters and their parents. She'd lost her shoes at the show, so carried away by the excitement of her time, her band, that she flung them high into the air. It wouldn't be long until she turned her back on Punk Light and got into the real serious stuff and beyond. But I'll never forget her happiness and how I felt a new mix of pride and sadness. Oh yeah, she's growing up. Oh no, she's growing up.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

We've been circling each other like a couple of planes at o'hair. With nowhere to land if we did, no place to go from there. Then you're talking to me like you're handling the Dead Sea Scrolls. Do you think we're gonna figure this out before we pull it out?