Chapter Seventeen

The ins and outs of living in Nashville circa 2003...my picture on the post office wall; Angelo and Chuck, Rosie and Lucinda

• Don't Know Nothin' circa 2003, me and Tony Gilkyson on guitars

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Chapter seventeen Nashville made it easy, essential even, to go out on the road, but being a mom made it imperative that I come right back. Having a kid makes it hard to be rudderless. There was a built-in structure, the three PM school pickup and feeling of working towards the greater familial good that provided a sense of purpose any time I lost faith and asked myself why am I doing this? Why was I still asking myself why? I'd achieved what I'd come to Music City to do, found a publishing deal. A legitimate company believed in me enough to advance me a regular amount of money to keep afloat while I continued to write, record, and tour. I knew that my publishing advance was essentially a loan I'd never pay off without a hit song, or at least a song on an album that sold in the hundreds of thousands. A cut, another artist covering one of my songs, was proving elusive. I'd heard that Welk songplugger, the person responsible for keeping tabs on who was recording and pitching songs, considered my work too edgy. But wasn't that edge part of the reason they'd signed me? Once you'd gone from dreaming of Nashville as a possibility to living there, getting up every day, buying groceries at Kroger and bottles of wine at Frugal MacDougal, sitting in the round at the Bluebird or selling off CDs at Phonolux to make extra cash, there was no going back to how you were before. It was boot camp, spring training. Once you threw your lot in with the fraternity and sorority of songwriters, musicians and artists, whatever happened and however long you managed to stick it out elsewhere in the world you'd forever walk a little taller. The downside of the career protein shake that was Nashville was you wanted to see results, and you couldn't help but compare how you were doing with the guy or gal next to you. I'd heard Dolly Parton interviewed on the radio when her thirty-seventh album, The Grass is Blue, came out a few years back. I would just love a chance for another hit, she said. She'd been without a record label, out of step with current country radio, and had the idea to relaunch herself with a bluegrass album. But she's Dolly Parton, I thought. Hadn't she already done everything? Yet she was still looking at younger artists, wondering where and how she fit in. I kept a P.O. box at the Melrose Post Office in Berry Hill. It helped to have one, so you didn't have to share your home address with the world. Email was still almost a novelty, and social media hadn't been invented yet. I'd started selling a live solo CD, as well as my cutout albums via my website, PrepayPal, that meant buyers actually paid by mailing a check. It felt good to take charge of that record selling part of my artist's career, the retail channels proving to be pretty fickle when left in someone else's hands. It was satisfying packing up discs and writing a note to buyers. One fan sent me a photo of my first few albums at the top of Mount Everest. There were many levels of success, and I tried to appreciate the modest wins, even if I kept hoping for the bigger score I felt sure was my due. They had my picture on the wall of the post office. Not a mug shot, but an autographed eight by ten. I was in good company with friends and neighbors and even legends represented. The postal clerks got to know everybody with a P.O. box. When the branch manager came to my gig at the Suttler, a nearby club, I felt like I'd achieved a small level of status in Nashville. Across town, the Ackland Avenue Post Office had an even bigger wall of photos of instantly recognizable big country stars. But I like to think of Melrose as more like an underground club. I was a cult figure who appealed to a small group. I constantly asked myself whether it was worth continuing, even with a publishing deal. Even when the local weekly paper Nashville Scene called me 2003's songwriter of the year in the city of songwriters. The fraternity of excellent music writers in town appreciated me. Michael McCall, Bill Friscus Warren, Robert Orman, one of the first to write about Last Roundup. Craig Havaghurst, Peter Cooper at the Tennessean, Jim Ridley, and Jonathan Marks at the scene. They all wrote about me as if I belonged there, and even added something to the place. But any artist will tell you there's no there there. I remembered when all Last Roundup wanted was to put out an album. It took four years. When you're in your twenties, that feels like forever. In retrospect, I could laugh about quitting my day job the week before we left New York for our first US tour, thinking I'll never need to work again. What a rookie move that was. Maybe I'd come to Nashville with the same kind of faith, call it naivete, that a publishing deal was the answer to everything. These goals are the necessary carrot on the stick to keep pushing. No need to blame others for constantly moving the goalposts. Artists are perfectly capable of doing that for ourselves. We make a life of it. I wondered how I could access the magic formula that let you be yourself as a writer. Think Dolly songs, or Dina Carter's Did I Shave My Legs for This? Or any number of Shania Twain hits at the time. Creating work with an individual point of view, the ring of truth, and popular appeal. Sometimes I wished I could look like me only more generally appealing, and sometimes I wish the same for the songs I wrote in Nashville.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

I thought I knew what to do, I thought I knew how to do it, thought I had a clue, a blue. I thought that I was so smart, a master of the art being a button of button, master of the skin easier now that you're reminding me how nice it is. I don't know if you don't know what I'm doing. Do I forget where I live and I can't find my car? My only goal is to be really locked.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

I don't know nothing. No, I don't know nothing. The more I learn, the more there is to forget since we left, baby. I don't know nothing.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

I thought there might be a bigger artist who could use my help to finish their songs, but I didn't know how to make something like that happen, and wasn't good at asking for help. But the few times I tried to write up work with more commercially successful artists, writers, the humbling aspect stung. There was the glamorous hitmaker who had her people call minutes after my arrival at her writing studio. Yeah, it's fine. No no worries. I guess there was fear a potential co-writer like me could be a freak or stalker instead of joking about it to break the ice. What makes you so sure I'm not an axe murderer? I spent our appointment constrained, wishing I had people too, who was checking to make sure I was okay. And then there was the artist whose people needed to run it by him and get back to you if it was something he'd be interested in. I thought he was a fan of mine like I was one of his. But there was a hierarchy to these things, and critical success like mine was pretty low on the ladder. A little too well, I love her work, but yeah, most people probably wouldn't get it. Maybe I just wasn't tough enough for the game. But like Paul cautioned, Nashville had a hold on me. I was only just getting started here, wasn't I? Angelo, a bona fide hit songwriter so successful folks knew him by one name, invited me over to write. He'd also invited Chuck Prophet to work on a three-way. I'd never done one of those before. Three songwriters putting their heads together instead of the two I was used to, but it seemed worth a try. Chuck was famous for being in the band Green on Red. We'd traveled some of the same paths back in the days of Cow Punk. He was passing through town on tour with his band, The Mission Express. And when I watched them rocking Twelfth and Porter, I thought they must be one of the finest bands out there. Angelo started out as one of us, played in bands, slogged around on the circuit of small clubs, made rock albums, but was getting songs cut and even having hits writing and producing. Kim Ritchie, Patty Griffin, and Trisha Gearwood. Chuck was always putting out great records and touring. He was both an artist and a road warrior. Getting together with the two of them was a little like that old mystery date board game. Did I want to go the Angelo route, settle into a Nashville life of co-writing, aiming for cuts by bigger artists, and let touring fall by the wayside? Or was I more for the chuck door? Live it, breathe it, be it a genuine rock star, if on a smaller scale than we'd ever imagined could exist, back when we'd fallen in love with rock music in the epic, grandiose early seventies. It was that old artist door versus songwriter door thing all over again. I didn't worry about any of it when we got together in Angelo's nice house off Belmont Boulevard. Angelo was cool, Chuck a ball of energy, and I probably wanted too much for them both to like me, to feel comfortable enough to do anything more than talk a lot and find common ground. Friends on both coasts, barbecue, the beautiful production on Chuck's latest album. We didn't come up with a song, but it was a start. I think when I moved to Nashville, I'd hoped to find other female musicians who were also moms, but music was still a man's world and you needed a certain toughness to survive. I met Rosie Flores, Lucinda Williams, Alison Moore, Janelle Mosser, and Joylyn White, all unique artists and incredible singers with an edge. I sat next to Gail Davies at a dinner party at Rosie's house. Gail was one of the only female country artists to produce her own albums. Her son, Chris Scruggs, just out of his teens, played every instrument phenomenally well with everyone in town. Gail was the only mom I met who made music for a living, and I wished I could ask her how did you do both? You guys hungry? I asked Rosie and Lucinda. Hazel was asleep when we came in from the Gold Rush Bar. She was old enough to stay home on her own for a few hours now. I tried not to make too much noise, but I definitely felt a little wobbly, a little worse for wear after a couple of drinks. The three of us gathered around the kitchen island. I felt proud of my house, simple as it was. Hazel and I kept it tidy, fairly sparse, with tall ceilings, with windows up high. I felt a little starstruck at two musical heroines right there in my kitchen. Rosie Flores first caught my attention with her LA country punk band, Screamin' Sirens. I'd adored her solo country debut, loved her voice with a catch in it on Harlan Howard's God May Forgive You, but I won't. Now she was my neighbor and even helped me out babysitting Hazel sometimes. She was a killer guitar player, great vocalist, and fine songwriter with a flair for colorful Western style. Lucinda Williams was a mix of uncompromising artistic credibility and touching vulnerability. I'd been aware of her since her rough trade debut back in the eighties through my one-time benefactor and AR guy Nick Hill. And then Dwayne Jarvis, who'd played guitar in her band. Paula done a stint as her drummer. I'd never gotten to know her. I always felt too in awe and shy around her to fully be myself. But she knew Paul and I had broken up, and she knew heartache, and we were all a few whiskies along the road to comradeship. She murmured words of empathy and understanding in that voice. I know, Hun. I know. I made quesadillas. These women had been putting themselves out there and on the line for years, and I looked up to them. What did I have to offer? I was a mom. I could crank out meals and melt cheese, even with a buzz on. Motherhood made it hard to go to other people's shows, hang out and network. It was also a blessing, a life raft, a place to ground the lightning rod that is the necessary equipment of being an artist. Even though Paul and I had called it quits, I'd never be all the way alone, even if I wanted to. I had my daughter, so even though I'd lost my boyfriend or sent him away with my sulky uncertainty, I still always had a reason to get up and make breakfast in the morning. I may have floundered trying to navigate song publishing that wasn't really happening, touring that rarely broke even, the challenges of homeownership and keeping a vehicle running. But Hazel was a good kid who excelled at school. As a mom, I wasn't doing too badly. We were still most definitely living down south, but sophistication was beginning to creep in. Provence, a French artisanal bakery opened in Hillsborough Village. Provençal fabrics and yeasty loaves were a welcome alternative to the endless wait at downhome pancake pantry just across the street. Still, it was hard to picture the old country stars you spotted in the traditional places even registering these new fangled locations. I wasn't sure I wanted to see Porter Wagner clutching a baguette in a copy of the New York Times, but progress comes at a price. They said Nashville was a five-year town. If he lasted that long, he'd stay forever. I'd been there for three.