Chapter Twenty-One

"I'm not just a girl. I'm a girl with a guitar..." I wrote in Girl To City. Guitar is part of my identity, and it's not always easy how that works. A big part of it is about feeling free.

Writing Dancing With Joey Ramone, touring with Steve Earle.

Early solo version of DWJR from an interview on KUT in Austin. 

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Chapter twenty one I met another singer songwriter who was also a mom. Shelley had a crystalline voice and made flawless bluegrass records. She'd been raised Catholic, like me. Turned out we had something else in common. She had a civilian boyfriend too. Jeff was a doctor, some kind of surgeon, divorced with a big house in Memphis, three hours to the west, just like Charles was three hours south. When Shelley or I played in the round at the Bluebird, or had out of town gigs where the audience sat rapped and blessed us with applause. Charles or Jeff could stand proudly by after the show with an earshot of the merch table as the kudos rained down. You were wonderful and I love your voice slash song slash that record you made. These men took some credit for the work we did, work we'd been at for years, before ever laying eyes or anything else on them. Because now they were helping sustain us, weren't they? By believing in our talent, by loving us. Female artists often think they have to choose between work and love, unless they're married to fellow artists or musicians, and that's its own balancing act. It's rare to find another artist who will always be on your side, no matter how their own work is going. But thanks to the generous nature of our exceptional men who weren't artists but lovers of the arts, Shelley and I could each have it all. Except, just like Charles, Jeff demanded to keep tabs on every aspect of Shelley's life away from him. Who was that male fan spending extra time looking at all her CDs? What exactly did she talk about with a certain male co-writer? Sure, the one who seemed gay wasn't a problem, but that recently divorced guy, wasn't it a little intimate spending time in his apartment? And did she really have to meet up for lunch with a male friend? I mean, what kind of message did that send? Was this love or patronage? Shelley and I wrote a few songs together, warily keeping in touch as her guy and my guy made us each increasingly uncomfortable. We could see what was happening. Clearly something was off, but we were like two drowning people shouting help at each other. As if he knew I was on the edge of slipping away, Charles doubled down with the gifts a sleeker, faster laptop. They practically give these away at work. Pro Tools interface and recording software. I'd been happily making demos on my old Tascamporta studio, but the new standard was digital. Nothing but the best for me, Charles insisted. And wasn't it time I replaced my guild guitar with something better? The blonde acoustic was a part of me, but held a flaw, a warp to the neck no luthier had ever been able to solve. I was always breaking strings. It was such a frequent and unwelcome part of my show. I'd even titled a live solo CD, I've got the world on a broken string. For thirteen years the guild had been my guitar, although I also enjoyed playing the Green Greco semi-hollow body electric my brother Michael found in Tennessee. I loved the unreasonable power of an electric guitar. I'd had a moment of kismet and possibility out west in 2002. Guitarist Tony Gilgeson brought me to meet a guy called Fat Dog in Berkeley. His shop, Subway, was a worn of guitars and old gear, a hovel, but it felt like magic in there. I picked up a cheap hunk of plywood with a striped silver pick guard, sat on a chair and plugged into a little amp, and felt immediately at home. I took my gig money from playing at the Freight and Salvage, opening for Richard Shindell, and bought it. A Tysco Del Rey. It was cool to look at and cool to play. But it was nothing but trouble. The first time I played the Tysco in public in 2003 at the AAA Radio Convention in Louisville, the pickup collapsed inside the body during my second song. The first song sounded incredible, but I'd had to stop in front of the crowd and borrow Buddy Miller's guitar. I thought I was cursed when it came to guitars, having yet to learn that mechanical challenges come with the territory of playing an instrument, especially electric ones. So when Charles said I should treat myself to a better acoustic guitar, I took him up on his offer to pay for it. I searched all over Nashville, trying out acoustics, and eventually ended up at Gruen on Lower Broadway. The place is a temple to wood and steel, six strings, twelve strings. There are humidors for the finest specimens, and racks and rows of every color wood from every type of tree that can be shaped into the body of a guitar. The salesman was patient and knowledgeable, and when I finally walked out with a Gibson J forty five, I felt confident I'd found the guitar that suited me like no other. That night I slept alone in my room upstairs on Grantland Avenue, the guitar sitting in its open case. I swore the room smelled different with the Gibson in it, the sound hole giving off a slightly acrid, woodsy smell of cut rosewood and varnish, a new guitar smell I'd never known before. When I woke up the next morning, I transcribed the dream I just had, where I was dancing with Joey Ramon. Why had a new Gibson guitar built in Montana and bought in Nashville, brought me a dream prince from Queens, all the radio memories of my years spent living in New York City, listening to CBS FM, the same music Joey Ramon loved, danced around in my head and came out as a song. It hurts to say, I don't think I would have afforded myself this beautiful instrument without Charles telling me I deserved it.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

He walked into the party looking just like he had in the past. He came up to me and he didn't even have to ask.

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You need to call him, Charles said. Tell him you'd like to open the shows. I've never been good at pushing myself forward, asking for what I want. I'd written with Stacy, Steve's sister, and for years my ex-husband Will had played drums in Steve's band, The Dukes. Steve was close with Jack Emerson, and maybe the death of Jack made him feel warm towards me. Even though Jack and his partner Andy had turned me down as a solo artist, Jack probably talked me up to Steve for years. For whatever reason, Steve said yes. I do a good job, certainly. I was good at being the support, on and off in thirty-five to forty minutes. Maybe the audience doesn't expect much. Oh great, a lady with an acoustic guitar, and then I'd play balls or cynically yours or give the drummer some or don't ever change and catch them off guard. They'd laugh, they'd cheer. Steve offered me a berth on his tour bus for shows in Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. When Paul and I were together, he'd entertained me with stories of tour bus life, and I'd imagined I'd reach the point as an artist where I might even have my own bus. It sounded like a perfect cocoon transporting artist and band from show to show without breaking the force field. That alternate reality didn't show signs of happening any time soon. But it'd be nice to have the experience anyway. Steve's bus picked up our touring party in the middle of the night at a bus depot way out in the wild north of Nashville. Like the massive soundstage rehearsal complex or mastering genius Hank Williams' sleek lab on Music Row, or any number of music execs mansions I'd spied through fences on the outskirts of town. There were occasionally glimpses into the music business that served as reminders it wasn't an impossible dream. Mere mortals did reach the heights. North of Nashville there were acres of black asphalt and stars in the sky, and the very important instruction don't poop on the bus conveyed mere seconds after I'd climbed the steps and met the bus driver. One of Steve's sons, Ian, was along as guitar roadie, and there was a road manager, a good guy named Patrick. We played nice theaters for attentive audiences, middle aged folks filling every seat and swarming the merch table after our sets to buy CDs and have them signed. I was lucky Steve was between albums, and his fans already owned everything he'd put out, so I sold every CD I'd brought. The thought of playing in front of such a large crowd was intimidating. But once I walked on stage, all my gigs worth of experience kicked in, and I felt confident, knowing I had songs people responded to, whether they knew me or not. And with the J forty five, regular string breaking seemed to be a thing of the past. Steve was focused and nearly a decade sober, and after gigs the bus felt like a calm retreat, I thought there couldn't be a better place on earth than Steve Earl's tour bus rolling along through the mountains, not far from where I grew up, with a film or TV series on the entertainment system. Steve was partial to a new western called Deadwood, but I think my favorite moment was riding along beneath the moonlight in a hushed bus, everyone enthralled by a biopic called Plath, starring Gwynneth Paltrow as the doomed writer. Not the tour bus mayhem I'd envisioned. Charles was far away. I worried he'd insist on following along behind us in his car. But he was an admirer of Steve's music, and even though he fretted about me ending up in Steve's stateroom on the bus, as he felt suspicious of every man I came in contact with between the ages of nineteen and ninety, even he knew where to draw the line. After the last show, when we pulled back into the parking lot outside Nashville at 3 a.m., there was only the moon for illumination, while I unloaded my guitar and bag from the hold underneath the bus and transferred everything to the back seat of my car. As I left the protective barrier of touring and pulled out onto the road, my phone lit up like I was being watched.

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