Someone asked me if the songs are all there yet. The songs have been here, committed to tape (not exactly tape anymore— digital tracks but I like to think of the recordings as existing in a physical realm) for almost two months now. I mean, the words, chords and melodies were formed before that. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to have to write IN THE STUDIO, rather than come into recording with a load of compositions already existing? In the case of this record, I got inspired and added a bridge to a song I wasn’t sure had enough going for it, but other than that these songs already had a life: some demo’ed, a few even played live a number of times. But that’s just the beginning—call it kindergarten.

Back in early July, Eric tidied up his studio, a modest room at the back of our house with one window looking out at the neighbors’ narrow driveway and the brick side of their house. That window was replaced by Eric and our friend Rick the builder who sadly died in June. A lot of our time recording this summer has been mourning Rick who we loved dearly. We laugh at things he would’ve said or quote stuff he did say, or marvel at work he achieved helping Eric soundproof the studio and build a shower room, all of it bearing the stamp of a heavy metal-loving ex-Air Force builder from Kansas. The lower half of the studio window has the beaded curtain Eric made for our old house in Catskill, with beads he purchased at Joann Fabric (RIP) and strung by hand. I spend a lot of time staring at the colored beads.

The other window looks out onto what the British call a conservatory. Americans might call it a sunroom or garden room. I tend to switch between all those names, just like I never call a room with a TV an arbitrary word like the “den” or snug. I’ll definitely say a kitchen is a kitchen, a bedroom a bedroom. Our friend Gina was here the other day and she called my office “the sewing room” which I think I took offense at because I like to think of it as a place of great possibility in the fields of music, art and literature and tend to do my sewing at the kitchen table. But after Gina left I warmed to the idea of calling it The Sewing Room, maybe even imagining myself painting a plaque saying exactly that to hang above the door…

But there’s no time for that now. Or anything else really. There are twelve songs committed to a digital world and we’re now at that point where quite methodically we’re going through ticking off jobs that need to be done to each of them. There’s a column on the right hand side of a whiteboard that shows two songs mixed and five ready to be mixed. The column on the left has five songs needing…things doing to them. Some need another guitar or percussion. Some choices have to be made about vocals. There’s one to which Eric has threatened to add what he calls “the catastrophe box”…

When we started this record, I claimed I wanted it to be “stripped down and basic, y’know, just vocal and guitar and maybe some added touches?” But recording, like writing, has a way of telling you where you need to go, if you just let go of a pre-imagined destination and follow along. Obviously a song has to be in a key (though you can always add a modulation - ha, can’t think when the last time I did one of those.) You need to get an instrumental track or two down so you can pitch the singing, and maybe to do that you need either a click or a beat box or an actual drummer. Or nothing. Sometimes you just go with your own rhythm, especially if you don’t intend to add anything else.

But once you get started with the bare bones, pretty much anything can happen.

And does: it needs more guitar and a bass. Which bass? I hear harmonies. I want a backup vocal part that says something different from what the main vocal is saying. Eric mentions the oscillator - yes please. How about some handclaps? Add a guitar figure. More guitars. The room is filled with synthesizers and keyboards and those are so expressive. We’re building a world.

I do a lot of singing. I do a lot of crying. Some of it is frustration, when I just can’t do it well enough. Singing is so personal. Backups and harmonies are fun and you play another character. But communicating the basic story is the same as writing, you can’t lie and you can’t fake it. All you have is your truth and the people deserve your best version of that.

My older brother had a heart attack on a bike trail in Washington DC a few weeks ago. He was thankfully riding with his buddy Mickey who got him to a hospital right away. I say thankfully, not because they were able to save my brother’s life —they weren’t—but because there was someone looking out for John on the trail and he wasn’t alone at the end. Mickey and John went to South Catholic boys’ high school in Pittsburgh together, that’s how long they’d been friends. John’s sons and my brothers came to his side at the hospital. We didn’t realize until they’d had him sedated for two days that he wasn’t going to make it. By that time, there was no point in me using the ticket I’d booked to fly to DC.

They found on John’s license that he’d registered to be an organ donor. It added a positive note to the ending none of us had seen coming. Had John seen it coming? He lived for the moment, refusing to see a doctor “I’m fine, I’m fine.” He was sixty-nine years old. His last text to me, sent the day before his final bike ride: I’ll be there at your gig in Norfolk (VA) in Oct. He was always at my gigs. John loved music and it was the subject of most of our conversations. He’d text me raving about a show or record. It’s going to be tough playing in VA this fall, but I’ll do it knowing John’s spirit is out there somewhere.

Where do we go when we die? I don’t know but I’m keeping John and Rick in my heart when i stand there singing these last weeks. John’s friends in VA say he was proud of me. They say they all sat around listening to one of Eric’s albums a few weeks ago. As we were wrapping up the ending of a song that started simple but turned epic and magnificent somewhere along the cosmos, I said to Eric “it’s a shame nobody buys records anymore.” Not entirely true but the large stages I imagined have been replaced by living rooms (hey they’re bigger than dens). But I do this work anyway. It’s what I’ve spent decades doing. We laugh ourselves silly sometimes at the delusion of it all. “We’re Rupert Pupkin,” we say. “Am I Rupert Pupkin?”I ask. It’s who we are and it’s part kindness —an act of good will—and part madness; it’s a form of prayer. My brothers and I were raised Catholic but rock music was me and John’s shared religion, and I know he would approve.

They were leaving LA and I texted, wishing her good luck for the first dates and long drive. “Austin will be good” I said. I started to type “Mmm tacos” my sense memory of many trips to play that town kicking in. The Mexican food had always been a revelation when I lived in New York, back in the days when there was nary an authentic taco or fresh tortilla in sight in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Then I remembered —she lives in LA. They have plenty of tacos there. She is not me.

That same day, I enjoyed reading Daniel Tashian’s Substack. He’s a songwriter, musician and producer I encountered when I lived in Nashville, never got to know him well but he was nice and cool, and I love learning more about him through his writing. He’d quoted a bit of EB White’s essay Once More To The Lake, and the quote felt so apt I went searching to read the entire essay.

White is re-experiencing his trips to the lake his family took every summer through his son’s experience: starting the boat’s outboard motor; the lapping sound of the water, the smell of Maine. Shopping at the little grocery, ordering pie in a diner. His feeling of remembered peace, multiplied by his son’s experience of the same summer activities.

I realized I was doing the same thing. I was mentally in the van with my daughter, out on tour.

On White’s essay, Daniel writes and it’s just brilliant: “There’s a point at which you can’t live vicariously through your kids anymore. The brain becomes aware of the charade and won’t let you proceed with impunity.

I was not only doing that, I was also feeling a burning urge to share my own experience. It’s so hard to not be “that guy” sometimes. The one who says “Tucson - you HAVE to stop at (insert obscure esoteric eatery name here) for their enchiladas suizas…”

or “omg Houston - hottest show I ever played, it was 100% humidity AND we had to carry the gear up a fire escape to load into a warehouse with no A/C.”

It’s hard not to be that guy, the know it all, and a parent at the same time. It is SO hard, and I fight my inclination to share, share, share with my daughter—here’s how it was for me! I was there! I know that place, that venue, that drive. It’s what musicians do, our common web of touring, but combined with being mom—please don’t let me be that mom. Oh hell I AM that mom sometimes. I’m only human.

Somewhere along the first week of the tour, I noticed Hazel’s location was showing up in our texts, and I remembered back during her wedding week last fall, we did location sharing on our phones. Now I was really hooked.

“They’re in Amarillo now!” I’d say to Eric. I was in England but I was also in the van, with the band.

“Did you stop and see those half-buried Cadillacs?” I asked annoyingly, via text. I’D never had time to see them, I know it’s usually impossible to make detours for interesting sights on tour.

“How was Austin?” I texted. “No New Orleans?” What was Atlanta like? I imagined the heat, the fried chicken and barbq (though these days bands might skew to a vegetarian majority…I remember clearly dear Duane Jarvis as the only non-meat eater on a tour, stopping at Skyline in Ohio, him crumbling saltines and making do with the toppings while the rest of us tucked into beef chili…)

She had a chance to visit her dad’s family in North Carolina and I felt glad for her, to see her dad’s mother, the gracefully indomitable Anne Rigby, one last time.

No Nashville. As my daughter traversed the country, I was working through parts of it in the recording studio: Our Old House, a song I wrote during a visit to Nashville. Everybody Loves the `Burgh - my hometown. Between recording an album and also the podcast episodes for Girl To Country, stuff kept intersecting. The tour when Hazel and I did songs together, back in 2004. Each time I read a chapter, I’m unprepared for how emotional I might become reading my life out loud. The death of my mother. The pride I felt seeing my daughter so comfortable on stage for the first time. That’s the latest chapter I recorded and it tore me up, feelings I didn’t have time to register back when it was all actually taking place. I don’t know whether or not to edit out my stifled sobs.

Back out on the road via Hazel, it was like she was retracing some of our steps. That’s what you do on tour, even in a country the size of America. Some are places you’ve lived, have family. Went to school. Brooklyn, Cleveland. Chicago.

I woke up one morning to see she was in Maumee OH. The name of the town sounded so familiar. A hotel exit near Toledo. So many nights spent in Maumee for the simple reason it’s on the way to and from Chicago, Detroit and other Great Lakes cities and towns. I couldn’t help myself, texting to her about the headstock of a beautiful Harmony guitar Eric had gifted me breaking off in a fall from a luggage cart in good old Maumee.

They hit Detroit, a last minute gig with only 35 people— I thought hey, I’d be thrilled with thirty five people in Detroit, but I didn’t say it. Her tour is not my tour, it’s Cory’s tour, and they are rocking each night for a crowd.

Then she was heading away from familiar environs. Driving west through Nebraska. No kindred experiences to share with her, via text or silently, except a fun show in Lincoln back in year aught eight seven, and me and Eric’s epic two hour set for one paying customer in Omaha circa 2012. I felt the tour nostalgia wave slipping away. When she’s back home for a little while (they play Europe and the UK Sept/Oct) I’ll still be working in the studio and checking in on her fun nature experiences and local gigs in Los Angeles until I have some more touring of my own.

The last paragraph of EB White’s essay was the one Daniel shared, and it really is shattering without trying to be. It’s sent me through the essay again and again. How the details and recognition experienced via our kids have the delicious ability to let us relive our pasts with the added joy (and also worry) a parent feels for their child. At the same time, the feeling of them carrying on doing the things we once enjoyed for the first, second or tenth time point to one inevitable thing - there’ll come a day when …we have to stop. Either because we’re too old, too feeble or just…not here anymore.

“When the others went swimming my son said he was going in too. He pulled his dripping trunks from the line where they had hung all through the shower, and wrung them out. Languidly, and with no thought of going in, I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment. As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death.”

There’s a line in Girl To City, spoken when I was twenty-eight years old: “There’s no way I’m going to be riding around in a van without seats, putting on makeup in broom closets, playing in dumps like The Nick ten years from now!” I said.

Hazel will be thirty-eight this year. The age I said I’d clearly be finished with all this youthful endeavor by. I loved when she posted a photo of herself putting on makeup between the stickers in a dim dressing room mirror. I saw myself, but I think it was me at fifty-three. Time does march on, but our world is not the twentieth century one of EB White, the details stable as a snow globe. Those old time limits we used to place on ourselves have outlived whatever usefulness they ever had.

So…Maumee. Think I’ll stop off after playing in Michigan this fall. But I’ll definitely leave the Harmony at home.

Let me start again. There’s something hopeful about summer that makes me want to shop for clothes. The warm weather feels like a chance to start again, revise my appearance. Part of that is comfort—even here in England it’s just been too warm a lot of the time for my usual wardrobe: jeans, boots, shirt, jacket; scarf.

Maybe also there’s the low stakes in summer shopping. Fall and winter items cost more. With little wisps of cotton, sandals using less material- clothes offer potential escape at a lower price.

So (ahem) - I’ve become a recurring character at the John Lewis pickup counter at our local Waitrose.

I know, I know—Waitrose is the “posh” supermarket. We’ve got a Sainsbury’s right across the street whereas Waitrose is a one mile walk or, let’s be honest, a five minute drive away. When I used to be a visitor to England, a trip to Waitrose was a special treat. It just seemed so nice in there, compared to the freezing cold Morrison’s, cavernous Tesco, convenient Co-op. I’ve tried Lidl but just can’t handle it. Sainsbury’s works overall, and is like an extension of our house at this point, I’m in there that often, so Waitrose is still a once a week outing to look forward to. I shop the specials! I use vouchers! And, because the `trose (as Eric sometimes calls it, American-izing to tarnish the glamour) and John Lewis are the same company, if you order from the JL website (to Americans I guess you could say JL is like Macy’s only a little nicer? Is Macy’s still in business?) they deliver it for free to Waitrose. So once a week, as I approach the desk, I imagine one of the very nice and cheerful employees saying to their co-worker “Here she comes again, poor thing lives in hope.” My eager eyes searching the desk behind for whatever new item I believe will be the key to unlocking my future as a breezier, more carefree individual (talking about my actual self here. At this age, in this body, in this life - not the imagined one where I’m a character in a Jacqueline Susann novel). I give a tremulous smile as the employee places the white package in my hands, probably a knowing “bet that’ll be coming back” nod from the Waitrose person as I tuck the package discreetly in my trolley and go get some groceries.

What have I tried this summer?

A one piece bathing suit. It fit but was the most depressing green color. It just made me sad. Not emerald green that makes my husband say “Is it Saint Patrick’s Day?” but sort of a park ranger green more fitting for a vest and pants to wear while surveying a swamp or fitfully checking cars in at a kiosk. It definitely didn’t say “summer beach fun” or even “municipal swimming pool” so that went back.

A potential stage shirt. Now there’s this emerald green shirt in a silky material I bought probably on Kim France’s recommendation at least five years ago. For all those years, I have worn that shirt on stage. Any time I just don’t know what I can possibly put on to get up there in front of people, I have leaned on that green shirt. I continue to see photos— dozens of photos of myself, gradually gaining weight, the fabric pulling a little tighter—until I have had to take the protective step of sealing it into the plastic tub I keep for stuff that’s on hold, on its way out of my life. I just can’t perform in this shirt again, as easy as it’s been to wear. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me (“she last came around in 2021 and, well let’s just say she has a dozen new songs since then but shouldn’t someone say something to her about the shirt? ”) So I searched and found what looked like a cool (both in appearance and fabric) sheerish shirt I could justify paying more than I usually do for clothes as I would factor in per wear cost. It arrived too late for me to take out on the road in early June, so I was convinced it would be a winner. The fabric was beautiful, it almost worked, but the sleeves just took up too much space. I thought of altering them, cutting them off at elbow length and hemming but…the qualities of the fabric, a sort of burnout lace, would’ve made sewing difficult and…well, back it went.

Here’s a sidebar: Argos. Now this is the Sainsbury’s equivalent of John Lewis, but more quotidian. I’ve ordered a rake, printer cartridges, water filters etc all through Argos. One of the hardest things about living here has been figuring out how to pronounce “Argos,” with Eric drilling me —“just say it like you don’t care” so I don’t mark myself out as too American. Thankfully, with ordering online from Argos and picking up at their counter in Sainsbury’s supermarket, there’s no need to actually say the name of the company, except when the counter person asks if it’s “Argos or Tu (Sainsbury’s own clothing line)?” I’ve figured out I can just say “Umm, the first one.”

So they were having a Tu sale and I saw some bathing suits in the store as I breezed past the ladies clothing section with groceries one day. I went on the website and ordered two choices, one a sort of pattern in a cute fifties-ish style and the other a wine red one piece. I confidently went in to the Argos counter with my order number to pick up my package—one of these had to work. And at around £20 a piece, even if it wasn’t perfect it could surely get me into the sea a few times this summer.

I expected the young woman behind the counter to hand me a small package, just some wisps of fabric right?

She practically needed a hand truck to carry the bathing suits to the counter. When she hoisted a large bundle into my waiting arms, I wanted to say “there must be some kind of mistake— I ordered bathing suits, not a whole load of patio soft furnishings!” But there was my order number on the label.

Grimacing, I headed back home. I felt like some indelible line had been crossed. Had I officially become…a matron? One whose bathing suit was no longer some little nothing you could toss in a bag, but a full blown construction project - I half-expected at least one of them to have bones and stays and include a QR code to order my own ladies’ maid for when I needed help squeezing my flesh into the thing.

So much fabric. So much hideous fabric.

Back it all went.

A sports bra/camisole for yoga that looked easy and practical but nearly strangled me when I tried to remove myself from its tourniquet-like grip.

A cheery gingham dress with sleeves so voluminous they seemed designed to smuggle drugs. It did have pockets which can be cause for celebration in women’s clothing but that just added more fabric.

I guess there was another dress or two. A few pairs of sneakers have come and gone back, but I live in hope I’ll hit on the right ones eventually. Like clothing size, I’ve gone up a full number. The sizes are all different here. And they seem to have almost done away with shoe half sizes. I’m taking up more space in a world gone wrong.

It hasn’t only been clothing attempts. My solar-powered Tyvek lantern was a triumph. But the jury is still out on the effectiveness of a “cooling” pillow.

When does all this online shopping happen? It’s usually after eight or so hours of recording, then getting groceries, cooking dinner, watching a film. I’m winding down, reading Substack, and think…maybe— if I could just hit on that perfect breezy clothing combination that will take me from the beach to a stage in a corner of a pub. I did find cute sandals that work. There’s another bathing suit on its way, a gingham check tankini. I swore I’d never do tankinis again (not one but two pieces of wet fabric to wrestle out of!) but can’t resist gingham. We’ll see…

There’s still a little time to get it right. But I just saw a few yellow leaves in the grass; an apple fallen off the tree. It’s almost August and autumn will be here before we know it.

I think I’ll just go sit outside in any old thing. That perfect sunset isn’t going to watch itself.

Gigs to look forward to, no green shirt

• Sun 26 July London UK Boogaloo Gospel Brunch (playing w/Wreckless Eric & Lassie) free show 2 PM

• Sun 30 Aug Rugby UK Dean Friedman’s SongFest!

• Sat 5 Sept Norwich UK American Library

• Fri 11 Sept Cromer UK Grey Seal Coffee

• Thu 15 Oct Oslo Norway Mir w/ Wreckless Eric & Lassie

• Thu Oct 22 Norfolk VA Vessel Craft Coffee

• Fri Oct 23 Raleigh NC Mitch Cantor’s house concert

• Sat Oct 24 Atlanta GA Criminal Records instore 4 PM

• Sun Oct 25 Water Valley MS Tim & Susan Lee’s house concert

• Tue Oct 27 Memphis TN Listening Lab presented by Burke’s Books

• Thu-Sun Oct 29 - Nov 1 Lake Leelanau MI Lamb’s Songwriting Retreat

• Thu Nov 5 Columbus OH Natalies

• Fri Nov 13 Hoboken Little City Books info soon

• Sun Nov 15 Brick NJ Rosie’s Cafe house concert

I don’t think it’s just me. I feel sure any musician who began making records in the twentieth century, and perhaps continues to this day, has that moment at the end of a take where you’ve strummed the final chord and are holding completely still while letting it ring out, taking its good sweet time across a luxurious amount of an imagined reel of tape, and the producer’s voice from a control room complete with leather sofa comes through your headphones to pierce your concentration with the good news: you’ve created a hit. It’s not even a surprise. You’ve known it was a hit since the moment the first line came to you and others followed over the space of two minutes and fifty eight seconds, and you felt it deep in your heart and soul—this! This is the one! The one that changes everything…

Okay, maybe it is just me?

The reality is different: the studio is tucked away in a house, a neighbor wheels a recycling bin past the window; a basket of laundry sits in the hallway outside the door. No matter—I’m making a record and it’s varying degrees of hope, delusion, hard work, and magic.

I’ve tried hard to be regular with my Substack posts — every two weeks is my aim—BUT sometimes other work takes precedence and in this case, it’s making a record. So, I’m sorry this post is a week behind (though sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in reading all the Substacks I follow and can’t handle the volume, so maybe I’m doing you a favour by lightening your reading load?)

Eric has worked hard to set up his studio in our place in Norfolk. Removing a woodburner, doing some soundproofing, swapping out a genteel net-curtained window facing the neighbor’s house several feet away with a piece of large obscure glass. Our friend Rick the builder, who sadly passed away last month and we are still reeling from that, helped him shift the door to open the other way (doors take up a lot of space). Eric has done a lot of recording in there since we moved less than two years ago: England Screaming, his brilliant re-recording of an early 80s album; various tracks of his own (we did do a Christmas song the first winter, Festive AF). This fabulous duo Lassie came in over the spring to make a record, the first single White Hair is out now. They’re wonderful singers and players with imaginative, memorable songs, and are helping make up Eric’s current band that also includes me (next gig at Boogaloo Highgate London Sun 26 July 2 PM).

Generally I’ve been cowering upstairs in my office since we moved here. Writing, finishing Girl To Country; making my own demos, recording the podcast version of the book. Even writing a song or two. I think I’ve been afraid to start making an actual album in the new studio because…it’s new. It’s not where I made the last couple albums. The unknown.

It’s got me thinking about all the recording over all the years. A good thing about writing memoir is I now have a memory bank over two books (and years of blog posts but those I just kind of crank out whereas with book writing I work hard to cast myself back into the moments I’m writing about, like a screenwriter in reverse) where I can dredge up scenes with very little effort. Maybe that’s kind of sad, to think that once you’ve committed moments to “literature”, there won’t be much point to revisiting, but I suppose you can always find new lenses to look through.

I think what finally got me started on this post, as I find it hard to write about work as it’s happening—feels like it might jinx it or take away from the process, to try and set down the nuts and bolts, like a magician revealing the mechanics of their tricks—I posted a photo on Instagram the day we started recording and Lenny Kaye commented, sharing a David Lynch quote, that the pleasure was in the doing. It reminded me of recording with Lenny, back in Shams days. He was such an encouraging presence in the studio. It made me want to share a few recording scenes—not to turn this post into a “So It’s Come To This: A Simpsons Clip Show”, the dreaded device for filling the void! Well, maybe I am, hey what is wrong with an occasional clip show?

So here are some recording scenes, from Girl To City , Girl To Country and the blog:

1980

Gina lived across Monmouth Road in a more grown-up version of her old room—she had a bedroom, sitting room, kitchen and bath. Palmolive from The Slits’ sister Esperanza and her husband Richard Dudanski of the 101’ers lived in the squat on the other side of the tiny street. I felt like I was living in an issue of the New Musical Express, the British music journal Bob and I had pored over back at the dorm. I was a little breathless around all of the music people I knew, especially Gina, never forgetting the impression she’d made on me at Tier 3, with her long dark blond hair shining, huge bass slung low while she swayed and shouted, with an alternately tormented and blissful look on her charming face. But she was kind, and invited me for tea or a curry, and to Berry Street studio in East London, where the Raincoats were recording their second album. I’d never been in a studio before and it was tense and technical and thrilling.

The studio felt very different from the controlled chaos I’d experienced at live gigs. I didn’t want to get in the way, so I sat very quietly as the band did multiple takes of a song. I wondered how they knew when they’d finally gotten it right.

1982

Don Christensen, the Raybeats drummer and Dan Dryden, a childhood buddy of his from Nebraska who worked as a sound engineer with Philip Glass, offered to record the first Last Roundup line-up in their studio which shared a loft with Don’s living space down on Warren Street. The six-song recording (“Let’s Get Lost,” “Bargain Bin,” “Borderline,” “Blackfoot,” “Ice Tea” and “Atlanta”) was never circulated beyond the band members playing the tapes for ourselves like monkeys who’ve discovered fire: “It’s us! On tape!”

Listening now, it’s an eerie artifact, an aural diorama of early eighties East Village settlers clothed in reverb, thrift shop garb and tape hiss. Don and Dan corralled us all around one microphone, trying to capture the oddness before we became even mildly proficient at anything. They’d seen the value in that moment of discovery, but all we wanted was to get closer to something resembling proficiency.

1984

We recorded a new demo on the 4-track Tascam Portastudio, which my brother John had sent as a gift from his travels on a US Navy aircraft carrier. Michael hung a microphone over the shower curtain rail in his bathroom to add reverb to the vocals.

1985

Cowboy Jack’s place was intimidating for a young group. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings had recorded there. The Cowboy himself, renaissance man producer/writer/legend, puttered around on the ground floor in his office or the kitchen and out in the backyard. To get to the studio you climbed a cloud-painted staircase to the second floor, where the control room was tucked away on one end, with no window looking over the room where recording took place. I hadn’t been in enough studios at the time to know how unusual that was. The whole set-up was meant to be relaxed, low-key and casual. It worked for Johnny or Waylon. What if one of them stopped by to see Cowboy Jack while we were working? We were all thrilled and terrified at the thought.

There were no headphones allowed in the Cowboy Arms. The idea was to play and sing like we did in our rehearsal room or on stage. There were to be no overdubs. Everything was going down live: upright bass, acoustic guitar, washboard, electric or lap steel guitar. And vocals.

Jim Rooney was the producer Jack and Andy had chosen. He had lots of experience with bluegrass and folk musicians, where technical prowess was almost a given. He didn’t know what he was getting into.

“Makin’ magic here—makin’ history, darlin’!” Jack Emerson shouted regularly from the control booth. He knew we had style, and songs, and a singer. We’d played dozens of shows and were a tight outfit. But the exhortations to “make magic” had the opposite effect.

Some takes, we’d pump ourselves up to where we’d almost be having fun: Michael would unleash a yell perfected at Penguin hockey games and heave the cowbell around; Angel hooted like an owl; Garth let out a manly growl and thumped the bass; I did soulful strumming, pogoing crossed with clog dancing or heavy metal head banging.

But there was take after take and the hijinks started to fade away, leaving us to face that we were good on the Pyramid stage, playing for drag queens and oddball East Villagers. Some nights—at Folk City or in Michael’s apartment with no one there but the four of us—some nights, we were magnificent. But in Music City, among professional engineers and producers who did this for a living, we felt like amateurs. Not imposters, never that. We believed too much in what we were doing to fake it. If we weren’t as good as back in the days when we were charmingly bad, we hadn’t yet reached the point where we were truly good.

1987

Unlike in Nashville where the pressure had been on to capture the entire performance in a take, all we had to focus on was tempo and dynamics. We’d played the songs so many times, the changes were ingrained. The role of every instrument was tied to the others: hear that woodblock, start strumming. Lock in with the bass as soon as he finishes that three note descent. It was simple music.

My guitar parts weren’t difficult. As long as the chord changes sounded clean, the strings didn’t buzz, and I could take it easy and not bang into the microphone aimed at the f-holes on my big black Gibson archtop, there was nothing to worry about. Overdubbing acoustic guitar meant capo’ing the guitar to play the chords in different positions, making the sound bigger and fuller. There were even little studio tricks, like when Lou slowed the cording speed of the tape down slightly to play on top of with the effect of spreading the pitch wider. We weren’t aiming to change the arrangements from what we could achieve live, just to beef things up a little. For the first time, I realized that I loved recording. It had previously been just a means to an end—a way to get gigs, or entice a record label—but now I was seeing it as a whole other realm of creativity. Those little things that happened in the room, now, that couldn’t be orchestrated, were where the magic was. The moments where the feeling came up through your hands and throat and straight into the microphone, so whatever you were feeling, a listener could feel it too. Those were the moments that kept me coming back to the records I loved. Not perfection, but glorious imperfection, the catch in Gram Parsons voice or that point in a Louvin Brothers harmony where they barely pulled themselves back from the brink of losing control.

1992

The Shams looked nothing like a band when we arrived at the studio straight from our day jobs. Sue would be in paint-splattered jeans and pajama shirt, her hair flecked with whatever decorative paint color Marlo Thomas’ or Bill Murray’s apartment renovation required that day. Amanda would be dressed in one of the latest creations from her clothing line Living Doll. I’d be in my secretary skirt and sensible shoes from riding the subway to my midtown office job. A sort of East Village People, it was around the studio microphone that we became a gang.

We recorded basic tracks first, with Sue on bass, me and Lenny playing guitar and Will drumming on some of the tracks. Unlike our single and a lot of our demos, made on a Tascam four-track, we had sixteen whole tracks to work with. It felt luxurious but there were practicalities to consider. When Will came to the studio, Hazel had to come too, and she’d arrange her Simpsons and Animaniacs and Little Pony figures on the carpeted dais behind the mixing desk until she fell asleep face down on the floor. Was her ability to fall asleep anywhere a gift or a skill born of necessity?

Most of our time in the studio was spent recording vocals. We tried it all different ways: the three of us around one microphone, or each of us on individual mics at the same time. There may have been a song or two where we recorded separately, one at a time, but achieving a performance, even if it was cobbled together from a few different takes, worked best when it was the three of us, like a synchronized swimming team or rowers in a scull pulling together down a river. Not that we were ever about discipline and precision. The Shams were a ragtag team aiming for the heights, and Lenny was a patient coach encouraging us at the very least to reach for honesty and sometimes the sublime. “Imagine air blowing through a hot metal pipe up your ass,” he said. Not poetry but it freed up something!

1993

November of 1993 I went into Pie Studio on Long Island with Gene Holder producing. We recorded twelve basic tracks in two days. I played the green Greco and sang scratch vocals, and we planned to do overdubs and vocals later at Water Music in Hoboken. The initial weekend was a whirlwind of focused concentration, almost like playing live. We’d run through each song a time or two and stick to the arrangements we’d used on stage, or rough things out on the spot.

The overdubbing at Water Music was fraught with technical difficulties: channels that didn’t work, headphones that went dead. But the studio was giving us a cheap rate so it allowed us extra time to work on vocals. I was self-conscious about having my voice exposed, with no other singers to blend into. Sue came in to sing some harmonies: this bit of camaraderie in the vocal booth was a good distraction. Standing alone in front of the microphone can feel like communion or pressure, or both. You want to give your best, without sounding like you’re trying too hard.

1996

We moved on to continue the recording at Mark Linett’s in Glendale. Your Place Or Mine was a basement studio L.A. style, with graceful swimming pool and lush landscaping outside, a trio of Scottish terriers straight off a forties holiday card and the original recording console from Western Studios. He had recently mixed Pet Sounds in stereo for the first time, sitting right in this spot with Brian Wilson. I hoped the molecules in the air held onto some of Brian’s genius.

Mark was quiet in the way of some great engineers, his sly sense of humor a perfect foil for Elliot’s. They had a competitive relationship that reminded me of brothers, and made me feel at home.

1998

I’d spent enough time in L.A. to decide I didn’t have the ego or confidence to live there; it was simultaneously too sprawling and too insular. The thought of finding a place to live and a school for Hazel, while trying to book gigs and navigate the industry side of town, intimidated me. But I returned there in the spring of 1998 to record my second solo album. Elliot Easton and I chose a dozen songs and worked at Mark Linett’s studio in Glendale, where we’d pulled together all the tracks for Mod Housewife two years before. Elliot played bass and overdubbed guitars. I played guitar; Don Heffington was back on drums and percussion, and keyboard player Tom Canning joined us on a number of songs. Recording the basic tracks was alternately blissful and hilarious— the songs came to life with Elliot full of ideas and everyone else bouncing suggestions. Nothing felt too wacky.

Some of the vocals slipped out easily: “Summer Of My Wasted Youth” and “Invisible.” But recording the harder-edged songs was torment. I wanted to be a rock vocalist—felt like a strutting rock belter in my soul—but when I stood at the microphone, all that came out were my feelings. They weren’t elevated or made majestic by lung power or bravado and technique. Try as I may, I was usually just…a person, singing my songs.

fast forward to

2024

…Eric and I were really pushing to stack up enough tracks so I could have a complete album finished before we dismantled our lives and the studio to make an overseas move. The pressure was on. I came up with a swampy guitar figure to approximate an early demo version I’d lost when my hard drive crashed, and Eric put in some brutal fuzz bass. I’d tried doing a low harmony all the way through the earlier version that had worked on the demo but sounded a little atonal over a more rocking track. Some vocals you have to work and some are better not labored over and this was one of those —don’t try to sell the song, let the words and music do the talking. Eric is a great vocal coach in the studio : “You need to be there, but resist the urge to join in,” is one of his koans that usually does the trick for me.

So gathering all this together (and I could go on and on sharing scenes from the books and the blogs over what now spans…umm let’s see 1982 to 2026, good lord I got out my calculator and that’s forty four years ), looking at the photos makes it seem like a lot of fun. And it for sure is. There are also plenty of tears of frustration, moments of futility, songs and tracks dumped that don’t work; heights reached for that aren’t achieved. But I mostly feel lucky to continue doing this impossible thing —again. Thanks to all who’ve sailed with me (many gone too early: Jack Emerson, Lou Whitney, Jim Wunderle: Don Heffington) and to Eric who works so hard and reminding me: “If you don’t do it, it won’t get done.” I see many of my fellow musicians asking “Is there any point to making albums any more?” Maybe we are like those Japanese soldiers who carried on fighting in the jungles after World War II ended. I know it’s a common analogy people use to describe persevering beyond the point of reason. Usually it’s attributed to “they didn’t know the war had ended.” Some soldiers feared they’d be punished for giving up. I like to think we’re the third variety—carrying on out of a sense of honor. Also because it’s fucking fun. Here’s to work being the destination. Here’s to still living in hope.

Meanwhile, got gigs on the horizon! info here and more to come…

• Sun 26 July London UK Boogaloo Gospel Brunch (Wreckless Eric gig, w/ Lassie)

• Sun 30 Aug Rugby UK Dean Friedman’s SongFest!

• Sat 5 Sept Norwich UK American Library

• Fri 11 Sept Cromer UK Grey Seal Coffee

• Thu Oct 22 Norfolk VA Vessel Craft Coffee

• Fri Oct 23 Raleigh NC Mitch Cantor’s house concert

• Sat Oct 24 Atlanta GA Criminal Records instore 4 PM

• Sun Oct 25 Water Valley MS Tim & Susan Lee’s house concert

• Tue Oct 27 Memphis TN Listening Lab presented by Burke’s Books

• Thu-Sun Oct 29 - Nov 1 Lake Leelanau MI Lamb’s Songwriting Retreat

• Thu Nov 5 Columbus OH Natalies

• Fri Nov 13 Hoboken Little City Books tbc

• Sun Nov 15 Brick NJ Rosie’s Cafe house concert

“It must be an interesting place to work!” I enthused.

“Do you work?” he asked. It was ten AM on a Sunday morning, I was driving to a gig a few hours south with soundcheck happening at 1 PM. He was tasked with checking out dozens of elderly ladies who’d spent a little too long in the bar the night before. I didn’t know how to answer him.

Do I work? Sometimes I feel like work is ALL I do. I thought of the last month of emailing, interviews, social media posts, travel arrangements and back and forth with venues and promoters trying to keep hope alive that anyone would come to this round of shows. Ordering books and tote bags to print and figuring out how to pay for them. How the few times I picked up my guitar to play songs felt like sneaking in a little joy and made me almost guilty, then I’d remember picking up my guitar to play songs was the whole point, but the other part can be so unrelenting I spend some days trying to snap out of depression.

So part of me felt defensive. But I also knew what he meant about “work.” I’ve worked a service job, though often compared to the putting one foot in front of the other to keep some semblance of a music career going without turning it into a trudge, the service job felt like playacting. You could walk away any time and find another. We only have one artist life, even if it takes different forms. You don’t want to fuck it up, though show me an artist who hasn’t done that occasionally or even repeatedly.

In solidarity, in sympathy, I jumped in :“Tending bar - yeah dealing with the public, it can be so challenging!” I’m a worker, man, and have been since I was twelve. I get it.

“It’s more the co-workers…”

“Oh hell yes, if you’ve got a good crew, that’s everything. One bad apple can poison things…” I started thinking I’d better get back to driving, but there must’ve been a lull in his checking-people-out duties because he wanted to chat.

“No, it’s more `what kind of mood am I in today…’ Okay - now his pouting was starting to irritate me. I ain’t your mama, kid!

“Well have you got everything you need from me?” I asked, suddenly all-business. “I’ve got to umm…get to work. Bye and see you next time!” I left him to deal with his mid-twenties crisis.

“Do you work?” What is work?

Cambridge Dictionary definition of work: an activity, such as a job, that a person uses physical or mental effort to do, usually for money.

I thought back over the last week.

There’d been the hiring of the rental car in Norwich. I’d taken the bus into the city. Parts of Norwich are ancient and GPS barely works at all in pockets so I’d grabbed screen shots of the route to walk from the bus station to the car rental place. My directions took me up a “loke” which is a local-ish term for a pathway or cut-through. This particular loke went through a sketchy back of the houses area—an array of dumpsters (“skips” they call them here) and overgrown with weeds. I heard footsteps behind me and stopped to “look in my bag” so I could see who/what it was …

A schoolboy of about twelve, burgundy blazer, smart black trousers and white shirt. I don’t think I’ll ever not be charmed by the sight of British school kids in their uniforms. I followed him up the loke, which went under a crooked old house propped up on a couple of metal poles. “Is this safe?” I wondered.

The car rental wasn’t simple - I’d booked with my American details, so the guy wanted to see my return ticket to the US. “Well…” I’m going back of course, but not til…October?” He was willing to accept my British details but only if I had a credit not debit card in the UK. These are the challenges of being a citizen of the world. I was ready to just book my US flights to fill in that part of the form but somehow between the two of us and his system we came up with a solution.

I gasped when I saw the rental vehicle. I’ve rented a lot of cars this year and this was the largest by far. The Peugeot 3008 - when I told Eric it was a behemoth, he christened it the “Ford Behemoth.” Comfortable and secure on the motorways but kind of a nightmare for the tiny country roads and parking in the tight spaces they have in Britain.

Next morning I loaded up with books I hoped I’d sell and a small PA for a couple of the gigs; guitar and some outfits. The drive to Hull was lovely —dramatic skies through Lincolnshire. I listened to Jimmy Buffett and James McMurtry, maybe it was the big skies, calling out for stories.

In Hull I set up quickly at Wrecking Ball Music & Books and hurried deeper into the City Centre for something to eat before playing. A lot of my time on the road is spent finding food—between the driving, unloading, setting up, etc I burn fuel. I ate in the nice pub where there was a pub quiz going on, with modest prizes “Eyes down…A slice of cake is the reward for getting this next one right”. In the ladies room, I heard two women talking about Las Vegas - seeing Ricky Martin and Pitbull. “Pitbull put on an incredible show,” said one. Was this really Hull? I’ve never seen a show in Vegas! Played there once, but still longing to have the visitor experience. Back at my antique table with purposefully-mismatched chairs, the dinner plate was laden with fresh salads and vegetables, and couscous! Things have changed since my early trips here…

Hull is where Eric and I met for the first time. I really wanted to read that part of my book in the city, and when I did I felt quite emotional. It was a small but focused audience and they all bought books.

reading and singing snippet by Gary at Wrecking Ball

The drive to North Shields next day wasn’t bad. I was adjusting to the Behemoth, and find the driving style in the UK a lot less stressful than US driving. The roads are way smaller and so there is little margin for error and much less self-expression behind the wheel. Eric and I share a twenty year old Audi with a fine engine but none of the modern features the rental cars have, so I appreciate the help out alone on the road–climate control, large screen for the Maps, Bluetooth sensors and self-driving features. I have yet to bother learning whether these modern cars in Britain have cruise control, as those great big stretches of cruising along for miles and miles like in the US just don’t seem to exist.

I was glad Eric had warned me it was hard to find the way in to the Premier Inn at North Shields. One roundabout further and I would have been on the fifteen hour ferry to Holland. North Shields sits at the mouth of the Tyne River —it has a roguish charm to it with loads of history. Our friend radio DJ and promoter Keith Newman showed me some sights and brought me to his boat in the harbor for some nice fish and chips before the gig. The Engine Room was really fun, the owner Mark had hosted me at his festival on Lindsifarne back in November 2024 and runs this charming small bar and music venue in a historic building. What a fun show. Everyone was supportive, buying books. I made my way back to the hotel and then couldn’t seem to park the Behemoth - the car park was very large and dark but with lots of fencing and areas blocked off, and the open spaces felt too far from the reception so I maneuvered around a while, backing in here and pulling in forward there until I felt the vehicle was securely lodged but still allowed me space to get my guitar out to carry in to the hotel. I think I was pretty tired by then.

My days of getting up early to go explore places I’ve never been are gone I guess. I tend to take advantage of the boring breakfast in the hotel so I can get some work done in my room—and even then my intentions to post a new Substack or edit my podcast often fall by the wayside as I try to answer emails and keep on top of booking stuff and advancing the other shows as well as get myself together for that night’s gig, the likelihood of a dressing room at most of these venues is nil. I did manage to stop by Mark of the Engine Room’s daughter’s cute coffee shop the Wheelhouse on my way out of town.

What a gorgeous drive to Edinburgh. Northumberland’s brooding sky, a glimpse of Lindisfarne Holy Island where I’d played in 2024. I turned to drive up the coast for a little bit and the scenery was stunning. I was the only car on the road for a lot of the time and felt so lucky to see this soulful, beautiful part of the world - welcome to Scotland.

The gig in Leith was a little challenging—I had made the mistake of thinking I could just promote it myself, had sold tickets and done the best I could from far away but Edinburgh always has lots of stuff going on and the likelihood of people finding your gig there on any given night without some serious presence is not great. Colin who’d booked my last Scottish shows that went really well has been out of commission but I forged ahead anyway. I really liked the Depot room where I played and some nice folks did turn up but early on I realized there was only one other woman in the room (by midway through there were three of us) and I had to remark on that—like when we saw Rickie Lee Jones in Suffolk last month and this big hall full of older women reaching their arms out towards her, an our-age artist up on stage and I just wanted to shout “I’m here too ladies, I’m right here, living among you…” I don’t know how to find more women to play for but I want to.

My friend Lindsay took me in to see the Biba exhibit at Dovecote Studios. I was in a wonderland of fabulous Biba clothes and ephemera, when on the way out in the handwritten wall of Biba memories, I saw that someone had written how David Hockney passed away that day. It made me so emotional, what an artist! who I’ve loved since i was a teenager.

That night in a church hall in Linlithgow, a good crowd came out for the readings and songs. Lindsay had happened upon a small independent bookstore there in the town and Sally the owner was so nice to work with, she ran home for some lamps to help make the set up look homey and the locals were a fun bunch to play for.

Next day in Glasgow, an afternoon show. Upstairs at the Doublet Bar, a proper old Glasgow place where I’d done a rocking trio show back when Hang In There With Me came out. There’s something just magical about the room. I so appreciate Stephen/ Pastels & Monorail and Paul at the Doublet for having me. During the gig, I read the part of Girl To Country where I felt terrorized in my B&B room twenty-five years ago, and vowed I’d never come back to Scotland again. The worst parts of the story were the ones that made the audience (and me) laugh the most. Sometimes people ask if writing is like therapy—again, back to the “Do you work?” question. Writing IS work, not therapy—the end product intended to benefit someone outside the worker. But I think it benefits the writer too.

There was a moment in the show where I just felt overwhelmed by emotion. Reading parts of this book out loud do that to me. Not in a bad way. But there are certain words and phrases, images that pull the feelings from me. In Mary Karr’s great guide The Art of Memoir, she talks about how “…a single image can split open the hard seed of the past”- they’re choices we make when writing—why mention the Archies rather than Doc Pomus? It has to be a portal and you can’t know until you’re writing which is the one. It’s something you feel in your whole body. And you have to decide, that’s the work. So when the feelings welled up onstage (if there were a stage, but to make things even more intimate, we’re all just on the floor of the bar) I wondered if I’d even be able to continue. And the audience, this room of people taking time from their busy city Saturday, held me tenderly in silence for a minute. It was beautiful. I finished with Don’t Ever Change as I do with this show, but then I had to play Dancing With Joey Ramone for the joy of it. I felt like I’d really gotten the arc and set list with this run of shows, but had missed Joey. Hell, it’s my hit.

Glasgow was gearing up for Scotland in the World Cup, pubs staying open until 4 AM, so I headed out of there to the hotel in Cumbria. I was tired, I was giddy and relieved but also concerned for Sunday’s gig in Hebden Bridge. For weeks it had been a worry, whether enough people would show up. Promoters canceling due to low ticket sales is a real threat these days and it hurts us all. I saw that the free Burnley Buffet (array of non-posh snacks, I was to learn later) was now topping the bill. I really like the Trades Club, having played there with Eric a few times but had hedged my bets with this salon with other writers/artists.

The afternoon show was really wonderful. Cath, who’d set up the event, brought a standing lamp with fringed shade, draped throws and pillows on arm chairs from home for the chat part of the show. DIY/`C’mon kids let’s put on a show!’ is still my life. I loved the other writers and the Burnley Buffet was a fun touch. I had a sweet flat to stay in just next door and was able to hang out for a drink or two after the gig finished. Even got up for a walk by the canal next morning before the long drive home. Maybe this was what I’d really wanted in coming to Hebden—filming site for Happy Valley and Riot Women; bustling bohemian town in West Yorkshire set against a poetic Pennine backdrop; birthplace of Ted Hughes, final resting place of Sylvia Plath—I’d wanted to be a part of the place for a moment, almost experience what it was like to live there. Maybe that’s often a motivation for what I do.

I wonder what it would be like to do that kind of touring where you’re driven in a bus or tour van, dropped off backstage at a large venue with a stage and sound engineer/team, dressing room, catering even? Would you really know where you were every night?

So now I’m reading what Plato said (it was a very long time ago); a little Marx; some Hannah Arendt. This question about what is work has apparently been confounding people forever. Why spend time thinking about it at all, when there are gigs to book and promote and a whole album of songs I’ve written over the last few years to record. I want to do more drawing, printing and painting. Write another book.

Thank god I took social security a while back. That money helps keep me afloat in between spending to make money to fork out more dough to print more books and buy records to sell, to fuel up the rental vehicle, to drive to the next spot to play for people. Working continues to make me feel like a part of the world.

“Work is activity that is instrumental and intermediary to satisfy needs and wants, and Work is activity that produces a benefit (or intermediary product to a benefit) external to the worker(s) doing the activity.” says Jens Jorund Tissedale, a professor of philosophy in Bergen, Norway. Maybe I’ll get to meet him when I do a gig there with Eric in October.

Then the hard part started.

My agent and I worked out a plan. I would hire an editor to help me shape the arc of my manuscript into something hopefully saleable. Also, eventually I would craft a book proposal with a sample chapter and chapter outline that broke down the whole of the book into a smaller number of pages. Finesse a bio, bigging myself up. Gather comp titles (this probably changed as the year or two to finish the proposal went by: goodbye Patti Smith, Kim Gordon and Chrissie Hynde, hello Carrie Brownstein and Viv Albertine. The publishing world moves at a glacial pace but the shelf life of new books is relatively short.)

Looking back, I think I worked with…four different editors. First was the agent’s assistant. She was brilliant and zero’ed in on the New York story being the thing to focus on. I had to leave most of my childhood in Pittsburgh on the cutting room floor.

The next editor—the first I actually hired and paid for out of my own pocket— asked me important questions to narrow the focus to…music. In retrospect that seems obvious, but when you’re writing about your life, it’s easy to go down many cul de sacs about all the things and people you love and are interested in: French fashion magazines of the 60s and 70s; New York bars and clubs of the 70s, 80s and 90s. The corporate hierarchy of Sony Music and street layout of Nashville—the whole road map of the US and barbq places located along those interstates and highways, to be honest. Those are just a few things I had to pare back. It was months of work. There were many times I thought “this is too hard.” I’d already written the book and revised it. Now I was rewriting it in a condensed form.

When the proposal went out to major publishers, the feedback was positive. Editors liked my writing. New York in the late 20th century was a nice niche. We felt like we were on the right track. But there were no solid yeses. I wasn’t well-known enough/didn’t have enough of a following to attract a big publisher, and maybe the story arc wasn’t all the way there enough yet for the book to stand on its own merits.

I kept busy playing gigs, doing some touring, working in the bookstore/bar, writing songs and recording my first solo album in over ten years, The Old Guys. One publisher seemed seriously interested at last, but they wanted more focus on New York City and less on…me.

The twentieth anniversary of my first solo album Diary Of A Mod Housewife was approaching, and I decided to do a vinyl pressing. There was a learning curve with that but it kept me busy while I waited for answers from the next round of submissions to smaller publishers (mostly academic presses). Some hopeful moments but still no yes.

Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography came out. I was moved by it, more so than I’d ever been by his music which I admire but only love selectively. It gave me hope there was a reason to do this, because as famous as Bruce was, I related to his story and struggles. Bringing people in to your world so that they saw themselves seemed important. Not playing the Super Bowl, obviously, but being real and honest enough that anyone could say “yeah, I bet I’d feel that way if it was me up there.” Something like that. I feel like I learn through every memoir or autobiography I read, and I read a lot of them.

Meanwhile, Trump was elected for the first time. Maggie Roche died, one of my Nashville pals Greg Trooper passed away. Tom Petty died.

Eventually I was offered a deal so bad, my agent recommended I pass and consider putting the book out myself. I can remember that moment so clearly—I’d just landed in Chicago to play some gigs, was crossing Logan Square on my way to one of the great bookstores there. I knew I had to see the process through, but wasn’t sure how. Being rejected again and again can wreck your confidence. I went in the bookstore and stood among the titles. They felt like allies, they felt like competitors on the playing field. I belong here, I thought. Maybe this is why I love sports movies and army movies: those scenes where the rookie or new recruit is standing in awful weather, battered, dirty and ready to give up. They’ve given everything they have—or that’s what they think. And a voice, a sergeant or fellow soldier, a hard-assed coach who’s weathered many seasons says “What, you think you can quit? There’s no quitting! Show me what you’re made of! Nobody cares what you do son, but do you want to look back from your rocking chair and see that fork in the road where you could’ve pushed through and took the easy way out…gave up?” (I think that’s a lot of mixed metaphors but I feel sure you’ve seen the movie and get the idea). For me it was all those books, the physical beings with their covers and spines and fonts, urging me on. You know you belong here. Suck it up.

I hired an actual book coach to help get me through the next part - salvaging my original draft with all the timeline adjustments I’d made. Every time I needed to rethink things, I would put the chapters in Scrivener. This program has many powerful features I’ve never used, but for seeing your chapters in one spot and the ability to move them around, I find it so helpful. It’s like grabbing a messy pile of paper and taking it to an elegant library where you spread it out on a large table, outside of the grubby room where you answer email, shop for jeans that might fit, and watch IG posts of people waiting on line in NYC to buy frozen yogurt. I really do recommend Scrivener.

Then I moved everything out of Scrivener into a Word document again. Switched back to my original courier font and kept working. Courier feels friendly, low-stakes. Times New Roman is when you’re ready for the big show.

Eric’s mother declined and died. My Gibson was crushed on a flight from Minneapolis to Winnipeg. Delta paid for me to get it repaired.

In early 2019 I went to Zihuatanejo in Mexico to play at their guitar festival. I carried my laptop with me, hoping for a minute to look at my draft, but was too busy enjoying Mexico. Joyce Maynard had invited me to stop off in Guatemala on my way home, and I spent a week at one of her memoir workshops. I really started to see the end in sight here. It gave me confidence to share small parts of my book with the group of women I spent a week hanging out with. I think it’s not a bad idea to take part in writing workshops or retreats, if you’re selective about it. It can help to have other writers who are going through a similar process cheer you on, and listening to their work gets you out of your head and story, and also fires you up to get back into it. I feel that way when I go see other musicians play who are good—I can’t wait to get back home and pick up my guitar or write a song.

I finally figured out the title, Girl To City, after the famous Daily News headline Ford to City: Drop Dead. Like band names, it takes a lot of effort or no effort at all to come up with a title that feels right. I had the cover photo, taken by one of my Parsons roommates Julia Gorton, who’s a fabulous graphic designer as well as brilliant photographer. I sent her the title and she found the Daily News font to create the cover graphic. I posted the cover on social media before I’d finished the book. It felt like a commitment to get it done.

I arranged to work with a copy editor who’d been recommended to me, but then worried about the process. I asked if she could do just a short sample edit so I could see how it worked and she didn’t feel right about that. I found a different copy editor in the UK who specialized in music-related books and he did a good job and turned things around quickly. The writing was pretty tight at that point but one of my favorite notes of his on what must’ve been one of my trying-too-hard lines— “Save yourself!” he wrote—and that tells a little how that process can work- you’re dressed and ready for a performance and you hope for the friend you’re actually paying to say “um, take off that ridiculous tiara” or “purple is not your color dear.” It’s a weird kind of instinctive thing, for me anyway.

I signed up for Adobe InDesign to do the layout myself and watched tutorial after tutorial, I’m sure like with Scrivener I’ve barely touched the surface of all the program’s features. Julia Gorton helped me so much getting the photos for inside the book in the right file size. The layout was a bitch. The weeks it took to lay the book out felt like they would kill me - I think I would happily farm out the layout work next time if I found the right person. Converting to a flowable ebook was also not easy. The uploading to the Ingram and Amazon sites made my head spin and I screwed up many aspects of both. Again, I would pay someone to do the mechanics next time, even though doing it myself meant at least I was happy with how everything looked.

I made a book trailer in iMovie. My skills were pretty minimal then (I’ve gotten better with the invention of CapCut, but now just find myself always short on time). Learning a lot of new skills was a big part of the self-publishing process. I booked a tour of book-related gigs in the US through October and November of 2019. Those helped me get some reviews for the book, and Terry Gross even had me back on Fresh Air for a second time (the first was in 1997, for Diary). It feels like we were living in a whole different world back then. I wanted to do an audiobook but ran out of time to set that up, so instead made a podcast version of Girl To City, each chapter an episode, and that was a pleasure and gave me a weekly job when everything shut down in March 2020.

Everything is so different now. There was no Substack in 2019. There were still weekly papers in most US cities and more places to get reviews. I kept the self-published aspect of my book pretty quiet, as it still felt like some kind of failure. But people loved Girl To City and the book sold. When I wrote up a proposal for my second book, to see whether I could find a publisher for that one, I added up the sales and saw that I’d made money—was still making money. I decided to spend my time writing rather than hoping for a deal and publish the second book myself.

So this morning I woke up to the sound of peacocks screaming in the car park of a Premier Inn just outside the city of Hull in the northeast of England. I did my first book event last night in a week of UK shows. I’m very tired and wonder half the time what I’m doing and why I push myself to get yet another book into people’s hands. As my dad said, when I told him I was writing the first one: “What, music’s not hard enough—now you want to write a book?”

It’s connection. “Only connect,” said E.M. Forster. I just wanted to read a little of my story in Hull which is an important place to me (ya have to read the book to find out why). Sing a few songs, read some stories and see if any of it landed. I want to share it in Scotland and other spots in England and wherever they’ll have me. I’m the guy in the mud on the football field—he’s not the biggest or strongest, but he believes in the power of words and music. He cares enough about the small everyday moments of people’s lives to keep picking himself up and trying to give them something to cheer for or nod along to. It’s just words and paper (or okay, an illuminated screen) or notes to sing over chords to play and it’s so basic but it’s what we’ve got.

So, if you’re looking for mechanics of self-publishing, there are many many sites out there. As with life, I bumble my way through. But if you feel like you belong in the world of books, you do. And if you have a story to share, it matters to someone. Since we’re in sports/war movie territory, I’ll trot out a phrase from the unlikely NY Mets via Tim McGraw’s dad, pitcher Tug McGraw: “You Gotta Believe!” It’s basic but it works.

Out playing these book-related gigs this week, with some US ones coming in late Oct/early November and more in the UK late 26/early 2027. Look for Girl To City and Girl To Country via your local bookstore or wherever you buy your books, I’d put it a bunch of links to purchase but I need to drive to Edinburgh now!

My first memoir has loads of reviews on Amazon/Goodreads, my second book has…four? True Girl To Country has been out less than a year, but that tracks with what I’m hearing from others. (I don’t think I’ve ever said “that tracks” before - sorry!)

I know I owe you a Part Two to my self-publishing journey story and that’s coming in the next few days. One thing that won’t make it into that story is my attempt to navigate publishing in a WHOLE OTHER COUNTRY. I’ve received wonderful reviews for Girl To Country in the British music press, I should be sharing them far and wide, (I will get to that I swear) but in spite of the amazing press, aside from ebooks, I have to physically sell each copy of my book myself. Where distribution in the US was a little simpler (or maybe I had more of a handle on things, having toured there for many years so knowing the stores in a lot of towns, and also having spent a dozen years working in a small bookstore) I am totally at sea here in the UK.

So, I’m heading up north in England and to Scotland for some book events it’s taken months to set up, in conjunction with venues and a few bookstores. It’s a risk - the ticket prices (when they exist at all, a couple are free events) are nominal. If I don’t sell books, I will lose money: car rental, hotels, gas and food on the road. Wear and tear on my body- it’s a lot of driving, and sleeping away from home as you get older does get harder, I have to admit it.

BUT - I love doing my readings combined with the songs that fit with the stories. The whole thing is starting to flow like a musical, I’ve even figured out where I can flash back to the first book Girl To City, and fit in a few songs from that one. It’s far from a scripted show, because there’s nothing like a little spontaneity and freefall, but it has an arc. I look forward to sharing the books with whoever might be interested, I think they’re both good reads that are relatable to anyone who’s loved music and tried to live a creative life, or wondered what it might be like to follow that kind of path.

I appreciate the venues taking a chance on me, and hope people come out so I don’t let them down either!

So, if you know anyone up in the Northeast (Hull and North Shields in Northumberland; Hebden Bridge) or Scotland (Edinburgh, Linlithgow and Glasgow) I hope you’ll spread the word.

• Tue 9/6 Hull UK Wrecking Ball Music & Books 7 PM tix

• Wed 10/6 North Shields The Engine Room tickets 7:30 PM

• Thu 11/6 Edinburgh Leith Depot tickets

• Fri 12/6 Linlithgow Queen Margaret’s Hall tickets

• Sat 13/6 Glasgow The Doublet 3-5 PM presented by Monorail Music tix

• Sun 14/6 Hebden Bridge The Trades Club Sunday Salon 2 PM tickets

“Umm…Pepperdine?” I say, hoping I got the pronunciation right. Deflect, deflect. Eric has the good sense to never enter the fray in these American B&B situations. Too many questions, too much instant intimacy. The last thing you want at this hour of the day is to be put in the position where you have to tell people you’re a musician or performer of any kind. You go from being one of the crowd to an oddity, a curio. They’ll want to know all about it, and why they’ve never heard of you, and it’s way too early to start questioning your path in life. Save that stuff for the afternoon at least, or ideally evening, when there’s alcohol at hand.

Part of me feels flattered they think I look young enough to have a college-age child. They both appear to be in their late forties, early fifties, but who can tell anymore. But, this being an inn, they’re not from around here so look refreshingly frumpy.

They nod eagerly. I say “No—just visiting my daughter (think normal, think relatable) and her husband!” I practically squeal, savoring this true detail. I’m a terrible liar in any situation, whereas IF my husband ever dared cruise the coffee and juice station in such a homey establishment, he’d make up something about being a retired geography teacher, relishing the chance to spin a web so boring the other guests start looking at their phones.

The women smile with relief: “Seeing family, enjoying the sights! Wonderful!” they both say, and go back to talking about where they come from (Ohio; DC) and graduation lunch plans.

Next day, I slink in a little earlier and it’s a different scenario: a petite honey blonde who looks a well-maintained mid-70s spilling her life story to a guy with low-key stylish clothes and glasses who I imagine must be in real estate. Neither of them pay any attention to me, they’re so caught up in what turns out to be the beginning of a new chapter in the recently-widowed woman’s life. Between the time I pour myself a cup of coffee and the arrival of my omelette, I learn that the widow is from the Bay Area but looking to move to Pasadena or environs as her two sons are LA-based. One a musician, a bass player who often plays with one of the Jonas Brothers and whose big tour just got put on ice when the Australian surfer turned pop star he backs cancelled due to illness. The other son is a librarian in downtown LA, who just broke up with his girlfriend who happens to be a writer on Hacks.

“Jean Smart, I’ve worked with her,” the man says. “I’m a producer here in LA,” he says: “Film, TV, live music events. A lot of events. I’ve been at it for thirty some years. It’s a challenge but I still love it.”

The woman says she and Jean Smart are the exact same age, 74. “Love her,” she says. She and the producer talk about the benefits of Pasadena or South Pasadena, the community and opportunities to meet other retirees and women in her same boat. She’s being brave, you can tell. Trying to look at her new chapter in life with positivity. She’s lucky she has money to smooth the way, but her fear and loneliness speak out to me across the dining room. I’m hanging on every word, every detail. I can’t figure out why the LA mover and shaker guy is staying in a folksy B&B. “We live in LA but Auburn is our forever home,” he says. I must’ve missed his story about contractors or mold remediation.

I wonder if I’d come in before the widow if the producer and I would’ve talked. Maybe with a little persuading (well, it probably wouldn’t take much) I would’ve told him all about me and Eric’s West Coast escapades, how we really HAD been taking an opportunity to visit my daughter and her husband, eating some fabulous meals in LA (Sqrl, Hama Sushi). We’d ridden in a few Waymos, those newfangled self-driving cars which seem oddly normal after a couple of days around and in them, before renting a car. I’d checked out some YouTube videos extolling the benefits of the Toyota Camry (one guy kept insisting “the trunk holds THREE HOCKEY BAGS - that’s THREE! HOCKEY BAGS!” which really sold me) and the Camry was indeed a fantastic car. I felt like an animal unleashed after a month on the tiny, winding country roads in the UK, cruising up the 101, embracing every cliche (listening to the Eagles…Eric proclaiming “I could do a poke bowl” at each stop for refreshments. Eventually he asked me “what exactly is a poke bowl? And what do people mean when they say they’re `doing’ their food?”).

First stop up the coast was Santa Barbara for the SB Literary Festival. We’d been put up in a lovely hotel and engaged in a spirited panel discussion with UC musicologist/professor David Novak at a divey for SB bar/restaurant, where Eric almost started a brawl with some loudmouth when I was trying to play a short set in the noisy dining room. How we ducked out of there via a side door with Amy French, who’s been shopping the screenplay she wrote based on my two memoirs. We had a lovely dinner, where the servers all looked like surfers and were so charming it didn’t even feel real.

We met up with my one-time house concert hosts now pals Clyde and Tobi the next day at a smokehouse on the other side of the tracks and then went to visit Amy and her amazing husband Clifford and their wonderful kids. Next day we drove up the 101 to Santa Cruz, to stay with producer Erik Nelson. He had a whole suite for us, with an amazing library of music and film books. Next day he hosted us on his radio show on KSQD, and I was reminded how much I love this part of the world and a big reason is these amazing community and noncommercial radio stations that give a musical home to people like us.

My daughter’s new in-laws put us up for a few days at their pretty house in Paso Robles. They’re wonderful people, we had so much fun hanging out. Eric played a great show at the Makeout Room in San Francisco. What a fun night, a lively crowd and creative atmosphere, I feel so at home in California and don’t know if it’s because I’ve spent so much time there over the years and even more now that my daughter is a resident, or because it is one of my spiritual homes, why should I be any different from the millions of seekers who’ve found their way to the west coast over the years?

The drive back down I-5 with Hazel and Patrick, playing Warren Zevon. Mother’s Day brunch with my daughter at Cindy’s, she brought me a gorgeous bouquet. Wild Honey Backyard Concert in Eagle Rock, the great sound and scenic atmosphere—Eric really cast a spell that drifted out over the hills behind Paul Rock’s sweet amphitheatre; visiting a nice radio guy Dennis the Menace in the Hollywood Hills; a hike up to the Griffith Park Observatory; Jitlana Thai; the continuous stream of covers at the Tuesday night live jam at Canter’s Kibitz Room. I drove and drove, each night I felt myself vibrating from so many roads, so many other cars and people and sights; the neighborhoods, the vibrant trees and plants and flowers crowning every hill with even taller mountains in the distance. The seven foot tall black Bowie in Ralph’s supermarket, the bewigged server at Spoke who told Eric they were “Amazing, thank you for asking.”

My book event at Permanent Records Roadhouse felt like a dream from the moment we pulled up out front: cool place, great soundman, lovely bartender. Plentiful parking. Hazel DJed and played one fab record after another. The people came and I read my stories and sang my songs. When I read the part of Girl To Country where I meet Eric for the first time in Hull, I always imagine Eric appearing through the crowd to join me onstage—but this night in LA it actually happened! We played Do You Remember That and Genovese Bag — the old team, and finished with Don’t Ever Change.

Pat Thomas and I sat on chairs on the stage then, and had a chat about both my books and writing. Pat is really a gem, I feel lucky I’ve gotten to know him a little bit thanks to my venturing into memoir writing.

I sold and signed all my books. Howard Kaylan was there and I couldn’t stop hugging him, I’ve been a Turtles fan for many years and always imagined I’d have to go out to the desert to meet him, so it was very touching he made the trek in to see me. So many friends I got to see for just a minute.

I said goodbye to Hazel and Patrick, and Eric was still there - it wasn’t a dream after all. How many nights have I finished playing in LA (or any town for that matter, but LA or New York are the ones where you feel it most I think) and wished I had someone to go out with after. I’m not saying this to sound pathetic, it’s just reality that unless you plan ahead, everyone goes their own way in such a huge place. But Eric and I were together, and we drove over to Fred 62 in Los Feliz, one of the few late night (after 9 PM, this ain’t New York) sit down eating places. I felt so happy, and relieved that this night I’d sweated about for months had gone so well.

The next night we attended a Dodgers game with my daughter and husband. I imagined it would be a grueling experience, forgetting that hey, we’re in LA! Every ticket taker or official person we encountered was smiling, friendly and helpful, although Hazel and I did have to return what we thought were our small-enough purses to the trunk of the car due to Dodgers Stadium “only see-through bags” policy. It was a gorgeous night, seats up high but right behind home base. There was a fiftieth anniversary Star Wars thing going on before the game, we got a big kick out of the Dodgers vs Giants action and the mover and shaker season ticket holder holding forth in front of us, including his giant-sized texts I couldn’t help but zoom in on to read later. By the time the game ended we’d eaten Dodger dogs and garlic fries, and Eric had been spattered by ketchup along with the three rows behind us when somebody stepped on a foil packet that had been dropped on the steps—I can feel a little anxious going into a big public event like this in America (hell maybe even more so in the UK, no guns but they are overall a fiercer lot) but the ketchup was as violent as things got; Dodger Stadium was a lovefest. I can’t wait to go back.

Then there was a fiftieth anniversary showing of Taxi Driver at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood (what a year was 1976, right?) and dinner at Musso & Frank’s which I’d so wanted Eric to experience - it didn’t disappoint, they even gave us dessert on the house for our wedding anniversary my clever daughter had mentioned to them. Yeah it was two weeks ago but we were on a plane that day so it hardly counted…

Staying with friends in Santa Monica, we enjoyed a cake delivered by robot (thanks Paul and Liz!) and visited the Mosaic Tile House in Venice. Usually while out playing gigs we go from driving to the gig to a hotel on the outskirts to the next town and I’m so glad we were able to experience the fun things other people get to do AND have the pleasure of sharing our words and music. Life is short and getting shorter and the time for everything possible is now.

So, I’m back in the breakfast room at the inn and the Hollywood producer is asking me about my music and books and this film treatment —“Y’know this is really interesting. Yes I can definitely get this made,” he says. “And what about the music, who controls the rights?” The widow’s husband is still alive and they’re happily golfing up in Napa, her son’s tour didn’t get cancelled; the other son and his girlfriend manage to work things out. In life, in braving the breakfast room, it’s all in the timing.

They were hard to miss—“They’re so ugly, they’re kind of…beautiful” I said. Caramel, or maybe toffee, colored birds eye maple doors and sides with darker striated base and curved top. Lacy filigree gold pulls. Only £50? But did we really need two of them?

They came as a set. We opened a door, hoping no nasty surprises.

Inside the wardrobes were clean, with glass-fronted drawers and carefully-printed labels: “Socks”, “Underwear”; “Shirts”. The bottom two drawers were a little more haphazard. They were hand-lettered “TRAVEL” and “SUNDRIES”. (What the hell’s a sundry? we wondered, and decided that depended where the previous owner’s interests lay.)

The charity shop said delivery charge was…ten pounds. The shop manager consulted with their driver. He wanted to know whether we had stairs. “He’s elderly,” she said as an aside. “He’s in his seventies.” Eric and I looked at each other.

The deal was done.

Suddenly it seemed like our lives revolved around these behemoths— it was as if we’d adopted children. Allowances must be made. We knew they were destined for our bedroom. Houses built in the century before the last century aren’t exactly bursting with closets. We’d spent over an hour in IKEA some months back, eyeing and measuring and costing out the modular wardrobe choices. The variations and possibilities were only as limited as your vision and tolerance for this kind of thing: they were very sleek and expensive. There was no getting around the reality they’d be big shiny lumps that took up a lot of bedroom real estate.

But surely the IKEA wardrobes would be better than the sad plastic tub that had sat against the one wall since August 2024 with a load of Eric’s clothes heaped on top? (I’d downsized my clothing collection to what could fit in a small wardrobe the previous owners constructed next to the chimney breast). We’d let the idea rest.

Now it felt fated. These wood veneer relics were making the decision for us—urging us into a new era: the wardrobe years.

A time was arranged with the elderly van driver. A band was over working on some recording when the wardrobes arrived. We first saw Lassie play a great set back around Christmas. Eric has been recording their harmonies mixed with surf guitar and pulsing drum sound, and the two women, Emily and Camille, have become friends. We’re doing some gigs together soon! Lassie were bemused as Eric told them to hang out and relax while the short work of getting these bits of furniture into place happened.

The old van driver took a look at the Edwardian (or is it Victorian?) staircase up to what the British call the first floor, blanched, and dumped the large lumps outside the front door of the house. He’d been jealous of the wardrobes and didn’t think we deserved such a prize. We lifted them and realized there was no way they were going up the stairs without more muscle.

Eric called our pal Rick the Builder.

Rick comes from Kansas, was in the Air Force, plays heavy metal bass and lives in a small village about thirty minutes away. Thank god for Rick— he refits doors, puts in windows; tiles and paints, does plumbing, all while listening to a comforting classic rock radio mix. He’s bigger and stronger than your average Englishman but makes jam and spaghetti sauce from the bounty he and his British wife grow in their garden. He’s a reminder of the good things about America, the generosity and ease, the good-humored can-do spirit built into the best people there.

Thank God for Rick. He came flying over to help.

Eric, Rick and I shoved the first, slightly smaller wardrobe up and around the staircase with a curve at the top. Rick said “Hey, Amy’s a bad ass!” after he saw me sweating and straining next to Eric at the back end of the behemoth. He doesn’t know I grew up with four brothers and never wanted to be “the girl” (except for when it served me). Camille and Emily waited patiently to get back to work, cheering us on.

Eric had measured and determined the two wardrobes side by side would fit PERFECTLY along the intended wall. We didn’t really need two wardrobes but since they came as a set…

The second was bigger and heavier than the first. There was no way it would make that turn at the top of the stairs. Now we were on a mission. Nobody said “You know, we don’t really need that second wardrobe…” No way were we breaking up a family. Rick got out the drill. Camille and Emily made more cups of tea.

The guys took the thing apart. We got the pieces up the stairs. Eric and Rick rebuilt the second wardrobe, right next to the first. Rick needed to go but Eric promised to come over and help him with some recording. Camille and Emily listened to one of their tracks and headed off.

That night, Eric and I lay in bed admiring the wardrobes.

“They’re very…caramel,” Eric said.

“Kind of shiny?” I said. “But they fit so perfectly! And won’t it be nice to have all your clothes organized, on hangers and in those lovely glass-fronted drawers?”

“I imagine we’ll get used to them,” Eric said.

“Maybe we could sort of…stencil a pattern on them, to kind of break up the caramel, make them blend in a bit?”

We both fell asleep eventually, dreaming wardrobe dreams. Things would never be the same again, it felt. How had it happened? It was like the entire lives of the previous owners of this furniture dynasty would have to be incorporated into our lives. Not through any specific knowledge, just osmosis. What kind of ties had the guy hung on the built-in tie rack, for what sort of job? Where had their “TRAVEL” taken them? What the hell was a SUNDRY?”

I slept uneasily. The wardrobes were looming. I woke up early and went downstairs to google “stenciling”. What sort of paint would work on this polished veneer? A slight geometric pattern, maybe two colors, a little deco, a little Morocco, might break things up a bit. I wasn’t going to spoil the wardrobe party. They fit the space perfectly. We had a storage solution.

Eric came downstairs a little bit later. “Cup of tea?” I said. He’s never once said “No,” but I like to ask.

I thought of going back upstairs to read in bed for a little while, but couldn’t face the newbies. I’m sure I could get used to the two of them—it might just take a little time.

I handed Eric a cup of tea. He said, “I was thinking about those wardrobes…”

I froze. “The stencil idea?”

“Just—do you really think we need the both? One would work just fine. I could hardly sleep with the two of them staring at me. It was like they’d taken over the whole room…our entire lives even.”

I waited a beat. Inside my heart was leaping. There’s a reason Eric and I are married.

“I’ll get the drill,” one of us said.

“I can’t wait to tell Rick,” said the other.

We figured the wardrobe could fend for itself for a little while — Eric and I are doing gigs in California this week and next, come on out.

Read more

A few weeks ago, I dropped a note on Substack, sharing a feeling of pride that my first memoir Girl To City was cited in the opening paragraphs of a Sunday New York Times essay about starting a band for fun. I was honest in the note, saying how even with an agent I couldn’t find a publisher for my book, and that I eventually ended up publishing it myself. How we shouldn’t listen to people who tell us NO.

As soon as I’d posted it, I worried: “But no means no!” Haven’t we spent years trying to hammer that idea home? In a different context of course. In the world of women and men. I always worry something I say online will piss someone off or bring out the trolls, but I’m not so visible or popular that strangers tend to come around. I thought of deleting the note. I trusted the audience on Substack would understand what I meant—that we don’t need to heed the gatekeepers and naysayers. It’s the kind of YOU GO GIRL, FIGHT THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY cheerleading that Substack’s algorithms push forward (weird that they’re also now platforming misogynist Andrew Tate, even though his macho victim-blaming speech has been banned from all the other social media platforms…I shouldn’t even mention him so forget I did.)

I’ve never had nearly one thousand people like one of my posts in all my decades of writing online (except for this one photo on Instagram that inexplicably went viral, attracting all manner of shirtless bots with comments like “Hi cutie” and “Can I be your sex slave?” And the Facebook post I wrote when the great David Olney died at a songwriter festival in the round back in January 2020.) But writers hang out on Substack and writers need hope and I’ll admit I’ve badly needed that dopamine hit every time someone likes and comments on the post “Good for you!” and “I needed to hear this”. I keep thinking I should write a recap of how it all happened, how my book that no one wanted came out through my own steely determination and has gone on to sell thousands of copies—that part is all true! But there is so much more and it’s a manual that’s so particular to that one book in that specific period of time that, try my damnedest, I struggle to get the steps to work again for myself, with my second book Girl To Country.

But. It went like this:

In 1998, a NYC gal who liked my music and worked for a literary agent suggested I bring in a book proposal. I’d been playing in bands for years but my first solo album Diary Of A Mod Housewife had attracted a huge amount of press in a pre-social media world: newspaper and magazine articles; radio and TV— there was no internet except maybe an AOL email account and instant messaging here or there. I was having a moment! I knocked together an idea for a kind of modern day urban Erma Bombeck collection of essays, knowing that I wanted to write, knowing from doing band newsletters and some early attempts at online writing that I could write. I mean I’d been writing songs for fifteen years, songs other writers and people who knew and loved music said were good. Songs I believed in enough to live a fairly hardscrabble city existence as a temporary office worker and a mom; a tenement apartment dweller.

I printed out my book proposal on the printer in the Legal Department on the 36th floor of CBS’ Black Rock building, one of my usual temp assignments. It was only a few pages and the agent wasn’t interested enough to ask for more, or if she did I was too busy playing gigs to pursue the idea. But I wanted to write. In my hopeful naive way, I thought it might be a good way to make money.

In 1999 I moved to Nashville to pursue a song publishing deal, to find a better life for me and my daughter (this is the story in my second memoir Girl To Country, which came out this past year in the US and last month in the UK —the book I’ve invested five years of time, energy and money into and that didn’t get mentioned AT ALL in the Times piece because the writer of the essay didn’t know it existed but…I’m getting ahead of myself here). I kept kicking around the idea of my Erma Bombeck with a minivan and a guitar idea. I read books on How To Write A Book Proposal. I read books about Writing Your Life Story. The “how to write memoir” business was still in its infancy, there was Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg and Anne LaMott’s Bird By Bird; The Situation and The Story by Vivian Gornick had just come out and I wanted to understand it but couldn’t—I hadn’t done enough writing yet.

I’d write missives for my website, maintained by a fan who knew HTML and I’ve long since lost touch with —Kevin are you out there?—where I’d try to describe what it was like to be a mom but also a songwriter and touring musician. I found a song publishing deal, got paid by the month (actually an advance against future royalties but you don’t think about that when you’ve been broke for so long). I wrote dozens of songs.

I went to a writing workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio and felt humbled that no one knew who I was or what I’d done as a singer/songwriter—that I’d been interviewed by Terry Gross for NPR’s Fresh Air; that I’d strummed and sung one of my songs on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Been on Mountain Stage; my music played on Car Talk. The moment where I could come in to the world of writing as a somebody had passed and I was a hopeful, just like everyone else there at the workshop. We had to print out a piece of our writing to share with the group. I spent every night in my hotel room trying to make a piece from my website speak to a room of strangers who weren’t fans of my music. I was touched at the thoughtful comments when I eventually shared. This wasn’t my music world: the world of necessary arrogance; alchemy in semi-darkness surrounded by beer crates and cigarette smoke. This was adults who did all different kinds of jobs, sitting in a circle in broad daylight, like at kindergarten, telling their lives and wanting to learn. I felt I had a very long way to go.

It wasn’t til I moved to France some years later (hey you have to read Girl To Country for how and why that happened) that I stopped reading about how to write a book proposal and how to find an agent and finally sat down and wrote. I started with a novel, Satellite Of Love, that I did for fun like a warmup exercise. I still kind of love that book but aside from sharing for my paid Substack readers, haven’t done anything with it. I then moved on to the memoir. My husband Eric had written his autobiography, A Dysfunctional Success, being his funny, charming and above all honest self and I showed him my early attempts. “Don’t tell me what you’re going to tell me—just tell me” he said, or something like it.

I started blogging like crazy. Maybe it was a reaction to the isolation of living in the French countryside, maybe it was a way to avoid working on my memoir…maybe it was a way to work on my memoir without feeling like I was actually doing the work. I was practicing writing for an audience. A very small audience, pretty much really only other bloggers (there was a whole world of expat ones, in France and beyond, a supportive community) and some music fans who kept up with my doings. Looking back now at my WordPress archive (I migrated my Blogger posts over there in…2012), the posts date back to 2008. I’m afraid to count how many there are! Until I moved to Substack with the possibility of paid subscribers (thank you paid subscribers!), that was a lot of work without pay. My early thought “hey this writing thing might be a good way to make money! Better than music?” has a permanent cartoon of God or Satan laughing maniacally attached. At the same time I’m proud of the writing I’ve done there and here over the years.

2009, 2010—in 2011 we moved to upstate New York. I had a first draft, I think I called it My Mother The Minivan. I sent a chapter to Janet, who’d first gotten in touch back in the 90s and still worked for the agent. “What about fiction?” she asked, but I wanted to publish my memoir. I was learning as I wrote just how much I loved to write. How the challenge of being honest in an entertaining way was kind of looking like my life’s work. How if I put myself into a scene I sort of remembered, all the details started coming back to me. It was like being a character in a fairy story, but the story was real.

2012, I started working in a bookstore in Hudson, New York. The Spotty Dog was a local institution—Beer, Books & Art Supplies. Karen Schoemer, who I’d known as a prestigious music writer back in NYC, was the book manager. She helped me get a job there. Of all the good things music writers have done for me over the years—the kind words and critic’s picks to highlight an album or gig— this was the biggest, most helpful. I’d never had what might be considered a slacker kind of job before, back when I was a mom with a young kid. One where you roll in at 11 AM, turn on the music of your choice, talk to people about writers, the news; local gossip, the weather. Wait for the new book releases; shelve classics. Pour beer, drink with the customers. Scrub toilets and mop floors, more often than you ever do in your own home. The owners of the store gave us the employees freedom, to choose books and how things looked. I came and went as my touring schedule required. Eric and I had started a record label, Southern Domestic, to release our duo albums Two-Way Family Favourites and A Working Museum, and eventually our solo efforts too. DIY made sense with our combined fan bases, the heyday of social media (Facebook, Instagram AND Twitter) crowdfunding; Bandcamp. We were very much living hand to mouth, running two old cars; thankful for Obamacare and Medicaid to cut our cost of living but still stay healthy with dental and my skin cancer surgery covered.

I loved getting a paycheck and cash tips from the bookstore/bar. I ordered art supplies, spent hours making elaborate book displays every month, until Hudson became such a popular tourist destination that there was no more hours of crafting and coordinating book setups, only time to wait on people.

And I communed with the books. It was a commitment, having a part time job I loved and cared about, but I loved being around all these writers on the shelves, and the writers and artists who came into the store and lived in the community, and was determined that I would see my own book up there on the memoir shelf.

In 2014 I queried and found an agent. She worked with some of my music writer friends and was smart and well-respected. She thought there was really something there with what was by now my third or fourth memoir draft. At this point the book was titled All I Want, after one of my songs. I had lists of potential titles and knew this wasn’t exactly the right one but it wasn’t as embarrassing /jokey as My Mother The Minivan. I’d read a lot more memoir writing books by then— a writer named Marion Roach’s was especially helpful. I’d seen and read the flood of musician memoirs that started with Patti Smith’s Just Kids and Keith Richards’ Life in 2010. I was learning that you really had to narrow things down (unless you’re Keith) and I knew this book was a coming of age that ended…well kind of right around when I wrote that first very brief book proposal back in 1998.

But there was still so much work to do.

Part Two - Making It Happen

Hey there are a few gigs and book-related events happening in early May and beyond!

• Sat May 2 - Santa Barbara Literary Festival in SB, CA - Wreckless Eric and I in conversation with writer David Novak + I’m reading and playing songs after!

• Wed May 13 - Los Angeles CA - Permanent Records Roadhouse - readings & songs and conversation with music historian Pat Thomas plus my daughter DJ HAMR on the decks - 6 - 9 PM, a free event but please RSVP!

• Sun 31 May - High Wycombe UK - Kingsmead House Concerts tix

• Tue 9 June - Hull UK - Wrecking Ball Music & Books tickets

• Thu 11 June - Edinburgh UK - Leith Depot

• Fri 12 June - Linlithgow UK tba

• Sat 13 June - Glasgow UK the Doublet afternoon show

• Sun 14 June - Hebden Bridge UK Trades Club afternoon salon

Besides my brother Michael, who’s lived in the same apartment and has had the same landline phone number for almost half a century, Stephanie Chernikowski’s 212 number is the only phone number I know by heart. Even my own daughter’s number is a little bit of a mystery, beyond the first six numbers, as I’ve never had to dial it, just always kept it stored in my phone. But I’ve known Stephanie since the early eighties when phones sat tethered in our tenement apartments, or in Stephanie’s case a ground floor space on the Bowery that she lived and worked in— took photos, developed film and printed her black and white images—for decades. I remember at least one cat, a small outdoor space, a loft bed (?) and tiny kitchen but most of the space given over to work. Big photo backdrop rolls. Stacks of photo paper boxes and files, filled with photos. So many photos. Basquiat came and went as a neighbor. Not in a fab, Architectural Digest celebrity artist way— except for her landlord Andy Warhol, those didn’t really exist back then—but in the way artists did it in twentieth century NYC, and for the hardiest, most determined like Stephanie, hanging on for dear life to impossible spaces, up til the end.

Stephanie died on April 1, in Bellevue Hospital, a (Texas-born and bred) New Yorker to the core. She was always, to me, above all an artist. Older than the musicians and artists and writers I knew, but of a way cooler generation than my parents, she looked ageless with her (usually short, but when long it was lustrous) white hair, high cheekbones and dark dark eyes. I can see her gestures, hear her voice so clearly - how is it possible that I hadn’t hung out with her in years?

I guess that’s just how life can be. When I first met Stephanie, I already knew her as a photo credit on images of musicians I loved. Back in the late seventies, only a few had real cameras, with real lenses, and these photographers wielded POWER - not in an abusive way, but in that their images exerted force. Out at night, watching bands, hearing music - there was so much to take in and watch your back, this was New York City in the dirty dangerous days after all. Live photos and portraits of Ramones, Cramps, Suicide, Television - we’d pore over them, study them to actually see what we’d been listening to and looking at. With her name and striking looks, I imagined Stephanie must be European - but she was from Texas.

We met when I first started seeing Will Rigby, and his band the dBs were often having their photo taken by Stephanie. I remember being jealous of this striking older woman who was so focused and together. I didn’t know many or any older artists in New York— she was intimidating. But we got to know each other and grew close. She took photos of my bands, Last Roundup and the Shams, and sometimes used me or Will or eventually our daughter Hazel as models for photos she took to illustrate a regular feature in the Village Voice, “Getting & Spending,” where she and a few other creative New Yorkers would share interesting stores and insider city ideas. In addition to being a brilliant photographer, Stephanie could write. It was through her I met Chet Flippo and Martha Hume, David Browne - serious music journalists. She photographed me in underwear, and pregnant. She babysat and took pictures of my daughter, they had a special bond, as Stephanie no doubt shared some of her alchemical secrets with Hazel, in the way only a down to earth, but also mysterious, elusive woman could.

Stephanie was that New York visual artist I’d imagined or hoped I might be, if I hadn’t pursued music and motherhood. She forged her own solitary path but had dozens and dozens of friends. She went to gigs to shoot pictures and also because she was a serious fan. She swam at the NYU pool. She rode horses at Central Park stables. She went to see films or art - we sometimes went together and it was a pleasure but also not to be taken lightly because part of the deal was we’d talk about the film or show after and she had opinions and expected you to have your own. There are people who challenge you to use your mind, and Stephanie was one of them. I felt smarter, more cultured, more of an artist myself spending time with her. But she was also warm and funny and caring. I doubt she ever lost her Texas twang and humor.

I moved away, to Nashville. The last time we took pictures together was in 2005. I wrote this in Girl To Country:

“I decided to call my new album Little Fugitive, partly inspired by the 1953 film by photographer Ruth Orkin and her husband Morris Engel, about a little boy who runs away to Coney Island because he thinks he committed a crime. I related to the DIY aspect of the project, and also to the plot.

Photographer Stephanie Chernikowski and I took the subway out to that retro Brooklyn beach with its famous boardwalk, one of the few places in the city that repelled the kind of development running rampant everywhere else. I posed near the Parachute Jump, a towering landmark visible for miles, sitting unused—a monument to art and pointless dreams. Stephanie had lived for decades in an artist space on the Bowery; her landlord was Andy Warhol. She took iconic photos of Blondie, Alex Chilton, and the Cramps. I grabbed hold of her sharp eye that captured artists’ auras like I used to clutch the bar on the Cyclone rollercoaster in Coney Island’s Luna Park: let me still be just a little bit cool.”

I didn’t write that she hipped me to my first real New York haircutter—the kind of currency that must be earned via genuine commitment to the big city. That she introduced my early band to her Austin friends, who hosted me again and again years beyond any sense of obligation. That she understood better than just about anyone my struggles with cystic acne. How she saw Elvis play Beaumont Texas when she was a teen (did he actually kiss her from the stage or am I imagining that part?) I never wrote that I loved her, and maybe it’s too late to say that, but I feel it as sure as I remember her phone number under my fingers. I haven’t seen Stephanie, or dialed an old telephone for years, but I can still feel it.

See if you can find a copy of Dream Baby Dream: Images From The Blank Generation, brilliant collection of Stephanie Chernikowski’s images, many you’ll recognize as they are so indelible/iconic.

Worth reading, this interview from 2009 - I learned things about Stephanie I probably never had the nerve to ask: https://www.popmatters.com/115359-wonder-the-photos-of-stephanie-chernikowski-2496117126.html

I was stuck on a roundabout in Swansea, and I couldn’t get off.

Some days, that sentence feels like it could be a metaphor for life.

Driving through darkness, not even sure you’re going in the right direction. Looking for the poorly-marked exit, to take you the way you need to go. Choosing the wrong road, and ending up in front of the massive Amazon warehouse—again. Looking for other cars to give a clue as to what to do, but it’s late and there are none.

It had been a good show in Bristol. The room sounded nice and it was such an attentive audience. Afterwards, a lot of people came up and bought things. “Thank you for that,” said a man named Paddy. “You made me feel like myself—does that make any sense?” It was a perfect compliment. To me, it meant that he’d felt seen, acknowledged, and okay.

I’d driven from Norfolk that day, and it’s a long drive. Another rental car, this one a Citroen I’d gotten used to. I’d tried to stop at my hotel on my way to the venue but—it being Bristol—I could see it from the roundabout, but couldn’t get to it. I’ve learned from lots of previous trips to this city that was heavily bombed in World War II and has a rebuilt, insanely convoluted city center, that it’s better to stay outside of town. But I LIKE Bristol, there’s something so creative and bustling (I was going to say “buzzy” but then realized I’d sound like I’ve watched too many property shows…which I have) about it. A couple passes on the roundabout, one close call with a bus lane going in the wrong direction—I gave up that idea and parked in front of a brewery down the road from my venue the Hen & Chicken for an hour, watching the Bristolians leaving work and school for the day. There was a primary school nearby and it cheered me to see kids in their school uniforms with mohawks, big heads of curls and braids— Norfolk is beautiful but it’s not very diverse so sometimes it feels like everyone kind of looks the same. In Bristol, individuality seems a motivating factor.

After the gig, I managed to get to my brutalist hotel and find my way in eventually. I was exhausted, I was hungry. I talked to my daughter on the phone and practically started crying, but in a humorous way so she wouldn’t worry about me. “Oh Mom…” You know Ava’s mom in Hacks, played so delightfully by Jane Adams, I live in fear of veering into that territory of self-involved neurosis. After I hung up, I found FOUR packs of Biscoff cookies on a tea-making tray, practically sucked the milk out of the little containers meant for your tea and texted my daughter: “I FOUND BISCOFF, ALL OK.” She lol’ed back.

It was an easy drive to Swansea next afternoon. It had changed a lot since Eric and I last played there in…2012. That shocked me, to realize that 2012 was actually fourteen years ago. Where had all those years gone? Bunkhouse was a good rock bar, they were a nice crew. Huw, who I met many years ago when his band the Pooh Sticks came to the first Knitting Factory on Houston Street in NYC to see my band the Shams, had set up the gig.

Chris who opened the show said he’d seen me in Cardiff back in the early 2000s…was it…2004? He mentioned the Toucan Club - I felt sure that was me with Sid Griffin’s band in the year 2000. Twenty six years ago.

I wondered if I should be ashamed…that there were probably the same number of people at the gig that night a quarter of a century ago, and shouldn’t I be playing somewhere larger to more people BY NOW?! But I managed to come around to feeling “it’s okay, you’re still going and you’ve accomplished a lot.”

I could’ve started spiraling. I’m a little on the edge of that these days. Maybe it’s the state of the world, or exhaustion. Getting older—this constant need to reflect, measure where I am vs where I’ve been. Where’m I going? Moving continents. Maybe part of the relief of playing in Portugal last month was - I’D NEVER PLAYED THERE BEFORE. I HAD NO MEMORIES OR EXPECTATIONS OR EVEN LACK OF EXPECTATIONS. I’d been free in a way I’m not when I come back again and again to places, even if the “again and again” is decades apart.

But I had to take some pride in the way I’ve kept on. HOW MANY SONGS I’ve written since then - in 2000 there was no Don’t Ever Change, or Dancing With Joey Ramone…or Do You Remember That - I hadn’t even met Eric yet. There was no Til The Wheels Fall Off or Keep It To Yourself. No Back From Amarillo or Please Be Nice to Her or Bricks or Genovese Bag. Playing Pittsburgh or Bob or Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again.

I hadn’t written two books or hundreds of blogs, then Substack posts. Hadn’t bought a house in Nashville or moved to France with Eric, or married and then lived in upstate New York or found a beautiful house and garden in Norfolk England. Hadn’t seen my daughter graduate college or move across the country to Los Angeles and thrive there, finding a wonderful partner and getting married surrounded by friends and family and bandmates.

So Swansea was fine. I may have wandered off-piste a little with my set list, having needed to divide it into two sets in Bristol. That can really change the flow. The stage lighting gave me some trouble during the readings. (Gosh do I need a book light?) But I think the gig went okay.

Then there were the roadworks. I was heading out to Cardiff, less than an hour away, to stay with friends who’d come to the gig themselves. They’d offered to let me follow them but I don’t like having to track a pair of tail lights. Hey I’ve got GPS.

The GPS stopped working - a chirpy “Follow the route” means “you’re on your own, sucker.” Without other cars on the road, none of it made sense. I started losing track of which direction the car was going. I was in a vortex. Two times, three times around the roundabout, missing the poorly marked exit—in Britain the roadworks are marked by a sketchy-looking knee-high dull gold with black type sign —so temporary-looking (even if the project lasts years) that you say “Diversion, really?…now?” Back off at the Amazon warehouse where the lights were blazing. The third time, I considered going in there and asking for a job.

The fourth time, I missed the Amazon road and ended up at the gates of the Port of Swansea, surrounded by massive lorries, headed for container ships. God knows what they were carrying. It felt sinister, like that second season of The Wire. I drove back towards the city centre and when I finally got a phone signal, booked a hotel. I called my friends in Cardiff. They said it had taken them two or three tries to get out but they’d made it.

I just didn’t have the strength to try anymore. I practically fell into the arms of the cheery young woman behind the desk at the hotel. When she’d got me all checked in, I came back down and bought a packet of crisps and a tiny screw top bottle of Merlot - party time in my room. My head was still spinning from the roundabouts but eventually I fell asleep.

Next morning I ate breakfast in the hotel. I looked up at the TV on the wall above the bar - there was a man doing the weather report. I looked for the familiar shape of the United States - any school kid could draw it without thinking: Maine up here, Florida down there, Texas like a large hipster’s goatee, that blocky bit in the middle and California up the left side to the Northwest, and Alaska a kooky fascinator off to the side. But it was a map of the UK up on the screen. Oh right, I’m not there, I’m here. A near-constant feeling of displacement. There was an American couple at the next table, chatting excitedly about the sights they’d see that day, in the way Americans do. I remembered Eric telling me about his years in rural France, where he’d keep to himself when fellow Brits entered a restaurant. “Would you look at the state of him?” he’d once heard a couple say, thinking he was French and couldn’t understand English. Not that I don’t love my fellow Americans (a lot of them anyway) but I aspire to fit in here in the UK, so I resisted my natural inclination to join in and start swapping life stories. Sometimes I miss that aspect of American life— lay it all out on the table within minutes of meeting someone— but lately I’m seeing the positives in keeping it all safely tucked away. Maybe I just don’t have the energy anymore. Maybe the British modesty is part of what’s always drawn me here.

When I’d checked out I was sure I could navigate my way out of Swansea in broad daylight. I greeted the Diversion sign like an old friend (“Oh you”). It only took one mistake at an exit, and then I was out! Heading towards the next gig in Hereford.

Past the Vale of Neath. I thought how evocative, how dark and brooding and…well, Welsh, that name sounded. The landscape beyond Swansea started to resemble a lot of the British crime dramas we watch. Bleak, windswept. I drove awhile and started worrying I might run out of gas, so I exited at what looked like a town, imagining a large supermarket on the outskirts. Instead, I descended deeper and deeper down a tiny street into what had to have been a mining town. I pictured a young Richard Burton following his father down into the mines…My hopes of filling up the rental car and finding a can of Elnett hairspray were slipping away. I was headed for the vortex again - where the hell was I?

When I found a service station, the hairspray selection was not surprisingly, very limited. I found a can of “Enliven” that looked like it had been there since the eighties. It took me a few minutes to exit the service station - without other cars around, I just wasn’t sure which side of the road to put myself on and didn’t want to make a mistake. Finally I was en route again.

The landscape started changing. Daffodils and greenery. I crossed over into England. I began to relax a little. I saw a magpie flit alongside the road. “Hello Mr. Magpie, how are your children!” I yelled, my voice cracking. I’d learned that you must always say this when there’s only one magpie, as one for sorrow means there’ll be a death, where as two is for joy - so by verbally connecting the lone bird with family, you break the curse. Eric taught me this years ago and I admit I usually say it dutifully, with a wink. This time I put my whole heart into it.

It occurred to me I was changing. Inserting my American self into the British landscape, I could observe the differences, take note of adaptations I make to fit in society, but now the landscape was permeating my interior. Like the Incredible Hulk in reverse, I was developing inside: a new relationship to the natural world, an aversion to showiness. Yet I was still getting up onstage and singing these personal songs, reading intimate passages from memoirs. No wonder I was exhausted. The artist me was working on catching up with the émigré. It might explain why I’ve found it hard to book shows in the UK since moving here. I don’t know how to be myself anymore, the performer me. In the US, I lean back into who I was. Here - I’m on a dark roundabout, looking for the other cars to guide me. Even if they’re in the form of a magpie.

It was a cold evening and the sky felt especially dark, the stars yet to come out. I left the house a little after eight to catch the 20:26 train that would arrive at Gunton at 20:32. We were celebrating birthdays so I’d dressed up a little, as if I were taking the train down to London. It felt weird to be out walking at this hour, when even the fish and chips shop in the marketplace would have taken last orders. Down the road from our house, a man ran with his carrier bag flapping in one hand, trying to make it to Sainsbury’s before the supermarket shut. Earlier in the day I’d stopped by the store myself and been amazed by the banks and banks of cut flowers, bouquets for Mum, as this Sunday was Mother’s Day in Britain. There’d even been a guard standing sentry to keep desperate grown-ups from dashing in, grabbing a cellophane-wrapped handful of blooms and rushing off without paying. “But—it’s for Mum!” they’d shout when collared.

I needed my phone’s flashlight to walk through the bit that connects the Sainsbury’s car park to the town car park. It’s a little creepy but hey this is Norfolk, not South London (although maybe it’s fancy there now) or Bradford (it’s probably fancy there too). Two nights before, I’d been in Walthamstow which used to feel edgy and rough in parts and has become the “Sunday Times’ best place to live in London, 2025.”

In North Walsham, I passed only a hooded figure or two (it was cold, so they had their hoods up). I cut through Black Swan Loke (a loke is a local term for a passageway/narrow path) and curved past the formerly-rough, trying to be family-friendly pub the Black Swan, where a couple of young guys were saying “cunt” loudly, one after another. I hadn’t put my airpods in, thinking in the dark like this I wanted to hear what was going on around me, but wished I hadn’t had to hear them because it felt aggressive, almost like they were trying to get a person to look their way. A teenage boy was attacked by a group of boys a few weeks ago in our town, on a Saturday evening. I pictured Lord Of The Flies: “Get him.” Ah, men. So, just minding my own business…

In the next car park, I passed an older couple, the man wearing a leather hat and carrying a guitar in a bright green case. They were hurrying, as if maybe someone was waiting for him to bring the craic to another pub - it is after all, just two days away from Saint Patrick’s Day.

The usually busy main road was nearly deserted, no cars coming to or from work. That’s what our town is, a working town. There’s no nightlife except a pub or two or three, no restaurants to speak of (well an Indian and one quite nice place where we have tea and cake sometimes). By day it’s cheery and bustling, with history and everything you need. You can catch the train! It works.

Still, I felt a little nervous as I passed the used car lot, crossed the main road and walked under the railway bridge. It’s the narrowness of the sidewalk there rather than the darkness that makes me extra careful anytime of day, but at least there IS a sidewalk. I climbed the ramp up to the train platform and felt so alone, my hand on my phone in my bag. Who would I call if something happened? The constabulary in town closes at 6 PM. Still, it would take a desperate, not-very-motivated criminal to hang out on the train platform in North Walsham, waiting for the rare nighttime train customer.

I imagined the blow to my head and then the last few weeks of my life telescoping: back two nights ago to Walthamstow, Mother’s Ruin Gin Palace, the pink and white lights for the Rock and Roll Book Club event for Girl To Country playing and reading, feeling emotional for a minute, remembering me and Eric at the Walthamstow Plough playing together, 2008, how we’d had to spray air freshener around the stage to make it bearable. Funny, the things we feel nostalgia for. This night he’d been up in Edinburgh and here I was, and isn’t life strange? Sitting on green armchairs like thrones with Kathy Valentine, mics in our hands, discussing my book that Kathy said she loved, and had insightful things to say and ask me about, which touched me so much; selling and signing books to old friends and people who kindly follow my writing and music. The drive partway across Britain to Stoke on Trent and the nice small town of Biddulph the day before, where I played in a beautiful old church. Seeing Eric for a minute before he set off for his own gigs in Scotland. Renting a car at London Heathrow airport, thinking how similar to the last one, only the steering wheel was on the other side of the car.

Turning in the rental car at Lisbon Airport, how reaching the airport through immense roundabouts and construction that the GPS didn’t recognize had been the most stressful part of the whole trip to Portugal. Playing in Lisbon for a mix of Americans, Brits and Portuguese, feeling like I’d somehow gotten it down, at the same time I still wished I was better/tighter/sharper. I’d seen a post by KT Tunstall, asked to open a tour for Brandi Carlisle and the secret she’d learned from Brandi — to warm up for forty-five minutes every night before a show. I’d imagined the entire audience on the other side of a flimsy wooden door to the restroom being treated to me singing scales in an operatic voice, after I’d met them in the lobby as I set up my merch, and instead hummed gently while writing out my setlist. We do the best we can with what we have.

I’d wished I had more time in Lisbon. Aside from the nice people who ran Bota Anjos, and friends and people who’d come to the gig, my only interaction had been with the Uber driver back to my hotel after I played. I’d learned our brief time in this city last year how many of the streets are not even accessible by car, parking seemed difficult or impossible. So, Uber was cheap. My driver, from Pakistan, speaking perfect English, neatly turned down a one way street in the wrong direction - “It’s fine, it’s fine.” He kept shaking his head saying what a bad day it had been. Fares keeping him waiting. How little he got paid for driving, how never to leave a four star review- that dings a driver’s profile badly. How the cost of Lisbon has risen, risen, but pay is still abysmally low. He kept apologizing for ranting but I didn’t mind - he was sharing a very real frustration. I felt like I was seeing life in this country in a way, one man’s experience of it anyway. He said his parents lived in Dubai. I gasped, and he said, “It’s fine, it’s fine, they’re okay.” That might be the most exhausting, exhilarating thing about travel—these little windows into other lives that make our own familiar ones seem comfortable in contrast, but also not that different.

I knew I should’ve gone to the beautiful, ancient library in Coimbra that morning — I’d booked a ticket the night before, but when morning rolled around, I hadn’t had the energy to find my way there and figure out parking. Not knowing I had the show in Lisbon that night. I feel tireless onstage, like “I could do this FOREVER!” but lately, afterwards, once I’ve found my way back to where I’m staying, I can barely move.

I’d loved Coimbra, the people I met and the small theatre room where I played. The audience was lively, sat at tables and chairs; I enjoyed my dinner with Victor one of the promoters who’d toured the world with his Portuguese by way of London punk band. It had been fun hanging out with fellow American expats after. I’d revised Vote That Fucker Out on the spot as “Fuck Trump” seemed to be the general emotion with expats and Portuguese alike. Before Coimbra I’d had a lovely time along the beach at Melides with our friends Peter and Karen. I remembered navigating from way up north at Arcos de Valdevez to the tiny surf town of Esmoriz, south of Porto, with no GPS, after my phone had stopped working.

Without my phone I’d been a whimpering shell. I know, I know, we all used to do everything without phones that now do everything for us. BUT we were prepared for that. We carried maps, handwritten or faxed (!) directions. Coins for payphones that dotted the landscape. Foreign language phrasebooks! CDs or cassettes to listen to in the car.

It had been a great gig in Arcos. I’d played first on a bill with Garota Nao, a popular newish Portuguese group. Their leader, Kate, was authoritative and poetic; artsy projections lit up the stage. Beforehand, the audience had really appreciated my set. I’d felt it and not worried, like I had my first night playing, about the language barrier. The younger people spoke English. I had dinner with Fernando, who’d set up all the shows for me, this was his hometown and it was a beautiful place. The promoter had been so welcoming, they said I was the first non-Portuguese artist to play at their cultural center. The Portuguese people are cool and warm at the same time, what a delightful place.

But somehow I’d burned through the data on my phone. It would only work on wifi. Even to leave Arcos on Sunday was daunting. Trying to read the road signs somehow brought me right back to the town center. I couldn’t get out! I followed the river back to my hotel which was along the river bank. The front desk was closed for Sunday lunch (memories of rural France), so I pulled the car right up by the door to get back on their wifi. Wrote down the directions as best I could—after years of relying on GPS, I think I’ve lost the ability to write directions, the specificity needed.

My handwritten notes got me out of town to the A road, but then I wasn’t sure which way to go. I knew I had to head south, but the road signs didn’t indicate which way was north or south, only by town. Porto was not on the sign. I figured if I reached Spain, I would know I was going the wrong way.

It was like this the whole way to Esmoriz. My tour playlist of Slow Train Coming, Oh Mercy and Sabrina Carpenter shifted to Portuguese pop radio. I pulled over a time or two at service stations to refine my directions. Skirted around Porto (yeah, yeah, I know I need to see it sometime, but - well, that’s touring) Made it to Esmoriz but made a wrong turn and found myself in another beach town that wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I could tell I needed to go further south so I hugged the Atlantic coast and made it to what seemed like the right town. I was looking for Avenida de Praia. I thought Praia sounded sort of like playa, or plage - beach - so I turned towards the sunset. The place was mobbed. I knew my hotel was across the street from the venue, Uncle Joe’s Bar, but couldn’t see either. Was this Avenida de Praia? I went in the other direction, searching for a street sign. The only word of Portuguese I’d managed to learn was “Obrigada",” thank you, and “desculpe,” sorry. Everyone had their sunglasses on, headed towards the sunset. I couldn’t find the words to ask…anything. Thought, I’ll drive back up this street. I saw a very large church at the other end. Church - praia? Prayer? Maybe Avenida de Praia was focused on the church…but the idea of an Uncle Joe’s Bar sitting in the shadow of an imposing house of God just made no sense. I thought of hopping on the autoroute out of town and down to my friends in the Alentenjo, but…I couldn’t find the signs to point me out of town.

I turned back towards the sunset. This had to be the Avenida. The sun was sinking behind a sea wall, the town was emptying out. I took one more shot at it, headed west, back towards America.

And there was Uncle Joe’s Bar, a block from the ocean. Across the street was my hotel, a cute place called Be Happy Lodge. The lodge looked closed. I felt very tired. A sign on the door said to call, but my phone didn’t work. Uncle Joe’s was closed. I thought maybe I’d just get in the car and shut my eyes.

Then a young woman came out of Be Happy. She told me she’d been waiting for me. She talked me through everything, showed me my charming room, and pointed me up to a rooftop bar/restaurant where you could just see the last of the sunset. I ate camarones and drank a glass of light white wine. I thought I might stay in Esmoriz forever…

Back on the train platform in North Walsham, I saw two young women on the other side of the tracks take a seat on a bench at the end of the platform and I felt okay, like I was safe enough out in the Norfolk countryside, even on a Saturday night, and nothing bad was going to happen. The girls were chattering, wearing cute fake fur coats, short dresses, heading for the city of Norwich for a night out. The recorded announcement told us the train to Norwich was arriving, and in the other direction I saw my train’s lights getting closer.

Lisbon to Gunton. It’s not such a long way to go.

A few more gigs coming up!

• Wed 18 Mar Bristol Hen & Chicken tix

• Thu 19 Mar Swansea The Bunkhouse tickets

• Fri 20 Mar Hereford Wild Hare Club at De Koffiepot tix w/Anya Pailthorpe

• Sun 29 Mar Hastings 1200 Postcards 4 PM w/Jude Montague

• Sat May 2 Santa Barbara, CA Santa Barbara Literary Festival

• Wed May 13 Los Angeles CA Permanent Records Roadhouse tickets available soon

• Sun 31 May High Wycombe UK tickets 6 pm show

Touring—playing gigs—I find it helps to have the rhythm of a comfort watch to wind down at night. It can be daunting to get up in front of people to play, as much as I look forward to it; as bracing and moving and uplifting as it can be—the feeling of completing a circle that starts with writing songs and really only finishes when you put the songs in front of people, share a thought and feeling—can be the best feeling in the world but also exposes you and makes you vulnerable. When it’s over, you wonder what you’ve just put yourself through, and why.

So…Bloodline. I think this might be the third time I’ve watched the series made back in the mid-2010s. I have great affection for it, as one of me and Eric’s early streaming experiences, and it might be my perfect comfort watch. Partly it’s the shaky camera work, the documentary style lack of formality like you’ve just stumbled onto the scenes. I remember the first time Eric and I watched it finding that off-putting. Now that I’ve watched it again, and now again, I find the casualness soothing. It puts me right in the Florida keys, a place I have no attachment to, no big desire to visit.

Maybe, if I watch it enough times, I’ll even finally figure out what happened in the show. There’s violence. There’s treachery. There’s brothers and a sister. There’s fish. Drugs and real estate. Bad people doing bad things. There’s Sam Shepherd, briefly (his last role?) and Sissy Spacek.

Ben Mendelsohn as Danny Rayburn. He’s always smirking and sweaty. Did his family make him bad, or was he always…just bad? He’s a delicious villain.

Chloe Sevigny in her trashy bikini-topped dresses.

Kyle Chandler and Linda Cardellini. They became like family friends when we eventually got around to watching all five seasons of Friday Night Lights; or Dead To Me. But when we first watched Bloodline these great actors were a revelation.

So in between gigs and traveling in Portugal, I watch Bloodline.

Setubal, I played in the cultural center. It was an old palace that had been abandoned and repurposed for the people. Pedro the promoter and his girlfriend Louisa took me for dinner beforehand, a nice European practice I remember from playing gigs in France, Belgium and Germany. There was a respectable audience in the Casa de Cultura. I felt nervous, and also embarrassed that the shirt I’d put on to wear was the exact same one I was wearing in the poster they’d made for the event, like “does this lady only own one shirt?” I was trying to feel the audience out—could they understand me, was any of it making any sense? My friends had come from down the road which was nice, but I could feel them feel me being a bit nervous. I was conscious of being very alone up there, and wondered why a person would put themselves through that, at the same time I loved playing my guitar and singing songs for the people. I played The President Can’t Read and that one really connected. A man towards the end said “Play something from Nashville” I felt like I’d failed somehow as I’d played a number of songs I’d written in Nashville, but I suppose they couldn’t be defined as being of Music City. The man was probably just showing he was engaged with the show, but wanted to hear something he knew. What Nashville era are we talking about here? I wish I had thought to bust out Fist City or some old favorite but on the first night of the tour I hadn’t reached that level of freedom. One of my performing heroes is Steve Poltz, who effortlessly just flows with the audience he happens to be in the room with. Jill Sobule was that same way, fearless and giving. You want to be authoritative - have a plan, know what you’re doing, but also rise to the moment. Obviously you can’t please everyone, especially a room of people who’ve never heard you before. Some teenagers came up afterwards and said how much they loved it, and felt inspired, so I felt like I’d done a worthwhile thing.

Back in my hotel, I watched Bloodline. I thought of what a great actress Sissy Spacek is, wondered where she got her straw hat, and also thought how much she reminds me of Sue from my old band the Shams.

Danny Rayburn sweated, smoked and schemed. I hoped he’d be redeemed somehow, even though I knew that wasn’t going to happen, having seen the whole thing before. Maybe part of the power and comfort of the rewatch is it’s good practice in keeping alive belief in impossible things.

The next day, imagining I’d have plenty of time to stroll around the nice streets of Setubal after breakfast, I checked the route to the next gig and gasped when I saw it was over four and a half hours away. That’s a long drive in an unfamiliar country. I packed up, rolled my suitcase a few blocks over cobbled streets, the suitcase clacking loudly, retrieved my car from the cultural center parking spot and headed north. I was definitely ready to start using the toll roads.

The toll roads in Portugal are superb. They’re also quite expensive. I went through the ticket lanes and saw what I was paying and it added up to at least forty euros for the drive. But even the service areas were nice, with fresh orange juice and a big array of sandwiches and pastries or hot meals. I was heading far north to Arcos de Valdevez, to another cultural center. The scenery was calm and beautiful, getting more hilly. I saw “FATIMA” on a road sign and remembered Catholic school and this bit I’d written for Girl To City that I’d edited out eventually:

At school we watched the film about Our Lady Of Fatima where three little kids in a country far away saw a vision in a field. The lady who appeared told them if their peasant parents didn’t pray hard enough, the world would end. If they prayed right, a secret would be revealed. Everyone gathered in the field and it rained and when the sun whirled closer and closer to the earth, drying the peasants’ soggy clothes and threatening the world with total destruction, they all dropped to their knees and believed. I hid my eyes and thought that, hard as it all was to swallow, unquestioning belief was the way to go. I think the secret was pray more.

I don’t think it occurred to me til the very moment I saw Fatima on the sign that Portugal was the “country far away”. That story and the film had a powerful impact on me as a kid. Saturday, I wanted to pull off the road and see Fatima for myself, but I needed to get to the venue for soundcheck. That’s touring for you. Eric and I played in Florence once, on tour with Yo La Tengo. “Huh, there’s the Duomo, over there,” I said from the top of a hill as we entered the city. That’s as close as we got to any sights. But you make plans in your mind: yep, gonna get back there someday, see that for real.

For now, there was a gig to play.

It was all going so well! Starting with my luxurious seat on the flight to Lisbon. I’ve learned from Eric to suck it up and pay the extra baggage charge for checking my guitar in person, it’s usually a couple dollars/pounds more than doing it online, but those desk agents seem to hold a certain amount of power in their hands. When I went to board the man at the gate said I was in a different seat. “But…but I booked a window…is it still a window?”

“No miss, it’s an aisle. But I think you’ll be happy with Seat 2D.”

I probably gasped and bit his hand off. It couldn’t get better, top class on this two and a half hour flight from Heathrow to Lisbon. Posh glassware, lemon slices in the chilled water, tea in a china cup, pate, quiche, cornichons and a lemon meringue tart to finish. A steward came around with fresh scones - who passes up a scone? I would’ve ordered wine but knew I needed to rent a car upon arrival and was a little trepidatious. What would it be like to drive in Portugal? I hoped they’d honor my request for an automatic car. I hoped I’d remember which side of the road to drive on.

Are the Portuguese the most relaxed people on earth? My passport wouldn’t work in the automatic machine at immigration. SEE AN AGENT the machine flashed. I imagined questions - what was my purpose for being in Portugal? Was I working? Was I carrying merchandise? I prepared to front it out - visiting friends in Melides.

The agent couldn’t have cared less. I don’t think he even looked up from his phone as he welcomed me to Portugal.

Lisbon car rental was a little challenging. The parking spaces were so tight, I scraped one of those yellow-striped plastic dividers simply pulling forward. The turns exiting were hairpin - my friends Karen & Peter texted to ask if I managed the car rental okay. BRING T-CUT I texted back, I never heard of the stuff til Eric and I started playing together, when it became as much a part of our touring arsenal as guitar stands and duct tape. It magically (here’s hoping) covers/repairs any…ahem paint discrepancies on rental vehicles.

Lisbon rush hour runs late. I’d hoped a post-7 PM arrival would leave the roads clear but the A-whatever road was clogged as I made my way to my industrial zone Moxy hotel. Maybe it’s boring but I more and more rely on Marriott hotels - the app is great, I earn free nights and I rarely have a bad experience with their places. The roundabouts to get there were kind of crazy but I’ve had a lot of roundabout practice lately living in England, so I arrived unscathed. I pulled up into the loading in area, expecting to need to move the car to a car park.

“Oh no problem, you can just leave it there overnight,” the woman at the desk said. Wait - you don’t want to charge me, just cause you can…Control me, just to be cuntish? (a word I’ve never used in my life but it popped in my head and yeah, like roundabouts, after a year and a half of living in England, it just works to describe certain behavior).

Welcome to Portugal.

I ate nachos and drank a couple of glasses of wine at the hotel bar in lieu of finding dinner, while a DJ almost convinced me I like Hall & Oates with his creative repurposing of the bass line from I Can’t Go For That. When the bartender handed me the bill - fifteen euros - I felt sure there was some kind of mistake, having gotten used to the idea of a fifteen dollar glass of wine in the US, but then I remembered I was in Portugal!

I can’t say I slept great. Eric was in Reading and I missed him and our bed at home. I woke up early and tried to bypass the pricey hotel breakfast, imagining I’d go for a walk to find some coffee and a pastry, but when I looked out the window and at MAPS it looked like I’d have to cross a highway to get to a place, so I gave in, justifying the expense as I hadn’t had to pay for parking. (I’d probably woken up early because I was convinced the rental car would have been towed or clamped, the easy hotel parking scheme too good to be true…nope it was sitting there, just as I’d left it in the loading zone).

As I sat eating my bountiful breakfast, I looked out over the highway and remembered - oh right, I’m in Europe, not the US. They don’t punish people for not having a car here. There was an easy walkway over the highway, I could see people walking briskly to work, insulated from traffic, not sprinting across multiple lanes of traffic as I’d imagined I’d have to do if I headed out on foot. Ah well, I’d picked up a banana and the makings of a sandwich for later so it all came out in the wash.

I requested a late checkout and worked for a while, editing my podcast; emailing a few more Los Angeles bookstores trying to set up an event for May (losing faith in that idea at this point). I swam in the beautiful infinity pool and prepared to head to Setubal.

*

I avoided the toll road to Setubal. It was less than an hour away and I couldn’t yet handle figuring out how to pay tolls (was there the equivalent of an ezpass…would I have to speak to a ticket taker?) I thought I’d leave that until I was a little more acclimated.

Navigating around Setubal was easy enough with the GPS, I’d put in the name of a coffee place that looked decent and like somewhere I could work for an hour or two before heading to soundcheck. I circled around a couple times—parking seemed almost impossible. Finally I spotted a very tight place that would require backing in on a narrow thankfully one way street. Here’s where I actually began to appreciate the backup camera on the rental car, I’ve usually scoffed at them. There’s UK-tight and apparently European-tight is even tighter. When I’d managed to extract myself from the car (oh god I must lose those extra pounds, no wonder Europeans stay slim, they would never be able to get out of their cars otherwise) and noticed the car next to me had a parking ticket. I took a photo of the parking regulation sign, popped it in Google Translate and it told me my place was reserved for the Peace Court. While I firmly believe in the tenets of peace and wouldn’t want to obstruct the upholding of it, it was nearly 4 PM on a Friday and since the car next to me already had a ticket, I figured the warden had already done his or her rounds, so I walked off in search of the cafe, trying to keep track of where I’d parked in case the GPS signal failed me. In a matter of minutes I was in real danger of getting lost and seemed no closer to the coffee place on Maps, so I made my way back to the car (I’d clocked particular tiled buildings as markers - did I mention how stunning all the tile in Portugal is?!) My car was okay, no ticket, and I spotted an everyday looking cafe just across the avenue. There were plenty of tables so I could sit with my laptop- fine! When you’re on the road doing gigs, practicality takes precedence over aesthetics a lot of the time, and I’ve come to accept that, and even love that aspect of touring. You let go of the idea of “The Perfect…” meal, drink, experience and just go for what’s easy or what works - which feels closer to a town’s day to day life.

In the cafe I made a spectacle of myself: I spilled a load of coins all over the floor (I thought I’d been so smart back at home, gathering up decades worth of Euros to use up at last), and trying to pick them up I knocked over a cardboard ice cream sign. The ladies behind the counter were really sweet and spoke no English, I only knew two words of Portugal, please and thank you, but I managed to order coffee and a pastry. I screwed up again by getting out money to pay right then, which I remembered after is not how it’s done, they bring your stuff over, you eat and drink and eventually when it’s time to leave THEN you pay.

I kept an eye on my car while editing a podcast. Nobody came and wrote me a ticket. Soon, it was time to find the venue. My first show in Portugal. What would it be like?

There’s lots of places I want to play: Japan, Australia, Mexico, South America. Spain, again! Italy? That gig in Rome years ago went so well! These ideas remain pipe dreams without a promoter or an offer that sets reality into motion. With Portugal, reality aligned with the vision - a promoter named Fernando Pinto who has booked me since Shams days in New Haven Connecticut, where he moved from Portugal many years ago. There’s a big Portuguese population in this part of the US.

It’s not like booking me to play in small venues was ever lucrative for Fernando. I’ve had good turnouts there and not so great ones, but Fernando is a believer. So when I said “hey do you think I could play in Portugal?” he set to work booking me enough dates to make the trip worthwhile.

Being in England makes this kind of endeavor a lot less daunting - unlike other countries in Europe, Portugal even sits in the same time zone as the UK. It’s an easy flight, from Stansted or Heathrow. Months ago, Fernando came up with five gigs over the last weekend of February and first of March. I went and played just outside New Haven last fall and it hallelujah it went well. Fernando was in Portugal that week, he’s in the middle of moving back.

I even had the offer of a place to stay for the days in between gigs, from our friends Peter and Karen who were the reason we visited Portugal in the first place. They share a holiday home with Peter’s family. It’s a spectacular place in a beautiful, quiet town that’s a jumble of rustic and fabulous, reminding me a little of a Portuguese version of our old area in upstate New York.

So, easy - right? Hang out in Portugal, play for some people, drink good wine and eat nice food, admire the landscape and ogle tile. What could be hard about that?

But it’s a leap of faith too. I don’t think about the reality of these situations until I’m just about in them. So panic starts to set in as I’m packing a bag. I literally know three people in Portugal. Have never mailed a disc there. Correction, I know four people if Fernando is able to fly out of the snow-covered Northeast US, to meet me at the first gig in Setubal. I don’t speak Portuguese. Not everyone speaks English. How will it go?

Setubal’s nice. We ate lunch there last time, listening to a rock and roll trio playing outdoors in the little plaza. They were good. Walking (rather, climbing) through beautiful Lisbon one evening, music filtered out of bars and cafes. A violinist practiced in the window of an apartment at the top of a tall hill in the old town. A djembe player and an upright bassist improvised on a street corner.

Where will I fit in? I would ordinarily send merch ahead but wasn’t sure where to ship to, how the mail is. I figured I’d just pack a larger suitcase - put records and books in there.

Books? It really doesn’t make sense to read at these gigs. I hear there are lots of Americans and Brits but…I thought it was better to focus more on songs: rhythm, melody; spirit. Plus, books are HEAVY. I packed some vinyl, CDs. I screenprinted more tote bags.

Eric helped me with my pedal board. It has a DI, pre-amp, tuner and tremolo pedal in place, so I just plug the venue’s XLR into the DI, plug my acoustic into the pre-amp. Portugal uses the European two-pin plugs, and Eric swapped out my US plug for a British one and found an adaptor from UK to Europe power (if he hadn’t it would have been easy to pick one up at the airport). I dug out a Euro plug for my laptop. Packed my microphone and cable. Extra strings Eric had ordered for me. At the same time as I’ve been getting ready to fly to Portugal, he’s been getting ready to go to Reading, Tamworth and Coventry. It’s such a different feeling from when we’ve toured together. Shared excitement and dread. It’s hard to explain - you want it to happen and you want it to be over.

What to wear? A few good shirts. Two pairs of jeans. The weather will be at least slightly warmer there in Portugal, but I need boots or sneakers to wear on stage, a jacket. A person needs choices but it all has to fit in the suitcase along with LPs, CDs, tote bags, pedal board. I left the books behind which feels weird because the last year has been finishing, revising, laying out and publishing my second book for the US in the fall and next month in the UK. I have a load of Girl To City, the first memoir, to sell at the upcoming UK gigs (the UK version of the book is on order) and thought people in Portugal might like the cover, but it’s just too heavy to carry even ten books.

I’ve got my guitar, strings loosened to check. British Airways doesn’t allow carry-ons, we fly them a lot and I’ve just sort of given in to the idea of not carrying on my guitar anymore. The case is flight-worthy (knock wood). I am glad not to deal with lugging a guitar through the airport. I know the heartache and inconvenience of a crushed guitar and I don’t think I’m tempting fate. I used to pinch pennies with travel - “but that costs ________”! Now I do what I need to, reasoning that I have no road manager. No one to drive me, sell my merch. I do it alone. It’s a lot of work. I don’t even know why I do it alone except I can’t imagine it another way now. If I had another person I’d be worrying everything was okay for them.

And I think I like traveling alone. I wonder if I have trust issues, but I think solo traveling and solo playing is the ultimate trust exercise: you’re putting yourself in the hands of the world you’re traveling through. For sure it’s fun to be part of the gang, the cocoon of a band: shared jokes and hilarity; propping each other up and rehashing victories and injustices. But everything is just so vivid alone. That’s probably why it’s terrifying, setting out. Hey world, have at me. I say that from the privileged position of an older white woman. The cloak of invisibility is armor. Except on stage. Then it’s sort of…shapeshifting?

Hell, it’s not a Himalayan trek. It’s not the souks of Morocco or a tuktuk in Vietnam. It’s a BA flight to Lisbon, an Avis rental car. The biggest risk is plugging in my power supply, opening my mouth to sing, hitting a chord.

So here I am on the train to London Liverpool Street to change to the Elizabeth line for Heathrow, to catch a flight to Lisbon. There I’ll rent that hopefully automatic car and check into a nearish hotel outside of Lisbon so I can park conveniently with my big suitcase, guitar and knapsack. I hope the hotel has an elevator! I’ll decant the merch, tune my guitar. Play some songs in my hotel room, to get ready for the first show tomorrow: “I wonder if they’ll like this one?’ and “this one FEELS like a good song for Portugal” and “how do I say `not too much reverb’ in Portuguese?” and “I wonder how things are going for Eric in Reading?”

Tickets/info here: https://www.amyrigby.com/tour-1

The wonderful Michael Palin is back in our lives again thanks to this charming new BBC series Small Prophets.

“We have Sue on the line—Sue, what can you tell us? Any Michael Palin encounters to share?”

“Yes, actually well you see I’m a speech therapist, and there’s a center in London called the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering.”

“Oh, bless. Isn’t that wonderful. That’s amazing! So, tell us Sue, have you been there to the Centre?”

“Actually I have. We brought some of the young people we work with to London for a day out and stopped at the Centre and would you know, Michael Palin was there that day. He was absolutely lovely.”

“Oh what a wonderful encounter, that is brilliant. Thanks so much for calling Sue.”

“Also, growing up we did have a python…”

“Named Monty? Perfect! Absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much for your call Sue. I just love to hear that Sir Michael Palin is as nice as you’d want him to be. He came to Norfolk every year as a child, to spend his summer holidays at Sheringham…”

Next up there was a call from a man who’d done publicity for Anglian Railway and they’d named a train for Sir Michael Palin and on the dedication day, he got to shake hands with the man himself. AND he was just as nice as when Sue met him.

I’m driving through the Norfolk countryside and smiling, marveling at the quaintness of it all, but smiling also because I’m driving, and comfortable enough driving to listen to the radio. The simplest things we take for granted can do so much to help us feel like ourselves.

And that self is always changing, at least a little, as long as we’re alive. My new self in Britain ordered a garden tool I never heard of before - it’s called a Dutch hoe. I’ve been so excited about this implement, thinking how it will make all the difference in helping clear weeds and moss out in the garden without me having to crawl around on my knees. I’m so eager to get out there in the garden, while I’m home, to get a start on things before spring comes and it all gets out of control. I went over to pick it up from the Argos (that’s been another lesson, coached by Eric - how to pronounce the word “Argos” so as not to sound laughingly American, like when the GPS lady says “Bressing-HAM”). Argos is a counter, usually at the back of Sainsbury’s (that word took practice too, shorten the second syllable so it sounds like you’re cold for a second) where you pick up any kind of item you want, ordered from the website. When the nice young woman brought out my Dutch hoe, I probably said something about the endless rain and how tomorrow’s supposed to be sunny, finally, and how I couldn’t wait to take my new hoe out for a spin and she kind of chuckled supportively and I blushed and then walked out with my Dutch hoe which turned out to be less magical than I expected - pretty much just a piece of metal on the end of a stick.

I spend a lot of my time running around to supermarkets. It was thus when we lived in Catskill and it’s just how we live our lives—both Eric and I have a fear of filling the refrigerator and kitchen cupboards with a lot of food. It’s too much of a commitment, or too hopeful, or too much pressure. A “big shop” for us is three days’ worth of food max. The fridge is always easy to clean, there aren’t layers of containers in there to be excavated.

Of course there are days when I wish we had something to eat around here.

So for day to day shopping, I (we- it’s mostly me) run to the Sainsbury’s which is a two minute walk from our front door, just next to the cemetery. I call it our pantry, I’m in and out of there in five minutes. It takes an extra minute when I buy a bottle of wine, as an attendant has to come over and verify that I’m “visibly over twenty-five years of age” (legal drinking age in the UK is 18 so you’d pretty much have to be in a school uniform for them to look twice).

Once a week or so, we drive to the outskirts of town for the more upscale Waitrose experience. The lighting’s better, they have a fresh fish counter and a cheese counter, I always shop the specials—there’s a magazine rack and newsstand. In Waitrose we get to play the doddering, annoying couple who shop together, holding up this packet of cheese slices versus THAT packet of cheese slices, saying “ooh look, they’ve got that bread we like.” The employees are partners in the company so they’re quite jolly, will be chatty if you want, and tend to stick around (I just looked it up and the 20% employee discount once you’d worked there at least twenty years used to last for all eternity, kind of like my old bookstore/bar, lord I miss that discount on books and art supplies).

Yesterday, I ventured out to Waitrose by myself. I was glad we hadn’t taken the car to the car wash like I’d been wanting, as there’d been an unexpected snowfall. That’s another thing I’ve noticed around here—I get the impression the posher you are the dirtier your car. In America we lovingly shampoo and bathe our babies, I used to take such a pride looking out the window at my humble Subaru sparkling clean, fresh from the Scrub a Dub off Route 9W. It’s funny the little things that give me a pang…

Anyway, back at the Waitrose I missed my shopping buddy and our whole routine in there, but came away with two four packs of heart-shaped crumpets which Eric would’ve said “wait, we don’t do crumpets” to make me laugh. But they’re on special offer! I was all business grabbing the usual items off the shelves, the granola and honey brands you can’t get at Sainsbury’s. Luci and the grandkids are coming so I even got lemonade and that big thing of milk (I think it might be called a litre - big in England is nothing like big in America).

When I rolled the trolley out to the car, I thought how when I’m on foot at Sainsbury’s I will only buy as much as my two arms can handle to carry back home. This leads me to a big change I see coming: I want one of those shopping bag on wheels with handles things. A granny trolley they call them. I was eyeing one in the shoe repair shop the other day, patterned with butterflies. I think it may be time to give in and wheel a trolley.

Heart-shaped crumpets on special offer, a Dutch hoe — soon, a granny trolley. What am I becoming?

That’s a little what it felt like landing at Heathrow the other day after a few weeks in America. Calm and quiet, the general tidiness and propriety of England after a carnival ride. Which was the real place? I couldn’t tell. I’m still not sure.

Leaving to come back home had been fraught, British Airways canceling my flight 24 hours before I was supposed to fly direct from New Orleans to London. A couple people had been surprised when I told them such a flight even existed, and apparently the airline wasn’t sure either. They’d replaced my direct flight scheduled for a reasonable hour with a six AM flight one day later, then a nine hour layover in Charlotte, where an ice storm was expected. I learned all of this a minute before I was supposed to play a house concert in Baton Rouge, but that’s show biz. I put it out of my mind and had fun playing my set to a nice group of people, several of whom had been at the show my early band Last Roundup opened for Alex Chilton at a local club nearly forty years ago (1987 - like having a kid nearly four decades old, it’s hard to convince yourself you’re just getting started in this game when the distance between now and back then is decades greater than the years between watching Hogan’s Heroes as a kid and World War Two). Joe Adragna who was so nice and played a great set to open for me convinced me after the show to call and have them find me a better flight and I did - New Orleans to Houston with a tight connection to London, if all went okay I’d see Eric at the airport or a train station sooner than if I’d caught my scheduled flight.

I’d rented a car for the Baton Rouge gig to be returned to Louis Armstrong airport. I listened to I Heart Country radio for the hour long drive back—an experience the announcers kept insisting was “Guaranteed Human” which I found as chilling as it was heartwarming. It’s come to this now, remember when Jack Radio, classic rock packaged with a generic manly announcer voice, felt like we were in the end times? (now I’m kicking myself I didn’t search for WWOZ or WTUL signal on the radio dial while I had them right there, but my head was filled with travel details and a lot of congestion and reminding myself what side of the road to drive on). When I filled up the gas tank a few miles from the airport, the wind was as cold as any I’d felt in New York at the beginning of my trip. The airline let me check my bags for free. I was worried about the very short connecting time in Houston and asked if I could gate check my guitar, then realized I was just too tired and under the weather to carry it and my carryon however far I needed to go to get to my gate. New Orleans had done its job and completely worn me out.

As I waited for one last coffee and beignets past security, a fire alarm went off. “There has been a fire emergency. Please leave the airport now, do not ride the elevators. I repeat, there has been a fire emergency. Please - leave the airport now, do not ride the elevators.” A woman’s voice spoke over the PA system. I expected everyone to start filing out into the frigid air. When would everyone start filing out? I didn’t want to be the first to leave. The staff behind the bakery counter kept working, men sipped pints of beer at the bar while the giant TVs kept showing football, and Dixieland music played (is it still called Dixieland?) A bartender in a tank top and strands of Mardi Gras beads polished pint glasses, laughing with her customers. The fire alarm kept going. Was that the smell of smoke? “…EXIT NOW…do not take the elevators” the lady kept saying.

How did everyone know there wasn’t a fire for real?

They didn’t, but that’s just life in America.

When I’d landed in New Orleans ten days before, the air was warm and gentle. My Uber arrived, a bright orange Dodge Charger. I checked into the hotel on Canal Street and floated over to Killer PoBoys in the French Quarter where they were playing the Pretty Things. I ate a lot of delicious food in New Orleans but there’s really nothing like that first crunch of a shrimp poboy, almost like a banh mi, yes I went back again it was so good.

The Folk Alliance was starting up, I wondered what I’d gotten myself into at the Sheraton, singer/songwriters and folkies and the people who love them or eke out an existence through them riding up and down from the huge lobby to the performances in hotel rooms, hour in and hour out. This kind of music networking experience makes me feel very insecure and almost like I’m not sure I love music as much as I should. I was glad to have my panel idea accepted (When I’m 65…70…74, Solo Touring beyond the age of reason) and happy to feel part of the world of songwriters and performers but not very adept at navigating the packed schedule of performances, daytime discussions and nocturnal gigs. I kept drifting away to stroll around the French Quarter, wished I’d brought other clothes, and kept an eye on the news and the weather reports which weren’t looking very promising for my house concert outside Oxford MS and in Memphis - ice and snow can be catastrophic down south.

“God love you,” said a younger guy I chatted with at the lobby bar, when I told him I still toured playing my own gigs. It felt a little like the way they say “bless your heart” down south when they feel a little sorry for you. He’d been able to leave the touring life behind via co-writing with a successful artist. I remember imagining this kind of creative payday for myself back around when I moved to Nashville. How could I explain to the guy the beauty of a gig like the previous Saturday night in the bookstore/bar I’d spent twelve years working behind the bar in New York’s Hudson Valley, getting to know the townsfolk, shelving books and occasionally standing up to play my own songs, an It’s A Wonderful Life affirmation, like many of the house concerts and small bar gigs I play these days. The logistics and physical strain feel impossible sometimes, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner manifest. Maybe his “God love you” meant “somebody’s got to do it.” Many are called, few are chosen.

Maybe that was what drove my panel suggestion. I think it had been prompted by the passing of Michael Hurley at the age of 83, the same week he wowed an audience at the Big Ears Festival in Chattanooga. Could he have stopped touring, playing his folk art songs for eager, increasingly younger audiences? Should he have stopped touring? As Willie Nelson says, “All I do is play music and golf - which one do you want me to give up?” But the long game looks a lot different when you’re in it than from the outside. Sometimes for the better (we get to see the audience’s faces, a benign version of working the Matterhorn thrill ride levers) and sometimes for the worse (with all the culinary delights of New Orleans on the doorstep, I had no choice one night but to eat a sad packaged sandwich from a late night deli on Canal Street).

The older woman cloak of invisibility is a kind of double-edged sword at this type of event (is there a “this type of event” or is Folk Alliance really its own thing, i think maybe it is) The upside is, no one notices you and no one cares - the down side is, no one notices you and no one cares. I’m not inviting compliments or arguments, please don’t say “age is just a number” - do you think Mavis Staples sits unaccompanied and completely anonymous at a hotel bar in New Orleans before playing to a packed room? This type of event is alternately humbling and gratifying, where else can you feel the weight of your history (“I last saw you at the Mucky Duck in Houston, I think it was…2003?”) the absence of fallen peers (“I really miss Greg Trooper”) the insane eternal sense of possibility (“this guy does a house concert series out west you’d be perfect for”), all in the course of a few minutes?

I saw artists play sets I loved: Linda McRae in Rm 900, Steve Poltz in Room 830; Emma Swift. I nearly missed my own first set in the great Black Oak Artists room, the timing confused me (was 12 AM Fri midnight at the end of Thursday, or the dawn of the new day Saturday? I borrowed a guitar at the last minute and powered through) I visited fabulous Euclid Records, the Carousel Bar; ate oysters at Luke with trout dip on toasted bacon fat Saltines (Cajun crack I think they call them). I happened on a sing-in in the Sheraton lobby, after the sad Saturday following the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, hundreds joining together to “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” organized by the Black American Music Movement and Piedmont Blues Preservation Society. Dayna Kurtz invited me to the New Orleans Athletic Club for steam and sauna and swimming - what a beautiful place! And Dayna has a way of inviting conversation, I felt like I’d entered the inner sanctum of NOLA ladies in the locker room. I went back to the Carousel Bar again to see the Iguanas, with Cindy and Dave from the Beachland in Cleveland. The tentacles of a lifetime of touring stretch far and wide and that’s a beautiful thing.

When the festival ended, I was under the weather - the Oxford and Memphis gigs cancelled with serious ice storms and damage, friends across MS/Tennessee suffering the effects of the storm, some without power and heat for days. So in spite of feeling like hell, I felt fortunate. Lucky to hunker down in a cheaper hotel with a lovely staff (the Q&C it’s called) and try to get well for my New Orleans and Baton Rouge shows later that week. I managed to get out to the Garden District on my birthday, taking the streetcar down St. Charles past so many memories from the past: the Circle Bar at what was Lee, now called Harmony Circle; Ponchartrain Hotel where I’d tried the Mile High Pie before I was a mom; the Columns, the Rink. I stopped at a bookstore as I like to do in every town. Had a nice birthday dinner thanks to Molly MacPherson a longtime fan who’d encouraged me to try and book a show here - I probably wouldn’t have even tried if she hadn’t done that. My friend Clarke drove me to Snake and Jake’s Christmas Lounge to record Rene Coman’s podcast- the houses brought back memories of my daughter’s year at Tulane, how we’d driven around that part of town looking for an apartment for her to rent and Dave, the bar owner, had said Dr. John was looking for a roommate. Yes, only in New Orleans. It had been such a favorite place of mine, and I’d let myself forget.

When I finally set up to play my gig at Nola Nacular, still slightly delirious, it was good to plug in —my FA shows had been strictly acoustic and I’d done that to test myself but really do feel most comfortable singing into a mic, pumping the acoustic through a PA or an amp or both. Anthony who owns the gallery met me up at Tulane radio station with Shawn Gwin who was also playing the gig, and the host Laura reminded me how valuable the college and noncomm stations are, not just for artists but people listening, it was such an integral part of our old community back in upstate New York. I don’t know what the equivalent is in Norfolk. I still think a bookstore/bar might be the answer.

I stopped into a brewery with pop up roti stand to have some food before my set. Went to the restroom to get ready to play and remembered I’d left my scarf on the back of my chair. When I returned to my table, a pit bull was wearing my scarf. He sat draped in it, while his owner drank a beer. She had that wild-eyed need to talk to someone I know all too well, when you’ve been on the road for a while, you need a witness. She said they were looking for a place to stay, probably saw me recoil and said “I mean I have a hotel now but we’re (her and the pit bull with excellent taste) moving here.” They’d driven down from Wisconsin, where the temperature was twenty below, but where things had gotten REALLY bad was around Oxford Mississippi. They’d spent the night huddled in her van because there wasn’t a motel room anywhere, fifty other cars sitting in the Love’s Truck Stop all night.

I’d always imagined myself as une femme of a certain age sitting on a barstool in New Orleans, just chatting with the world and here it was happening, again and again. I’d missed playing those gigs up north but it had been for the best I didn’t go up there. Just hang out in the Crescent City around Mardi Gras time and let the world come to you.

“Did you used to live in New Orleans?” someone asked at the gig. I never had, but saw friend after friend and people I knew from many different phases of my life. I wished I could tell the young guy on the barstool in the Sheraton lobby how well-loved, by God or the lowdown spirit of New Orleans, I felt.