projects

Melbourne – Billy, Bodhi and I fly from Boston to L.A., touching down briefly in the state of California just as it catches fire. Our next flight will take us to Melbourne, Australia, quite possibly the best city on earth. Australia, aka “England, Outside” or “Clean California” does most things better than the rest of us. Just so you know. When you aren’t there, you should probably feel bad about it. We do.

Bodhi has packed his wet-suit, flippers, mask and snorkel, roughly 4 million marine biology books and about 5 million toy sharks. He brings only one pair of shoes. “I wasn’t planning on wearing shoes,” he says.

Mirko, our new tour manager, picks us up at the airport. Mirko is German, raised in Australia. He has an interesting accent: he talks like a pirate like all Australians, but his speech is clipped and precise. He claims the combination of German and Australian is perfect for tour managing, “Efficient and lazy!” he grins. I never do catch him being lazy, but he is calm. And efficient to the extent that everything somehow gets done without you seeing him do it. I now know I can relax on this tour.

Mirko brings us to our hotel (next door to “The Sisters of Divine Zeal”) and while he is checking us in, it begins to rain. I look down at Bodhi and grab his hand “Wanna go outside and smell the rain?” He nods and we run out the door.

Billy then carries our suitcase into the lobby and asks Mirko where we’ve gone. “They’ve gone outside to smell the rain,” he says, deadpan. Billy meets us in the courtyard, smiling.

“I think I like Mirko,” he says.

•••

This is a day off, so we go out looking for apples and snakes. The apples we find are expensive and disappointing; I keep thinking it’s fall because I left that season behind in New England. It is, of course, spring here in Upside Down Under, dewy and green. We switch to more seasonal produce.

Then the three of us look under stones, in tree branches and in people’s yards for snakes but, embarrassingly, the only snakes we find are in a pet shop. Of course, this pet shop is fantastic (Australians doing stuff better than us again). We talk to the reptile handler for a good twenty minutes, admiring a 7 foot python. There is also a nice selection of fish for Bodhi. “An epaulet shark!” he squeals. Then he races around the store, pointing into various fish tanks. “Neon tetras! Yellow tangs! A pipe fish! A long-nosed gar! Axolotls!”

Melbourne looks to us like someone laid New Orleans over Tucson. With maybe a little Reykjavik thrown in. It is wet and chilly. I pray that the fish don’t remind Bodhi of his wet-suit; it’s so cold. We walk through beautiful neighborhoods and parks until we’re tired enough to fall asleep.

•••

The next day is a show day, with press in the afternoon. The cab to the radio station doesn’t show up, though, and I am very late for a live session. The publicist finally drives me there herself and we listen to the station on the way. The dj keeps hyping my interview. “She’s so trusting,” I say. “I’m four hours late!”

When we race into the studio, she smiles, “Thank you so much for coming!” No mention of the time or the fact that she’s almost off the air. They’re so kind here — (Australia = better).

I am then late for sound check, which is nerve-wracking, as it’s the first one. I have brought no band mates with me this time, which means I must make all the sounds myself and they should be good ones. Of course, there are buzzes and power issues, the amp is a rental and seems excessively bright, one of the delay pedals is acting weird, song to song, my distortion pedal sounds completely different, the mike feeds, etc. Eventually, Mirko and Billy sort out the sound in the room and I sort out the sound for myself on stage. Then we go back to the hotel so I can sign t-shirts.

We couldn’t afford to bring printed shirts into this country to sell, so Billy bought blank t-shirts ahead of time and had Mirko pick them up and bring them to the hotel for me to write my name on. The names of the colors are entertaining: “Ocean” for men, “Merlot” for women. Interestingly, “Ocean” is not the color of the ocean and “Merlot” is not the color of Merlot. Also, it’s really hard to draw on a t-shirt. I try a Sharpie, a paint pen and an industrial marker. They all catch on the fabric and make me write my name retarded. Then I feel guilty about trying to sell this to someone and draw them a sad little picture: a guitar, a tree, a spiral.

“I’m really bad at this,” I tell Billy.

“Shut up and do it,” he offers helpfully.

I eventually get 36 shirts done: 18 men’s and 18 women’s. Then Billy writes numbers on them all. We’ll have a drawing at the end of the tour and the lucky winner will receive a guitar. Hopefully not a crappy one.

Tonight’s show is a blur, but I am reminded of why I’ve always loved to play here: people care. They are just enough out of the fray to be able to. They aren’t as relentlessly subjected to trendiness as Americans, they just want you to know your shit. Which I sort of do.

Bodhi sleeps on the couch throughout my set. Afterwards, I bundle him in a blanket I swiped from the airplane and carry him outside, where it’s still cool and rainy. It’s strange for Australia to be so cold. I like cold, I just have no sense memories of this place cold. Usually it feels like a carnival here. And Bodhi so wanted to snorkel in that ocean. I put him inside my coat to keep the rain off and take him back to bed.

•••

Hepburn Springs – Before heading out to the next show, we all feel so bad for the 4 year old marine biologist that we take him to the Melbourne Aquarium. It is a peak experience for Bodhi, who can name every single shark and ray there. I am mystified as to how he does this; they all look pretty similar to me. He says there are subtle variations in fin and tail shape and number of gills, eye placement, etc., that differentiate one shark from another. And the rays are different sizes with distinctive stingers. I don’t know. I try to keep up, but Billy’s the fish guy. I don’t even really like fish.

“If you want to know anything about reptiles, just ask,” I say to Bodhi. “Like sea kraits or something.” No response. “Marine iguanas…” Nothing. He’s busy staring at something so well camouflaged I can’t even see it. “Did you want to know anything about reptiles?”

“Not really,” Bodhi answers, touching the glass wall behind which a shark glides past. “Look, Dad, a white tipped reef shark!”

I wander off and buy a cup of tea with a pocketful of beautiful change (their money’s pretty, too). Eventually, Bodhi is cajoled into leaving (we have to buy him a Melbourne Aquarium baseball cap to get him out of there) and we drive to Hepburn Springs.

On the way, Mirko makes sure that we all wear seat belts because we’re driving out in the country, where it’s not unusual to “wang a roo” or two.

“Jesus, your roadkill must be spectacular,” says Billy.

“Yes. And interestingly, if you kill a kangaroo, it can kill you too,” says Mirko thoughtfully. From this point on, we no longer use the verb, to drive; driving is now known as “wangaroo-ing”.

Our hotel is next door to the club tonight. It is my favorite kind of hotel: 70’s + brown + a shower cap in the bathroom. There’s a party atmosphere here, too, as many people from the Melbourne show have come to tonight’s show as well and are staying in the same place. Our room is freezing. Like it’s haunted. In fact, Hepburn Springs is freezing. They light fires in fire pits on the sidewalk. It’s strange and very beautiful. This town reminds us of Santa Fe, but without the tourists. Really lovely.

While Billy and Mirko set up my equipment, Bodhi naps on a beautiful velvet chaise in the club and I do phone interviews staring out the window of my hotel room into the neighbors’ yard. It is full of cockatoos and a kind of wild parrot called a rosella. There are no kookaburras, ’cause they only show up in the morning(!). I can’t get over this. How can a place that feels so comfortable also be so exotic?

I make another 36 t-shirts and then skip dinner in order to sleep for a few hours before the show. This makes me a little fuzzy, but I figure it’s better than sleeping during my set. After the show, I mention my nap to a couple who brought CD’s for me to sign; I’m feeling a little slow and figure this is a good excuse.

“We know you took a nap before the show,” they answer, smiling. “We peeked in your window on our way to the club!”

•••

Walking back to the hotel, we hear what sounds like Flipper on the roof. An Australian friend says, “That could be a koala…” and walks up to investigate. I’m glad Bodhi is already asleep because he’s afraid of koalas (“They can be nasty!”) — sharks, yes, koalas, no. Billy and I are thrilled, however. We’re getting our phones ready to take pictures for the kids who aren’t with us when our friend says, “Naw, it’s just a possum.”

“Aw, crap,” says Billy. Then we see the possum. It is stunning. Like a huge masked bush baby, smooth and elegant with vivid markings. “That’s what you guys call a possum?!”

“Well, what do you call it?” asks our friend.

“Our possums are like…big, dumb rats!”

“Oh. Sorry, ” he says. Australians are better than us and so are their possums. I should’ve guessed.

•••

In the morning, we have an early flight to New Zealand, but we are told that we can’t leave town without first going to the Red Star Café. This is true, as it turns out. Each morning, we find a breakfast place so amazing that it becomes our new favorite restaurant and beats out the one before it. The Red Star is now our new favorite place. The wait-staff all appear to have been to the show (Hepburn Springs is a small town) and are extra nice to me. We leave healthier and happier and head out to the airport, Mirko and Billy still studying Hepburn Springs real estate listings.

Land of Oz indeed.

This entry originally appeared in Powell’s Books blog and is reprinted by permission.

My best friend in college was the movie actress Betty Hutton. She was too old to be in college and I was too young; this was all we really had in common, if you can call it that. Though she did like the fact that I was in a band.

“C’mon, Krissy,” she’d say, patting the seat next to her in the student lounge, “sit down! Let’s talk show biz!”

I had never heard of Betty Hutton, never seen any of her movies, and, frankly wondered if her Hollywood star persona wasn’t invented. She was awfully… eccentric, to say the least. A gigantic woman who made herself seem even bigger by wearing rhinestone-studded turquoise cowboy boots and combing her white hair straight up, she smoked menthol cigarettes.

“Minty,” I commented one afternoon.

“I don’t like minty cigarettes,” she said, “but I’m trying to quit chewing gum.”

Betty did live in a bona fide mansion, though. Right on the ocean and decorated entirely in white: white furniture, walls, carpet, dog, piano. She’d sit at the piano with her gay friends, singing show tunes. Really. I mean, I assumed they were show tunes. When the singing was over, she’d wipe tears away and hug whoever had been accompanying her.

Then, glistening, she’d call me over and say to her friend, “Krissy’s in a band. A band called ‘Throw-ing Mu-ses’. Krissy’s gonna be the new me.” So sad. That she couldn’t find anyone better than me to groom as her “show biz” replacement. All of that old school Hollywood wisdom to impart and no little tap dancing vessel in which to put it. Al Jolson once told Betty that when she left the stage, she should peek out of the wings and ask the audience with her eyes, “Do you want some more?”. Betty tried desperately to get me to do this.

“Look, Krissy,” (she always called me Krissy, she was the only person who ever did — I called her “Bob” for “Beautiful Old Betty”) “it’s not that hard. You have to play with them, flirt with them, string them along. Be the cat and the mouse, you know what I mean?”

“Sorta.”

“Well you aren’t actually doing it.” Then she’d smile sweetly. “I know you’re trying.”

“I’m not really trying.”

“No, you’re not,” and she’d laugh. Hard. I couldn’t fake her out because she actually came to Throwing Muses shows. She always brought her priest, though she never explained why, and she and this priest would stand in the back of the room and look encouraging while we played. Betty would make her eyes real big at me, I guess telling me to ask the mosh pit if they “wanted some more”. The thing was, my eyes were spirals while I played; I was so far from flirting with anyone. Lost in a swirl of sound, I never even knew where I was.

It was hard for me to explain this to Betty. “Why do we entertain?” she would ask — and then answer herself — “to make people happy!” She said this all the time. I didn’t think I made anyone very happy by playing and I told her that. “Well, you do scream a great deal don’t you? Which isn’t very nice. But that’s the style these days. And they jump around when you play. I think that means they’re happy. So you gotta show them that you love them back. You gotta earn their love.”

I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t trying to earn love, that I was trying to own violence. I couldn’t tell her this because it would have sounded as pretentious then as it does now. So I said, “I play to make the math work”.

“Oh! Like tap dancing!” Betty was so beautiful.

Leaving a psychology class one afternoon, she squealed, “That Sigmund! What a comedian! It’s bad enough he wanted to fuck his own mother — he’s gotta write it in a book and get it published! A book people are still reading! That poor man…he’s probably up in heaven right now, with his face in his hands…”

She gave me quarters for the vending machine, still laughing. “I need an oral fix for my oral fixation!” I brought her some crackers and a soda. “What is this?” she asked, holding the crackers at arm’s length. “I can’t read the package.”

“It’s cheese and crackers.”

“But, honey, I’m not lactose tolerant.”

“I don’t think there’s any actual cheese in them.”

“Okay, look,” she said, tearing into the package. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. It’s this: don’t ever let them feed you pills.”

“What? Who?”

“Whoever tries to do it! They’ll want to wake you up and knock you out because they make more money when they can control you physically and emotionally. Judy Garland and I had a good, long talk about this once she forgave me.”

“Judy Garland-Judy Garland? From The Wizard of Oz? Was mad at you?”

“For stealing the role of a lifetime right out from under her. I don’t blame her. But now she’s dead.”

“Yeah, she is. I really don’t think they do the pill thing any more.”

“Stay clean, Krissy. And then you won’t end up like Judy Garland.”

Years later, in a London hotel room, I was to reflect on this conversation while staring into the palm of a tour manager who offered me a fistful of pills. The yellow ones were for waking me up, the blue ones for knocking me out.

Betty died earlier this year. I hadn’t seen her since I was a teenager. In 2002, we lived a few miles from each other in Palm Springs and never knew, so I didn’t ever see the beautiful very old Betty.

To mark her passing, I rented one of her movies, though. In it, astonishingly, she plays an un-wed mother. She is lovely and girlish and completely over the top, just like I remember her. I can see her working to earn love, asking stuff with her eyes. I don’t see the deep well of sadness that once moved her to perform, as her final thesis, a soft shoe of “Me and My Shadow” in a college classroom, tears running down her face. What I do see in that gorgeous face is the wide-eyed openness of a lady who could think that Sigmund Freud was a comedian and that I was an entertainer.

• I often feel there is an inverse relationship between quality of output and material success in the music business. This is distressing, but not out of line with what I’ve come to expect. Throwing Muses would wander the halls of Warner Brothers back in the day, muttering, “You don’t have to suck in order to work here, but it helps.”

• Now, however, the financial climate and current upheaval in the music business mean that musicians like me are genuinely poor investments for the traditional powers that be. We do not engage in lowest common denominator trendiness, and so don’t warrant the expenses of marketing dollars and company overhead.

• Okay, I get that; this is a business. However, I believe that when you sell toothpaste, you should be selling a goo that helps prevent cavities and when you sell music, you should be selling sound that enriches the listener’s inner life. There is today a twisted kind of natural selection in the entertainment industry — a sort of “survival of the blandest” — the result, I imagine, of mind-fucking marketing techniques, bandwagon appeal, hype. To me this stuff is ugly, not beautiful.

• Given this, I can only assume that record labels are not for me. I’ve said it before — I will always play music — but in the past, it was a record company’s job to make sure you heard that music. They sold their product; they had funded it, it was theirs to sell. How to sell music without them? I liken our situation to that of the family farmer’s — how can we keep from going under without going corporate?

• This is what I think: we specialize — we offer an organic product. It is lumpy and expensive and made with love and it can save you. It’s the right thing to do. It isn’t shiny or poisonous, which can be disconcerting to people who’ve been raised on shiny poison, but it’s natural, it’s high-end and we want you to eat it.

• To that end, I think I need to engage in a grassroots kind of capitalism, choosing principles over profits, values over image, ideals over marketing. I have to create a permeable membrane between artist and listener — I’m a craftsperson, after all. The church of the rock star that the music industry televangelists hawk has always been anathema to me anyway. This is about songs and sounds, nothing else.

• Music is a tenuous profession in good times, hard times mean some of us disappear. I’m not looking for pity, but collaboration. Coming to you is the best way I can think of to continue being a musician.

• The model is not new, it’s akin to public radio’s listener supported programming and Community Supported Agriculture’s subscriptions to underwrite crops. In other words, music grows on trees, but money doesn’t and I’m unwilling to suck in order to work here. Therein lies the value proposition. This little business will be interactive and intelligent; you will not be lied to, no shiny poison, no middle man.

• The idea of relying on listeners, treating music as a cooperative, is humbling, yet interesting to me. This is a bit of a manifesto, I’m sorry, and now I’ll shut up, but I wonder if we might be able to do this together.

More soon…

Love,
Kristin

Best signage in the Northwest: “Free Beef with Tire Purchase” and
“Non-Emotional Caskets”

We have four days to make Minneapolis. An easy schedule to keep with Super Billy at the wheel unless, of course, the universe tilts on its axis and everything goes all haywire and the Family Bus blows up. Which it does.

We’ve broken down before. In fact, we break down a lot. Our bus is a sensitive dullard of a machine. A princess who feels every pea and can’t begin to figure out how to overcome even one of those peas. But never before have we ridden the professional and financial line so hard. This tour is barely breaking even and may lose money. I worry that I won’t be able to pay the other musicians and that my attendances and therefore guarantees are falling to the point where I can no longer afford to tour.

Every date is a question mark, a potential indicator of my future. I say I don’t believe in the music business because I hate what it celebrates and yet…I have no other business. Like it or not, I rely on the same construct I always did, the same Handicapper General that trades in some of the most offensive marketing on this planet; the same business that turns music – which is my religion – into nothing more holy than Fritos. I have to care if no one buys my record, I have to care if no one comes to my shows.

I have to care, because soon, there may be no place for the next song to go. I think I’ll always play music. I think I have to. I’ll play in my bedroom, in my car, in my garage…but without an audience, without money, I won’t be on the road and I won’t be in the studio. And like it or not, music is a social endeavor. I wish it wasn’t, but it is and as such, it’s impact is stunted when it’s invisible. Music isn’t supposed to stay in the bedroom, the car, or the garage. It’s supposed to be given away, to become other people’s soundtrack.

So what happens is, we’re driving through the mountains and I’m stumbling around the bus, listening to music, making sandwiches for the kids and laughing with Bernie as we barrel down the highway like we have so many times before. I had just stepped over a dog to hand Wyatt a cup of milk when Ryder yelled, “Fire!” from the back bedroom.

Instantly, the bus filled with smoke. I grabbed the baby off of his stool and handed him to Rob who was sitting on the couch. Bodhi’s eyes were huge as Rob wrapped his arms around him. Then Bernie found a fire extinguisher and ran into the smoke; I ran after him as the bus careened across lanes of traffic, Billy trying to pull off the road and yelling, “Don’t go back there! Don’t go back there!” I found Ryder in the back and pushed him into the kitchen, then I grabbed Wyatt and put him on my lap. We fell onto the couch next to Martin and Kim and that’s when everything slowed down.

The smoke billowed, Bernie appeared through it, people were yelling, Billy worked to keep the bus on a twisting mountain road without power steering or brakes…and all I really saw was music going away. Up in smoke, as it were. The last piece of the mother/musician conundrum falling out of play.

We lived, of course. But the impression of life being in slow motion persisted through what came to be three days of being stranded in Idaho without cell service or hotels. I don’t remember much about this time. I remember Billy somehow finding “s’mores” ingredients for the boys: from Super Billy to Super Dad. I remember making a fishing rod for Bodhi out of a stick and some dental floss. I remember cutting my hair in the dark, just to get it out of my face. I remember a band meeting where four exhausted, hungry and unwashed musicians all voted unequivocally to stay on the road and not fly home. “Anything to keep playing,” they all said, “we’ll do whatever it takes” and I had to leave the room because I’m not a girl and I don’t cry.

I remember the children packing their lives up as we left the bus, their only consistent home for the last 7 years — and at the time — their only home. Wyatt was in tears because he might never see it again. We all knew we probably couldn’t afford to fix it.

I remember waiting for Billy, Rob and Bernie to arrive with a truck and a van so that we might at least make Chicago and limp through the rest of the tour. The little boys blew dandelion seeds into the air while we waited. I sat in the grass and watched them through a haze of grief, knowing that since touring costs money and recording costs money, I could no longer work. I wondered if there was such a thing as life after music, wondered if I could live such a life, wondered if children ever forgave mothers who couldn’t live life. I was pretty low.

Bodhi approached with a dandelion and blew the seeds into my face gravely. “What’d you wish for?” I asked him.

“To live all the way to the very last day of my whole life.”

No, then. Mothers aren’t allowed to go anywhere. I’ll have to work it out somehow. Christ, the things they say sometimes.

And we do work it out. For the time being, anyway. Bernie and Rob drive the equipment truck while the three boys and Martin and Kim and the three dogs all ride in the back of a mini van. Billy and I ride up front like the Mom and Dad we’re supposed to be and pretend to yell at our passengers, slapping blindly into the back seat and threatening to “turn this van around and take everybody back to Idaho”.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” they all scream. Martin and Kim get very good at passing snacks, books and Kleenex into the back seat and then books, garbage and used Kleenex into the front. We discuss the idea that God has it in for us, a long-held theory of my brother’s. “Look at the facts!” he has said, “Everywhere you guys go there’s a natural disaster. In fact, all you have to do is think about going somewhere and awful things happen there. Do me a favor and don’t ever move to my neighborhood.”

He has a point. We have suffered damage of biblical proportions in the last several years. Earthquakes, floods, conflagrations and tidal waves seem to track our movements across the globe. “Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something,” Billy suggests.

“It wants me to quit? Why?”

“Who knows? Maybe you have more important things to do.”

“Like what?” I ask. “I can’t do anything but music.”

“That might actually be true.”

The Minneapolis show is canceled, but we make Chicago in time for soundcheck. A friendly restaurant owner in town has read about our plight at the website and brings a beautiful Italian dinner for our entire touring party to the Lakeshore Theater. During the set, my children dance around the dressing room singing, “Polenta! Polenta! Ya-ay, polenta!”

Most of the audience seems to be aware of our recent struggles, as they line up to buy five or six CD’s at a time after the set. “I already have this, but, you know…Christmas is coming,” says a woman in a red blouse. As I sign four copies of Learn to Sing for her, I remind her that it’s May. She smiles. “Well, Christmas is coming eventually,” she says.

By the time we reach Indianapolis, I’ve learned that the amount of money in the tip jar at throwingmusic.com has increased along with our bad luck. “The tip jar is overflowing!” says Tine, our webmistress, “and more is coming in as we speak. I’m watching it grow before my eyes!”

I have wildly mixed feelings about this. I am amazed and grateful, of course, but also heartsick. I’d feel okay taking some sugar daddy’s money, some record company or wealthy patron or…well anything but money from these people who’ve already given so much of their time and support over the years. But because of this swollen tip jar, it looks like the tour will break even: the bus will be fixed, the musicians paid, their flights home bought. Absolutely incredible. I’m proud that this “tribe” that music created solved the problem for itself, without the help of Corporate America – or anyone else.

At The Ark in Ann Arbor, a man holds up his copy of Sunny Border Blue and tells me, “If you ever stopped, I think I would, too.”

After the show at the Crystal Ballroom in Cleveland, a woman hands me a wide, flat cardboard box. I am so hungry, I think she’s given me a sheet cake. “Is that a cake?” I ask her.

“Did you want a cake?”

“Well…is it one?”

“No, it’s a picture, but I could get you a cake…”

“No, I don’t need a cake-”

Then Kim hops up onto the stage. “Yum! Cake!” she says.

The woman looks sad, “No, it’s just a picture…”

Billy leans in to pack up my stomp boxes, “Wow! Is that a cake?” he asks, grinning.

Now the woman looks distraught. “I’m sorry…” she says.

In Pittsburgh, Vicky and Slim Cessna smuggle their children into the venue to watch the set from the back of the room. During the show, Slim, a man of very few words, leans over to Billy and says, “I know it’s been hard lately, but this is important.”

We meet Orrin at Hi-n-Dry in Cambridge to shoot a DVD of the last night of the tour. This place was the late Mark Sandman of Morphine’s loft, back in the day. Now it’s a full service studio/performance space and it’s beautiful. With its funky oriental rugs and easy hominess, it so reminds us of Kingsway Studio in New Orleans that it’s eerie. There are even Boston versions of our New Orleans friends there. So strange, yet so comfortable. “Welcome home,” someone says to me when I walk in.

I am, at this point, physically and emotionally spent by the tour, yet terrified by the idea that in the morning it will all be over. Five months is not a terribly long time, but we sure packed in a lot since January. Goofiness and trauma, gourmet dinners and starvation, sleet and sun, boats and buses, mountains and deserts, days spent asleep, nights spent awake…Jesus, we’re like a bad movie.

The thing is, there was always playing. Every day had a point and that point was songs. Whatever happens next, I’ve been so blessed.

—

Painting: “Stranded – In Beautiful Mountains” by Victoria Cessna

Best signage on the way to LA: Space Is Limited

Orrin shows up at the El Rey theater with a new joke template. It is addictive. It gets stuck in your head like a melody ‘til you can’t think about anything without trying to fit it into the template. It goes something like this:

“I used to work in (blank), but I was (blank), so they (blanked) me.”

For example: “I used to work in ceramics, but I was always getting baked, so they fired me.” Or: “I used to work in lingerie, but I was barely there, so they gave me the pink slip.” Or Wyatt’s: “I used to be an ice cream man’s apprentice, but I was tired of playing second banana, so I split.”

This goes on all afternoon.

During the McCarricks’ set, Jonathan and Dav Dolorean and I get stuck backstage, unable to get to the dressing rooms (to the beer) without crossing the stage. We play out various scenarios in which we are able to sneak past the musicians and the projector and the screen and the equipment, while remaining invisible to the audience, but Jonathan is jumpy, having just the night before, leapt onto the stage during Martin and Kim’s set and spilled Jack Daniels all over the cello.

At one point, he hisses, “Cover me!” and crawls on stage between the screen and the projector, shimmying past amps and drums, only to come back dejected a minute later. “It’s no use,” he pants, “the projector is blocking the stairs to both dressing rooms.” This information sobers us in more ways than one. Dav escapes to the bar, but I’m afraid of being talked to out there and Jonathan is too nice to leave me alone.

So we sit. And hum the word “beer”. He tells me that his girlfriend is Kaitlyn from the High Violets, not only a superior Portland person and great musician, but one of the best ladies ever. This makes me so happy, I give him a big hug. A good couple makes a great person.

Tonight’s show is intense. We play hard, like 50FootWave covering KH material. I guess we’re nervous; this is a hometown show for us (one of our hometowns, anyway). Afterward, we load out with the El Rey staff who are so lovey-dovey that we get hugs at the end of the night. Honestly, New York and LA are the warmest, fuzziest cities.

The next day, Billy gets prickly as we enter Monterey. “This is a good place,” he says. “I can feel it.”

It is extraordinarily beautiful. Mountain air, misty beaches and Dr. Suess trees. We park on a lovely little side street around the corner from the club. The Family Bus is so tacky next to these quaint homes, though, that it looks seriously incongruous—embarrassed, even. Poor old dumpy bus in fancy-ass Monterey. It’s like taking your children to a rich kid’s birthday party.

After the show, the bus refuses to start. It won’t leave Monterey. It won’t even go back to the club for the equipment, so we have to leave our stuff there overnight (so embarrassing). Billy actually dons grease monkey coveralls (Bernie: “You look pretty cute in those”) and works into the night. After standing around and handing him tools helpfully, we begin to fade and hand him tools lamely, then I send the band to a hotel in a cab and watch Billy work in the cold (he does look cute in the coveralls). Then Ryder takes over and the little kids and I crash on the couch.

With the help of our LA friend Colin on the cell phone (he speaks engine and doesn’t go to bed ‘til 3 in the morning), Billy convinces the bus to cooperate and it begins coughing back to life. When it sounds almost normal, we sneak out of town, drive to the nicest RV park in the world and wake up to sunshine and horny toads.

Santa Cruz…hippies, hippies and more hippies….sigh. But hippies don’t come to the show. Hippies don’t like me.

We play food frisbee backstage until people start showing up, then we sneak out with dip on our clothes. The Attic is a great club; 50FootWave played here when it first opened. It’s a nice, grown up room, but it doesn’t feel cold.

After the show, Bernie gets stuck in the elevator with a bunch of gear. It’s not between floors or anything, it just won’t open, so we stare at him through the window and he stares back. Eventually, we pry the door open, but he refuses to get back in, so Martin gets in with the next load. Then he gets stuck. We pry the door open again and I take the cello from him but let the door go. It locks and the elevator goes away with Martin on it. He smashes his face against the window as he disappears.

Mothers Day in San Francisco. I am treated like royalty. We’re invited to a friend’s ranch in Carmel for brunch; the boys are on their best behavior. Doony, the boy who isn’t here, calls during soundcheck. I’m sitting on the stage at the Great American Music Hall, taking a screwdriver to my guitar, when B carries my cell phone over, “It’s the big baby,” he says.

I grab the phone. “Doony?”

“Happy Mothers Day. I was gonna send you flowers, but then I didn’t.”

“Flowers are boring.”

“That’s why I didn’t.”

Such a good boy.

Jim Brunberg of Mississippi Studios fame, records the Portland show, at the Aladdin Theater. He hovers behind us with his headphones on all night; whenever I turn around, I get a big thumbs-up from Super Jim. This is such a nice boost, I consider taking him on the road as a permanent member of the bus family.

Portland loved ones fill the dressing room, bring us Thai food and road coffee, Virtuous news, baby pictures, music, homemade cookies…then we gotta say goodbye again. Seems like we’re always saying goodbye. Ryder and his girlfriend get one evening together before we take off for who knows how long; many tears on the family bus tonight.

We are all itching to play when we get to Seattle. After soundcheck, Bernie and Rob and I are still itchy, so we do a handful of 50Foot songs, but it isn’t enough. Dolorean feels the same way.

We have to say goodbye to them tonight; this is their last show of the tour. They have turned out to be brilliant, special, hilarious and kind; I haven’t had this much fun on a tour in a long time. All four Doloreans hang out on the bus before the show to pass around a bottle of champagne and be happy and sad with us. They talk about the day jobs they’re going back to and they have gifts for my children: beautiful books, thoughtfully chosen with each child’s interests in mind. We’re going to miss them.

I put another bottle of champagne on the stage during their set and this proves to be Al’s undoing. As our champagne buzz wears off, he stays happy and sad, then gets very happy and very sad (and very unsteady) and ends the night passed out in the dressing room on my little pink sweater. I try to pull it out from under him without waking him up (Barton: “I don’t think waking him up is what you should be worried about”), but then I feel bad and give up. He looks like a little drunk angel.

Al does wake up during load out–he sways down the ramp and pukes behind a dumpster, comes out triumphant, with his fists in the air. People cheer and blow kisses but nobody wants to touch him.

Everybody’s laughing; even Al’s laughing, but I just can’t. We all do our own version of dumpster puking when music stops. I walk back to the dressing room to retrieve my sweater.