now brian has it and so does jaron, our monitor tech. we're in tampa florida, taking a day off. things started going very fast and i got back into the tour rhythm, sleeping 10-12 hours a night, waking in the dark in parking lots, staggering into a venue, becoming coherent in time for soundcheck and watching the rest of the day turn into a blur. pouring everything out on stage, meeting people all night, falling asleep, waking up, repeating and trying to battle exhaustion effectively.
occasionally breathing deep turn the phone and computer on and put on my "i can still do business, i swear" t-shirt and trying to negotiate my life off tour. i got to a yoga class in chicago before the show. i went to two yoga classes on our off day in nashville. i went to cafe coco (my nashville again cafe) a total of 4 times, in one day. Again is an addiction.
new years eve was a beautiful family affair.... photos from The Grand Ballroom, NYC
i wish i could separate out each day of tour from the cluster and enjoy it as an isolated event. night after night i feel like an overloaded sponge. our fanbase is so fucking incredible. i can't get over it. i read constantly about the decline of the recorded music industry and about how people aren't going out to shows anymore because there's nothing to believe in anymore....and i want to drag each and every one of those cynical bastards out of their cubicles and go "NO!!! LOOK! LOOK! LOOOOOOOOK!!!!" i'm tired as shit. thank you so much, all of you. thank you for making our lives this month so wonderful. i want to burst with joy from all the glee and craziness and love we feel every night coming out of the audience. ...................
random thoughts:
some journalist read my blog about going out barefoot in the snow and wrote a preview of the show calling me crazy. i kind of like being called crazy, it's sort of romantic. but i really don't feel crazy. i feel pretty sane. i think a lot of people think that i'm crazy because of the lyrics, the music, the image. that bugs me. my theory, and we were discussing this in the bus last night. there are four kinds of music:
the first adjective describes the lyrical and musical content of the band (ie: what kind of music is this?) the second adjective describes the overall vibe of the band and the quality of performative connection (ie what kind of people are these?).
we tried to come up with perfect examples of each and an overarching phrase to encapsulate:
1. negative negative music = "we are sad the world sucks and fuck you too you bloody cunts" = sex pistols, gg allin 2. positive negative music = "we are sad the world sucks but don't you feel the same way and let's all bond together in mass sorrow and anger" = rage against the machine, the smiths, nine inch nails 3. negative positive music = "let's all dance and sing and be happy but don't fuckin' bother me you bloody cunt i'm a rock star" = any bitchy pop band out there (you name it, i ain't gonna take the heat) 4. positive positive music = "yay! we love happy music and everythings great and we love you too" = polyphonic spree, yanni
dave argued that the dresden dolls fall into the "positive negative" category. i think we straddle that line between positive negative and positive positive. depends on the song. i mean, ALL the songs aren't about pain. o god. no, wait. maybe they are. well, fuck it.
.............................
six days ago it was MINUS 17 degrees in montreal. today it is 70 in tampa. this schedule is not human.
i am trying to come up with a plan for next year. i think i am going to take the spring almost fully off and start gearing up in june for the release of the record. i might do a few casual solo dates here and there when i travel around to visit friends (right now thinking about chapel hill, DC, nashville, santa fe, paris and berlin). if you have any ideas for good venues (think: small, weird, good...maybe 300 capacity as i want to keep these shows small, easy and family) tell me now!
what if i just GAVE AWAY THE RECORD FOR FREE with the catch that you PHYSICALLY HAD TO WREST IT FROM ME?? yes, you must meet me at 6 am, on the golden gate bridge the day i am playing san fran, at the eiffel tower plaza in paris, in tiergarten in berlin, on the docks near pier 51 in NYC, on the cliffs of dover the day of the london show.......i'll be there. with a box of records to give away. but you have to wake your ass up at 6 am (and so do i for the matter) and if you make it over, you get the record and a hug and my supreme admiration. i wonder how many people will actually show. i wonder if this idea is even REMOTELY feasible. .................................
did you realize that Cuisinart is actually "cuisine art" (as in, french-for-kitchen ART). i didn't catch that until about two years ago and shared the information with brian last night, to whom it was also a revelation. thought i should share.
i made it through the boston show with half a voice.
i always feel so shitful (to use a meow adjective i've picked up) when i can't sing, which is most of the time. why does this happen?
being sick didn't help. not having a trained voice doesn't help. i really am going out there and making shit up every night. believe me, i do NOT have a plan nor know what i'm doing. period. i've gotten really well-practiced at i-got-no-clue-how-to-really-do-this-well-here- goes-nothing. i can sort of play piano, and i can sort of sing. i've been figuring this out as i go along. blindly hoping i'll get it right most of the time and assuming i'll mess up approximately 27% of the time. i completely spaced the lyrics to "girl anachronism", which we played second, because my brain simply went haywire. its always interesting to see what comes out of my mouth at those times. it's not quite english, it's not quite gibberish. brian commented that last night it sounded sort of swedish. WHATEVER IT TAKES. the fact that the shows was still stupendous makes me realize, once again, it ain't the tools, it's the delivery. but i almost don't want it to be true. i don't want to be able to get away with it. i was talking with melissa (aka meow) about this. she can do shows in character (ie as Meow Meow) with a broken voice, no problem. whatevs. it's cabaret, it's punk, it;s rock, there's no rules. but if she's doing an opera gig: all bets are off. the voice has to be there or the gig doesn't go off. what do those fucking people do?
i want an understudy.
strangely, four or five different people (all girls, actually), have told me over the last few days of shows that i inspired them to learn how to play piano. that inspires ME to learn how to actually play the piano, because now i feel guilty. it's all relative.
after the orpheum show (sold out, to our amazement....over 2300 people in our hometown....we were very excited by that) i entouraged home because meow, lance, katie kay and all the members of the luminescent orchestrii were staying at my house, some in beds, some on floors. beer and wine and assorted folks found their way over and though i should have gone straight to bed, i stayed up, drank (resPONSIBLY, wine only and two glasses at that, i hear it kills germs) and chatted for an hour with my brothers and sisters. was it worth it? fuck yeah. still. i woke up with no voice. i spent the day stuck crusted to bed in my apartment, still feeling flu-like and unable to cope with the realities of life (like packing for the upcoming two weeks of tour...i'll have to do that tomorrow morning). many cups of tea later, i am still wondering if i'll have a voice for the new york show.
if you're coming, cross your fingers. i am already plotting an elaborate hand-drawn dresden-dolls karaoke machine and i'll have to find someone to run it.
i took this picture outside the philadelphia show since the marquis on south street was so pretty right at dusk
.....and as i was standing on a newspaper box making a fool of myself trying to get the perfect shot sxip and sarah from lumii showed up in the frame. i ran down and said hello right after that, it was our first reunion in a while...and sxip said that at that very moment i caught the photo he'd been saying to sarah "someone should get a picture of this marquis"...then they turned around and saw mah ass.
love it
did you know you can take an online colorblind test?: www.kcl.ac.uk/teares/gktvc/vc/lt/colourblindness/plate1.htm
i tested normal. thank god, now i can be a pilot if i want to.
last but not least, here is a very kinky looking Evelyn Evelyn- inspired "bondage Elephant Elephant" that showed up at the boston show:
excellent.
have a safe new years....they're CRAZY out there, those fucking people.
In philadelphia, still ill with the Sickness. I'm waitin it out, man. I have a remarkable cold sore under my left nostril and a magazine cover shoot today. Time to bust out the fake hitler moustache and create some controversy. Like rammstein.
Yesterday was a bruiser of a day, we had two shows back-to-back in DC and baltimore, the first in an honest-to-god (no pun) synagogue and the second in a club. The gigs were great, brian and I rejoiced in being back on stage with each other and just played our asses off and enjoyed being back in full dresden formation. Meow Meow blew the crowds away as I knew she would and sat in with us on delilah. Her hot pianist lance guested on mandy goes to med school. Our crew is back in full-force.
I'm not superstitious. But things have been happening. music, especially certain songs, has been speaking from the beyond and indicating my path like those emergency lights embedded in airplane aisles.
The point was. I have a favorite Again cafe in philadelphia. I'm in it right now, its called the chapterhouse; I stumbled across it the last time we played here. I went out of my way to walk here for some thinking and writing before soundcheck and as I entered I heard the sound of something I knew coming from the speakers but I couldn't place it..... Sounded like low air-raid sirens. Then the guitar started and it was "two-headed boy part II" and I melted a bit.
When I was in scotland in august I went to my edinburgh Again cafe (the forest) one afternoon and there was a girl (autumn ayers )from philadelphia singing "oh comely" on a little stage with an acoustic guitar.
I'm starting to think that my life is just strung together moments against the backdrop of this record album. If you don't know the record, this is harder to explain. The record: In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel and its music and songwriting: without equal. I had been discussing with my favorite director-friend the possibility of creating a stage production inspired by the record (it seems like getting the rights might be impossible) but we agreed on one thing: the album and songs have an internally magical power.
Wherever you go, you will meet people who know and love this record with a passion that may seem unreasonable. The literally extra-ordinary thing is that the album was never hyped in the mainstream, there was no giant promotion. It was hyped for a while in the indie community (I remember discovering the record, through brian, about a year after it came out and mentioning it excitedly to one of my hip indie musician friends who was like: yes amanda, that record is amazing but sooo last year), but that means nothing to 99% of the american music-listening population. So its ENTIRELY word of mouth outside of the indie-cult. And not unlike the way the dolls grew in certain communities, the word-of-mouth on this record has carried it year after year further and further. It didn't hurt the magical momentum that jeff mangum, the creator of the record, supposedly cracked immediately under the impending success and disappeared, barely ever to be heard from again (rumors abound, I have no idea what the actual deal is). But ask your average person and they'll have no clue about this album. I'm still shocked when I talk with some huge music fan or record industry heavyweight and they have never even HEARD the bands name.
What makes this record so perfect? I heard someone say, or maybe I said once, can't remember (I'm getting old): the record is like mainlining. Its a direct transmission of soul through sound. That said, you might listen to it and hate it. But watch the comments on this blog. That will tell you everything.
Have to go to soundcheck.
-later- ......................
Show was fantastic, we're in for a 6-hour van drive to boston. And we're tirrrrred. These two angelic people, michael and shonda, brought us, luminescnet and meow and the whole crew a gigantic vegan feast after the show, complete with absinthe (which we're saving for new years). Food Love. Bring it on. This tour is a perfect bill. Meow the anarchist cabaret singer, luminscent the insane klezmer dance band and us. I wish bills like this would last forever. Sxip played with us (I played drums!! I love the drums.) And brian and I sat in with lumii. Meow and lance both sang and played during our set. Its a full-on lovefest.
Festing more, Jenny owen youngs showed up and we snuck her on the bill right before us to play "fuck was I" on brians acoustic. She's amazing. I piggybacked her onto stage.
The photoshoot was fine. We ripped the long red curtains down from the windows, got naked (poor brian has finally caught the Sickness too, neither of us were feeling sexy so we figured we go for a weird naked art photoshoot....) and wrapped ourselves up in them. I found a hat. The shoot worked. Pictures are weird.
Autumn, the girl who I referred to in the above ramble - the one I stumbled upon singing neutral milk in edinburgh - she magically appeared at the end of the show with her two sisters. When I told about my happy cafe experience and the welcome song I got there this afternoon, her sister said: that's so weird. I haven't listened to that album in years and I put it on today.
well, it doesnt really count because we havent officially started yet. tomorrow. two shows.
do you ever wonder: if someone were to place a real cap on your mortal years....like, really just give you a concrete date: "your number is going to be up when you hit 45" that you would live your life that much differently. fight club examined this for as split second. i'm in baltimore, i just took a bath, and i found myself wondering. if someone were to tell me i had ten years (exactly) - what would i do? would i tour? stay put? travel unknown? help the needy? stuff my face? really hard to say. i think i'd spend a while figuring out, for sure. the problem with this sci-fi fantasy is that knowing your number does more than igve you a limit, it also gives you immortality for an unlimited time period. this is irritating. maybe what we need is a maximum. you have, maximum, 23 more years to live.
GO!
23 is no fun.
what if
ok, you have 13 months to live. really. you're not impervious to obvious pitfalls (if you walk in front of a bus, you LOSE) but as soon as those 13 months are up, you're out.
GO!
what do you do?
i took this photo tonight. i captured everything i feel about being on tour again. i am feeling better but not amazing. i have still have snot flowing out of my nose regularly.
i've noticed i'm getting into a really nasty habit. i'm not posting when i feel like it because i keep stock-piling photos and long, complicated blogs involving all this media - and much like tons of other shit in my life, i lose the forest for the trees, get sidetracked and leave the shit hanging.
so fuck it. i'm just writing with no plan. i'm just writing because it's xmas eve and i'm feeling reflective. and just took a two-hour bath, which gave me time to think. it's 3 am and i'm still a little jetlagged from australia. i'm at my parents house, the house i grew up in. i love coming here. i know the sound of every door latch and every floor creak, i am overly familiar with the rattle of the bannister (which i incidentally fell over, 13 feet, when i was 7) and the ticking of the clocks and - my favorite sound - the gurgling banging of the radiators. i've tried to explain this many times to many people: the only way i can describe the relationship i have with this house is to say that i had very few friends when i was little, and that the closest thing i had to a consistent "best friend", who protected me and played with me and guided and amused me, was this house. some kids had a dog. whatever it takes.
the bath, unbeknownst to me, hadn't been used as a bathtub in some time covered in Cat Hair, presumably because the Cat (and affectionate jet-black boy named shadow, he's on my lap right now) likes to hang out in there and sleep. and shed. by the time i was fully immersed and noticed it, it was too absurd. there were thick clumps of it floating everywhere. instead of being grossed out it was sort of fun, i played a game to see how much floating Cat Hair i could wrest out of the tub and ball into a giant collection on the side of the tub. then i got the idea to go outside and feel the snow on the ground, sort of like when you run from a hot tub to a cold plunge. so i ran the shower as hot as possible, scalded myself, then wrapped myself in a blanket and ran (quietly, as to not wake my sleeping family) out to the back porch steps. they overlook a totally isolated wooded area, and i went for as long a walk in the 1-foot snow as my burning little pink feet could bear. i only got about 6 feet from the porch, the snow was very cold, and icy-sharp at the top, and my little feet froze. i waled back up the the porch and felt the relatively warm planks of wood under my feet. the blanket was keeping me warm and there was a very, very slight wind. the sky was crystal clear. the moon was casting really stark, bold shadows off of the bare craggly trees onto the blank-with-snow yard. it was a really astonishing sight. dead quiet.
i've canceled my life.
i'm leaving in two days for a short, killer dolls tour in cities where we know we can just rock out and have fun, and then i'm coming home with absolutely nothing on my schedule. i had a spring tour planned, i just canceled it. i was going to put the record out this spring; i canceled that too. everything around me has suggested that it's time to stop, assess, re-start and then blast off. i'm not going to go live in an ashram somewhere, don't worry. i'm going to take an Actual Break. a real one, this time. not that fake shit where i say i'm going to do it and it turns into a five-day affair at home. this is It. i'm stopping., i swear. for at least two months. my apartment, my apartment is crying for it. it's crying Amanddaaaaaaaaa pleeeeease clean meeeee. i've been dumping all this tour shit in it for 5 years and never sorting through it. i've done a dozen photoshoots int he past 6 months and havent gone through the shots. i have emails waiting to be answered that were sent to me in august. so it will be a cleaning, sorting, re-vamping, re-structuring the framework of my life and business kind of break.
the minute i decided all this, things changed. that saying about Jump and the Net Will Appear? the moment i realized that i had my own decisions in my hands, that i could plan my life the way i needed....that i could stop depending on my old blueprint for life: Bam. not only did my head clear and the realization that a break was truly in order really hit me, but the possibilities of how i can re-structure my life also appeared. the right things and people appear when you start trusting yourself. that's exactly what's happening. it's the exact same way with love-relationships. you can say that you want to start dating again in theory, but if you're hung up, you can wander through life for YEARS and it's not until you truly get over someone. then that the new lover walks into the party and your eyes meet. life is astounding that way, but it certainly makes sense. the phone starts ringing when you get off your ass and start doing dishes.
.
i just finished reading anthony kiedis' (the lead singer from the red hot chili peppers) autobiography. what a fucking frightening life. i had no idea that up until really recently he was such a junkie. terrifying and the stories of how poorly treated everyone in that lifestyle gets when there's drugs just ruling. to me the idea of not showing up to rehearsal because i'm out getting loaded is just simply unimaginable. my brain doesn't even go there, neither does brian's. we simply rely on each other in a way that excludes shit like that. i said to him today: we may argue, but at least we're sober when we do. arguing with someone who's been in and out of rehab 6 times over 15 years and just happens to be trying to kick that day after a week-long smack-and-coke binge. not quite fun. it's enlightening reading how other people Do This Life. it's the same lifestyle, give or take a mansion, motorcycle and tattoo or two. tour, band, rehearse, write, interview, assess, fight, make-up, perform...it's a grind. but everybody find a different way of turning it into a Life of some sort. there's so many different ways of doing it. but the similarities between bands are becoming more and more apparent to me. for the record, in most cases: i am anthony (minus the smack habit) and brian is flea (minus the mohawk).
they were so like us in their early days, though, just total freaks excited about being freaks and doing crazy action for no reason other than....they could. i had always assumed that their early fanbase must've been a real skate-punk crowd but from the way anthony describes it it was really similar to the early dolls crowds...a punk here, a goth here, a total rag-tag motley crew of whoever was into these crazy cats getting up on stage and being total clowns. the first tape i had was in 7th grade, i remember distinctly buying it at newbury comics, it was the self-titled album and i bought it because my best friend holly young and i had had a cafeteria discussion about how you could Just Tell if a band was Cool and Alternative from their name. we tried to think of good examples and we came up with Nine Inch Nails and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. but i actually had no idea what either of those bands sounded like. so in order to inform myself i went out and bought the tape and was hooked. blood sugar sex magik came out the year of 9th grade, and it was our summer theme CD. we would go to the meadows, smoke pot and blast that shit. that same bunch of friends and i went to see them play on new years eve. they blew me away with their live energy. we were crammed right up against the stage at some sports arena, about 20 people in from the front, really close.
the most memorable events of that new years eve, however, weren't during the chili peppers set. the two opening bands were at that time totally unknown: Pearl Jam and The Smashing Pumpkins. Eddie Vedder crowd-surfed from the stage to the sound-desk and i remember grabbing his leg and making a mental note to remember about that in case he became famous and i could claim leg-touching bragging rights. the circle is now complete. the other very memorable moment was when we were waiting for the chili peppers to take the stage and this song came on over the PA. this guy in a baseball hat turned to me and said, "i love this song. this songs fucking rocks." what is it? i asked. he said, "it's this band called nirvana. they're the shit." the song was smells like teen spirit. i was witnessing the birth of grunge.
.
i am going to try to post my complicated blog about australia (i still have my fall blog, getting more obsolete by the second, sitting in my drafts folder with 25 pictures attached) within the next week or so. i can summarize the trip: FUCKING AMAZING. what a beautiful place filled with beautiful people. the fans in australia are unbelievable. the theater group o worked with, the danger ensemble, was a total fantasy come true. i'm hoping we can do more shows in more places together. and seeing everybody and talking with all our fellow freaks.....it made me hungry to get back on the road and re-connect with everyone on this upcoming tour, i had forgotten how much i miss it until i did it. this upcoming tour is going to be such a perfect love-fest with all our friends on stage with us...sxip and luminescent, my new soul-mate meow meow, our trusty crew....we're so excited.
it's time to go to bed. i have a flu to kick and exactly two days to do it. please send garlic vibes my way.
i can't wait
merry xmas, happy everything, be safe, drink lots of water...i love you guys.
it's officially winter and it's cold and it is 4 am and i have not started packing for australia. obviously i must blog.
i still don't know where i'm going to stay. that is, we've picked a joint in melbourne with some freak types who sound right up our alley, but we've got no address. so i think i may land in melbourne many hours from now, suitcase in each hand, and look forlornly at upside-down street signs while dingos eat my baby.
actually i plan to take a cab straight to the spiegeltent and hug it. i've missed it so since edinburgh.
i didn't pack because a string of people happened tonight....andrew called and said there was a jazz band at a place in cambridge, so i went there, thinking i'd have time to pack after, then geeta was next door and i haven't seen her much lately and i shared a bottle of lambic with her, thinking i'd have time to pack after, then my old friend from elementary school, fred, came to visit nick at around 1 am downstairs and started telling us about converting to judaism and the three branches of judaism, and i needed to absorb myself in that for a while, thinking i'd have time to pack after, then i needed to talk to katie kay about post-war trade and she's on LA time, so we talked for a while (we're making POST-WAR TRADE UKULELES....i'm so happy), thinking i'd have time to pack after, then i started cutting my fingernails. and took some self-portraits with my furry cat hat.
i am so excited to go back to ozland. everyone there is magic, there's a friendly syrup in the air. i am so excited to see steven and the other performers in the danger ensemble. i am excited to drive the aussie coast with them as we groove tunes and talk butoh and plans for our bizarro stage antics. i am even excited to have a 10-day slumber art party with them on somebody's floor.
i am also very very more than psyched for the upcoming dolls tour. brian and i have been practicing and it's soul food to play with each other again. we had the traditional every-song-we-could-think-of-on- the-violent-femmes-first-record jam, this time with brian on guitar and me on drums. meg white watch out. and i have better sex tapes too. oh wait.
film recommendation: the lives of others. we watched it the other night after rehearsal. german. recent. long. starts a little slow. but GOOD GOD it's fine. can't do much more justice than to say holy shit, perfect movie.
best reply from the last blog: a web of safety benefits only a spider. all rewards come from risk.
i sat next to a man in the cafe pamplona tonight (yes, thinking i would pack later) and he was translating papers. he made a phone call and to the other person on the line he said: "oh, just sitting her, working on papers and having some coffee. and happy to be alive." he told me he'd been coming to the cafe pamplona since 1959.
it started snowing today in big fat gorgeous chunks. it's still coming down. i think this calls for a picture, let's outside.
post-script: 6:52 am: completed packing mission, compacted vitamin collection, created many fingerless gloves. snow switched to rain, sun has risen.
the blog that i wanted to write was epic and profound and detailed and full of photographic images and reflections on the last two months. in fact, i have several drafts on my desktop complete with photos. i've been all over the fucking place a lot has happened. i was in montana, doing a solid week of training for yoga-teaching, i was in seattle working with my new back-up band, i was working on the record in LA and san fran and somewhere in there i was in new york with brian and other friends putting on the finishing touches.
i still might write that blog. it's long, but every passing day makes it feel less relevant, because i'm stuck in an entirely different swamp now. i need to at least relate my current state of mind. are you guys still out there?
during all this mess of the last two months i got gradually lost in every way. my mind started to deteriorate and my body tried hard to keep from crashing. i went vegan for a while for survival.
my whole infrastructure started to feel like it was falling apart. my home, my team, my brain, my career, my general web of safety all going the same way: nothing literally falling apart but nothing working at capacity anymore, either. the basics keep me from despairing: my record is incredible, i'm in relatively good health, nothing is awful. the difficulty lately lies in wondering what the point of all the struggle has been. i've been working my ass off for years, non-stop, deluding myself into thinking that it would get easier and more fun and it's only over the course of the past year or so that i realize i've dug my own grave more than i have dug the tunnel to freedom. it's just the same cycles over and over. don't mean to sound morbid or anything here, but the theme is applying to life in general. i'm watching all these people around me rushing and struggling, caught up in the game, everybody working their fingers to the bone. myself included.
it reminds me of that wonderful part of "eat, pray, love" where elizabeth gilbert goes into a lingerie store in italy and buys a shitload of fancy underwear, even though she has no lover and no chance for intimacy even remotely around the corner. she finds herself thinking about the italian soccer fan she was sitting behind a few days before who was screaming at the top of his lungs at Albertini, the star player, who had just passed the ball to midfield where there was absolutely nobody waiting. the fan was screaming: "Per CHE, Albertini?!?!?? PER CHEEEEEEEEEEE?!?!??" in her own mind, she was asking the same question: "For WHO, liz??? FOR WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO??!??!?")
this is how i'm feeling lately. maybe it has something to do with not touring for too long. the disconnection is pretty complete. for who? for me? for you?
the biggest delusion i've revealed is that i keep learning the same lesson of self-reliance, or is it just my puritan upbringing? i've had these mini-realizations before, but this one was more seismic. i was working for years on the assumption that if i just played hard enough, wrote well enough, felt passionate enough, proved myself enough, toured enough, won enough fans, who know...that help would come swooping in like a magic carpet and take all the responsibility away. but this is totally childish thinking. there is always a support staff, but that's what they are: a support staff. i am, will, and should always be the end of the line, the only one in control of my own show. i don't know why i started thinking, at a pretty early age in my career, that if i just worked hard enough i 'd be able to hand that responsibility off to a team of experts. i am the expert. it's terrifying to realize that and have to re-format your mind to the new scenario. it's not only applicable to my career, it's just as applicable to life. you wander through your days thinking that you'll find that perfect scenario, job, lover, partner (fill in the blank) who will somehow unburden you of your struggling existence, your decisions, your responsibilities. it's bullshit; only you can truly unburden you. but the fantasy is very, very tempting. does it ever work? if you exchange stories with anyone (try someone who's recently been divorced for starters) you'll find that the delusion is an extraordinarily common one. we want to believe in the fantasy more than we want to take responsibility for the fact that we are, indeed, the only ones who can run our own show.
one of the yoga teachers who was in montana left me with a choice phrase that keeps reverberating around in my head. we were in an incredibly long and hard pose, sweat pouring and people groaning. he said:
"Don't be fooled. HELP IS NOT ON THE WAY."
everybody cracked up laughing. we all knew what he meant. there is that fantasy, in every moment of tension and struggle, that help will magically arrive and make all the pain and suffering go away. so many people in my life...my agents and managers and engineers and producers and lawyers and accountants and bandmates, the list goes on....the airport luggage carriers, the hotel clerks, the taxidrivers, the people who make my sandwich....they're all helping, and god knows i need them and they need me to function to survive....no doubt. but they're not going to save my life, they're not going to give me any answers, they're down here in the mire with me, trying to figure this shit out for themselves. wondering, too, if someone is going to open the door to their bedroom one night and say: "i know you've been waiting for me for years and i'm finally here. things have gotten way too out of control, my friend. before we get to the meaning of life stuff (and believe me, we'll get there) let's start with something simple, like your closet."
now we know why cult-like religions and personal organizers paid $500/ hr are doing fantastic business.
this is turning into the blog i wanted to write. i should be warming up my voice for tonight.
look i rhymed.
i'm trying to focus on each small task at hand until my shit gets together in some recognizable way. i'm supposed to be leaving for australia in a week and i still don't have a plane ticket or a plan of where to go and stay, even though there are shows booked, which makes me wonder if i'm going. my head works in strange ways in this regard, and always has: until i'm at the airport, i still think there's a chance it might not happen. this fear is founded, actually, on a life and schedule in which things - often beyond anyone's control - have fallen apart at the last minute often enough for me to not trust anything unless it's right in front of my face. i've gotten used to this the way i've gotten used the things in my apartment always being different when i come back due to the number of people coming in and out. i just don't blink an eye.
i'm at home right now, jason webley is staying here, we played in portland last night. i hadn't played the piano on stage in a long time. i felt rusty but creaked back into action well enough. there was some snafu with my keyboards not being fixed so i started the set off with two broken notes. something was cosmically against me (or else i was playing harder than usual) but by the end of the show there were 8 broken keys. i could barely get through a song. there's nothing romantic about it, you don't get the satisfaction of a guitar player with the springy- sprangy look of strings splaying everywhere. every song ends up being an intellectual obstacle course instead of an emotional outpouring and that plainly sucks. in trying to describe the feeling to the audience, i tried to come up with an apt metaphor and finally hit on this: starting a song and then realizing that the main notes you need are broken is much like when you're driving a car in an ice storm in the way left-hand lane of a highway and the entire windshield fogs up, leaving you only a few 3x3-inch patches through which to figure out where the fuck you're going. but playing together with jason, and watching him play, was joyous in itself. i could forget the fuckshow of my life and take comfort in singing some new material, which we had a great deal of fun putting together on the drive. he's one of the best songwriters i know.
tonight we play providence and then i spend the next two days trying to dig out of the pile.
so that things do not end on an entirely sour note, i will include a recent self-portrait that made me happy:
when i got home earlier tonight i felt like shit. i have been traveling for almost a month straight. i know you don't even know exactly what i was doing. nobody knows exaclty what i've been doing, and that includes me and i'm not kidding.
you've been crashing in my room, because that's how things roll at the cloud club. you're leaving in a few weeks for paris, and you're couch-surfing, as i have been for the past month. seattle, portland, san francisco, LA, santa fe and new york (with connecting flights in salt lake city, atlanta, phoenix and maybe i'm missing something), doing everything from recording to mixing to photoshoots to singing and rehearsing to shows and video shoots to holding new babies to mastering and having nail-ripping and life-determining meetings about my life and career and suffice it to say, i'm fucking tired. so tired, nick. empty tired. don't give a fuck tired, unhappy tired. i have been feeling so weird lately. coming home has been upsetting.
i got in from NYC at around 4pm today, dropped off my suitcase and put on a dress and got a ride from lee straight downtown to go to the opera with my family, which was the whole reason i came back today. we ate. i tried to stay awake. then i came home. i felt Empty And Lonely. i sort of know what i'm doing with my life, but not really. i don't feel at home here anymore. i've gotten too used to the road.
i felt something bordering full-on depression as i decided that it was time to go to bed. i didn't want to go there. i've been sleeping alone, but something about going to bed alone tonight seemed especially sad. i brushed my teeth and picked two books to take to bed with me to keep me company. i couldn't do it, couldn't for some reason, didn't want to go to bed, even though i was so fucking wasted tired. i just kept listlessly looking at piles of unopened mail to see if maybe something personal showed up in the course of the last month along with all the bills and books from amazon......maybe.... some letter from some ex-lover that might change my life that i could take to bed with me and clutch to my chest.
i kept checking emails, until my computer got knocked offline and i decided that it was a sign and i should, finally, go to bed.
so, reluctantly, i finally did.
and when i climbed up the stairs to my sleeping loft and found not one, not two, not three or four or five, but SIXTY impeccably-frosted vegan cupcakes laid out in the shape of a crucifix on my bed, i wanted to crumble with gratitude that indeed, everything is All Right. the fact that you included a painfully large xerox reproduction of my embarrassing high school yearbook picture was also The Shit. i'm not even tired anymore. i am now in a Fantastic Fucking Mood. i need more friends like you.
here is a video that chip and i shot last week in seattle. don't ask. happy halloween.
this week: seattle, los angeles, san francisco, santa fe, new york. boston, sleep.
how am i feeling?i feel about how i look in this video: completely lost, clueless and isolated and yet somehow ok despite my total lack of direction (which, if you look carefully, is backwards). the last few months have been.....enlightening is the positive way of looking at it. i'm not even close to out the woods yet. when i blog, prepare for four to five installments.
writing in planes seems to have become a habit, but it makes sense to me.
i barely thought about blogging when i was in edinburgh and when i stop to think about it, i realize why: i have no desire to keep a running of my life and actions. did this. went here. met so and so. greetings from.... it's not the events themselves that i'm interested in writing about, it's the reverb.
so maybe: memoirs, not chronicles. maybe this: it's been so sublime that to write ABOUT it DURING it would have seemed like a violation, as tasteless as stopping incredible sex to discourse thoughtfully with your partner about how incredible the sex is.
at the beginning of august i flew to london for the bush hall show
amanda and rohan (photo by nickie mcgowan)
and then to edinburgh and just left yesterday (by way of one short show at the pride festival in manchester, which was a disaster, though fun, and not part of the story). i'm flying back to boston. in total i spent about 3 weeks at the fringe festival in edinburgh. i booked 8 shows at the spiegeltent and played a few extras as the opportunities came up. it was the third year i've been in edinburgh during the fringe. the first year it was just for a day or two. i vowed i'd return. last summer i managed to stay 3-4 extra days. from now on, i'm there all month every year. it is no less than perfection. it is disneyland for artists. it is heaven.
this is the fringe:
wandering lost in an city transformed into an altar to theater, music and art. old stone and brick buildings in the center of a twisted and cobbled fairy-story city that lie in slumber until fringe time and are then transformed into damp and dark spaces where art-makers compete for your attention, every one of them attempting harder than the next to plunge their hungry fingers into your heart and make you bleed so profusely that you have no alternative but to promote their show by word of mouth to all your friends.
everywhere the walls are damp and everywhere there's laughing and it smells wonderful and everywhere things happen now now now until 6 in the morning and profanity and profundity walk smack into you in the street. jaaaaaaaaaaa.
on the third day steven (from zen zen zo in brisbane) came. we'd been hatching some vague plans to put action to music with him at the helm and a collection of performers he would wrangle from australia. he introduced me to the performers from a show running at the fringe called "six women standing in front of a white wall". they were friends, some of them old students, of his and they generously lent us their performance space so we could rehearse the ridiculous lip-synch performance to "umbrella (ella ella eh eh eh)" that i had dreamed up on the plane ride over. it involved reggie beatboxing. reggie came over. game on. art started.
here's what we came up with:
the next day i saw the performance of "six women...". it was exactly this: six women, wild-haired painted white butoh-style and wearing pink prom gowns, standing in front of a white wall in a dark brick basement venue that is usually a hallway. they stand behind velvet VIP ropes with signs that read "please do touch". they stand there, writhing in wait, every muscle of their body tense, waiting to be touched. music alternately manic and heartbreaking plays through the speakers. maybe somebody crosses that rope and walks up to one of them touches them. and when touched, how they respond, all gleeful and wild and wordless and explosive, happy but terrifying like a baby in a state of shock in that moment for bursting into tears. the performance was attended by 10 or so people. steven and i touched them. i smiled, it was sweet, it was art, i knew these were my people. we invited them to come perform during my spiegel show, they'd be perfect during "material girl". let them writhe in front of the audience in their terrifying dresses and why not let's put blood capsules in their mouths and have them start oozing during the "living in a material world" section of the song. so every night these women, along with steven and the danger ensemble, all australians, would be packed behind the tent putting on white and laughing, what heaven will look like for me. steven and his crew put together a piece for my song "strength through music" that broke my heart so hard one night i wept while i watched them, hands on heads, all attending columbine and virginia tech, freezing and falling to the aisle of the tent while it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop every night. during "coin-operated boy" they paraded in the audience with "pash for a pound" signs. pash, i learned, is british for Making Out. they had many takers and often made out (no pun intended) very well. someone made a twenty one night. during "the assistant" they created a striking tableaux of twisted circus magicians and assistants. steven is like pope: he sees straight into my head and straight into the music and knows what goes where without me barely having to utter a word. chalk one more point up to Rock Love. we have it. we call it Art Love. i played off of them and their energy the way i play off brian, they fed me, more and more every night.
there's a great video reggie took of our daytime rehearsal of "creep" with the six women, you can really get a sense of what the tent looks like:
stained-glass & velvet & gold vaudeville tent that seats 300 people and travels the world, a magical ship of cabaret and drinking that delivers atmosphere in such large doses that it's almost intoxicating. it's like stepping inside a gingerbread house or a movie that you love, you can barely believe that it's real. there were two tents set up at the fringe in a garden of tables and umbrella-ella-ellas and bulbs strung on tress. one with wrap-around booth-seating and a dance floor (my tent) and one with old circus bleacher-style seating (the bosco tent). there were dozens of acts, all rotating from afternoon til late late at night and the turnover was tight. we all shared dressing room trailers and the bathrooms were portapotties smelling strongly of cigarettes. it was one of these portapotties into which i accidentally jettisoned (and from which i vainly retrieved) my blackberry last summer.
we were all all all over each other, everyone fast friends, everyone in awe of the next person, everybody checking out each others acts and the whole place feeling like family. i've never had so much constant exposure to such an abundance of my kind of talent and people in my life. it was what i'm always trying to make. already made, and there, for me. the staff, including all the door people and backstage crew, wear old-school 1920s and 30s attire: hats, suits, vests, garters, skirts, boots, everybody truly loving it. fucking class. wine in the morning, coffee at night, cider all the time.
i shared the stage with Bob Downe, a hilarious seventies throwback and with Camille, a french-irish beauty i've seen for years at the tent who does a nightly show of kurt weill, nick cave and jacques brel. not up my alley at FUCKING all. she was an inspiration and we would bump into each other every morning and share hangover woes and she would give me pieces of french apple pie. late at night there was the shuffle club, where the tent would jam pack and we would swing dance to a smoking band playing jazz standards. sweat everything off and slip down drunk on all the beer on the floor. (http://www.myspace.com/theshuffleclub)
...with bob downe backstage at the spiegel
most of the spiegeltent 07 family in front of the bosco (can you find amaaaaaaaanda? photo by ryan mcgoverne)
at the bosco tent was meow meow, one of the premiere cabaret performers from the new york scene and she was an instant hero, just add water. i've never seen a performer like her.... in love and in awe. she crowd surfed to the lighting booth every night.
meow sound checking in the tent
there was suitcase royale, which was a junkyard paradise combination of monty python, terry gilliam and, as the reviews said, "wallace and gromit meets david lynch". sxip showed up and we went together and clutched each other in hysterics the whole time and kept saying all day that we wanted to live in the set with the butcher the doctor and the newsman. they're coming to pittsburgh in the fall. go or die, i'll try to remind: www.myspace.com/thesuitcaseroyale.
at the end of every night starting at one o'clock a password was spread and bosco tent would turn into a speakeasy where only the performers and the staff would knock at the backstage door. some band or another would kick out the jams and the drinks were served in teacups. the first night i went was almost the best, meow's piano accompanist and i took over the grand piano and played a 15-minute version "ice ice baby"/"under pressure" while the doctor from suitcase royale tried to channel vanilla ice. my last night i showed up with a song i had penned that afternoon to play for the assembled patrons: an ode to the spiegeltent. it was a tango, the lyrics began:
"i want to live inside this tent i dont care how much rent they want i want to curl up in a ball forget the worlds out there at all and fall asleep each morning plastered underneath a wooden bench
i'll drink my breakfast at the bar i'll never change my clothes or shower i'll hire a desperate local child to fetch paninis from outside and keep me stocked on cigarette papers and underwear and i'll be best of friends with all the staff we'll share our sorrows and a laugh they'll be oblivious at night when they are turning out the lights that i am sleeping in a pile of their 1930's hats...."
....and so on and so forth. it ends with us all dying and meeting up to get pissed in a spiegeltent in heaven.
it went over very well.
then me and tom dickins sang "hallelujah" together and tried to make each other cry.
this is the fringe. it's the best place in the world.
me, meow and camille in front of the bos (photo by ryan mcgoverne)
there was my apartment.
which i found through the dentist(who-fixed-my-tooth-that-i broke-beatboxing-at-the-fringe-with-reggie-watts)'s son sam. sam ends up being an amazing musician in his own right and i got to see him play and sing a few times over the course of the fringe. sam had a friend named jo who had an empty room in her house for the month.
i rented a shitty keyboard and put it in the corner so i could practice. rohan practiced on it. i think max played it before he found tonsillitis.
i'd wake up in the morning with new thoughts in my head, ideas that maybe i always have but because of the change in climate and shift in lifestyle i finally did things i don't do. i wrote two poems. i don't write poems. i'll share them later. one is called "broken-heart stew" and sounds like a dr. seuss book and one is called "how to hold a man with no arms". they are both good.
i wrote a children's story. it took 30 minutes but it's not really finished. it's about a boy who keeps changing his name.
i ignored everything coming in. i dealt with the essential but i have, at last count, approximately 567 emails (after spam-deleting) in my inbox. i don't care.
everybody texted. i had a UK cell phone left over from last year and it became my new lifeline. everybody always had somewhere to go, and if there wasn't somewhere to go, you could always find someone at the forest.
self-portrait on arrival day:
this is the forest cafe:
one day i walked in for a sandwich and there was a girl from pittsburgh playing "oh comely" on guitar and instead of ordering my sandwich i sat down in a chair and watched her and within about 2 minutes i was in tears. ok, so i was having a sensitive day anyway but what the fuck. her voice was like an angels, i talked to her afterwards and she came along that night to hanover street and played the guitar part for "two-headed boy" while i sang. we practiced in the basement. (http://www.myspace.com/autumnayers that's her).
the forest is the world's best Again cafe, co-operatively run and volunteer operated by everyone around, with plates of vegan salad, mad painting on the walls and indie music at all hours of the day and night. they only play music that is sent to them by unsigned bands. where everybody is, thinks, talks, sits in rotting armchairs with disintegrating springs that sink you to the floor. where the abandoned presbyterian church upstairs finally opened up as a forest cafe annex for a few weeks and miraculously the giant pipe organ up in the balcony was still working. the collective that was anarchically taking over the church space was a mass of 20 kids from london, and they put up gorgeous photos everywhere and made music for the end of the world. the sounds were like the old Birthday Party live recordings. the group was called "What They Could Do, They Did". the place was packed and dark with light creaking in from the street lamps breaking through the tin foil that had been plastered over the two-story stain-glass windows and i played "will" on the organ for the crowd down below as max worked the foot pedals with his hands.
upstairs at the forest & the pipe organ.
max. and rohan. the two of them sleeping like homeless angels on the wooden floor of my room and we would all scrape ourselves up sometime after noon and walk down to the cafe on the corner where we had, all three, fallen in love with the waitress who was so frazzled and terrified every time she took your order that you had to, just had to, deliberately slow your speech to watch her slowly self-destruct in agony. we were sadists, trying to inflict jedi zen on her and it never worked. the orders always came wrong, i always tipped, which you don't DO in scotland. from then when i was alone there, i would write. i would curse the draft from the door which was always kept open even though, for the first two weeks, it was always freezing and raining. from bush hall to edinburgh, max and rohan and i ate many meals together and always ended up in the same seats on the same topic of technical skill losing out to passion no matter what the application. about how there are no rules for life and you realize this gradually. rohan finally made me an associate member of the guild of funerary violin players and i attached the golden plaque proudly to my ukulele.
some pictures of the forest:
outside
inside
the forest bathroom, which gets repainted all the time, as do all the forest walls:
i took jogs through the meadows near the apartment and listened to the songs that becca left on the iPod i had lent her that she named Maggie.
one day my heart broke.
i had my heart broken, mostly, i think, because i needed it to be so i could fix it and feel my own blood pumping. i'll never know. i keep forgetting what it's like to feel even the remotest shallow heart pains.
that day i was hung over and i gathered up all the energy i could muster and left the house for a run. maggie was on shuffle and "everybody's gotta live" by the band Love came on. i had never heard it. i played it again. and again. and again. i kept running. i felt like that character described in Paris, Texas. i kept running and running and hitting repeat until i was so full of Yes that it was impossible. then i went home and showed and went out that night to see what would happen but i brought maggie and when things got hard i finally took her out and i put on the song and i walked by the throngs of people in the cloudy dark wet light and i felt my heart explode with every face i saw pass me. i wanted to grab my cracked heart out of myself and throw it in the river and i wanted to hold onto it forever.
i went to 99 hanover street to pick some money up from gavin. i'd had a variety show there the night before and invited all my friends to come play....sxip, reggie, rohan, steven and the other guys from danger ensemble, jessica delfino singing songs about vaginas, more more more, it was a juicy night everybody sat on the floor and we all rock loved and drank wine and ate indian food in the make-shift basement dressing room. i was tired from my jog and from my heartbreak and from the late night. gavin waved, he was just finishing up a band on stage and as they played their last chord he told me to hang on so he could throw a song on the turntable and he ran over while i got a cider at the bar and i heard "EVERYBODY'S GOTTA LIVE.....AND EVERYBODY'S GONNA DIE..." and i properly melted to a puddle of fucking mush on the floor.
i dragged my semi-broken heart around for a few days like a suitcase filled with top-shelf drugs, happy to have it but afraid that it might burst open and get me in a shitload of trouble.
on one of those days i went back to see the six women show. they'd gotten rave reviews, the show was now packed. instead of 10 people, the room was teeming but the crowd was just as timid and confused. i was raw, tired, sad, happy, broken, leaving in a few days. they just stood there, writhing. i held onto a set of hands and i felt tears gush out, thinking this is it: this is your lover. and i knew i was right. and they knew i was right. and they held me and i held them, and in all the parts of my brain that were working i tried not to take any of it for granted. saying: there's no rule that says that people are going to make mind-blowing art, no rule that you're going to be there to see it. touch it NOW. NOW. and i left the theater without saying goodbye to any of them in words, my hands and pants and mouth and nose covered in white, and got in a cab to go to the dentist's house for dinner.
i knew andy, a bad-ass trumpet player, from last year and the next thing i knew he wrangled three of his friends and i had a horn section fro "leeds united". they all played pants-less and i loved them. photo by stuart barrett
i loved them so much i booked a day in a local recording studio and they brought along a bass player and drummer and we laid the track down. it is the sloppiest thing i have ever recorded. i did the vocal in one take and didn't even warm up. i think it's going to go on the record just because IT CAN! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ha.
we had a good time in the studio:
with the band recording "leeds united" at chamber street studio (drew forrest)
doing vocals (drew forrest)
the record has been on my my mind but i tried to ignore it all month. i went jogging and i realized that if you didn't know me, you'd hear all these songs and just think i was just an incredibly morose and fucked up chick. that didnt' sit well with me. i need to think about that.
this is the dentist's house:
there is a house in edinburgh where a family lives that is the most wonderful family in the wolrd. i've never seen so much drinking and laughing and joking and shared love of music and life around a family dinner table in my life. instruments are played, spilled dessert from the table turns into an art installation and photo opportunity and the dying and lovable cat, pumpkin, shares time in everybody's lap. i am now torn between living in the suitcase royale set or the dentist's family's house. emily came over for dinner the first time. we ended up all lying on the floor stuffed with food and wine watching alice cooper and tom waits and captain beefheart clips from the old grey whistle test DVD. we spent the next day looking at each other shaking our heads saying "dentist's house. Best. Family. Ever." the encore dinner was just as wonderful and sam and i practiced "two-headed boy" together and then we all walked over to reggie's late-night show and at 2 am we took stage and played it. then i played "what about blowjobs" with reggie and did NOT break any teeth this time. no pun intended ok next:
this is the fringe:
-heading to the spiegeltent in the morning and checking my email under an umbrella drinking cappuccino and eating banana bread while camille comes by and talks irish in her gorgeous wool coat and sxip comes by with someone from luminescent orchestrii and talks about how their show went and mark comes by and calls me darlin' and sonya comes by and says how you goin' and tom comes by in his suit with his big australian smile and tom's mom gives me a massage in her trailer maked "zen central" and puts flower essence under my tongue and talks to me about love and life and makes my chest break open.
-a piece of physical theater called "the angel and the woodcutter" that it makes me cry not one, not two, not three, but four seperate times. by the last scene everyone in the house is fucking sniveling.
-sitting in the kitchen with my housemates, from all over, greece, italy, food being cooked, wine poured, conversation turning in circles and the record player always on. the back window lets you out into a garden with tiger lillies and fox gloves.
-three weeks of Noga
-a one-man play about technology and isolation in which everything morphs into a sick video game and i cry from happiness and not-loneliness and then the actor who is a friend of reggie and jason webley's from seattle takes me back to his house under a cliff and makes me eggs and toast and we end up talking (surprise) about how technical skill loses out to passion no matter what the application.
-a walk to the spiegeltent one evening, decide to take the long way through the meadows and a group of four or five people are lying on a blanket drinking beer and i'm in a good mood and one of the guys is playing a hand-drum even though he doesn't really look like a hippie and the beat makes me happy and so i smile and when i walk by i catch his eye and he doesn't look away and i don't look away and the whole episode only lasts 3 seconds but he ends it by saying "i love you"
-showing up at club noir with reggie and the danger ensemble to do a quick appearance and being backstage with a gazillion half-naked burlesque dancers and drinking GOD knows WHAT was in those pitchers.
..c="http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k14/Bill_H/amanda/09032007blog/19.jpg" border="0"> with reggie at cloub noir (tina warren)
mark during coin-operated boy at club noir. i'm not sure if he made any money that night. (tina warren)
-seeing fuerztabruta, the same folks who made "de la guarda" at a tent on the other side of town. me and steven and drew all cab it over. i grab steven's hand within the first ten minutes because we both know that this is It. in an hour, urban life sticks the arrow of decay through our hearts, world trade center towers crash over everybody's heads, and tsunamis consume us as all three hundred of us agree to dance and scream and FUCK IT. we leave drunk on the performance and take public transport back to town, steven produces a bottle of vodka from his backpack and we all feel 16 as we burst into spontaneous fits of laughter taking swing and making faces in the back of the top of the double decker bus.
-conversations about the end of the world in a bar with the staff from the bongo club after seeing the group 1927 create the most incredible fusion of film and performance i've yet seen. true genius; i am determined to get them to come open up for the dolls this winter: http://www.myspace.com/1927cabaretmostcurious
-cider, whiskey, lager, wine, repeat
from comments:
"You aren't the sum of your experiences. You're the whole fucking equation." whoever wrote this, you're awesome.
"did you ever see a film called "paris, texas"? i expect you have, but i think youd like it anyway." this is not only one of my favorites (and i love wim wenders in general, if you haven't seen his new one, don't come knocking, it's pretty good and bleak) but the soundtrack is oneof my favorite soundtracks of all time. ry cooder, slide guitar, just ridiculously great.
amanda and alex, my last night at the fringe in the underbelly bar. notice indeed my bloated cider-belly & how my jacket barely closes:
all right.
i'm out to the mountains montana for a week with no phone or email again, finishing yoga teacher training so i can finally quit this ridiculous day job.
if anyone tries to message or email me i'm way backed up so be patient. i finally put life first for a while and it means i have about 462 unanswered emails in my inbox.
i get back & then i'm spending all of september finishing up the record and then mixing the first week of october in nashville. i'm scared. it'll be done and then i won't be able to change anything. but then it will also come out and people will finally be able to hear what i've been doing with my life for a year.
NAMASTE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!!
love
a
oh p.s. miscellaneous plug: YOU MUST SEE REGGIE'S NEW VIDEO for "WHAT ABOUT BLOWJOBS". me & him performing this song together at the fringe seems to have become a tradition, and this video is the funniest shit i have EVER seen: go go go: www.collegehumor.com/video:1771127 & hopefully we'll do this song together at the ART shows in boston in a few weeks and everyone can sing along. if you haven't got tickets, get them http://www.amrep.org/hoc/, these shows are going to be epic and beautiful and never again.
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