A love letter

It's been really hard to be a good friend lately. For months I've been busy traveling and working away from home on a level that I wouldn't think possible to sustain but I'm doing it. We're getting by. When I'm actually home I try to relish each moment but still get caught in front of the computer, settling the past week and setting up the next. I recently fell asleep on the new couch, curled up with Matthew and Patsy, our arms crossed over each other, noses tucked underneath shoulders. When I awoke, groggy, I thought, this is exactly what I've been craving, a family puppy pile.

At home my priority is those two and I do my best to pay attention. Then I try to call my parents. I reach out to my friends but it's been hit or miss and that hurts because in many ways my friends have been the most important thing in my life. I don't think I would have survived to now without them. Yeah, you guys have made me laugh a lot but SURVIVAL, YO. The concurrent shift to a marriage I love, with Matthew both as husband and friend, and a job that is wonderfully rewarding but as consuming as it gets is a delicate balance in and of itself. Eking out hours for myself is tricky. I get so mentally exhausted that at the end of the day, I can't always speak to the world outside of my four walls; all I can do is Netflix or read fiction before falling asleep, usually before the end of the program or chapter. Giving as I should to everyone is impossible right now. I can't explain in any interesting manner the way my hours and days unfold. The only person who really, reeeeally knows is Matthew; he sees it when I'm home and hears it when I'm away. He understands how happy I get when I feel I'm doing it all well and witnesses my tears of frustration when I'm not. He tells me I'm being too hard on myself and I say that's easier said than done.

A few weeks ago Sara wrote and asked if I had any photos of us out in New York with her uncle Jimmy. It must have been 2003 when we went drinking and dancing with Jimmy, known to us also as "Tito" and "Charlie". I think I called him Tito the most and he calls me "The Rev". That night, St. Patrick's, we went to an Irish pub and then to another Irish pub where we danced salsa with junior firefighters under green shamrock garland and Sara and I shook a leg with a little old couple whose collective age was right around 170 years. Tito is fighting cancer now and Sara wanted to show him those photos if I still had them. It would bring him joy, she said. That night was one of his favorites. I wrote back and asked her to send him love from The Rev and told her that the photos were still in a shipping container in Nashville but that as soon as we moved in Feb 1 and unpacked, I'd find them. When I finally dug them out, these flimsy scans of xeroxed copies, two dogeared images from a great night almost ten years ago and sent them to Sara, she was sitting with Tito, watching the Super Bowl.

I think Sara's been on an old photo kick because around the same time that she asked for the New York photos, she sent a link to a group of us who all went to school together and met in Ecuador in 1997, a link to a website that contained incriminating shots of all of us in South America. Doing drugs? Naw, though I did spot evidence of drinking beer on the roof of a moving train. The main offense, in my opinion, was our egregious choice of pants. Our jeans were nipple-skimmers. And huge. I do recall my Ecuadorian boyfriend telling me that my clothes were too floja: literally "lazy". "What is he talking about?" I wondered at the time. But the first photo I saw of myself, slick with Amazonian sweat, inspired me to shriek to Matthew, "My jeans! I look like I have a dick!"

I was not alone.

The photos from Ecuador made me stop for a minute and think about the last 15 years, about how I got from this hill outside Baños to where I am now.

I found photos I took of Sara the last time I saw her in New York six months ago and thought of how much her life too has changed since 1997. Change is to be expected, right? I love change with all my heart. That's not news here. We act the same together now as then: killing some wine or ill-advised shot before having a serious conversation, asking each other what is this like for you? What do you think about that? What does it mean? Right before laughing like stupid asses and smirking over someone's shoulder. Note: we both smirked a lot over one another's shoulder at the audience when we officiated each others' weddings.

I don't feel like I'm losing anything or anybody being so absent right now, I just miss people and parts of myself. Matthew supports me and my work, my friends and parents give me a hard time now and again but know that I haven't disappeared for no good reason. I have reasons even if they aren't always fully understood. I just never want my life to narrow, I want it always broad and full of many people and many interests. I want the people I love to feel it deeply and not just believe it because I tell them. I want my friends to know I'm thinking about them so often, because I am. I want lots more photos 15 years from now. I want to curl up and fall asleep on the couch with Matthew and Patsy, our arms crossed over each other, noses tucked underneath shoulders.

Next I tell a story about how I stubbed my toe once

At a show in Oklahoma City last week, I kept biting the same spot on my gums just inside my lip and spent a fair amount of time with my hand clamped over my mouth, wincing and giving myself the finger in front of one of my colleagues, Jill. I saw her a few days later in Baton Rouge.

Jill: I have one of those spots on my cheek that I keep biting! So annoying.

Me: The salad dressing on the salad I got at the show last night was seeping in my mouth sore (gross) and stinging like hell but I played it cool.

Jill: Aww, that sounds awful. But you did a great job of hiding it.

Me: Thank you. I have a reputation to maintain.

Laughing quietly to myself (just a little)

About how Matthew was trailed by store staff when he shopped at Target in a Nashville suburb. Next time he goes to Target, if there is a next time (there will be next time), I hope he walks in, approaches the first employee he sees and says, "Hi, my name is Matthew. I'm 32 years old and have a Masters degree in Library Science. I'm wearing a "battle jacket" that I made by sewing patches and a smattering of black studs onto my black denim jacket. Yes, I like punk, hardcore, and metal but I also like Ryan Adams' love songs and opera. I don't have a patch of Maria Callas to prove that so you'll have to take my word for it. I own an energy-efficient washer and dryer and wear expensive deodorant from Sephora that doesn't contain aluminum. My wife and I just bought a new couch from Macys. I did not come to Target to steal CDs from your shitty music collection; I need a LAMPSHADE. What aisle can I find that in? Thank you."

Waking up in Little Rock

Little Rock, AR

Texas Club

I liked the Texas Club as soon as I hit the door because it reminded me of Road House. I wrote Matthew, elated, and he asked if there was a cage. I walked around and wrote back, "Cannot find cage, am disappointed." What the Texas Club lacked in cages, it made up for in a booming sound system and line dancing. When our set ended, the house music came on and the floor filled with kids line dancing to Footloose. Another wave of nostalgia swept over me and I sent another message, "It is so 80s in Louisiana."

Joan Jett and The Blackhearts

Handpainted show poster of Joan Jett and The Blackhearts from 1988 in the owner's office at the Texas Club.

Baton Rouge, LA

Welcome to the jungle country

When I took a job with a country artist, I knew nothing about country music besides the odd tracks on my iPod by Lucinda Williams and Johnny Cash. The band I'm tour managing would talk about musicians and I'd smile blandly. The few times I tried to comment on songs, I got confused. Are we talking about Dirt Road Anthem or Dirt Road Prayer or Red Dirt Girl or Car Wheels on a Gravel Road? All the dirt and the roads, they got me turned around. At a gas station on the drive from California to Ohio, I bought a People Magazine, Country Edition and read it cover to cover, often out loud. Matthew looked at me sideways and I said, "It's RESEARCH."

At the American Country Awards in Vegas in December, I sat in the green room and watched the monitor of what was happening on stage, the badonkadonk jokes and the Red Solo Cup singalong. Some of the only people I recognized were the cast of Pawn Stars and the comedian Bill Engvall, who I've seen on Comedy Central. I lot of the women looked familiar but I couldn't name them. I saw my former boss from Idol and he said, "I remember when I started and I didn't know who anyone was." "When you were me, you mean?"

When I found out that we were going on tour as an opener for Jason Aldean, I thought, "Great, who's that?" Now that we've finished the first leg of the tour and am preparing for the next, I fully respect where we are. We play the first set of the night, to thousands of country fans in arenas who came to the My Kinda Party tour. Our schedule is close to what I did when I first toured on a crew: wake up on the bus every morning, stumble to the front lounge to make coffee, ask our driver where we are if we're still moving, go inside the loading dock to find the towels for a shower in a locker room if we've already arrived. Stay busy all day until I crawl into my bunk at night. I'm not making most of the rules, I'm asking other people what they are, I'm learning new things.

Now that I'm on the country circuit, I also get to vote in the awards shows. I get daily email updates from several country news outlets and when it's awards show time, labels send me CDs and promo materials to sway my vote. Hilarious! And informative. And just a lot of stuff. Many, many people have told me that Nashville and the country music world is small and that everyone knows everyone. So many that it started to feel vaguely like a warning more than a friendly reminder and maybe it was but I can attest to the fact that after six weeks of paying attention, the pieces of the country puzzle are starting to come together.

Last week I was talking to a producer who said he'd love us to a play a festival he's doing later this year. I asked him who else is on the bill and he rattled off a string of names. "Wow," I said without a trace of irony or bullshit, "That's a great lineup."

Laughing quietly to myself

About how I got on the bus this morning to find a bag from Cracker Barrel full of $80 worth of baby moccasins. Most incongruous thing ever found on a tour bus.

Phew

Yeah, I love this. Thanks, Leah

Lionel Richie morning

I knew it was going to be a good day when I pulled up to the hotel and Lionel Richie was smiling at me through the windshield. I sat there stunned and beamed right back. "He liked us!" Rita said.

Things strangers said to me in the last 24 hours

"I bought an Acura on Craigslist today."

"Don't stand out here too long, people will think you're selling drugs."

"You should try West Nashville, a lot of rich white people live there. Excuse my language."

"You're going to love it here."

"You're going to love it here."

"You're going to love it here."