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."

Laughing quietly to myself

About how I overheard a cashier at Sally Beauty Supply tell someone to put the warranty for her new curling iron "in the same place you keep your birth certificate." Apparently I've been seriously underestimating the value of curly hair.

Nashville soundbite

I'd filled up the gas tank and was sitting in the front seat fiddling with the GPS and ripping open a Slim Jim with my teeth because many recent road trips have turned me into a straight-up gas station primate. I now have a favorite brand of beef stick because I'm eating so, so many of them in the car. Or is it a pepperoni stick? I don't know. I fear the ingredient list and refuse to read it but the brand is called SASQUATCH if you'd like to investigate. This is something that I don't do at home where I'm drawn more to things like avocados and green peppers. Seriously, though, eating an avocado while driving? I would have to ask that it be pitted, stuffed with beeferoni, and sheathed in plastic before I'd even consider it.

I heard a voice call out, "Miss, you forgot your fuel cap." I opened the door, leaned out to look back and sure enough, the cap was dangling. I got out and started to screw the cap back on but didn't see anyone around. "Who said that?" I asked. A man poked his out from behind a column and smiled. "Welcome to Tennessee," he added. I realized he was looking at the California plates on the car. "Thanks," I said. "I'm just moving here and like it so far."

"Everyone who comes here from California does," he drawled.

Meaning

I've had something on my mind since Camp Mighty two months ago but the seeds of thought were planted much earlier, in 2008, when I wrote about my reaction to a man who smelled on the subway. That post was about my emotions and the overwhelming helplessness I feel when witnessing need in others. I wondered why I kept finding myself torn apart, just absolutely floored, by sadness because I wasn't always so wobbly-kneed. I then answered my own question by guessing (rightly so, I believe) that I'd been missing an important part of my life since I'd started working on music tours. Before touring, my work had a strong bent to social action with a few notable exceptions (Don Pablo's Mexican Kitchen! And all those pubs!) and without it I eventually I felt a void and I felt guilt. Guilt isn't my motivator nor my predominant sense, mainly because it's not useful long term and I'm finally getting inspired to brainstorm on ways to create more meaning for myself since I'm probably not going to quit my job to become an organic farmer or work in an orphanage any time soon.

One of the speakers at Camp Mighty was Kenna. I used to think about Kenna as just that guy on my iPod because Matthew had given me his music but I hadn't taken much time to listen. When I saw that he would be speaking at camp, I was intrigued and when he took the stage, I was rapt. Kenna spoke about the music industry and his place in it. He spoke of the ego involved, the publicists and stylists, and the pressure. But first we had to call his mom to sing her happy birthday. He put her on speaker but didn't tell her right away that there were a hundred people listening.

"Mom?"
"Kenna!"
"Happy birthday, mom."
"Are you taking your vitamins?"
"Mom!"
"Have you met a nice girl yet?"
"Mom, I've got a bunch of people here. They want to sing for you..."

It was very endearing. After we sang and laughed and listened to Kenna and his mom chat more and got our heartstrings all but manhandled, he hung up and continued his talk. He had reached a successful point in his music career and was living large, following the sparkly path of fame, when he had a conversation with his father. In the conversation his dad mentioned that as a child in Ethiopia he'd suffered for years with a waterborne illness and that his brother died. Kenna was struck. He didn't know that he'd had a uncle who died as a child and that his own dad had lived ten years with the physical pain that comes from drinking contaminated water: crippling diarrhea, nausea, cramps, dehydration, vomiting, fever and the looming threat of death. His dad told him that he had saved $10,000 and that he wanted to use it to help a community in Ethiopia build a well.

Kenna's parents immigrated to the United States due to persecution by the government in Ethiopia, his father a former Minister of Agriculture. After spending two years separated from his parents and living with his grandfather in Ethiopia, Kenna joined his parents in the US and grew up in Virginia. He was close to his parents and lived in a generous house that took people in and helped family still in Ethiopia. The Zemedkum family sounds like a big-hearted and open-armed clan that instilled deep values in Kenna which hurt him all the more to realize he'd been oblivious to a huge, formative fact about his father's life. To hear Kenna speak about this was powerful. It was a moment in which he questioned his choices and how he'd been living. I don't want to put words in his mouth but what this sounded like to me, when I compared it to my life was: I may not be doing anything wrong but am I doing enough right?

Kenna's response was to turn his attention to the matter of clean water worldwide and from that Summit on the Summit took shape. To draw attention to the fact that a billion people don't have clean water to drink, he got high profile people to hike to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and got other high profile to donate money if they made it. Kenna proposed his idea to Justin Timberlake on a snowboarding trip and while J. Timbo wasn't able to do the climb, he introduced the documentary that was eventually made for MTV and Jessica Biel, Lupe Fiasco, Emile Hirsch, Isabel Lucas, and Santigold climbed with a number of experts, sherpas, documentarians, and, of course, Kenna. They made it to the top of the 19,340 foot peak on January 12, 2010 and Summit on the Summit's work is ongoing.

After Kenna's talk and Q & A session with Maggie, I approached him to say thanks. I told him that I'm a tour manager and that I struggle to keep my job from taking over my life at the expense of activism that's important to me so his story resonated big time. He laughed and told me to tell Randy Jackson what's up for him. I didn't get into the fact that while Randy and I have passed in the hall a few times, I have no interaction with the TV judges since I've taken over Idol only when the TV show ends and my link to the judges are more along the lines of "Yeah, I saw Paula Abdul on her phone out by the dumpster when I was on the way to the bus." Plus, I have since then left the Idol tour and am working for one of the Idols, Lauren Alaina, on her solo career. That's also beside the point. I'm just as busy as I ever was and still need to pay close attention to what's important to me.

Kenna was incredibly friendly and approachable and told me to get the contact info of one of the people he works with because collaboration is good. Regardless of what collaborations I forge or what issues I throw myself into, it was a good reminder how much is possible, at what scale, when you reach out to others and step out of your comfort zone whether that zone is calling someone you don't know or hiking at an elevation in which your eyeballs can freeze.

Something I've enjoyed while working with Lauren is the number of shows that we've done as benefit fundraisers. She's sung her heart out for cause after cause, one recurring topic being children's cancer. We've visited the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis once and are going back again soon. ST. JUDE BLOWS MY MIND as one of the most intense examples of positive energy coexisting with crushing sorrow I've ever beheld. I'm in awe of the supreme strength of the children and families at St. Jude, not to mention those who work there.

I've set a goal for myself to find an organization that I can volunteer for when I have down time in Nashville. The side note to this would be to create down time when I feel like I don't have any. On an ever deeper level, I am mercilessly drawn to the idea that I need to write about my brother and my family. My parents spent years advocating and fighting for disability rights when I was young and I appreciate this more and more all the time. I face a huge amount of resistance to actually writing our story and have finished a total of only two chapters in two years but I also have an idea of how resistance works and am pretty sure that this just means I find the weight and meaning of it all intimidating. I believe, however, that telling stories is a potent way to build and create community. On the way to the coffeeshop today, I had a text conversation with Kelly who'd written out of the blue to offer writing support. Do I need a reader? Can I send an outline of ideas? What about a summer retreat in Tennessee? Do I realize that a chapter a month is a whole book in a year? Kelly has a lot of energy, as we all do especially when we channel it in the direction we truly crave.

Laughing quietly to myself

About how I told Rob the two cassettes I bought at the same time in high school: Nine Inch Nails and James Taylor. He countered with his young double purchase of Helmet and C+C Music Factor. Fair play, Rob. You're just about as confused open-minded as me.

Edmond

I stood in the taxi stand line at the hotel and waited for the bellman to whistle down a cab. It pulled up, Edmond at the wheel: 50s, grey mustache, baseball hat and wire-rimmed glasses. He looked like an older version of my soccer coach from ninth grade, the one who had us stand in a validation circle after each practice, our arms slung around each others' necks, sharing compliments of what we noticed each other do well that day. I told Edmond I needed to go to the bank and gave him the address. He coughed and apologized, "I just ate a sandwich." "Do your thing," I said. "It's cool."

A block or so later he asked me what my favorite Christmas gift was. I hesitated so he said, "Here, I'll tell you mine," and held up a wrist so I could see his watch. He pushed a button on the side, "It lights up!" "Nice!" I said, "Mine is leggings from my husband. They have eyeballs all over them."

"Where are you from?" He asked. "I'm from Montana." We got a little lost and he compared his GPS to his wife, "I think I know everything already but it's always better when I give in and ask for help." We found Chase but had to cross six lanes of traffic to get to the parking lot. Calmly he pulled into a lane of oncoming cars and sat unmoving. When they honked and went around us he told me, "I used to drive an ambulance so I still act like I have flashing lights and a siren." "You're very confident," I said.

On the way home from the bank we talked about marriage, the Grand Canyon, the far-right Republican party, and he drove a good 20 feet atop a center island to avoid waiting to get in the left turn lane. At one point in our conversation, I heard myself say, "I'd freeze to death if I had to choose how I'd die," and I knew Edmond is my current favorite cab driver. He may not obey traffic laws but he really seems to enjoy his work and is strangely engaging.

DECORATIVE USE ONLY

Applebee's
Albuquerque, NM

Looking for a home, Nashville edition

I thought moving from California would be difficult with the packing, loading the shipping containers, and driving but it turns out that moving to Nashville is harder. Where is our place here? We've been here looking for days and so far it's nowhere. I'm ultra-methodical when looking for a home and stalk Craigslist and property management sites, make phone calls and visit apartments to the detriment of anything else I may have to do. My mind swirls with THE CHOICES! and I mull over and weigh options until finally something makes sense. But the choices in Nashville thus far have been 1. sad 2. more sad and 3. depressing, I'm going to bed. We've found ourselves saying things like, "Well, if we're going to live on a sad street, then I'd rather be on that sad area." The city doesn't make sense yet to a degree that no amount of advice from others, driving for hours on end, and mad Googlemapping has solved. Everything so far has been out of our price range or dismal and I'm entirely confounded.

For years I had ability to attract unique or inexpensive homes - I was a caretaker for an old schoolhouse in Seattle and lived free in the nun's attic quarters, $500 for a room in a rent-controlled condo with brick walls and french doors to a patio in the East Village and at one point I almost lived on a boat - and from 1995 until a few years ago, my rent was almost always between $350 and $500. In Covington, we paid more than that and the place wasn't the perfect location but it had a LOAD of character and I'm a character junkie. I like urban and country, super old or super modern. I like the tall brick buildings of the inner city and log cabins and modular and mid-century. I subscribe to the idea that my surrounding's aesthetic affects my mind and swear that on a cul-de-sac my thoughts feel dead end. My ideas are bigger around tall buildings, trees, or mountains and fluid when I'm on water.

The first house we looked at in Nashville was nice inside but small. The smallness would have been fine if the vinyl siding of the outside wasn't as shabby, the front porch so dingy and the street so sad. "It is winter," we said as we walked down the sidewalk, "We have to imagine what this will look like in six months." But it also wasn't close to anywhere in the city we wanted to be and would have been a drive to everything. It had a yard and a park at the end of the street so Patsy would have been a happy dog but the humans would have been painting our nails black and popping Wellbutrin once they dried. It was cheaper than California but more than Cincinnati and Kentucky. I assumed we would easily shave off several hundred or even a third of our rent price by moving to Tennessee but this may not be true. We saw a place today that I nicknamed the moldy campground and it was only $150 cheaper than our Oceanside apartment. It was that house you went to a party at when you were 19: stained carpet, the walls listing oddly, cabinets that don't shut, extension cords run along the walls, and black in all the corners. It was on a beautiful street and looked great in the photos.

What I don't get is that Nashville has tons of artistic and musical residents, not all of whom can be rich. WHERE ARE YOU PEOPLE LIVING? I think it's more affordable to buy a house here than rent but we're not trying to buy a house. I've had people tell me that I need to live in East Nashville, or Sylvan Park, or Green Hills. We drive around and it looks great but nothing is for rent or it's boarded up or it's malls and tract housing at which point my brain's synapses quietly power down. One area, Germantown, I was warned against because it's supposedly not walkable to anything. We found it today and it was near a grocery, several cafes, and a farmer's market. I loved the buildings but everything was $1,800 or $2,000 a month. There is one Germantown house with a warehouse and watertower at the end of the street. Downtown is in the distance and modern row houses are around the corner. It was the warehouse and watertower that got me, though. In a potentially suburban setting, I actually find signs of industrialization comforting. The rent is less than $1,000 a month and we're going to see it tomorrow. Assuming we like the inside, the catch is that the current tenant doesn't know when she's moving out. "It could easily be by February," says the listing agent, "I'll be the first to know!"

Things I learned on the latest road trip

- I need to buy several of these emergency seat belt cutter glass breaker LED light tools. Thanks Jim.

- My iPod on shuffle likes Sade waaaay more than I do.

- The Motel 6 chain has undergone a transformation in Arizona and New Mexico: laminate wood floors have replaced old carpets, new color-blocked bedspreads instead of stained flower prints, modern finishes, flat screen TVs, and all still under $50 a night. The same has not happened to the Oklahoma and Missouri Motel 6; those still smell like nursing homes.

- I used to love Mad Libs when I was a kid (The astronaut took off in a rocket hot dog, hahahhahahha!) but they are not funny now. In fact, after doing two Mad Libs I fell into a depression and we had to throw them away.

- I'm going to miss Oceanside and kept thinking about the dinner at Harney Sushi on our last night in town and everyone who came to it: Miguel, Mark, Marisa, Troy, Julie, Sam, Monique, Monica, Jacques, Job, Lauren, Alex, Pablo, Fabian. So awesome.

- Still, I'm REALLY excited to come home and got slaphappy right around Florence, KY. And Nashville is only 275 miles from Cincinnati.

Going west

Scene from this time last year when we drove 2,220 miles in the other direction

New Mexico
Photo: Elise Thompson

Going east

We're taking our time getting from Oceanside to Cincinnati. We drove from Flagstaff to Albuquerque yesterday, to the edge of the blizzard and the point that New Mexico shut down I-40 overnight. Check out of Motel 6 late today to let the storm move east and with luck will make it to Oklahoma City tonight.

ps Why do we keep moving during winter?

Preparedness

"Oh my god, are there people in there?" We were driving east on I-40 just past Barstow, CA and to the right of the highway down an embankment was a smoking car turned upside down, a man running towards it. I slowed down as quickly as I could and pulled over to the shoulder. Matthew jumped out of the passenger door and began running. I backed the car along the shoulder, grabbed our phones, locked the doors and ran as well. I slid down the brush and gravel hill and when I got closer heard the man ask Matthew if he had a knife. Matthew pulled his Kershaw out of his pocket and handed it to him. I saw a woman's legs and heard her screaming. A boy of eight or nine was out of the car, standing about ten feet away, shaking and staring at the car, now on fire. Matthew and the man cut seat belts and pulled the baby and little girl through the windows. I put my arm over the boy's shoulder and across his chest and felt his heart racing. "They're getting out honey, it'll be okay."

Their mom was finally cut free and pulled out. A truck driver arrived with a fire extinguisher and the fire in the front and back of the car was doused. The family was banged up and cut and the mom was stumbling and wailing, "What happened? What happened?" She held her baby and looked at the car in shock and cried. She had no idea how her car had sailed off the highway and down the hill but a driver behind them saw the car swerve left, then right, and then was gone. The mom must have fallen asleep. She was moving to Chicago, driving her kids alone, and didn't get very far. Other cars stopped and more people helped with ice packs and water and pulled the family's suitcases over for the kids to sit on. They wrapped the kids in blankets and talked to them. Someone with OnStar called down the hill to tell us that the police and ambulance knew where we were and were on the way.

The first policewoman arrived and one of the bystanders filled her in on the kids' contusions and abrasions. I wished I were a nurse and knew words like contusion and was doing more than just rubbing the mom's legs and reminding her that her babies were safe. When more police showed up we felt in the way so we thanked the men we were standing with and went back to our car. As I drove away, I couldn't turn the music back on and I couldn't stop thinking about those children. They were so quiet; their mom was the only one making any noise. Were they okay? Was more wrong with them that we couldn't see? I couldn't stop thinking about how much worse it could have been: it might have happened on a less busy road with no witnesses. It could have happened after dark. The car could have gone to the left and into oncoming traffic. They could have not been wearing seat belts. The fire might have kept burning. Matthew might not have had a knife in his pocket. They could have easily lost their lives.

"Thank god you had your knife." They were stuck in there. "I'm a believer, I have to learn to use my knife now." #46 on my life list is to learn to open and close my switchblade properly. I put that on the list out of embarrassment, because I've had it for over a year and still feel like I'm going to injure myself every time I pick it up. I think it's funny to laugh at Matthew when he whips his knife out of his pocket to open a lollipop or a banana but I suddenly get it. Also, the AAA first aid kit I keep in the trunk is useless. I dabbed the baby's bloody nose with the tiny square of gauze in the kit and that was that. We already have two flashlights in the car and I keep a small one in my shoulder bag. I want to get more gauze, ace bandages, rubbing alcohol and blankets for the trunk. Maybe a glass breaker? Basically I want to become a first responder because I tend to take things too far. I hope the family is okay.

Henna #4

I just had my fourth run-in with Lush henna and the first was in April so I'm looking at doing this process on my hair every two months until I say eff it and go grey. HMMMM. That is a bit more often than I'd like but I'm still digging the outcome, all natural looking and earthy and non-toxic, so be it. This time I mixed half a bar of caca rouge (red), half a caca brun (dark brown), and a whole caca marron (chesnut). I'm getting better at the application - boiling, grating, mixing, slopping - though it still looks, and always will I suspect, like a baby escaped its diaper and crapped all over the counter. I have now instituted a "dance once it's on" step and when the caca has been combed through and has started to harden into a helmut, I do a few moves to celebrate before getting to the business of hanging out in a shower cap for seven hours.

Laughing quietly to myself

About how I asked for the internet password at the coffeehouse and the barista leaned in and said, "WATERMELON...ALL CAPS..." as slow and deliberate as if we were CIA agents. I've never heard watermelon sound so ominous.

#51 Be a mentor to a high school student

In October I talked to Sunny about her job as an art teacher in a new (to her) school and mine as a tour manager. How weird is it, I said, that I didn't study business or music but I've learned how to work in the music business. She said that more than anyone she knows I'm not defined by my work and that I just apply my personality to whatever job I'm doing and figure it out.

I had to think about this because I feel very defined by my work. It's true, though, that while I sometimes think I'd like to take an audio class, I'm far more comfortable with staging, sound, and the geekier financial aspects of music management than I would have ever imagined back when I worked in books; I credit my parents and Montessori for making me so damn flexible. Sunny said it doesn't matter if I'm self-taught, I'm still an expert and should do the Ask an Expert program at her school.

At Sunny's public school in Chicago, seniors are matched up with "experts" to help them with their senior project, the main thesis question and the direction of research they are taking. I stalled for a minute due to doubts as to whether I reeeeeally know enough to call myself an expert but OKAY. If we are talking about research, I'm in. I love research like I love long walks on the beach at sunset. No wait, like soup. I love research like a good bowl of soup. Long walks on the beach at sunset are just okay.

I've learned this about the school, North Lawndale College Prep:

85% of graduates are the first from their families to go to college

Last year the school received over 1200 applications for 240 openings and all of the students, most of them from the West Side, were picked from a blind lottery

NLCP receives about $1,500 less per student from public sources than traditional Chicago public high schools so they still struggle with a funding gap

NLCP has led all charter and traditional Chicago Public high schools in percentage of graduates in college the fall after their graduation for the past two years

70% of graduates have gone on to 4-year colleges and 30% to 2-year colleges since 2005 and 25% of college graduates are in or have completed graduate school

I was matched up with my student, a young woman dancer who asked, "Does performing arts improve student academic success, social skills, and college readiness?"

We were paired because music is a performing art but I still had a moment. I was exposed to every performing art growing up but didn't make them mine. After elementary school, I wasn't in plays, I quit the piano, I sucked at guitar, I sang off key in church, my dancing consisted of flopping around during reggae shows and I chose the academic high school where I could bury my nose in books rather than the School for Creative and Performing Arts. I AM GOING TO FAIL THIS GIRL.

I got out of my fear by pulling from all the examples I have surrounding me of what performing arts does for people's lives and turned to research to check up on the status of the arts in education these days. We ended up having a conversation on the phone since I wasn't in Chicago to go to the school and meet La'Keithia in person. We both explained where we were coming from, asked a lot of questions, and I hope I helped lead her down paths she hadn't considered and supported the direction she had started to take.

I learned a lot too.

American business leaders want an innovative work force yet arts education is not recognized as key to the solution.

Arts education strengthens cognitive development, innovative and creative thinking, critical reflection, communication skills, enhances social adaptability, cultural awareness and enables kids to have tolerance and acceptance, appreciation of others.

Art gives kids who are not book learners a way to express their own intelligence.

Art opens up new opportunities, gives kids something positive to do who may not have a lot of other choices. I'm talking about secretly talented gang bangers here.

Unlike curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts people use judgment over rules. There are many ways to see and interpret the world.

The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.

Studies show that involvement in the arts helps kids increase test scores and promotes academic achievement.

The arts offer a way for people to tell their stories, use their imagination, become active learners and imagination and expression are at the center of the learning process

The arts in school symbolizes to the young what adults think is important.

Finally, ARTS ARE THE SPARK OF CIVILIZATION. No biggie!

Laughing quietly to myself

About how I called home to see what Matthew was doing and he was sewing a button on a shirt and watching Roseanne.