In betweens

Our new neighborhood, Germantown, is the oldest neighborhood in Nashville and just north of downtown. It's part modern condos and row houses, part renovated warehouse lofts, part historic brick buildings and part small shabby homes with shingles flapping and chain link fences creaking. Our home is somewhere in between all of that: neither new nor historic but modest and clean and livable. Our house feels like it's been liked over the years but not loved as a rental property. Many details have been taken care of but other small ones were overlooked and we're doing what we can to put our touch and character on it, make it feel like us.

There is active industry in Germantown, a packaging plant that appears to be in operation and other factories nearer to the river that I haven't investigated yet for the graffiti if nothing else. The rents here are very high or very low, except for us again. We snagged a deal - good for Germantown but not rock bottom by any means - for our yard and porch and third room so that Matthew and I each have our own work space. We just had to wait a month with our stuff in storage, me on the road, and shuttling between parents and parents-in-law basements and bedrooms until we could move in a month ago.

On our block we live halfway between a homeless shelter and expensive lofts. I can walk to the Germantown Cafe with its wine list and truffle oils or to Church's Fried Chicken with its 12-piece bucket deals. Our coffee shop serves beans from Batdorf & Bronson, a roaster in Olympia, Washington I went to aaaaaall the time in 1996 and is one of my favorites. We have an artisan chocolatier and cinderblock liquor store but no neighborhood bar or music venue with microbrews and a jukebox. I hear birds, and dogs, and trains, and church bells and on two nights we heard gun shots.

"Really?" I said.

"Definitely gunshots," said Matthew.

That makes the new front porch feel slightly less amicable, I thought. Until I was talking to a Southerner who said, "You know, that could have just been rednecks shooting straight up for fun. We do that down here." I died laughing. "I never thought of that, I just assumed it was people shooting each other. Thank you, that's strangely comforting." She raised her eyebrows and shrugged.

Slow

My talented husband's release Slow came out today! With remixes by Ellie Herring and Skeleton Hands, you can hear clips on iTunes, Amazon, and Beatport and you can read more about it on the RACECAR website. Haven't you been jonesing for gothic undertones and the darkest shades of blues?

Waking up in Nashville

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."

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."

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!"