Photo credit: Anabel DFlux
Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
My tour vehicle for the West Coast is the Little Guy car, that’s the name of it. It is a 2008 Kia Spectra and it has about 100,000 miles and a new transmission.
When I fly out somewhere, however, I rent a car. My most recent breakdown story was last summer in Maine, driving a rental that got a flat on my way from Boston up to a house concert outside of Portland. Load in time was 4pm. I was way ahead of schedule because I’d heard the town of Gardiner is super cute and I wanted to explore.
I pulled over at the Kennebunk travel stop and called AAA, but as it turns out, car rental companies now do this thing where they lock the tire to the car and don’t provide a key. The first AAA roadside assistant to arrive couldn’t help.
By the way, Maine is the least populous state east of the Mississippi and large enough to cover the rest of New England. It’s pretty sparse, and luckily it was summer, daytime, and the Burger King had Impossible Burgers.
I ended up at this travel stop for three hours sitting there at the Kennebunk Travel Center making these phone calls and crying, trying to get through to anybody that could patch a tire while it was still locked to the car. I just thought I’m going to die here in Kennebunk, Maine. I’m never going to be able to drive away, I’ll have this flat tire on the car forever, and this is the end of my life right here, right now. I know, very reasonable fear…
Finally, someone came at 6pm, fixed it in under 10 minutes, I drove an hour, and pulled up to the house concert right at 7pm, when the show was supposed to start. By then it was raining, but everyone there came out to the car and helped me unload, setup, and I was probably plugged in and singing my first song by 7:30. By the end of it, it just became a story from the road. I met some really nice people that day.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
I’m a vegetarian and except for the occasional Impossible Burger when I’m stuck with a flat in Maine, I eat really close to the Earth, and shy away from overly processed foods as much as I can. On the road I got to grocery stores, and stock up on fruits and vegetables for snacking, juice, hard boiled eggs, and generally order from the salad menu at a restaurant. I’d rather go out for a nice dinner when I’m back home with my sweetheart rather than when I just subsisting on the road.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
I play them until they’re dead, and they are dead right now, but I’m bringing my touring guitar into the shop today for some work. In a few days I’ll pick it, and it’ll have those squeaky bright new strings on, but that’ll work itself out over the next few days of rehearsals before the album release show.
Where do you rehearse?
I have a 10’ by 12’ shed in my backyard that I had built in 2018. It’s uninsulated because I was going for a “cabin in the woods” feel –?think Thoreau and Walden Pond. I like feeling the elements of weather, I like hearing the rain. I like hearing the wind. I live in Southern California, so it’s relatively temperate. I also just like the illusion that nobody can hear me when I’m practicing, even though I know the neighbors can – my neighbor right next door says, “I love when you play “Headlights.” Every time I play headlights, it’s like “this one’s for you, Sherry!”
Also, though it lovely here in LA most of the time, in the summertime it can get pretty hot, and every year the tree guys come and trim back the branches of the mulberry that gives nice shade. The top of summer and the middle of winter is when I get a little miserable in the shed and spend more time playing in the house.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
I don’t remember the title, but the first lyrics were something like “driving home in the rain,” and something about my silver shirt. I had been driving home from a dance club in Boston and after the thump-thump all night I was in my car alone, it was pouring rain, the smear of the lights from the traffic lights and everything driving through Boston. I remember my silver shirt, that reflection of the light on it. And so that got written in the song.
Of course, there were songs before that too – when I was around eight my friend Risa and I would run through the woods and make up kind of operettas where I narrated all of our actions. And it was, “we’re running along. We’re running along, rah rah rah rah running along.”
Describe your first gig.
I am a classically trained woodwind player and when I was even younger played violin. So my first “gig” was in third grade for a violin recital. From that point onward, rehearsals and concerts were a regular part of my life.
The very first singer-guitar gig I had was right around that time that I wrote that silver shirt song. There was a little night time Greenwich Village sort of cafe thing on my college campus, where there was live music and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and low lit lights and funky decor. That was my first gig outside of the classical world, but I was probably so nervous about it that I wonder if I even wrote about it in my journal.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
I work for a nonprofit called The SONA Foundation, which creates resources and programming in mental health, career development and financial wellness for songwriters and music creators. It is a phenomenal organization, and I am constantly surrounded by people who love music and who are working in the music industry at extremely high levels. Most of them are songwriters themselves, but the other people who are not songwriters are enormously passionate about music creators. It is so heartening to be in that environment, and to constantly be around a narrative that says “this music thing is of utmost importance to my life as a human.”
I also teach creative writing at a university, and teaching yoga has been a constant in my life for about 15 years. At this point teaching feeling like an extension of my practice – whether it’s yoga or writing. For me it was a natural evolution from being a practitioner. Of course, my favorite job is being a performing songwriter. I really love that.
Something that people don’t talk enough about is the idea of community when you do have a day job, and it gives you a sense of place. Someone said the other day that .001% of musicians are able to earn a part time or full time living from it, so I consider myself to be incredibly lucky to be making a living playing music along with working with SONA and teaching.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
I took a ten year spirit journey away from music, and, in that time, almost entirely stopped performing and writing. When I came back five years ago, it was like all the baggage I’d been carrying the first time was off my shoulders. I started writing and performing… then there was the pandemic, and the quarantine, which didn’t stop me from writing and performing, but changed the way I did it.
So how has my music related income changed over the last five years? For me, it’s something that now exists where it did not exist at all five years ago.
I expect that I’ll continue to grow as we do with every profession. In 2023 I will have been on tour for about probably three months of the year. I’m stepping carefully into the space of touring because five years ago I wasn’t touring at all, two years ago I was just starting, and this year I’ve been out for about three months total, which means that I’m away from home a lot more than I ever was before. I’m curious to see how it’s going to look in my future. I’m watching how I feel. Touring is thrilling. It’s awesome, but it’s heartbreaking as well, to be away from the people that you love.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
A big question I asked myself when I was younger was how important is talent? Am I innately suited for this? I used to look back to my non-music family and wonder if that was evidence proving that I am not suited for this journey.
What I know now is that those questions are irrelevant. The most important question is, how much do you love it? Because if you love something, then you’re going to devote as much time as you can to it, and you get good at the thing that you do over and over again. If you love something, you’re gonna want to do it, and you will get good, and it doesn’t matter what your genetics look like.
Funny enough, within the last six months, I learned that one of my great grandfather’s was actually a concert pianist. But it does not matter what your innate talent is, what matters is your passion. And that you follow it.