Photo credit: Alex Berger
Tell us about your tour vehicle.
I’ve had many configurations over the years, starting with my 2008 Prius, which was my touring vehicle when I was single and fancy free. Once I had kids, I outgrew the Prius pretty quickly, though my husband and I did do one tour with my daughter Josephine in the back seat and most of our stuff in a roof rack. We definitely played a lot of ‘trunk tetris’ that tour. After the pandemic we graduated to an SUV and then rented a van when we started to have to bring a nanny with us. During the pandemic we bought a camper, which we took on one tour.
On the one tour we did with the camper in 2020, we blew out the engine of our SUV in Boston and got stuck there for a week waiting for a replacement engine! It ended up being kind of magic, because my parents live in Boston so we got extra time with them (hard to come by in 2020), and it snowed. After an emergency run to Target, my kids and I had an EPIC sledding day.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
Convenience stores almost always have hard boiled eggs, fruit, and cheese sticks and I usually bring apple sauce packets, nuts, and seaweed. Plus the occasional salad with grilled chicken from Chick-Fil-A and egg mcmuffin, and I get by!
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
Ha! I’ve never broken a string playing guitar or tennis! I feel like it will be a badge of honor for both when I do.
Where do you rehearse?
I don’t have my own rehearsal space, per se, but we did convert our garage into a studio so sometimes I use that if I’m rehearsing with a band. We call it our two guitar garage.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
Title: You Can Lie
Sample Lyric: “You can lie to me, but don’t bother. Either way I won’t believe you, and after all that I have been through, I ain’t lookin’ for love anyway.”
Ooof, I wrote some sad ones back then!
Describe your first gig.
It was at an outdoor street festival for Oktoberfest, on a beautiful fall day in Philadelphia. I had been playing at an open mic night every week and the venue selected a few “best of” the open mic to play in the festival. I was on cloud nine.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
I’m a heart transplant cardiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. It is definitely my favorite day job :). I work a 2 week on/2 week off schedule so that I can have time for music and my family.
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?
Needless to say it plummeted the last 2 years. I have done more co-writing in recent years so my streaming income/royalties have increased. I made a record last year so my overall income will be much lower, as it always is during record-making years (but SO worth it).
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
It often feels so hard, so easy to compare yourself to other people and feel bad for how you’re not measuring up. It’s such vulnerable work. But when it comes down to it, I always feel best when I just keep my head down and make my art, make art that’s honest, that’s a true reflection of me at that moment. Put my whole heart and soul into it. Just for art’s sake. That’s what makes me feel like a true artist, and makes the “success” part matter so much less.