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A laptop, bottle of water, miniature tape recorder, cashmere cardigan, couple pens, guitar tuner, daytimer, wallet, cell phone, couple battery chargers, packet of throat lozenges, a canister of protein powder, and a glossy red lipstick. These are the contents of my bag. It is the curse of the chronic over-packers, that the one time we actually need 1/2 of what we bring, is the one time we decide to travel light. So after the alarm testing terminated in the Ramada Inn hallways and I had consumed my second pot of Folgers a la non-dairy creamer, my phone rang. It was my publicist Ariel requesting I pop out to LA for the Vanity Fair photo shoot I’d been putting off in order to get a decent break from work between tours. Suddenly I was very sad. I’d promised Dean I’d be right back and now I was going to have to beg him to be patient and wait an extra day to resume our vacation. I could just picture him there tucked away in my little house in Boulder waiting for me to come back to him and the thought nearly wrecked me. "But R--" I whined pathetically "I didn’t bring anything with me. Just the clothes on my back. I didn’t even bring a toothbrush. I can’t be shot now, I’m a mess." I thought that was a good excuse as any but not for Ariel the super publicist. She called me back a second later: "What’s your shoesize, dress size, bra size?" "What products do you use in your hair?" "What’s your moisturizer brand?" "How much do you weigh?" "How tall are you?" "You’ll be on the 11:45 United flight to Chicago and the 2:20 to LA. Have fun."No excuses with that girl. Very impressive, I must say…. Damn! So now I’m on flight #115 to LA, through Chicago and past CO. I’m tired primarily because the show was so fun and we got to hang out with Steven Kellogg and his wife to be, Kirsten and Steven’s alter ego "Hector Rellogg" and Paula and her brother, and Julie and David ("Wolf") and Carmen after the gig was through and the ringing of the slot machines ceased it’s buzzing in my ears ... not that you know any of these people. Just take my word for it: it was fun OK? The other reason I’m so tired is because I stayed up watching Gilligan’s Island. The first episode was on, the one right after The Minnow gets wrecked and they realize they’re gonna have to make some huts. Pretty exciting stuff. It takes a gig, right in the middle of vacation to prove to me that I love what I do for a living. I love performing. I love being on stage and writing songs and being with the guys. I am one LUCKY GIRL! That no one can deny. Sept 18th 2001, Denver to Bozeman MT On the Road with My Ol’ Man 6:00 Wake up. The sun rises pink and salmon over the flats of Denver’s east side. Flight #1775 United is mine. It’s the first reservation I’ve had to the west-ish coast that hasn’t been cancelled. I feel tired but lucky to be leaving as I check in to a somewhat empty DIA only to find out that I’ve been randomly selected to have my baggage screened and searched before boarding. Suddenly I’m glad I left myself 4 hours to spare. There are men with badges and tight polyester midnight blue pants, wearing semi-automatic weapons and I can’t tell whether I feel more or less safe due their presence. There’s a huge hold up at the random search counter #101. Seems the Mormon woman in front of me packed a steamer next to her alarm clock making her jewelry-sized red luggage look suspiciously like a bomb and now there are dogs and more men with weapons and an embarrassed Mormon and another hour. Tick tick tick… The flight is eerily empty and we’re requested to ignore our seat assignments and proceed to the back of the plane as far as we can to balance out the luggage below. I’m going West to meet up with my pop for a handful of dates. We’d planned these dates together at the beginning of the summer but they couldn’t have come at a better time what with all the national tragedy. It’s good to be with family right now, and when I see him all quiet and reserved and glad to see me in his glasses in his green sweat pants (the ones like I have) in room #181, Bozeman MT, I feel the drought of fear subside. We hug and catch up in the brown/gray gravy rayon of the halogen-lit room, which buzzes and bristles and finally forces us out into the hallway to do a load of laundry. We catch a workout above the pool before sound check and Dad tells me about "Total Tiger," a product he’s seen on an infomercial that he’s dying to get. He’s already got the "Ab Slider," which he has with him and demonstrates its uses before letting me try it. During sound check Dad decides he wants me to sing "Sign of Rain." And "Close Your Eyes" which I’m more than glad to do. It’s thrilling to be on stage with him. I think what makes it so exciting is the combination of being a grownup singer in front of all those people while feeling like a little girl around him. It’s really nice to be with him out there on stage with the lights and the darks and the bows and the harmonies and the butterflies. I love my Dad. After the last song is sung and the last bow is taken, we jump on the tour bus and begin our journey south toward Sun Valley ID. The bus reminds me of my childhood. It smells like the bottom of rain; it feels like icy hot; it tastes like late night morning leather and it takes me back to days when this was my home…. This bus… this road…. His road. There’s Mexican takeout on the counter and we make up songs about chicken enchiladas as we sip off of Stewarts Ginger Beers. Dad has a PayDay and we watch "Vampire in Brooklyn" Arnold McCuller shows me a picture of Dad blindfolded with a red cup in his hand. "We gave your dad a taste test. Seems he can tell the difference between ‘Volvic’ ‘Nevia’ and ‘Evian’" said Arnold. [David Lasley's website has photo of the taste test in Arnold McCuller's "Tales from the Road"] "Oh, I can totally tell the difference between those waters", I bragged and no sooner had I said that than I was blindfolded and tasting various waters and, I might add, naming them correctly. It’s not that we’re high maintenance. I swear. It’s just that some water just tastes better than others do. Trinity’s my favorite. I grab a bunk above my pop’s. He cleared it off for me before the show but now it’s full again of his stuff: 1/2 empty water bottles, single socks, a medicine kit and those green sweat pants (the one’s like I have). I can hear him snoring in the bunk beneath me and think to myself in the bump and the brake "Isn’t it nice to be home again." Sept 21, 2001 - Salt Lake City UT Blue boxes, Blue steel boxes carting equipment back stage go click click, click click over concrete cracks. This view, this backstage view, is familiar. It’s as comforting as the pine wood smell of my baby crib. Even the empty time between potato chips cracking in the hospitality room to the echoes ebbing from the performance hall are reassuring and as predictable as bedtime lullaby. I wait, stage left with J.I., who’s tuning up my guitar, to go on stage. Outside is Salt Lake City. But this morning we were in Sun Valley, ID, where we’d played two nights before outside, underneath a mountain covered in a blanket of stars. It was freezing there that night and I had to hand out hand warmers to the band on stage. Funny too, cause the day was hot. 80 degrees hot. But the second the sun resigned to its bed in the mountains it got cold. It does that in the desert. We had a great time though. Dad had me sing an unrehearsed "Mocking Bird," for an encore. People seemed to dig it and God knows I had a great time. We slept up at dad’s manager, Gary Borman’s, house which had a view so wide and so beautiful that it was blinding to take it all in, in one breath. We took a hike through the golden aspens which showered leaves on us like confetti. Then we ate sticky buns as we traveled to a bar-B-Q thrown at the house where Hemingway spent his last days. The carpets were magenta, and the heads of animals he’d killed, cougars and antelopes, hung breathlessly on the stucco walls. There were old pictures and magazines. An ad for slacks in an old Playboy read so funny that dad and I tried to memorize it. It went something like: Take a look-see at your self. You’ll lay your moola down right fast for a couple pair quick.. Cuffs are out, belts are nowhere. Try’um man.Later, after the cookout, dad thought we'd better get another workout in before nightfall. I mean this guy (my ol man) is a fanatic! So we borrowed a couple bikes and headed out on the bike path. 2 hours later the sun was going down. Dad offered to buy me a sweatshirt but only had 19 bucks, which in that town barely paid for a tube of toothpaste. My sports top was wet from the wash I’d taken it out of before we left and I decided we better just rush and get back before it got much colder. But I should’ve known better and by the time we got back to the Borman’s house I had all the telltale signs of hypothermia. I spent my night dizzy and nauseous under the mothering supervision of Mrs. Ann Borman, their friend Barbara Rose and of course my ever lovin’ pop who sat with me ‘til I fell asleep. What a good ol’ man I got. I feel much better now. September 22nd & 23rd 2001, Reno NV "WHEEL-OF-FORTUNE" screams a slot machine every 10 seconds followed and proceeded by gaming music in the key of D. Kid's scream, parents reprimand, blurry voices announce flights that are canceled, re-gated, boarding and people wait, breathing hard-ly. This is the Reno airport at quarter to two. I'm going home now. There's a Starbucks across the hall next to the women's bathroom and the green and red muted carpet reminds me of a sweater I once knit for a boyfriend? I can't remember. An older lady looks on at somebody else's blond children (the ones I just moved away from to protect my own sanity) with a history of longing, while next to her a businessman makes disappointed gestures into his credit-card-sized cell phone. I can't help but feel sad. Sad all over. Sad like the full body aches you get with the flu. It started last night. The sadness I mean. When I was on stage with my dad in Reno just behind the hotel/casino, in front of the airport landing strip and beyond the billboard which read in blinking reds "ALL YOU CAN EAT!!!!!" I was on stage singing "Close your eyes," which we always do together as an encore, when this overwhelming sense of sadness flooded over my body and I started to cry. I was just tearing at first 'til we came to the chorus: So close your eyesI burst out in full-fledged sobs and couldn't finish the song. I felt powerless, destroyed, vulnerable, lost, little. I don't what's all right about any of this. About the state of America, about our president, about war, about the loneliness, about people being gone or lost, about people not knowing which, about the fear of the unknown, the unknowable, tomorrow, the next second, the next breath. I'm scared just to know that I'm leaving this town and that means leaving my dad and that, that means not knowing when I'll see him again. It's always been that way, that when we say good bye It's "hope I see you soon" and "I love you" but in this time of craziness and instability I feel the finality of "good-bye" in a way which hurts the breath out of my mouth and, on stage, turns it into sobbing. The tears lodged in my chest and in my heart and in my eyes and solidified there in a hard-to-remove-grease-stain sort of way, and even after the bus pulled away, my dad on it, I waved until it bended out of sight. Then stood there numbing in the shadows which fell of the stage in greens and blues. The tears didn't stop, haven't stopped and I wonder if and when, they'll stop. Oh the sun is surely sinking down…I miss you daddy ("You Can Close Your Eyes" is published and © by EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC /BMI) October 22, 2001 I'm taking some time off to avoid the "burn out" that my parents insist will come to pass if I don't "relax a bit" and "stop working like a mad woman." They know better than I and so I'm off, both mentally and physically, for a vacation. I just wanted to thank everyone for the brilliant letters you've sent and the amazing support you've shown me and my band. You REALLY and TRULY rock. There will be a limited amount of road tails for the next month or so but there are many road tales archived that you might enjoy. Again, thank you and God bless. February 1, 2002 - Home in Boulder This is home. This sky, my ceiling, these mountains, my walls. I love it here and yet, get to spend so little time at home. But now I’ve been off the road almost 5 months. The last time I played was with my dad in September out on the West Coast. It’s such a tease to go out on the road with my dad. His tour experience is nothing like mine. Well, almost nothing. For one, my dad’s band travels in a bus with bunk beds and DVD players and a refrigerator with yummy snacks in it while their equipment rides in a separate truck. We drive in a van (Moby) where there’s a cooler with warm sodas and one neck pillow to go around for the 5 of us plus, we fit all our equipment in the trunk. We stay in the same type of hotels, my dad and I, only we get 2 rooms while dad gets 50. My dad’s band sleeps in bunk beds with TVs and VCRs in them while a driver drives them through the night to their next gig. I sleep on a bench with 2 other guys, my ponytail pinned under my guitar players ass to a hotel, post show. Then we wake up at 7am and drive all day long to our next gig. My dad’s got two people to run his sound. One to fix his stage speakers and another to run the front of house sound. We’ve got a road manager who’s also our primary driver, who’s also the monitor engineer and also runs the front of house sound. Pop’s band’s got a room for "Hospitality." We’re lucky if we’ve got a table with a couple of tea bags on it. The JT bus has a toilet on board. Our closest bathroom is a Denny’s "next exit." The members of my dad’s band each have their own changing rooms. Our changing rooms are the ‘men’s’ and the ‘ladies’ restrooms. The only writing on the walls back stage with my dad, are placards with the names of the different band members on them. The writing on our walls reads "I _____ your mother in the back of my van SUCKER!!!" Not that I’m complaining. It’s just different. But man I wish I had that fridge...it wouldn’t suck to have the driver, either...and maybe a couple more neck pillows. Yeah, that’d be nice. |
