S A L L Y T A Y L O R

BACK IN THE US - BEGUN JUL 2004 (most recent first)

October 10, 2005

Mom and Ben and I are going out on the road together at the end of November and I think I almost have enough new songs for an album. I've been playing a bunch with brother Ben and I'm singing back up on his new album "Another Run Around the Sun" which is fabulous and bound to be one of your favorite Taylor albums if you pick it up.
-- Sal

June 23, 2005

Dear Friends.

2005 has been a slow year for music. I've been working mostly with family, singing with Mom, putting back-up vocals on Brother Ben's (awesome) new album that'll be out soon. Also we've been gigging around together and most recently did some jobs in London, Marthas Vineyard, and New York.

Sally in the Raw is up and running on the Pearl St. Mall in Boulder, so we'll be churnin' out the Raw food for health conscious folks in Colorado through September.

I've just begun writing again after what seemed to be a long dry spell and am forcing myself to write a song a day, a habit I enjoyed while living in Telluride Colorado in 1996. Of course they're not all good but at least I'm getting it out there. Ben wants me to record another album but I'm not ready for that yet. For now, just promoting other family's music is OK with me.

August 16, 2004

OK, I know I’ve been slacking when it comes to playing concerts this summer but this should make up for it:

The Tranquility Project 2nd Annual Fundraiser will be held at Chautauqua Auditorium, Boulder, Colorado, on Sunday August 29th at 6 PM!!

This will be an evening of music, featuring performances by me (Sally Taylor), Livingston Taylor, Ben Taylor, Wendy Woo and Something Underground, with some special guest appearances as well.

The Tranquility Project is a non-profit action group whose mission is tri-fold: to extract landmines from Southeast Asian soil; to rehabilitate their innocent victims; and to raise awareness that will aid in the prevention of future landmine atrocities.

Tickets will be $37 for general admission, with Gold Ring tickets for $175. Gold Ring ticket holders will enjoy complementary appetizers and beverages from local restaurants and the Walnut Brewery. They will have the opportunity to mingle with celebrity guests including current and former professional athletes from the Colorado Avalanche, San Francisco 49ers and the Calgary Flames.

We’re also having a live auction including signed things from: Sheryl Crow, John Popper, Sting, Crosby, Stills & Nash, as well as some big amazingly generous donations from my mom and dad. So come help us in our efforts to alleviate landmines from the soil and give legless children hope for a safer tomorrow.

Tickets are available at the Chautauqua Box Office (303) 440-7666

July 27th 2004

The last shot was at 2:30am. But if I was going to make my flight out of LAX at 6:30am, I was gonna have to leave at two on the dot. I’d still be cutting it close. Not to mention, I had to drive back to my room (#370) at the Quality Inn in Lompoc first (which I hadn’t seen the insides of since my first night) to pack up my bags which, by this point, had lain half-emptied and unmoved for a week on the magenta carpeted floor (what must the maids think?!?). The morning was windy and little wisps of salty hair kept stinging my eyes. I didn’t even bother to change out of wardrobe or remove the light beige concealer thats clogging my pores and pancaking my skin.

I’d promised months ago I’d be at "Shjon and Sherry Podein’s Children’s Benefit/celebrity golf tournament" in Minnesota to play and I wasn’t going to miss it. Besides, Dean was gonna be there and by this point I’m missing him like moth misses porch light at dawn.

The water looks metallic in the rearview mirror as "Fritz" my Albanian limo driver, and I pull away from the beach. 4 more hours and I’ll be in LA. I was asleep before we hit the I-101, face planted in the back, drool fighting gravity down the black leather seat as I dreamed.

So would you believe it? I end up missing my plane. LAX has this 1 hour baggage check rule. "Gotta be at the counter one hour before flight time or you can't get on the plane Ms," said a waifish Asian woman in binocular lensed glasses behind the American counter. It was 5:45am. "There’s not another plane ‘til 3 this afternoon," of course, "but you might try Northwest. They have a flight leaving in two hours for $259 dollars. MMmmm, that’s good price. "

When I get to St. Paul’s airport I link up with Wendy Woo and Jake Shrodder who, lucky for me, had just arrived and were retrieving their bags at the baggage claim next to me. Good, this means we were all running a bit late.

Piling into a white stretch limo we pull guitars from their sleeves and practice (for the first time together) the songs we’ll be singing, in an hour and a half’s drive. It was a pretty cool jam sesh: the "mood lights" swirling on high, the cocktail glasses clinking over bumps and rivets in the road, the rain, gently hammering at the skylight. The harmonies we were braiding together were cool and, of course, being in the back of a huge white stretch limo wasn’t too bad either. There wasn’t enough time to check into the hotel before the show so we passed around a stick of Old Spice "original" and sampled each other’s lip-glosses before hopping up on stage right from the chauffeur’s outstretched stretch door. The Kids with Ataxia, for whose benefit we were playing, were all in the front row: Taylor and Katie and Tyler and Brian and Joe and Joel and Zach lined up in their wheel chairs; they made the rain fall deep inside us. They inspired the songs to pour even harder from our hearts. Looking up at us, their necks barely supported the weight of their fragile heads, their eyes glistened, and their hands clapped between misses. I’d missed this. I’d missed this more than I’d thought.

The next day, at the golf tournament, I let the AT kids drive me around in a golf cart. Their crippled hands gripping the wheel for the first time ever, and quite possibly the last, made the corners which were wide, and more often than not off the road, more tolerable. "Ataxia" degenerates their nervous systems and abbreviates their excruciating lives giving them a worse pain than any child should have to bear. But maybe most painful is that the disease doesn’t affect their brains, and they’re left struggling to get their intelligent, painful and thought felt words out to their parents, sisters and friends. They are brave and a constant source of inspiration to those that know them. It’s inconsolable to watch their tiny souls strapped down in bodies saddled with this disease, getting closer and closer with each year to their breaking points.

But for one afternoon a year, at Shjon Podein’s children’s fundraiser, they are free. With five kids hanging off the bumper and my left foot firmly positioned on the brake, they drive and drive and drive me around (through the trees). Occasionally my brake foot loses to their lead gas foot and we end up careening into a bush or a bench or (as happened more than once) into the middle of somebody’s golf game but their parents seem happy just to see them playing at all, even in harm's way. And me, I’m just happy to be alive at the end of it all.

They remind me to rejoice, to play, to smile, to not complain about my life, to love without boundaries, to be fearless and to be relentlessly grateful that I am alive and healthy.

July 21, 2004

"NO, a month on a beach doesn’t sound too bad… and what? I can act in a movie AND sing my own music?!"

This was my conversation with Pat Healy, Former CU grad, producer of "There’s something about Mary," Playwright and now director extrordinare. He’d called me a couple years back, something about canceling my tour to film a movie in Mexico called "Pinche Burro" about some 20 somethings who go down to Baja for New Years, break down in a school bus on the beach and get in trouble with the law. By May of 2004 the name of the movie had changed ("El Nino") and we'd be filming up north of Santa Barbara at Point Conception (Westernmost point in the USA) at a military base closed off to all but Pat and his crew for 3 weeks.

"Three Weeks?!" I said, knowing that the likelyhood was slim to none that I’d be able to go. Dean and I have been working for two years to open a Raw (all organic all vegan and all living) foods cart. The cart was already made, much of it while Dean and I were away in South East Asia, and by the time Pat called to reassume production on his movie, our "Sally in the Raw" food cart was primed to go out on the Pearl Street walking mall (one of the hottest locations in Boulder!)

"I don’t think I can do it." I said reluctantly. I've always wanted to try my hand in acting and it seemed like such a good opportunity (not to mention a lot of fun). "Sally in the Raw opens next week and right now, I'm the only one who knows how to (UN) cook the food." The next day "El Nino" the script was in my mailbox and a dozen sunflowers arrived at noon.

"But honey, I’ve always wanted to be in a movie" "But honey, I can teach you all the recipes in a week" "But honey, 3 weeks’ll fly fast" "But baby, but honey, but baby." These were the conversations with my husband of 8 months for the weeks proceeding. But apparently I have the best husband in the world and didn’t need to "honey" or "baby" him. He insisted I do the movie and was on his way to learning the ins and outs of Raw (UN) cooking before the week was out.

It was a (HUGE) cram to get our cart out (a ‘67 VW split into 3 parts, the center 3rd scrapped and the ass end attached back to the front) but I was on a plane to LAX by June 20th to be in a movie called "El Nino"

July 15, 2004 - Point Conception, CA

The Pacific Ocean is cold. The waves around my ankles produce chicken flesh all the way up my thighs and I opt for a dip in the shallows of a tidal pool instead of a full-on bath in the vastness of the ocean. Once immersed in the pool I find the sand fleas too aggressive and ravenous to stay in very long. Oh well, another day without a shower. The beach is empty. It’s just me in a towel and nature as I wade through puddles left behind by retreating tides. Red starfish and sea urchins dapple the sand. I see a wandering hermit crab and pick him up for a closer gander.

Immediately he puckers himself into his shell, emerging only tentatively to check me out. The sight of me proves too much for him and he jumps straight out of his shell back into the water. His unprotected body is vulnerable and he scurries up to a nearby stone for protection. I offer him back his home but he’s not interested. I find him another shell. It’s pink and smooth and a little roomier, and certainly more aesthetically pleasing I’m thinking as I set it down beside him. With his muscular tail curled, he checks the inside for other inhabitants, then without delay he unclenches his fist-like tail and backs on into his new home. I’m happy to see him skittle away adorned in his new castle.

The sun’s on my face as I wander slowly back to the school bus and my sleeping bag which is up on top of a surf rack. I feel I have more hours to put into my dreams before this day begins and our first shot won't be for hours now. The set is quiet. No one, save for me, sleeps down here and at night I get a free show of shooting stars. The top of the bus is really the best camp site, but no one else seems to be vying for it so I get it every night while the rest of the cast and crew drive 60 minutes back to the hotel. The only problems with camping out here is it’s really hard to climb up and down from the bus without a ladder in the middle of the night, and today I woke up at 1:00pm tattooed red by the sun, in patches all over my right side. Not to mention I’m getting a pocked rash rising on my back from the poison oak I mistakenly lay back into yesterday.

Back on the roof I pick up my guitar and try and play along with the wind. I have no pick so I use an empty nicorette gum wrapper to strum. Lyrics come flooding so I write them down on the back of a script. What lies before me is an ocean of flying dolphins, pelicans and seals that inquisitively come into shore to have a peek at the human on the big yellow school bus. Two wild boars, in tandem, run down the beach. They stop at some slabs of seaweed to grub, then run each other back to the cliffs. Dust blows up and dances just beneath me on the platform and the tubing waves tilt backward against the wind. They lose their tips to the air.

Could this be real? Really? Me, on a bus, in a movie, Point Conception, California? Really!? I’ve never felt so alive and free and so I have a cigarette to keep me from floating away. I know, as I walk up the hill smoking my butt, that breakfast will be left over deli trays and, if I’m lucky, a granola bar. But my bare feet feel light against the wet grass, and I can smell the salt air in my skin so I know that it’s going to be a great day.

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