blog

I spent the bulk of the day at RJ’s house, went for a great run and then cooked a big veggie/egg scramble for lunch which they seemed to really enjoy. I was glad about that, because I’m house-guesting here for so long that it really only seems appropriate that I pitch in somehow, or at least buy their love with food.

Around 4 I left for Dayton, a town that I had never been to before, to play at the Canal Street Tavern, a venue I’ve never played. This show came together kind of last minute - another gig cancelled about two weeks ago (due to venue closure, sad) and I had to scramble to find something to fill the night. I reached out to the Canal Street Tavern and learned they had an opening before a “progressive bluegrass band.” I promised to play my most country-leaning tunes if they would let me have the spot, and they agreed.

I arrived at the Canal Street Tavern and noticed all the ways it looked like a rowdy bar — dark paneling, no kitchen, cash-only bar service, graffiti-and-sticker-covered green room. The doors opened at 8 and my set didn’t begin til 9:30, but as soon as the doors opened people began filing in. Servers brought drinks, more folks ordered from the bar, and I calculated that many would probably be well into - if not beyond - their second drink by the time my set started. I switched the setlist and put Redneck Karaoke Bar first.

At this point I began to notice that my throat felt unusually sore, and I got nervous. I’ve been on the road for two and a half weeks, which isn’t too long, but I’ve been singing loud and talking a lot. The talking during the day, and after the show, is often parts the most taxing part of touring (vocally). My voice was so fatigued that I didn’t even feel like warming it up. Never a good sign. When I bent over to grab some cables from my bag, I noticed a dull, aching pressure in my head. Rut roh. I began to send distressed texts to friends, bemoaning my apparent upcoming illness and fretting that I wouldn’t be able to put on a good show, entertain this large, bluegrass-hungry crowd, or make a good impression on the owner, which I genuinely wanted to do.

9:30 rolled around, and I walked out to stage. While I was tuning my guitar, the owner Mick came over the loudspeaker and gave me a glowing introduction. In less than twenty seconds, this rowdy bar turned into a listening room. For all my worrying, the show went fine - in the green room, I had forgotten one very important thing: I love to sing. I love to perform. Connecting with a roomful of people who are open to new music is pretty much my favorite thing in the world to do, and it gives me an adrenaline boost that pushes me through whatever is bothering or ailing me before I get onstage. I wonder if I could play through a serious injury, like a gunshot in the leg (probably not).

My voice was a little raspy, but none of these people had heard me before, so for all they know it’s supposed to sound that way. More importantly, it reminded me - it’s not about having a pristine or technically precise voice. It’s about the moment, it’s about sharing a feeling, getting a story across, and that has nothing to do with a sore throat or a stuffy head.

After my portion of the show, I really enjoyed meeting the folks in the audience and sitting with them to listen to Newfound Road. They put on a killer show! The mandolin player, upright bass player and banjo/guitar player are all phenomenally talented musicians, who weave their individual strengths and interests together beautifully to create a rolling bed of sound. The lead singer Tim has a voice like liquid mountain gold. He holds his notes with strength and integrity - you believe every word he puts across, and then at the ends of phrases he slides through short runs that bring even more urgency to his message. They released a live album last year, and it’s downloading in iTunes as I type this message (click here to check it out!).

In the green room, before I left, I noticed a familiar sticker, high up on the wall, way above my head (so probably around five and a half feet :-). The sticker was for a band called Raining Jane, old friends of mine from LA, and it reminded me that I’m lucky to be on the road, doing what I love, connected to so many hard-working and talented troubadour and vagabonds.

Apr 10

Today was a work day. I spent most of the day holed up squinting at a computer screen, firing off emails, trying to catch up on emails from the weekend and late last week. I’m in the very final stages of proof reading the art for my new album, so I spent some time squinting at that. Later in the afternoon I went out to run errands and grab some road rations and on the way I home I passed the most beautiful stretch of cherry trees. I had to pull the car over and take a picture. I stood in the sun and noticed how all the nearby houses had tiny pink pedals browning on the curb and blowing in and out of their gutters. It was really beautiful. I tend to book shows in Maryland & Virginia and I think it is possible that the cherry trees are subliminally beckoning me here.

Ok, so maybe I didn’t quite do nothing today, but the few things I did sure were pleasant. Slept in. Delicious brunch with family. Long walk by the river. Scrabble. Back to bed.

Apr 09

THE BEAR WITH ME I’M GROWING OUT MY BANGS TOUR: Day 04!
April 7, 2012

I woke up on the air mattress of my sister’s living room, a little less than 6 hours after falling asleep. We ate a lovely breakfast. We headed from Alexandria into DC to meet up with my mom and check out Margaret’s new apartment in the district (Capitol Hill, baby!). We measured. We placed imaginary furniture throughout the apartment. We moved my luggage from Margaret’s car to mom’s. She and I drove into Virginia to have lunch with Jenn, Meredith, Logan and Michael, who possibly has the coolest job ever (he books the Birchmere Music Hall). We wandered in the sun, window shopped and bought some fancy chocolate which my poor vegetarian mother learned had bacon in it only after taking a nice big bite. Poor mom! She said that from now on, she’ll just have to ask “Pardon me, if there meat in that chocolate?”

After that, we drove to Rockville, I dropped Mom off and took her car to Scott’s house where I showered, dried my hair, burned a hole in a rubbermaid bin with my curling iron and had to flat iron instead. Poor hair. We played a really fun show — two mini sets, then an in the-round-round with Jenn, Meredith and I. I love playing in Maryland, there are some amazing music fans in this state. Had a great time chatting with folks after the show, packed up merch and gear, made it back to Mom’s a little before 1 am. Slept as close to 12 hours as I possibly could.

Apr 07

THE ‘I’LL-SLEEP-WHEN-I’M-DEAD’ TOUR: Day 03!
April 6 (written on April 7, technically, but shut up)

Whew! Today was a doozy. The kind of day where I just collapse on my bed (or, in this case, an aerobed on my sister’s apartment floor) feeling proud of myself for just having gotten through it! Additionally proud for, I think, kicking its ass. Here’s how it went down (I’m going to use military time, in honor of Tim).

05:15 COCKADOODLEDOO! That’s actually the sound my cell phone alarm makes. Angry rooster sounds. Angrier than usual this morning.

05:30 Drive myself & KC Clifford’s neighbor to the airport (so she doesn’t have to pay for parking)

07:00 Board a very full flight from OKC to Baltimore. Bonus points to Southwest — this is my third flight this week and so far noone has given me any grief about carrying on my guitar. Hallelujah, knock on wood. I probably should have slept on the flight, but instead I catch up on drafting emails

11:30 (eastern) Land at BWI, get picked up by Courtney Smith, Jenn Grinels’ friend and publicist and one of my new favorite people on the planet. Despite the fact that we have never met, she agreed to pick me up on the airport, harbor me for the afternoon and drive me to the gig in time for soundcheck, all so I could avoid renting a car over Easter weekend. We instabond on the drive out to Annapolis, where she lives. By the time we get to lunch I think we had cleared awkward acquaintance stage, and by the time we left Whole Foods I think I have told her more about my personal history than half of my family members know.

14:30 We arrive at Courtney’s house and I am able to sit still for a minute. In hindsight, I can see that this would have been a good hour for a nap. Instead, I cruise aimlessly around the internet.

19:20 Arrive at NightCat. Kinda late. Jenn is soundchecking. I can hear from the street that she sounds incredible, and I’m so excited to walk in and see her onstage. I love playing shows with my friends. I soundcheck and immediately begin to get excited about the venue — this is my first time there and the set up, sound lights, etc are all lovely. Sounds like ticket sales have been pretty good too, everyone at the club is excited.

20:00 The lovely Meredith Kaye Clark, actress, singer, viola-ist and all-around extra-ordinary member of Jenn’s band takes the stage for a 3 song surprise opening set to buy Jenn and I a moment to breathe and get ready to go on, since we all got caught in traffic and had such a late start.

20:30 I hop up on stage…it is at this point that I would like to mention that I decided, this week, to quit drinking coffee. Mostly because I am tired of relying on a liquid substance to give me the will to live. Raina reminded me that recently that one time long ago, before I was totally addicted to coffee, I described it as “borrowing energy from a future time” and I think that’s very true. I think three-year ago, pre-coffee me might have been a little smarter. So I’ve decided to balance my energetic checkbook, and just keep everything in the present. I worried that this might bite me in the ass while playing a show fifteen and a half hours after I woke up, but just the opposite — I feel clearer and brighter than I have in awhile. Could be the coffee, could be the audience listening, laughing, hollering and clapping at all the right moments. When I get offstage a man looks at me and says “Boy, you have a ton of energy!” and I feel like I have won.

21:25 Break time! We mingle, CDs are sold, conversations begun. Kristin Bidwell, a friend from college, has driven down for DC! What an awesome surprise! Also my mom’s college professor Herb, and a fan named Sandi who I have been wanting to meet for a long time. So nice chatting with everyone, until…

21:40 Jenn’s set begins! She announces early on that she has bronchitis, which is funny because she still sounds better than most singers sound on their very best day. Her voice is truly out of this world. I’m not sure that I’ve ever met or heard anyone who can sing like her. She is freakishly good. She brings me back up to sing 3-part harmony on “Right From the Start,” with her and Meredith and calls me back up to for the same on her song “Happy Birthday,” which she dedicates to Marguerite and Meredith, who are both there celebrating. She also dedicates the song to her friend Tim, who I met for the first time tonight, though Jenn has been telling me about him for years. Tim is a fighter pilot who is about to leave on his 5th deployment to Afghanistan, and he will have his birthday over there before he gets back. Jenn got pretty choked up while singing so, naturally, I did too, because emotional weeping is contagious and I catch it kind of easily.

23:00 Jenn’s set ends and we visit with the crowd a little more. A sweet veteran with a shy numbness in his hands tells us that he’s been coming to the Night Cat almost every night since he moved to Easton and that we blew him away. We thank him and Jenn went back to selling CDs. He looks at me and tells me that, while he was in the army, part of his job was profiling and he learned to read people and that when he saw me on stage, he felt like he really saw me and it made him blush and cry at the same time. At this moment I feel overwhelmed by the number of beautiful, unique people there are in the world with magic and love and light to share, and so blessed to get to meet an unusually large number of them. It feels like my heart is blowing up like a balloon. Shortly after that a sweetly wine-buzzed woman in her 50s leans towards me and whispers “If I were to ever go to lesbania, I would want to go with you. Now I’m, like, old and stuff, and I’ve never been to lesbania in my whole life but…I’m not really kidding.” I donn’t know whether to laugh or cry or hide or try to sell her 7 or 8 cds. Luckily the activity at the merch table swirls me off and I was able to get away with a giggle and an appreciative ‘Thank you.’

23:50 Suitcases, merch, purse, guitar are all been safely collected from the venue and/or transferred from Courtney’s car to my dear sister Margaret’s, who is also helping me avoid the Easter weekend rental. We begin the 100+ mile drive back to her place in Arlington. I opted not to look at a map prior to this, probably out of self defense, for it I had known at 7 am how long of a drive I was going to make at midnight I may have just curled up under a plastic seat in the Oklahoma City Airport and slept there all day.

01:43 After only one extra loop around the Washington Monument on our way through DC, Margaret and I make it safely to her apartment in Arlington. She has an air mattress blown up and waiting for me, and I’m so happy to be somewhere familiar, with someone who I have known and loved all my life. We collect pillows, blankets and sheets from the boxes that she has been packing to prepare for her move next week and I collapse on my air mattress where I am now chronicling the madness. Busy days on the road truly start to blend together; the edges soften and the details blur and float in my memory, detached from their original time and place. I’m writing to pin them down, somewhere in time, just in case I ever want or need to remember that they came from today, somewhere between Oklahoma City and this air mattress.

PS: Kristin Bidwell, my friend from Berklee, sent me this snapshot from the show tonight and it was waiting for me when I got home. Turns out I didn’t take any pictures today, so this will have to do.

Apr 06

The first thing I learned today is that if you google ‘healthy breakfast Oklahoma City’ the top listing on yelp has the word ‘pizzaria’ in the title. A little further down the list I saw something with the word ‘eggs’ in the title, so I went there and had a lovely breakfast and caught up on some internet work (if you are reading this and I owe you an email…I’ll get caught up tomorrow! Sorry I’m spending this moment writing this instead of your email, but Day 02 of a blog-writing-initiative seems a little early to quit, so here I am).

Almost immediately after breakfast I had a nice lunch with KC Clifford and David Broyles, my sweet and talented hosts here in OKC. We talked about all sorts of exciting things, most notably their impending baby ::insert involuntary squeal::

After a lil phone interview with a Florida radio station and a nice walk around the neighborhood, I hit the road for Stillwater, OK. For a town whose title says “even the water here doesn’t move,” it actually seemed to have quite a bit going on. I played at Oklahoma State University and all of the kids I met on campus were super sweet — in fact, the kids on the programming board were just the right mix of funny, dorky and funky. Tonight I got to be the very first performer in their new “Little Theater,” which is actually a lovely, 400-seat theater in the round off the student center. I have a feeling lots of great shows will happen in there and I’m happy that I got to be the first.

After the show I drove back to Oklahoma City just in time to watch some mind-numbing TV with KC. Even more exciting than the dramatic nighttime television was listening to her baby’s heart beat on some high tech listening device that you lube up with blue jelly and place on top of the baby bump! Baby’s heart beats are much quicker than grown up heart beats, it sort of sounds like a baby bird floating in out of space. It was beautiful. All that happened after that was a bit of packing up my stuff that has somehow exploded all over her guest room in the past 36 hours, and now the alarm clock is set for a little less than 5 hours from now, so I should probably shut it down and get to sleep. Maryland, here I come!

PS: KC Clifford’s house is a crafter’s paradise. She built that table with her own two hands. I am serious. She is amazing. See for yourself - http://www.kcclifford.com/

Apr 05

Tour is off to a great start! Flew from Austin to Oklahoma City today, which is interesting because 1) with a connection in Dallas, I basically spent 6 hours driving to/from and hanging out in airports to spent a total of 19 minutes in the air. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I’d say the two flights were each about 40 minutes long, which barely gives you enough time to open your peanuts before the plane begins its descent. Here’s a picture of the bags I have packed to carry through all the airports I visit over the next three weeks. I remember SAYING I was going to pack light, not really sure what happened next…

Had a fun show tonight at The Blue Door in Oklahoma City. It was my first time at this venue, and I’m so glad I finally got to see what all the fuss is about — it’s truly the listener’s listening room! I played a couple requests tonight, both songs I wasn’t planning on putting in the set (Trenches, Dear & You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me). I know it’s technically considered heckling, but I like it when people talk to me while I’m on stage. It’s fun. Just something to consider…

Ok, bed time for me. I’m going to try and blog more on this trip, so stay tuned!
xoxo
~becca

Mar 19

Here’s the whole tour! I left Austin, TX on February 15th and returned March 13th, having performed/visited in/reigned mischief upon: Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis, Nashville again, Knoxville, Charlotte, Richmond, DC, Southport (NC), Wilmington, Savannah, Atlanta again, Dahlonega, Birmingham and then, in one mad 850 mile dash…back to Austin! After said 850 mile drive I walked into my living room to find 50 hippies raging after a “mellow” house concert in the living room and it dawned on me: SXSW had already started. I woke up the next day and the festivalonference began. So I’ll blog about that next!

Feb 19

Wow, the month of January absolutely flew by in a flurry of songs and recording. Sorry I forgot to blog about it. Luckily, much of the process has been documented in a video series available at www.youtube.com/rebeccaloebe. For your convenience, the videos are also posted at www.rebeccaloebe.com/preorder.html where, after watching said videos and becoming inspired to help some crazy kids make a record, you can pre-order your very own copy!

Speaking of pre-orders, I promised that if I could raise at least $10,000 by January 31st, one lucky pre-order-er would win GUEST LIST PRIVILEGES for every show I play in the year 2012! Well, thanks to the AMAZING support that I have received from donors all over the country (nay, the WORLD!) I did reach my goal by the deadline, and now we do have a winner, one mister Michael Stein from Patchogue, NY.

Congrats Michael! Thanks for your support!! Also congrats and thanks to Bob Salmon and Rich Lovie who each won a copy of Mystery Prize in a bonus round of drawings that we did in the webcast last week.

Lastly, thank you to EVERYONE who has contributed to my online pre-sales campaign. Thanks to your generosity, I have been able to make the album I wanted to make, without giving up ownership or creative control to any international conglomerate corporations! If you are wondering how much money it takes to create an independent record, I have laid out all sorts of details about my budget at www.rebeccaloebe.com/preorder.html. The $10k goal I set for January gave me enough capital to cover the expenses of studio time, musicians and some of mixing, but I’ve still gotta pay for mastering, duplication and other release-related costs. In short, if you haven’t contributed yet, you’re NOT too late! Every dollar helps me release this album.

I am incredibly grateful for all of the support in all of these last five years of the road. I truly could not do this without you.