get on up there

Man, some days I'm just not a performer.  On any given day I can be a combination of the following: songwriter, sister, daughter, friend, sweetheart, producer, guitar player, singer, proud pet owner, traveler, designer, record label owner, fabric painter, writer, poet, and on my best days, a good person.  Only once in a while do I ever actually feel like a performer.  Yesterday was not one of those magical days.  Yesterday I was just a girl with some songs that I was expected to play in public.  What can you do?  You get in the dress, tune the guitar, try to tune your mind to (hopefully) the same key as everything else, and you sing.  What I've come to realize is that not everyone can tell the difference.  Audiences have been accepting me as I am for years now, and enjoying what I have to offer on even my most unfocused of nights.

I played at Precinct in Somerville, MA last night, for the first time.  It's a venue that has cropped up since I moved away from the Boston area.  (Why don't they call it the Bostonland Area, like they do in Chicago?  It would be much cooler, in my opinion.) My brother's new project Fortune Teller and I shared the evening with a group of Bo's friends called The Gents.  I played in the middle slot, which going in, I'm not going to lie, felt like the Kiss of Death.  Sometimes being the "singer/songwriter" in between two actual bands is a total jam-buster.  People get all amped up on drums beats and loud guitars, and then there you are, a person with a slightly beat-up acoustic guitar, wearing a tablecloth dress, carrying on about love and all that.  It ain't easy being green, ya know?

In any event, the night went better than I had expected it to.  I had some wonderfully surprising friends show up, some of whom I'd not seen in five to ten years.  And on a Sunday night, no less.  The Gents put on a fine show, and Fortune Teller were incredible, especially for it being their third show.  I'm very happy to be a part of the Fortune Teller fold that will be making a new album in a month.  I have the highest of hopes for it, as my brother's songs are moving and honest and his band mates provide a really full and colorful sound scape for them to exist within.  The album promises to be brilliant.  Bo and I will be co-producing, and we put a good dent on the pre-production end of things this past week.  Stay tuned for more information on that.

I'm home in Nashville after nine days away.  In hindsight, it was a good trip.  Alas, hindsight is always a different lens than is the present.  So what if you feel like an imposter on stage once in a while, right?  There are worse things.  I hung with my pals who are getting ready to have a rad wedding in a few weeks, I sat across from the grown man that my brother is today and listened to his ideas about his life and work, and I had some victories and failures with it all.  It's life.

Sometimes the best that you can do is rock a Jackson Browne pin and hope for the best.  Now, that's a performer.

Here's my set list and a link to the photos from the show.

Thanks for listening.

xoxo, bu

rainbow road

brilliant mistakes

between ocean and sea

younger all the time

strong as you think

if it isn't love (orig. by New Edition)

true story

your best friend

the streets of my town

http://www.flickr.com/photos/buickaudra/sets/72157626376500700/

photo by Sara Liebmann