buick audra and the pizza dream

oh, to be you

2012-01-21T22:28:00.015-06:00

I'm now at the stage of life where I hear lots of interesting things from my peers, in the way of their ideas about the world. The mid-thirties are a weird time of thinking you know what you're doing, all the while living with the secret fear that you have no idea at all. It's different from your twenties when the fear has not yet presented itself; you're just an obnoxious know-it-all who does and says appalling things with no idea that you'll regret ninety percent of it later. I have a sneaking suspicion that the forties will be about simply accepting that we have no clue. I'm kind of looking forward to it, I'm not going to lie. Because, you know what I hear a lot of these days? Dudes talking about how much they "can't listen to (insert awesome album of yesteryear here) because it just doesn't sound any good". I know way too many recording engineers. And only three of them are exempt from this rant.

I don't claim to be an engineer, and I'm not claiming to know every single thing about sonic values, pre-amps, compressors or mics. I'm just a musician who makes records. I have recorded myself as well as other people and we've all survived it. That said, I've been listening to music pretty much every second of my life since birth, and I just finally need to say this: HEY SUPER UNKNOWN "ENGINEERS", GET OVER YOURSELVES. I recently heard some smack talked about a band that I hold in the highest of musical esteems, the Smiths. Now, I understand what goes on with the Smiths, kids. I know Morrissey can be a bit dramatic and even maudlin at times. I don't think he would dispute that claim. Perhaps Johnny Marr's guitar style isn't for you (in which case you might be deaf, but, hey). I can even almost handle the idea that not everyone needs to know the thirty-thousand words to 'Cemetry Gates'. Almost. But, if you're going to tell me that the reason you've never given that group's music a chance is that you don't like the sounds they got, in 1987? I'll meet you behind the school at 3:15. Be ready to fight.

This opens up a whole can of what-the-hell for me. Because, where does it end? What's the criteria for acceptably recorded and/or produced material? Does it have to be from 1990 or later? Does it have to be un-famous? Is a song or album without merit if the quality of the actual recording is below this undefined standard? If any of that is true, it's just total mayhem in my mind. Some of my very favorite music was made in what may well have been a garage or bathroom, and I love it just the same. Without even touching on the vast expanses of great music made throughout the ages, I can find fault with this short-sighted approach when applied the last twenty-five years of punk, new wave, electronica, rock and pop music. Let's take Operation Ivy's one record, for instance. I don't know a single person in my generation that didn't live for that album. Not only did it merge fast, sloppy punk with upbeat ska sensibilities, but the song subjects spanned everything from hot girls, to music in general, to coming together as opposed to always being separated by bullshit. So WHAT if it sounds like it was recorded in a living room with maybe two mics with socks over them? On the other end of the spectrum in 1989, we had Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails. I can't pretend to know how this record was made, but in my mind, Trent Reznor recorded it on some Tim Burton-esque machinery in his mother's basement, while wearing a leather dress. When you look at it through that filter, it's the best album ever made, miraculous even. But even if you don't, are you going to really sit here and tell me that the songs didn't change your life when you were fourteen? That you didn't sulk in your room with bad eye make-up on, shrieking along to 'Head Like A Hole'? Were you just born up above it? Well, now you're down in it.

This brings me to my favorite part of those who suffer with acute cases of Engineeritis: lack of valid output. Every single one of the people who complains about great music for sport makes nothing of the kind. This is not to say that they're not all musicians - because they surely are. They all wanted to be rock stars, whether they'd admit that or not. Somewhere along the line, the fear took hold and they started recording more than they played out. It might have started with close friends' bands, and then expanded to the circle around those folks, and so on. Before they had a chance to notice, years had gone by, they'd gained thirty pounds and many moons had come and gone since they'd been on a stage. Alas, they still make a record of their own from time to time. The songs are uninspired and safe, the vocals are drowned in effects, but damn it - that three thousand dollar pre-amp makes the guitars sound just perfect. Exactly six people own copies of said album, and the bitterness in the heart of the Sad Engineer Guy continues to grow. They resent all who are not as afraid as they are, and they continue to criticize all who take the chances they never did.

The quickest way to tell an expert from a wannabe is this: the experts would never claim to be such. I've had the immense pleasure of having my last two albums mastered by a proper genius by the name of Doug Sax. That dude has worked on more great music than can be listed. He has the frickin' Lifetime Achievement Grammy, know what I'm sayin'? And everytime I've been around him, he's been interested in what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. He doesn't act like I'm a fool for making records at my house with whatever gear I can scrounge together (most of which is borrowed from Gary Paczosa - another genius). He asks thoughtful questions and tells me what he likes, and where he thinks I can do better next time. The man's all class. The two engineers that I've worked with who's styles and philosophies I LOVE, are still rocking out. They're getting up there and exposing their guts just like everybody else. That's why they rule to work with. They're not judging the plays from the sidelines; they're still in the game. They don't act like they know it all; they're still learning. I hope I'm never done learning. I hope I always listen to music and love it so much that it makes me scream, cry and flip out. It's a gift, pals. A gift.

The truly great ones among us just do what they do, because they have to do it, not because it might measure up to the Imaginary Standard of the Hate Brigade. Regardless of whether or not their music is what you're into, the sounds are not the point. The message, energy and innovation are the points. You can spend the rest of your life tinkering around in your caves with your toys (all of which will be obsolete, at some point), but you're not changing anything in the world. You're not saving anyone's life, least of all your own. To quote the very best:

"Don't forget the songs that made you cry, and the songs that saved your life...
Yes, you're older now, and you're a clever swine, but they were the only ones who ever stood by you."

~Morrissey/Marr of the Smiths
(That's right - the goddamned Smiths. What.)

Keep on creating. Use what you have. Believe in yourself.
Thanks for listening,
~buick audra

pretty good, pretty good

2012-01-08T15:10:00.001-06:00

This is the first entry from my new blog about a punk rock quilting project! Follow it!

ALL

Those of you who know me will find this project to be no surprise. For those of you who don't, let me introduce myself. I'm Buick Audra. I have the All-O-Gistics on my music room wall and I wear a gold pendant that says 'Good Good Things'. In short: I'm a Descendents fan. I also happen to be a maker of sorts. These two parts of who I am will come together over the following thirty-six weeks.

I currently live in Nashville where I enjoy a fairly chill life of making rock music and the occasional vegan cupcake. I have a rad husband and a little old cat who wears a tuxedo, full time. In past lives, I've also been the creator of many a thing out of fabric. Lately those projects are becoming fewer and fewer, I guess to make way for the music. It all started with quilting, many many years ago, and I've decided to get back in touch with that part of who I am. I was recently flipping through a book of five hundred and one quilt squares and fantasizing about making a kind of sampler. I've set out to do just that, though I'm adding my own punk rock twist: each square will have the name of a different Descendents song on it, by way of some fairly shoddy hand embroidery. They will all be six inch squares with satin stitch embroidery. I'm doing my best to pay homage to the Descendents font (Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed), but, yo... That's no joke, right there. It will in no way be perfect, but I think it will be fun as hell. I'm going to do one square per week, for the next thirty-six weeks.
This is my first square, and I started where it made the most sense to: ALL.

Enjoy, fellow Descendents nerds... Enjoy.
- B.A.

ALL: 6 x 6 inches, shoofly pattern in cotton (inspired by 'ALL' from the album ALL, 1987)

for those who think and feel

2011-12-28T14:07:00.005-06:00

The calendar claims that something is almost over, and that something new is soon to follow. Our culture has a frenzied way of announcing new diets, behaviors and future goals right around now, and in years past, I've done the same. Today, I've got none of that for you. My diet has consistently focused around vegan Mexican fare and various coffee beverages for the better part of twenty years now. I tend to do too much, rest too little and wish I'd done differently later. My body, aside from the occasional new tattoo, hasn't really changed since I was about seventeen, no matter how much I pay attention to it or neglect it. And, I write basically the same song over and over, but trick you all by employing the magical assistance of a capo from time to time. This is it, it would seem. New year or not, I live in this body and this mind.

I sat on my couch all day yesterday, still battling with the residual illness of my most recent bout of strep throat. I watched what felt like fifteen thousand episodes of the The Office (the American one), and half-assedly knit a birthday gift for a thirteen-year-old I'm sort of related to. This is what resting looks like for me. It's dreadful and dull, and all I've really got in me these days. It's been a long year, after the thirty-four long ones that preceded it. Next year will be the same, and I no longer have illusions about that sort of thing. I was born with a certain set of equipment that makes my life feel like this. Some days it's incredible; others, less so.

I'm usually a musician. When I feel or think things to any kind of extreme, I write my way out of it. It's been a handy coping mechanism, and one that I place tremendous value on. I very much believe that it has saved my life a time or two, and for that I'm quite grateful. On a lighter note, it's also given me more laughter and delirium than anything else, hands down. Because of this, it has priority seating in my arena. The past four years that I've spent in Nashville have been the most prolific for me, to date. I could get into bragging about how much I've written and recorded in that time, but I've recently realized that I think that's gross. The race to win, at whatever it is people think they're competing for, looks really lame when you see it from the sidelines. Who cares if I wrote one or three hundred songs? Anyone who does care is weird, in my opinion, as it's no one's business but my own. Let's just say that I made some work that matters to me. That's what counts. Some of it's wrapped up with a tidy bow and some of it's still in process. Lately, progress is at an all-time low, and I mostly think about the work in the abstract. People are waiting on my actions (some more patiently than others), but it changes nothing. I don't have the drive today. And yes, that feels very strange for me.

I recently watched the documentary about the band Rush. Aside from that group of men being profoundly inspiring in every way, their story gave me some comfort and hope to hold on to. Not being a diehard Rush fan, I was unaware of the timeline that their music followed, most notably around a very long hiatus they took in the wake of Neil Peart's personal losses. His daughter and wife both passed away within a very short time, and Peart literally drove around the country on his motorcycle for several years, abandoning everything in his life, including the music that had been so central to his story up to that point. All three band members assumed the project was over, and they accepted that, wholly. That was what blew my mind. No ego was entered into the equation. No terrible non-Rush project formed out of the ashes. No shitty solo albums emerged. They just accepted what was happening. Isn't that just the key? I've never been part of a real brotherhood like that, where if one of us needed to fall apart, the others would allow it and love that person through it. Nor do I have that within myself. I wasn't taught it. That kind of love, tolerance and acceptance is the product of masterful parenting and support. I didn't get it and I don't have it to give. (I can hear my friend Josh correcting me, telling me that I do, in fact, have this quality to give... And I love him for it, but it isn't true.) It doesn't mean it's not mine to have in this lifetime, but I am currently without this component.

On my couch, my mind listens to the Committee of Useless Thoughts, and we all begin to agree that I'm probably nuts beyond repair, destined to repeat the patterns that I'm wired for. My six-month-old Taylor guitar is snug in her very nice case in the other room, untouched. Two of my dear friends bought me my own SM7 microphone for Christmas, and it's still in the box. I have eleven songs that await my editing and post-production, and they're trapped in the hard drive until further notice. Lastly, I'm three songs into a really wonderful new record with a band that shaped up towards the end of this year, and I can't move forward on it at all. I've got nothing. And I'm having a really hard time accepting all of it. Who am I these days? Where's the girl who's always working on five different things, with a high fever about all of it? I don't have any more of an idea than you do. But, if you see her, tell her to call me. I'll be watching reruns of a TV show. And when I run out of those, I'll find a new show.

I heard Tom Waits on the radio the other day. He was dodging personal questions that were being asked in an interview by rambling on about all sorts of other eccentric B.S., as is par for his particular course. He's artful in that dodgy way. Most of what he said was what you hear in his music, and having been a listener for many years now, I'd heard it all before. But, he did rather eloquently describe the stage that I find myself in lately. He compared the creative process to the structure of music. To paraphrase, "In order to have music, you have to have rests. Sometimes you're the sound, and sometimes you're resting." So, after many years of being the sound, I'm in the rest. This too shall pass. This too, shall pass.

Thanks for listening,
buick audra

refresh and god bless

2011-11-12T22:20:00.013-06:00

Man, it's been a month since I've sat still and written a word. It hasn't been for lack of things to say, but rather sheer absence of down time. It's been a busy (and awesome) month, to say the least. But, I'm grateful for a quiet moment to sit here while the banana bread I'm making for Eric McConnell rises. It smells amazing in here.

So, after several weeks that included producing the vocals on my brother's new album, having two dear friends come to visit the Fort from Boston and working on songs for a new record that I'm a part of with some dudes... My thoughts for tonight are on the chances we give others as well as ourselves. Let's hope I can mold these ideas into something you can bite into. Sometimes my mind feels like it's just a series of bright colors and melodies, and the articulation of such can be tricky. First, let me say that I'm filled with peace and gratitude right now. I'm aware of how beautiful life can be these days, and it's helping me to shine new light on some otherwise dark areas.

I once had a friendship for twenty years. I held the relationship in impossibly high regard, as it had weathered all kinds of tests, both physical and emotional. Sometimes I think I worked harder on the presentation of the friendship than I did on the connection itself, but that's all behind me now. It ended some years ago, leaving me with a pile of unanswered questions that I sift through from time to time, hoping for new insight. It does come, slowly but surely. Once in a while I hear something awful about myself that they've said and all of the old, bad feelings come flooding back. You see, the worst thing that happened to me in that dynamic was that I felt like I never got to grow up to the other person. Not literally of course, but figuratively. Who I was at age fifteen was who they held me to being, all the way up to thirty-two. It just didn't work. The best that I can do today is forgive us both and keep my own mouth shut. Hurtful behavior plus hurtful behavior doesn't equal forward movement; it equals further damage. A wise person once said to me, "Don't be sorry, be different." This is me being different.

I think we have a filing system, as a society. We have labels that we apply to people we know (and don't know) that make it easier for us to navigate life. In my community of fellow musicians, I hear it all the time, particularly the negative files:

"Oh, he's not even there for any of the records he supposedly produces."

"If you want a grumpy, indifferent engineer who won't give you any feedback - he's your guy."

"Nobody ever works with him twice."

Mind you, every single one of those statements has been made in my presence a multitude of times by people who have never worked with the folks they're talking about. They're going on hearsay, or gossip. They're going on insecurity and therefore judgment. They're going on fear.

In family settings, these character assignments are present as well. Someone is always The Mess, while another is the Overbearing Over-Achiever. And don't forget about One-Who-Is-Blind-To-All-Bad, and the popular Overly-Honest. I've been called a number of these things, and have done the same in turn. We get used to the roles we all play, and just ramble through life believing our own titles. Well, I invite you all to look again. Look at your loved ones. Look at yourselves. Look at who you all are today and celebrate the new information, if the situation calls for it. Some people will be in the same place that they were the last time you checked, but not everyone. That super uptight cousin of yours might have spent the last five years doing yoga and learning how to let things roll off of her back a bit better. Your brother may have learned how to talk to you about who he is and what he's about. Your kid might be working on their stuff in a twelve-step program. Who knows. All I'm saying is that there's a whole lot of life out there, and it forces us to grow, sometimes in spectacular directions. By closing the book on the possibility of change in others, we say that we also can't be expected to improve on who we are. And we can. We do.

With some lighted road behind me, I see now that I've likely disappointed as many people as have disappointed me. That's a sobering realization, particularly after thirty years of thinking I was the only one who ever sustained injuries in the wreckage. It also helps me to understand that I'm just a traveler on the path, and not out on my own, as I so often feel. Everyone's doing the best they can with what they know. As we learn, we do better.

Here are five things that have always been true about me, since nearly birth:

I love Michael McDonald.
I don't love the Beatles.
I believe in the existence of vampires.
I cry every single time I see Kermit sing the' Rainbow Connection' in the Muppet Movie.
Instrumental fusion jazz makes my brain short out.

And here are five new truths about me, from the last year or so:

I still don't know my way around Nashville very well, after three and a half years.
I love Car Talk on NPR. LOVE.
I'm going to move to Los Angeles next June.
I really enjoy editing in ProTools.
I like those spicy pepper flakes on my pizza. I've seen people use them for years and never knew what I was missing.

See? In big and small ways I'm evolving, even though I may never care (ever) about the Beatles. I truly hope that I'm given second chances when I blow my first ones, and aim to be the kind of person who can grant that to someone else. It's always rewarding when I do. Once in a while I get to experience a whole new side of someone I love, and it's usually because I've let go of their title and just allowed myself to hear what they're saying in the moment.

(And, for the record, I'm absolutely dying to work with all of the guys that I listed by way of their respective reputations above. I ain't scared.)

Thanks for listening,
buick audra

ordinary, table for one

2011-10-13T22:47:00.012-05:00

tal·ent [tal-uh-nt] noun

a special natural ability or aptitude: a talent for drawing.
a capacity for achievement or success; ability: young men of talent.
a talented person: The cast includes many of the theater's major talents.
a group of persons with special ability: an exhibition of watercolors by the local talent.

Talent's a funny thing. It's a word I've heard a million times in my life, yet its impact and application have changed for me over the years. When you're a kid, it's something you hope you have, to be able to show off and wear as a badge. Before vanity kicks in and takes over, it's really our intangible qualities that we hope make an impression. Parents are kind of nuts about that sort of thing, as well. How many times have you heard someone proclaim that their baby is already showing signs of being "gifted"? But, what's gifted? To me, if you can sit down at a piano at age four and play Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata', you're gifted as hell, but can also claim no credit. You clearly didn't work for that, but are just wired for greatness I don't think you're gifted if you can put the square peg in the square hole. I think that just means you're not slow. Ah, but talent... I think talent implies gain over time. It means some ass-busting transpired along the way. But, that's just me.

I'm fairly certain that my brother showed earlier signs of musical aptitude than I did. He was like the living, breathing version of Bamm Bamm from the Flintstones, as he would bang on anything that could be treated like a drum. But, he would also sit at out mother's piano and gently play the keys. He never hit them or clanked around like you might expect a toddler to. He seemed genuinely interested in the sounds he was creating with his little fingers. Me, I was off in my bedroom throwing myself around to 'Fame' by Irene Cara, a song that can still send me into impromptu belting in a public place. Bo and I both played instruments growing up. I rocked a clarinet for ten years while he made his way through alto saxophone, trumpet and eventually drums. I remember when he got his first drum kit for his fifteenth birthday; he could already play. He sat right down and got to work building patterns and making beats. I was awe-struck. I've never been like that with anything. For me, it didn't come as naturally.

I got my first guitar when I was twenty. It was a reissue of a sixties Fender Mustang, turquoise with a red pick-guard. I chose that one because it was the right-handed, affordable version of the guitar Kurt Cobain had played. I knew nothing about guitars, and I think my reasoning was that if I had to start somewhere, it could at least look cool, never mind how it sounded. Luckily for me, it sounded alright. I had several guy friends who played, and they were always holed up in their rooms with popular songs they loved, figuring out the parts on their instrument of choice. I, of course, skipped that step. I was impatient to get to the good part, where I got to sing songs that I would eventually write. So, I started there. I have a list somewhere of the motley and bizarre assortment of songs that I've learned by other people. It's fairly short. I've simply got no interest in it. I don't mean to say that I don't kneel and pray at the altar of other peoples' music, because I do. I just don't need to sing it when I'm the one on stage, you know?

I've spent the last fifteen years closely examining my guts and writing songs about them. It's not always been a fun or pretty process, but it's been my process just the same. Some songs are better than others. A few of them have changed my life and made me believe that I'm really onto something. Others have been thrown into the pile of Process Songs, to be revisited another day, if ever. More than that, I've been figuring out how to sing the way I want to, and how to make guitar fit in with the other two practices. I make lots of racket, some of it bad, all of the time. My mother is a natural singer. She was born like that. Her voice is majestic and crystal clear; everyone who has ever crossed her path remembers her for it. At no point did I think mine would ever reach that level of beauty, but I also knew early on that singing would have a different role in my life than it has in hers. My singing is about telling you something. It's not about being pretty. If I sound alright along the way, god bless. But, I often don't, and have lived with it for a long time. The message still gets sent, and that is my primary purpose this time around. I'll be pretty in my next life, maybe.

I recently worked with someone who thinks I'm good at some, but not all, of the things I do. My ego took a hit at the announcement of this opinion, and it's given me pause. Going in blind, this person assumed that I was one of those aforementioned Gifted People, but that my gifts were not yet fully realized to the extent that they could be. (Laughable.) While I agree that I've got a long way to go, in almost every area of my life, I've already been on the road for a bit, friends. For starters, I was a positively horrid guitar player in the beginning. My hands had zero natural relationship to that instrument and it was years before I played anything close to a proper chord. Singing over said act was even more absurd. Singing at all was a mess unto itself. I have tremendous struggles with vocal pitch that have lessened some with years of practice and knowing what works for me - but you should have heard me back then. My first song had two chords and was dull as a butter knife. I think the following twenty or so were about the same... I can assure you that no one in my life mistook me for a special talent of any kind. But, I stuck it out. I played, sang and wrote badly until it all started to improve. If I've been given any gift at all, it's that I am driven to do better, to do more. Always.

I'm never going to be the best in the room, and sometimes that's tough to sit with. I play with all kinds of proper geniuses and savants and just straight-up ass-kicking people, people who can play anything. It's true that if you stand me up next to them, I'm always going to come up short. Yes, I can put the square peg in the square hole, but I often choose not to. I think there's something to be said for the weirdos who don't care what fits where. I say throw the damn peg out and fill the square hole with glitter. I don't think F chords should ever be played major. I don't know how to play a single Metallica song - and you know what? I don't even like Metallica. Big deal. Doesn't mean I need to wear a helmet, it just means I don't care about that particular set of rules. If you desperately need to find someone who fits that criteria, the world is crawling with them. But, if you're looking for me... Well, I'll be writing my slightly-better-than-terrible songs on my turquoise Mustang, using all the wrong chords. And I'm taking full credit, too. My gift is my guts, but the rest is all me.

Thanks for listening,

buick audra

ship without a rudder's like a ship without a rudder

2011-10-04T22:14:00.003-05:00

I saw the Lemonheads last night, for the very first time. It wasn't the real Lemonheads, but rather Evan Dando with a bassist and drummer... Still, it was as authentic as it's been for years now. There is only one Lemonhead anymore.

I got into that band later than I should have, and even then I was only sixteen. I moved to Boston at that age, and they had just become huge following the release of their fifth album, It's A Shame About Ray. The first three things that I ever knew about them were:

They used to have two singers and songwriters, but the other guy (Ben Deily) had quit the band.
Juliana Hatfield was going out with the remaining lead singer dude, and scored a bunch of vocal spots on the album because of it.
That guy did tons of drugs.

I had just moved from Miami where I had spent the previous three or four years attending any punk, hardcore or rock show I was allowed to. I owned way too many over-sized t-shirts for Krishna and straightedge bands, and an equal number of ill-fitting army fatigues. I preferred safety to danger, structure to chaos and life to death. Drugs scared the shit out of me. They still do. It might have been my first awareness of a musician I loved being an addict. I dare say it was even before the grunge thing had turned so scarily dark. Andy Wood of Mother Love Bone had died, but he was never that pivotal artist for me... And it was still a few years before Kurt would pass, and eventually Layne. And anyway, those dudes were all the frickin' way over in Seattle. We were in Boston, and this guy Evan was making truly great music right down the way, you know? I remember that being an exciting time, like there was something happening and we were living through it. For as many bands as I saw in Boston over the years I spent there, I never saw the Lemonheads. We were all too young to get in to those shows when Ray was out. We could see all ages shows at churches or Food Not Bombs rallies, but all the venues on Lansdowne St. were off limits. Even the Middle East and T.T.'s were a toss up. It all depended on the show. But, you could guarantee that you were too young to get into shows where the principle song subject was getting fucked up. So, I missed it.

I've been away from Boston for a while now, but have followed Evan's story here and there. It's quite a story. I don't need to tell it here, because it isn't mine to tell, but along the way he has made some incredible music. He's also had some pretty ideal band mates in that catch-all band of his, not the least of which were Karl Alvarez and Bill Stevenson from my favorite band, the Descendents. That line-up toured together about five years ago, and I cannot believe I missed it. Sigh. The tours are legendary for the dramas that occur, and so I wasn't sure what to expect last night. This tour is supposed to be the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of Ray. They've been advertising that the band will play the album in its entirety. That almost happened. Almost, but not quite.

I was the girl who got to the show before doors even opened last night. After waiting for twenty years to hear these damn songs live, I was eager to be somewhere good during the set. I had two hopes for the night: that Dando would show up, and that he would play 'Rudderless', my favorite song he ever did. Seeing as how he's the front man for the band, and that song is on the album in question, one might presume that these were givens... And that person would be foolish to do so.

There were two opening bands, both of which are supporting the whole tour. They were entertaining, and excited to be a part of the show. But, let's face it, when you're all there to hear music that you've loved for an age, you just want to hear it already. Evan took the stage solo at about 10 pm. He played about a half a dozen songs like that, with just a Les Paul and sounded really true, for lack of a better word. He sounded true. The guys joined him after that and they started to play the album. It kicked ass for all of two songs. Two. Then Evan claimed that he was losing his voice and couldn't play over all the noise of the band. The next two songs were supposed to be the title track (and biggest hit of his catalog) and my song. He capo'd up for 'Ray' so that he could sing it lower, and played it like it was just some song. I suppose it is. He started to play 'Rudderless' and then decided not to, for fear that he couldn't sing it. My little gay heart cracked a bit, but I was committed to just letting the experience be what it was going to be. After all, he'd shown up, hadn't he?

All told, he played for an hour and forty minutes. That's a really long show. People like Prince play sets like that. Throughout the course of the night the band rejoined him for about six more songs and then let him finish alone. He played most of the album that he was supposed to be honoring and just a whole lot of other music, some of which was his and some of which wasn't. It wasn't all amazing, but a lot of it was, and it all went through me. It left me with a lot to think about today. Aside from the performance, here was an artist who played to an audience like we were all just hanging out in his living room. He was oddly conversational and interested in what we all wanted to hear. He accommodated what he could, and apologized for what he couldn't. Yes, he was struggling with his voice, but he hung in there, and his guitar playing was great. He remembered the words to roughly thirty-five songs, and I know that he didn't anticipate playing some of them. Even before he went on stage, he was out in the room all night. He watched both of the opening bands from the audience and was actively happy and engaged with what they were doing. Who's like that anymore?

I have no idea what goes on with Evan Dando. I don't know if he's still married, divorced, on drugs, sober, happy, murderous, Satanic or Baptist. And I'm not sure I care. The dude's a fellow traveler. He wears Converse just like the rest of us, and is doing his thing, which happens to be writing really incredible pop songs. I've learned a lot from him in this last twenty years on my own journey of trying to be a good musician who is, at the end of the day, true. And, I continued to learn last night. Even when it wasn't going well for him, he played through. He smiled at the ground and swore aloud. His beautiful chord progressions had the occasional "FUCK!" layered over them, and it was perfect. It was exactly as it should have been.

And, the very last song he played was 'Rudderless'.
Thanks, Evan.

And thank you for listening,
buick audra

This isn't from last night, but it's lovely and you need to see it.

teacher, talker or walker?

2011-09-26T23:00:00.005-05:00

I walked around the gorgeous and expansive grounds of Cheekwood yesterday. For those of you outside of Nashville, it's a set of botanical gardens, an art museum and an outdoor sculpture path, all laid out on the most stunning property you'll ever see. It actually looks unreal, it's so beautiful. I spent a good deal of time on the sculpture path, observing, reading and responding to all of the great work that I saw. One piece in particular stood out for me, a work called "Blue Pesher" by James Turrell. It's an interactive installation that you actually enter and experience from the inside. It's a circular room that has a continuous bench to sit on and be in the space within from all sides. The ceiling has an opening that is a perfect circle, through which you can gaze directly at the sky above. Due to the shape, the acoustic qualities of the space are pretty amazing and sound just endlessly reverberates.

When I first entered the space, I was alone. I quickly picked up on the sonic element of the piece, and started to quietly sing while I looked at the perfect sky above. I took one photograph, to both remember the moment by and share with my husband who was in Brazil at the time. After a few minutes, a couple entered. The woman immediately sat down at my right and started taking photographs with a very serious camera she was carrying. Her partner sat across from me and smiled quietly to himself. He started to sing, obviously curious about the sound, as I was. His voice was so lovely and soothing, and while I couldn't quite place the song he was singing, it sounded familiar and perfect at the time. We all smiled at each other, and they got up and moved on. Moments later, a mother and son entered. The boy was about seven years old, and filled with youth and electricity. He immediately crouched down in the center of the space, which is filled with black sand, I'm guessing to absorb any rain that falls through the hole at the top. He kept grabbing handfuls of the stuff and watching it run through his fingers, over and over. His mother, on the other hand, paced all around the outer edges of the space, looking up at the opening from every possible angle, like she wanted to get every perspective she could before it was too late. This time I was the one to leave first, but not before I closed my eyes ans said a quiet "thank you" for the experience I'd just been given.

It really connected to something I've been thinking about lately, which is the subject of how we all learn. In that five minutes I spent in a piece of someone's art, I observed my process, and the processes of four other people. It was very telling. I first read the names of the piece and the artist, then sat still, looked and listened, and then I tried what seemed like the best move at the time. Pleased with the results, I documented the moment and sat still for a spell longer. The woman who took pictures entered and immediately acted on her urges from a stationary point, and then left when satisfied. The man who sang had almost the exact same process as me, which was crazy to witness, like a mirror. The boy was thoughtful yet active in a repetitive manner, while his mother acted non-stop and was constantly moving. All of those decisions were valid, and all of them were probably indicative of who we are in other areas of our lives. That's what makes us such a fascinating species. We learn. Or, at least some of us do.

Education is an interesting thing. There are so many ways to learn, and consequently, so many ways to teach. There are the researchers who then share their findings through lectures, classes and writing of their own. There are the this-is-what-I-was-told-and-so-this-is-what-I'm-telling-you people. (They comprise too high a percentage of our public school teachers in this country, if you ask me... But, who asked me?) There are the physical instructors who have mastered whatever it is they do or make, who can share a step-by-step process with their students. And then there are the do-ers, the people who lead by example and educate those who can keep up with them along the way. Those are my favorites. Everyone I admire in this life is one of those.

I spent the summer after my graduation from art school trying to "teach". The director of a summer arts program for kids contacted me, having heard that I could both sew and play music. I didn't have any reason to believe I couldn't do the job that was being asked of me, so I accepted. The good news was that I made two dear friends that summer, and they are among my closest to this day. The interesting news was that I couldn't stand teaching. I felt pulled at, tired, annoyed and generally like a fraud. Who was I to be telling these children when and how to create? Just because it's class time doesn't mean you should suddenly become inspired and jump into the business of making. I simply disagree with the whole underlying premise there. The best I could do was offer the techniques I knew, and give them high-fives. They were either going to create or not, but it sure as hell wasn't going to come down to me. Plus, the thing I noticed (and resented) most was that I stopped creating as much while I was teaching. That was the real deal-breaker.

I went to art school because I was interested in some methods and mediums that I knew fragments about. I specifically did not go to music school for fear that it would ruin music for me. It was the right move. Art school was a great experience in that it taught me how to think about my work, how to present my work, and how to defend my work. I use these tools every day of my life. The special added bonus was that my department head was a terrible teacher. She was a woman who had at one time been a practicing artist, but had long since abandoned that life for one of raising a family and "teaching". She had the curriculum down to a science and spent her days rattling of dye formulas and weaving patterns. She was my worst nightmare, and I was hers. I couldn't have cared less about how to weave this or that Apache shawl. I wanted to talk about the anti-feminist issues that surrounded Barbie. I wanted to put on a rock opera. I wanted to play in a rock band wearing nothing but my underpants and war paint. It was a long three years in that department, but it was a defining time for me. For every project of mine that she blocked, two more sprung up their place. I did twice as much work: the work needed to fulfill my scholastic requirements and the work needed to fulfill my own artistic vision. She was a pain in my ass, but her presence made me the artist I am today. In that setting, I discovered that I learn the hard way. And I'm alright with that.

I taught myself to sew and I taught myself to play guitar. For that reason, I do them both incorrectly by technical standards. Also for that reason, my stuff is weird and individual. I've been asked by people here and there to teach them how to do one or the other thing, and I always politely decline. It's not because I don't want them to know how to do those things, but it's because I wouldn't know where to start. When you're self-taught, there's no A-B-C to your process, you just "do". I always tell these people that the best way to learn how to do something is to learn how not to do it. The mistakes are the truths. You only sew an armhole shut once before understanding why that part stays open. I've enjoyed this journey of mine, even though it's sometimes painful and confusing. I don't want to be told "how", I want to know "why", and if tripping and falling is my way, then so be it. At least I'll get a good a look at the uneven ground that brought me to my knees, right? The other reason I don't teach is because I believe in everyone. If I can figure it out, so can you.

Thanks for listening,
buick audra

recidivism

2011-09-24T08:39:00.009-05:00

"I'd never say it doesn't mean that much to me. Glad, anyway, to see you struggle free."

~Jawbox

I hope that at the end of my life, I don't have a headstone that reads, "Here lies Buick Audra, who didn't play well with others." I mean, I hope I don't have a headstone at all as that would mean I had been buried which sounds terrible, but that's beside the point. In all honesty, though... It's been a rough few years with me and collaborations. I'm not so crazy as to think that it always boils down to the other party being the problem, but I also can't shoulder all the blame. Perhaps some of us aren't collaborators. Perhaps some of us just make stuff on our own. I appear to be in the latter category whether I like it or not.

To be fair, I seem to do alright when it's not my project in any way. I very much enjoy lending my ear or voice to other peoples' work, and don't run into any to struggles there. I understand that it is their vision we are working towards; I am merely stepping in for a moment, and whatever the final outcome is: I'm fine with it. But, anytime I enter into a so-called partnership or major collaboration where my art is in play, there will be blood. Over and over again, I play a part in terrific disasters that are disappointing, frustrating, maddening and a colossal waste of time. The sinkhole of bad human behavior usually sucks the art right down into it, to boot. I count three major failures in this arena, and they've each locked me up for periods of time. The first and most significant of the three had me in a medium security prison of the mind for what felt like an eternity. I'd fool myself into thinking I was earning good time, but then a fight would break out and I'd end up in solitary confinement and be right back where I started. The next one actually upgraded me to maximum security, but I served a shorter sentence. The final stay was minimum security but it stung just the same. Jail is jail. I aim to stay free, but it's harder than you think. I'm currently on probation and I'm watching every step.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what the issue is. I know, the mind reels that this could be the case, given the amount of time I've obviously had to think it over. But, it's true. I think it has to do with this expectation that, on top of attempting to co-create something of value, we'll also be great friends. We'll be Super People who get along famously and agree on everything, and if we don't, we've done the wrong thing altogether. But art is intense and turns you inside out. The process of making it can be more intimate than making out with a person. How are we to be perfect and pulled together at all times? I've said it before and I'll say it again, those abandoned projects are like kids I had with inappropriate partners that were put up for adoption before birth. It never stops being awful. Years later, people you haven't seen in ages ask you about it, assuming you carried that child to term... Because the last time they saw you, you were pregnant. And you give some vague answer about people being different and quickly try to change the subject to something else. Only there isn't anything else, because for me, my work is the whole story. Like I said, it's awful.

So, here I am with my girls, Rose Ink, Singer and Family Album. Everyone's doing well, thanks. I do think about the orphaned ones, more often than you'd guess, but try to forage ahead as best I can. Recently, one of them was left at the doorstep, providing a brand new situation for me to face. You see, I've never had one come back. I've never tried to re-create a bridge that had previously been burned to ash. Do I make a new bridge out of popsicle sticks? Do I have to go back over at all, or can I just get a megaphone and yell across the water from my shore? Message in a bottle? I'm open to the feedback, believe me. My mind works better when I write its contents down, and so in the recent weeks since this new scenario has unfolded, I've done some brainstorming about how not to land myself in the same holding cell of worthlessness I seem to end up in, post break-up. Here's what I have so far:

Maybe music isn't marriage. (But it is... Oh well.)
Maybe I need less than I think I do. Only, I just got through convincing myself that I need more. It's all very confusing.
Maybe the release of an album I don't have individual control over might not kill me. (Doubtful.)
Maybe the primary purpose of releasing the music overrides the personal bullshit between its parents. I know something about coming from a wreck of a situation.
Maybe I'm supposed to be learning something here, and who wants to be the kind of person who can't learn?
Great things have come from people who don't see eye to eye. Great, great things.

These are all things to think about. I make no promises. If I go quiet, I've let myself fall back into the cracks of who I am. It happens. But, I want to see the Big Picture and stay focused. I may even want it badly enough to stay out of trouble this time. Just maybe.

Thanks for listening,
buick audra

the Hail Mary pass

2011-09-16T21:02:00.009-05:00

I've been thinking about art lately. I suppose to some extent I'm always thinking about art, but more recently I've been mulling over specifics, and my thoughts have led me down some pretty deep rabbit holes. I am both a fan and student of the art world, and I include all of the arts in that statement. I studied visual art, am a practicing musician, writer and designer, and have always appreciated dance, theater and opera as extreme examples of human brilliance and discipline. One of the greatest gifts that I received from my mother is a love and interest for all of the aforementioned forms of expression. It is, in my opinion, humans at our finest.

To speak on the arts is too general, so I'll hone in here. I'm a longtime fan of Andy Warhol's work. His entire movement, and the players within it, have always fascinated me. I find his approach to have been both genius and mystifying. He was clinical yet passionate, giving us pieces that vibrate with color and seize your attention with their exacting, high-contrast presence. For all that I've read, seen and studied about him, I've never grown tired of the information or the imagery. My living room speaks to that truth, as almost every surface references him in some way, whether subtle or obvious. He was a person who literally founded an entire multi-genre art scene in New York over a few short decades, and we are still captivated by it today. His peers were countless, but among them were Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Byrne, Debbie Harry, John Waters and Robert Mappelthorpe. Robert Mappelthorpe. I started hearing that name young. My mom liked his work and shared it with me and my brother before we were old enough to comprehend the intensity of it all. My mom is like that, and that is a wonderful way to be. Before your mind develops fears, judgments and biases, it's much more open. When music and art enter such a pure mind, it does beautiful things with that information. So, Mappelthorpe's iconic and graphic imagery entered my child mind and all I saw were humans and shapes and contrasts. His work has remained that way for me for all of these years, until recently.

I read Patti Smith's autobiographical book Just Kids over the summer. It had been recommended to me by many people whose opinions I hold in high esteem, and the premise sounded lovely. I knew that she and Robert had been romantically and creatively linked early on, and thought that the book would be illuminating and exciting to read. I expected to feel some grief, of course, as he's now been dead for twenty-two years, but I didn't expect to feel all of the other things I felt as I made my way through the pages. The book chronicles the friendship, love affair and collaboration of Patti and Robert from the time they met in 1967 to the end of his life in 1989. They met in New York after having recently moved there from their respective homes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They were both about twenty years old at the time. Her writing is stunning, and it is clear from the outset that the words are crafted both technically and emotionally. Her memory is amazing, and she recounts every detail of the rooms, faces and feelings. It is a work of brave self-exposure and I admire that very much. However, I didn't root for every character. And I thought that I would root for every character.

I'm changing, it would seem. Time was, I'd have read all about the desperate behaviors, seedy hotels and blurred lines and thought nothing of it. I might even have glorified it all and chalked the collective brilliance up to the collective dysfunction. But, not today. Today it sounds awful and sad and damaging. Today it sounds like a whole lot of people wanted some unattainable thing and they all thought Warhol held the Golden Ticket. Today it sounds like a bunch of people not unlike my own generation who were trying to help themselves to a serving of Life, but managed to hurt everyone in the process of doing so. They weren't special. They were people. Yes, some of them made incredible art and music, but so do some of us. They cheated on each other, lied to themselves, hurt their bodies, and broke their hearts... Just like we do.

We look at the past because those Polaroids are already developed. The pictures and words exist, and we search for bits of ourselves in those faces and phrases. We do. Since I can remember, I've listened to music, read liner notes, gone to museums, opera houses, rock shows, lectures, classes and libraries. I knew that I wanted to create, and set out to soak up all that I could of what had already been created. I don't regret any of my education, whether it was in a scholastic setting or not. I'm the better for learning, and I hope that I never stop. But, how do I reconcile these expectations of mine that great art must come from greatness? And more importantly, how will I let myself off of that hook? I'm already not great. I've already blown it. I've lied, behaved dishonorably, made shitty work, given up on other people and myself, burnt cookies... I've already blown it. But, my heart sings songs to me. I hear music when the room is silent and see dresses with clouds in their hems. I imagine Hawaiian fantasies set to my brother's drumming, and colors more vibrant than those of tropical flowers. I look into Sylvia Plath's dark eyes and know I owe her something in my lifetime. Am I allowed those things if I've already blown it? How many Hail Mary's do I have to say before I'm absolved of who I've been, so that I might go on to make great things?

You see, I didn't root for Robert Mappelthorpe because I don't root for myself.

I walk among greatness. My loved ones are all making work, and some of it is mind-blowing. And some of my outer community of peers are brilliant. And some of them are assholes. And some of them have drug problems and personality disorders. And some of them are doing irreparable damage to their lives. And some of them will be famous. And some of them will be in books. And some of them will die.

Truth be told, I'd have been too afraid to go to the Factory and I know it. I could never have hung at the Chelsea Hotel, nor bothered with Max's Kansas City. If I were alive then, and living in New York, I'd have been sitting in my apartment with a guitar, contemplating cutting my hair, wanting no part of the party or the parade. Because that's who I am. God bless Edie Sedgwick and Nico, man. They look lovely in all of that footage, but their lives were hard and short. I don't want that ending. My beginnings were already hard, and I don't want that to be my whole story. If I make it into anyone's book, I want to be rooted for. That's all. I want to be someone to root for. And maybe I'll stumble onto greatness along the way.

Thanks for listening,
buick audra

being friends with boys

2011-08-29T22:54:00.000-05:00

I've had guy friends my whole life. I was a tomboy growing up, and then ended up in a music world with many, many dudes. It was inevitable that some of them would become my pals. As a woman, my male compatriots have had a different role in my life than have the females. Well, the straight ones, that is. Oddly, most of them are musicians, while most of the ladies are not. So, the guys and I have that in common. We talk about records, guitar sounds, drum machines, other musicians, the highly controversial topic of Rick Rubin, and sometimes: girls. I'm kind of a bro, and I'm fine with it. In fact, I love it. It means that I have peers with whom I share likes and dislikes, and speak a common language. I have this with my sisters too, but about different things (like Adam Sandler). My very first best friend was a guy, and some of my dearest today are men as well.

As I've gone through this testosterone-filled world, I've befriended a few imposters, accidentally. They look the same, act the same, do the same things... All until they don't. What happens? They like me. I mean, they like me, like me. Yep, just like grade school. And also just like grade school, when they don't know what else to do about it, they turn into mean little boys. Four days from my wedding day, I'm reflecting on the more recent wave of casualties in the epic story of Boy Likes Buick; Buick Doesn't Care, and it's an impressive figure. What surprises (and impresses) me more than that list, is the list of guys that didn't go that way. I don't mean to say that I think every man should fall in love with me like I've got some witchy power over the opposite sex. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm always surprised when anyone is into me. What I mean to say is that there are men with whom I have successful friendships and/or professional relationships today, that very easily could have have devolved into something else. Some of them have a History of Crushing, and got past it. It is to their credit alone that they are not on the bad list. Hat's off, gentlemen, hat's off.

I've been foolish enough to miss the signs of Boyhood so many times it's embarrassing. Make no mistake, age plays no part. I've have known some grown-ass fellows to fall short in the dignified behavior category. Those are always the saddest. Like, come on. You're old. The most insulting, and oddly most common, are the jerks who feign professional interest in my music in order to have a reason to spend time with me. That is possibly the single worst thing a regular person could do to me. (By "regular" I mean not related to me. My relatives have a particularly horrifying set of tools with which to dismantle my sense of self-worth. Custom made.) To act as though my heart and soul, which is my music, is anything you believe in, when it in fact is not... Well, son, that earns you a lifetime without having me around, at all. What I'd like to know is, what did you think would happen? That I'd kiss you and you'd transform from your toady self into a prince, and then after the wedding you'd admit that you're not actually into chick musicians? You'd end up dead in the back yard. I think you got off lucky here, friend, I really do.

When I got engaged almost a year ago, there was a mass exodus of dudes from my life. One day they all just vanished. The weird, sad singer/songwriter guy, the brilliant producer guy, a couple of whatever bassist guys... Gone. Like we'd never known one another. When you think about it, it's kind of amazing. I wish it were surprising, but it's not. I've been leaving 'em behind since Babyface was in a band called The Deele. At least the offenders in question then really were eleven years old. They get a pass. It's not because I'm anything special, I'm just my own entity. A certain brand of person is drawn to that and wants to pin it down like a butterfly, for further inspection. Only, it's not yours to know, and therefore you will never just be able to enjoy me for who I am.

In light of the Lost Boys, I'd like to give a thunderous round of applause for the men in my life who love, support and stand next to me through whatever goes down. Some of you go back decades with me, and others only a few years. Whatever the case, I salute you, and thank you from the bottom of my heart. You all restore my faith in men, partcularly in ths world filled with boys. As far as the rest of you go: It's your loss, I'm a great pal. And I want my book back, jerk.

All woman,
buick audra

and the beat goes on

2011-08-28T16:33:00.003-05:00

Well, Nashville... I don't know.
I know that I try to encourage friends, associates, fellow musicians, pets and every other breathing creature to attend my shows. I also know it just doesn't happen. People have jobs, kids, tv, and Titans tickets and they can't be bothered. It's a bit of a nightmare, and I'm not really sure how to navigate it. I am far too sensitive to just play to the bartenders time and time again. Against all advice not to, I take it personally. This happened tonight. Again.

People with kids are always telling you about their little ones; this kid said this, and the other one did that. We're expected to respond with matched amounts of excitement and interest every time, even if we ourselves have no frame of reference for what that's about. I don't have children, and though I have some nieces and nephews that I love dearly, it certainly doesn't compare to how a parent must actually feel about every milestone, no matter how small. Yet, society tells us that we have to "ooooh" and "aaaah" about all of these things alongside these people, as it's just what we do. But, I have a question: what about the rest of us? What if we don't feel like having kids? What if we have a 1969 SG and a handful of songs that we're ready share? Do we get to talk about that and have the expectation that The Others will be equally as amped about it? Because I think it's only fair. If I have to look at your kid while he does whatever it is he's gonna do, then I think you need to pay your dues over here too.

I know that I'm upset about more than the show tonight. That was just the salt in the proverbial coffee. I'm getting married in six days, and it's a wonderful thing. Strange thing is, only about six people in my life are acting as if that's the case. Those six people are my heart, and I'm so thankful to them for sharing in my joy, but the rest of my people... Hi there. I'm Buick Audra. I'm doing something important. It would be great if you acted as though you knew it was happening. I've thrown six baby showers. Six. I've made twelve baby quilts. I've knit ten pair of baby booties. And you know what? It was my choice and pleasure to do those things. But, I guess I'm tangled up in the expectation for reciprocity. It gets me into trouble every time.

Mind you, I'm having a tantrum and have already been reprimanded by loved ones and professional colleagues alike for doing so. It isn't advisable to get so dark, it would seem. But I am dark, and that's sort of always been the truth. Some days I'm just better at hiding it than others. If I were perfectly balanced and healthy, I'd be piping in with how grateful I am about this and that person, and that the lesson in it all is.... Blah blah blah. I'm sick of the lessons, y'all. I'm just trying to play some shows here, and have an audience that isn't being paid to be there. I know I'm putting negative vibes out and they'll probably swallow me whole at some point, but I just can't help it. Normally when I want to start fires, I force myself to make a gratitude list, and once in a while it works. The alphabet comes in handy until you get to those B.S. letters like "x" and "q". (Who cares about xylophones and xerox machines?) When my list of grievances is longer than my list of things I'm grateful for, I'm officially nuts. Such is the case tonight. In the spirit of aiming for sanity, here's tonight's gratitude list, as it's only fair:

A. Amos the cat (it's always Amos the cat).
B. Brother Bo and Brett Rosenberg. Bo, always. Brett saved my soul a little tonight. Thanks.
C. Chad Riter. Source of endless love and support.
D. Dave Walsh. Pal unlimited.
E. Eliza Wheeler. Lovely friend who walks every line with me.
F. Family Wash crew. Thanks for the root beer, love... And for making me get up there.
G. Greg Hagan. His absence made me revisit electric guitar. So glad.
H. Humility.
I. Iris Robert. Claims me as family. Love.
J. Jerry Roe and Josh Fuson. Jerry, sweetheart. Josh, diehard friend who spent all day with me hanging shutters.
K. Kathy and Ann. Thanks for listening and caring.
L. Levi Fuller. Oldest and dearest bud, coming to Nash this Thursday.
M. My family. That one went down like a jagged pill.
N. Nancy Huebsch. Magical aunt.
O. Otis Redding III. Inspired my imagination and confidence.
P. Paul Griffith. Plays drums with me. Rules.
Q. (who cares)
R. Reeves Gabrels. Makes me laugh, always. Smells amazing, no matter what.
S. Sarah Tyson, Sara Liebmann, Seth Bodie. Ruling friends and support system.
T. Tim Marks. Crazy awesome bassist who plays with me. Makes me sound better than I am.
U. Unwavering love for music.
V. Value system, modified as needed.
W. Walsh Family. Love.
X. (also who cares)
Y. You.
Z. (oh yeah, I hate this one too)

Not too bad. I do feel a bit better. And I do really smell like Mr. Gabrels, after having hugged him only twice. (It's some magic potion that he totally mixes with a wand in his bathroom sink. I'll never believe anything else.) Anyway, maybe I'll feel better tomorrow, maybe not. Maybe my expectations will be in check and I'll just be stoked beyond measure. I don't know, Nashville. I still don't know.

I'm getting married and I play music. Those things are pretty awesome. Tonight's show was disappointing for me, there are no two ways around it, but I'll live, I suppose. But for real, breeders... I may not be having any babies, but I have a vintage analog delay pedal that would love a hand-knit cozy. And no, I'm not kidding.

Nuts, tired, slightly hateful,
buick audra

I'll see your apathy, and raise you: purpose

2011-08-17T00:46:00.010-05:00

"Whenever I want a quiet night to myself, I book a gig in Nashville."

~David Olney

The above words couldn't be more true, sadly. I played a show last night at a fairly legendary local dive, The Springwater, and no one came. Wait - my future mother-in-law and one of my best buds came, but that was it, and since one of them also played the show, he doesn't really count as an audience member per se. You may be asking yourself, "Why?"... It's because I live in Nashville, Tennessee.

See, in Nashville, everyone is involved with music. It's no longer the country and bluegrass town that it once was, as it has grown to have presences in every genre by now. But, there still is a large population of writers working for commercial country cuts, as well as artists just dying to get that one big shot. Along with them, you have your side men, producers, engineers, sound guys, managers, tour managers, publishers, song-pluggers, executives, venue owners, promoters, publicists, stylists... And, oh: regular old musicians, like me. Guess who makes the least amount of money? That's right, us. Last night was a perfect example of how that works. I played a show, for which there was a cover, so right there, you know the club made at least a little something. The sound guy got a flat rate. The artist who played first was solo, so while he didn't get paid anything for his performance, he also had no overhead other than the gas he used getting there. The band who played after me were a proper band, so they probably didn't make anything either, but same deal with the overhead. Me? I paid my side men, got paid nothing myself, and left in the red. For what? I ask myself this every day of my life.

My music isn't sweet. My music isn't passive and pleasant. My music doesn't fit a pre-cast mold of palatable, sellable easiness. My apologies. I've never been able to find a comfortable seat on that train. Am I trying to "make it"? Well, that depends on how you define making it. Yes, my goal is to be able to not have to work outside of my music in order to pay the many bills I have. I don't have aspirations of being a huge icon that can't do her own grocery shopping, no. I can't fathom having a musical director for my band, nor a manager telling me what I have to wear to suit my image. I know who I am, what I look like and how I sound. I know how I like my rhythm section to sound, and how I don't like a lead guitarist to sound (ever). In most other cities, these things would be seen as positive aspects. Around here, I'm a disease.

Half the people I encounter here are so deeply entrenched in their own weird brand of self-pity/self-defeat, they don't even see me standing in front of them. The rest of the people just assume I'm something else: a girl with long, dirty blonde hair who must be a folk singer. Wrong. I've sung a folk tune or two, but it ain't my bag. I actually sing like I've spent equal amounts of time vocalizing on 'Cameage' by Descendents and 'Can You Stand The Rain?' by New Edition, because I have. I play bad, dissonant guitar with strings that always ring. I wish I could be in a band with Paul Westerberg, Chris Stein and Bill Stevenson. I really do. But, Nashville wouldn't know any of that because it doesn't care. Nashville wants to complain about major label gigs with this and that artist. Nashville wants to hate on anything that threatens its mighty sense of entitlement. God forbid T-Bone Burnett kidnaps one of Nashville's own to make a record that sounds nothing like what they make in this town. Scandal! Nashville's still talkin' about the good old days with Johnny Cash and that whole crew. Who knows if the next great musical mind is among us... No one's paying attention to anyone else unless everyone else is. That's the key.

I make music because it saves my life to do so. It's a coping mechanism, just like any other. Some people smoke cigarettes; I write songs. I'm a survivor of all kinds of dark things, some in my past, and some in my present. The music has seen me through, and given a voice to the feelings that would have otherwise been too heavy to carry around. The honest work of other artists gave me hope as a kid and young adult, and I pray that mine does the same for others, to some small extent. Last night, I was reminded of the power that music can have. I got off stage after performing to the other bands and aforementioned future mother-in-law, and had a feeling of relief mixed with discouragement. The show had gone well enough musically, but I was saddened by the bad turn-out. I wasn't two feet off the riser when a woman approached me asking for the lyrics to one of my songs I had just played. I didn't have them readily available, but told her that all of my lyrics could be found on my website. Something about her demeanor made me ask more. I had her clarify which song she connected with. She said it was the second to last one in my set, which had been 'Northern Star'. She then volunteered the information that the lyrics had made her think of her brother, and that they had made her cry. I shared with her that the song had been written about my younger brother, and also makes me cry from time to time. She then told me that her brother had just passed away.

That is why I get up there.

It's not easy to do any of this, and the older you get, the harder it gets. But, I have something to say, and a voice to say it with. If one person hears me and gains something from what I'm sharing, then my job is done. I wish my peers were there to be a part of that experience, but they're not. I wish that the support that I show to my friends was reciprocated, but it's not. It's still my job to tell my truths and hope that they connect with the stray hearts out there.

And Nashville, y'all may have had outlaws, but you very obviously never had punk rock. Your loss.

Thanks for listening,
buick audra

"I looked up one day and saw that it was up to me. You can only be a victim if you admit defeat."

~Descendents, 'Coolidge'

by association

2011-08-10T22:31:00.000-05:00

You don't know my last name. Well, some of you do. But, these days, most people don't. I haven't used my full name publicly for about seven years. There are a few reasons why that's the case, but none of them are terrifically interesting. Maybe I had to go on a bad t.v. show and didn't want the world to be able to find me. Maybe I thought that Audra, being my middle name, had a more feminine ring to it than does my legal surname. Maybe I don't have a relationship with the man from whom I got said surname. They're all true, to different degrees. Mostly, it was just time for a change.

Still, at least once a day, I fill something out with my Real Name, and sometimes it gives me pause. Having a surname means you come from somewhere. It means you didn't just hatch from a stray egg, or fall to earth like Bowie in the aptly titled sci-fi film (which I saw way too young; thanks, Mom). It means you, and your name, were kind of designed by someone else. And the stamp of that design stays with you throughout the course of your life, unless you just cast it all away and start anew. I haven't yet, but it crosses my mind every few years or so.

The people who knew my biological parents always have extreme opinions of them, one way or the other. They were very much a set, from what I'm told, and they certainly left a dent in the collective psyche of their peers, before my birth. They were both songwriters and performers, and were on stage together more often than not. My mother was known for her hauntingly beautiful voice, outspoken opinions and musical laugh; my father for his lyrical genius, brooding temperament and sloppy rhythm guitar playing. To my knowledge, they collaborated for the better part of a decade before other things developed and took them down separate roads. (I think I'm one of those developments, but that's not what we're talking about.) I've seen all of the photos, heard all of the music, and had all of the words memorized by the time I was five. I did see the tail end of the magic in person in my toddler years, but it's hard to discern which of those images are memories and which are things I've been told. Lord knows I've been told quite a bit.

As I've grown older, the folks who knew my parents in their time of prolific creativity have found me, in all of the usual ways. The internet has made it so that no one can really stay anonymous, much less a girl from Miami named Buick. I am often told how much I look like him or her, and how much my music reflects their styles and talents. I once had a stranger stop me on the street in Coconut Grove, when I was about thirteen, to ask me if I was my father's kid. That's how strong the resemblance is, in some ways. I don't mind hearing about them, but it is sort of strange. It's like being told that the characters from from some movie are your parents. It's like that, because that's not what I know of them at all.

I never lived with my biological father past the first year of my life, and let's face it: I don't remember that. I was mostly raised by my mother and my brother's father, who is the only man I've ever called "Dad". I did spend some time with my father in my younger years, seeing him for an occasional weekend here or meal there. Most of what I know of him has been relayed to me by other people. I've formed my own stories about who he is was and is through his music, but I don't really know the truth, and it's unlikely that I ever will. He opted out of knowing me when I was about sixteen, and that was that. My imagination has had to fill in the many blanks that my heart hasn't had the energy to.

The opposite is true of my relationship with my mother. I know her as well as any daughter knows her mother (which isn't as well as some would assume), and could probably ace a quiz on her likes, dislikes and quirks. But, that's not the woman from the stories of her youth. I'll never know that person, and I'm now older than she was when she left that life behind. Aside from the music, our life paths have been remarkably different, and our personalities reflect those choices. I think it's tricky to be a daughter with a strong mother. I think there always lies a quiet question as to who you really are, in the dark night of the soul. I think it's both terrifying and weird to realize that you are, in fact, your own person at a certain point. I've felt for some time that I'm walking on on uncharted territory, and that the people who designed me wrote no map for where I am. For a while that felt lonely, but it's starting to lighten up around here. I'm even excited by the new and unexpected turns once in a while. At least they're finally my own.

I've recently come to know the teenage daughter of a friend of mine who passed away almost seventeen years ago. Her daughter wasn't two at the time, and had been adopted by another family, so I hadn't seen her in those formative stages. She found me through this very blog a bout a year and a half ago, because I had written about her birth mother here and the name jumped out at her in a Google search. Since then, I've been getting to know the wonderful, talented and sweet young woman that she is, and it's been a true pleasure. I'll admit that when I was first connecting with her, I compared her to her mother in every way. She does look quite a bit like her, and there are some similar tendencies towards the arts, etc. But, all of that fell away pretty quickly as I started to pay attention to who she is, and less to who her mother was. She deserves that attention and respect, as we all do. Where we come from is only part of the story. Where we're going is the rest.

I know I look like him and sound like her. I know that I share a love for the writing of a dead poet with him, and a passion for horror with her. I know, I know, I know. I also know that I can't keep a plant alive and would never, ever put Jimi Hendrix on the stereo. Ever. Some of it's in my blood, and heart and bones... And some of it's all me: my design.

Thanks for listening,
buick audra _______

three heads, six legs

2011-08-04T16:06:00.007-05:00

We played our first show as Buick Audra and The Talent last night, here in town.
It's funny how you can make all of the grandest plans in the world, but life just dictates what actually unfolds every time. I thought I'd tour all year in support of my most important project so far, Family Album. I thought my family of origin would be present in part for that experience. I thought I'd save up my money and put it towards the making of a new album called Afraid of Flying, slated to be recorded later this year. What actually happened looks nothing like that. I haven't toured at all. My pet fell ill, and I've dedicated all money and time to treating his ailments in the ways that are possible. My guitar evaporated into the vast expanse of Life Lessons and I'm now paying off a new one, little by little. My family of origin... Well, let's just say that outside of my brother and some loving aunts, I'm on my own these days.

I say all that because last night was really fun. Fun enough to be a bit of a game-changer. I'm trying some new things out with my band mates, Jerry Roe and Tim Marks. We're playing a bunch of songs that I've never busted out before. We're developing a new sound, which is much more influenced by punk rock than anything I've done up to this point. And, no one's wearing a dress on stage. After a bunch of years of designing and making my own stage ware, I'm pretty over it. I love the idea of it, just like I love the idea of highlighting my own hair. Both are a terrific waste of time, at least that's where I am on it today. I have a couple Pizza Dream dresses left to don at my upcoming solo shows, but beyond that: expect jeans and t-shirts. Milo Aukerman didn't sew his own clothes. Nuff said.

We played at the Basement, a venue that I've been artfully dodging for four solid years now because I'm both crazy and a holder of grudges. That was a dumb move, as that place is pretty alright to play. The sound is decent, the people are nice and the B.S. is at a minimum. Sold. A solo guy playing an electric guitar and assorted elements of a drum kit (a la the Avett Brothers), went first. I'm a jerk, and have no idea what his name was. It began with "j". We went second, and played three songs from Family Album, and four new ones. It was loud, and mostly pretty good. Because (some) men are weird, I was told by many of them that my rhythm section was amazing. While I agree, I'm always stunned when some dude really tells me that, and nothing else. Learn to lie, gentlemen, learn to lie. JR and Tim do rule, and I love what they bring to the songs. Without them, I'd just be a gal in a Siouxsie shirt yelling at the top of my lungs. They definitely add something rad... But what the hell is wrong with loud chicks who love goth bands from the eighties? Zero, that's what. Anyhow, a local band called Telecommunicators ended the night with their up-tempo dance rock. It's great stuff, and they're bound to ignite any day now. I'd like to thank all of the pals that came to support any of the musicians who played. It was a good first show for us, and I know we'll get better.

Don't get me wrong, I love my last two albums. I have no regrets about how or why I did anything within the process of making them... But, holy CRAP is it good to be playing hard music again. Where did I go? I don't have the answers to that, and honestly, I'm not even looking into it. All I know is that I feel more like myself than I have in years. I have no idea what will come of it, and I don't care. I'm just happy to be a part of the sound. We're tracking demos this weekend. Maybe one will leak onto the interwebs. Anything is possible.

Thanks for listening.
~buick audra

P.S. No one took pictures, but here's our set list:

your best friend

back to Boston

Northern star

strong as you think

younger all the time

tell your friends

unkissed

mi nombre es Buick Audra

2011-07-16T17:32:00.015-05:00

I've lived in lots of places. Well, maybe not "lots", but a good handful of noteworthy towns, for sure. I'm originally from Miami, which gets both Coolest and Weirdest from today's list of superlatives. That place in the eighties was everything you think it was, times two. We had a truly multi-national representation of cultures, a crime syndicate that made New York look friendly, and more pastel buildings, cars and sidewalks than a candy store has grams of sugar. There was nothing like white linen and a gun to align you with my hometown.
Next in line was Boston. I don't have the energy to get into what I think about that scene up there, but I'll wrap it up with: it ain't for me.
I flirted with L.A. in the early 2000's, and found it to be an odd fit for my needs at the time, but beautiful just the same. Any place that has a beach and boardwalk within driving distance of your home is alright by me.
I spent one dreary year in the bowels of Providence, Rhode Island, the memories of which feel like Purgatory. It's like an even darker, more corrupt version of Boston (which is really saying something, as Boston is where dreams and direction go to die), with the added hilarity of the Italian mafia's presence.
I slid down the coast from there to good ol' New York City, and that place changed my life, as I think it does everyone's who spends a good minute there. You're either going to learn to fend for yourself or not, while living in the Big Apple, and whichever is true ultimately determines how well you do there. I loved it for my four year term. These days, when I return to work or visit it feels like frantic filth, but that's because I changed.

I changed because I moved to Nashville, Tennessee: birthplace to the Grand Ole Opry, lots of songs about whiskey, trains, pain and rain... And a very specific group of people who call this place home. There are the folks that are from here, like my fiance and many of his pals, and there are the transplants like myself. People come here from all over the world to be part of the musical history that is Nashville's legacy, and I'm guilty of being one of them. About six months into living here I realized that I would, in fact, never be part of this town's story, and have been just hanging out ever since, being the weirdo I've always been. I've never had whiskey, and am not terribly fond of those who over-do that purple-making punch. I don't ride trains, nor care about the rain, and my pain isn't very special, far as I can tell. The closest I get to being Country is having written a few songs about loving someone who's doing hard time in jail, on acoustic guitar. Come to think of it, that makes me pretty damn Country, but whatever... Nashville don't care, and I don't care right back. This planet is only one section of the greater universe of music that I love and belong to.
I grew up in the post-hardcore glory years of Jawbox, Fugazi and Lungfish. I skateboarded to a soundtrack of Descendents, Bad Brains and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (before they realized they were from California). I know every single vocal part on New Edtion's 'Can You Stand The Rain', as well as those of the cover by Boyz II Men. I can name all of the musicians and engineers on Rickie Lee Jones' eponymous first album, and tell you where they appear on her later records. There will never be enough to satiate my interest in the magic of music. Never. There is crazy magic here in Music City, but it comes with some other stuff.

Nashville's a great place to live if you want to own a house for not much money, and have the space to create your art within that house. And I do. It's a great place to live if you enjoy well-crafted songs that may potentially feature a dobro and/or mandolin. And I really do. It's a great place to live if you're interested in promoting yourself, drinking too much and trying to write hit songs for other people. And I'm not. So, we're two for three. Not too bad. I do love my home, and I have some wonderful friends both within and outside of the music world... And I dig some of those hit songs ('Fast Cars and Freedom' saves my life every time I hear it, true story). There are rad people here, and there are some total freaks, as is true of anywhere. The freaks here are a bit more unassuming than they are in say, New York. No one is nude in a cowboy hat in the middle of an intersection, nor playing the vibraphone in a neon gorilla costume on the train platform (and we're all the more inferior for that). In Nashville, there are social freakitudes that creep under your skin in otherwise seemingly normal interactions. I'm privy to these behaviors on an almost daily basis when I'm in town, and they never cease to amaze.

For those of you who don't know it, "Bless your heart" is a stab. It's the Southern, sugary way of implying that someone is crazy, pathetic or just generally confusing. In the Northeast, it translates to, "You're so cute." Both of these tend to roll of the tongues of women, and are pretty much one in the same. Where I'm from, we don't have a version of this insult, so it took me a while to really break down this vernacular. In short: beware of being either cute or blessed.
On to the Strange Behavior in Southern Males... Call me a radical feminist, call me what you want, but what is it with men that can only talk about other men? Friends, I'm telling you that down here, it's completely normal for a man to walk up to a woman he knows and ask her about her husband, fiance, brother... The list goes on and on. Now, this in and of itself doesn't sound so bad, but it is when it's the first question asked to said woman. Believe me, I love my future husband a great deal, and am very proud of all that he does... But how about asking a sister how she is first? How is her life so insignificant that it doesn't warrant even the most basic of polite questions? I don't care if her partner is Prince himself; she still matters.

This brings me back to the cultural observations about the places I've lived. Miami has a strong Latin presence, to say the least, and those cultures tend to be matriarchal. (Yes, I'm speaking in generalities, but I have a point.) In the circles that I grew up in and around, you always asked about a person's mother first. It's just what's goes on in a Colombian/Cuban/Puerto Rican (etc) household. Now, from what I see of Nashville, I'm led to believe that the women are secondary, particularly in the world of Serious Musicians. But has it always been this way? I have a really hard time believing that anyone ever walked up to Mother Maybelle and asked her how Ezra was, before asking her how she was on that day. That sounds outright ridiculous, now doesn't it? But, just as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, I'll go into some densely populated part of town this week, and the first thing out of some man's mouth will be, "How's Jerry?"

Jerry's fine, y'all.

I have an album out right now, a dream up my sleeve and something else in the oven. I cut my own bangs and painted my toenails purple last night. I'm writing two books at the same time, as well as three essays. I'm producing my brother's album and demo-ing my own songs for people who are interested in them. I think I finally figured out which settings sound best on my amp for switching back and forth between the clean and overdrive channels. I have a new storm door and a hole in my foot from stepping on a nail the day I got it. You didn't ask, but that's how I am.

I know better than to think there's anything that can be done about it, but it still drives me nuts. You're all part of some mystery Man Community and I'm just here, taking it all in, doing my thing to keep the beat. But, let it be said: One of these days I may just crack and lapse into what I know from my background. If you get to lead with questions that have nothing to do with me, then I get to answer with,
"No se.... Porque mi nombre es Buick Audra."
And that'll be my my way of letting you know: I'm from out of town.

Hasta luego muchachos,
buick audra

disections and dichotomies

2011-07-11T17:07:00.004-05:00

I'm suspicious of people these days, myself included.
It seems that the more I come to learn about myself, the less I understand about everyone else. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but at some point within the last year, I started to notice things about the lot of us humans that I was apparently quite blind to before. It leaves me with a list of questions that I spend a good deal of time mulling over while my body does other, more relevant actions.

One area that has me stumped is how and why we "help" one another. I was raised a version of Catholic, and the teachings I heard were pretty heavy on the martyrdom tip. In that camp, to give is to sacrifice, quite literally, as did the lord and savior on the cross. To this living day, I'm fuzzy on how one man's death did anything for the rest of us, as we've obviously just gone on to sin like mad, but whatever. I trust that there's a bigger answer that I never heard. What I did hear sounded intense and outside of a relatable reality, and there it stays. But, in 2011, I see people nailing themselves to the proverbial cross and expecting the same praise for it, all the time. Here's the problem there: no one pulling that stunt today is wiping clean the slate of a zillion others' sins, dude, least of all mine. Left and right, in my little life alone, I am witness to "acts of assistance" that no one asked for, and that no one knows how to respond to. Naturally, anger ensues on said amature martyr's part, and that's how messes are made. From this, I take away the simple lesson that I probably don't need to be anyone else's hero. Particularly when I'm not asked. Nor should anyone swing in on Tarzan's rope and try to be mine. In the struggle comes the strength, at least, it does for me.

Let me be clear: we all need the aid of another from time to time. I just think it's best to wait to ask... And to be asked.

That said, the other, even more abstract variety are the people who actually will not help you unless you seem as though you don't need it. I find this breed to be not unlike that which is only attracted to an unavailable person in a romantic capacity. This is neither mystifying nor admirable to me. I recently had cause to peek into the dark window of an associate's mind over burnt veggie burgers and decent fries. He happens to have a fat hand on the aging pulse of The Old Music Industry, and I find his outlook to be both informative and entertaining. When asked what it is, exactly, that record labels are looking for in an artist these days, he responded with, "Labels only want to work with artists who seem like they don't need a label". This sounded both gross and true to me, which ramped up the level of grossness a notch or two. How terrible that having your own footing is the only thing attracts another to, what, rush over and knock you over? Because that is often what happens, not only there in our handy musical metaphor, but also in life. God forbid you actually know what it is you're trying do and how to go about doing it.

It seems to me that both of the aforementioned tendencies stem from a self-serving place. Let's face it, ain't too many true Mother Teresa's cruising around in this life, just giving without receiving. Most people who so desperately want to give (whether you want/need what it is they're giving or not) are getting something from it, or hoping to. Rare are the truly selfless among us mortals. I will totally admit to having given in both tangible and intangible ways and feeling hurt when whatever I wanted wasn't returned. Most people give in search of reciprocity, gratitude, or in truly dark cases: your soul. I've been on the receiving end of all of those expectations, and they're pretty stressful to face, in their respectively varying degrees. While I have several ninja skills up my sleeve, mind-reading is not among them. When acts of kindness and/or generosity are bestowed upon me, of course I'm grateful. Am I interested in re-paying the debt for the rest of my life? Having a baby so I can hand it over? Extracting my soul from my frame and bottling it for you to either drink or put on a shelf for a rainy day? Being your Best Friend Forever? Not really. I'm interested in sending you a 'thank you' card with sparkly stickers and perhaps a gift certificate, because I'm operating under the assumption that you're both sane and aware that you've chosen to do something for me. Sadly, these two things are not always true.

So, fellow men and women, what's in it for us? What is that magical motivation behind our extended hands? What do we hope to gain? I ask this to myself as well, as I have all sorts of opportunities to practice mindful or manipulative behaviors, depending on which I choose on a given day. I have found that the best that I can do is to try to give from a place of honesty. What that has meant for me, is actually giving a lot less than I used to. When I was less self-aware, I gave more than I had, and then starved for it (damn that Catholic guilt). Then, as a backlash to that, I gave almost nothing for a while. Now, I try to just do what I can. I can't make quilts for your babies anymore, nor send two-hundred Christmas cards per year. These days, I can try to love you for who you are, and on rare occasion make you banana bread. And that's on a really good day.
I also do a lot of protecting my soul from prospective owners, and have done so from a very young age. I was raised in the Soul Trade, and know all too well how easily one can lose the title to their own essence. I nearly lost mine during a particular British Invasion a few years back, but I'm all in tact today. I even still have my own shadow.
The Give and Take is a weird chapter of the bigger Human Condition, and I'm reading every page. It's fascinating material.

To borrow a sign-off handle from my pal Otis,
"Soulfully", buick audra

setting my dials to "rock"

2011-06-29T14:48:00.008-05:00

I played a show here in town last night. My friend Cole Slivka hosts a weekly night over at the Family Wash in East Nashville called Short Sets. It's exactly what it sounds like. A handful of performers fill the roster each week and do about five songs apiece, or twenty-five minutes of music (which, scarily, can be comprised of what may be only one song). Anyhow, I shared a bill with my pal Josh Fuson and his friend Patrick Rickleton. The night was book-ended with performances by Cole herself and the owner of the joint's most recent project, The Carpetbaggers. Jamie's great, and not nearly as visible as he should be in the music scene around here... But, that's a rant for a different day.

I've been exploring the whole being-a-grown-up thing lately, in the area of playing with just regular folk. By regular folk, I mean people with whom I have no familial or friendship-based history. After an eternity of playing music with my closest of kin, I decided it was time to try out the Other Thing. I have to say, it's pretty great. Sure, the feels are all different, and there's no mind-reading involved (was there ever?), but there's something to be said for having short and sweet interactions with your band that exclude side dramas about anyone's personal life. I've been very lucky on both ends of the spectrum, however. Both my Family Band and my group of Grown-Ass Strangers are killer players, so I've never been without brilliant cohorts. I usually feel like I'm the one who needs to polish my chops, just to keep up.

I learned to play guitar and write songs while playing in a band with my brother and oldest friend. We called ourselves 33 Slade, and spent about eight years terrorizing the very limited rock scene of the Boston area. My brother Bo Bertold played drums and my pal Levi Fuller rocked the bass while I sang and did some stuff on/to electric guitars. I had next-to-no inhibitions, and thought nothing of playing super loud, fuzzy guitar and yelling at the top of my lungs. For years. On top of that, I was also wearing war paint and almost nothing else. I love that girl that I was back then. She was a total bad ass in every way. Yes, she may have been a touch insane, but she had one thing that I sometimes lack: guts. Somewhere along the Maturity Pipeline, fear gets introduced to our psyches. In some areas, this is good. Perhaps we no longer drop into twelve foot skateboarding ramps, ensuring that all of our bones will still be in tact by the day's end. We pay our bills on time, now caring whether or not our credit score is any good. We go to sleep at a reasonable hour at least a few nights a week, because our jobs matter somewhat now... The basics. But, for me, it also meant trading in the war paint and the Tube Screamer for an acoustic guitar and a sundress. I'm not sure why or how that happened, but it surely happened. I went from being Buick Prentice to Buick Audra, and that change was physiological.

I didn't start playing until I was twenty. That goes ditto for my songwriting. You hear about these twelve-year-olds who are already running their own bands and playing all kinds of instruments... I'm here to tell you: I wasn't one of those kids. At twelve, I was playing clarinet in the school band, obsessing about my then boyfriend, Jay Murray, and listing to an eclectic mix of music that ranged from the Chili Peppers to The Deele (nothing has changed there). I wasn't sitting in my room with a Strat playing Metallica riffs, I promise. I've actually still never done that, and probably never will. (Who cares about Metallica riffs?) Because I'm self-taught, I oddly never went through that phase of learning a bunch of songs by other artists on guitar. Fifteen years in, I've still only played a handful of songs that I didn't write.
They are:
1. 'Wildflowers' by Tom Petty
2. 'Would' by Alice in Chains
3. 'About A Girl' by Nirvana
4. 'Round of Blues' by Shawn Colvin
5. 'Skyway' by The Replacements
6. 'Weakness' by McRad
7. 'If It Isn't Love' by New Edition (Jimmy Jam/Terry Lewis)
Oh, and a weird (maybe terrible) version of 'This Little Light of Mine'. No comment on that last one. In each of my "covers", I've COMPLETELY re-written the guitar part, if there was one to start with at all. (New Edition's arrangements are pretty devoid of guitar, typically.) I have no idea how to listen to and lift the exact part that is played on the albums, and I'll take that even further: I don't care.
It's art. It's there to be interpreted. At least, that's my opinion. I say this to admit that I've been basically winging it on my instrument since the beginning.

When 33 Slade finally laid down the guns, and I became Buick Audra, I lost and found a few things. I explored an entirely new sound that involved layers of acoustic instruments, vocal harmonies, and winding melodies. That was really the point at which I became a producer. While I had co-produced the Slade's second album, Harmonies For One with Matt Squire, it wasn't until I was on my own that I allowed myself to run with every idea I'd ever had. I started co-producing my solo music with an old friend, and we had a blast doing things that we'd never allowed ourselves to do before, in our respective rock-based pasts. It swept me up and drove me to get educated about the worlds of Americana, bluegrass and folk. I've been eating that information for breakfast for years. I've since performed with ukulele, mandolin, autoharp and an assortment of acoustic guitars on my own recordings. I even moved to Nashville, for sobbing out loud. But, on the flip side, I have a very distant and cold relationship with my electric guitars, my Ibanez Analag Delay pedal and my amps. They've just been sitting around probably harboring major resentments towards the Taylor guitar that has been so prominently in my favor since it came into the fold in 2006. Who can blame them?

Well, life just gave me some pretty amazing opportunities to try something else for a while.
A. My beloved Taylor isn't long for this relationship, I'm afraid. She's being re-claimed by a gift horse any day, and we can barely look at one another.
2. My lead guitar player wasn't able to make my show last night, and I felt suddenly inspired to embrace the moment with some of Buick Prentice's piss and vinegar.

For five years, I've played the Taylor live. If I've played with a band, I've played acoustic rhythm and had some fancier player than me do all of the electric stuff. I know where that came from, too. It came from working with a particular musician who made me feel like I didn't play very well, surely not as well as him. And I believed it... Until now.
When my guitar player canceled last night, I just snapped into an old mode and got out my 1960 Fender Duo-Sonic that has been in it's guitar case, untouched, for literally six years. We talked it out, and she decided to forgive me for the night. I played with only Tim Marks on electric bass and Paul Griffith on drums, and we ruled. We were loud, we were happy and we were playing rock music.
I think I smiled through the entire set. Everything in my mind and body was saying, "Oh, right... We know how to do this." We want more.

I dare say that I'm starting to "get it". I have such resistance around certain lessons in life, especially when they hurt, but once in a grand while I actually get the clarity around the real message. It's time to change, again. I've made the beautiful records with my loved ones, with hollow wooden instruments of all shapes and sizes. I've told the stories of those relationships and how they shaped who I am today. I have loved that Taylor guitar and all she has taught me about myself as a writer and a musician. And now it's time to move on to the next chapter.
And friends, the next chapter involves getting loud. Stay tuned.

Thanks for listening,
buick audra prentice

P.S. Here are the songs I played last night, and the dress I wore, which is made of a vintage tablecloth (dyed peach by me) and a dish towel.

younger all the time

strong as you think

northern star

brilliant mistakes

your best friend

la front

la back

la pal, Josh Fuson

la bodice

la skirt

giving ground

2011-06-26T21:47:00.007-05:00

I can't believe that the year is almost half over. I have a bad habit of tallying up the Goods and Bads of the year at hand, and measuring them against those of years past. This tends to have a disastrous impact on my self-esteem, but I do it anyway. Truth be told, I've only ever had one year of Kicking Ass year on paper, and it's long gone. And anyway, it was the kind of ass-kicking that makes your aunts proud. Boring.

So far, this year has been a terrific snarl of good intentions and life lessons. Just when you think you've graduated from What Not To Do 101, you're right back in the first day of class. In the Intentions column, we have (a.) The completion and release of Family Album, and (b.) An attempt to collaborate on artistic ventures with real (not imaginary) folks. Conversely, in the Lessons column, we have (a.) The family and friends estrangement project (please see item a. of previous list), and (b.) The realization that "collaborate" means "control" to some people, and those very people walk around looking normal like everyone else, making them almost impossible to detect at first glance. I fall into these traps and have only my non-super-power tools with which to dig myself out. This mostly results in me feeling tired and bruised most of the time. All I have are words and truth. Sucks.

I don't drink Red Bull. I don't go to parties and get louder with every passing hour, operating under the assumption that everyone will surely benefit from what I have to say. I don't flirt. I don't punish people by taking love, objects or communication away from them.
I'm not saying that I've never done any of those things, but I am saying that I don't do them today. I've learned that those behaviors don't suit who I am, and more importantly, who I want to be.
I want to be an adult who respects themselves and those around them. I choose not to have friendships or relationships that trade in bullshit. I'm shy. I have a partner that I adore, so flirting is moot. And lastly, I spent what felt like an eternity in a "creative situation" with a person who was drinking Red Bull like all the water on Earth had evaporated for good, and it was a nightmare. Have a juice and be quiet, already.

That said, I have sadness about What Could Have Been, had I only needed less at different points in my life. If only I hadn't valued sleep, health of both the physical and emotional variety, dignity or honesty... Then I could have really made some shit happen. But what? Fame and fortune? Family harmony? World peace? It hardly seems likely that in advocating for my basic requirements as a human, I've managed to dismantle as many as twelve of my relationships within the past three years, right? Likely it is not. But, true it is. There have been times when it has felt almost Biblical in nature, like an Exodus of some kind. I half expect frogs to fall from the sky any day now. I wish that I were the kind of sunny person who was able to just march ahead, unscathed by it all, rattling off things that they're otherwise grateful for, but I'm not. I spent far too much of my youth in my bedroom with Smiths and Cure records to have turned out that way. Sure, Robert wrote some deceptively cheerful tunes about it being a lovely Friday, and how he and some lucky other were tea-drinking cats. Fine. But he also wrote 'Letter To Elise' and 'How Beautiful You Are', and I imagine he spent a fair amount of time in the cold bathwater after the composition of each of those heartbreak horrors.
And Morrissey, forget it. From unrequited love to general human disappointment, the man has said his piece on the razor blade that loving someone else can be. Anyone who tracks a chainsaw in the middle of their song has been burned a time or two. I am a dutiful student of both of their work, and have to agree: most days do feel like Sunday around here.

So, now what? Just songs about murder and hate and blood? Perhaps. Or, I could pretend to be like everyone else I see in this Music City I live in... Hungry for attention and the first prize in a mysterious, never-ending contest. (Now the murder music looks even more appealing.) No, neither will do for today. Today I get to chew on the bitter root of forgiveness. Whenever I hear people talk about forgiveness, two things immediately spring to mind:
1. That people are arrogant lunatics who think they're setting one another free by way of "forgiving" them.
2. That Don Henley's song on the subject must be a true musical masterpiece, because it literally plays in my mind every time I hear the word. That's a powerful hook, right there.
But seriously, forgiveness is what I struggle with today. Yes, I've been wronged in a myriad of ways that range from very real abuses to unknowing carelessness. I've suffered with all of them, and still do, to some extent. But, I'm not sitting here with a wand that will bounce over each person's name and "forgive" them. No. The name I need to look at is my own. Guess how I know? Because they're all gone now.
All of those relationships that hurt me, or let me down... They're gone. But, I still carry them around and let the weight of it all be bigger than the good I have today.
My brother recently told me that I'm an angry person, which only made me angrier. It did so, because I have felt justified in my anger for all of these years. These things really happened to me. And so they did. But they're not happening today.

Truth is, I don't now what's happening today. People ask me about it all the time.
"What's happening with the album? The video?"
"What's going on with your brother these days?"
"What happened with that record you were making with ___________?"
"When are you moving to L.A.? What's the plan?"
Man, I ain't got answers to all that. Shoot. And the answers I do have aren't very glamorous. See, that's the problem with kicking ass. Do it once, and people think that's your standard for living. Like you're just going to wake up every morning and conquer life. You'll make hit records, design for celebrities, manage perfect personal affairs, give fantastic advice, have a clean house and look AMAZING all day long. Well, gang, I hate to disappoint you, but my big victories this month have been making Indian food from scratch and deciding to write a book about a New Jack Swing album from the '80's. Not exactly award-winning accomplishments. But, they make me smile, and I take note of that these days. In a time of such massive transistion in all areas, smiles are a valuable commodity. I'll take 'em where I can get 'em, if you know what I mean.

No, 2011 might not be the year I impress the World with my artistic genius and intellectual prowess. It might not be the year I mend my severed family ties, or cure Autism. It may not be the year I finally solve the Zodiac murders (although, it also may be the year for that. The theories are strong)... But I'd love for it to be the year that I give myself a break and learn to forgive myself for being human. The wise people say , "Forgiveness is letting go of the hope for a better yesterday". It always stops my heart when I hear it, because I realize that I'm still in that cycle of holding out for a different outcome of the past.
I'm not perfect. I can't undo my nuts fifteen-year-old behavior. I can't change who I was at twenty-one, or even thirty-one. And you know what? I also can't apologize for it for the rest of my life. Anyone who thinks I need to is not a friend. And I can let them go.

All of this self-realization has wiped me out, but first thing tomorrow, I'm making wand to bounce over my own name... Perfect people have wand-making supplies, right? RIGHT?

Thanks for listening,
buick audra

human differential

2011-06-18T07:29:00.007-05:00

I'm in a stage of sorts. These days I take vanilla in my coffee, listen almost exclusively to music written and produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and I lose people. You heard me right: people.

I grew up in a situation that I don't hear many people describing as their own upbringing. While I had some normal things in place, I also had some extreme oddities at play. These were the details that set me apart from other kids in the numerous schools I attended, and that still make me different today. At least that's how I feel. The evidence of my life's course would support this theory.

I just made an album about my "family". It's a challenging term to swallow lately, as the lonely truth is that only two members of my family of origin will have anything to do with me today. Neither of them is a parent. In a lifetime that handed me not two, but three parents, at thirty-five I can't call any of them to chat. I have one who was seemingly never interested in me and hasn't called in twenty years, one who resents the very ground I walk on, and one who has spent many futile years trying to make me into something I could never be. That last bit comes up again and again. Knowing who we can never be leaves us with a better understanding of who we are. This, I am finding to be more true on a daily basis.

When I was a child, I didn't have choices. Everything from my diet to my dress was dictated by the whims of the adults around me. I had one primary parent who held very strong opinions on most matters, and these were passed on to me as Truths. We like the Rolling Stones, we don't like Led Zeppelin, we love spinach, etc. I think this happens more often than not, and it's not so crazy when applied to trivial things like Richards vs. Page and your preference in leafy greens. It starts to get a little more complicated when applied to major lifestyle decisions, and other family members.

I was three when my brother was born. We share fifty percent of the same DNA, and the other halves are quite different. Mine came with an aptitude for playing sloppy acoustic guitar and weighing no more than a hundred and ten pounds in my lifetime, and his came with a love of the outdoors and dogs. The familial representation of my half has been absent from very early on. I am fairly certain that I'm not claimed as a daughter on that side, and haven't been for possibly all of my life. On my brother's side, however, the familial presence is mighty. His lineage is alive and well, and it's taking prisoners, if you're interested. In the absence of my own tribe, I was sort of absorbed into theirs as a young person. It was an odd fit from the downbeat, but again, as a kid... You just sort of run with the wolf pack you're in. A strange pack is better than none, you think. You think. Somewhere around sixteen, I raised some issues. These were not light topics about going-to-the-Janet-Jackson-concert (I wish), but rather I-don't-feel-ok-in-my-life sorts of things. What I received in response was anger with a side helping of shame. This pivotal moment would set the stage for another sixteen years of this pattern. To be honest and accountable, I signed up for it. There were things in it for me. There was a weird whiplash of love that was present from time to time, there was the hope that I could placate the need to be honest with myself in order to "make it all work", and there were The Gifts. In hindsight, I was straight up bought and sold. Check this out.

After that very first Shame Party, I was given a vintage diamond ring. In coming years, I would receive lavish gifts that included expensive clothing, travel, MY EDUCATION, meals and cold hard cash. I'm not proud of it, but I was a broke artist/musician with little idea of the damage I was doing in accepting it all. I felt a distinct mixture of confusion, shame and gratitude for most of my life until a few years ago. In 2006, I was given a guitar by that camp. One of them bought it, didn't like how it played, and moved on to what they considered to be a Better Instrument. The guitar came my way, and I accepted it with open arms. I had never owned an acoustic before and was just in the beginning stages of writing and recording my album Singer. I love that guitar more than I have ever loved an instrument. It stays on a stand in my bedroom, at the foot of my bed. I've written over two hundred songs on it, played it on four albums, and have performed with it at every show I've done over the last five years. Shortly after it came into my possession, a major trauma occurred in the family. The confusion I'd felt for all of those years gave way to harsh black and white clarity. Truths loomed over lies, winning out at last. I have never been the same, nor has my relationship the pack of wolves. We all readjusted our sails and went in different directions. I'm just glad we made it out alive.

So, here I am all these years later, living in Nashville, writing my songs, kissing my cat, and don't you know that the Big Bad Wolf just came a-callin'. A week ago tomorrow, I got a letter demanding that I give the guitar back. My guitar. The instrument that I have superstitious, sentimental and creative attachments to. Apparently, if I'm not going to become a wolf once and for all, I don't deserve to play a wolf instrument. This is the going argument from that side, I kid you not. Needless to say, I was livid. On top of that, all of the shame and fear that outline every single memory I have of my childhood came rushing back and I thought my heart was going to finally give out from the strain of it all. My default setting is anger, which sucks, but the best that I can do is keep it at bay. There seems to be no way to re-wire my system at this point. I swear, to not reply with a threat of actual murder or arson (at least) was a profound accomplishment. For anyone who has ever been bullied by an abuser, you know where I am with this. The pain in knowing that people who are supposed to love you would choose to punish you for what you are and are not capable of... It can't be measured. It can barely be expressed. (And believe me, I've spent years in the practice of doing just that.)
I went through every stage of grief about twelve times, and now I'm just tired. I've got no fight left, and I just want quiet. I'm sending the guitar back. Not because I think they're right (quite the opposite, actually), but because I just want to be left alone. Something in my heart finally cried, "Surrender, Dorothy".

In dealing with all of my losses, both in family members and outside people, I come back to one topic over and over: is love conditional? My hurt and rage tell me yes. I want to throw love up on the cross and burn it alive because I feel so betrayed by it. But my intellect and true heart of hearts tell me no. I think that this is the truth I sit with today: Love is not conditional, but admiration and respect surely are. I may love a wolf or two, but the respect has dipped into the negative numbers, and I'll be surprised if it ever crawls back up to zero. This brings me back to choices. I'm not a little kid anymore. I'm not at the mercy of the adults who were supposed to make sure I was safe and fed anymore. And furthermore, I didn't choose to be a wolf, and I'm not. Of that, I'm certain. I can eat kale, listen to Robert Plant all day long, and you know what? I think Mick Jagger seems awful. There, I said it.

Want to hear an amazing storybook ending to this cross-genre tale? When I finally let go, and breathed the sigh of defeat about my beloved instrument, I weakly put it out to the universe that I was in need of a new guitar. I don't have much money, and I'm not the Queen of Connections, that's for damn sure. I LOVE the exact make and model of the one I've been playing all these years, and honestly, just want the exact same one. She's a Taylor 714ce. A beauty. Phone calls were made, prayers were whispered, and within two days I had a Taylor endorsement. That is the craziest thing I've maybe ever written. I get to pick a dreamy new guitar out, they'll send it to me and I'll pay an artist's rate, which is a huge help. That elicited a shriek and a fan-kick from me. It doesn't fill the hole of the losses, but it's such a beautiful lining to my life-long raincloud. I can't wait to write two hundred more songs and serenade the cat with my new guitar. I'll have to keep that in mind when I pack up the old one and send her back to Wolfville. Sigh.

Now I have to put my red cape and ruby red slippers on to go see the Alexander McQueen show at the Met. I bet he knew a thing or two about wolves. Just remember this: you can take the slippers away from the girl, but she's still gonna find her way to Oz. Oh yes she is.

Thanks for listening,
buick audra, new appreciator of Led Zeppelin

the work

2011-05-24T22:36:00.004-05:00

I have no idea what other people think about.
I walked around Manhattan today and looked at people's faces, trying to gain some insight into what their minds might be doing. Outside of the occasional verbose lunatic, I got nothing.
Me?
I think about work.
All the time.

I'm up here in New York for a job. Some folks might consider their jobs to be their work. Not me; It's just a job. I show up somewhere, the tasks are outlined, and I carry out my due diligence. It's how I pay for my home, car, cat food, cupcakes and high heels. But mostly (to borrow a phrase from a dear friend), it "funds the dream". Ah, yes. The Dream, my darlings, is my work.
I don't have kids. I don't buy nice clothing. I don't own every gadget that Apple makes. I have work. For the time being, these things are mutually exclusive. When you're the mind, body, machine and heart behind what you do, that other stuff stays out of reach. Way out of reach.

I'm blue these days, and I just admitted it to myself. I've been in a bit of a post-album-release haze, and couldn't put my finger on what the true matter was. But, after a closer look, I see that for the first time in years, I'm without the drive of a deadline or production schedule. My last project's creation spanned three years, and within that time, I birthed two other bastard projects. That's a lot of songs, and a lot of listening to your own voice (and some other voices you may or may not ever need to hear again). All three ventures were crash courses in awareness and humility, in their individual ways. With my own record, Family Album, I had to readjust my expectations about every four minutes, the entire way. People bowed out, other people jumped aboard, we changed our minds about songs, someone played steel drums... It was mayhem. Beautiful mayhem, but mayhem just the same. Still, the biggest lesson that came from that, was that I have everything I need within me. I didn't know that before I was forced to prove it. It's been powerful information to have, and it's a truth that gets challenged on a daily basis, let me assure you. The other two projects (which, in my mind, are jailed up in a music orphanage somewhere), taught me that there is absolutely nada that I can do about anyone else. Ever. Don't worry, I'll forget that and have to learn it again. I promise.

Day in and out, my brain hears music. I work on my songs, and imagine the greater contexts that will support them, which ultimately become albums. I visualize the imagery that might precede the music, giving the audience something to attach themselves to: A face, or a location of significance. I think about why some people matter so much, and admire their fierce bravery and strength of will. I wonder if the risks that they took were optional in their minds, or if they were just givens, written in invisible stone. Was Amelia Earhart ever afraid that she would fail? Did Sylvia Plath know that her story would give women like me a path to walk down in her wake? Was Frida Khalo even concerned that anyone else saw her work, or was it just her way of marking the days? These women have taught me, and I'm a grateful student of their very trajectories. They lend me courage when my own reaches an unimaginable low.

We defeat ourselves, you know. We have all kinds of grand reasons why We Can't. We build elaborate moats around ourselves that would take a genius to navigate the trenches of, in order to safely reach the other side. We're master security technicians. The smarter you are, the better suited you are for the job.
I, Buick Audra, admit to having said at least three, if not all, of the following things:

1. I can't afford to ___________________________.
2. I don't know how to ___________________________.
3. No one ever helps me with ___________________________.
4. In order to ________________, I need to buy or steal ____________________.
5. I never have time to ___________________________.

Doesn't that look awful? I'm a bit beyond the pale just seeing it in print, myself.
The absolutely horrifying truth is that some of them are still true. I'm here, on someone else's (very nice) computer feeling sad about my weird life that involves both a Job and Work. I feel envious that some folks get to bypass the Job part of that equation and just create freely. I feel freaked out that I missed the imaginary boat to Awesomeland, and it may not come this way again. I'm mad at all kinds of elders for what they did and didn't teach me. I hate Coldplay. (That last one's irrelevant, but also true.) But, seriously: How soon is now, Johnny Marr?

I read some literature this morning that is intended to soothe the souls of people like me. Instead, I looked at the words, and saw: Permission To Fail. It was right there on the page. It talked about surrendering our own will and replacing it with a faith that basically everything will be as it should, and that all will be fine and lovely. The part that truly sent me to the mattresses was a bit about how the setting and achieving of our own goals may not give us what we ultimately need in this lifetime. Listen, I know that I'm supposed to slather on a bunch of Trust, and just feel peaceful in knowing that no matter what I bust ass to accomplish, it's out of my hands... But you know what? I think that sucks. There has to be a middle ground, kids. There has to be room for an honest belief that our lives are going to land where they will, but also that we can take actions to further our causes. Actions that will matter. Actions that won't be in vain, only to be swept away by some god, or the universe or Divine... All under the heading of Getting What We Need Instead Of What We Want/Live For. I want a meeting with that committee. I'll gladly go ahead and shake hands with Divine, Freddie Mercury and whoever else holds a seat, and represent the mere mortals who have actual dreams. Sign me up.

Call me stubborn, call me sick; I still believe in trying. Yes, I'm tired. Yes, I wish I knew how better to get my art out in to the world beyond my twelve friends and two family members. I don't yet. But, I'm going to sleep on it tonight, and tomorrow, maybe the literature will hold something a little bit more inspiring to draw from. Maybe my fear of music managers will evaporate and I'll meet just the person to help me do this. Maybe not. I want to be extraordinary. Not famous, not rich, but extraordinary. I want my life to matter. I want for some girl to sit with my words, fifty years from now, with this same ache in her heart. Because this kind of ache can only breed one thing: work.

Thanks for listening.
xo, buick audra

"Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive,
trying not to confuse it with what you do to survive..."
~Jackson Browne

split the difference

2011-05-19T09:44:00.003-05:00

I am thirty-five years old. My only sibling is three years younger.

That's thirty-two years on this planet together. So far, it's been a trip.

Recently, people have started to see us together and remark on how much we look alike. That's a brand new development for us. We're much more used to tempering the shock and awe that follows our claim that we are, in fact, brother and sister. You see, we're not exactly similar on all fronts.

The going observation about Bo and me is that we're Polar Opposites. It's true, we walk on different roads most days, and from the superficial to serious aspects of who we are: we're individuals. I have a cat; He has dogs. My hair is straight as a bone; His is curly. I'm petite; He's Herculean. I'm high-strung; He appears mellow. We are divided on the issue of Steely Dan (I'll let you guess who's on which side of that fence). The list goes on, and we're constantly reminded by our families and friends of just how dissimilar we two are.

But, we grew up on the same farm in South Florida, eating the same fruit off of the same trees. While we do have different biological fathers, we share a mother, and she is no mute force. We are both blue-eyed, though, my color is close to that of denim and his has a touch of turquoise swirled in. We are both coffee people. We both eat oatmeal for breakfast everyday. And, quite seriously, we both kneel at the altar of Michael McDonald, and know he can do no wrong.

I just had an opportunity to look at my other half through a new lens; It was that of his own music. Bo and I have played together for about fifteen years now, on and off, but the music has been primarily written and sung by me, while Bo has always kept the steady beats on drums. In recent years, he's truly come into his own as a songwriter and we just put a dent in what will be his first full-length album. I'm acting as engineer and co-producer. Since I'm not performing on this project yet (though, I will play some guitar and sing as well), I get to really listen. Listening is what making a good record is about, if you ask me. It's not my moment to shine, it's his. I've been doing my best to help him tell his story through these songs by way of giving the powerful words a strong platform to launch from. Through that process, I've heard one undeniable thing: similarity. We're not so different after all.

I feel like I was born into extremes, and from there, I've operated from extreme perspectives. I'm not sure if I can really say that I see everything as "black and white", as I have very little relationship with either of those colors, truth be told. (I'm from Miami, and we celebrate color.) I can say that I definitely lean to the light and dark, though. Other members of my family have a better grasp on the gradients between. My brother, for instance, lives in shades of blue. He wants blue water, blue skies, and blue walls when he goes to bed at night. I'm learning about this. My own color palette is changing lately, and I find myself drawn to things that I never was before. I enjoy the shift, and I have new awareness about how other people might feel or think. Does it make my tendency to want pink polka-dots on my front steps wrong? Hell no. It just allows me to appreciate someone else's simple light grey stoop for what it is: simple.

Maybe it's about keeping our eyes and ears open. And our hearts. Maybe the rainbow allows room for all of us, somewhere. And maybe we're allowed to explore that entire spectrum throughout our lifetime, without being ashamed of where we used to be within it or might want to go next. The basic theory around color tells us there are pairings that are scientifically compatible. These are called Complimentary. Our brains make sense of these duos when juxtaposed. The same is true in music. In many cases, the third note above another note will create what we know as Harmony. They will never be the same note; They will always be different, but your ear loves them together. I'm given great comfort by these truths, as I feel like it takes the pressure off of us to conform to one another's ways. We can maintain our E flat in purple and someone else can rock a G in yellow, and it can be perfect. We can do this. Today, I'm going to try to focus on the harmony. The bad notes are out there, as is a whole world of beige, but they don't have to be dominant. And when things are dissonant, there's a reason. Around here, it usually means that someone needs to re-tune.

Thanks for listening.

xo, buick audra, singer, songwriter, sister

yo, can I live?

2011-05-13T12:17:00.011-05:00

I've been away from home for twenty-six days of the past thirty. Between "making a living" and making a record, I've spent nearly a month in beds other than my own. I wish I could be a Bad Ass and say that I was on tour, but I can't. Know why? Because I can't afford to go on tour. People like me rarely can.

Let me tell you about people like me.

We work day jobs that we're ashamed of. We lie about them, or give vague answers when pressed by people who can't or won't read social cues. We write our own songs because we have something to say beyond the heartache-being-on-us, or doesn't-everybody-wanna-have-a-one-night-stand. We make records in our homes or studios that people generously let us use for much lower than the going rate. We produce our own tracks because we spent our twenties listening to every beat and melody of every song we thought was moving, and think we know how to better use that education than Some Guy who went to Berklee might. We need to know why and how things work, and also why they don't. We look up what mics get used on which amps by certain recording engineers. We fund our own projects because we don't have the financial backing of a label or mysterious benefactor. We book our own shows. We hire our own backing bands. We teach players the changes in the songs. We read Tape Op magazine in line at Whole Foods, even when we try to resist. We have pictures of Steve Albini taped to the walls of our record labels that we own and operate ourselves. We art-direct our own photo shoots and album covers. We design and make our own wardrobe for performances. We are tired. In the dark night of the soul, we're terrified that we're not doing enough to honor our art even though it's killing us to do as much as we do. We cry when no one is looking.

In the last three years, I've written more than seven albums worth of material for myself, produced and released Family Album, and co-written/co-produced two complete albums with projects that I invested time, money and creativity into. The latter items may never see the light of day because we couldn't get the personality stuff ironed out. Maybe a wiser, less exhausted me would wax poetically about how it was all a lesson, and that I'm right where I'm supposed to be... But, I don't really feel like that. I feel like I wasted a bunch of time. It's hard enough, man. It really is. Maybe the truth of the matter is that I'm mad at myself for bothering. I struggle with how and when to engage, if at all. I don't really have any interest in co-writing a bunch of hit songs the Nashville way, nor have I ever felt inspired to start a proper band since the indefinite hiatus of my old band 33 Slade commenced. Individual people have approached me here and there about co-producing, performing and writing, and it always feels like a compliment in the moment. Why wouldn't it? But, I manage to snag some truly unprepared folks with my net. Yes, I love to write, sing and arrange music with people; It's the human connection amplified by ten, sometimes more. It's pure magic when it works, and nothing else can really compare to it, in my opinion. But man, sit across from that same person and try to have a balanced, adult conversation about What Happens Next and you're in for a surprise, friend. I'm simply not interested in abandoning my own ship for your dinghy. Like, at all.

I'm in Massachusetts right now, allegedly producing an album that I actually happen to care about the final outcome of. It's not mine, but it's the music of someone I hold very dear and I'm happy to be a part of this process. However, I'm currently in a bedroom listening to the tracking that's happening in the next room because I just can't hang. I'm being given a rare opportunity to view an old chapter of my own through this experience, and it's pretty hard to look at. At a certain stage of my musical and personal path I was very fearful of working with anyone outside of my group of close friends and family. It was intense, difficult, disappointing and occasionally amazing. The brass tax of that approach is that perhaps our loved ones aren't always equipped to render the results we seek in our creative ventures. Perhaps they can't actually handle the suggestions and criticisms that are a natural part of the situation. Perhaps they play a six string bass and think the tone is fine, even when the low B string is an atrocity. (Sigh.) But, these lessons aren't mine to teach anyone else. We all have to learn why this might not be the best plan. And nothing educates us better than a big ol' mess.

So, I ask myself, "What am I getting out of this, if this drives me so crazy?". On the one hand, it's very cool to see this music come to life, as it's been a long time in the formative stages. On the other hand, I'm doing it again; I'm pouring myself into a project that isn't mine and having a hard time with the elements that are beyond my control.

I'm pretty sure six string bass is way out of my jurisdiction.

I need a vacation. I need to live in that Go-Go's song with the awesome lead keyboard melody. I need to go water skiing in a pink bathing suit. I need a sunburn. I need to drink virgin piña coladas (hold the whipped cream) at some resort where there are no buzzing pre-amps or self-righteous musicians who want to squabble about whether or not their iphone tuner app is more accurate than a stage tuner. I need to get back to basics and laugh about something that isn't on tv. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself because I don't have what I presume other people do. I need to get it together and call Steve Albini to book him for five days of tracking. In the immediate, I need to go and literally face the music that I agreed to be responsible for. I need to be nicer to this guy that I resent for even showing up at this session because he's in no way ready for this. I need to do some laundry. I need a cookie.

It boils down to me, and I hate that I know that. It was so much easier to blame the outside world for my own dissatisfaction. But, those days are long gone. I have to see this last album (that isn't mine) through and then get the hell on with it. Cuz that's how I roll. Once in a while, you have to look at your own reflection and straight-up ask, "Yo, can I live?". And unfortunately, you're the only one who can answer back.

Thanks for listening.

buick audra, four string bass lover, period.

Amish as it gets

2011-05-04T01:03:00.009-05:00

Call me old-fashioned, but I think a proper conversation has two sides.

Two or more people voluntarily exchange niceties, secrets, facts, what-have-you, and it's a dialogue. It's like tennis. The ball gets served to one side, and then hit back over the net. Right? It doesn't just get served over and over from the one side, either landing on the court or pelting the other player, now, does it? I don't think that's how it's supposed to go. I have, however, seen people hit tennis balls against walls and be perfectly satisfied with the return of their ball, time and again, from an inanimate object. Fine. But, if you ask me, that's a monologue.

For whatever reason, a certain kind of person finds me to be a fascinating specimen. I can't quite put my finger on what it is about them that makes it so, and I surely have no clue as to what they latch onto about me, but it's always been this way. I have just enough strangeness to really turn some folks' screws. Maybe it's my "unique" first name, maybe it's the African warrior women around my left wrist. Who knows. What I do know, is that the behavior that ensues is maddening. There I am, pummeled by The Questions which are always the same. I am thirty-five years old, and I have been answering anywhere from one to all of these questions every day of my life since I could speak. It goes something like this:

1. Were you conceived in the back of a Buick?

(You've lost my eye contact)

2. Does your father own a car dealership?

(Crickets)

3. Is you brother's name Ford?
(Crickets while I walk away)

4. Is your middle name LeSabre?

(If you've made it to this question, I'm long gone, and we'll never really know one another.)

5. Do you have siblings? What are their names?

I have one brother. His name is Boey.
6. Is he named after David Bowie?

I don't think so. I don't know. Maybe.

7. Why are you vegan?

Because I want to be.
8. What do you eat everyday?
I'm not sure that's any of your business.

9. Does it offend you when people eat meat in front of you?

Of course not.
10. Is your fiance vegan too?
No.

11. Do you and your fiance make music together?

Not really.

12. Why?

Because we have our own projects that we're pretty busy with.

It's a long life ahead. It'll happen, I'm sure.

13. What do you mean, you "produce" your own records?
That's a question for Google.
14. What's the difference between music engineering and production?

That's also a question for Google.

15. How did you win a Grammy?
a. I didn't tell you I did.
b. Same way everyone else does.

c. I have two.

16. Did you go to the Grammys?

No.
17. What kind of Country singer are you? Like Johnny Cash?

a. I'm not a Country singer at all.

b. No one is like Johnny Cash.

18. How do you know Joss Stone?

I don't.

19. How was working with (enter a celebrity's name here)?

Wonderful.

20. How many tattoos do you have?

I don't know, and please don't touch me.
21. Did this hurt?

Yes, and please stop touching me.

22. What do you mean you've NEVER had a beer? Never? Nothing? Weed? Nothing?!!!

I don't use any substances. That's what I mean.
23. But you know you're not really "straightedge" because you drink coffee, right?

Ok.
24. How do you get your protein?

From food with protein in it. Also, I eat babies. Alive.
25. Are you Amish?

Yes, I'm wearing a Smiths shirt and have tattoos all over my body...

But, I'm Amish all right. Amish as it gets.

And there it is. My daily questionnaire. To be clear: I love my name, my brother, my sweetheart, my diet, and my value system. I'm happy to have a civilized, balanced dialogue about any and all of it, just as I'd love to hear about some similar points of interest in another person's life. It's all about give and take. And respect. You can respectfully inquire about something without applying a tone of mocking or awe. You really can. And you really should. If you choose not to, you might be introduced to a baby-eating, unfriendly girl named Buick. And frankly, Mr. Shankly, it'll be all your fault.

Love,

That Girl

Snoopy, Shiraz and a very sneaky serial killer

2011-05-02T09:35:00.003-05:00

I'm in Wine Country. Santa Rosa, California, to be exact.

Don't ask me why, because it's not important (trust me), but it's incredible to be here just the same. I'm here on "business", though, none of my own. When I'm not writing and recording music, I'm held semi-voluntary hostage by another creative industry that sometimes shuttles me to cool places. This time, it's Sonoma County. For anyone who hasn't been here: get here. This place is proof that there is a god, or that there was one at some point. The landscape, air quality and peace of mind that is up for grabs here is unparalleled, in my opinion.
Or maybe it's just where I am in this moment of my life that makes me feel like this. Who knows.

I was feeling melancholy on the plane. I'd spent only three nights in my own bed before embarking on this journey, and had been nervously monitoring the health of my vintage cat, Amos. Plus, I'm growing more and more resistant to this "work" that I do with every passing day.
But, that's a topic for another time. I'll let you know when the book is finished. Anyway, I had the Work Trip Blues in the worst way. I flew from Nashville to Oakland, and then had a car bring me to Santa Rosa from there. I opened my eyes from the nap I'd taken during the drive to see a four foot tall statue of Lucy van Pelt at the entrance of the Hyatt that we had pulled up to. Y'all know Lucy. She's the bossy older sister of Linus, the endearing blue-blanket-toting kid who hangs out with the one and only Charlie Brown. I've stayed at a few Hyatts in my day, and not one of them had any kind of Peanuts situation goin' on, I promise.
I thought, "What kind of weird, theme-park scenario am I entering into, here?" And then, just like a cartoon, the light bulb over my foggy head turned on. This is where Charles Schulz lived. The genius who brought us The Great Pumpkin and A Charlie Brown Christmas (to name a few of his numerous contributions to the world) worked and lived right here for the last thirty years of his life. He got up every morning, ate a jelly doughnut and wrote/drew his daily Peanuts strip. Right here. If you know me, you know that I have a Snoopy and a Peppermint Patty doll on my guest bed, both original artifacts from my childhood. I am a huge fan. I have said many times that I think that Charles Schulz and Jim Henson both gave the world permission to believe in the good; to believe in one another. I still learn from their examples on a daily basis. This town celebrates Schulz's life and work completely, and you can't walk a full block without being reminded of that cheerful fact. They even named their airport for him. My sadness melted away immediately.

At that point, I resigned myself to enjoying what I could of this quaint town in my down-time from the project at hand. I was starting a ten day job with a group of people that I wouldn't know from Freddie Mercury, which is always a point of apprehension for me. Freelance can be weird like that. For whatever dysfunctional reasons, I am always saddled with a fear of, "What if this is finally the job where I have no idea what I'm doing, and it's obvious to everyone here?" Does anyone know what I'm talking about? It's the worst. There aren't enough self-help books in the world to undo that anxiety. It's seems to come with the territory, unless you just don't care. I straddle the line.

Turns out, I do know what I'm doing, at least I do this week. Ask me next week and I may have a different answer for you. Regardless, the locations I've been able to visit this week have been stunning. I have never seen such grounds. If I didn't know better, I would swear that I was in Ireland yesterday and Italy today. Northern California is in bloom right now, and there are vineyards for miles and miles. I don't drink, and I never have, but this up here is a living and breathing thing. We travel by RV to each site every day, and I make sure to ride shotgun either to or from everyplace we visit. I like to see all of the little surf shops and vintage stores that line the block-long strips of business on our drives. I like to think about who owns them and shops at them regularly. I like to listen to music in my headphones and select songs to match the visuals. I like it all. When I forget what's riding behind me in the RV, it's a perfect moment.

I had the pleasure of speaking with a local the other day, and he shared with me what he knew of this area's history with wine. He said that 1976 was the pivotal year. In 1976, a wine from this region of California won a blind taste test in France, and it put these vineyards on the map. There were about twenty vineyards at the time, and there are now over three hundred and twenty. I listened to his story as we drove through a vineyard in Alexander Valley and looked at the miles of perfectly spaced plants. They do this all year, tend to the plants. The harvest season is in the Fall, and from there, the success of their year is determined. Money, time, labor and love all get poured into the land and whatever it reaps is what it is. Some years are legendary, and some are not. This process spoke to me, and I have new respect for this group of strangers whose efforts so closely resemble those of any working artist. You do what you know how to do. You do what's right at the time. And no matter what the response is from the outside world, you get up the next day and you do it again. To the visitors of this land, the beauty is in the product, in the wines that they'll taste and take home to their families and friends as souvenirs. But to the people who work the ground, the beauty is in the process.

Now, the one thing I know about the Sonoma and Napa areas other than the bit about the wine, is that forty years ago, people started turning up dead. Regular folks, doing nothing out of the ordinary were being murdered, and brutally, at that. Just as Charles M. Schulz was moving his wife and kids here from down the road in Sebastopol in 1969, someone took to attacking couples and leaving one or the both of them dead. Talk about a paradox. What began as a few unrelated homicides became one of the most unnerving unsolved mysteries in the history of California: The Zodiac murders. The killings spanned most of the state and roughly ten years, and no one was ever charged. I'm fascinated by the case (can you tell?), and have read and watched everything that I can on the subject. Everyone from Dave Toschi to Robert Graysmith to Arthur Leigh Allen is of massive interest to me. It's a bit of a disorder at this point, but I'm going to just ride it out and see where it takes me. The thing that excites me about being here specifically, is that the case is actually still open in Napa, which is a proverbial stone's throw away. Things still float to the surface about who it might have been, and they've never really been able to let the case be properly closed. I find that to be unreal. Detectives working in several counties over several decades have failed to nail down exactly what happened around the killings that they believe are connected by one man. The locals will still talk about it, if you bring it up. It's a very real part of their history here, and they don't take it lightly. I don't blame them. It's surreal to walk down the adorable strip on 4th Street here in Railroad Square and think that whoever they were might have walked the same path. And no one knew it to look at them. That's the thing about serial killers, they all just look like some guy on the street. Because that's exactly what they are.

Like I said, this place is alive. I've made so many mental notes about things I'd like to do when I return, and who I'd like to do them with. My best friend and I need to come and drink all of the local coffee and scour the many antique markets. My sweetheart and I need to come and stay at one of the B&B's on the vineyards. My brother and I need to come and go to the Charles M. Schulz museum before the current exhibit on Siblings in Peanuts closes this summer... Et cetera. I'll definitely be back to do all of those things. But this trip, I'm on my own. I think that's probably exactly how it's supposed to be, too. The lessons are in our landscapes, and this has been a plentiful one to learn from. So far, I've been reminded to always expect the good, keep an eye out for the worst, to look out the window at the view, and to create the perfect soundtrack for what's happening around you. Messages received.
I might be a tad melancholy on the plane again, but this time, for different reasons. At least this time I'm headed towards my sweetheart and my little tux-clad cat. Here's to living.

Thanks for listening.

xo, bu

better than the Easter Bunny

2011-04-24T08:32:00.002-05:00

"... I cried for it all and wondered why so few songs were written about cats."

~David Sedaris

I have a Kryptonite.

Put me in the face of personal danger, loss, or conflict, and I'm likely to make it through. Hell, I'm likely to write fifty songs and build a clothing collection about it. But, tell me that something might be wrong with my friend, pet and roommate of the last sixteen-plus years, and I'm a blubbering mess. A mess, I tell you.

This past week I faced that very challenge.

My exquisite critter fell ill and exhibited some symptoms that were outside of his usual over-eating reactions. I watched it for a few days, adjusted some elements and was pretty sure we'd staved off the worst. Then I left town for the week. For whatever chaotic, un-simple reasons, I run around a lot. Too much. I work here and there, play shows where I do, and have loved ones all over Hell's Half Acre. It's losing its appeal on a daily basis, let me tell you. Anything outside of touring feels like a violation to my personal peace and happiness these days, and I'm working on solutions (Santa and The Great Pumpkin have been brought on as advisors). However, it is what it is right now, and I still find myself drinking Starbucks at airports far more often than I'd like. Amos stays home and watches Desperate Housewives and entertains his assorted visitors when they come to give him snacks and drag his squeaky mouse toy across the floor. (He humors us all with that one. He's like PhD smart at this point, but understands that we simple humans love the idea of cats and mice.) Usually he's just fine. Aside from some boredom that he expresses to me upon my arrival(s) home, he's cool. Well, not this last time.

The aforementioned symptoms worsened in my absence, and one of his visitors called me with a tone of concern in his voice. My heart sank. Not only did it sink in that moment, but it continued to sink for the following thirty-six hours, finally reaching a sort of sub-earth below New York City.

In all of my years as that animal's care-giver, I had never before had to ask someone to take him to the doctor. I felt like a failure. A fraud. Unfit to own and love a creature with my insane lifestyle. Guilt and shame ate me alive as I pictured my very resistant little animal on his way to the hated vet, with a non-me. The horror. Amos is not a "vet animal". We don't make cheerful, annual trips to the doctor for shots and check-ups. Hell-to-the-No. I've seen that cuddly, loving ball of tuxedo'd splendor turn into The Bad Kind of Cat in the presence of medical professionals. Warnings are administered, and when they are inevitably ignored, he follows through on all threats. To the bitter end. In short: he'll cut a bitch. Needless to say, we visit said offices only when absolutely necessary. I'd never dreamed that one of these visits would fall during one of my work trips. Talk about a nightmare.

From me to you, never do this: never look up what "might" be the cause of your pet's symptoms or behaviors online. What you will surely resign yourself to, is the prognosis of a fatal, painful disorder that you were a fool for not having detected sooner. It's the same with us humans, isn't it? All symptoms of the common cold can also be applied to Rye Syndrome, Mono and probably cancer. Forget it. It's a moot point. If you can stomach it, ask for a full work-up to be done, and then exercise some patience (preferably without forcing yourself to start to plan the back yard pet funeral in your mind). You may just be pleasantly surprised. Also, ignore the Doom and Gloom that will be projected on to your situation by The Insensitive. Man, I had no fewer than three men respond to me saying that my cat was sick with something to the effect of, "Oh yeah, we had to put out cat (or dog) down for that". Um, Thanks for NOTHING. These are the same people who love to tell a person like myself about how they were vegan for a while once (lies), and that they became really anemic and malnourished. This is my favorite kind of person. The I-didn't-have-success-with-something-so-there's-no-way-you-will-either variety. I manage to bring out the worst in this species, as I'm a dreamer and dreams are dangerous to some. But, that's a rant for another day. It would suffice to say that every animal is different, including humans, and that a set of symptoms in one will not mean exactly the same thing in another. It's just basic science. There are a zillion variables to consider (diet, blood type, genetics, etc).

There is also hope.

Amos spent one necessary night at the vet's, and two more that I requested. He didn't need to stay for medical reasons, but I felt better about him being there for the remainder of my trip, just in case. For now, we're working with one antibiotic treatment and some magic mix to sprinkle on his food. Fine. I'm not convinced that we're entirely out of the woods, but we're on our way. This experience forced me to face some very intense and scary realities that are on their way in coming years, but not today. Today we'll watch The Easter Beagle and eat Starburst jellybeans like it's 1999. For now, I'm grateful to be present in this moment with my pal. We have been witness to the other's life since October of 1994, and that right there is a gift. Here are some pictures of the beautiful beast that I love, Amos "Fatty" McPhee.

Thanks for listening.

xo, bu

the eye of the beholder

2011-04-08T01:20:00.008-05:00

Any Twilight Zone fans out there?

I'm a lifelong fan. I was bred into a love of Horror and all of its relative sub-genres. Some kids have gods; we had ghouls. Rod Serling's work was not as much about blood and guts, but rather, the horror of the mind. Everyone of us harbors deep, dark fears and suspicions about ourselves and the world around us, and the Twilight Zone did a fantastic job of illustrating those very frights, in explicit detail... In my humble (and biased) opinion.

Every New Year's Day and Fourth of July, the Sci-Fi channel runs a twenty-four hour marathon of all the old episodes. No matter how many times I see each of them, the thrill is the same. I mean, who isn't dying to see Shatner have a nervous breakdown because he's the only one who can see the weird monkey/monster on the wing of the plane? Screw barbecues and bars, sign me up for that.

Anyhow, my all-time favorite episode is The Eye of The Beholder.

Donna Douglas plays the part of Janet Tyler, a woman who has recently undergone surgery to correct her disfigured appearance. We are led to believe that her face is so outrageously abnormal that, should the procedure have failed, she will be forced to live in a protected community with others like herself. Cast away from society. Through a veil of bandages, she talks longingly about finally being normal, being able to rest easy in knowing that she is just like her peers, etc. There is a painfully long unraveling of the gauze that covers her entire head, until finally... We see her: stunning. The woman is gorgeous. Yet, there is an air of disappointment and unrest about the grand reveal. Oh yes.

It's not gone well, you see. This was how she looked all along, and the procedure was done in vain.
You think, "What the hell is going on right now?"

And then, with a sense of perfectly dark timing, the doctors' faces are shown to you, for what you now realize is the first time.... And they look like pig people. They're terrifying in every way. But they are all like one another, and only she is different... Making her the oddity.

I've seen it no fewer than fifty times, and I shriek every time.

Because guess what, boys and girls? It's no tall tale. This is how we measure what's Accepted and Tolerated right here in the Real World. Who's to say which perspectives are sane and which are totally nuts? The majority, that's who. You could look up at the sky, claim that it's blue, and have no reason to believe otherwise. But, I challenge you to spend a week with ten or so people who claim that it's actually green, and tell me how you feel by Day Seven. You might still think that that it's blue, but you'll also think that there are no absolutes, and that some folks are fit to be tied... And that you may well be among them. I've spent a good deal of my time on this planet feeling like a blue-sky-seer amid green-sky-proclaimers. It's both exhausting and maddening. At the end of the day, you can fill yourself up with every last mighty conviction in the world, but if you're steadily told that you're the one who's wrong, it starts to break you down. We can only defend so much, for so long. Even soldiers have to sleep.

The part that I always hated about Janet, is that she truly believed that she was unimaginably grotesque, just because the world had gone a piggish way. Didn't she ever secretly suspect that they'd flipped the script? I have a list of questions about all of that, which I've often yelled at the TV (to no avail, I might add), not the least important of which is: "Hey Janet, are you even attracted to the pig guys, or WHAT?" At the end of the episode, this smokin' hot guy comes to take her off to Misfit Island For Good-Looking People. He's a freak like her, naturally, and is going to help her ease into the transition of the whole thing. She begrudgingly goes along, and then shortly after that, Rod Serling is on the screen in that awesome suit, chain-smoking and telling us about the Dark Side of things. As if we don't know.

Some of us aren't sure how we ended up as the odd-men-out in Pigland. Some of us ate the same cereal for breakfast as the other good little piggies, and can't trace our steps back to that pivotal moment where we might have left the pig pen and gone on to develop different features that would set us apart. Some of us are sick of worrying about it altogether, tell you what. The mirror shows what it does, and we are not one another's mirrors.

I'll say this: I may not know the correct color of the sky, or whether I'm Right or Wrong in my convictions... But, when it comes time for me to be hauled off to The Island of Mortal Disappointments to wait it out, I ain't going. Nope. I'm staying on to fight for my rightful spot in whatever pig-faced reality I may be up against. And I'm keeping the hot guy with me, too. Take that.

~buick audra, anti-pig

turn and face the strange

2011-04-04T10:05:00.006-05:00

I'm cleaning out my attic.

There is no way to literally do this without proverbially doing it as well. The act alone is an exploration, excavation, and ultimately a moment of reckoning about who you've been at various points in your life. It's true. My own pile of awarenesses varies from a pink marabou-covered phone to the written critiques that my work received over the four years I attended art school. And there's quite a bit that makes up the In Between. Part of me is ashamed of having hauled these things with me from state to state, when all they do is sit in attics and basements... And part of me knows I'll do it again. Well, maybe not the phone.

How do we know when we have healthy relationships with objects? We tend to carry on any behaviors that we learn in our childhood, whether we know it or not. At thirty-five years old, I've looked a lot of those "traits" square in the eye and left 'em by the side of the road. But still, we are our parents' children, like it or not, and they were our first teachers. Here's what I have known: A person who has owned a house for roughly forty years, doesn't live there, but refuses to sell it. It is furnished almost exactly as it was in the beginning, apart from basic cosmetic updates. It stands alone. Conversely, another person who has almost never owned property, but rather, is nomadic by nature. They move whenever they deem it time for a change, and that can be anywhere from four months to four years after landing in any particular location. The caveat, is that they have mountains of worldly belongings that have to either move with them, or be placed in storage bins until further notice. That further notice is a vague, distant glow from a lighthouse, miles away. The signal is never received.

I have little-to-no relationship with Normal. I have been close pals with Extreme, Dramatic and Too-Scared-To-Decide for most of my life. However, I tire of them, and have been avoiding them on and off for a few years now. Still, they call. My own home is a museum of who and what I love, and I take great pride in its curation. I like to think that I have shed quite a bit of my material past, and only kept what I find beauty in, whether sentimental or aesthetic (hopefully both). But the boxes from the attic tell a slightly different story. They say that I own everything from my childhood, and don't know what to do with it. That there is no "home" from which I came, at which evidence of my younger self resides, with no pressure. I have friends with that arrangement in place. Their baby clothes and report cards lay lovingly in some closet at their home of origin... Not me. I've got it all. And it's a weird bunch of stuff to have, I'm not going to lie to you. There's a feeling that while some of it may not be that important you, it seems like it should be. And you keep it. But not today.

Today, I'm looking through the pile, and weeding it out with a very simple set of guidelines in place: If it doesn't contribute to the story of my art, it goes. Books about little pigs and their unlikely adventures: no. Slides from my first group show at MassArt: yes. And so on. At no point do I plan on having a retrospective about how weird and disjointed my personal life has been, but I will however have a show about the path my art has been on since the beginning. It's actually been quite nice for me to look back through the boxes and read the words of my professors and peers. I was on my way to becoming exactly who I am today. My work was visual, conceptual, narrative and heading towards the incorporation of my music (which was happening separately, at the time). Reading their praises, criticisms and suggestions with older eyes is so illuminating. I didn't hear them, back then. I felt unsupported in my department, which I don't think was untrue, but other people saw me, and loved my work. I must remember that in life. The loudest voices are the ones closest to you, especially if their words are negative. There might be a hundred people just beyond them singing your praises... And what will you hear? The three people up front who focus on what they don't appreciate about you or your process. It's so boring to be human sometimes.

I have also read through some old letters and notes from people I have known throughout the years. Some of those friendships are still in tact, and some of them are not. It's ok, though. We can't hold on to every single person on our journey. And I've had a long journey for someone my age. In my adolescence alone, I attended about ten different schools and lived in as many homes. All of those places came with people, some more than others. I've shared the stage with many many musicians, and created art with a good number of folks as well. Life goes on. This is why we take pictures, and then hoard them in our attics, right? For me, the work I've created has told the story of who I've been better than anything else. I'm enjoying honoring it, and giving it a place to live without the company of my old hardcore and punk cassette tapes from the '90's.

I'm not a parent. I don't plan on being a parent. My creation is the art/music. When and if I move again, this stuff will get dragged along again, and that has to be fine. Consider it the keeping of the baby booties.

I've got my eye on Balanced. From what I've observed of Normal, I don't know that she's got what I want anyway. Normal might be the identical twin of Mediocre, and neither of them are for me. I know for sure that I'm not interested in either of the living templates that I outlined earlier. I'm oddly opposed to storage spaces, and have no need to have an empty house just for the sake of having it. I live in a wonderful space today, and should that change, it all comes with me. Today, I'm narrowing down what that "all" is. Just in case.

Thanks for listening.

xo, bu

get on up there

2011-03-28T21:06:00.006-05:00

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

nonesuch

2011-03-27T12:00:00.007-05:00

This is Petunia.

She is one of eight puppies recently born to my brother's two English Staffordshire Bull Terriers. All but one other have gone on to live with new families. Penny and Petunia remain as sole siblings to one another for now, until their ideal home(s) come along.

While their father is a mix of white and brown, their mother is mostly black with white spots. All of the puppies took after their mother, as far as their coloring is concerned. Not a single brown marking graced any part of of the babies, making them look like a perfect set of creatures. Like little dotted puzzle pieces that were always meant to fit together.

Petunia always stood out to me, as a different animal. For starters, she is almost completely all white, with one big black spot over her right eye. As she ages, tiny black dots are peppering her ears and face, but she is still quite striking in her extreme design. I was the one to name her at only a handful of weeks old. Her brothers and sisters all had temporary handles like "Three Stripes" and "Muffin", but her name jumped out at me the moment I saw her. I have a tendency to name things after flowers in the first place, but I also thought of little cartoon Petunia Pig in her skirts and braids and thought that the reference was fitting.

Now, when puppies are first born, the only behaviors that are immediately noticeable are those related to eating and sleeping, for the most part. My brother spent a good deal of time and energy making sure that everyone was nursing enough and behaving According To Plan. Anyone who wasn't keeping up was assisted in the process. (This is not how it would have gone down in nature, but is anything anymore?) They had a really nice, controlled area for the mama and babies to safely endure the first several weeks after the birth. I visited when the puppies were only two weeks old, and they were mere tiny blobs of cuteness that you found yourself speaking to in terrible, icky baby voices. This is something we all do, regardless of how intelligent or accomplished we may fancy ourselves to be. I challenge any one of you to sit with a pile of puppies and speak like a grown person. No chance.

I'd not seen the puppies since that last visit, until a few days ago. As I said, it's just down to Penny and Petunia now. To look at them side by side, they're twins. Identical DNA that has playfully distributed decorative elements, but nothing else. However, if you spend more than five minutes in their presence, two completely different personalities make themselves apparent. Penny takes after their father. She is sweet and mellow. She wants to be held, fed and allowed to sleep for most of the day. She seems to accept and even enjoy whatever is given to her in life. Petunia: not so much. That dog has another plan in mind, and it appears to closely resemble world domination. She possesses the behavioral traits of neither of her parents. She wants freedom, the top bunk and her own goddamned food bowl, thank you very much. She investigates everything, and takes notes on her findings. A new squeaky toy was brought home for the puppies yesterday. Penny had it first, and gave it a few obligatory licks and chews before moving on to find a snack somewhere. Petunia got ahold of the toy and wrote a song comprised of rhythmic squeaking that I'm pretty sure Timbaland needs to know about for his sample library. She never tires.

My brother says that research tells us that the "high-strung" dogs are actually more teachable in the long run. They have more potential with training, tricks, etc. He followed that statement with, "But, you still have to deal with all of that energy". With a dog like Penny, on the other hand, you have a nice laid-back pet right out of the gate. You don't have to listen to pterodactyl sounds all night because your highly intelligent mini-monster is untying rope in the next room. Nope.

As a non-dog owner, I have no good responses to any of the animals' behaviors. I live with a wonderful, sixteen-year-old cat who can practically talk at this point. I'm long past the training of anything in life, and don't anticipate going though it again any time soon. When the puppies jump all over me and chew on my things, I try to reason with them, in English. My brother finally had to scold me, reminding me that "these are not human beings". Point taken. But, I can identify so closely with what I see here. Two siblings, raised in identical environments and circumstances... Yet, they are polar opposites. What do we blame for these differences? The humans who may or may not meet all of their worldly needs? Their animal parents who know only their own feelings and instincts? These creatures were born as exactly who they are. Petunia doesn't know why she wants to climb over the baby gate that keeps her confined to the kitchen until further notice. She knows only that she must do it, and that she'll figure out what to do beyond that when she gets there.

Since these two puppies have been together longer than any of the others were, my brother is starting to feel a sense of guilt about separating them. They sleep in a perfect little yin yang of comfort and familiarity. You'd never guess that when awake, they are completely different in every way. They do love one another. Of course they do, it's all they know. Would they forget these moments together if separately adopted? No one really knows. Penny will be easier to place in a home due to her likable disposition. Petunia stands to either have her fierce spirit broken or encouraged in all of the wrong ways. Unstable people often have animals that go before them to project a strength or sense of fight that they wish they truly possessed themselves. In a perfect world, she'd go to live somewhere like a yard I once knew, amid acres of fruit trees. I like to think of her spending all of that creative energy in exactly the ways she's wired to: running, eating the fallen avocados and composing her musical masterpieces with whatever squeaky toy may lay in her path. I wish I could take her home to the fort with me. Alas, I have none of the above to offer her.
My life is spent sleeping on other people's floors and couches... And, when I do happen to be home, I enjoy the quiet time that I get to spend with my own vintage critter.

I'm going to kiss these puppies goodbye tomorrow, for perhaps the last time, and wish them good luck with their hopefully full and happy respective lives. I hope that the perfect people come along to honor and celebrate exactly who these siblings individually are... Because, let's face it, not everyone will.

xoxo,
bu

thank you

2011-03-12T22:30:00.007-06:00

This is a happy, happy day, pals.

We raised all of the money that we needed to on kickstarter for the 'True Story' video!

I am super grateful, and instead of getting needlessly verbose about it, I'm just going to tell you who made this dream of mine come true.

Thank you, thank you, thank you:

Carl Byrd

Jennifer Moore

Erika Walden

Jeana Hong

Eric Kosse

Teresa Pemberton

John Wynne

Drew Dutton

Jerry Roe

Bo Bertold

Eliza Wheeler

Mary Wheeler

Clayton Westland

Kathy Johnson

Melissa Wallace

Bernie and Flo Walsh

David Walsh

Donald Webber

Levi Fuller

Josh Fuson

Gina Repas

Leigh Angel

Jessica Arinella

Alicia Arinella

Robin Finck

Cathy and Bob Finck

Chad Riter

Niki Taylor-Lamar

Barbara Taylor

Kermit Taylor

Deanna Walker

Karolina Arias
Ramon Negron

Sara Liebmann

Siana Jo Crane

Claudia De Sousa-Baptista

Deborah Kenty Perry

Seth Bodie

Richelle Devereaux-Murray

Ken Connell

Christine Marr

Timothy Breese Miller

Angie Bilotti

Cheryl Spoletini

Stacey Harris

Hope Ardizzone

Denise Stiff

Shelly Bright Calabrese

Jamie Rubin

Eric McConnell

Dave and Jenn Rorick

Matt Satterfield

Jeff Atkins

Danny Dones

David Tinsley

on family and albums

2011-03-02T10:28:00.009-06:00

The last seven days have been book-worthy. Epic.

The kind of week that you reflect upon twenty, thirty, hell- fifty years later and recall the moments it was comprised of, in crisp detail. I'm not even sure I've had time to process it all, but I'm sitting on my couch having the first coffee of the day, and it looks pretty good from here.

photo by Teresa Pemberton

My big project is done, in a way. Family Album came out eight days ago. I finished the new website mere hours before the release day came, and come it did. And then it went, just like that.

My birthday followed, on the very next day. I happily spent it with family from out of town who graciously traveled to be part of the big week here in Nashville. Neither my sisters-in-law nor my brother had ever been to Nashville, so it was fun to show my town to them in the little time that existed between events. Good food was eaten, landmarks were pointed out, honky-tonk music was experienced. It'll do for a first time. I have a feeling they'll all be back.

The CD release show was this past Friday night, at The Family Wash in East Nashville. Contrary to my original idea, I did not get on stage with a bunch of people I've known for a hundred years and/or am related to. I had a great band that was a mixture of the former category and a new category: hired.

I've been admiring the playing style(s) of Jen Gunderman for some time now. She's really quite incredible on the keys. She joined us for the set and really completed the sound. I absolutely love playing with her and hope to do tons more of it. Tim Marks and I have been talking about making some music together for a spell now, and we finally took the plunge that night. He played upright bass for my set, and kicked major butt while doing it. Radness. Greg Hagan returned to my band on electric guitar, but this time also played a little mandolin on 'These Hands'. He rules. As for drummers, I had an alternating duo that would have made anyone jealous: my love, Jerry Roe and my brother, Bo Bertold. They took turns on drum kit, sang vocal harmonies, played guitar (Jerry), and led a song vocally (Bo). I mean, it really doesn't get any better than that. My heart was so full of goodness, gratitude and light. It will radiate from me for a long time to come, I'm sure.

The show was perfect. So many people that I love and respect were there to hear our music. Jamie has a really special place there, at The Wash. It feels like home, somehow, which was exactly what our show needed. I hope that everyone in the audience enjoyed it as much as we did. There are one zillion photos and videos from that night that I'll do my best to sort through and post them to flickr and youtube, I promise.

The next two days were a Brand New Experience for me. We shot my very first music video. A group of freakishly talented and organized people descended on The Fort on Saturday morning, February 26th. They had coffee, clipboards, walkie-talkies, shot schedules, lists, and most of all: the best intentions in the world. The months of meetings, conference calls, emails, planning and plotting were finally over. All that remained to be had was the real experience... And an experience it was.

We spent two very full days shooting at my home, the property of my future father-in-law and his wife, The Family Wash, and the house/recording studio that belongs to Eric McConnell. We also did some cool shots of me driving a 1962 Buick LeSabre on old country back roads. (I've always wanted a car like that, to be perfectly honest.) Every location was amazing, and every person was incredible. I can't remember an experience in my own life that has gone that smoothly. I am so honored for my music to have been the catalyst for such a group to assemble and conquer.

I'm going to gush about every single person here now. I can't not say it... It just wouldn't be right. Carl Byrd directed this project, which is so crazy and amazing that I still can't even believe it. I've admired his work for a loooong time (since long before I knew him), and am in awe of the fact that he is working in conjunction with my art these days. Y'all know the man, trust me. Remember the dancing Audrey Hepburn GAP commercials? Yes. That's Carl's work, among so many other brilliant examples. His team came with him from New York, and really made this whole thing happen. Jennifer Moore has been coordinating and producing this project since Day One, and has done a wonderful job. I have felt so respected, heard and celebrated by everything that she has done or said to me, and I am filled with gratitude for that. Erika Walden was the script supervisor for every single shot that was taken, a job that can only be done by folks who have the ability to pay the closest attention that is humanly possible. Her energy was amazing and supportive, and we all loved having her here. Jeana Hong was the mastermind behind all travel, lodging, permits, good faith letters, meetings and group correspondences. Brilliant. We'd all be tied in knots without her. I was made to look much more beautiful than I've ever actually been by the genius handiwork of Teresa Pemberton. I have been watching her make stars and models glow for years, and it was nuts to actually be the girl in the make-up seat while while she combined magical fairy-dusts to make me shine. What an honor. My dear friend Eric Kosse took the weekend off from being a world-dominating wardrobe stylist to make sure that all of the finer details of me and my life were accurately captured in the shots. He acted as a real advocate for the more personal elements of the story which were so crucial to the project. Also, this whole thing can be traced back to him saying to Carl, two years ago, "We need to work with Buick on her music projects!". Thank you, friend.

John Wynne and his Assistant Camera, Drew Dutton came from Denver, CO to shoot the video. John is an old friend of Jerry's who expressed interest in the project when it was first shaping up, and we brought him on board. The dude's amazing, y'all. He had SUCH good ideas, and a lovely grasp of what the visual story needed to be, in order to match the music. It was a pleasure to work with both him and Drew. They were a perfect fit. Somehow, we were sent the most amazing grips of All Time, as well. Jeff and Matt from Citation Support here in Nashville were a dream team of know-how, good humor and comradery from the start. They totally elevated the experience into feeling very professional, and it was noticed and appreciated. We even had a Production Assistant (I've never felt so "For Real") who seamlessly set-up and broke-down food, coffee, supplies, etc at every single location we worked at, without leaving a crumb of evidence behind. Danny, you're the man.

The last batch of people are my heart.

To my brother Bo, best friend Eliza and sweetheart Jerry: I cannot thank you guys enough. For being my family. For getting up every morning and making sure the house was ready to be shot on camera. For shlepping all over Hell's Half Acre. For getting me coffee and cookies. For being in the video. For being so patient and understanding. For meeting me with smiles every time I looked at any of you... I am so grateful. This record is about and for you, and I cannot believe we're here.

The video is for the first song on the record, 'True Story'. It's very possibly the happiest song I've written, to date. I've not been known for my light, cheerful work up to this point, and it's quite interesting (and almost surreal) that the song we just poured so much work into is all of three minutes long, and outlines a series of short but true tales about my life. Musically, it matches it's message. We have sparkly sounds of toy piano and glockenspiel, clean twangy electric guitars, gang vocals and a tempo that makes your body move, despite any effort you might make to fight it. I wrote the song in my little pink office one Autumn night, and made a GarageBand demo of it right away to send to my best bud Eliza to listen to. I remember saying to her, "I wrote a fun song! It's different than all of my other work!" Well, it was different for me then. Not today. Today I'm a happy, happy woman, and you can expect more sunshine from me, I promise.

This is only the beginning.

Thank you for listening.

xoxo, bu

p.s. Here are some assorted photos, and there are more to come!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/buickaudra/sets/72157626181752146/

the love

2011-02-14T22:57:00.019-06:00

I hope that you all feel loved today.

I sure do.

Aside from the obvious aesthetic attraction to Valentine's Day, I truly adore this holiday for the opportunity that it gives us to give away a little bit of sugar. Whether it's shown in tangible or intangible ways, we get to say, "I think you're the jam", and have it not be so out of context, on this day. Just as wearing fangs to work on October 31st is widely accepted, so is handing someone a tiny card with sparkly hearts on it on February 14th. I dig it.

I'm in New York City right now, working some, playing some. I performed at Rockwood Music Hall tonight in the Lower East Side, which is a venue I've played at a few times now. They are so lovely there. The sound is great in that room, and the people are super welcoming and friendly. (Where else will you receive a personalized Valentine from Amanda, the world's nicest bartender? I mean, really.)

I felt that it would have been flat-out irresponsible of me NOT to sing a batch of love songs, given the day at hand. So, I did my best to scrounge up a good list from my own catalog, with a few covers mixed in for good measure. I sang my version of 'Wildflowers' by Tom Petty, which I've done before on various occasions (humbly, always humbly). That song is everything you could ever ask a song to be: beautiful, honest, loving, and originally produced by Rick Rubin. The other cover was much more of a stretch. So much so, that it's actually more like musical paraphrasing. I don't think "cover" accurately describes what I do to the song. All I'm saying is that, when you sit down with a New Edition song from 1988, you really need to clear your mind of any expectations that you will, in any way, sound anything like the original artists... Like, at all. My version of 'If It Isn't Love' is (sadly) without the MPC drum fills, numerous modulations, and call-back gang vocals by Ronnie, Johnny, Ricky and Mike. But, it is very much the song that Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis wrote and produced. The lyrics and vocal melody are untouched. I don't even change the gender, so in essence, I'm singing a love song about another woman. Fine. If you ask me (and even if you don't), Cyndi's version of 'When You Were Mine' (penned by Prince) is flawless, and especially so because she didn't change the "he" to "she". I can only hope that should we ever record my New Edition "cover", Fab 5 Freddie will appear in my video, like he did the original. Fab is right.

Anyhow, madness aside, the room was filled family tonight. My pals came out from all corners to support me, listen to my music, and eat some vegetarian diner food after the show. I even got to borrow sweet Jenny Brown's guitar for my set. I am so lucky. My sweetheart is far away tonight, on a ship at sea playing music with his friends... But, I wasn't lonely at all. It's not about romance this year, it's about community, and I have that in spades. It's also about watching RuPaul's Drag Race with your crew while eating freshly baked vegan chocolate chip cookies.

Here's to hearts, Cupid, conversation candies, flowers and sweet wishes.

Here's to love.

Happy Valentine's Day, friends.

Here are the songs and link to the photos. More photos by Dave Walsh to come... The dress is a combination of a table runner from France (donated by Gina Repas) and a 1940's tablecloth (donated by Linda Claflin). Thank you, ladies!

xoxo, bu

the streets of my town

between ocean and sea

brilliant mistakes

wildflowers

if it isn't love

true story

younger all the time

strong as you think

http://www.flickr.com/photos/buickaudra/sets/72157626053288262/

ten fingers, ten toes

2011-02-07T20:37:00.003-06:00

I sat home all day, mostly staring out the window.
I saw the rain fall, and then snow.

I saw the kids meet the bus to go to school, and then get dropped back off when their day was over.

I saw the mail lady struggle to find a small package for my mailbox, and then drive away when she had placed it there.

I saw the street go dark with the setting of the sun...

And then, I saw headlights.

Family Album is safe and sound, here at the Fort.

I listened to the music, read all of the liner notes (for the thousandth time, at least), and shed a tear. Or five.
It's surreal to have it in tangible form. It looks so small.

The experience has been so big, for lack of a better word, that it's funny to hold it in the palm of my hand, and have that be the Whole Story.

Right there.

I can only imagine that it's similar to looking at a newborn baby and seeing traces of yourself in that brand new face, as well as the features of others that you may or may not recognize at first. And you know that those features will change, and be seen differently by some folks, who will swear all day long that the baby looks just like your mother when she was born.

And maybe it does.

It's certainly isn't all me.

My brother is in there, as are my parents, friends, loves, and even some people who have since gone away.

But, I'm the only one here tonight, and it's just wild to see her,

face to face.

It's very quiet in this house.

I have a list of things that I'm supposed to do now.

There's the mailing of birth announcements to this and that person,

as well as the parading of my new baby up and down the proverbial streets.

That will all start at the crack of dawn, tomorrow morning.

Tonight, I'll be here, in awe of the education that I have received throughout this process of creation. I do feel older, but also slightly wiser.

I'm mostly tired and relieved, and looking forward to all that lies ahead.

Thank you for listening.

xoxo, bu

loss is loss

2011-02-01T08:18:00.018-06:00

I read lots of poetry. I always have.

I appreciate the gravity, value and sometimes life-changing presence that words are capable of. There is a poem that has stayed with me since the first time I ever heard it. One Art by Elizabeth Bishop is a stunning, beautifully painful piece about how both simple and complex loss can be. How artful she is in explaining the different levels one might experience it at... I find it fascinating and inspiring as a reader and a writer.

I thought of her poem last night, when I realized upon arriving home from a quick trip out, that I had lost one of my earrings somewhere along the way. These are not expensive jewels, but rather a pair of bronze-colored roses made from a cheap metal, that I bought at a Southern department store while on a solo radio tour about four years ago. They must have cost about five dollars, on sale. Oh, but I love them. I wore them during the photo shoot for Singer, among several other occasions that I deemed special. In fact, I had them on last night because the day had been particularly hard for me, and I thought that wearing them might cheer me up in some small way. And now there's only one.

It's amazing the sentiment we apply to objects, isn't it? But, it's so true, and I'm a sentimentalist to the core. My home is a veritable museum of experiences that I have had and people whom I have loved. It's just who I am.

I'm challenged to wonder if maybe the lesson is always just to accept what is. Things get broken. Things get lost. People too. Do we cry, bury it in the earth and let it go? Do we keep the part that remains and make a proverbial pendant from the leftover hardware? Do we make a list of all of the other amazing pieces of jewelry that lay unappreciated in the box, and try to get grateful about all of that fare? I can go a multitude of ways. In my younger years, I'd have made the pendant, and worn it until the chain eventually wore down and broke (postponing the inevitable loss). As I grow up, I'm considering new options, but I can promise you that no itemized list of "just as good" accessories will be made in this house today. No sir.

Bishop said:

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

But, is it just that easy? I've lost big and small things in my life. I've lost love, friendships, family members, material possessions, hope, trust, faith, patience, and lastly, my way. And I've had to grieve for them all, in varying degrees. Perhaps with the tangible, it's the association or the memory that the lost thing provokes in us, which is actually to be mourned. Maybe we're always just mourning some piece of ourselves that has changed or gone missing, and the objects are merely catalysts for the acknowledgment of such.

I don't understand the science behind it, and it may not be mine to comprehend. I do know that other people have struggled with these same mysteries, as is evidenced by the brilliant expressions that live on to tell the tale. Someone recently told me that I'm too open; I give too much of myself away to be known. It makes me sad that art and honesty scare some souls, and that mine maybe among those that offend. But, I take comfort in knowing that the words of others have saved my own life, in their strength, wisdom and forthrightness. When we read that someone else has felt what we are feeling, it doesn't matter if the words were written two hundred years ago, or last week. We connect.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

I see my own life's map in this writing. I see the places in which I have invested years of my life and moved on from. I see the lives I had in each of those towns, and the people I knew then...

In three lines, she gave me that. Powerful. I think that the key may be to choose our words carefully, knowing that they have the ability to outlive us in this way. Did Ms. Bishop intend for a songwriter in Nashville to be looking to her work for guidance, more than thirty years after her death? Probably not. But, here I am: one gold rose, and a heavy heart. And I am so grateful for the words that give me permission to be just that.

Should you happen upon a lone rose earring, who happens to be out exploring the world, please remind it where it lives.

Thank you for listening.

xoxo, bu

shake hands, be nice

2011-01-26T09:49:00.003-06:00

The Five Spot, January 25th, 2011

Nashville, TN

Ah, Nashville.

This town is home to some of the finest musicians I may ever encounter. That said, do we really need to walk around acting like it? Come on, Music City, it's only music.

I played a show last night over in East Nashville. My pal Chris booked me on the night, which turned out to be quite a full bill when all was said and done. (It was both Said and Done.) The Five Spot is something of a local hang on that side of town, and apparently on this particular day of the week, being Tuesday, is jam-packed due to a good deal on some kind of beer and/or hotdog. I wouldn't know. Anyhow, we had a big audience. My line-up played fourth, out of about six bands. We had some trouble with our monitor mix on stage, and my guitar was virtually inaudible for the duration of our set. It threw us all off at first, as I'm the one that the band naturally follows, but after the first awkward song, I think we all decided to just rock out no matter what.

I made a resolution with myself on stage to try like hell to get more momentum around live shows, because man it felt good to play with that band. I was very lucky to have the talents of Chris Autry on upright bass, Adam Popick on drum kit and Greg Hagan on lead electric guitar. Wow. Those guys can play. And it was very cool to hear their interpretations of my songs, having either played alone or with the same people for the last several years. Greg played some parts last night that ought to be on the records, in all seriousness. What an intuitive, musical player. And Adam played so well that I found myself smiling in and out of the set just because I like what he was doing so much. Chris was fantastic as well, and it was really nice to finally share a stage with him after a year and half of us talking about it. I loved it. I want more. Book us. (Please.)

The interesting part about the night was, that even though we had a really attentive audience while we played (for which I'm grateful), absolutely not one soul came and spoke to me afterward. Not. One.

I'm from the school of shaking hands with anyone who did something I connected with when they played. Of course. In fact, there was a really great drummer there last night who got up with a couple of different bands, and I made sure to tell him that I loved his style. It didn't cost me anything. I still had all of my fingers and self esteem in tact on the other side of that interaction. It's just a nice thing to do when we're all performing for one another over the course of a really long night, after which we may have to leave our clothes outside in the snow to recover from the horrifying layer of smoke that has accumulated. It takes a lot to get up in front of other human beings and do your thing. Why not support one another in the process of doing so, eh?

I'll tell you who did support me, my rad friends who braved the gross, rainy weather and stuck around for hours to watch me sing. Thank you. And, again, thanks to the guys who stood up there with me and made me feel like I had a team to be a part of. I don't typically feel like that, and a girl could get used to that right there, tell you what.

For some freak reason, there are no pictures to prove that last night happened. Well, I know one of the reasons: My camera's busted. And, like all robotic, digital things, it's broken in a deep and mysterious way, where it performs some tasks, while shirking others. It won't talk to me. Sigh. I took the picture of the latest tablecloth dress on my phone, and that's all that remains. But you can picture it, right? Beer, Cool People (not me, the audience), and a whole lot of guitars. Yep.

That's all I have for now.

There's snow on the ground on this fine Wednesday morning, and coffee to be made.

The songs we played are listed below.

Thanks for listening.

xoxo, bu

true story

brilliant mistakes

northern star

strong as you think

younger all the time

ask anyone, they'll say the story's true

2011-01-18T18:15:00.002-06:00

I am one week into a new set of behaviors. They are, by name: Asking For Help and Letting Go of The Outcome. It takes practice, my friends, on the daily. Last Tuesday, I put up a page asking for assistance from anyone and everyone, in making a dream of mine come true. It already has come true, in a sense. The original intention was to make something about, for and with the people I love. Today, I can say that I have met that goal, and am now trying to share what we've made with as many people as possible.  For anyone new to the fold, here's a summary: I made a record about my families of choice and origin, aptly titled Family Album. It will be released on February 22nd through my own label, Trimming The Shield Records. We are raising money to make a video for the first single, 'True Story'.

If you want to help, please go to:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/buickaudra/telling-a-true-story 
And if you want to hear the full song, go to:
http://www.reverbnation.com/buickaudra

Some wonderful people have already made pledges to the project, while others have lent wisdom and expertise on specific areas of the process. I am so grateful for all of it, and find myself constantly surprised by the generosity of those I am encountering, every day. I will pay it forward. I am including the lyrics to the song here, for you to read and enjoy. Once again, I am sending gratitude into the starry night, and whispering to myself, "receive", while eating delicious vegan cookies.  

Thanks for listening. 

xoxo, bu

true story
I’m named for platform shoes
my mother saw on my Aunt Nancy’s feet
oh, Bicentennial, we hope you’re ready for this baby’s dreams
(why would I lie to you?
ask anyone, they’ll say the story’s true)

I gave my heart away
at age thirteen, in my World History class
I know him to this day
he’s still a big part of my circus act
(now, would I lie to you?
ask anyone, they'll say the story’s true)

and it keeps going
I gave up on knowing
why I have to live a life that’s so fantastically outside
of what one thinks of as reality

I learned to play guitar
ten years before I learned to change the strings
I wished upon a star
and here I am surrounded by such things
I made by heart and hand
there’s a magic to, “I think I can”

and it keeps going
I gave up on knowing
why I have to live a life that’s so fantastically outside
of what one thinks of as reality

I had a song to sing
I said, “make music with me”… he said, “no”
I put down everything
and wrote an album about letting go
now my heart is free,
and don't you know that man is loving me.

and away we go

2011-01-08T16:59:00.003-06:00

Friends, Family Album went off to be pressed and packaged today.
I'm taking heart in the fact that it is the birth date of one Elvis Aaron Presley. I'm so superstitious that, yes, I feel better about doing Big 'n' Scary things on days when other great things have happened. It surely can't hurt. All of my projects are in a state of progress right now, some closer to the finish line than others. It will feel good when I have something tangible to show for the millions of victories, large and small, that the past three years have been comprised of.

Since the album is literally out of my hands for now, it gives me pause to think about all of the other hands that have touched it, along the way.

We started the project in December of 2007, during a Boston blizzard.
Five days were dedicated to that original session, and from it, five songs survived. That band was made up of my brother Boey Bertold, my mother Catherine Huebsch, Nate Edgar, Dave Walsh, Mario Quintero and myself. There are days in your life that you look back on and wonder how you managed to get through them without your heart just throwing in the towel. Boston was like that. And those songs are so special and different, in both their sound and their spirit. We couldn't re-create them now if our lives depended upon doing so. I absolutely LIVE for art like that.

I sat with that experience for a while, and tried to make some of the other areas of my life function a bit better before I picked the project back up. When I was ready, some of my closest pals came to Nashville for my birthday weekend in February of 2009. That band was Jerry Roe, Seth Bodie, Levi Fuller, Eliza Wheeler, Jabe Beyer, Mario Quintero and myself. We did two more songs over that little stretch of days. The Nashville session had a different feeling for me, and I can hear it in the music, too. There is laughter in there, and I thank god for that.

The final big session happened a month later, in Miami. Mario and I went to our hometown to record the last handful of songs in the house that my brother and I grew up in, and that Mar and I had also spent a good deal of our adolescence hanging out in. In our minds, we were going to do something very different than what actually happened. In the interest of staying true to my music, which is an honest art, I'll tell you that parts of me were broken for good on that trip. We did harness lightning and were part of some brilliant, beautiful moments... But, we also survived some massive disappointments, the likes of which may haunt me forever. The band included Eddie Zyne, my mom, my aunt Nancy Huebsch, Mario Quintero and myself.

Additional performances by Carl Jackson, Dave Roe, Charlie Dechant, John Marsden and Josh Fuson were added later, to existing songs. I edited the album myself out of necessity. Sometimes you just don't have a masterful, patient recording engineer in your life at the moments you might like one to be. Alas, I engineered many parts of the record, as well as produced it, and decided that it may as well be my duty to finish it. I loved that process, though, I fear that If I were allowed to do it regularly, I would never leave the house. I mixed it with Eric McConnell, over at his cool house in East Nashville. Lots of magic had occurred there in past years, and man, you could feel it in the floor boards. The dude's got juju. (I can't wait to make a whole record over there, but that's a story for another day...) Finally, the music made it's way to Ojai, California to The Mastering Lab where Doug Sax and Sunny Nam blessed it with their special stuff that they do over there. (No one really knows what they do. They make their own equipment, and the knobs aren't marked, but your record's the better for having gone through it all it, for sure.)

The next stage was all visual in nature. We entered the vast world of artwork, layouts and manufacturing. I have this friend who turned out to be something of an actual wizard. Ric Simenson did the art/layout for the record. I can not praise his work enough. He treated old family photos, dealt with xeroxed pages, bad scans, fabric and hand-written fonts... All beautifully. He exceeded all of my expectations and really gave the record it's last bit of love that it needed in order to be DONE. Ram Hannan did the hand-lettering on the front cover, and it's so lovely.

I don't know if you've been counting, but that's twenty-three people, in total. And here we are. It's quite a story, but it's all true.

Speaking of true stories, we're about to launch the kickstarter page for the first video that I will ever make in my life. We've chosen to do a video on 'True Story', which is the opening song and first single from the record.
I need help, and I have a very hard time asking for it. But, this is the time, if ever there was one. This project has meant more to me than anything I've ever done, and I'm doing my best to see it to it's potential. I have self-funded the entire thing, which is part of why it has taken three years to make. It was recorded entirely in homes, by all of us who are on it. There is now a place where people can go to help us make this video, which will, in part, tell the story of how I made this record about what family is for me:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/buickaudra/telling-a-true-story
Family is crazy. It's life-affirming, disappointing, maddening, wonderful, messy, and it's how we learn about who and what we are.

I'm off to rest, and send good vibes to all of the little parts that make up the whole of the finished product, wherever they may be now. Godspeed.

Thanks for listening.
xoxo, bu

high resolution

2010-12-31T16:11:00.001-06:00

I'm staying home tonight.
It's New Year's Eve and I want to make sure I'm paying attention at the exact moment that the year changes over. I take this sort of thing seriously, ask any of my friends. I'm the girl who, on the night before her own birthday, lights candles and says little wishes aloud for a good year of growth and learning. So, you can just imagine how I get when it's a brand new year for all of us. Forget about it, full-on arson.

I was just away from home for a full week, in Boston and then New York. Good lord, it was an action-packed week. My sweetheart and I went to spend the holiday with my side of the family in New England. My ten thousand year old hand-me-down minivan chose that particular road trip to retire from duty for good. There we were, stranded on the side of the road outside Kingsport, TN with nothing but a AAA card and a waning morale. Five hours in. We ended up renting one of those straight-to-rental cars that bit the PT Cruiser's rhymes: the Chevy HHR. Nothing short of limited visibility and an awkward amount of room for your crap. Whatever. We crammed the contents of the abandoned van into said vehicle and continued North.
Here's the good news:
1. We now got better gas mileage and had one of those "AUX" hook-ups for the old i-pod. My former ride would maybe play a CD if the weather was between 65 and 82 degrees. Otherwise, you could kiss it's Honda ass. Truth.
2. Both of us arrived to Boston (albeit a full day late) with all of our limbs and a percentage of our wits, however dwindling.
3. Rental cars are always nicer and cleaner than any car I ever seem to own, so that was a plus.

Once in Boston, we had a really nice holiday at my brother's house with his tiny legion of pets. He has two Staffies that just had eight puppies a couple of weeks ago... So, literally Christmas and puppies. Not too shabby. My brother rules, and we hadn't spent this season together in three years, for a collection of reasons, so I'm grateful that we were able to do so this year. Boston, in typical form, went ahead and had a blizzard while we were there, which limited our mobility quite a bit, but, hey. If you've see it once, you're good. The raddest thing I have to report from that chapter of the trip, is the show that I played with my pals and brother. Holy crap, was that great. Back in my days of plotting murders and wearing warpaint, I was in a band called 33 Slade. We all converged at this funky little restaurant/venue called ZuZu in Cambridge, on December 27th, and had a complete and total success story.

My brother Bo, who is my all-time favorite drummer, has been writing music for the past few years. I've heard it in bits and pieces, here and there... But, man, he has gotten GOOD. His project is called Fortune Teller, and features a Classical style guitar player, an electric lead guitarist, an electric bassist and a drummer. Bo sings. At this particular show, Jerry Roe played drums, and was pretty amazing, if I might put my thirty-three cents in. The songs are smart, musical, interesting, and full of twists that you don't expect. Bo's voice is beautiful and honest, and leaves you wanting more. I got to sing harmonies on a couple of songs, which made me a very happy big sister.

I played next, and did a couple songs alone, and then was joined by my family for a handful of songs. Bo played drums, Levi Fuller played bass, Jerry Roe and Dave Walsh took turns on electric guitar, and harmonies were sung by Seth Bodie and my mom, Catherine Huebsch. What a treat. I usually play alone, so to have all of that wonderful energy around me while I sang was a real gift.

Levi played after me, and did a super cool job, with all of his magical pedals and tricks. He's a great songwriter, and presents his song with exactly the right amount of sentiment and technical know-how. I'm a fan, and I'm not just saying that because he's my oldest friend. For real. We all jumped up with him for two of his songs, like you probably figured we might. Bo played drums, Jerry played bass (he's pretty multi-talented, eh?), and I sang along. I also sang on the most recent record, which I will now plug right here: Colossal by Levi Fuller... http://www.levifuller.com/ I highly recommend it; it's excellent.

The mind reels that the evening held even more, but, it did. At the very end, after we all showed our stuff as individual songwriters and singers, Levi, Bo and I got up and played three songs as our old band, and it ROCKED. What a fun, face-melting time. It really made me think about how much I loved to play like that, and need to again very soon. While I am super happy writing and producing my solo stuff, there really is nothing like being part of a proper band of peers. Not to mention, the three of us have that crazy chemistry that made it feel like we'd just played together last week, instead of seven years ago. I know all too well how rare that is, having joined forces with all kinds of folks since those days. Magic is magic. In conclusion, the night was pretty epic. Thanks to everyone who played, helped out, and attended the show. You contributed to one of my favorite nights of being a music-maker so far.

Sadly, that was our last night in B-Town. I had to haul ass to New York the next day (and by "haul ass", I mean drive for six hours in gross snow and sludge and stop fifty times for coffee and bathroom breaks), to play a solo show at Rockwood Music Hall. We literally pulled into town about 35 minutes before I had to be on stage, which had me feeling pretty frantic, I'm not going to lie to you. I'm a stickler for punctuality, and being late for my own show seems impossibly lame. To my shock and awe, New York had actually either:
A. Had more snow fall than Boston, or
B. Done a much worse job of clearing the snow than Boston.
It was mayhem. Driving and parking alike, forget it. But, we got to the show, and I played my songs which always glues me back together, somehow. I had some friends and strangers in attendance and it was lovely to see them all. Thank you to my pals who braved the mountains of snow to hear me sing.
Special thanks to Chad for not only showing up, but wearing his Singer shirt and at least three Swarovski crystal accessories. Positively Divine.

The final frontier of the road trip involved going to Madison Square Garden to see the greatest living performer on Earth: Prince. That's right, I said it. Any disputes can be sent to: Kiss My Butt, Nashville, TN. The man rules all, and still manages to elicit sentimentalism, envy, worship, laughter, tears and booty-shaking from me, with almost every song he plays. I got tickets for my mom and bro for Christmas, so the four of us went together. A great time was had by all, for sure. After that, our brains were officially fried, and we headed back towards Nashville, where we are now, gratefully mellowing out for the weekend.

So, tomorrow is the start of a brand new year. It has big shoes to fill, as this year has been pretty major for me, all around.
I don't know if I've ever really said this aloud to y'all, but I won my first two Grammys this year. Yes I did.
I finished an album that took me three years to make, which will be out on February 22nd. And, I did it without the help of my long-time collaborator, Mario Quintero, which was huge. Moving right along.
I started to work with new people, which I loved and can't wait to do more of.
I got engaged to a wonderful man, which is so lovely and happy-making.
I played shows with some of my favorite people in the world, which will happen in spades next year.
I took some risks, and acted out of bravery more than fear, which is the daily struggle for me.

If I can be accountable to you, and to myself here, I aim to be better, going forward. A better friend, partner, daughter, sister, musician... Better.
We all have our reasons to hold still in life, and they are often valid.
Sometimes being still is safer than flailing around, which is the only kind of movement some of us know.
However, movement is growth, and I'm all for it.
So, tonight, when I sprinkle the fairy dust and ask Freddie Mercury and Divine to guide me gracefully through the next year, I will also ask for the strength to outgrow old patterns, cultivate news ones, and call just call Rick Rubin already,
once and for all.
May you all soar to the heights you dream of.
I'm cheering for you.
Happy New Year.
xoxo, bu

P.S. Here are song lists and photo links:
(Both of my dresses are made from tablecloths and handkerchiefs.)

12.27 (as Buick Audra)
rainbow road
the worst of me
simply said
true story
brilliant mistakes
strong as you think
younger all the time
12.27 (as 33 Slade)
mourning Rush
in lieu of the assembly
shit for friends
http://www.flickr.com/photos/buickaudra/sets/72157625591375703/

12.28
rainbow road
the worst of me
between ocean and sea
brilliant mistakes
true story
brand new lie
younger all the time
http://www.flickr.com/photos/buickaudra/sets/72157625716906232/

the Boston Blues

2010-12-26T14:29:00.002-06:00

I'm writing this from a house in Somerville, MA.
I came up for the holiday and a couple of shows, and have run into some road blocks, both literal and figurative. This place has a way of hurdling me into some grey area in The Past, like almost no other place can.

I'm from Miami originally, but spent a solid dozen years in the Boston area, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-eight. At first, the town provided an interesting new contrast to where I had come from, and I enjoyed all that it had to offer. Where Miami seemed rather isolated in it's geographically extreme placement, Boston was in-the-middle and on-the-way to all sorts of other stuff. Being a life-long music fan and consumer, the Northeast gave me a whole host of options as far as seeing live bands went. As soon as I got out of high school, I jumped right into the scene and participated in it for a long ol' time. As the years went on, some of the cultural realities about this place started to really wear me down, and I eventually left. My path then took me to Brooklyn, and ultimately Nashville, where I currently reside. Yet, here I am.

We went to see The Fighter last night. For those of you who haven't see it, it's a film about a guy from Lowell, MA, whose alcoholic/drug-addicted family keep him in a set of life patterns that prevent his own success and growth, until he finally makes a decision to take care of his own needs and let the rest of them just figure their shit out. The main character is portrayed by Mark Wahlburg, a Boston area native, who had no problem at all playing the part.
The role of his crack-smoking brother is played by Christian Bale, whose commitment to the performance is so terrifying that he'll probably win all manner of statues for it. A crackhead. From Lowell. Sadly, that's not so rare 'round these parts. This state is positively littered with lives that have been affected by addiction. Not only do I know this from my own proximity to it, but my best friend is something of a specialist on the subject, being a long-time needle exchange director in the area. While the disease is all over the world, of course, it seems to have a specifically oppressive presence in Massachusetts. There are the addicts, the families and loved ones, the angry, the hurt, the disappointed, the limited, the limiting, and the ones in denial. It goes on, and I'm among them today, as I have been before. I wish I weren't the kind of person who noticed this sort of thing, but I am, and have always been. It makes me sad, and colors the way I feel in a place.

Part of what freaks me out about this town, is the potential it has always brimmed with, yet never realizes, by my personal standards. You can't throw a stone without hitting an educational institution in Boston and it's surrounding cities. People come here from all over the world to study everything from the arts to the sciences to the business and finance. You name it, they've got a school for it here. Yet, upon graduating from such specialized centers for education, many many people end up just kind of "hanging out" in Boston for what ends up being the rest of their lives. Jobs at bars are procured, and the years begin to slip by. I can walk into several places in Cambridge today and see people that I knew fifteen years ago, who were working right there back then. They might be a brilliant musician, artist or great thinker. Doesn't matter. In Boston, they're a bartender and maybe in some local band. It boggles the mind. I've never understood it, and have spent a good deal of time thinking about whether or not the rampant addiction is related. I may never know. It's none of my business, I suppose. I don't live here anymore. On purpose.

Tomorrow night, I'll get on stage with a couple of people that I haven't played live with in almost seven years. I am very excited about the chance to do so, as I love them as much as I could ever love anyone. They are my old band mates from the 33 Slade chapter of my life, Boey Bertold and Levi Fuller. Levi and I are in town for Christmas, and Bo still lives here. It seemed silly to let the opportunity to play together pass by, as it's pretty rare. We'll be playing solo sets (and joining one another, on and off), and then actually attempting to play some of the songs we wrote and performed as a band, a whole lifetime ago. I've been practicing on my own for it over the past couple of weeks, playing along with select songs from our two albums. What a trip.

I was a different girl back then. I was deeply entrenched in all of the chaos of my twenties, as well as the dull haze of depression that steams off of the Boston streets. I was endlessly pissed off about a long list of things, none of which appeared to have any remedy or solution within sight. Sigh. It's wild to sing those words now. Not that they're bad... I was actually surprised by how much I appreciate them, in hindsight. It's just that they're so heavy. I've never been known for my light, witty writing, and may never be, but I've come a long way in recent years. I've put away the distorted, analog delay pedal Sound of Doom and replaced it with glockenspiel, toy piano and the occasional ukulele. The changes in my music directly reflect the changes in my life. I live in a great little house, with a great little cat, and have limited-to-no contact with folks who may be smoking crack and/or shooting heroin... And you know what? Fine, that's what. There are people with thicker skins and suits of emotional armor that are better equipped to take on the dark blue realities of addiction, harm reduction and general insanity than I am. I am ever-grateful for their work and contribution to humanity, because I'll tell you what: it ain't me, babe.

So, tomorrow night, I'll sing my songs, listen to theirs, and take two shallow steps back down Memory Lane before running back the other direction. I'm so glad we made that music back then. It shows me who I was, and who I don't have to be, in present day. I'm proud of that girl for speaking her truth when that was probably all she knew how to do, but her truths don't have to be my truths anymore. We have the records to let her exist within, so that I can move on and leave her here, in Boston.

It's snowing outside, and I have to go to band practice in the next room. If I'm not back in three hours, call the police... The Nashville police.

Thanks for listening.
xoxo, bu

giant steps

2010-12-14T08:24:00.002-06:00

I knew an art teacher when I was sixteen, named Mr. Mulford.
He wasn't really my art teacher, but most of my friends took his classes, so I spent a lot of unaccounted-for time in his room during my Junior year. He was already an older man by the time I met him, somewhere in his sixties, and had an air of knowing about him, like he came from way outside of the world we knew him within. He had pieces in art books that also contained the work of notable artists, like Rauschenberg and Johns. This was very impressive to the likes of us Art Room teens, who had the bare minimum of disdain for our immediate surroundings and soaked up every bit of Different we could get our grubby, acrylic paint-stained hands on.

Mulford took a special interest in me, and was constantly slipping me brochures to art colleges, like Massachusetts College of Art, or Rhode Island School of Design, when my friends weren't looking. I would laugh and take them, and they'd live at the bottom of my bag for the next six months. I didn't understand it. I was a musician. I came from a long line of musicians, and there was nothing more to say about it. Art was a whole other planet, which I admired from afar. He'd call me up to the front of his classroom, with a big, angry voice that was heavily soaked in humor, by saying, "Lady Miss Buick, GIANT STEPS". And he would ask about whether or not I'd looked at the pamphlets about art school.

I didn't go to college right away. I took two years off after high school, to figure it all out. I lived with my brother, and we started a band called 33 Slade with our pal Levi. I started school when I was twenty, at Massachusetts College of Art (aka "Mass Art"). He was right, I did have it in me. How he saw it, I'll never really know. For as musical as I've always been, the visually creative part of me is just as present. If I hadn't gone to art school, I would have become a very different person. Today, I make concept albums, with strong themes in both the music and the accompanying visuals. I'm asked about my work all the time, especially now, with the release of Family Album so close, and I know how to speak about my work... Because I went to art school.

In the immediate reality, I am spending this week working on all of my current projects. The layout for Family Album is in it's final stages of tweaks and microscopic adjustments. I can't wait for you all to see it. My friend Ric Simenson has taken such care with it, you would think that it was his own family in the photos. Absolutely beautiful. We have one more tiny thing to add to the front cover, and some dull things like bar codes and label logos for the back yet, but, we're close.

The website is in formative stages, and I have been hustling to provide all of the relevant content to the very talented woman who is building it. That is no joke, website building. Yikes. It's all I can to do keep up.

Lastly, covered in polka-dots and gum drops: The Video. I just spent a week in New York, and had the great pleasure of meeting up with the Gang of Awesome that I'm working with on that venture. They had some great ideas, I threw my notes in, and we made a plan. We're shooting in Nashville the last weekend in February, at a bunch of locations that are near and dear to my heart. I'm trying to round up as much of The Family as I can, as it's their album. I was just the vehicle. We need to raise some very real money for the project, and will be doing so through the website kickstarter.com, as well as some shows and other creative outlets. I will post it all here as soon as we get the pitch video for the website made. It's in process as I write this, thanks to Jennifer Moore at ByrdBarlage.

So here it is, where the wheels meet the road.
I'm operating from a series of lists that are all part of a larger list, and though it makes me lose my breath and get on my knees once in a while, I really am amazed and grateful. I've been busy for 25 years... But, right now, I'm busy with my own art, and trying to match the pace of the gifted and generous folks who seem to believe in it as much as I do. When it seems bigger than me, or too fast to run alongside, I hear Mulford saying, "GIANT STEPS", and I get it together. He was right back then, and he's right today. I don't know everything about who I am and what I will do. It's unfolding as I go, and I get to learn along the way. It's a wonderful thing.

Thanks for listening.
xo, bu

when you can't go back, go forward

2010-12-04T16:15:00.003-06:00

When I was a kid, I made a list of favorites.
Favorite bands, singers, dancers, painters, characters, writers, directors, etc. I've been steadily adding to The List my whole life, and have never really edited it. Everything and everyone on The List is untouchable, exempt from flaw, failure and disappointment. It has recently been brought to my attention that this is unreasonable as well as sightly insane.

I went to see a band the other night. I have been into these guys since their first record, which was released about two hundred years ago (to great critical acclaim, of course). They pioneered a certain axe-murdering sound that hasn't been properly executed by anyone else since. Like all good things, the project came to an end some years back, and that was that. We all moved on. A bunch of time passed, and now they're out on the road again, doing their part to spread the Good Word of Rock all across the land. I thought, "Great! What's a hundred years between rock-outs?" It's a hundred years, that's what.

I, like so many other misfits, ran right out and bought two tickets to The Past, with a big grin on my face. I put on my best dark eyeliner and stood in line. I waited and I waited... And out came some grown-ass men, who showed every minute of the century that had gone by. Don't get me wrong, the sound was incredible. If you closed your eyes (which you couldn't, really, for fear that you might be stabbed to death by person with a tattooed face), you could almost pretend it was the Bad Ol' Days. However, when you really got present (and, I got super present, friends), it was a special kind of awful.
There were unlimited sarcasms and resentments oozing off of the stage.
There were mismatched intentions among the players.
There were temper tantrums and childish antics.
Apparently, being able to have financial and creative mobility as a result of one giant moment of success in your career is an immeasurable burden. I wouldn't know, but that's the word on the street.

I felt aged by the end of the night. My expectations caught up with me, and there I was, in an ocean of misdirected angst and anger, bummed out.

I know that this sounds like a total drag, and it is, on some levels. But, it was an educational moment for me. People grow up. Bands get bad. And that's ok. It also made me take a second to promise myself that if I ever do reach that point of notoriety where my lyrics make a dent in the collective psyche of my audience, I will be careful with that. And, I will be grateful. While we don't know what goes on behind closed doors in other people's lives that might make them seem so unfriendly... I can sure as hell keep track of what goes on behind mine.

This is Buick Audra, reporting from Real Life, Today.
xoxo

90 days, but who's counting

2010-11-22T08:22:00.004-06:00

I get up very early these days.
I can place some of the blame on my 16 year old cat, Amos (who has recently taken to staging dramatic scenes at 5 a.m.), but I know that it's just me, unable to be still. It's 8:30 in the morning where I am, and I've already replied to several emails, made a list of incentives for people who might invest in a project of mine, and practiced the song I wrote last night. Twice.

The real reason behind it all, is that Family Album comes out three months from today. The project that has taken nearly three years to make, cost more money than I have, and acted as a litmus test for all of my relationships... Will be done. If I can pull it off, that is. I'm still dragging it around with me, like a kid that's twice my size and really ought to be walking by now. There are still things to be done with the art and layout, and the nice people at the manufacturing plant are patiently standing by. All I have to do is everything, all the time. No big deal. We'll get there. This kid will walk.

Part of letting go of the album involves doing other, big-n-scary things like having a proper website made. This has been a point of serious avoidance for me, for literally years now. Something about all that razzle dazzle, or worse, mock humility, makes me just cringe and hide from it all. I'd convinced myself that since I don't look at other artists' websites, surely no one did. This appears to be untrue, and people in my life have been gently tossing terms like "self-sabotage" and "wanting to fail" my direction for consideration. The awkward realization is that I do, in fact, need someplace to sell the albums I've labored over, and it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to have this blog, plus my show photos and tour dates all available in one place. While I rather fancy the adventure of each of those tidbits being in different locations, therefore making it impossible for anyone to really see what I'm up to... It seems that "the gig is up", as the late, great Jerry Reed once said. I'm sure to find new ways to harm my own career, but for now, I'm moving ahead with having a website built. If anyone has any specific wants or needs for that site, I'd love to hear your suggestions. It will (hopefully) be up a couple of weeks before Family Album comes out.

Another crazy thing that might be happening is: A VIDEO. Yup. A power greater than myself has sent a major self-esteem challenge my way in the form of an opportunity to visually represent one of the songs on Family Album. A team of ridiculously talented and lovely people are interested in making a video for 'True Story', the opening song on the record. I love this idea, as that song is a happy, fun song outlining a series of simple truths about me and my life so far. It was recorded at my own home, with a gang of my best friends who were here from all over the country. If all goes according to plan, we'll shoot the video here in Nash as well, using my house as one of the locations. Now, I've never made a music video before, but I've been planning them in my head ever since the first time I saw 'Thriller', and I'm SO excited by this prospect. The logistics, of course, are a big point of concern. We need money, the right people, etc. I'm trying to detach from the outcome, but I can tell you all right now, that's impossible. My hopes are high, and I'm going to bust my ass to make it happen. Nashville friends, I might be calling on you to participate. If we do it, it'll happen in mid-January. Cross your fingers and toes!

Lastly, here come the holidays. I'll be spending Thanksgiving with my sweetheart and am very happy about that. I'll be in Boston in December, and have two shows up that way, right after Christmas. For anyone who remembers my band, 33 Slade, the three of us (Boey Bertold, Levi Fuller and myself) will be playing separately and together on December 27th at ZuZu in Cambridge. I wish I could watch that one from the audience, but they're expecting me to sing. So, come hang out and bare witness. The next night, December 28th, I'll be solo at Rockwood Music Hall in Manhattan. I'll be playing some old songs, as well as brand new songs. Please come say hello!

I'm off to another day of telling myself I can do this.
I figure, if I say it enough times, I'll start to believe it... Right?

Thanks for listening.
xoxo, bu

something 'bout L.A.

2010-10-02T17:37:00.019-05:00

A lot can happen in a week.
Also, you can run into Kermit the Frog in more ways than you might imagine.
Here's how:

Day one of my trip to L.A. involved a performance at a prison with friends. The extensive details of that event can be found in my last post. But, I will re-state that my bud Robin Finck and I sang The Rainbow Connection together, on that day. (Kermit.)

Day two, I got up before the birds and drove to Ojai, which is a magical place Northeast of Los Angeles, where gnomes, mountain lions and mastering engineers hang out. It's fantastic and I highly recommend visiting. Highway 33. Yes, that's right: 33.
Anyone that has spoken to me in the past three years or so (sigh) knows that I've been hammering away at a record about family, and what it means to me... It's done. Took me thirty-three months and too much work to talk about in polite conversation... But that record is wrapped. I watched while Doug Sax turned unmarked knobs and raised his eyebrows in some sort of communication to Sunny Nam (who knows how to read the brows, at all times), and heard my album go from "nearly there" to "totally finished". Don't ask me what they do, because I don't really know. I can only speak on what my work sounds like before they do the mystery deed(s), and they're wizards for sure. It's also a slapstick comedy routine that is not to be missed, ask anyone who's been there. I'll post the couple photos I took that day... Note the shirt I'm wearing. (Kermit.)

Day three was what Normal People might call a Day Off.
I'm unfamiliar with the term, and the practice is an awkward one at best. Still, I drank too much coffee, tried to take a nap (which was unsuccessful, due to the coffee), updated the blog, and then went to see Jerry Roe play drums with the Useless Keys for the first time. They were great, and my pal Robin came and sort of painted sparkly dots all over what was already a fun night. Maybe no Kermy there, but, it was rather Muppet-y in general. See photos.

Day four was chock full of events that will playback in my mind for many years, if not the rest of my life. I had lunch with an old friend. Not a friend who is old in years, but a person whom I have known for twenty-five of my thirty-four years. We have had spotty contact at times, but always manage to find each other in the great jungle that is this planet. The stars aligned on this day.

Marsian makes puppets. Since we were nine years old, he has left trails of faux fur and googley eyes in his wake. He was the first person I ever shared my love of John Waters films with, and many highschool evenings were spent in his parents' basement, doing The Madison along with Tracy and Amber of Hairspray. We really had it down. You'll be happy to know that nothing has changed, on either end. Marsian is still gluing neon sparkly furs to any and all surfaces, while I slave over concept albums that involve specific accompanying wardrobe choices (not unlike Amber's dresses, I might add). And, we both keep pretty close tabs on Mr. Waters. (Who doesn't?) At the current time, Marsian is living amid some REALLY amazing art/relics relating to Jim Henson and his genius legacy of love and hope. I could write until the world stops moving about my admiration/adoration of Henson's work, and the happiness I think it has contributed to the world. I'll spare you that, and just say: I'm a fan. Anyhow, I soaked up the juju while enjoying a conversation that was long overdue. (Kermit.)

Later that day, I saw a beautiful rainbow, as the sun was setting.
I took it in, and said a little prayer for all that rainbows might have the power to grant. (Kermit.)

This part sounds particularly made-up, and I acknowledge that, but... It's true. I attended yet another show that friends of mine were performing, but this time the band was called W.P.A. They're lovely, and the amount of talent on stage when they play is outrageous and possibly illegal in some states. All I have to say is: Benmont Tench. Shortly before they played, Glen Philips, who sings and plays guitar with the band, said, out of nowhere, "You know, Kermit the Frog has a Hollywood star". Um. (Kermit.)

Later that night, my sweetheart proposed to me.
We're getting married next year, and I'm so happy.

The days after that blur together in my mind and the memories all look like tropical polaroids that are slightly faded from the sun. It was perfect, in so many unexpected ways. I'm so grateful, and would like to send thanks to Freddie Mercury, Divine and Jim Henson for all of the magic I got to experience.
I plan to pay it forward.

xoxo,
card-carrying lover and dreamer, bu
http://www.flickr.com/photos/buickaudra/sets/72157624957968867/

the rainbow, connected

2010-09-28T20:48:00.001-05:00

I'm having an adventure-filled week in Los Angeles.
It's amazing how different life feels out here, as compared to New York or Nashville. When I close my eyes, I can almost pretend I'm in my city of origin, Miami, Florida. The breeze feels the same, and the smell of similar plant life lilts through the air from time to time. I'm happy to be collecting both the New and Old feelings as I make my way around these streets.

My first day in town was spent with some friends that I see far too little of. The three of us enjoyed a day of reconnecting, as well as performing at a federal prison. I'm no stranger to correctional facilities. I've visited a few in my life so far, and I'll see a handful more, I can assure you. This particular day had an ease to it that I'd not experienced in prior visits. We were first welcomed by a well-intentioned staff and then by an audience of inmates who were very respectful of our presence in their temporary home. I'm so glad I went.

When the time came to perform, our gang plus a fourth artist set up and took turns. We were: Three singer/songwriters and a dancer/choreographer. I, personally, did a few of my own songs and some covers, for good measure.
Here was my contribution to the show:

wildflowers (by Tom Petty, solo)
brilliant mistakes (solo)
coffee with a stranger (solo)
the streets of my town (with Robin Finck on electric guitar)
make you feel my love (by Bob Dylan, duet with Robin Finck)
the rainbow connection (by Paul Williams/Kermit the Frog, duet with Robin Finck)

Robin sang some of his own music, and did some absolutely fabulous covers. (Have y'all heard the man sing, play, or both? "Ridiculous" is the word. So talented. So connected to the Real Thing. I'm a fan. He's a friend.) Bianca Sapetto performed a poem by Pablo Neruda en Espanol, and then did a stunning movement piece that she choreographed while Robin sang an interpretation of the poem's meaning. Beautiful. The fourth performer sang and played guitar as well, and was very enjoyed by the crowd.

I'm grateful to the folks that made it all come together, and pulled for me to get on the "bill" at the last minute. It was an honor.

I am reminded to give what I have: Music, honesty, compassion, and love. We are not separate. We are all the same. Everyone here is someone's brother, sister, mother, father, daughter or son. And we all belong somewhere we feel free, even if that place exists, at times, only in our own hearts. We are not separate.

xoxo, bu

the horizon, from here

2010-09-22T16:53:00.002-05:00

I feel like I don't write here enough.

I'm going to try to be better about it.

I struggle with the idea that writing about my own life may seem like an ego stroke, though I'm not quite sure to whom. I'm relatively sure that those of you who do read this are my beloved friends and family, so you'll all forgive this format for expression.

On to the news:

This year has been a beautiful stretch of road, with scenery all it's own.

I've been surprised, disappointed, proud and joyful...
Sometimes all in the same day.
There's never a dull moment 'round here.

My seemingly unending pet project Family Album has made some great strides in recent months. I gathered the strength to collect all of the relevant recordings, files, photographs, scraps of paper and Original Intentions, and gave 'em a good, long look. In a quick moment that could have gone another way, I decided to edit the album myself. I had never taken on such a responsibility before. I took it quite seriously, I'm not going to lie to you. I scanned every single note, breath and beat of that music, for almost two weeks. I then took it over to Eric McConnell's ultra rad house studio in East Nashville to mix her. Eric was chosen for his great vibe, talent and gear (in no particular order). It was perhaps the smoothest collaborative transaction I have ever been a part of, and Halle-frickin'-luja to that. We had it done in five easy days.

What now, you ask? Now, my lovely boys and girls, we master. I get to return to the incomparable Mastering Lab in Ojai, CA to let Doug Sax work his magic, just as he did with Singer three years ago. By this time next week, I'll have a Finished Record in my hands. You'll have one in YOUR hands on February 22, 2011. Hell. Yes.

I've also been chipping away at my other work, as the months creep past... Ringing Bell Project is alive and well, if a bit slow going. The work is detailed, demanding and daunting, but I'll get there. Oh yes. I'll report any breakthroughs as they come. And come they will.

Finally, in my very immediate path, I am preparing for a performance at a federal prison in California next week. I will be joining my pal Robin Finck (musician and person extraordinaire) for one of his regular visits to this particular location. We will perform individually as well as together for a couple of tunes. I'm super happy and super nervous. What else is new?

While in California for all of the above events, I will also try to stand still at the edge of the water, if only for a moment.

I'm learning every day, and am grateful for the opportunities that allow me to do so.
Thanks for leading and following.
More soon.

xoxo, bu

brand new territory

2010-08-14T21:36:00.005-05:00

Front Porch Stage, August 13th, 2010
Sioux Falls, SD
Pizza Dream Tour

I am a lucky, lucky person.
I got to fly to a new state, a new town, a new stage.

I played some songs in Sioux Falls, South Dakota last night. It was just a terribly lovely experience, overall. Man, the people were so nice, the place itself was beautiful, and it sure felt good to sing. Note to self: Sing more often.

I met a woman last summer, through another near-stranger, and the possibility of this performance came to be. Kristen Lueth and I have been in touch for a year about me flying up for the annual Sioux Empire Fair, to sing at the Front Porch Stage, which she has a hand in booking. I am so grateful that we both managed to follow through.

I sang a bunch of my own songs, and a couple by some of my favorite writers... Like, ever. I figured, when in the North, sing songs by rad Northerners. So, I did a cover of 'Skyway' by The Replacements, one of the best bands of All Time, much less to come out of Minneapolis. Secondly, I (very humbly) sang my version of 'Round of Blues' by the ever-brilliant Shawn Colvin, who happens to be from Vermillion, SD. I have loved that song since I ever first heard it, at age sixteen.

This is the first show that I'm considering to be a part of the Pizza Dream shows. Thusly, I wore one of the dresses from the Pizza Dream Collection. This particular dress is made from a tablecloth that I purchased in 1995, in Vance, France. I have never used it, as I have no dining room table, and my kitchen table is made of fabulous, pink formica. It shall never be covered. Alas, a dress was born. The top of the dress is a vintage handkerchief. It was fun to wear, and I can't wait to rock the rest of the dresses at future shows.

I met some wonderful local people, including a couple of kids who really made my day. Hearts and cupcakes to Jayla and Victoria, who bravely came to tell me how much they liked my singing. I would like to specially thank Kristen, for finding me, getting me up there, driving me around, feeding me and being just about the best company I could have hoped for. Chuck Hendrickson and his team of people made me feel so welcome, and I thank them all for that. A brand new friend got up and drove me to the airport first thing this morning, so, Mat: You rule, buddy. And to South Dakota: Thanks for making my heart happy for one whole day. I'll be back, and I'm bringing my friends.

xoxo, bu

This is a link to an article that BryAnn Becker wrote about my visit, for the Argus Leader:
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20100812/ENT05/8120326/1005/ENT

And, here are the songs I played, as well as a link to the photos.
(Kristen took 'em all.)

rainbow road
your best friend
a girl named Buick
coffee with a stranger
the streets of my town
true story
dear Jackson Browne
brother blue
brand new lie
skyway
sunny day rain
five
the pizza dream
younger all the time
between ocean and sea
brilliant mistakes
round of blues

http://www.flickr.com/photos/buickaudra/sets/72157624726356068/

tweet tweet. not.

2010-04-03T16:00:00.001-05:00

Hey loved ones... And Others.
Please excuse the solemn tone of this entry, but, I'm writing in a state of discomfort.
Before I get right to the point, let me say that I consider it a great privilege to make art, and have anyone connect with it at all. I really do.
I would never want to seem ungrateful for any of the support that I have received from anyone...

But, there are limits to what I find acceptable, as far as "supporting" me and my work goes.
Impersonation is not acceptable. It is not flattering.
It is not tolerable.
It has been brought to my attention that someone is using my name to post things online, as of late.
They have also chosen to use a photo of me, to make it all the more believable.
I see posts about my musical accomplishments, and the sentiments I might have about them, as well as personal tastes of mine.

While I do choose to be open here, about what I love and what I don't, it has never been my intention to leave my skin lying around for a stranger to climb into.
Please get out of my skin.
I know it's fun to wear, and all... But, get out.
Reclamation, ya heard?

Let me leave you with this, (which is called a quote):
"If you must write prose and poems, the words you use should be your own...
Don't plagiarise or take "on loan".
'Cause there's always someone, somewhere, with a big nose, who knows...
Who trips you up and laughs when you fall."
~The Smiths

Enjoy your own skin, everyone.
xo, buick audra, Original Model

P.S. Careful with the lightning, kiddo. Powerful stuff right there.

one good year

2010-01-06T10:56:00.000-06:00

Hello, loved ones!
I've been out of touch for the past couple of months...
Not for any good reason. Just letting the ideas simmer for a while before I talk about 'em.
I find myself at the beginning of a fresh year, for which I have Grand Plans, and a good feeling in my gut.
Not that the last few years haven't been "good", but, it's been an intense learning curve, to say the least.
Anyway, 2010 is brand new, and the potential is limitless.

I am both finishing and beginning projects this year, which is always exciting.

Let's start by talking about albums:
I am so thrilled to be able to say that we will be wrapping up Family Album, after two years of travel, production and love. We started that record in December of 2007, in Boston, MA, and will track the very last vocal next week, at my home in Nashville! The title says it all, as it is a project that documents the many and varied musical talents of those I consider to be my family. I share the songwriting credits with my mother, brother, father and the late Fred Neil.
It was so brilliant to be a part of.
It is mine to release, so I will be working hard in the coming months to find the proper channels for it to go through.
I hope to have it available to all of you this coming summer!

As far as other albums go, I do have some projects floating around out there, that I have co-written and co-produced with other artists.
As I am not responsible for how and when these records get released, I will leave that a vague, grey area for now.
But, don't be surprised if you see my name next to someone else's, on a CD here or there.
Yes, it's me.

Now, for the live performances/art projects:
I have two tours (of sorts) that I cannot live without doing this year.
In no particular order, they are the Pizza Dream Tour, and Ringing Bell Project.
The majority of the shows I play this year will be part of The Pizza Dream Tour. They will be solo shows, similar to what I did last year; I will just run around the nation in the van with some crazy dresses and instruments. I will talk more about the Pizza Dream, and the concept(s) behind it, as we get closer to the shows.
I hope to cover much more ground this year, and actually make it West, a.k.a The Great Unknown.
I've never played farther West than Nashville.
No, I'm not kidding.
I'm hoping that the hot air balloon floats me that way.

The other project that I will take on the road this year is one that I will have a hard time describing here.
Ringing Bell Project has been born out of a very pure and simple inspiration. I am making work that is directly based on my interpretation of The Bell Jar, the only novel by the poet Sylvia Plath. The work involves clothing, songwriting, performance, AND an ensemble. That's right, I will actually get on stage with other people again. That's what I know so far. I am actively working on the elements of that project, and will post any progress I make with it here. I'm aiming for a series of performances in the Northeast, as the story is based there, between New York City and varous parts of Massachusetts. I am completely committed to the work, and can't wait to see it through.

In addition to my art, here are some other things that make this year special to me:
1. After May, I will be able to walk down the street with my bother Boey, and do simple things, like have a coffee with him. Profound gratitude.
2. After focusing all of my effort on the interior of my home for the past twenty months, I will now start to work on the outside. I have plans for roses, strawberries and mosaic tiles.
3. On January 31st, in a galaxy far, far away, my name may be among many others, for having won an award for the gospel compilation Oh Happy Day.
That would be neat-o, in a Salvador Dali kind of way.
Even if we don't win, "it's an honor just to be nominated".
Like, for real.

That's all I have for now.
I wish magic, moonlight, art and love to each of you this year.
I am so grateful for all of the pieces of my life, and that includes each of you.
Rock out.
xoxo, bu

skies are blue

2009-10-20T10:05:00.003-05:00

... and the dreams that you dare to dream,
really do come true.

photo by Iris Robert

I'm home.

I learned a lot on this little tour.
I learned that I am right to live by my own rules,
no matter what.
I learned that it is important to play,
no matter how imperfect the setting,
as someone is always listening.
I learned that Florida still feels like where I come from.

Most importantly, I learned to always,
no matter how scary,
follow the yellow brick road.

Love and Lightning to you all,
xoxo, bu

ruby

2009-10-16T15:49:00.003-05:00

WKIX Seafood Festival, October 18th, 2009
Punta Gorda, FL
Lyons, Tigers and Dares Tour

photo by Iris Robert

You had to know that I would end with ruby... Didn't you?

Well, I shouldn't have complained about the wind on Day One of the Seafood Festival, because Day Two had even more in store: the temperature dropped about twenty degrees overnight. Lord, it was cold. Being the slave to my concepts that I am, I was a human popsicle in that last dress. I just couldn't not wear the fish dress! The day was ok, overall. I didn't feel very confident in my performances, but, I'll live. The turnout was not quite what they anticipated, due to the weather, but, I think we can all consider ourselves troopers for sticking it out. I'm glad to have done it. I dragged Dave Stillson of Kurveball up on stage to play with me for a few songs in my second set, just for fun. I think was getting tired of hearing myself, so I changed it up at the last minute. He did a great job playing along, considering that he had never played my music in his life. Ah, sponteneity. It was good to hear Kurveball and Mike Younger's band play again on Sunday.

I went doen to the WKIX studio that night, to co-host Down Home Cookin' with Larry T. What fun! I made sure to plug some of my friends and people I admire in the Americana world. We played Cadillac Sky, Mary Gauthier, Amanda Shires, W.P.A., The Avett Brothers and Suzi Ragsdale, to name a few. Great music. I then played three songs live in the studio, all from my next release, Family Album. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to talk about that project, since it is something I am so proud to have worked on. I'm dying to put it out, so you can all hear it. My family and friends are incredible people. So, the radio show was a nice way to wrap up the tour. Thanks to Matt for coming to keep me company.

Larry T, I so appreciate your support, help and friendship. Thanks to Kurveball and The Marksmen for being so loving and fun all weekend. Thanks to Marcus for the coffee and kind words. Thanks to Chris for the late night peanut butter. Thanks to everyone at Clear Channel, the Ice House, and Portofino. It was a good time, friends.

I'm wearing all kinds of extra gear over the dress in these pictures, as it was a cold day in Florida, but you'll get the general idea. And, as alway, here are the songs!

xoxo, bu

would
true story
brand new lie
coffee with a stranger
brilliant mistakes
sunny day rain
not sorry
brother blue
between ocean and sea
******
the streets of my town
brand new lie
brilliant mistakes
five
sunny day rain
not sorry
between ocean and sea
******
true story
brand new lie
strong as you think

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14860796@N03/sets/72157622503249767/

citrine

2009-10-16T15:43:00.009-05:00

WKIX Seafood Festival, October 17th, 2009
Punta Gorda, FL
Lyons, Tigers and Dares Tour

photo by Iris Robert

I played the first day of the festival, and survived.
There was a threat of being whisked away by the gale force winds, and taken as far as Oz... My dress acting as a parachute of sorts. Alas, I remained on the stage. But, we had a windy ol' time for sure. Still, it was a lovely day, and I met a whole bunch of new friends, which is always the Good News.

There were three sets of musicians playing the festival. The first band were local to the area, Kurveball, a three-piece from Cape Coral, FL. They had a great vibe, and are definitely on my list of folks to have with me, if ever stranded on a desert island. The third band was Mike Younger and The Marksmen, from Nashville TN. Now, Mike and I had met once before, about a year ago, through our mutual friend, Larry Timko, who made this festival possible. I had heard only good things about Mike and his music, so I was excited to see those guys play. His band were all super nice, as well, and we had a good time. I played between those two acts, which may not have been the best slot for me, as I was doing the usual solo thing. I felt like it may have made the energy lapse a bit, but, we did ok, I suppose. We each played twice through, in that order, so it turned out to be a pretty full day.

Later on in the evening, Mike's band headed over to the Ice House and played an impromptu show there. They sounded great in that room, which was a huge difference from the washy sound of the open outdoors. I jumped up and did three songs of my own, in between their sets. It is one of the only times anyone will ever see me play in plainclothes...

Thanks to Larry for working hard for us, to Clear Channel for having us, and to the other musicians for the good hang. Special thanks to Matt for coming to see us play, both places. I got a sunburn, but, it was a pretty good day.

Here are the songs I played in all three sets, and lots of photos!

xoxo, bu

true story
brand new lie
coffee with a stranger
brilliant mistakes
sunny day rain
not sorry
the streets of my town
between ocean and sea
******
a girl named Buick
true story
sunny day rain
not sorry
brilliant mistakes
the pizza dream
strong as you think
******
true story
sunny day rain
between ocean and sea

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14860796@N03/sets/72157622501549481/

emerald

2009-10-16T15:23:00.001-05:00

Portofino, October 16th, 2009
Charlotte Harbor, FL
Lyons, Tigers and Dares Tour

photo by Iris Robert

I had one more show at Portofino tonight.
Man, that group of people are so nice, and great to work with, as were the house band that played after me...
But, here's what I have to say:
I can't play at any type of restaurant any more.
It's just not right for what I do.
I play fairly intimate songs, all of which I write, and they just don't come with fries and a coke. It makes me feel dramatically out of place to play in front of diners, and is kind of a waste of time. You can't hear me well enough, and to be perfectly honest, my music probably isn't the best to eat by. Done deal.
It's a goal of mine to get an actual booking agent so that I can play strictly venues, no matter how small.
Tonight was pivotal for me.

That being said, big love as always to Doug, Abe and the rest of the Portofino family. Doug made me another feast, which I'll be gratefully eating for days...
And, sent me off with gifts of all kinds. So lovely.
Thanks to the other musicians for letting me share their system and time tonight. Thanks to Ceree for coming to watch, keep me company and take photos.

Here are the songs I played, and a link to lots of images!

xoxo, bu

true story
the streets of my town
coffee with a stranger
brilliant mistakes
sunny day rain
not sorry
between ocean and sea
five
brand new lie
god bless the truthsayer

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14860796@N03/sets/72157622601504786/