Big Black Birds 1st CD Release Show

There's A Million Should Have Beens

But Only One Way That it Really Is... 

Knee Deep in L.A. from Jami Lunde Big Black Birds

Big Black Birds CD Release Show

The Lyons Fork Lyons,Colorado 

June 23, 2011

Some how it just  turned into one of those kind of nights...one of those nights that happens only in Lyons. The kind of night where it feels like you've been cast in a movie, the script is perfect,not a word out of place, the director has waited all day for the light to turn golden and the summer night's air is still and warm as it dissolves into your skin. The faint cinnamon and clove fragrance from  flowers spilling out of flower boxes under big leafy trees wrapped in little white Christmas Lights  seduced  us  and made us all  beautiful. Krisha served up perfect  Coin Margaritas with lots of fresh lime, short stemless sexy glasses of white wine and tall blond bubbly Pilsners to the crowd of friends and neighbors. Wayne and Debbie Anderson, hosted my first CD release party at The Lyons Fork, their food centric, beer driven, margarita adoring little haunt in one of my very favorite buildings- The Old Cilantro Mary's... Before I lived in Lyons, when I would just come for music festivals, I would always stop in for a bite to eat... the old owners didn't serve alcohol and I can't honestly say I remember my meals very well, but what I do remember are the colors inside, the  folk art and the way I felt when I was in the building... like it was home. Red painted ceilings, sea foam green trim, big huge bay windows with Mexican striped curtains... Part Frida Kahlo, Part Mexican Brothel... I think there's a bullet hole in the wall from a shoot out back in the old days. There are still wrought iron railings to tie your horse up if you happen to ride into town... and not in a Texas Road House re-make sort of way... it just feels right in there...timeless... and now that  the friends I made when I moved to Lyons, Wayne and Debbie Anderson bought it a little more than a year ago they've turned it into another reason why Lyons is my favorite little town anywhere... 

I asked another one of the first friends I made when I moved to Lyons, Tessa Rochon, to open the show for me...as she was a girl who was a girl I not only worked with at  BBQ joint, but she was also an aspiring singer/songwriter and I shared the stage her a number of times. It was one of the last times I heard her and she played Neko Case's Middle Cyclone  at an open mic that made the hair stand up on my arms and brought the noisy bar she was playing in to a stand still... Tessa brought me a very cool Blue Star one night to a show I was playing ( as the band on the album was called the blue stars after the large chart I made to record who played what on each song... Todd Patrick Livingston Tele Lap Steel on Tupelo BLUE STAR)  and she brought me a stem of Cherry Blossoms to another show... Even though Tessa and I aren't close on a daily basis- she's listening... and she is LOVE... So Tessa opened the show with a few of her original songs accompanied by our neighbor and professional drummer, Brian Mc Rae... and played my favorite , Middle Cyclone which was my favorite album while I was recording the final vocals to my own album and it seemed to sing my life back to me.

Baby, why'm I worried now,
did someone make a fool of me
'fore I could show 'em how it's done?
Can't give up actin' tough,
it's all that I'm made of.
Can't scrape together quite enough
to ride the bus to the outskirts
of the fact that I need love.

Tessa sings beautifully and plays guitar so well... It was a treat for me to have her open the show. 

When I arrived to the venue after spending the morning in Fort Collins playing a live on air on KRFC  and meandering through the surprisingly empty Whole Foods that morning where I treated my self  to a few delights like new paper flower smell good, a dew blossom body butter, a new organic cotton black t shirt and a handful of bright magenta spray roses... When I walked up to back door of the Fork, Krisha greeted me with a big beautiful vase of flowers and a card... 

'Who are they from?' I asked 'I don't know!!! I wanted to open the card but I didn't.' Krisha Said... 

I recognized the card from The Bird Dog Press, our local Lyons Letter Press, in my favorite colors of Aqua and Red and read the name on the card Allie McLanahan... a girl who I knew from my days in Grand County Colorado who was their from the very beginning of my music career and planted the seed in my head to start doing my own house concert series, which led to developing my own Festival and Awnry Girl Productions... Her name was like a lightening blot that shot straight into my heart, sent a flush all over me, brought tears to my eyes and left me speechless. I hadn't spoken to her in probably 5 years or so... Just when I think no one really is reading anything I post on Facebook... 

This CD release was a big deal to me for more reasons than I will go into here... and While I knew some people were going to be there... friends from the neighborhood and friends I had made at the bar but I was thinking of the friends who weren't there to share this with me... Like my guy,Nate who was working for the week in Fairplay, Colorado... one of my best friends, Craig, who is working on a sail boat in Indonesia and my girl Kim who is in between Colorado visits and back in Venice... So I put up the picture Craig painted for me of Cherry Blossoms on the sea foam green next to my amp as I closed my eyes and brought them all to me in my own way... 

One by one my friends arrived... and each one of the people there I have some sort of a story with... they all came because they had followed the making of the album... they had rooted for me, supported me and where there to celebrate the arrival of my album.  They came because they love me... and you could feel the love in the summer night's air and I could see the red ribbon  that I sewed us all together with ...

As I was taking my guitars out of their cases, setting up my amp and getting ready, I couldn't help but notice a clear absence... Jack... My friend and guitarist over the last 2 years... He left playing music last fall for reasons I still don't understand and has left a hole in my heart where my music lives... I am trying to fill it, to re place him, to move on... but he walks in pretty big shoes... I get so attached... always have. 

So after Tessa played, Don Ambory, one of my new guitar players, Brian McRae and I took to our little corner stage and  played the album.  I was nervous for the first time in a long time... as Eben, my co producer of the album sat at a table close by with many musician friends and music lovers. And what's crazy...? They all listened... The crowd was quiet.  I played my songs and they listened... I know that's the way it should be all the time- but so many times I play to bar crowds where a lot of people talk over you or they're just  watching the TV... So to play for a crowd of my peers who actually were listening, made me nervous and emotional which took me by surprise. After spending  2 1/2 years working these songs... They have become so second nature... there is an easiness and familiarity to them... but that night playing the songs to that crowd, it was like I was playing them for the first time... I felt all the things I felt when I wrote the songs... I could smell the guy's breath I wrote All Over Me about as I sang it and I re lived all the moments of the making of the album from start to finish during the show... I felt an openess and a vulnerability that I hadn't tapped into in quiet some time... It's an amazing feeling to be heard.  

As I was playing I saw one of my old girl friends I call Hannah-laya-Anastasia come through the back door on to the back patio... It relaxed me so and put me  right into my shoes. There's something about having people around you that know you, the old you, the you you used to be... It just makes it that much sweeter when they see the you you are now... I've been so many places since I  last knew her  in the old days and so has she... She was the  mirror of my past and I needed that that night...It's not like it was that hard to forget where I came from but I needed an extra leg to stand there in the past where the songs came from so I could be in  the present singing them as I was  taking my next step into the starry night of tomorrow and all that's to come. It meant so much to me that she came...

As I played the songs from the album and lost my way in a couple new ones... I thought of the way I thought it was gonna be on the night of my CD release... the way I had imagined it... and missed the old guys in the band that are  on the record- I missed our connection... and I felt sort of silly standing up there selling 'my album' when it is really 'our album' Jack Leahy, Ian Morlock, Brian Schey, Todd Patrick Livingston, Greg Mc Rae, Eben Grace and Chris Funk- I feel like such a small part of the whole thing... but It's mine... They are my songs- that's my voice... I was there for the whole thing- and I knew I was lucky to have new guys sitting in with me playing the songs, making them their own... and I felt very lucky and sad at the same time... 

As we were playing each song, I felt as though I was playing them for the first real time... I sent them off on their own... Big Black Birds now had it's own wings and I had let it go...  I recalled something I remember Jeff Tweedy saying in some interview about once you write a song and send it out, it isn't yours anymore, that it's everyone's...it no longer belongs just to you. I felt the songs were now out on thier own... having flown the coop.

We played a little over an hour and called it good. I sold quite a few CDs. A couple of girls came up to me afterwards... One girl told me how she too had lived off the grid in Malibu in  a little cabin like I did in  Fraser, Colorado and could relate to the words in my songs... and another girl came up to me with stars in her eyes having just arrived in Lyons straight from a year and a half in Indonesia and told me how much she loved my lyrics and how she had lived like I had in Indonesia... I assured her that Lyons is a perfect place to land after coming back from Indonesia... I don't remember her name but I wish I had gotten her info- I would like to make friends with those girls her. One, has been in touch and one,She was blond- new in town... let me know if you know her.  And quite a few people told me how much they loved my sad song 'Time Will Tell' for both of my Craigs. 

It blew me away that people heard what I was saying... I mean I Listen to songs, I live through the lyrics ,suck the life out of so many songs and I'm always looking for the next song that sings my life back to me...but for people to listen to my songs like I listen to other people's songs... it made me feel so loved, understood and like it mattered. As Eben said to me last night 'Who Loves Music More Than You?'  I thought, surely there are people...even he must love music more than me... but he assured me that after knowing me for this long that I am some one who  really loves music... so much that it is my whole life-so much that I cry when guys in my band leave. While I nodded and agreed with him- it kind of hit me how well he knew me... I mean I just made a record with him over  2 1/2 years- but  in my mind, I still don't think he really  listens to my lyrics...like I'm hiding them behind all those huge guitars... Being heard...very vulnerable, scarry and amazing. 

It seemed like the night would never end... The music playing through the venue's speakers was the perfect soundtrack to the after party... The Black Crows and The Doyel Brahamhall/Charlie Sexton Band The Arc Angels set the perfect mood for the warm summer night... just when it seemed like the night could go on like this forever... a handful of plate sized rain drops fell sending the crowd on their way to where ever they were going to next...  And it just left me, Eben, Krisha, Wayne  and one of my favorite couples, who I knew before ever moving to Lyons, Caleb and Amy Roberts...  Caleb, who I had met  through his band Open Road...and from the first time I met him, there was a familiarity to him and I knew we'd be friends for a long time... He reminds me of my Great Grandpa, Gleason Williams, and that is the best compliment I could ever give a man... They'll never know how or why they mean so much to me but I do.

I spent the rest of the weekend in Lyons running the stage for The Good Old Days Festival where I also played at... and I reflected a lot on the night of  the CD release party... I ran into many of the friends who were there that night over the weekend and every one seemed to have the same thing to say... that it was just one of those magical nights that seem to come out of no where... you can never predict when they'll come and if you try to force them they just won't show up... but when they do they are unforgettable unmistakeable.

One night like that was Christmas Eve 2008, when I had first moved into KC's garage apartment and we had an iconoclastic Christmas Eve Party... Home made Egg Nog, chestnuts roasting over an open fire, friends singing around an old piano and all of us bundled up and went around the neighborhood Christmas Caroling... it was the eve of this album as well... There was a spark of love in the air then and everything was perfect... nights like that come but once in a lifetime... like the night of my 1st CD release show for Big Black Birds at the Lyons Fork... What great book ends.

As Eben and stood out under the street lamp in front of the airstream talking like 15 year old kids going over the night of the CD release... I said how sad I was that Jack wasn't there to share this with us and Eben said 'Jami, people go...Jack Goes, You'll Go. I'll go. People Go.' I stood there, arms all folded as that statement went straight to my stomach and made me want to throw up... I thought to myself... I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere.'  I'm always a sucker to think that maybe this time they won't go... but they always do. And that's one of the saddest things about life.

There will be more CD release shows... I'll be doing shows in rooms where no one knows my name. Where they'd rather watch the TV than listen to the songs I wrote in my garage apartment about boys that broke my heart... but I will close my eyes and remember the night I was surrounded by my friends in a warm summer night of  love. When I was heard and I will gather each one of those folks who were there with me one by one and sing from  that place to noisy bars, bottles breaking, espresso machines hissing and girls cackling.

It was one of the best nights of my whole life. I'm so glad I even changed the strings on my guitar, wore a dress with Big Black Birds sewed to the hem and painted my toe nails sea foam green. I took a picture of myself in my mind  with of all the ones who turned up to witness the night and have  layed it over my heart where it will live for the rest of my life. 

Thank you Lyontown for making my life such an amazing place to be. 

 And So It Begins...

Jami Lunde

Frisco, Colorado 

June 27,2011

Listening to Gillian Welch, 'The Harrow And The Harvest'

We're gonna make it yet to the end of the road

singing hard times ain't gonna rule rule my mind

no more...