Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round
They sing "I'm in love. What's that song?
I'm in love with that song."
They sing "I'm in love. What's that song?
I'm in love with that song."
I am just back from a whirl wind trip to Austin for SXSW 2012...
I could try and sound cool, like, yeah, it was the next obvious step for me and my record... everyone does it... but it was so much more beyond being cool...
It has been, in my mind, the biggest of all of the music conferences/festivals... Something that I started reading about with my subscription to the magazine No Depression in the late '90s. I remember reading about the Bloodshot Party at Yard Dog and thinking: those are my people...that's where I belong...
It might have taken me 13 years to make it to SXSW but it's always been the plan. It's been on my list of things to do... as a musician...not just as a fan. It's been on my big list..... Like the ones that my dreams live on. So it was always my plan to submit for an official showcase with the release of my 2nd album Big Black Birds. They started taking submissions last year for the 2012 conference and one day last fall, I thought, well, it's time, I better go ahead and submit my album/myself for consideration. After all, I'd been waiting 12 years...the time was now. So when I went on line to print out the forms or what ever it takes to submit, I saw I was a day late. Literally, one day late. I couldn't believe that I had waited all this time to have an album that I was proud enough of to think I might actually have a chance to be one of the 2000 chosen bands for official showcases and I fucking blew it...
It was March... SXSW 2010 and I was living in a one room garage apartment in Lyons, Colorado. My album wasn't finished yet and had along time to go still (it would eventually be released Aug 2011). I was in a really weird space in many ways. I had lost my driver's license due to a DUI, was taking the bus every where I had to go and spent about 20 hours a week at the Boulder Library because there were only buses to and from Lyons in the mornings and afternoons...meaning that if I had to go in for a breath-a-lizer test that day, I'd leave around 8 am and come back around 4... so I spent the time in between at the Boulder Library, reading books, writing a book of my own (not finished...yet) and feeling like a really fucking big loser. I gravitate towards the darkness... I read every book Henry Rollins wrote I could get my hands on, the diaries of Anias Nin, Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf,and Hubert Selby, jr... I was single...not even some one to blow dry my hair for at the bar I bar tended at... I spent a lot of time alone... just walking my dogs (I guess I had them so I wasn't that alone...but as for people... I was pretty alone.)
I am not sure really about the exact details but the lead up to that year's SXSW was big on Facebook and NPR... I remember reading somewhere that Big Star was playing and I was like 'Fuuuuck... I wanna be there...' I never got to see Big Star and they were always one of those bands I loved in a back wards way....from the bands I was listening to : The Replacements and Evan Dando and more... The Ballad of El Goodo ...
In 2010, Just as the music portion of the SXSW festival was to begin, lead singer of Big Star, Alex Chilton died of a heart attack on March 17 just 3 days before their SXSW scheduled performance... Instead of the Big Star show it turned into a Tribute show that featured some of my biggest musical heroes like Curt Kirkwood of The Meat Puppets, John Doe of X, Evan Dando of the Lemonheads and more...
Somewhere, somehow my musician friend, Amy Speace was there at SXSW that year. She always seems to be at the right place at the right time... I will try to recall from memory how she told me this all went down... I think she said she ran into her friend, Jody Stephens, who was in Big Star, in Austin, that day and he invited her to join the tribute...that's the condensed version. She must of posted something about singing with Evan Dando at the Tribute that made me almost have a stroke. Evan Dando, to me is one of my number ones... it was he who introduced me to the music of Lucinda Williams back in '92 at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago when he covered her song 'The Night's Too Long' ... He also reminded me about Gram Parsons with his cover of Brass Buttons... I had always known 'Won't you scratch my itch sweet Annie Rich'...from my FM radio days riding around in Camaros and he brought my little punk rock youth and love for bands like Lone Justice, X, and The GoGo's all to the center... He was everything to me then and even now. I love him... (On a side note: The guy I was with the night I got the DUI... a dead ringer for Evan Dando... )So when I heard from my friend Amy that she was signing a duet with him at the Big Star tribute...I looked around at my 4 wall sequestration and felt trapped and that my life was passing me by. I was happy for her, honestly, a big part of me was living vicariously though her. She after all, is a super talented singer and song writer who I had befriended years before at a Folk Festival. She was and is many steps beyond me in all ways but I look to her for inspiration and silent guidance when it comes to being a touring girl musician. She, after all, wrote one of the 5 songs in my top 5 songs I wish I had written. It's a song called 'Haven't Learned a Thing' and it goes on the list with Angel From Montgomery by John Prine, and Difficult Kind By Sheryl Crow to name the top 2.In that moment, that I realized that life was passing me by as I sat in that garage apartment surrounded by dark books...and I made a vow to myself...that my life was for the living...I made a silent promise to myself that I would make to SXSW as a musician... amongst a few other things.
I could take you back to all the years I spent not believing in myself... letting other people's doubt of me define me...and giving up on myself before I could even really try... And then some where, out of no where...A new way found me...it felt as though I was plucked up by my hair and picked up from my life and moved like a board game piece to the other side...another side...this side. I have no idea what I am doing...The grass isn't greener...it's just different. It's scarier and more stressful, but It's mine. In the last 5 years I've watched as some of my most private dreams came true...I have failed so many times and fallen while running so hard... And so many times, I am my only witness...new friends, could never know the old me who never thought she'd get to see any of the dreams come true...so I sit quietly next to my self taking snapshots in my own mind to try and hold on to the moments that are gone entirely too fast... Like last week being in Austin for SXSW... even though, I missed the dead line for the official showcases, I managed to secure 3 unofficial showcases around town and played to great crowds. I brought down a guitar player to sit in with me...but he was anything but impressed with the fact that I had brought myself there at 40 and witnessed myself live one of my biggest dreams... (yes, I know now that I need to put bigger, better dreams on the list).
I am proud of myself. I and know have grown so much. I feel as though I am at the top of my game right now and that's not saying much but for me it's just something I know...a feeling I get sometimes...an effortlessness ...I also know I have a long way to go and to quote someone from my past, 'I am no Emmy Lou Harris and no Gillian Welch.' I am me though and I am the best me musician I've ever been (and I am looking forward to what the next part of my life brings me.)
I spent most of SXSW alone... wandering the streets of my favorite town catching what ever bands I could... Feeling pretty invisible in a sea of skinny jeans, creepy moustaches, and everyone trying to out cool each other... I talked to nearly no one. I watched the world go by, listened to the bands, who, like me, had a dream to be there... and all the while felt like : these showcases are just another gig... my life isn't going to change because I was there...I had a guy from a Nashville Record Label kind of courting me while I was there...but after I made all the effort to meet him at the Driskell Hotel on 6th Street, I had to leave after waiting for him for 40 minutes so I could make it to one of my shows. We texted but never wound up meeting up down there...It was just too much in all the craziness. He sent me an email today... But I can't let myself believe that anything will come from it...I saw some great bands...to me they all sounded like one of 2 bands: The Jayhawks or Old Neko Case... which is good for me as I happen to like both of those bands a lot. I got to hang out at the Bloodshot Record Label party at Yard Dog and see some of my favorite artists...And I imagined the days when bands like Whiskeytown were there...
I sang my heart out and we killed it all of my showcases. The last one we had was on 6th Street which is where most of the chaos occurs at SXSW... blocks and blocks and blocks of bars each with at least 1 stage if not two...and all the bands dying to be heard. They say there are 2,000 official bands at SX and that it draws over 200,000 people... and on the night of my showcase down there, the venue I was playing wouldn't even let me in because it was too crowded. They finally let me in as it was my time to go on. Girl with guitar, singing eyes wide open, right hand leading the way, trying to find the people who came looking for someone like me... I found them... one at a time... People were listening...
There were times, I gave myself goosebumps, singing words from Big Black Birds like : They came by at the same time I felt like I was loosing my mind...' and looking out the window as Big Black Birds flew right by me... As I sang words from Time Will Tell l and remembered how it has been 5 years that Craig's been gone ... and how far I've come and thinking of his mom and the dreams she had for him and that here I was living a dream that Craig had for me... and I felt so alone...and I know that no matter who reads this, who plays next to me, who I try and describe this all to...that I am the only one that really knows or cares where I came from and why it meant something to be there singing my songs...
I drove home in one day from Austin to Lyons where I now have an airstream I call my own (although it's not really mine) that is across from the little garage apartment that I lived in a couple years ago dreaming up this dream... and in the cold morning, as I walked by there, still in my Austin Flip Flops in the cold Colorado morning, I saw the fluffy white blossoms of a cherry tree in bloom next to my old garage apartment while all the other trees around were still bare... I never remembered that tree blooming like that before... and I stopped for a moment to remember that year that Amy sang with Evan Dando at the Big Star tribute, the year I made a promise to myself that life wouldn't pass me by anymore...That same year I also went looking for a home for my heart. I had told myself that when the cherry blossoms were in bloom I would find my love... I did just 2 weeks after that on April 1st 2010 when the pink tree in our yard was in bloom... Yesterday I stopped long enough to take it all in and see my life traveling in circles... I had to remind myself to hold on to the moments that mean something to me and not just dismiss them because I know they are leaving anyway...To acknowledge them as they come and then hold them close in my mind when they've done gone and blown away...
Come quick and see
you won't believe
all these cherry blossoms
they are blooming
all over me...
Jami Lunde
Frisco, Colorado
http://www.missminimalist.com/2010/05/minimalist-philosophy-cherry-blossom-living/
On a side note...last night as I cooked a dinner of Carmelized Onion and Asparagus Risotto for my guy and me, I watched You Tube Videos of things I missed at this years' SXSW... and came across the Big Star Trailer for the movie on Big Star that premiered at SXSW this year and heard Amy's voice from across my kitchen and it nearly brought me to me knees...what it did bring is tears to my eyes...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=216ea1lJcMQ&feature=related
I could try and sound cool, like, yeah, it was the next obvious step for me and my record... everyone does it... but it was so much more beyond being cool...
It has been, in my mind, the biggest of all of the music conferences/festivals... Something that I started reading about with my subscription to the magazine No Depression in the late '90s. I remember reading about the Bloodshot Party at Yard Dog and thinking: those are my people...that's where I belong...
It might have taken me 13 years to make it to SXSW but it's always been the plan. It's been on my list of things to do... as a musician...not just as a fan. It's been on my big list..... Like the ones that my dreams live on. So it was always my plan to submit for an official showcase with the release of my 2nd album Big Black Birds. They started taking submissions last year for the 2012 conference and one day last fall, I thought, well, it's time, I better go ahead and submit my album/myself for consideration. After all, I'd been waiting 12 years...the time was now. So when I went on line to print out the forms or what ever it takes to submit, I saw I was a day late. Literally, one day late. I couldn't believe that I had waited all this time to have an album that I was proud enough of to think I might actually have a chance to be one of the 2000 chosen bands for official showcases and I fucking blew it...
It was March... SXSW 2010 and I was living in a one room garage apartment in Lyons, Colorado. My album wasn't finished yet and had along time to go still (it would eventually be released Aug 2011). I was in a really weird space in many ways. I had lost my driver's license due to a DUI, was taking the bus every where I had to go and spent about 20 hours a week at the Boulder Library because there were only buses to and from Lyons in the mornings and afternoons...meaning that if I had to go in for a breath-a-lizer test that day, I'd leave around 8 am and come back around 4... so I spent the time in between at the Boulder Library, reading books, writing a book of my own (not finished...yet) and feeling like a really fucking big loser. I gravitate towards the darkness... I read every book Henry Rollins wrote I could get my hands on, the diaries of Anias Nin, Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf,and Hubert Selby, jr... I was single...not even some one to blow dry my hair for at the bar I bar tended at... I spent a lot of time alone... just walking my dogs (I guess I had them so I wasn't that alone...but as for people... I was pretty alone.)
I am not sure really about the exact details but the lead up to that year's SXSW was big on Facebook and NPR... I remember reading somewhere that Big Star was playing and I was like 'Fuuuuck... I wanna be there...' I never got to see Big Star and they were always one of those bands I loved in a back wards way....from the bands I was listening to : The Replacements and Evan Dando and more... The Ballad of El Goodo ...
In 2010, Just as the music portion of the SXSW festival was to begin, lead singer of Big Star, Alex Chilton died of a heart attack on March 17 just 3 days before their SXSW scheduled performance... Instead of the Big Star show it turned into a Tribute show that featured some of my biggest musical heroes like Curt Kirkwood of The Meat Puppets, John Doe of X, Evan Dando of the Lemonheads and more...
Somewhere, somehow my musician friend, Amy Speace was there at SXSW that year. She always seems to be at the right place at the right time... I will try to recall from memory how she told me this all went down... I think she said she ran into her friend, Jody Stephens, who was in Big Star, in Austin, that day and he invited her to join the tribute...that's the condensed version. She must of posted something about singing with Evan Dando at the Tribute that made me almost have a stroke. Evan Dando, to me is one of my number ones... it was he who introduced me to the music of Lucinda Williams back in '92 at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago when he covered her song 'The Night's Too Long' ... He also reminded me about Gram Parsons with his cover of Brass Buttons... I had always known 'Won't you scratch my itch sweet Annie Rich'...from my FM radio days riding around in Camaros and he brought my little punk rock youth and love for bands like Lone Justice, X, and The GoGo's all to the center... He was everything to me then and even now. I love him... (On a side note: The guy I was with the night I got the DUI... a dead ringer for Evan Dando... )So when I heard from my friend Amy that she was signing a duet with him at the Big Star tribute...I looked around at my 4 wall sequestration and felt trapped and that my life was passing me by. I was happy for her, honestly, a big part of me was living vicariously though her. She after all, is a super talented singer and song writer who I had befriended years before at a Folk Festival. She was and is many steps beyond me in all ways but I look to her for inspiration and silent guidance when it comes to being a touring girl musician. She, after all, wrote one of the 5 songs in my top 5 songs I wish I had written. It's a song called 'Haven't Learned a Thing' and it goes on the list with Angel From Montgomery by John Prine, and Difficult Kind By Sheryl Crow to name the top 2.In that moment, that I realized that life was passing me by as I sat in that garage apartment surrounded by dark books...and I made a vow to myself...that my life was for the living...I made a silent promise to myself that I would make to SXSW as a musician... amongst a few other things.
I could take you back to all the years I spent not believing in myself... letting other people's doubt of me define me...and giving up on myself before I could even really try... And then some where, out of no where...A new way found me...it felt as though I was plucked up by my hair and picked up from my life and moved like a board game piece to the other side...another side...this side. I have no idea what I am doing...The grass isn't greener...it's just different. It's scarier and more stressful, but It's mine. In the last 5 years I've watched as some of my most private dreams came true...I have failed so many times and fallen while running so hard... And so many times, I am my only witness...new friends, could never know the old me who never thought she'd get to see any of the dreams come true...so I sit quietly next to my self taking snapshots in my own mind to try and hold on to the moments that are gone entirely too fast... Like last week being in Austin for SXSW... even though, I missed the dead line for the official showcases, I managed to secure 3 unofficial showcases around town and played to great crowds. I brought down a guitar player to sit in with me...but he was anything but impressed with the fact that I had brought myself there at 40 and witnessed myself live one of my biggest dreams... (yes, I know now that I need to put bigger, better dreams on the list).
I am proud of myself. I and know have grown so much. I feel as though I am at the top of my game right now and that's not saying much but for me it's just something I know...a feeling I get sometimes...an effortlessness ...I also know I have a long way to go and to quote someone from my past, 'I am no Emmy Lou Harris and no Gillian Welch.' I am me though and I am the best me musician I've ever been (and I am looking forward to what the next part of my life brings me.)
I spent most of SXSW alone... wandering the streets of my favorite town catching what ever bands I could... Feeling pretty invisible in a sea of skinny jeans, creepy moustaches, and everyone trying to out cool each other... I talked to nearly no one. I watched the world go by, listened to the bands, who, like me, had a dream to be there... and all the while felt like : these showcases are just another gig... my life isn't going to change because I was there...I had a guy from a Nashville Record Label kind of courting me while I was there...but after I made all the effort to meet him at the Driskell Hotel on 6th Street, I had to leave after waiting for him for 40 minutes so I could make it to one of my shows. We texted but never wound up meeting up down there...It was just too much in all the craziness. He sent me an email today... But I can't let myself believe that anything will come from it...I saw some great bands...to me they all sounded like one of 2 bands: The Jayhawks or Old Neko Case... which is good for me as I happen to like both of those bands a lot. I got to hang out at the Bloodshot Record Label party at Yard Dog and see some of my favorite artists...And I imagined the days when bands like Whiskeytown were there...
I sang my heart out and we killed it all of my showcases. The last one we had was on 6th Street which is where most of the chaos occurs at SXSW... blocks and blocks and blocks of bars each with at least 1 stage if not two...and all the bands dying to be heard. They say there are 2,000 official bands at SX and that it draws over 200,000 people... and on the night of my showcase down there, the venue I was playing wouldn't even let me in because it was too crowded. They finally let me in as it was my time to go on. Girl with guitar, singing eyes wide open, right hand leading the way, trying to find the people who came looking for someone like me... I found them... one at a time... People were listening...
There were times, I gave myself goosebumps, singing words from Big Black Birds like : They came by at the same time I felt like I was loosing my mind...' and looking out the window as Big Black Birds flew right by me... As I sang words from Time Will Tell l and remembered how it has been 5 years that Craig's been gone ... and how far I've come and thinking of his mom and the dreams she had for him and that here I was living a dream that Craig had for me... and I felt so alone...and I know that no matter who reads this, who plays next to me, who I try and describe this all to...that I am the only one that really knows or cares where I came from and why it meant something to be there singing my songs...
I drove home in one day from Austin to Lyons where I now have an airstream I call my own (although it's not really mine) that is across from the little garage apartment that I lived in a couple years ago dreaming up this dream... and in the cold morning, as I walked by there, still in my Austin Flip Flops in the cold Colorado morning, I saw the fluffy white blossoms of a cherry tree in bloom next to my old garage apartment while all the other trees around were still bare... I never remembered that tree blooming like that before... and I stopped for a moment to remember that year that Amy sang with Evan Dando at the Big Star tribute, the year I made a promise to myself that life wouldn't pass me by anymore...That same year I also went looking for a home for my heart. I had told myself that when the cherry blossoms were in bloom I would find my love... I did just 2 weeks after that on April 1st 2010 when the pink tree in our yard was in bloom... Yesterday I stopped long enough to take it all in and see my life traveling in circles... I had to remind myself to hold on to the moments that mean something to me and not just dismiss them because I know they are leaving anyway...To acknowledge them as they come and then hold them close in my mind when they've done gone and blown away...
Come quick and see
you won't believe
all these cherry blossoms
they are blooming
all over me...
Jami Lunde
Frisco, Colorado
http://www.missminimalist.com/2010/05/minimalist-philosophy-cherry-blossom-living/
On a side note...last night as I cooked a dinner of Carmelized Onion and Asparagus Risotto for my guy and me, I watched You Tube Videos of things I missed at this years' SXSW... and came across the Big Star Trailer for the movie on Big Star that premiered at SXSW this year and heard Amy's voice from across my kitchen and it nearly brought me to me knees...what it did bring is tears to my eyes...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=216ea1lJcMQ&feature=related
