Picture a hotel suite, with real potted palms in the corners, and champagne on ice, crowded with people in various forms of finery–you know, some dressed up, some dressed down, because it’s all about establishing cred. It looks like a hundred other music biz after parties, and when Sarah stumbles into me as if she’s […]
(and liner note!) Court and I stayed for a few more days in Tennessee after everyone else went home, to help Janine cope and to “be there” for Landon. I didn’t really know what “being there” would entail, but it turns out that literally just being there was good. I have no idea how a […]
Turned out that was Patty I saw in the crowd at the service. I know because later, I went looking for Ziggy outside the church, and eventually found him practically holding Patty and Digger apart at arm’s length. He caught sight of me and gave me a look that I took to mean get out […]
Salt water is bad for wood. You don’t want to know what tears did to the varnish on the top of the Miller. Okay, I’m being dramatic. It wasn’t any worse than the spot on the body where the sleeve of my flannel shirt wore it thin. We all get scars on our skin from […]
After my sister left, I sat there with the Miller in my lap, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to play it. I felt like if I tried to start playing or singing I was just going to cry my eyes out, and that would hurt like hell. I wasn’t ready for it to hurt […]
Life felt very unreal for the next few days, like I was in a cellophane bubble. That feeling was uncomfortably similar to the way I’d felt while we were in South America. Like I could go through the motions but I was somehow walled off from everyone else by glass.
I was the last of my mother’s children to arrive at her room that night. All my sisters were already there. I’m not really sure Claire still was. She had lapsed into unconsciousness shortly after asking for me. Remo and the three of them were gathered around her bed, waiting to see if she would […]
Claire was alert again, and she was asking for me. And there I was not even wearing pants. I told them to tell her I’d be there as fast as I could. I threw on clothes while Ziggy threw some stuff into a bag and went to pull the car around so I could just […]
Two more days went by before I went back to the hotel for a real shower and a break. A few times Claire had looked around and made eye contact, but it was like she was looking at us through one-way glass and couldn’t see us looking back at her. Ziggy came with me and […]
There was a moment of panic on my part when I realized the guitar I had there in Tennesee was the Miller, the low-action acoustic guitar Bart had given me years ago, and not the Ovation. Not that there was anything wrong with the Miller. The main problem was the case didn’t have the same […]