Zoe Mulford at Teavolve on Monday January 27th.
Well, it’s 5.30 in the morning and I can’t sleep. I’d Love to say that that’s not fairly typical, but that’d be a lie and I try to at least be MOSTLY factual in my storytelling – so – damn it, it’s 5.30 in the morning and I’m wide-awake. Again.
So I’ll tell you a little bit about something I did the other night that WASN’T fairly typical: I listened to Heather Aubrey Lloyd. Now – don’t get me wrong – I play with Heather all the time (though weirdly enough not in the last month) and I talk with Heather all the time. I often run sound for Heather. But I very rarely, in a completely passive way, sit back and take her in.
Sunday night I DID make it back in time to catch Heather, Joy Ike and Brittany Ann performing down in Takoma Park for Heather’s “How She Floats” show. It was kind of exquisite. All three of them are consummate songwriters, and amazing vocalists in dramatically different ways. Heather with her folk grit, Joy with her pop sensibilities and Brittany with her country flair and western boots – it makes for a great tripartite entity, always bouncing from one aesthetic to the next, generally viewing the concept of Love and romantic relationship through varying prisms.
But Heather shone. The side-effect of just being a listener meant that I had no outlet.
Heather’s songs, especially because I’ve LIVED through their creation over the past decade hold a whole other level for me. I know what they mean, I know the background story of each and every one. I know the inside jokes, the implications, the sidelong glances, the boys involved and the circumstances – and emotionally, it can be hard to not integrate myself into the music in some way. Sunday night it was REALLY hard.
I don’t know how people who don’t have an expressive artistic side survive. I suppose either they numb it or they explode. But I felt that explosiveness Sunday night as I forced myself to bottle it up and I welled up and teared up and got strong and got weak and got embarrassed and got over it and openly wept. It was a pretty incredible night.
I must admit. I’m a sucker for the visceral. I get distracted by the physical. We are sensual creatures and I fall into that. Not being able to answer back with my voice or more truthfully, with my fingers to strings, was hard – and it was worth it – but I’m very glad we’ll be back on stage together on Thursday. Somehow being emotionally expressive is so much less exhausting than being emotionally bottled up.
It’s cold. It’s dark. Now that I got that out of my head maybe sleep will come, but I doubt it. I’m about to see dawn from the wrong way around again (my tired mind conjures an image of Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s sister doing a handstand) and again, I wish that wasn’t so typical. Thoughts include : visited the Board and Brew tonight… Brian and Ben’s place is going to be uber-cool and I’m jealous of the awesome but not jealous of the awful amount of work and risk still ahead of them. Plan to play Risk there. Also : Pete Seeger died yesterday. I’m in a community in which this is incredibly important, but unfortunately my personal connection isn’t strong. Channel 9 news came and interviewed people at the store today to get some banjo flavour and a conversation with someone who’d known him (Dave). Snow makes college park beautiful in a swirling, skirling way. Activists like Pete Seeger make the world a better place. Activists like the woman who’s still harassing me about the ADA just sour it. Oh. And I’ve got a new open mic on the horizon. More on that later, I suppose.
