Thanks, Wynona.

So, Wynona Judd told me to move to Nashville.  I had spoken to a handful of music industry pros who had all said, “If there is anything else you can do, do that instead.  This industry is hard.” Then I met Wynona. I casually explained that there were plenty of things I could do, but that when I did those things instead of making music, “There are these little, spikey bugs that crawl around inside of all of my veins constantly biting and pinching me and making me want to scratch off my skin.  When I do make music, the bugs are definitely still there, but it’s more like they’re swimming or riding intertubes down a lazy river.”  Wy leaned back, got comfortable, and said, “I think we need you here.” What’s a girl to do?  Bye bye Boston.   But first I needed to get some things in order.

Some of you may remember the Chicago Blizzard of 1999.  The day it hit, I woke to find my Australian friend, Clare, staring incredulously out of my bay window, where the cars lining the street were already completely buried.  She turned to me, eyes so wide I could see more white than hazel, and asked, “What does it mean???”  Well, it turns out it meant we were headed to Mexico. 

Clare took a bus to the airport about twelve hours after her toes turned black and frost bitten while she was waiting on the el platform for a train that never arrived.  It was so cold that it completely shut down for a few days.  I, however, was a bit short on funds.  I called all of the airlines’ 800 numbers (like we did back in the olden days), and found that I could get to Puerta Vallarta for a little more than $250.  I reasoned that I could pay all of my other week-long vacation expenses with an additional $100  (and we did.  We paid $18 a night for a 3-story house right on the beach.  We found it advertised on the cork board in a coffee shop the afternoon we arrived), so I walked into the restaurant where I had been waitressing and announced that I’d sell anyone my Honda Accord for $350 cash and a ride to the airport.  I sold it immediately.  I know, shocking right?  That trip is a story of its own, and I may tell it later, but that tidbit explains why I was carless when I moved to Boston.

Well, you can get by without a car in Boston, but you won’t last a day in Nashville.   When I told my mother about my predicament, she said I could have her car if I flew to Chicago (from Boston) and picked it up.  (So see, you thought I was an idiot for selling my car for a plane ticket, but then I bought another one to replace it with a plane ticket too.  Pretty crafty, eh?) I didn’t really want to drive 1,000 miles by myself, so I asked Cheekay, my adventurous friend from Hong Kong, if she’d like to go to Chicago the next day.  So, what I really meant was, “Hey Cheekay, do you want to fly into O’Hare, get a car into the suburbs and then drive straight back here without ever experiencing Chicago at all?”  But I MAY not have presented it like that.  So, off we flew to the Midwest.  We hopped right into the car and took off.  We didn’t even pack a change of clothes.  Then somewhere in the middle of nowhere New York, the car died.  I called Mom and she said, “I’ve driven that car for 220,000 miles and never had a problem.  What did you DO to it??”  Well, I drove it until the odometer hit 220,621.  I think that was the crux of the problem.  Anyway, we called a tow truck and  “Bones” rescued us on the side of the road and delivered us to the nearest Best Western.  By the next morning we were about 30 hours into our adventure and really wanted some clothes that weren’t beginning to adhere to our skin and graft themselves to our bodies.  Before I tell you this next bit, you need to get Cheekay’s voice in your head.  She is this beautiful, petite Hongkongese woman who was educated in London and then went to Cambridge, so she has a very proper English accent. She said, “I’ve always wanted to go to a Kmart.  Is there a Kmart in this area?”  I replied, “Well, there’s a TJ Maxx across the highway.  We could walk over there.  They usually have cute stuff.”  “Is it like a Kmart?  Mainly I want to know this:  If we go to this TJ Maxx and buy ourselves some clothes, can I say that I’ve bought them at a Kmart?” Why the hell not?  We bought ourselves matching jeans and Roxy surf t-shirts, ran back to the hotel to find that Bones had delivered the beast (who was later named Bessie), and we were off.   Cheekay wanted to show off her Kmart clothes to some of our friends, so when we got back to Boston, we met them at McCormick and Schmick for happy hour and then ended up ordering and sharing Lobster Thermadore because that’s a completely reasonable thing for college kids wearing phony Kmart clothes and driving a donated-by-Mom senior citizen car to eat for dinner.

Then I packed up everything I owned, which took about 40 minutes, and drove to Nashvegas.  One of my Berklee profs found me a house and introduced me to a few more people in the industry, and I was off.  Now you’re waiting for me to say I am a grammy award winning songwriter with multiple platinum records.  But really I worked a non-paid internship which eventually turned into $10/hr, became a private tutor for a 12 year-old girl who lived in a castle her parents built after they had a hand in inventing ATM machines and sold the company for a few billion, and had some really wild rides along the way.  

 So, although I never saw her again, I’ll be forever thankful to Wy for a few things, like the night I had a back-yard dance-off with the Chinese ballroom dancing champions of 2001, the time I won a dirty dancing contest with the man who designed and created Elivis’ white jumpsuit, and the night a 12 year-old calmly and confidentally explained to me that I was abused as a child because my dad ALWAYS made me fly commercial.  (It’s so relieving to finally know what to focus on in therapy after all of these years.) Thank you Wynona.  Thank you.