The physical copies of my album arrived yesterday and I started to do one of those unboxing videos for social media, but I kept defaulting to: “I know I’m supposed to be jumping up and down with excitement, but I’m not!” Maybe it’s a touch of postpartum ennui, when, after all the work to get to this stage, you realize, wait a minute, you mean there’s more work to do? Yes, my dear! Next up: editing, with the help of YouTube tutorials, a video (recorded with my dear Tracey – who, in other news, is coming to a Fringe Festival near you over the next few months with her brilliant show All These Pretty Things, which I co-wrote and directed). And trying to work out how to do pre-saves. Sigh.
I’ve been working on this album since September 2020. Getting this incredible band together, writing the lyrics, doing arrangements (the simple ones; Luis did the transformational ones), designing the cover, uploading the digital tracks to TuneCore (so fiddly), listening to the album until I couldn’t really even hear it anymore, choosing the final order. And now what? Now come the doubts. Will people like it. Will I be in good voice for the CD release at Joe’s Pub on July 1 (tickets are here, by the way). Will I get gigs. Will people come? But whatever happens, making this album has been like writing a song which you come to the end of and think, “Yes, that is exactly how I feel!” That feeling is like all the balls miraculously falling into the right places at once in a ball-in-the-hole game.
This album really is a life and death catharsis project. Little did I know when I started it, that so many people I loved would be gone by the time I finished it. My beloved, perfectionist mum, who taught me to sing when I was three. My bestie, singer saxophonist Sheila Cooper, who was a huge champion of my singing, even struggling on her walking sticks with bone cancer to get the train all the way from Vienna to Budapest to see me perform at Opus. My beloved “Uncle Ken”, who some of you knew from my gigs at the 55 Bar and no doubt had to endure being pressed up against some wall to hear: 1. How amazing I am and 2. How we met – when he came up to me at Tower Records when I was just starting out and asked me if I was part Trinidadian, and I was so shocked because (a) no one else has ever guessed this ever and (b) this was before the internet or anything so there was no way he could have known.
He told me that story again on his deathbed and added, “To this day, I have no idea why I said Trinidad!” And I said, “I know why. Because now I’m here.” Spoon feeding him Jello in a hospice on his last day on earth. But I was so grateful to be there. And it made perfect sense – if you believe in such things as former lives (as I think I do). And I was so grateful to be able to be with my mum two years later, and to my sweet day-job colleagues, who surprised me with a hefty contribution to my airfare when I came back. This album is like a gumbo stew, containing so many feelings about all these people and life experiences. But I hope the songs are ephemeral enough for people to put their own interpretations on them.
The day after the physical copies were delivered to my home, I found out that my old bestie, Janet, had died. She was with me all through my 20s and 30s when we were neighbors and single mums (she a young widow and me an escapee). Calling me every day to make sure I was still here, when I had depression (which, by the way, I don’t suffer from anymore). Cheerleading from the sidelines when things were good. She recently sent me all my letters that she’d kept for the past 40+ years. She said she’d re-read them and they’d made her laugh and she thought I should have them.
The day after I heard the news, I had a dream. I was in a field and downhill to my left I could see a group of music businesspeople in the distance and I thought, “No, I can’t face it!” So, I walked up the hill where I saw Janet. We hugged and I said, “Oh I’m so glad to see you. I thought I’d missed you!” I could still feel the imprint of that hug on my chest when I woke up. I guess the dream, aside from being a real “visitation” from Janet, is me choosing “realness” over the superficiality of what drives music careers nowadays (TikTok followers and digital music services like Spotify that actively want “background music!”). A reminder that we aren’t musicians (or actors or painters or writers or whatever we do) for the accolades or attention or (God forbid) the dress, but because we can’t help it. It’s really that simple.
Meanwhile, I am so incredibly grateful to all of you who have supported and encouraged me, by coming to gigs, by (in the old days) buying albums, by following me on Spotify or Apple or Pandora, by writing to me (or about me), by being at the 55 Bar month after month, and the almost alchemical transformation your presence would effect. Some days I’d be so wiped on my way to a gig I’d wonder how on earth I was going to get through it. But there you’d be when I arrived and, two songs in, I’d be all better. So, in case you didn’t realize how much a part of my musical journey (and life) you have been, thank you!