Bringing It All Back Home

It’s a sweltering summer in Tennessee and I’m home after spending most of the year on tour and everything is beautiful and also chaotic and I’ve got two fans going (the overhead and the desk) and too much to do. And and and… I can’t believe it’s August. I’ve reached an age where I wake up too early, but I am a natural born night bird so I stay up too late. I try to make the most of these stretched out days, and yet, I can’t escape the feeling of being chronically behind. My brain hatches more schemes than my body can keep up with.

I have spent most of this month in a flurry of administrivia, but today, I am going to make a valiant attempt to pick up the guitar. I can feel a song coming through, I just have to make time to for it. My cat Ringo has been hanging out in the music room for days, sleeping on my notepad, trying to get me to make time to write. He is not a subtle guy. And I’m not the kind of person who wants to disappoint anyone, least of all my persuasive feline muse. His brother Tubby could care less. In fact, I think Tubby would prefer it if I stayed in bed all day every day, and together we could watch reruns of Law & Order, only occasionally breaking for snacks and a hit of catnip.

In music, as in life, it has always been a challenge for me to balance my creative impulses with the need to be a medium-functioning adult. This goes back a long way. I have gotten better at this over the years, but I still have to be very intentional about making time to make stuff. Every couple of years I pick up Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way — a guidebook for living a creative life — and start again at the beginning, and I diligently write morning pages in inky left-handed scrawl that embarrasses me more than the feelings on the page ever could. The point of the morning pages is to journal upon waking and to write unselfconsciously, but I couldn’t tell you how many times I have stopped mid-sentence only to write: I wish my handwriting were better than this.

My father wrote in lovely, decadent, Catholic school cursive. Large swooping Es and As and Hs. It was dramatic, as was he. When I moved out of home at 17, he sent long letters to me at college, detailing too much information about his and my mother’s recent separation and looming divorce. I wish I had kept them, but I didn’t. I remember his writing all too well, but I no longer have any evidence of it. It was complicated then, it’s complicated now. I’ve inherited more than my fair share of his traits: hypersensitivity, impulsivity, sporadic bouts of melancholia, a sense of adventure, a passion for poetry, and a deep love of music. But I didn’t get the penmanship.

A couple of Saturdays ago, I went to see my favourite rock’n’roll patriarch, Bob Dylan, play at the Ascend Ampitheater in Nashville. Bob wore his beloved white hoodie and seemed to be enjoying himself. I don’t think it’s wise for musicians to review shows, so I’m not going to. But I will say that I enjoyed myself too. The weather was unseasonably balmy, and I was hanging in the cheap seats on the lawn with three of my dearest girlfriends. We’re all big fans, and we’ve been known to send Dylan memes to each other from time to time, via the love language of my generation: the Instagram DM. It’s wonderful to have a core group of gals who appreciate niche Dylan jokes on social media. In that spirit, we delighted in sipping on white wine (if you know you know, if you don’t, congratulations on not being chronically online) and letting the music flow over us. Writing this, it dawned on me that while I have a pretty good understanding of what kind of reels they might want to be on the receiving end of, I have no idea what Kali, Vanessa or Dani’s handwriting looks like.

Mr Dylan on the other hand… In recent years, I have had the pleasure of visiting the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma on a three occasions, and on each trip I’ve marveled at seeing Dylan’s script on display. There are plenty of fun artifacts to enjoy in Tulsa — old film footage, guitars, Christmas cards from each of the Beatles, the iconic red jumpsuit worn by Sally Grossman on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home — but most appealing to me is the notebooks and the hotel stationery where you can see Dylan’s tiny cursive. I am particularly fond of this note from the Ritz-Carlton in New York, detailing album credits from the Infidels sessions. You can tell he was holding onto that biro really tight. I love the idea of these as alternate album titles:

FLESH-ZONE
FLASH OF THE THE FLESH
HIP WHITE BOY
DECADENCE AND CHARM
SURVIVING IN A RUTHLESS WORLD

I adore Infidels, especially “Sweetheart Like You”, which came out as the first single from the album. I was two in December 1983, so I don’t recall this momentous occasion at all. Instead, I bought the record some two decades later from a guy who sold secondhand LPs at a market in Sydney’s inner-west every Saturday afternoon. It was before the vinyl revival, so I managed to build up a nice little collection over time to play back at my place, which was a cheap sharehouse just a couple of blocks away. We had no internet, no air-conditioning, and the toilet was outside. But we had a record player.

There's only one step down from here, baby,
It's called the land of permanent bliss
What's a sweetheart like you doin' in a dump like this?

Another much loved song of mine from these sessions is “Don’t Fall Apart On Me Tonight”, though I prefer the alternate version, which appeared on the Springtime in New York box set in 2021. It’s sadder, and a little more desperate, and I am a sucker for a sad and desperate song:

I ain’t too good at conversation, girl
So you might not know exactly how I feel
But if I could, I’d bring you to the mountaintop, girl
And build you a house made out of stainless steel

If you haven’t spent time with Springtime in New York, I highly recommend it. The folks at Third Man Records did a fantastic job on the 4-LP set, and I treasure my copy. And yes, the alternate versions are great, but what’s truly exceptional here are the unreleased tracks. If I were the kind of person who ranked things (I’m not, I’m allergic to lists) “Too Late” (a song that only appears on the box set as it was never released on an official album) would surely be in my Top 5 Bob Dylan songs of the 1980s…

You’ll arrange to see your man tonight
Who tells you some secret things you think might open some doors
How to enter the gates of paradise
No not really
More like how to go crazy from carrying a burden that’s never meant to be yours

As would “Angelina”, an outtake from 1981’s Shot of Love:

Well, it’s always been my nature to take chances
My right hand drawing back while my left hand advances
Where the current is strong and the monkey dances
To the tune of a concertina

In the five years since Springtime came out, so much of my life has changed, and yet, so much has also stayed the same. I’ve been to three different Bob Dylan shows in three different cities, I’ve lived in three different houses, I’ve fallen apart and gotten myself back together, I’ve gone back to my birth country of Australia, only to come back, relieved and hopeful, to my adopted country of America. I feel at home here, even as it shapeshifts far beyond the place it was when I first visited back in 2009. I came for the music, and I’m staying for the music, and for better or worse, music has been my compass my entire life.

Later this month, I’m heading to New York, sadly not to record, but happily, to play a full band show at a small club called (somewhat confusingly) Berlin on Avenue A. It’s August 29, so it will be the cusp of autumn, but I am sure it will be hot hot hot. I’m looking forward to it. New York shows are always exciting and terrifying, and I am still naively, hopelessly in love with the city, since I have never dampened my fire for it by trying to to live there for more than a few days at a time. For the most part, I stay for one, two, three night stands. This keeps the infatuation strong. My relationship to Sydney (my birthplace), Nashville (my home), and London (a misfire disguised as a practical decision), is more complex.

Unlike Mr Dylan, I won’t be staying at the Ritz-Carlton. Blissfully, a kind friend in Brooklyn has offered up a budget-friendly room at their place. Still, I’d love to get my hands on some of that fancy hotel notepaper. Does it still say TELEPHONE MESSAGE? I feel I could write a song or two on that…