Don't Quit; Keep Playing

One night, in probably 2012 or so, I was driving down West End from Bellevue towards downtown, not sure where I was going, but I just remember I had been in a thinking loop about maybe needing to be more responsible and get a normal job. I was probably 22 and feeling the stress of a neurotic 20-something and the critical thinking was LOUD. I’d spent the last few years going to open mic night at Cafe Coco, and had really only started playing music at about 19. I was feeling the dissonance of having this idea of myself as a musician, no money, no real plan, and probably just normal early “adulthood” anxiety. It had occurred to me , I think, that perhaps this “music career” was an expression of ego and fantasy, and I tortured myself with how deranged I might be to pursue it.
On this evening I was probably on my way to Cafe Coco, or a friend’s house, who knows. I had been thinking that I should find a data entry job, or something steady that I could budget with, and it was not quite dark outside, the sky was that loud, deep blue of around 8:15pm in July. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash, and I turned to look at the source which was the Blakemore United Methodist church sign. “ DON’T QUIT; KEEP PLAYING ”. I swear! I did a double take as I drove by. I am cringing while writing this because it sounds corny as HELL!!!!!! But!!! I promise this is a real memory! A couple days later I drove by again and it had been changed. I’m sure it was a coincidental sermon title, designed to reach the Nashville Christian heart. I guess the craziest part was that that flash of light caught my eye. Maybe the sign turned on right as I passed? Maybe it was another cars headlights turning left off Bowling Avenue. But it still struck me and encouraged me so much.
I wanted to tell that story as part of this tool I was given around the same time. This post has been in my drafts because I can’t figure out how to piece it all together just right. Turns out this writing thing is hard. But, I feel like the idea of The Universe or God/Consciousness I was raised with, combined with the wisdom from my first voice teacher, allowed me to take that kind of moment to heart and enjoy it, and and believe in it a little, which kept me going. So I’m gonna talk about that.
I was raised in a kind of a hippy household. Spiritual but not religious. I always say the through-line for spirituality in our house was the community my parents had from 12 step-recovery. My dad practiced Transcendental Meditation, his afternoon 20-minute sit occurring in a storage room where he worked at Martha White in Jackson, TN. My mom was raised Baptist, loved the story of Jesus, but again we were raised with the 12-step approach to God- whatever interpretation works. As some folks reading this know, she later became an ordained Buddhist minister and a therapist. She was a poet/writer, and my dad a singer-songwriter; the two of them performing together, occasionally, when we lived in Jackson, TN under the moniker The McKaskles.

When we moved to Nashville, we attended a new-age church on Franklin Road through my middle & high school years, the teachings based on A Course In Miracles, and I was encouraged early on to, “Follow my bliss” (Joseph Campbell).

So, when I told my parents I wanted to stay home and pursue music after one semester of college, they encouraged me. It was also kind of a stressful time in the household so maybe there wasn’t energy to force me to stay enrolled, haha. Regardless, I remember feeling very supported in the idea. Any positive reinforcement I could get, I took. The idea of music as a career (or really, an identity) took me over in the way only a teenage brain allows, and I started spending every Thursday night at Cafe Coco’s Open Mic; “one song, no talking”. My parents gifted me a month of guitar lessons, and my mom’s friend Kathy Mattea was incredibly sweet to me and introduced me to her vocal coach of 30 years, Phoebe Binkley.

Phoebe was in her 70s by the time I came along, and her rate was the same as it had been for about thirty years; $35.00 for a forty-five minute lesson. She helped me gain comfortability with singing on a microphone, and to get over the embarrassment of being heard. I knew her husband Bob was just on the other side of the wall in the duplex they’d lived in since the 70s, and I had to do those loud warm-ups anyway. She taught me so much in our time together. She encouraged me to wear something that stands out on stage, whether a sparkly pair of earrings, or, in her words, a bold top. She taught me about the term “psycho-somatic”, which for us was to find a physical way to snap the mind into gear; to connect the body & and signal to it that “we are performing now!”. Her use for it in those days, was to pause worries about her husband Bob’s declining health, and show up to teach. If she could compartmentalize and focus on the work, I could, too. So we clapped and slapped our knees and got to work.

Phoebe had written songs for Marty Robbins, helped Ronnie Millsap get his high G (I think it was G), consulted Reese Witherspoon for Walk The Line, and taught Kathy for 30 years. She had a “wall of women”, framed photos of the women she’d worked with on her wood-paneled front room wall, and I dreamed of earning a place there. Her dad had also been a founding member of nashville’s Alcoholics Anonymous chapter, and that felt like kismet, too, having grown up in those rooms.

There were many great lessons within the lessons, just a handful of them to do with the voice itself. One that REALLY helps is to, “hold onto each success until the next one”. ESPECIALLY in the early days. It was such a powerful tool for me as I was starting to build some kind of artistic identity. If I got asked to play a show, or someone paid me or my songs a nice compliment, if I got introduced to someone in the industry, etc; the advice was to hang on to the positive feeling of that experience and look to it to counter doubt, until the next one came along. I counted “signs from the universe”, too, which included things like the church sign, obviously, and getting to learn from Phoebe, or even being introduced to her at all. It felt like I got to be part of this lineage of Nashville history just in taking lessons from her and hearing stories.

As things have gone on and I’ve released records, toured, met some heroes, had some damn-near nervous breakdowns, its been helpful for me to look around at what I have experienced and have gratitude for my path and accomplishments, and all the people who have made those experiences possible. I have looked back on these things during times where it felt like the foundation was crumbling or shifting, or when I was feeling unfamiliar to myself, as evidence of belonging.