Track Diary: "Want"

Life after Chaparelle

photo credit Char Klein

It’s January. I’m alone, and I’m on my way to Los Angeles for a short tour supporting the newly formed supergroup Chaparelle. I'm watching a gorgeous sunset, driving past Zuni Pueblo on the loneliest stretch of the interstate, when all the lights on the dashboard of my 2003 Subaru light up. I immediately start to shake. It takes me eight tries to open my phone and call my boyfriend. He talks to me in a low, reassuring tone as I glide into Flagstaff. I leave my car at the closed dealership with a note on the windshield and catch a Lyft to a hotel. It’s the usual chaos, and I’ve been on the road for less than a day.

[I am also three months alcohol-free, and my brain feels unfamiliar, like I came home and someone moved all the dishes around in my kitchen. Nothing is located where it used to be. Leave a comment if you know this feeling.]

I check into a hotel and I’m rattled, so I take something to calm my nerves. Then I take another. I anxiously hope that someone at the dealership will take pity on me tomorrow so I can get to LA on time. After fifteen years of touring experience, I shake like a leaf when something goes wrong with the vehicle. My body knows that a breakdown can be just the start of a lot of trouble.

A new alternator and one thousand dollars later, I make it to LA. Every night, I am blown away, watching Zella Day dominate the stage in her new band. This is why I said yes to the support tour; I wanted to witness a great band be born. Backstage with Zella, we share our stories.

Hers: a shooting star. She saw the wild swings of fame and fortune as a teenager.

Mine: a late bloomer. Slow and steady.

Both of us want to earn our place, our signatures scrawled on the green room walls.

From a distance, Zella Day is petite and aloof-seeming, but upon introduction, she will warm you from the inside out with her gigantic kindness. She’s got a once-in-a-lifetime kind of voice, and she sings with her whole being.

The tour ends in Santa Barbara. I load up my car and point toward Santa Fe. I feel weary but resilient, stretched thin to my edges from going on stage alone every night and singing to strangers. I’m wide awake. With two hands on the wheel and a cup of black coffee, I press record on my voice memo and let the couplets flow.

I want to live in the desert and bake in the sun

I want to live in the city and kiss everyone

I want to go to bed early, asleep in your spoon

I want to hear a pin drop in a sold-out room…

Production notes: I wrote this song with a playful, intuitive shift in time signature. The band decided we’d rather play it live than play to a click track. I have never used click with a band. I prefer raw to right. It took a few tries, but at one point, I felt electricity coursing from my brain to my toes. I felt lightheaded and grounded all at once. I felt my voice, so quiet, then powerful, and then it was over. A few beats of silence and then the sound of the tape machine turning off from the control room.

I asked Ross tentatively: did we get it?

A pause, and then he said: come listen.

This is why I consistently record live to tape. I believe that emotions get cemented and can last forever. Here are some of my favorite moments: Howe’s hair-raising, almost out-of-control drum fill going into the final chorus. Watching Ross, Howe & Gina sing “real liiiiifffe” in a circle around an old ribbon mic, heads thrown back.

As we listened back, tears poured out of me. Even though we were only halfway through making the record, I remember feeling a sense of completion and thinking, 'This is why I came to Nashville. With this group of people. To record this song.'

I’m crying / you’re crying / we’re crying / we cry!

XO

ER