Factory of Dreams
Almost like being in show biz
This isn’t a glamorous story and it probably won’t tug at your heartstrings - it’s just the reality of getting an album cover together and the first of some photos taken for promotional purposes that concerns me this month, along with trying to paint, pack and prepare our house for selling.
Selling! It used to feel like that was the point of photos—get someone to look and they might buy. I enjoyed doing photos back in art school days. Call me pretentious; call me a poser. It was almost like being in show biz! One of my roommates at Parsons, Julia Gorton, is a brilliant photographer and I always felt like I could become something in her pictures that I couldn’t live up to in real life. I was lucky being in New York City back then and knowing so many talented photographers: George duBose, Stephanie Chernikowski, Robert Sietsema. Ted Barron, my downstairs neighbor in Williamsburg.
It didn’t hurt that I was young. Even when I felt /was given the message that I was over the hill and too old to amount to anything in music, I was young. And I was effortlessly slender, could wear any item of clothing I felt like wearing. Many that I probably shouldn’t have but again— in the grand scheme of a hopefully long-enough life, I was still kinda new. But we can’t understand that until we’re many years down the road looking back.
So there I was recently, getting ready to go down to the city and take photos with a photographer friend I’ve enjoyed working with before. I dressed as if I was going to play a gig. That seemed the most comfortable way to go. Makeup on, black jeans and one of the only shirts in my closet I love which I’ve probably already mentioned before. Black velvet jacket - black black black and a little bit of color. It was a warm day for early to mid March, going to be in the seventies. Oh please don’t let me sweat too much. Don’t let the sun be too punishing. (Here’s the point where it feels necessary to mention the difficult things going on in the world and isn’t it a privilege to get to do any fun creative thing that may be hard-won but not that hard by comparison to pretty much everything a large part of the world is contending with. We all have our trials but I feel lucky - I hope this doesn’t make me sound smug. Anyway, on with the tale)
I know now from lots of experience the key is to relax. Be yourself. Have fun. It felt like years since I’d had new pictures taken. By someone else. In the days since the pandemic started I’ve taken and posted dozens of pics of myself. But that’s different. Those are like postcards, little notes scrawled from favorite locations. I do my own seeing and presenting, just grab a shot where I think I look okay and share a vibe. But seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes and lens, a more formal arrangement —it’s scarier. The stakes are higher. And being in my mid-sixties now, it wouldn’t hurt to declare “I’m older than I was and I’m okay with that” at the same time as saying “getting older isn’t something to fear - in fact it’s pretty fucking great.” Without saying any of those things too obviously.
It seems to be a theme lately, for other artists and writers I follow. I heard Jenn and Kim on my fave podcast Everything Is Fine talking about Jenn doing an author photo shoot that had me shouting “I know - oh my god yes!” I was going to say I yelled back at the radio but I had airpods in and was cooking dinner so I guess I just kind of shouted at the stove. Last week they had guest Lucy Sante talking about her new memoir of transitioning and the reality of presenting yourself to the world as an older woman and even with all the accoutrements available to women that most men won’t avail themselves of (a wider variety of clothing choices and hairstyles, makeup etc) it’s still all a little bit of a rude awakening. But necessary. I’ll add here Lucy’s book I Heard Her Call My Name is astounding. She is one of the most honest and perceptive writers I’ve read, as well as so humble and funny and I’m honored to know her just a little bit as a neighbor here in the Hudson Valley.
The album I have coming out in August with some singles in advance of that has been a few years in the making. I’m actually working with the German label Tapete for the release and so I feel like I almost have a regular job in giving them the stuff they need to get the word out: album artwork for LP, CD and digital versions, a variety of different photos, video, press releases and bio. It’s exciting and scary. I’ve put out my own releases through me and Eric’s Southern Domestic label the last fourteen years and have done all these same things plenty but knowing other people are involved and counting on me makes me take it all more seriously. But I want to enjoy it too because how often does this happen, putting out new work? And how wonderful someone else wants to be involved!
Along with making this new album I’ve been writing a second memoir called Girl To Country I’m close to finishing (“yes, I know,” you’re probably saying — “you’ve already mentioned it several times…”) These things take a while. This book focuses on the time after my first solo album and before Eric and I got together, when I moved down to Nashville and kind of lost my way but kept going too. I remembered a part in the story where I’m getting ready for an album cover photo shoot and thought I’d share that work in progress here. I was forty-one which now feels while not exactly young like very much a long-ago era. As I’ve gone through the process of writing about that productive, awkward, often misguided middle part of my life, I keep thinking “you should’ve known better!” but I’m hoping/finding…and um hoping that writing through it all helps to excise a good deal of regret. Anyway, here’s the short excerpt. And I’ll let you know how the photos go, single and video releases as they happen and also when and where you can find the new record Hang In There With Me that’s coming out August 30 on Tapete.
The Sugar Tree
I come up with the album title on a Midwest run of dates when a road sign flashes by somewhere in Missouri: Sugar Tree. I envision the cover as one of those 60s countrypolitan records with a soft color portrait in a natural setting, like an LP you’d find in a thrift shop. Photographer Jim Herrington lives just down the street from East Nashville’s Shelby Park, and a little research tells me this bucolic setting only minutes from the liquor stores and hot chicken places of Gallatin Pike was often used for country album cover shoots in the past.
Jim recommends a makeup artist and she meets me at his house on a hot afternoon to help me prepare for the shoot. The humidity makes my face pour oil and frizzes my hair. I’m okay in Nashville when it isn’t the sticky season, but since spring down south starts in late February and summer lasts until about the beginning of November, I find there aren’t many weeks out of the year when looking well-groomed is a possibility.
“Don’t worry, we’ll fix you right up,” the gorgeous young woman says as I settle into one of Jim’s dining chairs. I’d picked up a fitted dress on sale at the mall, not realizing until I put it on outside of the air-conditioned store that it’s 100% polyester, causing me to sweat and practically break out in a rash.
I’ve been happy with hair and makeup people’s work in the past, making me look like myself only better. I relax as the makeup artist sponges, brushes, curls and pencils me. She applies lip liner and lipstick, the final touches, and stands back to assess her handiwork. Then she holds up a mirror for me to admire the results.
I take a deep breath, then wonder why Joan Crawford in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? is staring back at me. My brows are double their usual width, my mouth looks like those wax lips kids used to fool around with before someone figured out that stuff is toxic. I think my eyes look pretty sultry but am too horrified to keep looking at myself.
I murmur words of appreciation, hand her a check and as soon as she’s driven away I go into the bathroom to scrub everything off and start over again with whatever’s in my makeup bag. Maybe it’ll be dark enough by the time we get to Shelby Park that my face won’t really have to show in the photo?
The sun’s going down as Jim and I drive into the park and there’s no time to look around for a suitable spot. We find a wooded area above the Little League field where there’s a game in full swing, the lights just coming on. I hear shouts and cheers from the young players and their parents as I sit down next to a tree. I just want to look pretty. Do all other female artists go through this? I wonder. I imagine the successful ones have the perfect attributes of womanhood—the obvious boobs and beauty— to show off, while I’m stuck with the flawed human parts like greasy skin and limp hair. Why couldn’t I have just been a guy?
“Your legs look great,” says Jim. I hitch up my dress a little. The field lights shine on the gold platform shoes a friend gave me years ago, swearing they’d belonged to a Hollywood screen goddess. I gaze off into the distance like I’m searching for love, success, acclaim; anything that will lift me out of playing for fifteen people after grubbily pawing the clearance rack at TJ Maxx. I pray for that magical combination of luck and timing that will send my songs like a Little League home run, up through the air into the ears and hearts of folks like me, who’ll relate and see themselves. If I wish hard enough, it almost feels possible.
Those who forget they're in show biz don't stay there long.
I love you!