A couple of weeks ago I got a random call from a writer from The New York Times. Full disclosure, it was acclaimed author Ron
Lieber, with whom I went to Amherst College. He was editing a special
section of the Times that would include stories about financial turning points
and remembered I’d written a Facebook post a little over a year ago about my
process of looking into buying a house and having to move. He invited me
to contribute something to this special section. He wrote me, “Maybe an essay….maybe
even a song.” I was in the studio on the day of the release of my newest
album, ‘That Kind Of Girl,’ making another record with a side project of mine
called Applewood Road (an acoustic trio of three women
singer/songwriters) and my first thought was ‘Now? I’m completely
exhausted…” My second thought was ‘THE New York Times? Hell yes!’
You see, a few months ago, maybe even a year ago, I started contemplating a
life that had more balance. A life that included less time wasted in
cheap motels in days off in between shows miles away from home. A life that
would make space for gardening, time at home with friends, dating, maybe even –
gasp – a relationship. And part of that contemplation involved a lot of
meditating and prayer about wanting to write more and tour less. Not just
songwriting. Whatever-writing. A week prior to Lieber’s invitation came
another invitation to guest write for a column in the Nashville Scene. So my
prayers were being answered, I could see that and be really grateful for it,
but the timing was a bit fishy. I was overwhelmed and depleted and didn’t think
I could do it.
Knowing that I had to do this, not ‘gun to the head’ kind of
have to but a personal mission of ‘I WILL do this’ kind of have to, I called
Neilson Hubbard, one of my favorite people and one of my favorite songwriters.
I told him the assignment. I said, we have to do this today. He said, ‘I’ll be
over at 5.” That’s the best thing about living here in East Nashville. I
am surrounded by people way more talented than I am, way more fluid as
songwriters, as musicians. And we live within a mile or so of each other.
We write songs. We record songs. We play guitar or bass or drums or produce or
tour. When we are home we are HOME. When we are not, we are in far flung places
for a good amount of time. And when called upon to write a song, we show
up and write a song. I have a wonderful group of songwriters I meet with mostly
every week to share new songs with, for critique, for the experience of
throwing a new idea out to the world. We write all the time. Because our
neighbors are writing all the time. It’s not a competition at all here in
any kind of negative way; it’s more of a call to arms to the artist inside.
Create! Produce! I love it. I feed on it and being here in the middle of the
juice has made me a better writer.
We wrote a song called “Spent” in about an hour. It was
easy to write once we decided our subject matter was pretty much right next
door. We live in East Nashville, TN, a bohemian neighborhood in Music
City right across the Cumberland River from downtown that, for many years, has
been home to one of the most diverse populations in this city. Bisected
by Gallatin Pike where an uber-hip coffee shop might sit in between a Discount
LIquor Store and a Check Cashing Shop, this area is peppered with quaint
cottage homes, that, until just a year ago, were affordable for the Artist
Class.
In the past five years, we’ve seen an explosion here in development
downtown, and that has crept across the river to East Nashville, as well, where
small, once-affordable homes are being bulldozed to make way for quickly-built
condos and larger homes. The artist class is being pushed out to make way
for the nouveau riche hipster.
A little more than a year ago, the owner of the home I’d been
renting for 5 years gave me a month’s notice to buy the place or find someplace
new. I started the process of looking into buying a home of my own for the
first time, which was daunting. I am a single woman in my mid 40’s.
I make a living at making music. I do not have a ‘dayjob’. This is my dayjob.
And I make a living at my art, which is a dream fulfilled.
But for many of us working-class musicians, painters, artists, writers,
we live a precarious financial existence of our own choosing.
I remember a few years back, a conversation with my
father. He’d been a company man for my entire life. A salesman, then a
Regional Manager, then a Vice President, then one of a handful of owners who
bought the company they’d worked with for many years. I remember the year
of the buyout well, because my father was able to buy all four of us kids cars
– not new ones, used ones, but our own car. We all got computers. I didn’t
have to carry a student loan for my final year of college. My parents’ took us
all on an incredibly extravagant vacation where we learned to sail a boat
together. A few years later, though, the owners sold the company to a
multi-national, whose executives then turned around and ‘let go’ of the
original owners one by one. My father was jobless at an age (and salary) it
would be impossible to compete with younger men and women competing in the same
field for less money. My father was out of a job but more than that, he
was deprived of the thing he’d been working for all those loyal years: the
golden ring at the end of the 1950’s corporate rainbow – the retirement party,
the big hoopla over a life well-spent towing the party line. My Dad did
all right on his own, created his own company and consulting business until he
chose to retire to volunteer for the Boy Scouts of America and spend more time
with his church and with my mother and his grandchildren. All the time I
was in my 20’s and 30’s, working three jobs, trying to ‘make it’ as an actress
and then a singer and songwriter, bartending by night, personal assistant or
temp-secretary by day, working my way up the artistic food chain until I had a
manager, a booking agent, a label, until someone famous recorded a song I’d
written and gave me my ‘break’ and I could live very modestly off my artistic
work without a support job…all that time my parents held their skeptical
tongues. Until one day, my father said to me, looking back upon his own career,
“I’m so proud of you. You are your own boss of your own business. You did
something you love. That’s the most important thing in the end.” It was
one of the most important conversations I’ve ever had with him. That he saw
me and got it.
I have a friend who used to say “We don’t make great livings but
we have great lives.”
We are the artist class. Some months we make nothing. Some we
make $10,000. It’s the rare one of us who knows how to manage our
money. And it’s the very rare one of us that has a corporate entity like a
Major Record Label who pays for all the things we need to make our art.
We are all independent artists in the end. And we rely upon our audience in
order to make a life and a living. Whether that be from record sales off the
stage, the cost of a ticket to see a live show, or help from Kickstarter or
Pledge or any other patronage that may luckily come our way.
I did find a house I could afford and, with the help of a
generous friend, we entered into a rent-to-own situation and, for that, I am
extremely grateful. But they are tearing down the small cottage homes
nearby to throw up $400,000 homes and changing the aesthetic and social fabric
of this little area where a session musician or a non-famous folk singer could
once buy a house and a piece of the proverbial Dream.
Spent
(Amy Speace/Neilson Hubbard)
Come take my hand let's walk to the end of this rainbow
Do you think that we'll ever know
Where to find all that gold
Once I heard someone singing a dream we could have and hold
Something of our own
A place to call home
We're head over heels
And in over our heads
We borrow and steal to pay the rent
How we gonna save any money when it's already spent
Years keep rolling the houses keep falling like dominos
They're throwing up condos
The new for the old
It's not enough to hear your own song on the radio
When your credit is far below
What they need for a loan
We're head over heels
And in over our heads
We borrow and steal to pay the rent
How we gonna save any money when it's already spent
Can we stay or do we have to go
Could this be the end of the road
How we gonna save any money...
We're head over heels
And in over our heads
We borrow and steal to pay the rent
How
we gonna save any money when it's already spent
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