a few months ago, i let an anniversary come and go without much fanfare. i was deep in carl richard marx’s first weeks, plus the usual holiday hubbub. but in early january, my album “sing you sinners” had its 15th anniversary. i’ve got 11 albums, the oldest of which is from 2000, so if i was going to mark all their birthdays, it would take up a lot of time and space. plus, though i am an inveterate archivist, i am not a sentimentalist. i prefer to look forward, and i feel most free to do that when i know the past is properly documented and stored.
however, the 15th anniversary of “sing you sinners” carried another unique resonance beyond the significant number of its quinceañera. on its 15th birthday, the rights to the album returned to me. not only that, they were the final remaining set of rights to any of my 11 records, bringing to a close a more than a decade long process to get all my work back under the same roof of my metaphorical music house. the logistical repercussions of this completion are significant: i no longer have to split certain monies with a record label, the process for permitting others to use any of my recordings is now simple and streamlined. just ask me! but it’s also an emotional completion. all of the carrier pigeons i sent out into the world - with messages of heartbreak, joy, clever puns, musical satisfactions - have returned safely to roost. my family is here, and complete.
this week on social media, you can see some of the gems my archivist self carefully stored. and if you want, you can listen to “sing you sinners” again, along with some never before released bonus tracks from the original recording session. wherever you listen to music (spotify, apple, youtube etc) you can find the special 15th anniversary edition, but i highly recommend bandcamp, along with a reminder that should you be so inclined, this friday is bandcamp friday and 100% of the proceeds generated that day go to me. since i have been home being carl’s full-time #dogdaddy, a few pennies here would be helpful.
such a little nugget! an outtake from the cover shoot
when i have marked other anniversaries of records, my writing on it has tended to focus on the experience of the release and the reception from radio, critics, and press. but as i thought about “sing you sinners”, the origin of the album and the concept that is “swing” feel most interesting to me.
i grew up far from my grandparents. my parents were each the ones to leave their close-knit immigrant families and Move Away. twice a year, we’d visit their northeast-based families for a few days. so as much as i loved my extended family, i hardly knew them. as it became clear that i was going to be an artist, i think another gulf opened. no one in my extended family was anything close to a professional musician, let alone a freelancer, so i’m not sure anyone really understood what i was doing with my life or how it even worked.
at some point in my late 20s, i was visiting my paternal grandfather in pennsylvania coal country, when i came upon a set of V-Discs in a closet. he was involved in supply in WWII, never going overseas but, ironically, stationed in Virginia for the duration of the war. one of his jobs was getting V-Discs overseas to GIs, and as a big music fan, he kept his favorites. the simple question of asking him about them opened up the most robust conversation we ever had.
born in 1921, my grandfather loved loved loved swing and big band music. there was a somewhat well-known bandleader from my grandfather’s town, and he considered himself the expert on this guy, having followed him around for many years. my grandfather often gave talks on the history of big band music at local community and club functions, and both my grandparents loved to swing dance. well into their very old age they were always out at some dance or other.
i think my grandfather was thrilled to have anyone in his family show even a smidge of interest in big bands, so he started giving me tons of his records, homemade mixtapes, and books and books about big bands. honestly, it was a bit much in that way that an enthusiastic grandparents can be.
we had an amazing band: allison miller, sam kassirer, todd sickafoose
during one visit, as my grandfather was piling up records and tapes for me to take home, he asked if i’d ever heard a particular song. with my reply of no, he sank down into his velour couch, next to the stereo. this was my grandfather’s prayer spot. each of my grandparents had a prayer spot, a part of their sofas so well used that there was a chasm in the cushion that they more or less had to climb in and out of. my grandfather prayed for at least an hour every night before bed, as well as the morning. always in the same spot. the wall next to the couch was wall-papered prayers and memorial cards and pictures of jesus and his blood. my grandfather inserted the cassette and played me “let me off uptown” by gene krupa’s big band, featuring the trumpet playing of roy eldridge and the singing of… anita o’day.
there are few moments where someone shows you a song, and it changes your life. my friend yazmany gave me one in the First Pando Summer. my grandfather gave me one when he played “let me off uptown”. of course i was fired up by krupa’s drumming, but anita o’day’s voice took my own breath away. i’d never heard anyone like her. she is not a flashy singer, she never ad-libs or embellishes the melody. she’s giving you the song straight as an arrow and just as bracing. in her voice, with my grandfather watching from his prayer spot, i heard everything i wanted my own singing to be.
it’s worth a moment or two here to talk about what swing is. yes, it often describes a genre of music from a certain period, played by certain kinds of bands with a certain repertoire. but i have always thought of swing as a process. it’s something you do to music, not something inherent in the music itself. you can swing anything, if you try. technically, you are placing specific notes just slightly behind specific beats, but what you are doing emotionally is adding a feeling of lightness to a song. not necessarily of niceness or sweetness, but a kind of light skip in the step of the music. i actually find this process particularly satisfying when singing about not light things - like heartache and loss and violence. when you talk of “swinging something hard”, which is my favorite thing to do to music, you are talking about adding a depth of space behind beats 2 and 4, but also adding space between notes for the music to breathe and come alive. you create a repeated, microscopic conversation between the notes and the listener, “will they get there on time?” they will, and with feeling!
on stage on the SYS tour in chapel hill, NC with allison miller
i have always loved swing music, and especially it’s intersection with early musical theater. by the mid 2000s, i had made a few albums that even featured some old-time swing, and my shows always had a cover of a jazz tune or two in them. remember too, at the moment i heard anita o’day for the first time, this was post 90s-swing boom. like any other person raised when i was, i loved big bad voodoo daddy, the squirrel nut zippers, and the movie soundtrack of swingers. after the fad passed, i stayed interested in these bands and swing music. this, too, was also the era of “rock-stars make standards albums”. big arena stars would put on a suit and tie or pin a gardenia in their hair and sing hits made famous by sinatra, clooney, crosby, fitzgerald, rodgers and hammerstein, rodgers and hart, cole porter and all.
the thought of making a swing record had never crossed my mind, as much i loved all the music my grandfather was sharing and that i’d encountered on my own. i was focused on writing as much as i could, honing my specific voice and getting known for that. however by the time 2006 rolled around, i had one record left on my contract with my label, a quickly fizzling relationship of mutual disappointment, and for various reasons (two of which were probably my escalating drinking and depression), i had no original songs ready to record.
so the idea of a standards album was floated. i was excited by the idea of singing songs by other people, and it solved a business problem. these are both great reasons to make a record. i’ve written and spoken in other places about how and why i chose the songs and the process of recording the album, but there are a few other memories i want to add under the umbrella of this essay.
when it came time to make the cover photo, instead of going for the femme / billie holliday version of “contemporary musician cos-plays in the swing era”, i went with a more masculine influence. i had very short hair at the time and chose to wear a suit. anita o’day actually talked about her similar choice in her incredible autobiography, “high times, hard times”. on the road, she wanted to wear the same band jacket as any other musician on stage. so she did. no gowns for either of us.
i remember having conversations with my team that if i was going to use this image, it would essentially amount to a coming out party for me as “lesbian”, the word i used at the time. remember again, this was 2006, and things were quite different than they are now. i wasn’t publicly out, and it still had a very real (mostly negative) consequence to be a gay musician, especially in the more mainstream world my label was hoping i’d find success in. no one told me don’t do it, no one told me i couldn’t, they just reminded me that my choice would have consequences. i made it anyway, and they were right. another essay for another time, but that’s what i think about when i see the cover photo, a choice i made with mixed results but no regret.
i also want to take a moment and remember that my dear friend rita houston, always a champion of my original music, was a huge fan of this project. she even interviewed me for the liner notes. old fashioned liner notes!! in them, she gave me one of the best compliments i have ever received, saying, “When I first heard these songs, I was struck by how much like your own work they are.”
rita died way too young in december of 2020. i think about her often, having nothing to do with this record. whenever i hit the lower west side of manhattan. in the green room of certain venues. when i hear certain ani difranco songs or eat particularly good sushi. when “kiss off kiss” came out, i realized it was the first record i’d ever made that i wouldn’t send to my friend rita for her enjoyment and love. i miss her very much.
rita houston (second from left) in the studio with us. that’s kris delmhorst grinning on the floor.
when the album was released in january of 2007. wall street journal music and theater critic terry teachout wrote a fabulous review that introduced the record to a whole new audience. from then on, he was an unabashed enthusiast of my music and a delightful friend. when “miss you like hell” arrived off-broadway in 2018, he again lead the way with a rave (the only one!) in his big, mainstream paper. he also sent a friend of his, debbie millman, to see the show, and thus i met another friend who is also a tremendous podcaster and public thinker. terry died suddenly last month, also way too young.
my grandfather died in late 2019. our conversations about swing music remained the most we ever talked to each other about anything. i didn’t see him much in his later years, and i wouldn’t say we were particularly warm or close, but he continued to send me songs he thought i should cover, and i appreciated them all. the day after he died, i was in a music store for a mundane reason and ended up buying my guitar Little Guy on an impulse. i think that’s a perfect way to mark the turning over of the universe’s fabric when the oldest member of the family leaves.
as i proposed in my last newsletter (and received much support for), i am going to make this a twice monthly publication. i’m also trying the experiment of reading you the whole thing, along with your regular audio treat. let me know if you appreciate this too. carl does not! he is so mad to not be apart of the recording, you might have heard him yippling in the background. this is the word i have made up for his signature combo of whine, whimper, yap, and bark.
also, i’ll never paywall my content, but if you do want to support this newsletter evolving into something more robust as it seems like its going to, i won’t say no.
x erin
ps - here is what carl looks like now. it’s almost too much cuteness for me to take, but then he tries to eat my computer and i realize there isn’t enough cuteness to make that ok.
¡ME GUSTA! : SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS!
a lovely episode of a lovely podcast on the diagnosis of C-PTSD, something i have personal experience with
my pal debbie millman, mentioned in the above essay, has a new book out, and i am honored to be one of the people she talks to in it about living a creative life
the marvelous singer-songwriter mark erelli is making a new album and coming out about the consequences of his deteriorating eyesight
you know me, i love football. and i love new orleans. and i love audiobooks. whew!! this one hooked me from the first word and did not let go
2022 IN-PERSON SHOWS
April 30 - Portland OR
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
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May 1 - Seattle WA
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
830PM 530PM
May 2 - San Francisco CA
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
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May 4 - Highland Park CA
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
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May 5 - San Diego CA
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
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May 6 - Phoenix AZ
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
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May 7 - Santa Fe NM
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
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May 9 - Boulder CO
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
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Jun 3 - Fayetteville AR
Erin will be performing in-person to celebrate the opening night of T2’s production of “Miss You Like Hell”
stay tuned for tickets & info
***
Jun 1 - Jul 17 - Fayetteville AR
Miss You Like Hell at Theatre Squared
TICKETS
If you have further questions or concerns about COVID protocols, please contact the venues directly.
Reminder, Erin does not appear in productions of Miss You Like Hell
anything you can swing...