today’s audio is me and my friend jill sobule’s cover of the neil diamond classic “America”. it’s a song from the soundtrack to his version of the movie “the jazz singer”, which is actually quite good. for some reason, its one of the 3-4 cassettes my parents owned. “xanadu” was another!
you can tell from the recording, this was a live performance. it was captured on nov 10, 2009 at the cedar cultural center in minneapolis, in the midst of a huge, months long tour jill and i did together to celebrate the co-releases of my album “hundreds of lions” and her album “the california years”.
before this tour, i had never met jill. i vaguely knew her big 1995 hit “i kissed a girl”, but wasn’t totally familiar with what she’d done since, which turns out to be quite alot and quite brilliant.
our managers and agents thought we’d hit it off, and they were right. over the course of 40+ shows all over the US, we got onstage every night and rode a wild, spontaneous train of laughs and sublime moments of audience connection. live streaming was new at the time, and we did a couple of those two. one from a sidewalk in easton, maryland. one from the basement green room of ani difranco’s babeville in buffalo, new york.
on our long drives in the tour van, we’d pull up wikipedia on our just released smart phones and mine it for facts about the town we were about to play. then we’d make up a bullshit, throwaway song about that town. absurdity and surprise were the goal. we’d start the show with this brand new song, performing it warts and all, hot off the presses. then each of us would do a mini solo set. after a break we’d do a free-for all duo set, changing the songs every night, singing on each other’s stuff. i got to play piano and glockenspiel. jill played banjo and drums. we both played our gretsch arch-top electrics.
being on the road can suck. the hours are impossible, creature comforts are scarce, sleep is elusive, the van rides can be interminable. sometimes audiences are great, sometimes they are non-existent. but out with jill and our amazing friend, tour manager, and photographer bunty burgin, i never had more fun on the road.
you can learn so much about someone traveling like that for so long. i learned that jill and i both loved sports. as a denver native, she was wild about the broncos and nuggets, riding me hard for my bandwagon fandom of the saints. when we played denver, she showed up at soundcheck with a tiny bronco’s thong for me to wear. i kept it and wore it for years, having a huge laugh and thinking of jill every time i saw it come out of the wash.
i never saw anyone pack a suitcase like jill. maybe pack is the wrong word. jill’s suitcase was chaos and entropy. she would unzip it, and it would explode. often just one of a pair of shoes had made it in. maybe it was one of her amazing, slouchy leather boots i was so jealous of. or perhaps a collection of weird hats. she had the best stage clothes. next to her, in my low-key seer sucker, i felt like i hadn’t tried hard enough to put on A Show.
one of the things i loved best about touring with jill was meeting her friends. she had the coolest friends. as a long time political activist she was connected to some incredible people doing important work. they’d come to the shows, and she would introduce me to them, suggesting ways we could work together.
as a self-described “two-hit wonder” who also had a successful actor as a partner, she had collected a strange assortment of famous and semi-famous friends. they’d come to the shows too, or she would tell hilarious stories about them in the van or at dinner. never a name-dropper, jill had such a beautiful take on the absurdity of fame. it was fleeting and hollow and could be fun if you let it, but holding on to it and being precious about it just made you look like a tool. and jill had no time for tools. she was real, and she liked people who were real too.
we had one fight in all that stressful time together. we were onstage in santa monica, california, and there was a problem with the amp we were using. maybe it was borrowed, maybe it was from the venue, whatever it was as she fumbled with it onstage, i made some sort of crack about it and her inability to get it working.
after the first set, we walked into the greenroom to regroup for the second half of the night. as soon as the door closed, jill turned to me with a seriousness i had never seen before. she rightly called me out for making fun of her and embarrassing her onstage. she was firm. she was clear. she asked me to not to do that ever again. and i never did.
that night was jill in a nutshell: side-splittingly funny, a brilliant songwriter and natural ham, serious in her craft and a hundred-percent believer in her self. she dished out absurd songs but didn’t take any shit, from audiences, from promoters, or from me.
after our big tour, we never did another like it, but stayed in touch and occasionally played bills together. she went on to make more records, to write more theater, to star in an off-broadway autobiographical show of her own. she was never far from my mind.
jill the clown, jill the pioneer, jill the activist, jill the provocateur, jill the stand-up, jill the balladdeer who’d leave you sobbing, jill the playful, jill the sports nut, jill the aunt, jill the sister, jill the friend. jill who died may 1st in a house fire.
i got the news from my friend and former manager who’d connected us in the first place. a text that showed up after a long day of auditions in chicago. reading it i felt my head turned inside out. my friend jill, dead in a fire at 66. who dies that way? of course plenty of people, sadly. but what would jill have thought about that?? going out in a blaze of glory, she might say, in her rasping laugh?
her death is terrible. and too soon. and ironic - a huge new york times obituary, articles on TMZ, a notice on the today show. spotify numbers that have jumped 200% in the last couple days (i checked). her upcoming gigs now turning into memorial shows, and selling out.
fucked up and ironic. now she’s a genius, getting huge press and selling tickets. maybe that would have been funny to jill too. she knew too well the perils of being a woman artist. after age 25, you have to be dead to be brilliant. you have to be ancient and have a “comeback” to be noticed.
she was just starting her comeback. and like many of my older heroes, i was looking forward to seeing jill get her due. wait, her due? what was it she was owed? it was us, actually who owed her. for the gift of her writing and her performances. for the gift of her deeply underrated guitar playing (she never got tired of telling people her favorite and only pedal was called the “swollen pickle”). for the combined gift of her wit and fearless political voice. the last song she put out on the internet was called “JD Vance is a Cunt”. because he is, and she wasn’t afraid to say it. but she said it with craft and melody. they don’t make ‘em like that any more.
the last time i saw jill was just before the pandemic. she had come to western mass to play a small venue, and i met her for a coffee in the afternoon before the show. as usual we complained about the grind - not enough money, not enough people. as usual for me, i talked in endless circles about wanting to quit the industry (what are you, in steel?). but i’d always talk my way back around to staying in.
jill just listened then laughed her sandpaper laugh and said, “you and me, we’re lifers”. she was right. there isn’t anything else i can or will do with my life. it felt like a blessing to have jill include me and bestow upon me that title. LIFER. i will think of her and wear it proudly.
that night jill played to too few people. when she took the stage, she said what she would always say to a sparse crowd at a show: “you are small but mighty”. it’s a canny thing to say to an audience. it acknowledges what we can all see, that there weren’t enough tickets sold. and yet it empowers and compliments and relaxes the folks who did make the effort to show up.
jill then proceeded to do a version of the show that i knew back to front from our years on the road. and yet it was fresh for everyone, including her. she ended the night in the crowd, getting the 20 or so of us to sing along to her anthem “america back”.
when they say they want our america back
what the fuck do they mean??
RIP comrade, you will be missed.
xo erin
jill as i like to remember her, behind the drums like karen carpenter.
photo by desdemona burgin
¡ME GUSTA! : SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS!
the great pelican feeding bonanza! the swedish moose migration!
one of my all-time fave artists, kae tempest, has a new single and another new single
i cannot recommend enough this series from freakonomics on the economics of new musical development. i am currently living in this particular doom loop / simulation. perhaps you will find it fascinating!
last month i was a guest on one of my favorite pod, Back Catalogue Listening Party. we popped open the spindrifts and listened back to my 2013 album MANIFESTRA, and i told some stories and showed some video and pictures about the making of the album. if you want you can also watch the session here.
UPCOMING SHOWS
2025
now - June 2026 - Fredericksburg VA
Fredericksburg Area Museum
Out And About: The Walk-in Closet
VISIT
May 25, 2025 - Kents Store VA
Virginia Women’s Music Festival
TICKETS
May 26, 2025 - Richmond VA
Hike & Concert @ Bryan Park
TICKETS & INFO
June 27, 2025 - Bryn Mawr PA
The Point, 20th Anniversary
TICKETS
FAMILY GAME NIGHT TOUR
July 9, 2025 - Boston MA
with Matt The Electrician, Natalia Zukerman, Kris Delmhorst
TICKETS
July 10, 2025 - Exeter NH
with Matt The Electrician, Natalia Zukerman, Kris Delmhorst
INFO
July 11, 2025 - Beacon NY
with Matt The Electrician, Natalia Zukerman, Stephen Claire
INFO
July 13, 2025 - Windsor MA
Hiking Concert with Matt The Electrician, Natalia Zukerman
INFO
July 12, 2025 - Austerlitz NY
Hiking Concert at Edna St. Vincent Millay Estate
TICKETS
October 22, 2025 - Austin TX
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 23, 2025 - Dallas TX
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 24, 2025 - Oklahoma City OK
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 25, 2025 - Lawrence KS
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 27, 2025 - St Louis MA
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 28, 2025 - Indianapolis
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 30, 2025 - Toronto ON
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 31, 2025 - Detroit MI
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
2026
April 10-May 10, 2026 - Chicago IL
World Premiere of OUT HERE @ Court Theatre
TICKETS & INFO
Aug 17-27 - Scotland
10 Day Tour of the Scottish Borderlands
TICKETS & INFO
Share this post