Did You Know...

Unless you're a good and intimate friend of mine you wouldn't know that my very first aspiration in life was to be a jockey. I loved horses and, growing up on a ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley and having lots of girlfriends who rode both dressage and western, it wasn't at all unusual that I should lean in this direction. I was never attracted to the local rodeo scene, however, with its barrel racing and such. I wanted the silks...

"Tell Me About Your Mother."

Easter 1952.

I always come to Mother's Day a bit warily. It's not a day I place a lot of stock in, but when I'm remembered by my sons I'm always delighted. On the other hand, when they don't acknowledge it I'm not usually hurt. It depends. I'm sure they're as confused as I am and aren't really sure what to do about the day, either. I lay all this confusion unashamedly at the feet of my own mother with whom I had a complex, conflicted relationship.

My mother was 26 when I was born, after seven years of miscarriages and dashed hopes. All she ever wanted in life, even as a child, was a bright, curious red-haired daughter. She'd been disappointed when, at the age of 17, she gave birth to her first child, my brother, who later suffered brain damage due to high fevers as an infant who was as apathetic as a stone and who had black hair. When I came along, all of her secret dreams came true. It was a lot to lay on a child...

A Most Pedantic Legacy

“Little Jackie Waller” was a Vaudevillian child star who took his first baby steps on the boards of theater stages across the Midwest. His babysitters were bare-breasted showgirls and his guardians were alcoholic clowns. He sang and danced both in minstrel shows and as a solo act, but his normal shtick was to interrupt the adult acts with wisecracks and stunts while winning the hearts—and cheers—of the audience.

He was diminutive, red-haired, and freckle-faced, the epitome of the Huckleberry Finn All-American boy, a new and popular archetype in the late 19th century. Was it in the Palace Theatre in Cincinnati or the Madison Theatre in Peoria that he enjoyed his first standing ovation, received his first hugs and kisses from a large-bosomed patroness, or read his first glowing newspaper notice? I have one such item; it’s the only physical reminder I have of him...

Folk Like the Blues

On nights like this one, after a stressful day, I like to light the candles, pour a cup of Earl Grey, and turn on my Mellow Music Pandora station. It comes to me through an app on the telly, which is connected to some awesome speakers, so the songs sound just as good as they did through my component stereo system back in the 1970s and '80s.

In the days before the internet, cell phones, iPods, and video games (except for my sons' Atari system which I never really played) my friends and I got together to make music. We'd gather in someone's living room, bringing jugs of wine, bags of chips, and our guitars, and we'd settle in for a long night of music, chat, a little political discourse, and a lot of warmth...

The Essence of Yo

Once upon a time, back in the '80s, I amassed a collection of yoyos. I remember how it started, too. I was working as Maestro Salazar's assistant with the Ventura County Symphony at the time and one night at a Nutcracker rehearsal, the guy who played the bass clarinet pulled one out and began using it. It was like a meditation. Beautiful, fluid, calming. He didn't do a lot of tricks, or show off, he just...  yo'ed. I enjoyed watching him so much, he gave me that yoyo. We were, all of us, sitting in the orchestra pit and things can get kind of chummy down there...

That Long Ago? Really?

Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Who doesn't remember exactly where they were that day?

I'd just graduated from high school and was feeling a little cut adrift. My family and I were invited down to San Gabriel for a BBQ at the home of some friends. We watched the landing—sitting on pins and needles—and when it was over, we all went outside and just looked at the moon.

The day was so significant to so many people that I even included it in the first book of my trilogy. Where were you?

When Ghosts Come to Call

Gary

I met Gary Plyly on Sunday February 20th, 1972. Some friends of mine, Charity and her boyfriend Gary, came by my house, inviting me to go with them to a party in Thousand Oaks. They told me to bring my guitar because there would be musicians there. When we got there, a few people were hanging out—not too many—maybe five or six. It was Gary's house on Foothill Road, overlooking Westlake and the US 101/Ventura Freeway. It was little and yellow, with a front porch and a long flight of stairs leading up to it. A 1950s construction perched on the face of an oak tree strewn hill. He had a wooden electrical spool that served as a table in the kitchen. It was the first time I'd ever seen that done and I loved it. We all kind of sat around drinking beers and passing joints while music played on the stereo. That was the first day I ever heard A Horse With No Name by America and I remember the sound system in the house was awesome! It should have been because the guys who lived there were musicians...

On the Way to Summer

Like many Americans, my happiest memories of summer are of family camping trips. But while Dad loved fishing from a shady riverbank and Mom enjoyed reading in a folding chaise, my favorite part was just getting to wherever they'd planned for us to spend those lovely two weeks each year...

Message to Self

You just never know what'll be waiting for you in your email box each morning. Yesterday I awoke to find a letter from an old friend from my years hanging out with local bands in the Sixties. I've mentioned before that my first boyfriend Sammy was the lead guitarist of one of the most popular bands in our area. At some point around 1968 his friend (or maybe they're cousins, I can't remember) Ponce joined forces to create another very popular band. I sent Ponce a private message in Facebook asking for some information about their bands for an article I'm writing and I awoke to find an email from him containing this picture plus two others.

That's me on the beach at Malibu in 1971. Sammy, Ponce and I went there one afternoon to hangout in the sun a bit. Ponce was a photographer, but I had no idea he'd taken these pictures of me. Or at least I don't remember him doing so...

We Are Water

JP Deni when we first met

Being close, best friends with someone for 43 years must count as some kind of a marriage. I met Deni in the summer of 1968 when she walked into the music store where I worked. I was immediately struck by her appearance, because she looked like a female John Lennon. Tall and somewhat lanky, she had shoulder-length hair that parted in the middle, and she wore wire-rimmed glasses. She carried herself with an assurance and confidence I’d never before encountered in someone my age.

She handed me a cheap acoustic guitar that needed new strings, I think, or maybe she just wanted someone to tune it, I don’t remember. Whatever it was, I did it as we spoke a little about music and who our favorite songwriters were. Like me, she was a confirmed folkie, our favorite folk artist being Bob Dylan. We also loved the Beatles, although they weren't folk. Our only musical difference was that where she liked Arlo Guthrie, I liked Donovan. Doesn't even count.

A few weeks later, on the first day of school, as I stood outside Russian class waiting for the teacher to open the door, Deni rushed up to me all smiles and exuberance, asking if I remembered her. Of course I did and as we talked, we discovered we’d both signed up to study Russian. What are the chances? It was a small class and a huge student body.

As we talked, more similarities revealed themselves. We were both newly transplanted from small towns, and we knew no one. Our musical backgrounds were similar, and the houses we lived in, just around the corner from each other, had the same floor plan. And in that floor plan, we had the same bedroom. We were both Libras, I a September and she an October, and she had an edge I respected, while I had a gentleness she admired. It was all kind of spooky, but in a cool, cosmic way.

I really didn’t want to make friends with anyone. I was very happy to be out of the small town environment I’d just left and I was ready to float through my senior year as a solitary, mysterious folksinger, free of the complications of friendship and invisible in the crowd. When this charismatic, intensely brilliant girl accosted me outside the classroom, I wasn’t sure I wanted to pursue any kind of friendship with her.

The next thing I knew, she was standing at my door in bell bottom Navy dungarees and a crocheted poncho, beads hanging around her neck and her guitar in hand. I was slightly miffed that she'd hunted me down like that, but I invited her back to my room. It didn’t take her long to win me over. She knew songs by Peter, Paul & Mary, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and, better, she loved my music.

With your fist thrust in the air,

And your John Lennon hair;

And your circled glasses,

That’s how I best remember you…

How many evenings did we sit in each other’s bedrooms sipping Constant Comment tea and playing songs, both together and for each other, while incense cones sent ghostly shadows up the wall? How many weekends found us in coffeehouses and at folk concerts? How many chords did we teach each other, and how many tea bags did we go through?

With Deni’s advent into my life, everything changed. I’d met a fellow folkie who encouraged me to nurture that side of my creativity (everyone else wanted me to be a pop singer). My songs changed, growing deeper and more introspective. I began writing about art museums and beaches, and wooden stiles by the windswept Highway 1 that curved and climbed along the Bug Sur coastline.

When she began attending classes at a local college after graduation, I tagged along in my suede fringe and paisley, and we became active in protests and rallies. We marched in the national Vietnam Moratorium together. I brought my guitar and we led many choruses of I Shall Be Released and Come Together that day.

Not long after, I decided to hitch-hike to Haight-Ashbury and it was Deni who dropped me off at the Ventura Freeway entrance. As I got out of her VW bug she asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

God! How many times have I wondered how my life would have turned out had I said, “No, let’s go back to your house for a cuppa and a ciggie.” It was a major crossroads in my life and I can’t say I made the correct decision, but what the hell? What’s done is done and that was a long time ago.

We’ve been through a whole lot of life both together and apart, and we've surmounted some of life’s cruelest attacks. She helped me through widowhood at the age of 18 with a 2 week-old baby and I helped her when her 18 year-old daughter died of preeclampsia in the final weeks of her pregnancy in 1991. Deni was at my house for the weekend when her husband called to say he’d found Nicki dead on the bathroom floor.

And my twelve-string guitar,

Planning to take me far;

With all the years before us,

Do you really think we ever knew…

Deni never recovered from Nicki’s death and in a very real way I lost my friend that day. Still, we remained close. As I watched her slowly lose the will to live, which resulted in two decades of illness, I already knew that I’d never get my old friend back. I stood beside her though, even when it was difficult. Why? Because I knew she’d do the same thing for me if the tables were turned. That’s what friendship does. I never judged her, never told her to pull herself together, and I never said the most hurtful words of all, “Life goes on, get over it.” For her, life may have gone on, but it was a life she just couldn’t seem to grapple with. The young woman who’d so tirelessly thrust her fist into the air against war and inequality was defeated. The gifted mind that wrote, directed, and acted in plays got lost in the television. Drapes were never opened, dust and cat hair collected on retired volumes of literature and philosophy. Her guitar sat unused, the strings brittle from lack of resonance.

In January she was diagnosed with cancer of the liver and as I write this, she is making her journey to the other side; she is not expected to make it through the next 24 hours. In my heart I know that she will soon be reunited with Nicki, and I receive comfort knowing that the emotional and physical torture she’s been through the last 20 years will be turned into joy, but you know how it is for those of us to must remain a while longer. However, ours is one of those friendships that, no matter how many years pass between our visits, we always pick up right where we left off. I have absolutely no doubt that we’re going to have a wondrous reunion the next time we see each other.

We are water,

And the river keeps on flowing,

We are water,

And the love, it keeps on growing.

We are water,

We are water.

_____
UPDATE: Deni passed at around 11:30 am PST.

We Are Water © SK Waller 1983

Picture a Day - Day 2

Day 2: A picture of you and the person you have been closest with the longest.

This was taken of Cathy Harris and me in the spring of 1969. I was a senior in high school and she was a junior. Over the break we’d written a dozen or so songs together—silly, comedic things based on TV commercials—and a couple of them weren’t bad...

Stoned Again

Do you remember last July when I posted some pictures of the Rolling Stones? In that post I told you about a band I posed with, but I couldn't remember their name. Well, I found it, as well as some pictures of them and a video of them performing back in 1965.

Click here to read more (scroll down to the bottom of the entry).

Gorillas, Fake Books, and the Big Mac

Since your response to last week's post about the time I spent in London was so positive, and you asked to hear more, here I am with another installment.

In the spring of 1981, my manager got me into the studio to record a four-song demo that she'd planned to shop around to various recording and production companies, not the least of which was MPL, Paul McCartney's company in London. I'm not sure why she contacted them. Maybe she had an inside track or something and had heard that he was looking into producing an unknown. I don't know. She received a phone call one afternoon though, telling us to come to London and then call them for an appointment. I left all that to her; I was busy writing and recording, and it was her job to sort out all of that stuff...

Dirty River

In all the years I've been blogging, I don't think I've ever shared with you one of the most important eras of my life. It was a time when some dreams came true and others fell apart at the seams, so that may be the reason why I've never discussed it with you. It was a time when I was taken from the edge of hell to the very gates of heaven, only to be dropped again, left to find a new way back, a new destination, and new dreams. For years, even thinking about it created so much pain, there was no way I was going to talk, or even write about it.

Time: The Great Equalizer

When I was 15 this ad summed up for me everything I thought was ultra-groovy. What girl didn't want to look like this? This, by the way, is the first true supermodel, Jean Shrimpton.

Looking at it now, I can see why I tried so hard to look like this. For a short while, anyway. Within the space of about two months, however, I'd found my own look, which was much more existential (for want of a better word), much more bohemian and much more "me". But for a moment in time this summed up my life as a teenager. This was the look in that intake of air right before Madison Avenue caught wind that mind-altering substances were going to change everything and I had to come to terms with the fact that I was never going to look like Jean Shrimpton...

Stoned

Back in the summer of 1965, I spent a couple of weeks with my aunt and uncle, who lived in Ventura County. I lived in the Santa Ynez Valley at the time, a two and a half hour drive away in those days. Yeah, that's 14 year-old me, ready to take on the world...

One afternoon I took the bus to a Walmart kind of store called Disco (short for discount) to get some cool, mod-inspired earrings. When I came out, there was a band playing on the back of a flatbed. I can't remember their name, but they had the obligatory Beatle haircuts and were kind of good, so I stood and watched.*

Backstage with the Lovin' Spoonful

The Lovin' Spoonful

Growing up in southern California afforded me many opportunities to attend some incredible concerts. My older brother Rick and I were musicians, which opened doors to meet a lot of recording artists as well. Through our friendship with Ernie and the Emperors, we felt like we were part of something incredibly exciting, like we were riding on the tail of a comet...

Those Were the Days, My Friend

See that sweet, innocent l'il thang? That was me 40 years ago. 40! Where does the time go? That was my senior picture. My high school (Adolfo Camarillo in Camarillo, California) is having our 40th reunion this weekend and although I probably wouldn't go if I still lived out there, I'm still waxing nostalgic over the website that one of our classmates put up. I was looking through the senior pictures and I knew only about three people, because we moved to Camarillo from Solvang the summer between my junior and senior years. No time to get to know anyone, really.

Anyway, in those days I stood 5'2" in my bare feet and weighed 95 pounds soaking wet. Sigh... Enough of that. Just thought I'd share; I haven't seen this picture in years!

Shrimp, Google and BSoD

Many years ago, when Joel was only about 8 or 9, we went into a pet shop at the Esplanade mall, in Oxnard. In the aquarium section Joel saw some Ghost Shrimp and he made a comment that they looked like they had backaches. Thus the name, "Backache Shrimp" stuck. Today I feel like a Backache Shrimp after unloading, organizing, alphabetizing and shelving all of my books yesterday. It wasn't only that which hurt me, it was the getting up and down on the floor. Funny. Over the weekend I must have climbed the attic ladder 30 times and I never felt a thing, but doing those books did. Getting older is a trip. I took a long, hot soak in our freestanding tub last night. What a luxury!

Tweeter and the Monkey Man

The two or three of you who read the other blog will have already read this story, but because my brain is mush (and I really want to make an entry today), you, my good and faithful readers of this blog are getting a warmed up dish today. Let me tell you about the Monkey Man. He's really just a sub-sub-minor blip on the radar of my life, but it's a good story for a Saturday.

Back in 1992, when I was still hot and Ville was married to that stoner dude, the three of us decided to go up to Cold Spring Tavern, which is an old stage stop in the Refugio mountains between Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez Valley. Ville and her stoner dude husband rode on his motorcycle and I rode with one of his friends, who had a Jeep. The tavern is a well-known hangout for local bikers on Sundays; they open up a separate building with a bar in it and they have blues bands come in, and people drink pitchers of beer and dance like the drunken bikers they are. It's great fun. Here's a picture. Click the link. Really. Click it now. You'll wish you could go there, too...