Alice Gerrard, a member of the bluegrass hall of fame, released her first record in 1965 as part of her groundbreaking bluegrass duo with Hazel Dickens, and is still touring and releasing records today at the age of 89! We talk with her about her incredible longevity, how she has taught herself about bluegrass and old-time music, and about becoming such an integral part of the fabric of American folk music and it's strong community.
Alice Gerrard, a member of the bluegrass hall of fame, released her first record in 1965 as part of her groundbreaking bluegrass duo with Hazel Dickens, and is still touring and releasing records today at the age of 89! We talk with her about her incredible longevity, how she has taught herself about bluegrass and old-time music, and about becoming such an integral part of the fabric of American folk music and it's strong community.
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All music written, performed, and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.
[00:00:07] Aaron: Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of The Other 22 Hours Podcast. I'm your host, Aaron Shafer-Haiss
[00:00:11] Michaela: And I'm your other host, Michaela Anne. And if you are a returning listener, thank you so much for being here. If you are brand new, thank you for checking us out.
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[00:00:55] Michaela: We're not your typical music promo show, We like to talk to artists in their off cycle times, between tours, between album releases, and we like to focus on the behind the scenes tools and routines they've found helpful in staying inspired, creative, and sane while building a career around their
[00:01:12] Aaron: art. And with so much that is outside of our control in this industry. We wanted to focus on what is within our control, We decided to have our friends and some of our favorite artists on to talk about all the other times that are outside of the public eye, and ask them the question, what do you do to create sustainability in your life so that you can sustain creating?
[00:01:30] Michaela: Yeah. And today's guest is an incredible artist who is a part of the deep history of old time and bluegrass music.
[00:01:40] Aaron: She is a pioneering woman in folk and old time music, and I would say probably came into prominence with records that she made in the sixties with Hazel Dickens as a duo, we are talking about Alice Gerard.
[00:01:52] Michaela: Alice has had an incredible life, incredible upbringing. Not growing up in Appalachia, but on the West Coast and spent time in Mexico and California.
Born and raised in Seattle, but she. Grew to deeply love and respect old time and bluegrass music, and has been pivotal in bringing that music to a wider audience. And she is in her eighties and still putting out records, still touring, still complaining about the logistics of booking flights and arranging all that stuff and sleeping.
On floors. But she is an incredible example of someone who has centered their life around music and creativity and art in any way that they can and sustained it and is still inspired and going. She became a documentarian. She photographed different musicians and artists and even created a magazine called The Old Time Herald.
[00:02:49] Aaron: we talked to Alice today from her home in Durham, North Carolina. One thing I learned a lot was really how deep the folk and old time scene was in Washington DC in the early sixties, when she was coming up. Talked a lot about the community there and the different scenes of people in the DC, Baltimore area and how she met Hazel there and really just learned so much about this tradition.
and was supported by her community through some pretty traumatic events that happened in her young life.
[00:03:22] Michaela: Yeah, she is a mother of four and still built this incredible career and the reoccurring theme that kept coming up was community music community of support, really focusing on the people and getting to make music together.
She talked a lot about the importance of listening and learning. She said she listened to Hazel Dickens for a long time before she actually jumped in and started trying to sing with her.
[00:03:49] Aaron: Yeah, which is really amazing. One little nugget of her deep listening skills if you catch her talking about it, She's talking about the way that people in the gala LAX area of Virginia is saying specific song, which is something that is so interesting to me about folk music both from America and from other parts of the world, is how these little regional dialects that happen.
And so we really had the honor of talking to Alice about, The creativity in interpretation and all of these little tiny, things that you can creatively throw into the way that you're delivering the song that you may not have written that really make it your own and really make it feel authentic.
And we even got a little gossipy on things that she doesn't like, like maybe the Kingston Trio for being a little too clean and too polished and not being authentic.
[00:04:32] Michaela: Yeah. So without further ado, here is our conversation with Alice Gerard.
[00:04:37] Alice: we have a lot of questions for you and we're so excited to talk to you about how you sustain, how you take care of yourself, how that's changed through the years. And obviously you've had a long life and career and there's so many things I wanna ask, but the fact that you're still enduring the
Sometimes it's.
[00:04:57] Michaela: yeah. yeah.
The stuff that you, dislike, which we all do says something because we have to do so much stuff that is not fun and not enjoyable to be able to still. Play music
and sometimes it, at least I can question like, is it worth it?
[00:05:15] Alice: I know. Well, It's too late for me to question that cuz I mean, as you get older, your energy level dies down a little bit. There's more, Mm-hmm. More wishing you could sit around and read a book and stuff like that. And so I still like love to play music and I like to work it's always been work of mine, whether it was playing music or. Publishing a magazine about old time music or other, stuff like that. So I just think I'll just keep going for a while.
[00:05:47] Aaron: Has that always been your mindset I'll just
keep going for a while and see how it happens?
[00:05:51] Alice: I mean, I really didn't plan a lot of stuff I wasn't on a career path with, you know, a real strong idea of what I wanted to do. I just knew that somehow music was gonna be in my life.
And things happened, this happened that, and before I knew it, know, I was in it
Yeah.
and I've never regretted it.
now I get social security, so that's nice.
Oh good. Mm-hmm. so it's a long experience, but, I've enjoyed every well, almost every minute of it.
Yeah.
[00:06:22] Aaron: So,
When we were reading about your journey and your life, are we understanding that you came into and found old time music in college?
[00:06:32] Alice: Yes. I was going to Antioch College, kind of one of these liberal colleges out in Ohio,
Not too far from Oberlin. And I had a friend there who had just gotten a copy of, it was probably around the time it came out, had just gotten a copy of Harry Smith's anthology of American folk music.
He let me borrow it and it just blew my mind, just like it was blowing other people's minds up at the same time. There's so many people that, you find out this was the thing that hooked him in. it turned out the music library had some 78 records and there was one in particular of an unaccompanied singer named Texas Gladden, who lived in, so she was in southwest Virginia. And was a great singer and her brother was Hobart Smith, who is known among old time, aficionados cuz he was great banjo player and guitar player. And so you could find these records.
And then I started buying 70 eights of, Earl Scruggs, bill Monroe, And listening to. Bluegrass too. So, but, But I came in through old time music, and it was all kinda the same thing. it felt like old time and bluegrass music were much closer together, than they became later, But anyway, so it was all part of the same thing. everything on the anthology, lots of blues and Car Carter family that's what dragged me in pretty willingly.
[00:07:58] Michaela: it's so interesting because we went to the new school in New York City, which is a very
li liberal school,
but we went to the jazz school portion of it.
[00:08:07] Alice: Oh, nice.
[00:08:07] Michaela: And I got really into bluegrass while at the jazz school because I met Michael Daves.
Do you know Michael
[00:08:13] Alice: Oh, sure. I'm doing a class for him tonight.
[00:08:16] Michaela: Oh, amazing.
Small world.
[00:08:18] Alice: talking about his family brothers.
[00:08:20] Michaela: amazing. Oh, amazing. Well, Michael taught me how to play guitar, and he, and
[00:08:24] Aaron: he taught me how to play mandolin, so Yeah.
[00:08:26] Alice: Wow. Yeah, he's, he's such a nice guy, and I love his parents.
[00:08:30] Michaela: Oh, yeah.
[00:08:31] Alice: you met just sweet.
[00:08:32] Michaela: his parents are so sweet. Yeah.
But he like opened up my whole world and was giving me a bluegrass education while I was in jazz school. And, he turned me onto one of your records with Hazel
Dickens, and the one I love is gone. was obsessed. it completely changed
my world.
So thank
you for that.
[00:08:51] Alice: I love that song. It's one of my favorite songs. And Bill Monroe wrote it and told us that he thought we could really sing that song. he had only written one verse in chorus, which is what we recorded since after that, when we got back together and touring a little bit, we wrote another verse to it and started singing it.
But we never recorded the second verse, but I
sing it. Whenever I sing that song, I add the second verse to it.
[00:09:18] Michaela: Ooh.
I hope I get to hear that someday.
[00:09:22] Alice: I know. It's such a great song. Amazing song. So, Billman Monroe, too. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:09:27] Michaela: Beautiful. can you talk a little bit about the different creativity processes where you come? Really deeply from old time music and finding songs and performing your version of the song versus if you are writing a song,
[00:09:42] Alice: That's an interesting question. so when you're learning somebody else's song, recently I was trying to learn a, an unaccompanied song from a recording.
Of a man by the name of D Hicks from Tennessee, and he's dead now. But he was a wonderful singer, but you couldn't understand word he was saying. It was really hard to understand So I called a friend who had recorded him and asked him to help me out. So he did. and my voice is totally unlike Dee Hicks, but I think that early on, listening to unaccompanied singers, and Hazel also was an unaccompanied singer.
a lot of it comes out of church music. In the white Venus, mostly the primitive Baptist tradition where they sing without music, always in the churches. And so I was just listening to a lot of it. I tell people you know, when they're trying to learn how to sing, the most important thing anybody can do is listen.
you don't have the advantage of growing up in the community and listening to it all the time. But the more you listen, the more you internalize it. And you're never gonna sound exactly like somebody else. But you can listen and pick up nuances.
And the more you learn to hear certain things, the more you pick them up and on and on. basically you're trying to get the feeling of what you're learning First you have to put it in the key.
You can sing it in. So that's, different most of the time. I remember Bill Monroe said this, I tell this story all the time cause it's so great, but he told us one time, he said, you know, cuz we, sang a lot of stuff in sharp and flat keys and stuff like this, just where it was good to sing. And he said, now you girls, you sing the song where you can sing it, where you wanna sing it. If the band can play it in that key fire, that band get you another band.
[00:11:34] Aaron: Exactly.
[00:11:35] Alice: So Bill too,
[00:11:37] Michaela: That's incredible.
[00:11:38] Alice: said than done,
Yeah. Yeah.
but it, you know, so it's all about, putting yourself into a song. I remember talking, I don't know, you know who Lydia Mendoza was? we were on tour with her once and she sang these ballads every night, these long ballads, and they was so soulful and emotional.
I, and she'd do it night after night and I asked her once, how do you sing these and get this, the feeling she said, well, I put myself in the song every time I sing it, I'm just putting myself right into that song. So that made a lot of sense to me.
you put yourself into the story Even if it's not your experience, if you have any empathy at all, you can sympathize with a lot of things that you haven't experienced necessarily.
but also the easier thing about singing other songs, like traditional songs or country songs or anything like that, or bluegrass, is you have this huge backlog of stuff that you've listened to and you know what kind of a song this is. And you're drawing on everything you've ever listened to.
You're drawing on stuff from the Harry Smith anthology, you're drawing from country music that you've listened to, blues. And if you've heard a lot of that stuff, you find yourself more able to draw on it when you're, both singing a song, when you're writing a song.
That's a complex issue. mean, When you write a song, you have nothing. There's nobody else's done this song, so you can't really draw on their perspective. But I think that what you've listened to comes into play in how you write a song too,
If you've listened to a lot of one kind of music, you're probably gonna write a song sort of in that vein. So I think my songs probably have elements of blues, bluegrass folk, and I don't know, I used to love Rosemary Clooney's Come Outta my House and stuff like I'm sure all of it's in play, but the main thing is you've listened to a ton of stuff
[00:13:41] Aaron: Yeah. You've absorbed the language
[00:13:43] Alice: Exactly. And I mean, I know what I like and I know when I don't like something I've done.
And it's a process, you sit down and you write hopefully, and then, You write again, then you correct stuff, and then you, get your thesaurus out and look up an alternative word for the one you're, you've been using too much but I usually don't write the song first and then put the music to it. I usually sit around with a guitar banging away in the key of C maybe, or then I'll try D and and I'll have some tune going in my head. I'll try to put a tune in, or I'll have an idea about what kind of a song this is gonna be.
and then they all kind of work together and in some kind of fashion that ends up. With a song, and I always record everything. I record stuff as I go along when I have an idea. Nowadays, can just turn on the phone and get recordings, and so it's much easier than the old days of cassette tapes and reel to reel tapes and stuff.
it's a process
[00:14:49] Aaron: yeah. Have you always used that process of recording yourself as you're,
[00:14:53] Alice: Yeah,
[00:14:54] Aaron: throwing out
[00:14:54] Alice: pretty much.
I mean, Hazel and I used to record ourselves just practicing with a real tore tape recorder, if you can believe it, and just so we could listen back and see if we liked it, We didn't do that all the time, but sometimes we did. that's where Free Dirt came up I found these old real tore tapes and it was us practicing and there was enough sort of good stuff on there that Free dirt decided to put out the recording of
us.
[00:15:22] Aaron:
Oh, cool.
[00:15:23] Alice: Hazel and Alice, Allison, Hazel Closet tapes or something like this.
[00:15:27] Aaron: Mm-hmm. so you started by, by listening and by learning about the music and learning the songs and all of that. How long were you just an interpreter of songs before you started writing, or did
they kind of go hand in hand?
[00:15:39] Alice: I met Hazel pretty quickly I mean, I went to Antioch and that whole Harry Smith thing. Sta started around, you know, the early fifties I lived in Washington DC at that time. on our co-op job from Antioch and my boyfriend and I were both really into bluegrass music and traditional music.
but they had these country music parks north of Baltimore, sunset Park and New River Ranch. And every Sunday in the fifties, mid fifties, on through the sixties, there was this whole gang of people around DC who were going through the same sort of renaissance of, we wanna learn this music.
they're a bunch of middle class kids, but there, there were lots of people who had moved up to that area from the south to Baltimore and. The DC area to get work like Bel Reed and her family and fields Ward and his family and many others. you know, and people move when they migrate, they usually bring their music and their cooking and their stuff, with them.
So there were people around playing this music and you just had to find them. And then there were lots of little bars around in Baltimore. There were little parks out in the periphery of Washington DC and somebody would open a park and they'd get musicians to play there. And that's the way it was with the Sunset Park in the river ranch north of Baltimore. And. So many people came through there. I mean, not only Blue Gas, but country musicians. And it would just be, you'd go up and you'd spend all afternoon, Sunday afternoon, bring a picnic or something and there'd be music all afternoon. The house band, which often was Olive be Reed open and then whoever was the star would perform.
And, And it was very informal, and there was no separating of musicians and audience, you could invite them to eat your picnic with you. And it was fans musicians would ask 'em how their mother was doing, you know, and it was very different than it is now at like festivals and stuff where, there's ropes and boundaries and,
Mm-hmm. But you really.
got to meet and get to know a lot of the musicians. so I didn't spend a lot of time before I got to feel strongly that what I wanted to do was what the people on the anthology were doing, or Flat Scruggs or Ole Cooper, Molly O'Day.
and then Hazel. I met Hazel and she was in our group of friends and that kind of capped the stack for me, and so I, I remember listening for a long time before I started singing with her. I that was the end of it.
I never sang, black is the Color of My True Love's Hair, the whole thing of this gang of people who were into the real stuff We were so snotty. was that we stuck our noses up at, Judy Kongs and, Kingston Trio and Chad Mitchell Trio, all that stuff.
[00:18:40] Michaela: What was the reasoning?
[00:18:42] Alice: it was too pretty.
It didn't have Any grit and it was very, I wouldn't say that about the solo singers, but the Chad Mitchell Trail and the Kingston Funeral. Everything was very predictable They had none of the sort of surprises that you got in traditional music, where a fiddle tune might be crooked Or stuff was happening vocally.
That was like so interesting and the kind of chords that people played a lot, which were different. I remember, you know, I didn't think about it at the time, but then later I lived in Gala LAX for eight years, then I thought back, Charlie Monroe, when he played Down in the Willow Garden? he hit.
Which is a minor note, but he hit a major e chord against the minor note and that happened a lot up around Gala Lax They didn't really play minor chords a lot. I listened to this and I said, this is so neat cuz it adds so much more tension to a song when you, can do that.
That's the incredible part of music.
[00:19:49] Michaela: It's up for many different kinds of interpretations.
[00:19:53] Aaron: Yeah. I liked you were saying, oh, this is how they would sing that around Gala Lax and that very hyper regional way of singing songs is so interesting to me. I actually came to American folk music through Brazilian folk music.
I I got into Brazilian music in New York City while we were in college, had an opportunity to spend about six months down there in northeast Brazil, which
[00:20:18] Alice: Oh, that's so
[00:20:19] Aaron: the,
closest thing I can relate it to is it's like, Louisiana. so I was saying in a city that was very similar to New Orleans, both architecturally, but also culturally and just outside of the city.
It was really rural and you would get into, Acadian territory, Cajun territory,
basically, but the Brazilian version. And I got to a point with their folk music where I could tell. Generally where in the region it was from.
[00:20:40] Alice: Yeah.
[00:20:40] Aaron: I came back to New York, got back into school, I realized I, I couldn't do that with American folk music.
And so I started, studying American folk music. And that's just such an interesting thing to me that find I'm, admittedly really not all that deep into the folk and old
timey scene comparably now. But just hearing people like yourself and our friends here in Nashville talk about it and talk about different, dialects, the different approaches, the different little things that are in this music is amazing to me.
[00:21:12] Alice: yeah. I agree with you. the John Cohen. Made this film, and I think it was in Peru it's been a while, long time since I've seen it. But he had a lot of scenes of musicians. It was a lot about music and cultural, but from regular country people. And it wasn't, the elite or anything.
Like he was going around and recording people and the scene, I mean, you could always tell just, I don't care what country you're in, you can hear authenticity. he recorded a radio show that happened every Saturday, he said, in this little town in Peru.
And these people would just come, just like they did in Gala lax, the W P A Q. They'd come with their instruments and they'd play on the radio on Saturday morning. these people in Peru did the same thing. They came to the radio station, they played their music, and it was just, mean, I really believe you can tell when stuff is authentic,
Which is an overused word, but
still you I love that about any culture,
[00:22:08] Aaron: Yeah,
that makes me think did you want to write a second verse to The one I love is gone for a while before you did, talking about authenticity, did that feel intimidating or were you like, the song isn't finished, it needs more?
[00:22:20] Alice: I don't think we thought about it much at the time. It was kind of when we got in the nineties, when we started doing a little more stuff together again. we always felt like it was too bad that it wasn't longer. there's a song that Hank Williams wrote that only had a verse in a chorus.
I'm trying to think of which one it was. and it was beautiful song. It was too short. So I wrote another verse to it. I think I recorded it with Tom, Brad, and Alice on one of our CDs. But anyway, so we just, I remember we were sitting down practicing one day and we just decided to write another verse, it was really fast.
Well, We kinda kept the style, I think it is something like I don't know. I don't know how I'll live with all this pain. Maybe I'm not sure about that. How my heart can ever be something with all this pain. So I'll wander all my life like a lonely, homeless dove
all alone with no one to love, I think. Something like that.
[00:23:22] Aaron: I mean, I would argue, between you and Hazel, if you wrote diverse in the nineties, then you guys were the authenticity.
[00:23:28] Alice: Probably can't argue with this.
[00:23:31] Aaron: Yeah.
[00:23:31] Alice: And neither can bill.
[00:23:35] Michaela: So I'm curious cuz from even just the little bit of conversation now and what I was reading about you was that your story has been that you were just into music and you just followed music. Whether you were playing it or you were documenting others, taking photographs or writing about it, that's always been your true north and that you kind of stumbled into a career at what point, if ever.
Did you look around and say, okay, this is a career, and how much thought throughout your life have you had to give to the business aspect of it and also the financial aspect of like, how am I gonna make a living and support my family? And because that feels like always a huge part of my life and our life and friends who are building their careers in music and how, anytime I hear like that sound bite of, oh, I just followed the music, I'm like, but were you never stressed about how you were gonna make money?
Like,
[00:24:37] Alice: Well,
That's a good question. seven years after Jeremy and I were married, he was killed in a car accident and we had four kids and it was the driver's fault or it wasn't Jeremy's fault anyway. And so had a couple of family friends who saw that we needed some help So they said we should. Take it to court and sue and we got some insurance money. It wasn't a lot. I think there was a cap in Virginia at that time of $35,000, which isn't much in today's, but it enabled me to put the down payment on a house. And then I had a maximum social security with four kids.
And I'm not a person who needs a lot of stuff. So I got this house and then my cousin, who was a contractor, fix the basement up so that I could have a friend live there and pay rent. And so all that kind of enabled me to live without having to worry about it too much.
so I was lucky that way. some would say maybe not so lucky, but lucky in how it turned out. Anyway.
[00:25:39] Michaela: The silver lining of the devastating
[00:25:42] Alice: Yeah. And I had a lot of friends. it. It was a huge community of people. there are communities in music and there was a big community around Washington DC at that time.
And you know, there was the, a very active Washington folklore society. There was lots and lots of bluegrass. There was Pete Kiken doll who started Bluegrass Unlimited. there was just a lot of stuff going on and it was really fun. there's this little club on Connecticut Avenue you could go and hear stephan Gelli and skip James played at the Ontario Place on the piano for a while. so there was a, just a ton of stuff going on and the community was always very supportive and I think that really helped.
I mean, I wasn't, out on the street, plus my cousin lived not far away and I first stayed with them so It was dreadful, but I was saved by Social security.
[00:26:37] Michaela: That's incredible.
And with four children,
[00:26:40] Alice: Four kids and the two youngest were in diapers still.
[00:26:43] Michaela: gosh. We don't have, family that live in Nashville. we have a supportive group of friends, but everyone's, so it feels like the theme of life is just everyone's so busy trying
to support themselves. So it's, very much we're just like, how do you do even two kids?
So the idea of having,
[00:27:03] Alice: I know.
[00:27:03] Michaela: being a single mother with four children,
[00:27:05] Alice: Well, it was a while back and I don't think I did it very well, but parenting that wasn't even a word back then. didn't have seat belts. Your kids played on the floor of the VW bus, or sat in the back ledge there over the motor, and nobody thought anything about it.
it was looser back then. We went to parties and took our kids and threw 'em on the floor to sleep and stuff like that. And they just, as they put it now, they were free range.
Although, my understanding of free range now is that there is a lot of responsibleness that goes along with the free range, but I think they sometimes felt a little hung out to dry, but. the biggest hugest thing in my life was trying to find babysitters for the kids, and I would just get whoever was around, you know, I get the neighbor, I'd get somebody just who was willing to do it. and then when we lived in Pennsylvania, which was out in the country after I married Mike, you had to find people who were willing to come to the country and stay in the house for a week or two, take care of the kids. And that was a very mixed bag. So it was always the background to my life was who's gonna take care of the kids when I go away? and. I don't remember ever having to not do something because of that, but I think it wasn't always the greatest experience for the kids. I don't think anything horrible happened. Something bad happened to the babysitter one time when they tied her up and then danced around her on the front lawn. They were older then and she was, I guess, sort of annoying.
[00:28:41] Aaron: So you're saying your kids were strong-willed as well?
[00:28:43] Alice: Yeah, I believe they're yeah, we have a lot of fun reliving. So that's, but um, as far as the business, I hate it.
You know, everybody's in Nashville, they're there doing business,
And that's the part of it I hate. And I think most musicians. I know anyway, hate it too.
And they wish somebody would do it for him, but of course, that's only for the, bigger musicians And I remember Mike doing his booking all the time, and he worked constantly,
Much more than I did. And we did some stuff together and he would always book the stuff. And then when I started singing with this group of women called the Harmony Sisters, we would book our own stuff too.
I, And I remember doing that. It wasn't too horrible because we developed this sort of circuit of people, you know, a lot of house concerts and little festivals and stuff. The three of us were working on it together too, so it wasn't just on one person, that's the part I don't like. dealing with different people's, like the whole band is gonna be up at a chaun camp this summer And everybody's in a different place, you know, and they have to come from here to there, and then somebody has to drive into JFK or LaGuardia to pick us up and that, and so like, ugh. I just need a travel agent. Well, I'm not traveling that much, you know, anymore.
[00:30:05] Michaela: what has touring looked like for you through the years?
[00:30:07] Alice: oh, well I never really minded it that much. But now I'm not at all fond of touring. up until fairly recently, I toured a fair amount with a friend of mine, Beverly Smith. And we toured a lot in the UK and, she would book everything But she didn't mind, staying with people.
we were staying with people all the time. It was, when you're on tour, all you wanna do is go into a room, shut the door,
you don't wanna be talking to people, Most of them are just wonderful people. but it's, hard to just balance this. And so I, I don't like that kind of touring. I wanna stay in a motel or private room and
Jay asked me, do you wanna share a room with Hazy and Tatiana? And I said, no,
Yeah.
cuz they're, they're in my, they're in the band too.
cuz I just don't want to, I don't wanna sleep on the floor and somebody's
[00:31:01] Michaela: oh my gosh,
[00:31:02] Alice: one time,
the Harmony, the Harmony Sisters played a house concert once, which was in the place we were gonna sleep,
So we couldn't even go to bed. Everybody was hanging out
and having a little Party afterwards.
[00:31:15] Michaela: always the challenge of you appreciate obviously the hospitality and the enthusiasm and the support, but like having time to recharge and be alone,
not to mention that you spend your days if you're traveling with a band and interacting with other people between the shows.
I've been learning that my body needs so much more recovery time and quiet
and solitude.
[00:31:41] Alice: I put a stop to talking with people between shows, if there's anybody else who will sell records or do the social stuff,
Cuz talking is much more tiring on your voice than singing, I
Oh yeah, definitely. when you have to talk to people and it's generally over noise, so that's a problem.
But I lived in Nashville back in about 80, 79 or 80. After Mike and I split up, I moved there with a, where a friend of mine lived and she had a house in Nashville, and I stayed with her for about six months. And then I, the thing that really made me want to not stay there was just that was just such a business oriented, it's probably even more so now, I don't know, But a lot of people are moving there
[00:32:29] Michaela: lot of non-music. people are moving to
Nashville too. it still feels, I think, pretty business dominant, but now it feels like the things that were very cherished about it being a music town
are getting bulldozed.
[00:32:43] Aaron: The classic story of artists are always the ones that come into a place and, blaze a new trail and set up culture and things that make a town and a community vibrant and people get wind of that and it becomes very attractive understandably so. and people move in and then prices go up and then investors move in and
[00:33:04] Alice: Oh my God.
That's happening all around here too. Everywhere.
Yeah. Yeah. you know People are being priced out of their homes that they've been in for so long, then they just smash 'em down, build these hugely ugly condo apartment building things. I hate it, and it wasn't like that back then when I was there.
It was just so country
kinda like the music, a lot of the music you hear now, you used to be able to run your. knob down the radio, you run the dial and you could tell the country station immediately. And now it just sounds like another pop station for the most part.
and I know there are a lot of great people who are living there There
[00:33:42] Aaron: are,
Talk about community. The community here is
really amazing.
[00:33:46] Michaela: Yeah,
but everyone's, really spread out now. when we moved here, we all lived in East Nashville and it felt like we were on campus, like so many of our friends were a few minutes from each other and we could, hang out a lot. And now, everybody was getting older. We all were getting priced out and wanted to buy homes. So we're all spread out in different places where whichever more affordable neighborhood, we found houses that we could buy.
[00:34:11] Alice: Yeah. Oh God, I know it's, it's, the same story. I know if I, the house I live in now is paid for, but if I wanted to sell it, don't know if I could afford to live somewhere else, because everything is gone sky high, so who knows? But anyway.
[00:34:28] Michaela: I know it's crazy. And. touring is so expensive now too.
I'm learning, being a musician has really, I have a lot of work to do, but help me work through a lot of my issues around money
[00:34:39] Alice: Oh really? You have issues around money?
[00:34:41] Michaela: Oh my gosh, yes. wanting it because it feels like it's security, but being a musician for me it's been more about spending money.
I spend so much money to build and sustain a career. And I feel like in today's world, I don't know if this is just me, but when I see on social media, people's like promoting their own records or like showing tours or videos or photos that they have. All I can think about is how much money all of that costs, because it just all costs so much money.
And maybe that's just my story, I also worked at a record label when I was right outta college. Um, I worked at Nonesuch Records,
[00:35:23] Alice: Okay.
[00:35:23] Michaela: was in the marketing department and I paid invoices and did all of the budgeting and saw the budget spreadsheets constantly.
So I started out like always thinking about those numbers,
and then now it's just, so deeply attached for me. It's hard for me to not see it or think about it constantly. That's why my question of were you able to just be like, oh, that works itself out, like as long as I can play music, that's what
[00:35:49] Alice: matters.
it's a terrible dilemma because I guess it's depends on where you wanna be on the spectrum of people who play music for a living,
because most of people like. Us or most people I know who play a lot of music, but they have another job they can do too. And for a while I belonged to the local, what was it, local one? was an AFM union, but it was a local union that John, this guy started to deal with traveling musicians.
you had a job, you put money into the union. And then you, after you got vested, you could pull out any time and get a certain amount of pension money. And, and they also had a little health insurance deal too. Local 1000, that's what it was.
and I don't know whether that's functional still, but I think it is.
I got a little pension from them.
But most people I know who play music have other things they do as well. And in, in, a sense, I've done that too because I've done a lot of peripheral stuff, It's always been music connected.
In the old days when these bluegrass bands were traveling, they were hardly making anything. They lived a very hard life on the road. They had to sleep in the car all the time and It was rough, rough life, and they weren't making much money.
And I don't know how people who are independent musicians without, know, a big machine behind them get to that point It depends on the point you wanna get to. If you wanna be, like Loretta Lynn or if you're okay being. Robin and Linda Williams Robin and Linda is a good example of people who, they didn't have any kids. They had dogs. and they're still living, So I shouldn't talk about 'em in the past tense. But they worked very hard They, traveled constantly
they got a, van that they could, travel and it wasn't like a car.
It was, something. They could take their dogs, maybe cook a little bit or something like
this. and that's how they did it. But, They were on the road all the time.
And I have never wanted to be on the road all the time.
It's the same thing when you're on your own. you have to be on it all the time.
I used to be able to get on Facebook, you know, we were raising some money for something and I got on every day, the morning and late afternoon after people, and I'd say, don't forget to do this.
You know, blah, blah, blah. And we're gonna be, and I don't wanna do that anymore. I just, I hardly ever look at Facebook anymore. But I know it's, place where I can put announcements of stuff. So I do, and I'd be happy never looking at it. but that's just what you gotta do. And it's, I hate it.
It's the hateful part. You just wanna play music,
[00:38:29] Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. We had Marelli as a guest on this show who's a songwriter and guitar player in Boston. And he said it so well. He's like, you have to commit every day to all of the other stuff, all of the emails, all of the social media, all of the not fun stuff. You can't just be like, no, I'm a musician.
I make music and sing it to people. that's the name of our show. That's two hours out of 24 in a day. So if you're gonna do this,
[00:38:57] Alice: Yeah, I like that.
[00:38:58] Aaron: You need to really commit to all of the mud versus all of the
[00:39:01] Alice: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:02] Aaron: But I
[00:39:02] Michaela: think the really key part is what you said, Alice, of deciding where on the spectrum you, you want to
be.
So if just detest some of the promotional stuff to the point that it makes you unhappy and you're okay with if that means that I'm not as known as by as many people, or I'm not headlining the biggest festivals, but I still can have a life centered around music and
[00:39:25] Alice: absolutely.
[00:39:25] Michaela: in my eighties and still playing music great.
But if your burning desire is to be, superstar
and make a ton of money off of it and have a big machine, then I think there is that okay, what are the things that. You have to do, that's a big part of this podcast for us and for me personally, is always deciding. I set out with certain dreams they've been shifting and changing because of learning what things feel attached to make those dreams happen in determining, maybe I actually don't wanna spend my life doing these other aspects.
And if that means that it's not gonna look the way that I thought. That's okay because maybe getting time to do this or not wanting to tour as much or wanting to have a more family-centered life and not be constantly promoting myself. There's all these sacrifices and weighing all the different things.
That's important part of this question. And that's why it's so interesting to talk to someone like you who's been in this for so long and still dealing with all the same stuff that we complain about,
[00:40:31] Alice: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:40:32] Michaela: but waking up every day of like, you're putting out a record and you're going to a chakin and you're playing music.
to me, that's if I can still be doing that and I still want to be doing that, that's the key. That's the goal and that's the dream. And also judging. The value of the music that you have contributed to this world and the impact that you will never know that you had on people like me being in Brooklyn, New York, and Michael Dave's little, room, listening to
your recordings for the first time and what that did to me and change the trajectory of my life.
That's stuff that you can't
[00:41:08] Alice: yeah.
and here you are, you're doing the radio show that's related to this music. there are so many things like when I started the old Time Herald Magazine. I just really got this urge to do this. know, I didn't know anything about putting out a magazine, but I knew a lot of people to talk to.
so it worked out okay. And, and it brought in some money for a while. so, but I think, one huge thing, you need help.
And I didn't know what I was doing, my family was out in California, so they weren't around to give me advice, which I probably might not have taken anyway, but, having people who can help you out really great.
but everything is different now. band camp, there's downloads, there's, you know, and I finally figured out, out how to put stuff onto band camp, if you know how to do technology a little bit, you're way ahead of the game. But now it's changing so fast, have a, I have a friend, her name is Aen Tran, and she lives in in Brooklyn.
We know i n. Yeah. She's very techy. So she's on my speed dial. You know, I go, IEN,
Yeah.
can we do a Zoom and You can help me figure this thing out. then she went and had this baby. Can't just call her anytime.
[00:42:24] Michaela: Well,
It sounds like the kind of reoccurring theme is constantly community.
[00:42:31] Alice: Mm-hmm. it is, it really is community.
sometimes it's hard to ask for help, but it's a good thing to be able to
[00:42:38] Michaela: Yeah, I think in all aspects of life.
That's a really good lesson. Mm-hmm.
I feel like this every time, but there's always a million more questions we never even got to. So Hopely, we'll get a chance to talk to you again,
[00:42:50] Alice: Okay. That'd be great.
[00:42:52] Michaela: for giving us your time. And Mike Taylor from his scold messenger,
he was one of our guests recently.
[00:42:59] Alice: Oh nice.
[00:43:00] Michaela: pass on his love to you.
[00:43:02] Alice: I love Mike. He's a really great guy
[00:43:04] Aaron: Yeah,
[00:43:04] Alice: absolutely. he's still got my Kelton case, so I'm gonna have to get it back from him.
Oh yeah.
He's been borrowing my Cal cases
[00:43:12] Michaela: he actually mentioned that in
[00:43:14] Alice: he mentioned that.
[00:43:14] Michaela: email.
[00:43:17] Aaron: So he knows, don't let him play ignorant.
[00:43:21] Michaela: Yeah. That's funny.
[00:43:23] Alice: Oh,
[00:43:24] Michaela: Okay, well thank you so much.
[00:43:26] Alice: you guys. It was nice to meet you.
See what you're doing there. That's a great idea. I've a 22 hours thing.