Amy.1983
I have so many mental images of my life in 1983, but not that many photographs or things to document the arc of that year. But I found this one, which seems pretty innocuous but packs a punch in my head.
My family drove me up to Nashville, TN and dropped me off for my first year of college at Vanderbilt University. I stayed there from Aug 1982 to May 1983. My Dad took this picture and that’s my younger brother, Larry standing with me near the student center. I was bumming because my girlfriend was 300 miles away in Athens at UGA, and Emily was down in New Orleans still, at Tulane. We had played a lot that summer and I guess I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with myself or how to maintain the ground we had gained. I made that shirt you see me wearing in the photo; it celebrated a very short era of calling our duo The B Band. I really have no idea where the name came from, it was some silly inside joke I’m sure, but I wore The B Band shirt all the time. When I started my days at Vanderbilt, I was hoping to have some college years of discovery while working on my own musical craft, and still for me, everything musically was about adding to the experience and growth of my music with Emily.
My oldest sister Laura had gone to Vandy and I had visited her a couple times and thought it’d be a good place for me. I’m not sure what transpired in the time after she graduated but the community of D&D playing, philosophy majors and free loving hippies had kind of disappeared off the campus and what was left, was pretty much a choice between the conservative young Republican kids who majored in Fraternity and Sorority life and the conservative business, pre-med or prelaw driven intellectuals. I know now there were a lot of other kinds of students there, but I was such a hermit that I couldn’t find them. I was trying to come to terms with my sexuality and scared of everything I was feeling. I was in Music City, U.S.A. and I knew I wanted to make the best of it, but still couldn’t really connect the dots. Vanderbilt and Nashville were legendary in my mind for alt country bands like Jason and the Scorchers and badass women rockers like Marshall Chapman. The Bluebird Café had just opened and was already a happening place. The SGA at Vandy was renown for hooking up stellar shows; R.E.M. came through on its Murmur tour and opened for The English Beat. I kick myself now, because I couldn’t get out of my misery enough to discover this world that lay at my feet.
I did have a super cool job though, at the most amazing used record, comic, and bookstore on Broadway called The Great Escape. It really became my savior during that time. I spent my hours going through tons of vinyl records in a dusty upstairs room, checking them and pricing them, organizing comics, ringing up sales, and doing gopher work. It was The Walker’s family business and they knew a lot about music. My sister had also worked there when she was school, so the Walkers took me in and treated me like their own. I spent most of my earnings on vinyl and comics, but the job gave me some structure and helped to feel like I was in Nashville and not just isolated on a college campus. Gary Walker was a Nashville songwriter and gave me some songwriting advice along the way. It took a while to apply his advice but it was a seed that got planted and grows even now. I played some gigs here and there, even played on campus, and it was really a big part of whom I was, but I was having so much trouble negotiating my inner life that I couldn’t really turn it into anything. I felt like such an oddball, and sometimes out of insecurity, I was strange for strange’s sake, but it’s hard when you feel all painful and crazy inside to figure out how to show it on the outside without giving it all away, so I guess that chip on my shoulder got pretty heavy.
I had a couple of entrusted friends that saved my butt for sure, I still use the guitar strap that they gave me in an act of total grace and support. But, there was nowhere that I didn’t feel homophobia and at the time, I didn’t even know what to call it, I hated myself and did whatever I could to stop that hurt. I wrote Blood and Fire in the throes of all that mystery and pain. But it was more than just love and sexuality chaos, my left wing was growing, my politics developing and I was truly feeling the pull of activism. I didn’t understand it all yet, it was just growing inside and I couldn’t help myself from taking in all that was wrong with the South in the 80’s. I wrote the lyrics for Nashville that year too, I left the original lyrics in a seedy Atlanta hotel I holed up in for some respite called The Dial Inn. It took me a while to pull it back up from my memory. I felt the Old South’s racism, classism, and all the negative parts of a wealthy old southern university and a conservative music city and that song was my way of coming to terms with it. But you know how it is, where there is that much frustration and anger, there is bound to be an equal helping of yearning and love; over the years that city has become a friend to me.
When your 19 years old, you don’t think of yourself as young, but you are, you are young and vulnerable and your senses are on hyper drive. I was pretty lost and always asking myself why did everything feel so off kilter, secret and dark? The creeping discovery of sexuality, politicization, social awkwardness of a freshman year, and powerful musical ambitions all culminated in a potent coming of age that lives with me even now.
