#linzy collins

[thedaveandkimmershow]

It was another of Linzy's wine tasting gigs, this one at Patterson Cellars Tasting Room in Woodinville.

By the time we arrived, the parking lot was wall-to-wall packed... and so, after a bit of circling about, we landed in the parking lot across the street. While I paid online, Kimmer walked over to join Linzy and order up some wine. A few minutes later, I lock up the car and walk across the parking lot, eventually ending up at the crosswalk directly opposite Patterson Cellars.

Standing there, I can hear Linzy performing. I hear her guitar. I hear her voice.

Crossing the street, though, I can also hear something else. I can hear the sound of more than just Linzy singing a song, a song I'd not heard before. A song with a positive chorus of voices behind Linzy's voice.

Dang.

Now, because my brain can't fathom any other explanation, its first and only conclusion is to presume Linzy is using backing tracks.

Nawwwwww. That can't be right.

Hmmmmmmm.

It's only when I arrive right there amongst the audience that I realize what's happening.

This is a sing-along.

This is a straight up.

Audience participation.

Sing-along.

People in front of and to either side of Linzy are singing the song she's singing.

Hmm.

This must be one of those songs of the moment everyone knows (except me, of course).

So.

After the song finishes, I quickly lean in from the table behind her where we're sitting to ask Linzy what's going on... and she says they've been like this from the jump. From the moment she took to the microphone.

🥳🥳🥳🤯

They've been a thoroughly engaged audience from song one. Singing along. Encouraging. Cheering wildly. Tips tips tips. And drinks for the performer.

Again...

🤯

The next songs bear out this explanation along with little kids dancing in the space in front of Linzy.

Eventually she directly enlists the table beside her to join in specific shenanigans...

And then next thing I know there’s a violinist.

Seriously.

A woman with a violin in its case in the audience.

Carly.

She gets enthusiastic cheers from the audience as she takes her place next to Linzy and the two of them quickly discuss how they're gonna do this.

Then Linzy's turning to me and saying

"You're gonna wanna get video of this."

And so I do.

Of course the violin wasn't mic'd to you can't actually hear Carly's performance while Linzy's singing.

In the breaks, though?

Yes.

Yes you can.

And it's lovely. And I'm amazed musicians can just do this kind of thing on the fly. And I'm thinking there should always be an extra mic 'cause there are a lot of talented musicians out there and who knows when you're gonna run into one of them packin' their instrument right there at the winery, the restaurant, the cafe, the lounge, the bar.

Afterward, I tell Linzy that this audience is gonna wind up ruining all other audiences for her from this day forth. Good grief. They were there to listen. They were there to engage. They tipped like crazy. They provided free drinks. And apparently they were quite familiar with the set list Linzy had prepared for this particular evening.

And this.

They also seemed enthusiastic about Linzy's Little Lies gig at the Edmonds Block Party not this friday but the one after, friday August 7.

Whoooooeeeeee.

That's gonna be one CRAZY night if any of these people show up!

😁😁😁😁😁🥳🥳🥳🥳🤯

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Okay so May.

Right?

We kicked it off with a bit of summer enjoyment, walking along the lake, enjoying the peace, enjoying the sounds of everyone at the lake, stopping in at Tapster and enjoying drink samples on their patio under a setting sun.

I won't lie. Being present in such moments, fully experiencing them, the feel of the sun and the light breeze, the sound of everyone enjoying this moment, the taste of the drinks, the smell of cooking food, the light and color and scenery all around us, and sharing in all of this together...

Is a thoroughly compelling experience.

I said in previous posts that no month is ever about one thing. It never is.

However.

Because some months are so indellibly stamped by an experience, those months are preserved in our minds as being about that one thing. For example, March was the one with Jordan & Dean. May... was the one in which we helped my parents move. And one of the byproducts of doing that is the discovery of thousands of photographs we either hadn't seen in a long, long time or...

Had never seen at all.

There's definitely serious family history in this treasure trove easily going back to the late 1930s.

There's also that time my folks took us on a family vacation to Disney World where we all stayed in the Animal Kingdom Lodge and Linzy embarked on a quest to accumulate Disney character signatures.

She was really very good at it. ☺️

Dashing back to 1962 in another photo album, I ran across these pictures from my parent's wedding day, honeymoon, and their voyage across the Atlantic to the United States.

Mother's Day was a feature of our May. This Mother's Day we spent in Woodinville at 425 Cellars where Linzy was booked for the affernoon and where the owners were fully generous in sharing with us the different wines they produce.

I stopped by a nearby restaurant to score some bruscetta to accompany our drinks and we had a lovely summer's afternoon enjoying Linzy's performance with the couples and families that had gathered at this time and place, sharing in the same experience. 😊

In the meantime... more photo albums and more photos. This time a photo booth strip with Linzy and my folks in a goofy moment, followed by a moment of a reasonably calm me as a kid sitting with my mom during a family trip to Holland (my first one), and then me, my dad, and my maternal grandmother about to board a boat for a lovely cruise of Amsterdam's canals.

Okay.

So now we come to the part about the moving. Which is the one about how my parents moved from a home with lots of space to a home with less than half that space. And so there were decisions to be made about what to do with anything that would not be making the journey into the new space. The first decision, as it turns out, was the baby grand piano. As in Kimmer always admired that piano from its first appearance in Magnolia and my dad remembered that. So he told her the piano isn't gonna be part of the new space.

Would she like to have it???

The answer, of course, was a full-throated

YES!!!!!!!

And so, with the expert efforts of the team from Pro Piano Move out of Edmonds, my parent's baby grand found its way into our living room where it absolutely looks meant to be. 😊

And yes. Both of us practice on it. I have a few songs I've always been meaning to learn. Kimmer's working on her left hand strength as well as learning specific chords from a book that shows the finger positioning for each one .

And yeah. It's a THICK book. 🙂

Aside from the baby grand, there was a truckload to coordinate and to accomplish. We were there for a solid week clearing out the small stuff then coordinating the medium stuff from the bigger place to the smaller place with the moving company and then, finally, coordinating the big stuff with another moving company both to donations and then to storage. It was one heckuva juggling act with a lot of expert help.

In the end, it all worked out by using every minute and hour available to us, every resource and contact. By the time everything was handled, it was fully dark out, ten at night. Two hours shy of the official deadline.

Gotta love it. 😊

And oh dear God did we sleep hard that very night into the next morning.

You bet we did.

😁

Which brings us to the end of the month...

After a thoroughly exhausting couple May of intense moving and storage activities, we managed to experience the last three Linzy Collins performances of the month, starting with Retreat along the shores of Greenlake.

Of course there's plenty here to love and enjoy. What captured our delight this time around was running across an old high school friend of Linzy's. The last time we saw her was summer of 2025 at the Everett Marina after a Little Lies show on the pier.

Before that?

Oof.

Would've been around the time she and Linzy performed a memorial song that Linzy wrote for a friend/mentor who died in a terrible accident a few weeks before graduation.

Linzy's instinctive reaction was to form her grief into music. Hannah helped her find some of what would inform Linzy's words. And their performance embodied a combination of full-throated grief, deep personality, and comfort in maybe the most authentic and natural way possible.

That song was a release for every single family member, friend, classmate, teacher, anyone who had anything to do with the school and, because of that, bore some part of the geief.

And so that song was a relief that shepherded everyone through and out of that unthinkable moment.

And those terrible feelings.

I won't lie. It is a gift to see these two long passed that and further along in their lives pursuing their futures with such passion.

A coupla nights later we're in Bellevue at our least favorite place to enjoy a Linzy Collins performance. The owner's a lovely lovely gentleman. But his clientele?

They are relentlessly, relentlessly LOUD.

They estsblish the venue as a sports bar as opposed to what it really is: a wine bar.

A wine bar that should reflect the culture and class of its owner but easily manages to do neither.

So yeah. Other than another chance to hang out with Linzy, this evening was a bust. Cacophonous, I think, is the word for our experience.

And then thankfully, thankfully... on the last day of the month, May 31, it's...

Reuben's Brews in Ballard.

Bathed in the light of a setting sun on a summer's day. Adorned with one of the biggest Henry's we've ever seen. Invested with families, couples, and the most kids ever to attend a Linzy Show. In fact, one of the evening's requests came from a little girl whose favorite song of the moment comes from the pop culture hit film, KPOP Demon Hunter, probably one of the biggest animated hits to grace Netflix then graduate to big screens for sing-a-longs. So yeah.

This little girl comes up to Linzy during a song break and makes her request. It really is adorable to watch Linzy interact with such tiny human beings. She granted the request and promised the little girl to do her very best. Which. She. Did. To the absolute delight of the little girl returned to her seat beside her dad.

More than most restaurants, cafes, wine bars, and venues, Reuben's Brews was a very sensory experience. It was people watching. It was feeling sequential moments. It was taste and smell and bathing in the music. 😊

It was the perfect cherry on top, ending the month under a setting summer sun listening to the smooth tones of Linzy Collins in the shadow of an immense Henry painted on a two story wall.

And for all of that? Every single piece of that?

You better believe we're thankful.

😁😁😁

[thedaveandkimmershow]

I'm back on my seat, perched at the corner of the bar across from which Linzy is performing a three hour set at The Cottage in Bothell. I've got all kinds of fond memories of this place and its ownership who bent over backwards to keep booking music artists during the various public health rules in play during Covid.

They believe in these local musicians and it shows. 🙂

Linzy's performing tonight from 630 to 930. She joins me twice over the course of those hours on short breaks.

I actually picked her up earlier this evening, 'bout quarter past 5, and we've been talking music from the jump. We even slid into the venue's parking lot a bit early and so we just hung out, Linzy doing a kind of show 'n tell with songs that currently capture her attention, especially ones that have a vibe to inspire her Dream Patrol project which, by the way, Dream Patrol has a show coming up in June at the South Gate Roller Rink. Stay tuned for details. This is a super fun venue. 😁

Right now, I'm at the bar listening to Linzy perform "Angels" by Robbie Williams, one of my requests for the evening. Also, Linzy mentioned during the break that one of her students and their dad are here tonight which is very sweet. Students and their families always show up at these basically all ages performances and they're really the most enthusiastic people wherever they are, applauding and cheering for Linzy and coming up to talk with her or make sure they're seen by her when they have to slip out to go home.

Bedtime. You know?

Again: really, really, REALLY, sweet.

😊

Now, I'm still sitting at the bar facing away from Linzy. What I am facing, though, is the fireplace and the propane fire burning within its tiles. All that's missing is the lovely Kimmer who's down in southern California right now celebrating her cousin's son's 18th birthday.

She made him a tasty frosted cake that has absolutely zero nutritive value.

He LOVES it.

😁

Time passes and now Linzy's performing a cover of "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House, another one of my requests she solicited before the show.

The other songs that I requested?

As I mentioned earlier, "Angels" by Robbie Williams and "Vienna" by Billy Joel that Linzy points out is a tough one to perform.

Still. Two out of three ain't bad. 😀

As she finishes "Angels", she launches right into the Duran Duran enduring classic, "Ordinary World" that could easily have been one of my requests.

My daughter knows me well. ☺️

Roundiing her second break of the evening, Linzy kicks off the home stretch with "The Best", that Tina Turner classic from my early young adult days. Funny how the music always takes us back like that. 🙂

Not long after, Linzy performs a cover of "Seven Wonders" that takes me back to an early Little Lies show in White Center where the band (of which Linzy is an original member) hit a crazy high point among their shows to that point. It was hugely inspirational and I always think of that show first, not Fleetwood Mac, whenever Linzy whips out this song.

While she does include a number of Fleetwood Mac covers in her set list, Linzy also includes a song or two from her former band, Midnight High, although not tonight. Interestingly, the first time she covered a Midnigjt High tune, it was a real head-scratcher for me because I knew I knew this song. I just couldn't place it at the time because their music has such a profound eighties vibe that I thought for sure this was something I once saw on MTV or from some movie soundtrack back in the day. 🤔

On the other side of nine, it's "Champagne Supernova" by Oasis that always make me want to rise up with my lighter, only I don't smoke and I don't have a, you know, cigarette lighter. 😕

A coupla songs later, it's "Rocket Man", originally performed by Elton John, written by Bernie Taupin and Elton John. It's a deep cut from the soundtrack of me growing up as a kid as well as being one of those songs Linzy thankfully added to her set list as she grew her set list along the way. 🙂

Closing out the night, it's Linzy's reharmonized arrangement of Abba's "Take A Chance On Me" that places more emphasis on the absolute sweetness of the lyrics. After that, it's Tears for Fears and "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" that always brings the original music video front and center of my mind's eye.

Linzy signs off at 9:30, indulging some music conversation with a coupla fans. These sort of impromptu conversations are happening more frequently as her performing schedule expands.

The conversations come to a close, Linzy tallies the Pay Pal and cash tips that add up to a good night atop what The Cottage is paying her for the night. It’s an interesting truth of the venue that she's very background here among all the conversations... but she always (most of the time, anyway) walks away with the BIGGEST tips here.

No idea why that is, but...

Awesome!😁😁😁

So Linzy breaks down her gear and we take it all out to the car after saying our fare-thee-wells to the staff who are just the best bunch of human beings.☺️

Loading then getting back into the car, we're immediately thrown back into Linzy's music inspiration show 'n tell featuring her most massive inspiration, Raye.

One thing about Raye: don't listen to other music in the same setting you're listening to Raye. Listen to that other music on its own at some other time so you can feel good about how great that music is. Once you add Raye to that mix, though, it forces you to question what even is the point of that other music. It's a little bit like comparing graduate work to the work of highschoolers. Don't force the comparison and all will continue to be right in the world.

Unfortunately for me, on our way over earlier this evening, we listened to a bunch of current pop hits that are catchy... but you pretty much get what's going on within the first 30 seconds.

Not so with Raye who is relentlessly surprising through the use of key and tempo changes, genre, vocal technique, song structure, arrangement, production, all topped with a healthy dose of whimsy. You have no idea where she's going in the first 30 seconds.

And so...

And so we listened to the first handful of cuts from Raye's 2023 debut album, "My 21st Century Blues":

"Introduction"

"Oscar Winning Tears"

"Hard Out Here"

"Black Mascara" and

"Escapism"

—pausing the music every so often to point out some element of what we just heard or to riff on some idea inspired by the songwriting, arrangement, or production.

There are definitely implications for Linzy's Dream Patrol here. Maybe not direct implications but implied nevertheless: songwriting territory to be explored and writng styles to be indulged that arent usually (or ever) indulged.

Anyway...

Anyway, by the time we're through the fifth track and an impromptu discussion about alter egos and meta points of view, I'm dropping Linzy back at her place.

Where our evening started.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

The transition from October to November was kinda awkward. For example, October definitely had its moments of oh hey, yeah, this KIND of has a summer vibe.

But November?

Yeah.

We're sleeping under a heating blanket, for crying out loud. There's no doubt where we are in the year. 😕

As I look back on November, the thread running through it is looking forward to Linzy's birthday show at The Sunset Tavern. We spent pretty much the entire month talking it up and, in doing so, remembering the period of her life from which Linzy intended to draw her set list.

Now, we had no idea what specifically was gonna be on that set list. Her band, though, would be a magnificent cross-pollination of The Little Lies and Midnight High performing these songs in that time capsule that brings back the memories of hearing each one brought to life. And I still do remember the heart that delighted in each one.

So yeah. Our November was filled with expectation. ☺️

In other news, I'm still getting distracted by the ability to take a picture like this with my cell phone...

And turn it into this:

Just. Can't. Help it.

In other, other news, November marked the beginning of my Christmas card efforts. Can't help that either because there are things I want to start now so they don't pile up in December. With that in mind, I inventoried the Christmas cards we have on hand going several years back in order to figure out the number I have still to buy.

Having done that quick inventory, I kicked off the process of writing this year's Christmas Letter, a two-pager sprint around the bases take on what we did this year. Thankfully, it's not the effort it used to be because I write a Month in Review blog post for every month of the year… so the process so far is me going through each of those blog posts and pulling anything of note regarding myself, Kimmer, Linzy, our cats, our doing's as a family, our doing's as a couple, and any insights that may have occurred along the way. ☺️

Also...

Aside from the expectation running through the month about Linzy's upcoming birthday show at The Sunset Tavern, there were also a few other gigs to complicate her month that included her private vocal tutoring and band rehearsals for her Sunset Tavern show.

Now, this end of the year has always been big on celebration not only because of Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year events but because each of our birthdays lands here: Kimmer 'n Linzy in November, me in December. And so it was that on the day before Kimmer's birthday, we found ourselves on our way to the east side to meet up with our youth pastor, the Dick Clark of youth pastors because for the longest time the man did not seem to age, like, a single day.

Shortly after we arrive, Wally, our former youth pastor, the man who married us, shows up with that unmistakable beard of his and that patented grin that manages to make its presence known to the world even with a full beard in front of it. It's always good to see him. Always. It's essential, if I'm being honest, that he exists in the world somewhere because we do need someone to look up to, someone, yes, older and wiser. That age difference does make a difference even at our age.

Also.

Wally's on a very short list of people we turn to for advice when life gets especially calamitous. He's on a very short list of people with whom we compare notes: he was a youth pastor and we were in youth ministry. He's on a very short list of people we turn to for straight-up wisdom. And he does, he does leave us feeling cared for, cared about. He is and always has been a light in our lives whether that light made our lives brighter or that light was the light at the end of a tunnel.

Okay so that happened on Day 1 of Kimmer's birthday.

Day 1?

Yeah... these fall and winter days have so little daylight in 'em that we spread Kimmer's celebration across two days. So among the things we did on that second day, we stopped in at Top Pot Donuts along the Edmonds waterfront. HUZZAH!!!

We didn't go crazy, of course. We split an apple fritter. We split an old-fashioned donut. Kimmer's ordering a cup of coffee. And I have my thermos of hot tea I brought from home. So that's what we do. Kimmer hops in line to place her birthday order while I head upstairs to the library, this area set with tables and chairs with a back wall fitted floor to ceiling with bookshelves filled with books from one end of that floor to the other. It fully reminds us both of our first Top Pot experience in downtown Seattle next to the monorail many years ago after (or before, maybe?) an interview in the city. A lovely revisit of memory lane.

So yes. During the day of the second day we were out 'n about exploring. Afterward, we returned home to celebrate with the "kids". Finally. All of us under the same roof. 😁

Later, It's a nice scene around the table. A lot of incandescent light coming from the kitchen. A lot of incandescent light coming from the living room. A string of White Christmas lights hanging over the French doors that form the far end of our dining room. It's a lovely setting for singing Happy Birthday to Kimmer as she presents her birthday coffee cake. You see, for heatlh reasons, the cake has to be made in a just-so way and it's Kimmer with the baking chops to make it so. Basically it's a vegan cake. Works well for us because of the nutrition as well as keeping us away from nasty sugars and toxins that give our bodies and cognitions a hard time.

Highlights aside, it was a great pair of days, exploring about and spending time with people we love.

Plus the donuts. You know?

A week later, it's almost Linzy's birthday. It's November 21. Time for her birthday show at The Sunset Tavern.

So how'd it go?

Oh sure it was a bunch of things. It was a show at The Sunset Tavern produced by Linzy. It was a performance by Amy Hall and her band, a performance by Young-Chhaylee and his band. It was a date night. It was the first Linzy Collins headliner. But most of all…

It was a birthday party.

That was the vibe from start to finish. The crowd buzzed with energy and an enthusiasm to engage with each of the performers, culminating in an enthusiastic round of Happy Birthday.

After the show Linzy was invited to perform at the Rabbit Box Theatre by the venue's booker who was in attendance this night. There were also a ton of people excited to speak with Linzy about her music, her voice, her performance. They were truly excited to share their experiences with her, to encourage her and, of course, to wish her Happy Birthday.

The show wound up being a wildly successful night for the Linzy Collins debut. It was next level for her, an inevitable mastery of both stage presence and performance. She charmed the crowd, engaged the crowd, and provided plenty of levity if not outright laughter. Her set list was a wonderful cross-section of human emotion and experience, of simple expressions and epic narrative. There are a lot of singles in this set list, a lot of songs to play on repeat.

Totally worth the wait. 😁😁😁

The next afternoon we're at the Pacha Collective, sitting in a VW bus with Linzy on her birthday. The bus is for real, by the way. The restaurant somehow parked it in the center (ish) of their restaurant and we're sitting around a table on a bench in the back of the bus enjoying our drinks. It's been a week so we're all tired. Linzy's show at The Sunset Tavern was the night before so she's super tired but jazzed at the same time. In the meantime, we're all enjoying this birthday celebration in a bubble inside a VW bus inside a restaurant. ☺️

And then...

And then the last days of our November: Death Valley. We left Tuesday morning, November 25, and returned home the following Tuesday, December 2. Our flight that took off from Paine Field in Everett left the ground at 9 in the morning, landing at Harry Reid Airport in Las Vegas a couple hours later. We're at the RoadSurfer pick-up location about 12:30, driving off the lot by 2:00 for some time driving around town gathering food and supplies. By the time we're officially headed out of town, the sun's set and it's a little after five. By the time we roll into our spot at Stovepipe Wells campground in Death Valley, it's a quarter after 7:00, full dark.

By the next morning we were part of a more close-knit experience with family. It's also a bit of a tech experience given that we've got a high capacity solar-powered battery with us and a starlink to provide WiFi out here in the middle of nowhere.

And it's also peaceful, perhaps our most peaceful yet, as Kimmer has a truck ton of reading and writing to do in her run up to a massive written and oral test that stands in the way of kicking off the work for her dissertation.

Out here, our rig isn't a tent. It's a Sprinter van. You can stand up in it. It sports a queen size bed in back, a bathroom in the middle, and a dining / work table in the front around which we play games with Kimmer's second cousin and his best friend in what inevitably turn into boisterously loud and funny encounters.

We are not "camping" like I would've thought of it back in the day. We definitely took our home life on the road, though, with family. And it is. It is a more close-knit experience. Or perhaps a more close up experience although with the most massive sky possible above us. We can even make out an arm of our own spiral galaxy, the Milky Way.

So yeah. We look up at the sky a lot. We indulge Kimmer's fantastic road cooking every few hours.

We join a community pot luck Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving night. And then the next night, same place, same people (but for a few who already left), we enjoy The Great Leftovers Potluck.

Our time in the desert comes to an end by noon, Saturday. And because our flight home isn't until Tuesday night, we've chosen to decamp to the Desert Rose Resort in Las Vegas for the remainder of our vacation, checking in Saturday night to a lovely, comfy space with plenty of room to spread out and relax.

Which. We. Do.

So we finish out November in Las Vegas, relaxing, studying, reading, writing, and enjoying a few hours each late afternoon/evening for excursions into the resort malls for food food and photo ops.

And yeah.

I've got a full first draft of our Christmas letter on its feet.

Onward!

😁

[thedaveandkimmershow]

It was a birthday party, after all.

Oh sure it was a bunch of other things. It was a show at The Sunset Tavern produced by Linzy. It was a performance by Amy Hall and her band, a performance by Young-Chhaylee and his band. It was a date night. It was the first Linzy Collins headliner. But most of all...

It was a birthday party.

So how did that party go?

Well, after the show Linzy was invited to perform at the Rabbit Box Theatre by the venue's booker who was in attendance this night. During the show the crowd buzzed with energy and an enthusiasm to engage with each of the performers. Afterward there were a lot of people excited to speak with Linzy about her music, her voice, her performance. They were truly excited to share their experiences with her and to encourage her and, of course, to wish her Happy Birthday.

It was a crowd filled with energy. It was a truly sweet crowd.

The set-list wound up being Linzy's Heart Songs going back to when she was 16... mixed with stripped down versions of a few of her pop/techno/club Dream Patrol hits.

She kicked off the sets with a pair of her Dream Patrol favorites, "Don't You" and "Little Magic". In their original incarnations, these two songs have a more techno and club vibe. More synth and samples than traditional instrumentation. Stripped down to acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and electric bass, though, this really is a lovely reimagining of the songs. ☺️

Then it was a Heart Song from when she was 16, a song called "You're Really Lovely" that we know as "The Pickle Song" because of its iconic first lyric:

"If you were the last pickle in the jar, I'd pick you".

Hmmmm.

For this song, Linzy brought singers Miranda Zickler (The Little Lies) and Kat Murray (Midnight High) onto the stage for harmonies that really were lovely. ☺️ They're pros who create a wonderfully lush sound, remaining on stage for several songs before taking well-deserved bows.

Also deserving of bows was Harry Wirth (The Little Lies) on electric bass who had a wonderfully iconic moment on the last song of the night, HPB. On electric guitar, it was Skyler Mehal crafting solos and tones to add just the right color and punch to the songs, from hard energy to ethereal sustains.

Back to the set list, a Dream Patrol upbeat favorite, "I Don't Wanna Know", followed by the darkest of Heart Songs, "Venom", followed by the most epic narrative of her Heart Songs, "Eve", that's easy to imagine with lots of sound production on an album recording.

After that, my long time personal favorite, "Halloween", that presents a toxic relationship through the lens of everyone's favorite fall holiday. Then "Benadryl", a Dream Patrol song. Then "Red Light" which is technically not a Heart Song but was written just after her graduation from Cornish College of the Arts in 2021. So. Heart Song adjacent, then. 🙂

After "Red Light", a definite Heart Song and Linzy Collins classic, "Rain Song", that's always been a fan favorite. To this day. Written during her first year of college during a, yes, rainy Seattle Day, it was a fixture of her set lists at SoFar shows as well as shows she live-streamed for The Cottage in Bothell during the Pandemic. It was a requested a lot.

Closing out the performance, it was the Dream Patrol crowd favorite, HBD, Linzy's most petty song by her own admission. Fortunately, "petty" plays spectacularly to a crowd of people who've been done wrong at some point in each of their lives. So they brought a tidal wave of energy to the chorus that begins "Happy Birthday, A**H****".

What can I say?

Fans identified.

In the end, yes. This was a birthday party complete with cake, candle, and everyone up close and around her singing a traditional Happy Birthday to Linzy right there onstage and along the stage rim.

It was a wildly successful night for the Linzy Collins debut. It was a next level for her, an inevitable mastery of both stage presence and performance. She charmed the crowd, engaged the crowd, and provided plenty of levity if not outright laughter. Her set list was a wonderful cross-section of human emotion and experience, of simple expressions to epic narrative. There are a lot of singles in this set list, a lot of songs to play on repeat.

We all look forward to her next performance at the Rabbit Box Theatre at the top of the year. For now, though, we wish her well, we wish her success, but most of all we wish her a Happy Birthday.

🎉🎉🎉

[thedaveandkimmershow]

She gets us on the phone early last month to let us know she's planning to throw herself a birthday show at The Sunset Tavern the friday night before her birthday.

Is it gonna be Dream Patrol? Is it gonna be herself. Because last year, October, it was Dream Patrol.

No, she finally decides, she's taking the stage as Linzy Collins, songwriter & performer, along with her friends Amy Hall and Young-Chhaylee to open the show for her.

Now, the thing about Linzy is that, in general, aside from a few songwriter showcases with other songwriters, she doesn't perform her own material. She's a solo artist who performs covers at cafes, wine bars, wineries, lounges, and restaurants. The public face of her songwriting efforts since graduating from Cornish College of the Arts is Dream Patrol of which she's the sole creative force. And what she wants to do, tonight in fact, is to revisit a prolific period of her songwriting career, the period from the end of high school in 2016 through the end of college in 2021. In a way, prolific as this songwriting period of her life was, these songs were left behind as she launched into her career working at The Royal Room in Columbia City, working sound production with Andrew Vait, performing SoFar Seattle shows with jazz guitarist Martin Budde, performing solo at wineries and restaurants, joining a rockin' Harper House Band performing covers (Stevie Wonder BAM!), having the debut of her Dream Patrol song Don't Wanna Know on 107.7 The End, providing background album vocals and also co-writing the song Walla Walla (definitely listen here) for the RX album, Epilogue, and then performing the featured duet on that album with RX (Robbie Christmas) at The Shop in SODO.

Oh yeah. And getting featured in the digital magazine CanvasRebel.

In 2022, she joined The Little Lies, the Pacific Northwest Fleetwood Mac tribute band. In 2023, she joined Midnight High, a band whose sound combines strong lead vocals, lush harmonies, and modern production with elements of 80’s synthpop, alt-pop, and indie rock.

So yeah.

Linzy's been busy. Her career is a perpetual forward motion machine traveling ever farther and farther from where she launched. And then early last month she gets us on the phone to let us know she's planning to throw herself a birthday show at The Sunset Tavern the friday night before her birthday. She plans to perform 13 songs that were born between 2016 and 2021 with a band for the first time alongside her guitar and keys. Not just any band, mind you. This band is a cross-section featuring members of The Little Lies (electric bass, background vocals) and Midnight High (electric guitar, background vocals) who collectively will perform a group of songs that Linzy calls Heart Songs. These songs represent a time capsule not only of a specific period of her life but also songs that preserve Linzy's fondness for the stories of human relationships writ large: the rosiness of love, the breathtaking scope of friendship, disillusionment set in the colors of old jazz standards, the anger that fuels break-ups like jet propellant, the tension of heartbreak and heart warmth written into a story of growing up, the trials of a love that's trapped in despair, the soulful setting aside of rose-colored glasses and fairytale wishes, the rhythm 'n blues of infuriating romantic indecision, the exquisitely inspiring finale to an as yet to be written musical.

I don't know what'll be on her set list tonight but I do remember that time of Linzy's life, that time of Heart Songs. I remember the life we experienced during those days...

And all the remarkable songs that showed up while we were living it. 

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

I was out and about with my dad today when he hit me up with the question:

"When did Linzy start with music?"

Interestingly, I wasn't thinking about her voice in the moment. If I had, I would've said she's been singing since she could. Voice was definitely her thing in grade school with her music teacher Mr. van der Pool. And with me, too, of course. :-)

Where I started my answer, though, was the end of grade school, fifth and sixth grade when Kimmer was homeschooling Linzy and couldn't get any traction on the different ways for Linzy to learn how to play the piano until she gave Linzy the VHS tape "Piano for Quitters" that doesn't try to start you on the road to mastery of the instrument. It focuses entirely on helping you play something intentional as fast as possible. In this case, it gave Linzy some basic chords she could play together in sequence that would sound like a song. It was also something on which she could play her own variations to her heart's content.

She was hooked.

Safe to say she was a beginner on the piano by the time she hit Jr. High at which point she took up the guitar which she learned to play by forming chords as prescribed by certain guitar focused websites. Because her hands were small, she also used websites to transpose those chords so she could play certain pop songs with fingers that couldn't actually reach all the way across the guitar fret.

It was on the guitar that she wrote her first song.

That guitar went everywhere with her whenever there was anywhere to go like overnights and camp. Vacation, even.

She joined a school band as a vocalist and then transitioned to guitar for that same band. As far as I'm concerned, she's been a band member ever since. It's a frame of mind I'm describing more than anything else. She's collaborative by nature.

At some point, the school orchestra needed someone on clarinet... and Linzy figured how tough could that be? She got piano skills and guitar skills on their feet quickly. This should be no problem.

HUUUUUUGE problem it turns out. There's a lot involved in making even one note sound legitimate on a wind instrument. Fortunately, she had the summer. She had YouTube. And she didn't actually need to learn how to play the clarinet. She needed to learn how to play the two songs her band director gave her to play on the clarinet.

She did, by the way. She had those two songs down on clarinet on the first day of school in the fall. We got a handwritten note from her director that afternoon:

"She did it again!"

She did, indeed. ☺️

I told my dad she wasn't a real-time sight reader. Not a problem through high school because it wasn't required. She would simply take the sheet music home and notate all the music, write down what all the notes were. Then she would practice those notes, that music. Then she would memorize. And then she could play it no problem.

That feat, by the way, reminded me of how I used to read children's books to her and then one day I came upon her reading one of those books on her own out loud, page by page. She's brilliant, I thought. As I looked over her shoulder, though, I realized she wasn't actually reading. She was recalling from memory what was on each page. She had most of the words but the mistakes she made weren't ones of mispronunciation. It was more the occasional paraphrasing that gave her away.

Still, though. Brilliant. She had a powerful memory that served her well all the way through high school.

The other thing I told my dad was how transposing key signatures was never a challenge for Linzy. I never understood how she was able to do that on the fly intuitively without any kind of music theory and intensive instruction. It was an ability with which she was apparently already hard wired that still blows me away.

In the grand scheme, of course, my dad and I were talking about Linzy's show tomorrow night at The Sunset Tavern in Ballard. Even then, though, it's hard not to talk music and ability, to marvel at the talent and skill the musicians performing with Linzy wield. There isn't an inch of what they do that doesn't involve hard work. The performances of which they're capable on stage are impressive as hell... and when you know what goes into those performances, you really become informed at the rarified air in which these musicians exist.

Anyway...

I had a chance to brag a little to my dad about Linzy today.

So I wholeheartedly did.

☺️

[thedaveandkimmershow]

When Linzy wrote her first song at the start of Jr. High, safe to say the missus 'n me were both gobsmacked by that turn of events we did not see coming.

Oh sure, Linzy had vocal skills. She was also obviously learning how to play the piano on her own with the help of "Piano for Quitters". She was learning how to play acoustic guitar on her own which bore its own unique challenges because her hands were still too small to form many of the chords.

And then one day, at the door to her bedroom, she performs the song. Right there in front of us.

Gobsmacked, lemme tell you.

We did not. See that coming.

At first, the pace of songwriting was slow... but as the years progressed through Jr. High and High School, her catalog of originals blossomed.

During her senior year of highschool, her writing reached a new peak, a new pitch, a different approach that continued to develop during her gap year and then kicked into very high gear at Cornish College of the Arts where she started as a jazz major and finished as a composition major. It's at Cornish that her abilities were furiously challenged. Unsurprisingly, it's at Cornish that her songwriting gained an impressive shine.

After Cornish, Linzy set out on a path that would lead her to join Seattle bands The Little Lies and Midnight High. She also developed a techno/pop/club sound under the banner, Dream Patrol.

That initial explosion of songs, though, between her senior year of highschool through her senior year of college?

Yeah.

Those songs are what Linzy calls Heart Songs. They were born between 2016 and 2021, from the run-up to high school graduation through college graduation. The years represent a time capsule that preserves not only a fondness for love stories and romance but also for the breathtaking scope of friendship, for disillusionment set in the colors of old jazz standards, for the lovely introspection to be found in a hazy rainy day, the tension of heartbreak and heart warmth written into a story of growing up, the trials of a love that's trapped in despair, the soulful setting aside of rose-colored glasses and fairytale wishes, the rhythm 'n blues of infuriating romantic indecision, and an exquisitely inspiring finale to an as yet to be written musical.

Heart Songs.

No kidding. Heart Songs.

Now, I don't know what's gonna end up on the set list. I don't have insight into what Linzy and her band that's a cross-pollination of The Little Lies and Midnight High... no idea what they're gonna play. But I do remember the songs in that time capsule. I do remember the experience of hearing each one brought to life. And I still do remember the heart that delighted in each one.

I have my favorites, of course. There are ones that speak to me most either because of the way they landed or because of the circumstances in which they landed.

But you know what?

I'm struck by the surprise that awaits. I'm intrigued by the eventual unveiling, one by one, of these songs I both know and have never heard before. Not like what's about to happen. And I'm excited to experience this music, yes, for the first time not only by Linzy on stage but by Linzy and this exceptionally gifted band she assembled from some of Seattle's best.

Friday, November 21.

TICKETS right here.

Be sure to wish her a Happy Birthday after the show because, after all, that is what we're all celebrating.

☺️