Wow...I had a great New Year's Eve! The band and I celebrated by performing at the Historic Missouri Theater from 7-8, then we ate, drank a little, and spent time with friends. I have to say, singing in a real theater with amazing acoustics is the best experience. I have missed it since my days of singing classically in college. Back then I almost never used microphones, just sang on beautiful stages with built-in acoustics. Last night I had the best of both worlds with a great sound company running the system, and a beautiful building to perform in. I saw a lot of our friends there, and it cheered me, since I was and am fighting a cold. I made it through nearly two months of touring for gigs, and finally my body is letting go, and saying I'm finally able to get sick without guilt! (GREAT!) Michael noticed that while I was performing last night I looked like I was going to fall over a couple of times, and I felt that way myself. Dizzy and disoriented. But I made it through, and let the music carry me. It was the strangest feeling to wonder if I was going to fall over in my high heels and break my guitar, all the while singing lyrics that are as much a part of me as my fingerprints.

But hey...that makes it sound like my New Year was a wreck, when really it was fantastic. I am so happy that so many community members came out to see the show and I got some new names on my mailing list and distributed some CDs as well. Columbia has been and continues to be such a wonderfully supportive community and I am glad the HSBand got to ring in the new year with our "home" town. (I still miss my family in the Pacific Northwest though - is that okay?) :)

I've been sort of delinquent about writing my blogs, but I'm pretty excited about a recent show we played in downtown Chicago. I went with my other acoustic guitarist, Bill Adams, my electric guitarist, Rob Lampe, and my harmonica player, Matt Griffin to play a Tuesday night shared show at the Beat Kitchen in downtown Chicago. It was an unusual venue, but we split the stage with two other bands, everyone got an hour. It was a great time, and beneficial to us because we met some great musicians who we are hoping to keep in contact with in order to share shows in other cities at future dates.

Seeing how the other two bands travel and perform was interesting. While we were told it was to be an "acoustic show" there was one band that had full drum kit, bass, guitar, keyboard, two vocalists, everything! We were thinking maybe next time we will bring everyone regardless of what the venue tells us. But just as those thoughts were running through my head, I was approached by the two female vocalists from the band Michelle Anthony and Stick Pony, who said they were thrilled to see an acoustic show like ours, and that we gave them the courage to say they could do an acoustic show like that in the future too. It's extremely difficult to travel with a full band, ONLY because you often lose money rather than make it. It's not an easy life, but it's such a rush! There's value to presenting your biggest sound to new listeners, then there's value to stripping the sound down and tyring to make the most of what you've got. It's all a learning experience.

Luckily, even though it was one of our first shows in Chicago, we pulled in nearly 40% of the overall crowd because our percussionist, Michael Bielski, (who wasn't able to make this gig) knows plenty of Chicago-ans. I'm really looking forward to the Elbo Room...I've heard it's a beautiful venue, very well established and well known.

I'll let you know how it goes...

One thing I regret about our trip is we didn't make it to McDonald's to buy a Happy Meal. We've decided the best way to commemorate our road trips is to buy a Happy Meal, keep the toy, and write the date of the gig on each respective toy. Presently there's a boggle-head moose sitting on my dashboard from Bloomington. I think we will run out of room within the next few months on the dashboard. It's not really a space-saving way to memorialize the trip, but it's sure fun.

I'm stoked because CD Baby, one of the biggest and best online distributors of indy music in the WORLD has asked me to be part of a showcase in the 2004 Folk Alliance Conference in San Diego this coming February. This is a huge honor because the pool of folk musicians represented on CD Baby is vast. Anyhow, if I can scape together the money to go, it would be a phenomenal opportunity to meet people in music and media, including people involved with labels, booking, etc. Most importantly, I'd meet other musicians going through the same struggles and triumphs that I have found myself dealing with of late.

The most frustrating thing for me right now is that money makes the rocking world go round. I don't mean I need to MAKE tons of money to be happy, but I mean that I simply don't have enough to get me to the places I need to be to advance my career, and that is SO frustrating. I don't want to whine though, as that is not what this is for...but if you're reading this, please send your thoughts and best wishes my way. I really want to get to this conference and perform!

Wow...after a long 48 hours, I am back from a gig we played in Bloomington, Indiana last night at a club called Vertigo. It was a learning experience, and a bonding experience for myself and for the band members who were able to come along. Now the men in my life (the band) say things like, "if Hilary's happy...we're ALL happy." Yes, it's sort of a joke, but you learn so much about yourself and each other when you're tired, cranky, hungry, have been driving for too long, share a hotel room, whatever the case may be!

But the one thing I take from our experience on the road this weekend is that we still love the music and I don't think that's ever going to change. Actually, we got along marvelously, and met some great new people in Bloomington. Every show is different, some are packed with people, sometimes no one knows you're playing and you end up doing an "intimate" show to a few dozen people. But no matter what, you're essentially always doing the same thing: music. I love playing and singing and connecting with people. Be it one person at a time, I'm sharing my music with the world, and having experiences I would never otherwise have had. All in all, I'm thrilled with what was tested and re-affirmed this weekend: my love for music, which has proven to be stronger and vaster and more important than all the little discomforts of the road.

I was recently asked to give a detailed explanation/interpretation of the lyrics for my song "That Kind of Woman," which is track 9 off of The Floating World album. (The lyrics to the song are able to be viewed on my website as well and will not be re-printed here). I am hoping that by giving my thoughts on this song it will not take away from others' personal interpretations, since music is for me a personal venture, and I think it should be for the listener as well. I am, however, also an avid reader and in college most of my day was spent analyzing texts, poetry, etc. So it isn't unusual for me to take a literary perspective. Anyhow, here goes:

Women and men alike seem to respond strongly to this song, though perhaps for different reasons. My guess would be that women might be responding more to lyrics, while men are pulled in more by the music. One reviewer and musician, Rocket Kirchner, described this song as having a "persuasive story line which both sexes can relate to."

Ultimately there are many levels on which this song can be perceived. Women are often expected to be everything to everyone in society. We are bombarded with ideas of beauty, how we should run our family, care for our children, serve our domestic partners, do our jobs. Sometimes amongst all these societal "roles," the heart of the woman, her sensuality and emotionalism, are denied. She often falls short, in her own mind, of what she "should be." Alhough I have felt this pressure in many different siuations, at the time I wrote this song I was particularly interested in the angst many women feel when comparing themselves to other women. There wasn't even a particular woman I was writing about, or comparing myself to, but I was creating the "ideal" woman, who, in this song, I obviously am not, although I would wish to be seen as such in the eyes of the one I adore.

There is also a less obvious, but more exciting message in the lyrics. If one suddenly puts themself in the place of this "ideal" woman, then for a moment they refer to themselves in third person and become "perfect," as the woman decribed in the first several verses. This may be an interpretation other women enjoy because it provides them with a sense of empowerment. I should expand here upon the idea of perfection. It's not any one or two or million things that define some tangible or shallow "perfection," this is a far reaching sense of power of a broad, mysterious, non-specific kind. It can be what each woman wants it to be. Also, in the final verses of the song, we are brought back to the reality of our imperfection, which hopefully makes the song even more poignant and meaningful to those of us who are all too aware of our faults.

There are allusions to both religion and alchemy in this song, which makes it a dichotomy in itself. "Water into wine," is of course a familiar image in the Christian religion, but later I talk about "silver into gold," which would remind one more of witchcraft. It would probably take me an entire thesis to delve more deeply into those allusions, so I'll let everyone else's mind wander on those matters.

Finally, this is a sensual song, and there is always an undercurrent of sexuality running through it, which seems to be repressed by the ideas of imperfection introduced later in the song. However, it cannot be entirely repressed, and I'd say this is symbolic of women in our society. We're supposed to button ourselves up, be proper and undersexed, but usually this underlying passion cannot be held in check completely, and as a result women are either put on pedastals, or on the contrary, debased, as objects of desire.

There ya go!