Drive All Day: Because I'm Too Old to Drive All Night

By Jamie Anderson

Jamie rants about everything from Spotify, who paid her ten cents one quarter, to sharing the road with clueless truckers who don't pull over even when they're dragging a curtain of sparks behind them. Read about a trip to Hawaii where she hardly noticed the beaches, (Because: Ukuleles), a gig at a hospice where they didn't want soothing instrumentals and candlelight, and a Canadian winter that saw her walking to class every day, even when the Real Canadians were driving. There's also the trip to Dollywood where her mom was the oldest person in line for a bone-rattling roller coaster but, then again, this is the same woman who jumped out of a plane in her seventies.

Jamie's a guitar teacher too, even if any search engine would have you believe guitar teachers are all young guys leaning over smiling women who can't possibly learn how to form a G chord without manly instruction. She's had several students from the Chinese embassy who pepper her with questions about Beatles songs, such as, "Did Eleanor Rigby really exist?" or "Why are these songs so sad?" There are pupils with creative excuses for not practicing like, "We couldn't find her guitar." She's had students who aren't neurotypical, such as her student who communicates using their favorite lines from vintage cartoons. On her popular YouTube channel, viewers ask about lesson details, but they also want to know if she's married and if she's lost weight. There are thousands of men who teach online and not one of them is told that the blue in his shirt matches his eyes.

You'll find out that one publisher refused her last book because they were afraid men wouldn't buy it; cloaked in so much academic-speak she needed a professor friend to translate. There are reviews of women's music festivals, a chapter about lesbian folk singer Alix Dobkin, and stories from the road, like the gig where a disheveled woman got up on stage and threw pennies at Jamie's guitar. Read about what it's like to teach at a girls' rock camp even though she's never owned an electric guitar.

It's not all music related, like the chapter about being an administrator for a neighborhood group where threads sometimes end up with writers hurling expletives at each other. Very un-Canadian, eh? She also writes about living between two cemeteries (the neighbors are really quiet), and the Uber ride from a New York City airport wherein her driver decided not to kill her and throw her body along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Get a glimpse of 1970s lesbian bar life with characters like Big Jan in "Definitely a Habit" and a more recent chapter about why barbecued chicken is what makes a festival better.

Dive into a musician's life and if you learn anything, remember to stay off the roller coasters at Dollywood, unless you have a jumbo bottle of Ibuprofen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667846736

Book preview

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Praise for Jamie’s work

Solid songwriting and engaging stage presence.

– Billboard

She’s one of our best writers.

– Jennifer Layton, Indie-Music.com

Anderson can deftly switch gears from very funny to very poignant …

– Alan Fark, Minor7th.com

She is writing some wonderful songs.

– Holly Near

For Drive All Night

A great ‘you are there’ memoir of the Women’s Music Era.

– Suzanne Westenhoefer

My own experiences confirm the truth of what sister Jamie describes in this series of intimate, revealing and humorous vignettes.

– Alix Dobkin

For An Army of Lovers

When there were no spaces where we could hear our musicians, we made those spaces … I stood in those crowds, sang along with Meg Christian, Casse Culver and women who played rock & roll and bluegrass and all the music that echoed in my bloodstream. Jamie Anderson has caught the lightning and put it on the page.

– Dorothy Allison

Fascinating and detailed …

– Eileen Gonzalez, Forward Reviews

Traveling troubadour and feminist historian Jamie Anderson has accomplished a feat befitting an Amazon Hercules.

– Alyson Palmer (BETTY)

Copyright © 2022 by Jamie Anderson

Tsunami Publishing, Ottawa, ON, Canada

www.jamieanderson.com

Jamie’s recordings are available at Bandcamp.com, Goldenrod Music and many download and streaming sites.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from Jamie Anderson. Please support the author’s rights or bad karma will come your way.

First Tsunami Publishing Edition 2022

Editor: Katherine V. Forrest

Cover Designers: Donna Lynn and Bruce Hall

Front cover photo by Woodland Willow. Back cover photo by Elizabeth Cooper.

Also by Jamie Anderson

Drive All Night, 2014 Bella Books

An Army of Lovers: Women’s Music of the Seventies and Eighties, 2019 Bella Books

Print ISBN: 978-1-66784-6-729

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66784-6-736

Contents

Introduction

Jamie, the Early Years

I Went Out to Some Bar

The Holler

The Ship That Sailed into My Life

A Scofflaw and Her Kittens

Just Another Day on Tour

What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Michigan 2014

Hugs and Jugs

Preserving Women’s Culture Through Jo-Ed Videos

A Thing of Beauty

Hallelujah

A Private in an Army of Lovers

An Army of Lovers Saved Me from a Nightmare on Commercial Street

Dyke to Watch Out For

We Couldn’t Find Her Guitar and Other Excuses

Finally, I’m a Queen

Someone’s Church

Meg Christian Made Me Gay

The Fortieth National Women’s Music Festival, 2015. There Were Angels, Right?

They Pay Me to Talk. And to Shut Up

Not As Good as It Seems

Number One Fans

I Love Rock and Roll

Women Don’t Teach Guitar, Right?

Recording The Truth Appears: It’s All About the Shoes

Twenty-three Things You Should Never Say to a Musician

Scrambled Eggs is a Lousy Song Title

The Rules

Visit to Dollywood, May 2015: Bring Your Own Ibuprofen

The Head Lesbian and Me

Sometimes I’m a Princess

These Songs Are So Sad

Ten Things a Musician Should Never Tell an Audience

He Played Real Good for Free: Live Music and More in New York City

Ten Things I Am Obligated to Say as a Guitar Teacher

Ukuleles in Hawaii: There Were Beaches?

The 2018 Virginia Women’s Music Festival. And Barbecue Chicken. And Hearts.

Walking with the Dead

What About the Rocking Chair?

Why Music Teachers Don’t Drive BMWs

Yes, You Can Play These Boots are Made for Walking on Ukulele

Don’t Spend That Dime All in One Place

YouTube, ITube, We All Tube for … Never Mind

Save the Last Dance for Me: The Fortieth Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival

Dianne Davidson, Deidre McCalla and Moi: Definitely Not Dead

The Last Chapter

Acknowledgements

Jamie Anderson is an author and singer-songwriter with three books and thirteen albums. Since 1987 she’s played hundreds of concerts in four countries and written a plethora of articles and blog posts for a variety of media from Acoustic Guitar to Curve. Plethora is her favorite word. Jamie lives in Ottawa, Ontario with her wife and two cats when she isn’t wintering in Arizona, her home state.

Song lyrics used with permission

The Boy Who Wanted to Fly © 2013 Jamie Anderson

Pictures for Mama © 1999 Jamie Anderson

Karma Café © 2015 Jamie Anderson

Beautiful ©2003 Jamie Anderson

Definitely a Habit originally appeared in Our Happy Hours: LGBT Voices from the Gay Bars. Story collectors: S. Renee Bess and Lee Lynch. 2017 Flashpoint Publications. Used with permission.

Some chapters first appeared as a blog post at

www.jamiebobamie.wordpress.com.

Introduction

When my first publisher called to say they wanted to publish my book, Drive All Night , I was ecstatic. She said that one of the things they liked about my first memoir was that I wrote like people knew who I was. Of course. Who wants to read a book about someone who’s apologetic? Musicians have to have an ego. No one else hears no more at their jobs, especially if they book their own gigs, something I’ve always done in thirty-plus years of touring. Rejection happens for many reasons and not always because you stink or you slept with their girlfriend. We get a gig because we keep bugging, er, contacting the venue until we get a positive answer and to do that you have to believe you’re as good as Adele, or at least, her neighbor’s dentist. No only means I go on to the next contact. It’s my second favorite answer.

It’s not enough that I play music. I decided to write books too and again, no is heard a lot more than yes. John Grisham’s first book, A Time to Kill, was rejected twenty-some times. He went on to sell millions of books including The Firm which was made into a movie. I mention this because fun fact: a poster from one of my albums appears in the office of the main character. Sorry, I got off the track. I started bragging and lost my way like the last time I tried to find my car at the airport at three a.m.

So, after my first memoir, a collection of stories from the road, I thought I’d write another one. Because. Ego. And I had a lot more to say. Since the first book was called Drive All Night, I thought an apt title for this one would be Drive All Day (Because I’m Too Old to Drive All Night). I no longer can drive for eight hours, hop on stage and remember all the words to my songs. I no longer sleep on lumpy sofa beds and eat fast food that’s cut ten years from my life. But I can still find a Starbucks in any state or province without a map.

I’ve changed a few of the names and details to protect the near-innocent but if I use someone’s full name, it’s their real name. I haven’t changed any of the major details because really, who could make up this stuff? If you work for Spotify, don’t bother suing me unless you can take the four boxes of LPs from my basement as payment. I plan to be buried with my guitars, the only thing of value I own, so neener neener.

Don’t be horrified at the gigs I do and the crowded places I visit where no one is wearing a mask. That’s because much of this was written before the pandemic.

Thanks to everyone who’s come to my shows, read my books, and taken my lessons. If it weren’t for your support, I’d be sitting in my living room singing for my cats and they don’t clap. In fact, they pin their ears back and run out of the room.

I’ll keep writing whether or not you know who I am. Maybe you will eventually. Maybe my cats will learn to appreciate me. Both would be great.

Jamie, the Early Years

I was born nearly bald and cross-eyed. My twenty-year-old parents must have been horrified. I was their first-born and they were living in a tiny apartment in Yuma, Arizona, where Dad was a private in the Air Force and Mom was a hotel desk clerk. I arrived nine months after my parents married. Yes, I’ve done the math.

My parents were cousins. That explains a lot, doesn’t it? I grew up thinking that everyone’s great aunt and uncle were related to both sides of the family. Maybe we’re secretly a royal family and I am ruler of a little-known island nation where everyone was cross-eyed. At any rate, I didn’t marry a blood relative so I guess I’m okay. And I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad were cousins by marriage.

Two brothers, Kelly and Todd, were born in rapid succession. Mom always said she wanted nothing more than to be a mother. At one time she had a three-year-old, a potty-training toddler and one in diapers. Still felt the same, Mom? Cris came along much later. By that time, I was old enough to change his diapers; good since Dad didn’t do any of that. He was a great guy but as Mom graciously put it, He wasn’t good with little kids.

In my baby book there’s a section for health records. Mom carefully listed several mishaps, including one time when I slid out of my stroller and fell down the stairs outside our apartment. She ran down, grabbed me, and after she made sure I was okay, wrapped her arms around me and rocked me, both of us sobbing. I also fell off a bed, a couch … then Mom stopped the list with She falls off everything so that’s all I’m going to write. I asked her about that recently and she commented You moved so fast! I came out okay so no complaints.

There was always music in the house, either the radio, or live, from Dad. He taught himself to play ukulele as a kid, then moved to guitar. He’d croon country and pop. The song Tammy was made popular by Debbie Reynolds in 1957, when I was born. He used to sing it to me, changing the name to Jamie.

Our little family moved to Phoenix. Dad left the Air Force, joined the reserves and looked for work. Neither of my parents had a university degree. No one in their immediate family had anything beyond a high school diploma so going to college wasn’t a given. Papaw, my maternal grandfather, was a trucker and Mamaw worked blue-collar jobs including a clerical position at a newspaper. My paternal grandfather worked in a factory that made car parts. Mom had several jobs including one assembling electronics that affected her eyesight. Dad jumped around the job market a bit, at one time lying about having experience as a welder and getting that job. It ended when a beam fell on his foot. In later years he sold insurance. He was much better at that. Dad could sell ice cream in a snow storm. I learned a lot from him and used those skills to book my tours. People hired me because they liked talking with me, not because I was always the best performer in the pile of inquiries most got every day. Dad was like that with clients. They’d talk about hunting and vacations to Mexico, then he’d sell them a few policies. When Dad shot a javelina, he had the head mounted and hung in his office. Have you ever seen one of those? They look like a pig mated with Cudjo. When I said that his clients might be frightened off, he pointed out in return that most of his clients were hunters also. And for the record, javelina meat is nasty. We donated most of it to a charity dining room.

Papaw was a teamster and a colorful character, the first adult I’d ever seen with a tattoo, a gun on his forearm. By the time I saw it, it had morphed into a blue blob that only bore a faint resemblance to a firearm. Papaw was the truck driver but Mamaw had a mouth like one. My cousin Lorali swears she was seven when she realized her name wasn’t Little Shit.

In 1960 my brother Kelly and I wound up in the hospital with meningitis. I remember sleeping a lot and Dad coming to visit me, his motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm. Mom sat beside me for hours, in a rocking chair. I needed regular shots (IVs maybe) and the nursing staff was instructed to ask Mom to leave when they did that. One nurse didn’t. Mom burst into tears. They didn’t do that again. Kelly, on the other hand, had a lot more energy. He liked to stand up in his crib and yell Hey! to his favorite doctors when he saw them in the hallway.

Kelly works in a hospital now. I have to get drunk before I even visit one. One time after visiting a friend, an instant migraine came on. If I’m ever so sick I have to be hospitalized again, just dig a hole in the backyard and lay me in it. (Just kidding, Mom.) Todd was in the hospital, too, in the preemie unit. I can’t imagine what it was like for my young parents, to have all three kids in the hospital at the same time. (Cris wasn’t born yet.)

The hospital bill was huge and, in those days, there was no insurance. They paid a little each month. It would probably have taken decades to pay off. The hospital chose one family a year and paid their hospital bill. Mom cried when she heard they chose us.

I made another trip to the hospital to get my eyes uncrossed. Back then, eye surgery was a guessing game. I emerged with uncrossed eyes but I still had vision in my left eye that was so poor it was deemed a lazy eye. The medical term is amblyopia and years later, a friend would angrily tell me that lazy eye was a pejorative term. I can call it whatever I like and lazy eye is a lot easier to pronounce. Does anyone know what amblyopia means anyway? It sounds like an alien in a Star Trek movie. I sometimes call it my stupid eye because although I can see out of it, my brain can’t process what it sees. My right eye can read. My left eye sees a weird jumble of symbols that might be your Apple password or a lasagne recipe. It can see color but not recognize shapes. As everyone knows, you need two working eyeballs to judge distance. Seeing me parallel park is hysterical except to the person sitting in the car behind me. Thanks to the surgery, my left eye follows my right so I look pretty normal unless I’m exhausted. Then, my left eye drifts up or to the left. I can be a great actor unless you ask me if I’m tired. My left eye always gives me away. I’m a lot of fun with a new optometrist. Even when I tell them I’m legally blind in one eye, they cover my right eye and ask me to read the top line. E. Yeah, I got that memorized. To make it more confusing, I wear glasses for my good eye. But I digress.

At six years old I was given an eye patch to wear over my good eye. Because I could only use my left eye, it was supposed to strengthen it. Instead, I had no idea what I was viewing. I could peel up the corner of the eye patch and suddenly the TV would come into sharp focus. Hey! That high pitched voice wasn’t coming from a tiny yellow blob, it was Tweety Bird! Then Mom would yell from the next room, Quit peeking! I’m convinced that this is where I developed my great sense of hearing. Mom learned that if she didn’t tape down the patch, I’d pull it up again. Because my eye was always covered I developed an eye infection in my good eye. Mom wasn’t mean, she was simply trying to follow bad medical advice. The patch didn’t last for more than a few months. Later on, it came in handy for a pirate costume.

In the early sixties my parents bought a house in a new subdivision with the help of a VA loan. I had my own room, pink, with plaster swirls on the ceiling. Dolls and stuffed animals crowded the bed. Later, when I came out as a lesbian, I heard story after story from lesbians who bragged about climbing trees and playing softball. I was a failure at sports and the new saplings in my neighborhood were not climbable. My mumbled contribution to those conversations was I loved dolls and dress up. With one of my mother’s discarded skirts, I could be a princess, a gracious lady, or a professional dancer. Nothing made me happier than when the teen down the street grew out of her clothing and I got a wonderful bag of hand-me-downs. It’s how I got one of my favorite dresses, in purple velvet. You can see it in a family photo from that time, all of us dressed in our best.

My mother worked outside the home most of the time I was growing up, usually choosing swing or graveyard shifts so she could be home with us during the day. I asked her recently how she got any sleep and she answered simply, I didn’t. I was tasked with keeping my younger brothers quiet although that was rarely successful. She taught all of us to be independent. I was horrified to find out that some of my little friends didn’t even pour their own cereal in the morning. We could cook and make simple meals at a young age. One time when Mom was trying to sleep during the day, she smelled something cooking. Only my youngest brother, Cris, was home and he was supposed to be napping. She ran into the kitchen and found him standing on a chair at the stove. With a spatula in his hand he bragged, Mommy, I cooked an egg! He was four years old.

Mom worked twenty-four years at a bank operations center. She started in the cafeteria, then went to the check sorting room, then to data processing, finishing up as lead computer operator in that department. My smart and hard-working mom learned to do everything on the job. They wanted to promote her further but she wasn’t crazy about supervising people. If she hadn’t put her foot down, she probably would’ve ended up the president of the damn bank.

Despite a full-time job Mom made certain I made it to Girl Scout camp, birthday parties in the park, and visits to the city library. I loved to read. In grade school, I read every book in the school library except for the science books because, really, who finds an in-depth discussion of space interesting? Yeah, there are stars. Yeah, there’s the moon. Yawn. I wanted to read about people. I especially loved biographies. One of my favorites was about the prominent scientist George Washington Carver. Born into slavery, he was the first Black student at Iowa State. He studied crops and soil and knew of 145 uses for peanuts. I also loved stories featuring strong and smart kid characters like the ones in the Children of Green Knowe series written by Lucy M. Boston. The kids lived on an old estate featuring spirits, a demonic tree and a kindly St Christopher statue. In one exciting passage, the evil tree came after one of the kids, grabbing him with scratchy branches. St Christopher came to life and saved the boy. I also read all the Nancy Drew books. A friend from down the street was interested in classics like Little Women so I read those too.

My voracious appetite for reading served me well in school. The only subject it didn’t prepare me for was PE. I made a gallant effort. Anything with a ball was problematic. I either missed it by a mile (Two miles? Who knew?) or I’d get slammed in the face. That made me as popular as you might imagine when my schoolmates chose sides for softball. In grade school one year there was a school-wide athletic competition with running, jumping and other skills. We were tested and rated according to our athletic prowess. Height and weight counted too. I landed in the category with the special ed kids and the one overweight kid who didn’t want to be there. I didn’t blame her. In seventh grade I made straight As except for a C in PE. The teacher didn’t think I was trying. She’d throw a softball at me over and over again, yelling at me to keep my eye on the ball. In my case the singular eye was correct. Still, I learned to twirl the baton and led a group of twirlers in a local parade. That was easier, partly because I didn’t have a teacher yelling at me. I’d throw it up and simply stick my hand out and it would hit me. I’d slide my hand to where it needed to be and grip it to keep twirling.

Lest you think I lolled about all day on the couch watching cartoons, I was an active kid. I loved riding my bike, practicing cartwheels with friends, flying kites, and skating. It’s just that I thought PE was boring. If I was going to run, there’d better be a chocolate sundae at the end.

Music was big. In addition to singing folk songs I learned in scouting, Dad was always singing and playing his country songs. At age fifteen, I stole one of his guitars and never gave it back. I taught myself every chord in a Mel Bay guitar book. I excitedly played Day Is Done (by Peter, Paul and Mary) for my girlfriend. She drolly commented, You played it too fast. But I changed chords without stopping! It was my greatest achievement in my short life.

A lot of people assume Dad taught me to play and while it was great to have live music in the house, he taught me nothing. He did, however, grab the guitar when it was so out of tune, he couldn’t stand it. He’d fix it and hand it back to me. We didn’t have tuners back then and Dad had no tuning fork. He tuned by ear, using the intervals found at the fifth fret.

One day, Dad heard me playing through my bedroom door. After I let him in, he asked to hear a song. I had recently learned Neil Young’s Needle and the Damage Done from the LP, dropping the needle down for a few seconds at a time, mastering each section before moving on. I played him that. He nodded thoughtfully and commented, You’re getting pretty good at those hippie songs.

I devoured songs by seventies singer-songwriters. I was embarrassed to admit how much I listened to John Denver. His syrupy voice and cornball presentation weren’t cool. I realize now that he was a good writer and I’m thankful that he introduced me to quality musicians like John Prine and Steve Goodman. He also fostered my love of bluegrass and country. The opening to Rocky Mountain High still makes my heart soar. I could play many of his songs. I also listened to much cooler musicians like Karla Bonoff, Carole King, James Taylor, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I went to hear the latter with a group of friends at an outdoor venue and couldn’t figure out why the air smelled so funny. And what was in those baggies that long-haired guy was carrying around? My friends were musicians but we weren’t very hip musicians. We were actually there to hear the music.

I joined Girl Scouts in second grade and went all the way through Seniors. It was cool to be a Brownie when you were in second and third grade but not so much an older scout in junior high. I didn’t want kids my age to think I was a big dork. Dork or not, I not only found music but also women’s community. I learned how to backpack, sail in a windstorm, canter a horse, and cook over an open fire. I also learned how to love another girl. The girls in my senior troop were especially affectionate. It was all done in the guise of friendship but looking back, I see it was something more. At night on camping trips, after we were snuggled into our sleeping bags, a couple of the girls went around with Hersey’s kisses for goodnight kisses. And I can’t forget those cold nights where we had to share a sleeping bag.

Lois was in my senior troop, the older woman, seventeen to my fifteen. She wrote poetry and never wore shoes. How could I not fall in love? Three weeks after I turned eighteen, we moved into a one-bedroom apartment that cost $125 a month. When you turned on the stove