Tampa Calling

Screeching guitars over a rapid backbeat pierce 50 ears trying to hear 25 stilted conversations. A foot-long needle shoots directly through the beckoning orifices, winds around the ear canals and connects directly with the center of each half of the brain. A throbbing begins at the base of the skull as imaginary brain fluid leaks out of each ear. Each face contorts into wrinkled disgust and the faces move closer together.

“Music is my life!” screams one bearded-with-glasses 20-something into the ear of a young girl with hair framing her face, brown tank top, cut-off jean shorts and several colored tattoos spattered across each arm. Clouds of cigarette smoke linger between them and slowly rise to the tar-stained ceiling. From the other end of the bar, the shapes and cartoons on her arms aren’t distinguishable, but I’m convinced they’re more than just blobs of ink. ”Have you ever heard the first Bad Brains album?” he continues to yell, ”It’s so raw, I can’t get enough of it!”

The band falls into a repetitive pattern of chunky chords, fast, pounding, tribal drums and hollering vocals. A few words sneak out of the mix, “MAKE…APPOINTMENT…TIME…MIND…EXCUSE!” Fuzzed mumbling fills the spaces between the recognizable words.

“I’m so glad you like them, too! Did you go see them at State a few months ago? They were great. I was there for Propaghandi, though!” the girl hollers back.

“What!? I can’t hear a fucking thing with this shit music!” Read the rest of this entry »

A dear friend of mine is in the midst of the arduous, exhilerating, terrifying and liberating process of coming out. She recently wrote to me about the central role certain music has played in helping her to interpret and cope with her whirlwind emotions. I’ve combined her suggestions with a few of my own favorites to create a soundtrack that is guaranteed to make anyone’s coming out possible, bearable and even totally awesome.

Prince, Cream: I’ve chosen this raunchy classic primarily for the obvious reason, but also for its subtext of affirmation and empowerment: “Do your dance / Why should you wait any longer? / Take your chance / It can only make you stronger.” So true.

Bruce Springsteen, Rosalita (Come Out Tonight): I don’t think Bruce knew he was writing the following lines for me and gay people everywhere, but we should still thank him for them: “Closets are for hangers. Winners use the door / So use it, Rosie, that’s what its there for!” Although set in a fairly cliche heterosexual context, this song is all about sexual defiance, transgression and freedom. It resonates with queer audiences in a profound way.

Ani DiFranco, Shameless: This spunky jam about a clandestine same-sex love affair was critical in my own coming out journey. Ani communicates the experience of being closeted in characteristically clunky couplets like “We’re in a room without a door and I am sure without a doubt / They’re gonna wanna know how we got in here and they’re gonna wanna know how we plan to get out.” Check out a rousing performance (complete with a full-throttle audience sing-along) after the jump.

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Well, take my breath away! At age 51 actress Kelly McGillis of Top-Gun , The Accused and Witness fame, has confirmed rumors that she is, indeed, a lesbian. While this comes as no surprise to devotees of The L-Word  (McGillis portrayed a closeted Army Colonel on the Showtime series back in 2007), it does make me look at Tom Cruise, McGillis’s Top-Gun co-star, in a whole new light. Check out the pic after the jump. I think she’s offered me a ride on her motorcycle before…

Read the rest of this entry »

On the morning of November 5th, 2008, the day after the historic election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, I was performing in a highschool in Palatka, Florida. The students, approximately 1/3 of whom in this particular district were African American, were palpably stoked. Many of them wore bootleg Obama t-shirts featuring images not just of the President Elect, but of his whole beautiful family. I started out my program by asking, “Does anyone know who won yesterday’s presidential election?” The students erupted into a chant of “O-bam-a! O-bam-a!” that made the aging media center feel more like a football stadium.

One would think that spending a day surrounded by so much pride and exuberance would be the ultimate spiritual jumpstart; that I packed up my gear that afternoon and floated back to St. Petersburg on a cloud of contentment knowing that the platitudes I’ve spent my life singing are true, that ”the times they are a’changin.’” Unfortunately, that was not the case. That day, which was such an unblemished triumph of justice and hope over prejudice and fear to all those young people, to me was a painful reminder that a well funded and well organized segment of my state’s and country’s body politic does not think me or other gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people like me their equal. November 5, 2008 taught me that in America a black man can (finally) take the Presidential Oath of Office, but a gay man or woman can’t even exchange a marriage vow. 

As I drove back home that afternoon, I scribbled a line on a Dunkin’ Doughnuts napkin: “I’m gonna love you, no matter what they say.” Months later, I found the napkin and decided to finish the song.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is currently 4:39 p.m. on Tuesday, April 14 and my freakin’ federal income tax forms have yet to be finalized and postmarked. (Believe it or not, folksingers occasionally earn enough income to warrant filing their income taxes!) This, obviously, is a source of immense anxiety. In an attempt to soothe my nerves (and in the true spirit of tax procrastination), I’ve decided to take a break from my number crunching to post a playlist that is sure to chill me and all of you other tax slackers out. Trust me, this is better than Xanax.  Enjoy!

Nice and Slow, Usher

Money Made You Mean, Indigo Girls

2 Cool 2 Be 4-Gotten, Lucinda Williams

Mercy Now, Mary Gauthier

Pulse, Ani DiFranco

Read the rest of this entry »

What do the corn-fed, flag-wavin', salt-of-the-earth folks of Iowa have in common with the liberal, yankee blue bloods of Connecticut and Massachusetts? If you guessed State Supreme Courts that operate in accordance with the principles of justice and reason, you're absolutely right.

Earlier today, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously decided that a 1998 law limiting marriage to a man and a woman was unconstitutional. (Here's the New York Times story.) This decision makes Iowa the first state in the Midwest and the third state in the entire United States of America to approve same-sex marriage.

In honor of this landmark decision, here's a video of the Musical Theatre Academy of Orange County performing "Iowa Stubborn" from the Broadway classic, The Music Man. Cheers to Iowa for standing staunchly and stubbornly against the tide of bigotry, discrimination and hate! Our state and our country really "ought to give Iowa a try."
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Growing up in and around the Tampa Bay music scene I would hear occasional murmurings about a time in the not-so-distant past when a handfull of local rags championed Tampa Bay’s local music community.  As I listened to such tales, my teenage imagination would conjure up images of chain smoking, black denim clad musicians hanging out on street corners reading these magazines as stegosauruses grazed behind them and terradactlys circled above their shaggy heads. In other words, music magazines devoted solely to covering the Tampa Bay music scene seemed outmoded and preposterous. Fortunately not everyone in Tampa Bay is as myopic and shortsighted as I tend to be…

Tampa Bay music scene stalwarts Jeannette Goldman (owner of Pro Star Recording Studio), Ken Thomas (webmaster of Tampabaymusicscene.com) and Thomas Garcia (local producer, songwriter and promoter) have banded together to publish Bay Area Beat: a magazine for the local scene and the local scene only.  

Here’s how their press release describes the mag’s mission: “Bay Area Beat is all about promoting LOCAL artists and musicians. Period. No priority coverage for national acts.” Here’s how Goldman rather emphatically put it to me during a recent phone interview, “We don’t care who is playing at the St. Pete Times Forum! We’re trying to support the musicians in the area that are working and making a living with their music.” Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Greene is a traumatologist. This somewhat morbid designation means precisely what you think it means: Bob is a certified expert in psychic pain. The Florida State University Traumatology Institute conferred this title upon him, but his years of practice as a licensed clinical social worker are the true source of his expertise. In this capacity he has counseled thousands of people, including survivors of some of the greatest collective traumas of our time.

The day after the September 11 terrorist attacks he drove to New York City to counsel people in the financial district who had watched helplessly as planes crashed into buildings, emergency rescue vehicles unknowingly drove over top of human remains and fire, smoke and ash consumed everything comforting and familiar. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bob provided counseling for the Tampa Bay 2-1-1 volunteers who spent two weeks in Monroe, LA fielding 2,000 calls a day from storm survivors in desperate need of rescue, shelter, psychiatric medication or even food after going without for three days.

Here’s how Bob, a man as unassuming and unpretentious as his name, describes his work: “I talk to folks just like me: bozos on the bus just trying to make it through this crazy world. I listen. There’s something about saying it out loud.” Here’s how I, a lifelong songwriter and singer, describe Bob’s work: He’s a pad of paper, a journal or a napkin and a bartender’s pen. He’s the multitrack Tascam I used to record my fist song when I was a sophomore in high school. He’s an open mic night or a house concert with a particularly gracious and responsive audience. He’s an opportunity to let the inside out, to let thought hit air.

I met Bob in my capacity as the director of Impact-Florida, a GLBT rights organization formed in response to the passage of Amendment 2. One of my members caught wind that Bob was starting a support group for people struggling to come to terms with their sexuality or with that of a friend or loved one and urged me to meet with him to find out what Impact-Florida could do to help. He was obviously impressed with Bob’s credentials and experience, but what resonated with him (and eventually with me) the most was Bob’s story. Read the rest of this entry »

According to California student Virgil Griffith, listening to Lil’ Wayne makes you stupid.

Alright, you caught me. That’s a complete misrepresentation of Mr. Griffith’s conclusions. I was just trying to get your attention. Now that I have it, here’s a more accurate summary of Griffith’s “research”:

Griffith compared aggregated Facebook data about favorite bands among students at 1,352 colleges with the average SAT scores at those schools creating an utterly unscientific but very entertaining statistical analysis of taste and intelligence. Here’s what he found:

Students who listed “Beethoven” as their “favorite music” on their Facebook page have an average SAT score of 1371. Students who listed “Lil Wayne” have an average SAT score of 889. Other notable artists/bands in the top 10 are Counting Crows with an average SAT score of 1247, Radiohead with an average SAT score of 1220 and Bob Dylan with an average SAT score of 1197. The bottom 10 included Beyonce (avg. SAT score: 932) and T.I. (avg. SAT score: 926).

 Outkast is the highest ranking “hip-hop” artist on the list at number 36 with fans sporting an average  SAT score of 1104. (Griffith lifted his genres directly from Last.fm.) The lowest ranking ”rock” band is Aerosmith at number 117. Their fans had an average SAT score of 987. Read the rest of this entry »

Special thanks to Amy! for inspiring this blog. In a comment on my recent Songs to save your party blog she wrote, “As a follow up to this article, I propose you consider the question, what songs are guaranteed to END the party?”

Amy!, your wish is my command. I call this my “Maxi Pad Playlist” because these songs are guaranteed to suck the moisture (and the fun) right out of any party. If it’s two in the morning and you want your asshole friends out of your living room, throw any one of these tunes on and watch the polite excuses begin:

Sweet Caroline, Neil Diamond - This song sucks!

Wind Beneath My Wings, Bette Midler - Beaches: The ultimate buzz kill.

Summer Lovin’, John Travolta and Olivia Newton John - Last night, Creative Loafing threw a party celebrating the launch of their spiffy new website. I was there drinking a Dixie Cup of wine, discussing the sad condition of the newspaper business (hence the Dixie Cups) with a very interesting guy and having a generally pleasant time. And then, this bullshit filled the air. I couldn’t say my goodnights quickly enough.  

Taxi, Harry Chapin - This song has all the ingredients to ruin your night. It’s brooding, slow-moving, tragically sad and features a musical interlude with only cello and a male singing soprano.  

Come Sail Away, Styx - Speaking of male soprano, I think it’s more effective at breaking up a party than a police raid.

This is all I’ve got off the top of my head. Surely, there are more abjectly awful songs out there than these five. Add at will!

This past Saturday I attended a friend of a friend’s 50th birthday celebration. At 25 years old, I was the youngest reveler there by a solid two decades. This generation gap evidenced itself in all of the usual and uncomfortable ways. My skuzzy Chuck Taylors and the holes in my jeans belied my immaturity while the absence of any beer to drink besides Miller Lite belied everyone else’s rapidly declining sense of taste.

Given the temporal and cultural barriers dividing me from the rest of the party, I began bracing myself (and by bracing myself I mean drinking Makers Mark on the rocks) for a pretty lame night. And then, it happened. The unmistakable drum riff that opens The Commodore’s 1977 funk classic “Brick House” filled the room. Perfunctory conversations ended, drinks were abandoned, purses were stashed away and we all simultaneously took to the dance floor. It was if someone blew a whistle tuned to a frequency we were all preprogrammed to respond to. Or, maybe more like we were all extras in a party scene in some stupid Hollywood movie and the director just said, “Action!” Either way, the vibe in the room was instantly transformed.

This experience set me to thinking that there must be other songs that possess this mysterious power to transcend barriers like age, extent of intoxication and comfort level with one’s own body and turn a really lame time into a really good one. Here’s a list of the tunes I’ve come up with so far. Feel free to add to it. I call this my “In Case of Emergency, Play This!” list:

Brick House, The Commodores - (See explanation above.) 

Kiss, Prince - Eternal and immutable sonic perfection. It also tends to elicit some pretty hilarious sing along attempts.

Just Dance, Lady Gaga - I know it has yet to stand the test of time, but I’m willing to stake my reputation (ha!) on this one on the following grounds: My 61 year old dad and I saw Lady Gaga open for The New Kids on the Block this past November. (Please don’t ask how that ended up happening.) We both really dug this tune right off the bat. 

Super Freak, Rick James - The bass hook alone possesses the power to transform even the most mundane and reserved amongst us into the titular “Super Freak.” 

I Want You Back, The Jackson 5 - K.T. Tunstall’s totally stripped down acoustic cover of this Proto King of Pop classic demonstrates it’s awesome power to make your rigid, sorry ass move. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not usually one to expend a lot of time and energy speculating about someone’s sexual orientation, but Miley Cyrus’s red carpet interview during ABC’s pre-Oscar coverage tonight had my gaydar sounding too loud to ignore.

First of all, she looked like a volleyball player in an evening gown. Second of all, and this is the most compelling evidence, when asked which celebrity she was most excited to see tonight, she gushed on and on about how Angelina Jolie is her favorite person ever.

Total lesbo!  Am I wrong? Somebody make me a liar. Here’s the clip of the interview snippet I caught:

If you missed our show at Ruth Eckerd Hall this past November, you’ve got one more chance to see a little lesbian folkie like me rock the hell out with my five piece balls-to-the-wall rock n’ roll band, My Boyfriends. We’re playing Pro Star Recording Studio on Friday, 2/27 at 8pm. 

Here are 5 reasons why you (yes, I mean *YOU*) should totally be there:

1) My Boyfriends are really talented musicians. Here’s a link to a blog I posted a few months back introducing them to the world and listing their accomplishments.

2) My Boyfriends play my songs how they are meant to be played. Not to denigrate the work I do as a solo artist, but my songs are really meant to be accompanied by more chest hair, back beat and low end than a single scrawny chick with an acoustic guitar can provide. My Boyfriends supply bountiful quantities of all of these things.    Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been averaging around 4 hours of sleep a night for the past several weeks. Combine the subtle, creeping delirium that accompanies such chronic sleep deprivation with modern time-wasting tools like the internet and it is no surprise that I found myself on Youtube last night watching singer/songwriter Melissa Ferrick’s video blog.

I have counted myself amongst Melissa Ferrick’s fans since the spring of 2005 when I shared a festival stage with her in Ft. Lauderdale. Before her set, we chit chatted while we picked at the wilting craft service tray. I had no idea who she was. After her set, I was so overwhelmed by the quality and intensity of her performance that I couldn’t bring myself to speak to her. I made my girlfriend go up to the merch table where Melissa was greeting folks and signing autographs to buy a few records for me.     

That was then. Now, after sitting through about an hour of the most inane and self-indulgent videos on Youtube I would have absolutely no problem giving Ms. Ferrick a piece of my mind. Here’s what I would say:

“Melissa, wow! What an amazing set! You’re like a lesbian Elvis or something. There is something I want to talk to you about though. Do you have a sec? 

Your video blog has got to go. I know you think the fans like it and I’m sure some of them do, but they’re the creepy ones that you hate talking to after shows and that you kind of wish would just buy your records and not show up. Do you really feel comfortable exploiting their mildly perverse interest in you?   Read the rest of this entry »

Traditionalists, romantics and cynics who would like to get laid next Saturday night, order your roses now! Valentine’s Day is a mere 8 days away. If you wait much longer you’ll be sporting a pot of mums on the big night and, trust me, mums will get you nowhere.

In honor of our annual celebration of love (or cheap romance if you prefer), I’ve compiled a list of my favorite love songs. Before I launch into it, I’d better take a moment to clarify my definition of what constitutes a love song. I’m pretty sure I deviate radically from the common wisdom on this.

A love song is simply a song about love. It is does not have to be about any one particular kind of love. For instance, according to my criteria The Troggs’ Wild Thing is a love song as is Biggie Smalls’ One More Chance. A love song also does not have to be about any one particular phase of love. For instance, Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright is a love song even though it’s about a romance’s bitter end and not it’s elated beginnings.

With my analytical framework now clearly established, I present to you my list of my favorite love songs. If you think this is totally off base and that I’m really just a bitter and withered husk of a human being, please let me know. Just try to put it more nicely than I did : Read the rest of this entry »

In writing this I know I run the risk of coming across as an elitist snob, but I honestly couldn’t care less about today’s barbaric and absurd national ritual. (I’m talking about the Superbowl, not church.)  If you’re with me and are looking for something else to do while the rest of America watches dudes touch each other in the only manner and context our culture sanctions, consider the following:

The Riot Folk Collective, a group of self proclaimed “radical folk musicians,” have organized an anti-Superbowl concert and potluck at Sweet Water Organic Community Farm (6942 W. Comanche Ave. Tampa, FL) this Sunday night at 8pm. The show is part of Riot Folk’s “Respect Yer Mama” bicycle tour. That’s right, they’re touring from Orlando to Miami BY BICYCLE. Take if from someone that gets nervous traversing Florida in her Honda Civic and does not look like a crazed hippie: that takes guts.

I’ve never heard these characters before, but I’m sure their show will be infinitely more entertaining than the alternative. Who knows? I may even score an organic hotwing at the potluck!

Barack Obama (a dude who has been president for all of 8 days) is featured on the cover of Ms. Magazine’s Winter 2009 issue. The feminist rag’s publisher, Elanor Smeal, defends the choice in the issue’s preface: “When the chair of the Feminist Majority Foundation board, Peg Yorkin, and I met Barack Obama, he immediately offered ‘I am a feminist.’ And better yet, he ran on the strongest platform for women’s rights of any major party in American history.”

This is all true and awesome, but something about the cover just doesn’t feel right… Read the rest of this entry »

Today over lunch I got embroiled in a spirited debate with a professional journalist friend of mine. The topic? Are bloggers truly journalists? As you might imagine, I stuck up for the bloggers maintaining that we’re as entitled to the distinction as the next guy. My argument went something like this: 

A “journalist” is little more than an observer who records and promulgates his/her observations. This is an essentially human act, not some skill unique only to a certain type of human with a certain type of training. When someone is called a “journalist” it means little more than they have the luxury of devoting 40+ hours a week to doing what the rest of us are forced to do only in our spare time and with fewer resources.

To illustrate my point, I juxtaposed the “journalist” with the “musician.” I specifically invoked Yo-Yo Ma because his stirring performance at President Obama’s inauguration was still fresh in my memory. I waxed on and on about Yo-Yo’s innate talent and decades of training and experience and how his title of “musician” encompassed all of this. It was not a mere signifier of his liveliehood, but an acknowledgement of his special skill. Everyone has the “skill” of a “journalist.” Few among us have the skill of Yo-Yo Ma. Read the rest of this entry »

Are you music buffs sick of narrowminded hatemongers trying to kill your Obama buzz? If so, you should check out my latest post in the Daily Loaf to find out how to fight back!  Here’s an excerpt:

I’m still totally high from yesterday’s inauguration. Hearing a President say things like, “The time has come to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness,” got me the kind of buzzed it would take another 8 years of Bush in office to kill.

While I am clinging to my high, I am also starting to remember that there are those among us intent on resisting the ineluctable tide of brotherhood and hope that has come so close to uniting our nation. Take, for instance, David Caton. He’s the executive director of the Florida Family Association, one of the organizations behind the passage of Amendment 2, the defeat of a 2008 civil rights bill that would have protected Florida’s citizens from being fired or denied housing based on their sexual orientation and countless other less significant but equally ridiculous “accomplishments.”

Lately, Caton and his eerily well-coiffed minions are mobilizing to prevent the Hillsborough County Commission from simply researching the possibility of extending health benefits to the domestic partners of county employees. According to a web alert from Caton’s organization, to do so would be an unacceptable furtherance of the “homosexual agenda.” (Never mind the fact that an overwhelming majority of the persons who would benefit from such an extension would be unmarried heterosexuals.)

Read the rest…

The openly gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, delivered the invocation at Saturday’s inaugural megaconcert at the Lincoln Memorial. Of course, if you watched the event on HBO, you may not have realized this because his big gay prayer got bumped from their live broadcast. In a small attempt to compensate for this oversight, here’s a YouTube video of his profound and challenging prayer:

If you’ve never experienced the hurricane-force musical stylings and caustic lyrical wit of Ed Hammell (aka Hammell on Trial), tonight is your chance. This Righteous Babe artist and long-time Ani DiFranco collaborator will be blowing the roof off of Skipper’s Smokehouse (I know, there is no roof) with his one man theatrical show, The Terrorism of Everyday Life.

Even more signicant (for the purposes of this blog, at least) is the fact that I will be opening for him. That’s right, I’m the soup to Ed Hammell’s sandwich, so don’t be late!

The show starts at 8pm. For tickets and details, go to www.skipperssmokehouse.com.

Remember, it’s not everyday that a girl like me opens for some dude. You don’t wanna miss this!

(Sorry. I just can’t resist a dirty pun.)

The idea for this post was born of my accidental experiment with decaffeinated coffee a week or so ago. (You can read more about that here.) One of the completely random and wholly undeveloped thoughts that “seeped in and out of my foggy, throbbing brain” during the course of that experiment was the following: There are a lot of really good songs about women murdering men. I’ve decided to explore and defend this claim. Here’s a list of the songs I was attempting to think about and some speculation as to why I/we enjoy them so much.

As always, if you know of other songs or can think of other reasons this premise is so engaging, post them at the bottom for me.

Aerosmith, Janie’s Got A Gun: Aerosmith, a band not exactly known for its radical feminist consciousness, broke major rock n’ roll ground in 1989 with this catchy little ditty. It tells the story of a girl (Janie) who takes revenge on her sexually abusive father by putting “a bullet in his brain.” It is the only song on the list to break the elusive Top 10. (It peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1990.) It is also the only song on the list performed by a male vocalist.

Martina McBride, Independence Day: A song as beautiful, empowering and redemptive as this one comes along once in a generation. It tells the story of a mother who immolates her abusive husband and herself on the 4th of July in a final act of what her surviving daughter, the song’s narrator, calls “revolution.” Many country radio programmers were initially reluctant to spin the tune. It took Martina herself working the phones and personally pleading with station managers to get the song on the air. Today, it’s a country music staple.

Read the rest of this entry »

This story originally appeared on The Daily Loaf, but I thought some of you music lovers might enjoy hearing a bunch of gay rights activists dressed up like mock Ku Klux Klansmen humming Kumbaya. Enjoy!

Impact Florida is at it again. The GLBT rights group made headlines last month when they staged an anti-Amendment 2 demonstration outside of Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s wedding. Apparently, they’re gluttons for controversy because their latest action is even more outrageous.

In a video posted this morning, Impact Florida calls upon fair-minded Americans of every stripe to write to the Obama transition team to request that David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, be invited to participate in the President Elect’s inauguration.

Their reasoning? If Rick Warren, a minister who has famously compared gay marriage to pedophilia and incest, gets to participate, then why not a former Klansman? They’ve even offered to spring for his bus ticket! Check out the video for yourselves:

For reasons abstractly philosophic, pragmatically political and deeply personal, I’m feeling pretty anti-war these days. If you’re with me, here are my recommendations for a mostly contemporary anti-war playlist.

(If you can think of anything worth hearing that I’ve ommitted, let me know. I’m always hungry for new tunes.)

Rise Against, Hero of War: When I heard this simple and gripping song on 97X a few weeks ago, I thought I had mistakenly flipped to WMNF, Tampa Bay’s awesome community radio station. It is a miracle that a song like this is on mainstream commercial radio. It tells the tragic and all to typical story of a young soldier’s disillusionment.

Ani DiFranco, The Atom: This cut is one of the strongest from DiFranco’s latest release, Red Letter Year. Here’s what she has to sing about the Nobel Prize winning physicists who developed the atomic bomb: “I bet there were no windows or women in the room / when they applied themselves to the pure science of doom.” She certainly has a way of putting things into perspective, doesn’t she?

 Lexi Pierson, Misunderstood: For those of you that haven’t had the pleasure, Lexi is one of Tampa Bay’s local treasures and this song is a masterpiece. Order a copy of her self-titled album here and enjoy this clip of Lexi performing Misunderstood live in Clearwater:

Read the rest of this entry »

Coffee, like written language, is a vital and definitive element of human civilization. From the foxholes of Bastogne during WWII to the Starbucks that stood for seven years in China’s 587-year-old imperial palace, wherever there are people, there is coffee nearby.

According to legend, 9th Century Ethiopian shepherds were the first to observe coffee’s benevolent power. When their goats happened upon some wild coffee berries, they ate them and began to dance. No myth has ever resonated with me as powerfully as this one. Coffee makes my brain dance just like it did those Ethiopian goats. I drink a cup and my brain becomes a pulsating discotheque with millions of little neurons holding synapses and twirling around my cerebral cortex.

If you’re still reading, you’re probably wondering why I’m extolling coffee’s virtues. You may be thinking it’s because I’ve had too much today. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I dragged myself out of bed at five this morning to drive to Miami. On my way to 275-S, I swung by Dunkin’ Donuts for, of course, a cup of coffee. By the time I was over the Skyway, it was cool enough to sip. By the time I got to Naples, I’d killed it. Half-way across Alligator Alley, I felt like I needed to die. My skin was clammy, my back, head and hair ached and I could hardly keep my eyes open. That’s when it hit me: Decaf.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night my sister and I shirked our familial responsibilities and boldly ventured out to forge our own, radical and new set of Christmas Eve traditions. After about 30 minutes of giggling and smug, self-congratulatory back-patting, we realized we couldn’t think of anything more edgy and transgressive to do than go to a Unitarian Universalist church service and then to the Bonefish Grill.

There is just something about this time of year that makes me not only tolerate mindless ritual, tradition and schmultz, but actually crave and appreciate it. Things I can’t even begin to indentify with on the other 363 days of the year resonate deeply and powerfully with me on Christmas Eve and Day.

In honor of this ineluctable spirit of unity, peace, love and togetherness, here is my Christmas gift/Solstice offering to you: Dar Williams’ holiday classic, The Christians and The Pagans.

I am posting this from the hell that is the Baltimore/Washington International airport at Christmas time. I cannot think of a worse time of year to be traveling. If the hordes of amateur travelers uninitiated in the mysteries of TSA procedures don’t get you, then the nauseatingly sweet stench of their Starbucks’ gingerbread lattes will. And just when you think you’ve made it – you’re at your gate with your black coffee and the stale Glazed Cake Munchkins you got at Dunkin Donuts the night before – the real onslaught begins: “Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock…” ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

In honor of the incessant seasonal serenade that is driving me swiftly to the edge of sanity, here’s a top 10 list of the Christmas songs I hate the least. (Let’s face it, none of us really like any of them.)

Just one more thing before I begin: this will be my last post for Tampa Calling. As soon as I’m finished, I’m going to hang myself with the strap from my carry-on bag.

10. White Christmas

I’m a Floridian which means I was raised on stories of how my forefathers fled the frigid north to avoid ever having one of these again. I derive a sort of sick pleasure knowing that I’ll be slathering on coconut-scented tanning oil and drinking margaritas this Christmas while the rest of Christendom shivers. Read the rest of this entry »

This may be old news amongst her more rabid devotees, but I just got an alert from Ticketmaster that Ani DiFranco is coming to the Tampa Theatre on March 20, 2009.

For those of you that haven’t experienced Ms. DiFranco live, you must!

She’s a cultural phenomenon and a brilliant lyricist and musician to boot (check out Tatangelo’s interview with DiFranco.) I wonder if she needs an opener…

Here’s a You Tube clip of Ani performing “Hypnotized,” one of my all time favorites:

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My memory of the event is not very clear. I showed up at the CL office in Tampa, ate a slice of pizza, listened to some Muay Thai boxers beat the shit out of what Stephen Hammill, CL’s online producer, assured me were anatomically correct mannequins and then it all goes blank. I think Joran Oppelt, CL’s Marketing and Promotions Director, may have slipped a roofie under the cheese of the pizza we shared. All I know is that the next day a link to this video was in my inbox:

Lorna performs \”Song for the Voiceless\” live on CL Sessions

There is no telling what else happened during these mysterious “CL Sessions.” I guess we’ll all just have to stay tuned to The Big Music Site to find out.

p.s. If you dig “Song for the Voiceless,” it is available on my latest album, Released. You can order it here.

In case you haven’t heard (and I don’t know how you would not have: the story has been everywhere from the Tampa Tribune to MSNBC to the Huffington Post), Impact Florida, an organization committed to attaining marriage equality for all Floridians, is planning a demonstration outside of Governor Charlie Crist’s wedding and reception on Friday, December 12. As the recently appointed leader and spokesperson for Impact Florida, over the past 48 hours I have received an inbox full of compliments, questions and requests for interviews. I have also received a small but not negligible amount of criticism. Here are two examples from comments left anonymously on the Saint Petersburg Times’ political blog, The Buzz:

“…you usually don’t get involved in this voting thing except when you and your buddies try and settle once and for all the question if who’s better; Donna Summer or Liza Minelli…”

“Let’s make a deal. Everyone can marry anything and as often as they want. Take off all of the discriminatory restrictions. A man can marry his pet sheep and a woman can marry her stud German shepard. A teacher can marry as many of her teenage students as she can squeeze in. Why just limit the fun to homos? Why not let mothers marry their sons and sisters marry their brothers?”

As you can see from these two gems, much of the criticism has been too ridiculous to warrant a response. Some of it, however, has been what true criticism is supposed to be: constructive, challenging and supported by evidence. It has come not from anonymous strangers, but from friends, peers and other respectable folks not too cowardly to join their name to their opinion. I would like to take a few moments to present and respond to these legitimate critiques of Impact Florida’s planned demonstration.

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I’ve been thinking about gravity. I guess that’s to be expected when the person you love more than anything, the heart beat you’ve tied all of your tomorrows to, gets her private pilot’s license as my partner did this past week.

Maybe I have the mind of a medieval peasant, but flying has always seemed vaguely blasphemous to me. Every time I board an airplane, I am haunted by some sort of inchoate guilt and a fear that I will not get away with it this time.

I’m not trying to defend my oddly theological attitude about the matter, but our language does indicate that this outlook might be a collective one. When a pilot flies or an athlete jumps some ungodly height or distance, we say they have “defied gravity.” Gravity is a force that reigns over us. It is a “law” in the most fascist of senses. There is no procedure for overturning or invalidating it. When we fly or jump, we don’t abolish the law of gravity; we merely defy it, the way an adolescent defies her parents only to find herself speedily exiled to the Siberia of her bedroom. “What goes up must come down,” we are fond of saying. Not even the onslaught of postmodernism (a philosophical force that, according to many, has obliterated God and reduced moral absolutes to mere preferences) has put a chink of equivocation in this cherished platitude. Gravity always wins.

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Since the dawn of man (or at least since they all moved down here from Indiana and Illinois), my family have been faithful participants in the St. Petersburg Times‘ Turkey Trot.  The Turkey Trot is a somewhat counter-intuitive Thanksgiving ritual: On the one day out of the year when all of our physical, mental and spiritual energy is supposed to be focused on eating, thousands of folks here in Tampa Bay flood the streets of Clearwater at 6:30am to run a 10K… or maybe jog a 5K…or, in the case of my family, lazily stroll a 1 mile route called “The Gobbler.”

In 30 years, three generations (it was four until my great grandpa passed away in ‘95 and it just might be four again this year because my brother and his wife had their first child) of Bracewells, Normans, Spears and Hunts have not missed a single Trot. We’ve Trotted with colds, flues, broken legs and cancer. My aunt Trots in her electric scooter and if she hits an impassable dirt patch in the road, my cousins and I lift her out. My best friend Billy Trotted on crutches his senior year of high school to impress my sister (his ex-girlfriend) who he hoped would take him back after such a display of strength and dedication. (It didn’t work.)

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When I give an interview, 9 times out of 10 I am asked the same litany of inane questions. The one I dread the most (even more than the completely irrelevant “How old are you?”) is this one: “Who are your biggest influences?” There are a lot of reasons I don’t like this question: It’s overly broad, it takes for granted that my “biggest influences” are “whos” rather than whats or whens and it assumes, quite dubiously, that whatever my influences are, I am consciously aware of them. These are all perfectly legitimate reasons for loathing this question, but they don’t tell the whole story.

The truth is I can’t stand being asked about my influences because, by general critical consensus, my influences are pretty lame. Take, for instance, my biggest influence, country music. I love it. And I’m not talking about the country that even hipsters like you CL readers can stomach. I’m talking about the uber twangy stuff that most people in my socio-cultural demographic dismiss as maudlin, cliché, trite and unforgivably corny; the songs about how the corn fed boys from my map dot can out work, out fight and out drink the soft handed sissies from your urban center; the songs with titles like “Where I Come From” and “Where the Green Grass Grows.”

Don’t get me wrong. Some of this music is hopelessly bad, but some of it kicks and spits on the door of greatness. I’m devoting this blog to separating the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats and any other biblically tinged agricultural metaphor for good from any other biblically tinged agricultural metaphor for bad that you can think of. Here it is: The good, the bad and the country according to me.

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Have you ever been to a listening room? I’m not talking about a theatre where folks may come to listen but first they have to contend with uptight ushers, mediocre seats and expensive drinks. I’m not even talking about a coffeehouse where folks may come to listen but are hard pressed to do so over the gurgle of the cappuccino machine, the murmur of the pretensious yuppies who didn’t come to listen and the hiss of the cheap ass PA. I’m talking about a true listening room with immaculate acoustics, an intimate environment and an attentive audience. You’re probably thinking, “Where the hell do you think you are? Boston? This is Tampa Bay, sweet cakes. We ain’t got none of them high fallutin’ listenin’ rooms around here.”  Ummmm, yes we do…

Pro Star Sound Stage is a recording studio by day but by night it is by far one of the finest listening rooms in which I have ever had the privilege of performing. It’s cozy (it seats about 100 people), it’s quality (did I mention it was a fully functioning, professional recording studio?) and it’s owned and operated by two avid music lovers with a knack for spotting and supporting emerging singer/songwriters.

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This past Saturday I was the guerilla sound girl at St. Petersburg’s instantiation of the Join the Impact National Day of Action for GLBTQ Rights at Mirror Lake Park. If you were there, perhaps you saw me frantically running extension cords through the sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist church across the street from the rally. (The City of St. Pete wouldn’t hook us up with power for the PA so the Unitarians picked up the slack). Or maybe you were one of the hundreds I inconvenienced by blocking off an entire street with my wimpy little PT Cruiser and my big freakin’ attitude. (If you were, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to drive over my mic cables. I need those!)

Whether our paths crossed or not, if you were there, you witnessed quite a spectacle: Karen Doering, former senior counsel for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, kicked off the event with an impassioned, and by impassioned I mean I couldn’t keep her mic channel from redlining, enumeration of all the totally unfair aspects of Florida’s Amendment 2 and California’s Proposition 8.

The high point of the rally for me was a statement read by Yasmine Jones, a 19 year old African American lesbian who spoke of being raised on her grandmother’s stories of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. She was taught and she truly believed that she was the heir of that legacy. November 4th, 2008 changed all of that. On that day, when most Americans were celebrating the election of our first black president, young Yasmine was watching anti-gay ballot initiatives all across the country undermine the equal citizenship that her Grandmother had struggled so hard to one day bequeath to her. (If a story like Yasmine’s doesn’t get you riled up, you should really start checking your pants pockets and digging through your sofa because you’ve lost your soul.)

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