Beloved Stranger

The Nursing Home Meeting

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:39:00 +0000

Today was a "care meeting for Paul Williams" at the nursing home he's been living in for the past two and a half years. I've been pretty upset about Paul losing his front and side teeth (could be three now) these past few weeks and I prepared myself in advance, so I wouldn't lose it (ie become the raging relative) in the meeting.

The reason he's lost his teeth is completely down to lack of care by the nursing home, they haven't been brushing his teeth and he doesn't remember how to take care of himself anymore. Actually he will brush and spit when given the tools but you gotta stand there with him and direct the show.

Anyways I bought a box of See's candies and took it to the meeting, a reminder to myself to keep it light even while getting into the facts and sorting out what we need to do. I found out the dentist is coming tomorrow and MediCal/Medicaid will pay for dentistry, so let's see how far they will go.

Will they replace the missing teeth? I doubt it. At the very least they can do something, I hope, to stave off the oncoming gum disease.

Poor Paul. I stood by him while he brushed his teeth and flossed today, the bleeding gums...sad. But the good news is the chocolate's worked their evil charms and me and the staff had a reasonable meeting.

GARAGE ORCHESTRA

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:45:00 +0000

Garage Orchestra was released in the spring of 1994 on an independent record company catering to the rising tide of 90s grunge bands. I don't know what this little record was doing there, one wallet chained/ buzz haircut/three quarter length short-pants employee said to me, "I heard your album Cindy Lee and it sounds like a cross between christmas music and tunes for a commercial". Luckily, I took it as a compliment.

And fortunately a few well heeled music outlets shed some positive ink about it that year, like Rolling Stone:

"(****)Squealing and swooping, Cindy Lee Berryhill's voice is a natural gas. Even more wondrous is the San Diego guitarist's arranging. To songs whose raw, free ecstasies recall Patti Smith, Berryhill adds strings-and-timpani flourishes that echo Brian Wilson. By turns quirky and tender in their lyrics, "Radio Astronomy", Every Someone Tonight", and "Scariest Thing In The World" conjure up a visionary, whimsical universe. Ace players like cellist Renata Bratt and percussionist Randy Hoffman flesh out eccentric tunes whose charm exerts fresh fascination and an odd, gripping luminosity."

..And, Record Collector (UK):

"Sometimes you imagine a sound in your head, and there doesn't seem to be any music in the world that can satisfy it. You can dream up your own menu, but mine demanded the Beach Boys' harmonies and Brian Wilson's idiosyncratic melodies coupled with a Dylanesque lyrical vision and the poetic passion of Patti Smith. If the result could somehow be witty, romantic and half-crazy as well, so much the better. Somebody else had the same dream, and the ability and daring to pull it off. Cindy Lee Berryhill's 'Garage Orchestra' from 1994 was the result, the third in an occasional series of visionary albums from the Californian singer-songwriter."

-Peter Doggett(1996)

At any rate, the commercial-christmasy music sounds of the G.O. are back in print via iTunes, TuneCore and other music outlets....

Tooth

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:17:00 +0000

Alexander got a mandolin recently and is just learning a few chords. We took it into his dads nursing home so he could show him how he's learned the G,C and D chords. He's playing them over a traditional song called Two Soldiers, performed by David Grisman and Jerry Garcia (you can almost hear them singing from Alexander's iPod).

I'm gonna be honest, it's getting harder to go in for visits. Emotionally, that is. This is a thing where Paul's never gonna get better. And that is a hard fact to face.

Today was especially hard, I noticed Paul had a tooth missing. An incisor, in the front and to the side, so not hard to miss. It broke me up. Last few times I've been in there I've helped him brush his teeth. All you have to do is give him a tooth brush with paste and let him spit into a bowl and rinse and spit, and then floss. But no one is giving him the brush and so he is falling apart.

This is hard stuff. We stayed for a while, I trimmed his fingernails, but I could hardly look at him without wanting to cry about that tooth. Like a little piece of history gone. And the nurses didn't even notice it was gone.

Alexander's ten now, he lost a tooth a week ago. He went to the dentist for the first time and had a glowing report, but a baby tooth had to come out. Then the tooth fairy came that night (geez 3 dollars!)...it's all about teeth. Some come and some go.

So I talked to the nurses at the home, and they will have a dentist come out. What can I say. Nothing will put the tooth back in and make Paul all better. Sometimes you just gotta accept what is, come rain or come shine.

I have a Care Meeting with the nursing home in a few weeks. I got to get my head on straight for this one, dentistry matters especially with someone that's not about to die in a year or so, he's 63 and gonna be here for a long while I suspect.

Sometimes it's about the feelings and there's no getting around that.

MAKE WAY FOR THE HANDICAPPED

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:34:00 +0000

A few days ago I received an email from a guy I don't know, the subject line said Make Way For The Handicapped, which happens to be a song from my album, Beloved Stranger (Populuxe Records 2008). The email said this:

Wow! I was trying to find MWFTH on youtube by my former band, the Mumbletypegs, when I came across your video. FYI, I'm not seeking money. I'm just very happy to hear someone covering one of our songs, and a person of your stature, no less. Its like the time a kid from Poland got our album. -Rush Riddle

...I was surprised and flummoxed. What did this mean? So I googled the band and found this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWUeFvM31M0

Wow!... I wrote back to the guy that emailed me:

Hi Rush, Wow cool to get your email. And found your version on YouTube. Are you the guy singing the song? There's a real story to this tune and if you are him you know the tale. Let me know if you're the elusive "Alex", or if you know, how I can be in touch with him..

all the best, cindy lee berryhill

* * *

Sometimes a story winds throughout your life that is so compelling, it keeps retelling itself, making installments over the long-haul, embroiling you in it's wild weave in the most inexplicable ways. Sometimes it's a story about good stuff, sometimes it's a series of bad events, usually it's a combination of both. This story in addition to being those things is, peculiar.

In the early 1980s I was living just off of Hollywood Blvd. with a couple I'd met in the Music Exchange Newspaper classifieds, when I was hunting for band members. I wanted to start a rock band and call it The Stoopids and play at the clubs around LA.

They, Jane and John, had just arrived from Chicago and had a dingy studio apartment, with a lot of cockroaches and a tiny bathroom. John the 23 year old guitarist and I hit it off musically and we decided to join forces, I wrote the songs, sang and played rhythm and he was great at coming up with classic George Harrison-like rock riffs. His girlfriend was a 45 year old greying hippy, that always wore the same bedraggled bag-dress, but she was really nice, supportive of John and thought I was really talented. So she became our "manager".

Before I moved in with them I was staying in a room in a mini mansion in Bel Aire (the really ritzy part of Beverly Hills), exactly next door to the Beverly Hillbillies mansion. The owner was a wealthy, divorced, financier that had lots of photos of himself and Hugh Hefner. This guy would bring a new bunny-type-girl home every weekend. "Cindy this is Bambii, Bambii this is Cindy". I made this guys orange juice every week day and cleaned his bedroom in exchange for staying at this place (which was a downstairs servants-like quarters). I never slept with him nor spoke more than two sentences to him. It was usually just "Cindy this is Cookie, Cookie this is Cindy"or, "Thanks for the orange juice".

This whole set up would have been a real laugh at the time, but I was depressive from living off of cheap, bad-food, like donuts, Arby's roast beef sandwiches and milk shakes...I think that list pretty much informed my entire diet. A doctor said to me at the time, "are you trying to look malnourished?" and I said "yeh, I'm in a punk rock band and you have to look pretty messed up". I was 19, what did I know.

I got sick of living in the anonymous, luxurious sex-hermitage, servant girl quarters and moved across town, in with Jane and John. Camping out on the floor behind their fold out couch/bed. It was messed up but pretty great, getting 3 square meals a day from Jane. I paid her 20 dollars each week for food, money I made working as a shoe shine girl in Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills. Among others, I shined Jack Lemons shoes, Herb Alperts and Leroy Neiman's, a sports illustrator who made lots of drawings of me shining shoes

John, the guitar player, and I figured out a few songs and then started looking for band members. The first bass player of the Stoopids was Glen, he lived with his navy physicist dad in a house in El Segundo and we'd practice in their garage. Glen was gay and we got along great, he really had a knack for audacity and music and his dad thought I was a genius for some reason.

Then one day our manager Jane got a call from Glen's navy-issue-glasses-wearing-physicist dad, Glen had thrown his bass against the wall and he wouldn't be playing with the Stoopids anymore. He'd had a psychotic break and we had to look for a new bass player.

Almost ten years later Glen called me and explained what really happened. He said he'd been a woman trapped in a mans body and finally got the go ahead to surgically change his sex from male to female. He was super nice as a woman, though quite large. He said I hope you don't mind but I took your name Cynthia as my middle name. It was an honor. I wrote a tribute song for her many years later called Diane, and it's on my album Straight Outta Marysville.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDakhkeGme0

So, Stoopids guitarist John, and I went back to looking for a bassist. We found a guy living in the San Fernando valley, with his mom as I recall, who called himself Alex M. Alex was an extremely talented songwriter. He had an incredible knack for saying inane things that sounded masterful and brilliant. He had one tune that went "I got a neutral shade army jacket on I got a spray can and crumbling wall to lean on". He told me it was inspired by the closing of LA's great and early punk rock venue The Masque.

Alex scared me, so I thought he must be a real punk. He'd say things to get a reaction out of me like: I was at a party last night and they were passing around a jar of human brains and drinking water out of it. He would tell me I'd better toughen up if I wanted to be a real punk. And I did.

One time Alex and I crashed a punk party. I nervously stayed in the main room but Alex careened around the whole place acting like a real fuck up. After a few minutes he ran back over to me with a hand over his eye, saying ..We got to get out of here, I just got punched in the eye by John Doe from X. I thought it was great. We split with him kicking over trash cans on the way out.

One day Alex brought in a new song, Make Way For The Handicapped and I loved it. It was everything I liked about the Ramones and even with a little bit of Talking Heads mixed in. He made me a cassette tape of himself singing his songs over a plodding bass, I'd listen to that cassette over and over laughing my head off and marveling at his musical wit.

One day after practice I drove him to his moms house and we had a talk out front in my car, a 1976 Maverick Grabber. Max confessed he had a crush on me and wanted to be a boyfriend/girlfriend thing. I talked to him a long time explaining how I wanted to be platonic friends and band mates and he seemed to handle it well.

A few days later the Stoopids had a band practice and Alex M showed up kinda drunk and with a guy friend. It was a horrible night, we realized Alex was too messed up to play bass and took a break.

Then Alex needed to talk some more about the girlfriend idea and I told him I thought we'd straightened that out. He was upset and ran off to the bathroom, when he came out he joined John and Jane and drummer Terry Cloth and I at the kitchen table. Acting nonchalant he put his arm under his chin and asked about the next practice date, with blood running down his arm. He'd cut his wrist.

* * *

Do you ever get that feeling like you've messed up someones life. If they hadn't met you maybe they would have faired better. It's a child like concept. Sometimes this feeling happens when something bad happens to a family member or a friend when you're a kid, you're the survivor and you're left wondering if you had something to do with their bad luck.

My mom died when I was eight. It wasn't anyones fault. She had a rare form of cancer, they operated and she didn't wake up. I don't remember feeling like it was my fault. As a kid I actually didn't even know what happened to her, she just left the house one day, (a bad day where I'd been pestering her and grandma had to yell at me to leave her alone) and never came back. No one said why, just that she had died.

Kids can get these weird, wrong ideas that if they'd just been a little better behaved they may have changed the winds of fate. Those feelings can carry on into adulthood too. When my husband Paul had a brain injury in 1995, because of riding a bike recklessly down a killer hill with no helmet, I felt somehow that it'd been my fault. If he hadn't moved to Encinitas to be with me and had stayed in Glen Ellen with his old friends and family this would never have happened.

You see how it works. You know it's not right thinking. But it's what happens when you try to make sense of a senseless happening. Somehow, you feel like if you'd been more in control of the situation, you could have prevented it from happening. The ultimate pretend game of control and it's a losing proposition.

* * *

Seeing that blood dripping down Alex M's arm made me feel faint, I called manager Jane into the kitchen. She told me to calm down. She'd seen this sort of thing before, when she was a girlfriend and groupie to the 1960s UK band Sad Cafe (she talked about them endlessly). She explained there wasn't enough blood to make it a real suicide.

No one said anything about it to Alex M. He put his arm back in his sleeve and said he'd see everyone at the next rehearsal then he took off with his friend. A few days later we'd heard that he got into a car accident on purpose on Freeway 101 with himself and his friend getting concussions. And he broke his arm so he couldn't play bass.

I couldn't hack it anymore. I quit and split LA, moving back to the little town of Ramona and in with my parents. I'd left my guitar at Jane and John's place and when I called and asked them about it a month later they said the Jamaican pot dealer down the hall had taken it, then his place got busted and the cops tore the guitar apart. Probably Jane and John took the guitar to a pawn broker.

Everybody limped away from that fucking band. It took years to get myself out of that black hole. A messed up time I never have to go back to. But I made peace with it long ago and have written about it many times. Here are some of the songs: Jane and John, Diane (Straight Outta Marysville). The Heat, Whatever Works (Who's Gonna Save The World).

And of course Make Way For The Handicapped which is me re figuring, trying to remember Alex M's song and since I couldn't, I rewrote it. (In fact, he has co-songwriting credit on the cd sleeve and copyright). Now after all these years, and thanks to Rush's recent email, I can listen to Alex's version and the sound of his voice and bass brings the past flooding back.

Rush Riddle who's film Averageman, is coming out this year, sent me an answer to my query about Alex saying:

No, I'm not "Alex", but he was in our band! He split for up-north ages ago and last I talked to him...said he was getting a sex change!, and was now "Alexis".

High Jump

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 01:21:00 +0000

http://music.yahoo.com/cindy-lee-berryhill/videos/view/high-jump--2139363;_ylt=AtP6BZLqoJ9Gf57yRylXSXzHxCUv

The single from my 1996 album, Straight Outta Marysville. The video is a throw back to the look of the early 80s, with that sort of MTV-party look, or the Marx Bros. famous State room scene. The song came out at a time when Liz Phair, Alanis Morrisette and Courtney Love were yellin' stuff into the studio mic. I dug some of those sounds but it didn't inform whatever I was up to, which I'm not sure just what it was-I was up to from the looks of this vid...

You'll see my partner, Paul Williams acting like the mean, bowl-cut-hair P.E. coach with the clip board, my long time friend and poet Lois Navrkahl is the big lady with the loud clothes at the end and singer-songwriter Joy Eden Harrison is the evening gown diva. The film maker is actually the 'little girl' that gets her stuffed animal out of her locker.

As for the song, it's me grousing about all kinds of people. The first verse is actually about being the first girl on the Vista High School boys track team, most of the upper grade guys were very critical of me being on the team and would play tricks on me, push me down or would ignore me altogether. Most of the guys in tenth grade like me, were pretty supportive and friendly. The worse experience was being pitted against a guy at a meet who jumped about as well as I did, his team mates were really giving him hell for jumping "like a girl". I got so psyched out about him getting harrassed that I couldn't jump worth a crap, and he won.

The second verse was about a small business employer I worked for, a little recording studio. The owner would come in about once a week sit at the big desk and make drawings of himself with very large noses. I wrote the song Damn I Wish I Was A Man when I worked there.

The third verse is me going off about a long ago boyfriend in New York. Heaven help the guy that dates a singer songwriter...

Straight Outta Marysville, is back in print in a digital-only format, at all the usual places.

(the photo credit on the album cover goes to my dad, he used a Brownie camera and took this photo of me age 5 or 6, just outside of Delano, CA on our way to the Sierra Nevada's)

Booking Shows 2012

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:47:00 +0000

We have started booking shows for this year. If you are interested in a date either at a club or a living room concert you can contact us at:

bookingcindyleeberryill@yahoo.com

Right now we are setting up dates for the 2nd and 3rd weeks of April for the U.S. west coast.

And early June for the east coast.

Gravity Falls

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:11:00 +0000

Thank You For A Wonderful Year

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:25:00 +0000

Happy 2012 to everybody from us' to you's....And thank you to everyone that supported Paul's care in whatever way you could this year, it's much appreciated. And yes, I still do wanna sell Paul's Dylan collection, just got to get it all in boxes so please keep in touch about that if you're interested in buying his various books, tapes of shows and the like.

I also want to thank everyone that helped me get back out on the road again this year, that's what takes care of my soul and keeps me writing which in turn keeps me happy and thus, I'm much nicer to Alexander when he tells me he has extra homework he'd forgotten about.

Thanks especially to Jerry Lima who put some of the shows together on the east coast, and who couldn't be scared away even after I made faces at him, sent him unfinished/scrappy demo's and warned him I was part alien.

And thank you to those dear friends that let us musicians (Renata Bratt, Randy Hoffman and Paula Luber) invade their homes...Matt and Rachel in Brooklyn, David and Kathrine in DC and David and Elizabeth in Manhattan, Alan and Amyjo in CT, and Paula in Newton MA, oh yeah Amy in Hoboken......

And a very special thanks to Chuck and Susan Hahm and their kids, who watched Alexander while I went off on those little road trips....you guys are amazing friends.

I look forward to 2012 and more new music and more home invasions.....

Nasa's new dust cloud, the Wreath Nebulae, a stellar nursery where baby stars are being born...Happy Holidays to you

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 05:05:00 +0000

A Trip to the Philosophical Santa

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:52:00 +0000

Alexander and I, Renata and Guthry Hahm visited Santa today and he gave us all a talking to, saying "the best things are free, like visiting the library or spending time with a family member." He told Renata to not get into Guthry's toys and he told Guthry to not get mad at his sister if she does get into his toys.

Then Santa pointed to Guthry's head and said "this is what's important, all that knowledge you get from studying at school, doing your homework and going to the library, and they can't take that away from you."

With all this free advice I wanted to ask him a few philosophical conundrums myself, like: "How did the 1% get there and how can I do it too?" or, "Was the God Particle made by God?" or "how do you find the one "blinking bulb" on the tree so your lights won't blink?"

Thank you to the Hahm family for taking Alexander on camping trips with them this year and making it possible for me to do a little bit of touring with my band mates.

I Wonder Why

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 06:55:00 +0000

Donna Grace and CLB 1993 Tecate Mexico, photo by Paul

Another song from Club Passim's in Cambridge. Bob Colby recording us this past summer...

This is a song that's stayed near and dear to me all these many years later, from the Garage Orchestra time period. I wrote it in Paul and Donna's van, about a week after I met 'em. They were in a restaurant eating burritos with Paul's Japanese agent, Mr Asanto and I was out in the van convening with some blue jays about this melody...You really can't go wrong with a pretty song about loss...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=GXl0RVfjRUA&feature=endscreen

Journal Entry: September 1992

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:19:00 +0000

These are writings from my 1992 journal, five months after meeting Paul, and while writing the songs that became Garage Orchestra

Am I in love?

I'm afraid to admit I may be.

And he is so often on my mind.

Got a letter from him today, I like that.

hmm, wish he were here.

then again, when he is, there's little time

for music work. So much of our attention

being devoted to one another.

He is adorable, lovable, high strung,

a lot of nervous energy.

Mind on high speed. He self consciously

speaks in slower meter, keeping his voice low

and tries to make it pleasant. Which can come off,

well....self conscious. Then other times it sounds a little higher

and a little quicker and more nervous and sorta kid-like (almost) and it's

less controlled.

I like it better less controlled.

Sometimes, a controlled voice sounds a bit like a new age author reading

chapters from a positive thinking book at a meditation/prosperity consciousness raising seminar.

I don't trust those types.

A lot of white people try too hard.

(Ocean Beach, CA 1992)

Ushers Into The Theater Of Life

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 18:12:00 +0000

Sebastian Green, CLB, Renata Bratt at NVA Theater, Carlsbad CA

(think we were singing a Carter Family tune here, "You're Gonna Be Sorry")

There are a lot of great things about being a guitar instructor. One of them is getting to work with young students that are just finding out who they are as human beings and some of them find out how much they love music, and some discover they have a gift for it. As a teacher, I think, we are just usher's into the theater of life, showing young souls their seat and then the rest is up to them.

Here's a really nice article on one of my guitar students, a 14 year old that's quite the natural on all things musical, but particularly bluegrass guitar. It's been fun and an honor working with Sebastian...

http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/columnists/inperson/in-person-teen-guitarist-already-has-a-bright-career-in/article_53dea65f-575e-50d6-bd3d-66ead9b0691c.html

photo credit: Peter Meade

Straight Outta Marysville

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:18:00 +0000

This is me and Paul 2 1/2 months after his bicycle accident/brain injury (April 15, 1995)...at the American Bookseller Assoc. convention. The doctors and nurses and therapists who were working with Paul had asked him not to go the the convention, it was in Chicago, they wanted more time for his brain to heal. But there was no talking him out of it so I went along and made sure he stayed safe.

You're wondering what I mean by 'safe'? It was just a month earlier he had come home from the hospital and on that day he went raging, out of the apartment and down the street because his mother had told him the chicken wasn't finished cooking yet. One minute he seemed perfectly normal, the next he was yelling at me he wanted a divorce...fine, except we weren't married. Or, he was waking up early in the morning, getting out of bed and peeing in a cardboard box in his office. Or, he was crying profusely over a passage in the children's film, James and the Giant Peach. It was a challenging adventure to be sure.

Before his accident happened I was just beginning to write songs for the follow up album to Garage Orchestra. I'd only had a few songs written so far...Talking With A Mineral, Diane of the Moon, I'm a Tumbleweed. Me and the core members of the Garage Orchestra: Randy Hoffman, Renata Bratt and Chris Davies, we're just beginning to workshop some of the tunes. But mostly we'd been touring throughout 1994 and 95 for the Garage Orchestra album.

We'd done a bunch of shows with the Smithereens, one of the shows had a new band opening before us, Weezer. The guys in Weezer were super cool and we all hung out behind the theater together after the show, discussing how much we liked each others music. We'd gone out as a 3 piece, me on guitar, Chris on bass and Randy playing timpani/vibraphone/percussion...

Anyways, when April 15, 1995 happened....I was in a bit of a funk. So many friends and fans were so enthusiastic about Garage Orchestra (released 4/94) and I'd gotten some great reviews, but nothing was moving my life closer to easy. It was tax day. I was driving home from a rehearsal with Randy and Chris and had a feeling of being hungry, and I thought to myself I'm not gonna stop to eat because I want to grab something with Paul, so I waited and I hightailed it home. I came in the apartment and no one was home, so I fell down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Next minute our neighbor was banging on the door and shouting for me to follow her...the accident had happened a block from our place, on a big hill going down to the beach on 3rd street. But I've written of this before...

Long story short: Once Paul was out of the hospital, out of inpatient rehab, out of outpatient rehab ...our lives were supposed to be normal again. Wrong. Bringing your loved one home after a brain injury is kinda like bringing a feral animal home, one that loves you, but is none the less, feral.

That first month he was home I wrote the song Unknown Master Painter. I must admit, I had the overwhelming feeling that I wanted to get in the car and drive it as far east as I could go. I wanted to escape, at the same time I knew I wouldn't. A few family members, Paul's family, were calling and inviting me to leave him. One said, "You're too young to have to live a life like this. You should leave now and let yourself have a life. He may never be the same again"

I didn't listen. In fact, I didn't understand what she was talking about at all. How does one leave someone that they love? Especially in their darkest hour. Plus, I was still too in love with Paul. You see we'd only just moved in together the year before. It was still in the intoxicating phase. But now, maybe with a big shot of Haldol mixed in. And then, there was that ever-present desire one has to want to fix it and make it all better, however impossible and delirious that fixing may be.

It was hard. My musicians were supportive and understanding and we fit in rehearsals when we could. The accident certainly set us back and I was left without any feeling of where the creative process was going, and then quite suddenly the cellist Renata had to move away to the east coast. So it became an issue of timing.

Somewhere in there I had a conversation with Paul about what the album should be and he brought up the idea of a Fire Sale, that is getting rid of all the songs I'd had in my arsenal, and hadn't released. And so that became the spirit of the album.

We recorded it in the fall of 1995, about 6 months after Paul's accident. Thinking back I don't know how I pulled it off at that time. It seems astounding now, considering what I was going through with Paul's recovery. And his insistence in getting back, quickly into his regular life pace. So we went to Europe so he could do a lecture tour, and he took a job as a music editor of a HiFi magazine, and I made an album and I watched over Paul's progress and his care.

This is the fire that brought forth Straight Outta Marysville. And it is back in print now, as of today in a digital only format..at iTunes and the like. I heard some of it today for the first time in over 12 years and it is an odd album, full of peculiar characters and plenty of youthful anxiety and some beautiful if minimalist orchestrations...Lenny Kaye once said to me that recordings are photographs, Marysville is then a photo album of my 1995 with a few amazing musical friends.

When she left Picasso,

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 04:13:00 +0000

the days were still warm, all the world was young

it was summer

or what was left of it.

When she left Picasso

there was nothing to be done to make the going easy

she was met at the end of the lane

by a man with a lamp

who showed her the way out

and which road to go

away from Picasso.

When she left Picasso

she couldn't eat or sleep

there was too little time

there was too far to go

and the future a steep/grade up/into the unknown.

When she left Picasso

it was a summer night

with the windows of the town fully open with light

and the terrible red eye of Antares staring down

from the bright net of stars called Scorpio.

and, what was there to be done with

the things he'd given her

the stories, the visions,

the children of nuclear fission

it was a hell of a way to go...

...when she left Picasso,

he wondered why

wanted to know the ways a bird can fly

so many had flown too close to the sun

but she has left me while our love was still young

and that rattled the soul of old Picasso.

When she left Picasso

the waves smashed on the shore

in the south of France

the rip tide was great

and pulled at full force

full of yearning for Picasso.

When she left,

and they kissed their last kiss

white hot as the first

he slammed his fist on the desk

spilling the green tea,

'women don't leave a man like me,

don't you know who I am, I'm Picasso'.

When she left Picasso

god he was mad

all the colors drained out of the room

and left were the etchings of structures of things

like bones and stones and tombs,

and the sucking black hole

at the end of the o, in Picasso.

When she left Picasso

she wasn't afraid

she had the right of the spheres on her side,

and the winds blew behind her and tousled her hair

and the gods in her did confide,

'we'd hoped you'd stay for a while,

but if you must then go,

you've earned your wings

with this Picasso'.

When she left

started her car

set the GPS for somewhere,

all the way down that long-haul road

were scattered bones of those that had gone before

lovers friends and foe of Picasso.

When she left Picasso

the Santa Anas were blowing

from California to Barcelona

the tin roofs of bordellos were coming down,

a chime from a church bell

the doppler'd harmonica

the sound of his voice,

his voice that echoed through her lost mining towns,

on the winds of desire that blew through the portals

of the P and O, of Picasso.

When she left Picasso

goodbye was still a hello

a fond waiting 'til next text or talk on the phone

every door left open

and buttons undone

like a nuclear wasteland

with all things in place

but the humans were totally gone.

Like this she said yes, to life and to love

and sent a wish out into the unknown

a kiss to all things

both fierce and beautiful

like this, she said no, to Picasso.

the sweetest thing is....

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 07:55:00 +0000

the heart goes on loving...

the sad thing is the heart goes on loving...

the exasperating thing is....

the beautiful thing is the heart goes on loving and the sun shining.

the ridiculous thing is the heart goes on loving and the sun and stars turn round in the sky, over and over again.

the encouraging thing is the heart, goes on,.... loving even while sub-atomic particles move on, changing partners, making whole new babies and snowflakes.

the dumbest-stupidest most wonderful thing is the heart... goes on loving despite the weather here and what you've had for dinner.

the trickiest part is the heart.

Somebody's Angel

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 10:41:00 +0000

When I was a kid there was a popular song that told of a soldier who'd come back from war paralyzed and in the lyrics he was imploring his wife Ruby, to not take her love to town. She was apparently a floozy, I sorted out later, 'cuz what kind of wife would doll her self up and go into town nights. I'm not sayin' it's one of the best songs ever written, I can't be objective enough for that, but I can tell you it effected me enough as a little kid that the lyrics would go through my mind time and again. Other songs along the same lines, that stuck with me were Skip A Rope (Henson Cargill) and Jackson (We got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout, we been talkin' 'bout Jackson ever since the fire ran out..)...these songs were all trying to tell me something about what the future held for us little kids...like some mysterious cryptic Cuneiform, that would let on just what it was to be an adult.

Somewhere along the way I realized that the Ruby in the Kenny Rogers song represented some kind of bad person, a woman that didn't take care of loved ones. I was a teenager in rural Ramona when Kenny Rogers came to play a concert in a remote part of our back-country. There were probably about a hundred of us teens and young adults on a lawn while he played through his hits. I don't remember much except that everyone sang along with the part of the song that went...."oh Ru-u-by,Don't Take Your Love to Town".

As a spouse to a man who had a serious brain injury which later turned into early onset of dementia....I've come to see Ruby in a new light. Within the lyrics you see that she's at home with him by day, and by night she goes out...but doesn't she deserve a life beyond being a care-giver? Maybe she goes to bingo at the church, maybe she meets a girlfriend for tea, or maybe she has a clandestine affair with a man, or maybe she's dancing with the lipstick lesbians at a dive-bar. Ruby deserves to discover who she is despite the fact that her husband can no longer do the things a husband can do.

I met a young woman a year ago, she had just lost her husband to the war inAfghanistan, she'd come to me for guitar lessons. She was pushing herself to do things she hadn't done before, to find ways to move on, discover who she was now....It's very hard work, this moving on business. But it's the business of life. Loving.

Jonathan Lethem and Paul Williams

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:08:00 +0000

This past weekend we had a visit from Paul's longtime friend, novelist Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude etc...). Jonathan shared some stories with Paul, reminding him how they'd met at a science fiction writers convention in Berkeley in the 1980s... and how Paul had been wearing a Meat Puppets tee-shirt at the time. In fact, that same tee-shirt is still in a drawer here at our place, I never had the heart to throw it out. I always loved that he had a Meat Puppets shirt....and what a great underground band.

One of the charms of Paul and his wonderful brain, when it was working properly, was how open minded he was to music that was out of his realm of experience. For a guy that was so much a part of the 1960s he was not the least bit stuck there.

I was talking to someone recently about Paul as a music listener and recollected how Paul, when he was writing the One Hundred Best Singles of Rock and Roll-in the early 90s, wouldn't write off a single, (some suggested to him by friends with fannish fervor), until he'd listened to it nearly 100 times. He used to say, "you have to learn the language of the artist".

Paul introduced me to Jonathan in 1993, he was working at a book store on Telegraph, just before his first novel was released, Gun With Occasional Music. Jonathan let us stay at his place in Berkeley for the night and headed out of town, good thing, I was sick as a dog....high fever the whole bit, but I was wildly in love and Paul had a grand time combing through Jonathan's robust CD and record collection, playing stuff like Grant Lee Buffalo and Pavement for me while I broke the fever.

(photo by me at Paul's nursing home here in Encinitas,.... I might add our son Alexander-who just turned 10 this week,- was frolicking with Jonathan and Amy's boys Everett and Desmond while the boring adults conversed)

She Enjoys Her High Life

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 03:09:00 +0000

photo credit: Peter Meade

Randy Hoffman, CLB, Renata Bratt @NVA Theater 10/8/11

Thank you Brendan Coakley for writing and reminding me of this passage from Paul Williams book Das Energi. These particular words really speak to me right now as we approach a full moon in Aries.

"She enjoys her high life; does not enjoy anxiety. So she stops hesitating and does what she has to do.

She does not live in a state of bliss, though perhaps she feels herself moving toward one...

or toward...something, she doesn't know what it is but it is the way she has to go, the journey toward it is the only life she enjoys.

It is hard, it is exciting, it is satisfying, lonely, joyous, frustrating, puzzling, enlightening, real; it is her life, that's all.

She accepts it. Sooner or later a person begins to notice that everything that happens to her is perfect...." Das Energi, 1973

(Paul wrote Das Energi at age 22 while living on a commune off of Vancouver Island)

And now, after her triumphant return from the old coast.....

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 04:20:00 +0000

She returns...
I'm playing my first show in San Diego in over a year, on Oct. 8th...at a lovely little theater in Carlsbad CA.

There will be a few laughs, a coupla tall tales, at least one sob story, a likely visitation from an intriguing extraterrestrial...and some brand new songs

New Village Arts Theater

Saturday Oct 8th

$20

with Renata Bratt on cello

and Randy Hoffman on glockenspiel

and percussion....

plus a few special guests

http://www.newvillagearts.org/

box office: 760 433 3245

*reserved seating*

comic courtesy of the late great William Rotsler

and inked at CorFlu 1996

Attention Bob Dylan Fans...

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 03:38:00 +0000

I will be selling Pauls collection of Dylan reference material to the highest bidder....the collection includes biographies, reference books, box-loads of cassettes and cd's that are bootlegged recordings of many shows, a few tour posters or tickets. Mostly stuff Paul used as reference material for his 3 book series Bob Dylan: Performance Artist.

The recordings were made by fans over the years and sent to Paul for the purpose of research/not for commercial use. They probably go back well into the 1970s ....(though I admit there are many boxes in storage I haven't investigated)

Ya'll come and get em'. Were cleanin' house around here.

.....contact me at cindyleeberryhill@yahoo.com

September 2001: The Month Before The Baby Arrived

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 03:08:00 +0000

(Mom, Clb, Paul, Anne Berryhill, the cake I couldn't eat, Sept 18th 2001, Alexander's baby shower)

In early September of 2001 I was very pregnant. I had moved back in with Paul (we'd split up 1999-2000, then re-engaged our marriage but had continued living apart, he here in Encinitas and me in West Los Angeles)and I had quit my girl-friday job at Lookout Management/Vapor Records.

I decided I was simply too pregnant to be.. say, picking up and delivering shoes to Lookout client Neil Young or fetching David Crosby from the airport or fielding calls from any number of living legends. So I said my goodbye's and loaded the Corolla station-wagon and moved back down to San Diego County.

As normal, 2001 was a hot September and I spent a lot of time walking and hanging out at our local beach, Moonlight. The city had recently retrieved a bunch of sand from some other locale, and it had dumped and spread the new dirty looking brown stuff all over the popular beach. Most locals weren't very happy with it. Along with the new sand came a bunch of sting rays and so everyone was having to shuffle step through the waves.

I wasn't swimming. It was a red tide that fall, where the waves look dirt brown by day and at night glow with the bioluminescence of millions of phytoplankton, algae. Lovely and compelling by night. But too toxic for a pregnant lady to swim in. Paul and I took many walks down to our beach that month.

I had to walk actually, doctors orders. But I was pretty ambitious about it, marching up and down the steep stairs on the beach bluff called Stone Steps (120 stairs in all). A recent medical test made my obstetrician think I might have gestational diabetes. The fear was I would have too large of a baby. In fact, Grandma Berryhill had two sons that were over 13 pounds, she definitely had gestational diabetes. I was a border line case.

At any rate, I had to cut all the sweets out of my diet, eat one piece of bread a day, stick with the fruits veggies and meat diet and then prick my finger and test my blood sugar three times a day. So if I walked after I ate, you see, it would bring my blood sugar down and I would fare well on the tests. So I did a lot of walking.

Paul and I lived in the same apartment building I live in now with our 9 year old son and the neighbors loved the idea of a child on the way. Checking in often on how the pregnancy was progressing and helping us get the landlord to give us new paint and carpet.

The apartment was clean and ready for a kid. But I didn't have the proper baby-care tools. So my girlfriend Patricia Michal's held a baby shower for us, on the weekend of September 8th or 9th. Lots of friends showed up, mostly friends without kids I might note, and Paul and I came home with a car load of stuff, the usual stuff, and I piled it all in the living room, ready to process another day. Also, I knew in a week my family, the Berryhill cousins, were gonna have their own shower for us at their place in Laguna, so I'd wait and see what we had after that.

Paul had been seeing a therapist since our separation, and now with a baby coming he was inspired to work on unfinished business with his kids from his first marriage, their mother being, Sachiko. He invited both sons, now adults, to visit us one at a time and participate in a series of therapy sessions with him, a place where they could lay out some of their truths and feelings about having Paul Williams as a father.

It was a good thing for Paul. He'd always had trouble controlling his anger, (the brain injury didn't help), and he was doing a lot of good work on finding ways to handle his feelings and look at who he'd been to others in his life, how he'd effected the ones he loved. It was a promising time.

We were involved in a Buddhist study group at that time. We'd both been studying the Buddha's philosophies via a Vietnamese monk named Thich Naht Hahn (who'd been nominated for a Nobel Peace prize by Martin Luther King) . Nhat Hahn had a monastery in east county we'd visit sometimes and the monks would visit our San Diego study group. After a night of reading and discussion the head monk came and sat with me and Paul and talked to us about the importance of bringing mindful peace to the home we'd be bringing the baby into. He was a pretty amazing person, with both a child like quality and a heavy intelligence vibe at once. I felt a strong connection with this monk, sadly he passed away, from diabetes, the same day our son was born. I always felt they'd passed one another with purpose, through the ether's, on their ways from heaven to earth.

This was our life in the month before our son, Alexander was born.

One morning Paul woke me up a little early, he was a bit rattled. His second wife Donna Grace called to tell us that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. Apparently she didn't know too much about it because Paul didn't have anything more to tell me about it and I pictured it in my minds eye as a private plane. And there was no TV to tune into, I haven't had a TV in my house since, 1991, actually the last broadcasting TV I had was when I lived in New York City.

That morning I had an appointment with my doctors office. Because my obstetrician was so concerned about me having gestational diabetes they were putting me through a series of "stress tests" which boiled down to strapping on a belt contraption and blasting the fetus with some crazy loud blips and seeing if it moved around(no wonder my son is sound sensitive now)...

On my way to the doctor, a half hours drive, I listened to the LA news station I usually tuned into, 1070AM...and was shocked to hear that it had been a commercial passenger plane that had hit the tower. By the time I got into the doctors office they had the TV's on and going full blast. I was in line, checking in when the second plane hit the other tower. The room had a mutual gasp and we all knew it was a planned thing. It was awful seeing all that go down, and I'm just sitting there waiting to be called in and then I'm supposed to take a stress test?

I listened to the rest of the events unfold on the car radio on my way home and I made a decision. I was pretty upset, who wasn't. I decided to not take in the news for the rest of the month. No hunting for pictures on the computer, no tv at friends homes..only enough radio to know whether the cataclysm's were coming west. I didn't want Alexander's last few weeks in the womb to be filled with stress hormones. I still think I made the right decision.

It's ten years later. All the pictures I didn't see, the famous photos I missed I'm allowing myself to see now. And Alexander went with friends to a 911 memorial in San Diego today. On the way home he asked his friends mother, " Who flew the planes into the buildings" She said, " The people that planned the attacks" He said, "You mean they planned it and did it knowing they too would die?" "Yep, she said, noticing how incredulous he was looking." Alexander: "But how could someone plan their own death?" ...

Alexander was born October 16, 2001, six pounds seven ounces, and despite the doctors fear of a large rotund baby brought on by gestational diabetes, I had one of the slimmer babies born that day.

WILD PONIES AND PLAYING CARDS

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 03:25:00 +0000

Sorting through multiple decks of playing cards on Paul's bed. Now he has a full deck.

Lately It's been hard to collect my thoughts and put them into a reasonable form. They've been running like wild ponies to the four directions. But I will make an attempt to type a few words today...

I've thought a lot about Paul lately, and the kind of life he lives at the nursing home. The bad food for one. I try to bring him a bagel and lox once a week.

He isn't fairing so well these days. I got a call from his doctor on Sunday (that's right Sunday...) and he wanted to talk to me about Paul's deteriorating mental health. He recommended anti-depressants (who wouldn't be unhappy living in a sterile Medi-caid run nursing home..?) I explained to his doc that we'd been through 5 or 6 different antidepressants several years ago and they all only managed to make him sleep more (up to 15 hours a day) and then get crazy when he tried to cut back (like when he bit his 2 year old son's arm). The doc agreed that might not be the way to go.

He suggested a visit to a psychiatrist. But you actually need to be able to converse, even minimally, with a psychiatrist in order for him to see what your needs are and then administer medicine based on what you've revealed about yourself. Paul rarely talks anymore. He'll answers a few questions in one word answers. The doctor pretty much agreed.

And then Paul's doctor told me, short of the antidepressants or psychiatrist, Paul could use more family visits. "Can some other family or friends come visit him more often". I told him it was all pretty much me, with the exception of an occasional visit from a family member that lives far away. He'd had a few regular visitors over the past 2 years but Paul didn't want to get out of bed for them.

That's when I realized that Paul's well being was based on whether I was visiting him (and his 9 year old son Alexander). He might live or die (you see he's not wanting to get out of bed anymore) based on whether this person, ie me, is able to see him more often.

So it poses the question...does one life go on hold for another?

In the past two years, since my husband was entered into a skilled nursing facility, I've slowly come out of a time I can call, care-givers burnout. When Paul lived at home, our son and I couldn't venture out, it had become too hard to take Paul anywhere. I payed for a sitter to stay with Paul while I was at work or went out to a movie. It was a very expensive time and we lived on a short leash.

Since then I've discovered I love to run. I run about 3 miles 4 or 5 times a week. It's a blast! I can go on short trips to other cities to visit friends or play some shows now. I can take our son to the movies or do something wild and go star gazing with an astronomy club. I can join up with a running club and meet new friends. It's like becoming a young adult again for the first time, where you don't have to ask your parents and borrow their car. Alexander and I can do stuff.

So I might have sounded like a right ol' asshole to Paul's doctor but I told him, "What I'm doing is the best I can do, visiting him once or twice a week. And it all falls on me, so this is what it looks like. It's just a sad situation. But let's make the best of it. "

And anyways, I won't go back to that place of living half a life. And i definitely don't believe Paul would want me to. Paul was always on the side of living wasn't he....

Let the wild ponies run free.

Two Songs From Club Passim

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 04:20:00 +0000

Our pal Bob Colby, from the colliding worlds of science fiction and rock and roll, recorded some of our show at Passim's in Cambridge, MA last month....

These are two of my new songs: Thanks Again and The Adventurist with my pal Renata Bratt on cello and Paula Luber on glockenspiel.

The show was the first in a series we did on the east coast, driving around in a Ford Impala (I didn't know they still made the Impala), during the great heat wave of July 2011. After Boston we hit the DC area, Philly (108 F) then NYC (105) , playing double bills with our pals from SF, Blame Sally. Except for Rob, it was an all woman show, which was great 'cuz we could get dressed back stage w/out a worry.

As is often the case, I forgot to bring CDs to sell, but that was okay because we were playing songs from Garage Orchestra which is out of print and then about 6 of the new songs which are yet to be in print. So somehow it all evened out. (Plus, I kept forgetting to pick up my end of night cash but the Sally girls had me covered me on that...'what you're supposed to make money? I thought I was on a vacation in Tahiti')...

Paul and the Boys

noreply@blogger.com (cindy lee berryhill) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 06:17:00 +0000

Paul playing Scrabble with his son Alexander and his grandson Kent, young Seth is directly behind Paul

Paul's oldest son Kenta, who has been visiting this week with his family says this: "Alexander, Kent and I played Scrabble with my dad on Friday. We only made it through 2 rounds (due to the boys' impatience) but my dad did come up with reasonable words (anti and glue) and added up all his points."