To Courtney
A friend and I decided to write letters to each other about womanhood and motherhood in the music business. This is what I wrote her.
Dear Courtney,
I’ve doubled down on a kind of relentless optimism lately, even when the world seems to be on fire; I can’t say exactly what wall gave or where the dam was holding back – but believing that our lives matter just seems the only way forward. I want to sing with abandon, beyond a sense of self. I want to write with honesty fiercer than ever. Each recurring present is a new chance to meet the moment. I’m not a folk singer by accident; my hopefulness in the world and the people in the world feels naive, even to me. But compassion belongs to all human beings, and for all the bad in the world, there is plenty of good.
When my optimism falters, it always has been rooted in doubting myself. I lived a long time with second-guesses that now get no credence. I’ve had some real bouts with feelings of failure — that I’d broken everything I’d been given, blown my opportunities, was impossible, too much (women with rich inner lives are taught this feeling from a young age), unworthy of love. Maybe not even capable of love. How ridiculous it appears, to write that here, now. At a certain low point in my life, I couldn’t make it through a meal without excusing myself to go to the bathroom, where I’d secretly weep. But the challenge of being a mother and more so, living through challenges to wake up on the other side of them on a path that is deeply my own has dissipated that struggle to something of a new, spring-green shoot: over-tender, under-sunned, a thin view of the wider story. My life is happening for me, not too me and I am not on the fence about what we mean to each other, that our actions resonate in ways that we do not understand, that we should not underestimate the impacts of small kindness, the unseen, and the power of being understood. I believe in the importance of meeting the moment with my voice, your voice, with all voices.
But a voice — how would I begin to explain what being in the music business was like for me to you — and more importantly, why would I? I don’t have a bitter axe to grind. I’m far from those terms, and better for it. Most days, I don’t internalize the rejection as having something true to say about my worth anymore. I live a completely different barometer. Why would I revisit old stories that don’t matter anymore, that actually sometimes still ache? Why would I sift through souvenirs looking at the left behind when life is so clearly ahead? Could I make it funny? (Let me tell you this hysterical joke that’s actually absolutely humiliating and not funny!) Would I change the names? (Could a thinly veiled version of me, Tina, try really hard and get it right forty percent of the time?) And by the way, don’t you know this story already?
One real reason to figure out how to tell that story is that music is still in me. I need to sing. I am still a musician; I have to go back into that transactional place to participate. I have to gather my courage. None of the music business gatekeepers can sing like I can. I can’t let all that crap – no matter that it affects my daily work life, my income, my career viability – matter that much. (Could it possibly be my foggy memory – that I had just taken my turns around the music biz too hard, and it will all be different this time?)
The first time I thought about my story was when a tv show asked me to. In pre-production, based on a book about the significance of single women as arbiters of cultural change, a casting agency asked me to audition and called me back. I was, at the time, six years into being a single mom. Two of them, I’d carted the kid around on the world with me. For four of them, I’d made sure my kid had roots. I put album life to the side because that was the only human thing to do. My dream of a viable music career – buses, nannies, a human sort of touring, scale in general – felt out of reach and over. What I had not failed was my daughter and the greater scope of my life. But that kind of metric doesn’t get you Instagram followers or festival spots or gatekeeper notice.
But the TV show did notice me! The casting agency requested a two-hour taped audition; I was in Montana without a lick of makeup or a piece of clothing not synonymous with sweatshirt when I got word. Wrangling a morning to myself, I maneuvered the Butte CVS makeup aisle, then went to work in my notebook. Why would I tell my story, and how? To what end? Who would this story benefit? How could recounting my experience do some kind of good, make the world a little bit better, a more loved and cared for place?
What was it like to be in the music business, Courtney? What were the true words? My band used to have a joke; “Go get the money, T!” I’d laugh and jump out of the van and go into whatever meeting with executives, agents, radio promoters, ninety-nine percent of whom were men. And I would perform – socially and onstage. Charm the men in charge, stand up for my band, look good, be smart but not too smart, not a pushover but not unreasonable, agree to financial requirements, work my ass off, forget I was a pawn in a game and then, after handling everything not perfectly but mostly with grace, pretend it was all effortless and that I hadn’t done anything at all. It was a bit like looking into a mirror of a mirror of a mirror in that mirror on that Montana morning, where I was putting on mascara. “The music business feels like being in the room with a whole bunch of guys acting like they are the smartest person in the room.” I thought, eyes widened for lash brushing.
A pause: the black wand hung in the air. I surveyed my work. I had done my makeup in a thousand shadowy bar bathroom mirrors. “Huh, I wonder who the smartest person in the room actually was,” I thought, resuming the combing motion with a laugh.
OH MY GOD. I almost choked. My face was tanned, wrinkled, marked by outdoor, western summer living. What if it were me? The last thing that would ever cross my mind was that I might have been the smartest person in the room. It had never crossed my mind before; it had certainly never crossed not anyone else’s. I had been a good singer, a girl good-looking enough to have around. I had a chance commercially because of those things. Whatever else I wanted to do with my integrity, I was free to do so in the corner on my own until I died. You’re the one that wanted to be a star. Yes, but you’ve not made a record and I’ve made seventy. Charm them the way you charmed me! Something about the band. I don’t hear a hit. You need a hit. Something about the band. That nomination was a fluke. Your dress was wrong. Your arms look fat. You’ve had a lot of looks. You’ve always been a moving target. There was a meeting about your nipple in that video, whether or not country music television will air it. If you’d have just shown your body, you would have sold thirty thousand more records. (Cut to the present tense!) Well, no one will ever say anything like that to you again! So many of the preposterous things people have said to me in my career ran through my head as I sat at that mirror, all of them still carried with me like little briars caught on sleeves and shoelaces, no matter how I turned my back to them and pretended they didn’t sting.
“I know you know what this is.” the casting agent told me in a high voice, animated in hand and face as if a model displaying prizes on a game show, “But I want to make sure you KNOW what this is.” Her hand to word emphasis was that of an orchestra conductor.
My makeup was done but natural; I’d spent hours that morning making good on why to tell my story, still not sure why. All I could think was “I’m sure as hell not putting my kid on camera.”
“THIS.” The casting agent’s palms spread across an imaginary Martha Stewart hors d'oeuvre tray, “is a doc-u-series.” (Big Smile.) “The difference between a doc-u-series and reality TV,” this time the per syllable hand motion appeared to notate tectonic plates coming together and moving apart, “is that we cannot” (palms up) “ethically” (palms together, eye raising) “pay you.” (Palms up.) (Shrug). (Smile).
I’d just spent $127 at CVS on pharmacy makeup and wasted three hours of the entire fifteen I get to myself in a whole year preparing for this nonsense. “I’m aware of documentary ethics, friend.” (Palms, tectonic plate syllable thing). But this (a major studio production, palms up) is not a situation where documentary ethics apply.” I take a gasp of the same old air. “I know this isn’t your fault, but if you want to use the stories of single women without paying them for their time and experience, you’re going to need to go back to your organization and tell them they have a real problem.”
The young casting agent blushed vaguely, a post-pandemic Vanna White. “I’m sure we could find a way to pay you for lost time at work.”
(Sigh). “That’s not really what I’m talking about.”
The show never came to fruition and this single-woman arbiter of cultural change never heard from the production again. Jean enters the room where I am now writing to you, Courtney, an All Access Pass on her shirt. A pair of lens-free glasses frames are knotted around her head with a piece of green yarn.
“What’s up, kiddo?”
“I have an All Access Pass to this house.”
“Yes.” I nod. “Yes, my love, you do.” May it always be so.
Would I wish the music business for her, her beauty? Never, not in a million years. Not an ounce of it. That must be the reason I’m writing it down for you now. I want better for her. For myself, too. For both of us. For all of us.
Love Tift
Such an honest, knowing, and hard look at the business side, but the love of what is at its core still shines through. I have to think that these thoughts and feelings about making art in some form while also trying to make a simple living resonate with those in the ether held by all those other artists who have struggled to make their art and get by decently. A hard life for many, but one that recognizes the essential value of art and music and writing to human beings and the culture of their times.
Takes special people to pursue their passions under difficult circumstances, and not nearly enough of them are rewarded sufficiently for what they create and share with the rest of us. The rest of us don't usually have such real gifts, for they are gifts of skill and insight and expression that many of us wish we had but don't to nearly the same degree, so we seek out those who do because they express things that we want to express and in ways that entertain, amaze, and often touch us deep;ly.
There is great value in that for fans and appreciators of art and music and writing - it is often what makes our lives richer and meaningful when so much of the everyday can be so hard to accept or love. So many have appreciated you, Tift, and loved your writing, playing, and singing, and I know so many still do as shown when you filled a certain large venue not all that long ago with folks who still remembered and still loved your songs.
Many of us long for new art and music from those who are so good at producing it. Hold that close to you in hard times. There is a shared bond between artists and their fans, and that matters more than a lot of other things in life because sometimes, the living itself can almost break you. That's why we depend on others so much.
I've always thought you were a supremely talented songwriter and performer with a canon of work that any musician with taste would be proud to call their own. I'm sorry you had to go through all that shit and still not get your just reward, but I'll always be listening, for whatever that's worth.