“When Is a Cookie?” — The Making of a YouTube Music Video

Welcome to my blog! I just entered the world of music videos yesterday, and what a trip. Here is a blow-by-blow of my acting debut in the first song that I have ever written for YouTube:

It began, as so many good things do, in my sleep ...

Wednesday, Oct 28 — In the middle of the night, I am always a genius. I will wake up and announce, with great resolve due to some dream-induced flash of odd clarity: “We are going bear pickle hunting.” Once I asked my husband Peter if he had Bluetooth. When he gave his typical response (“Whhuuaagh?”), I nodded knowingly and said, “If we’re talking, you have Bluetooth.” (At least, I’m told I said that. I have no actual memory of most of these utterances.) So I suppose I should not be surprised at 3 A.M. when Peter has a … let’s say, less than enthusiastic reaction to my latest blast: “You know, no one has ever written a pop song around a recipe!”

“Go to sleep,” saith he. But this time, I mean it. In this down economy, what’s more satisfying than making gifts for others, and doing so with your children?

Thursday, Oct 29 — I call Jesse Cotrell, my Internet guru. Jesse is a soft-spoken SanFranciscan/Bennington grad with a glorious head of hair (of which Peter is extremely covetous) and more first-rate talents than almost anyone I know — band leader, singer-songwriter, booking agent, and film director. He’s also young enough to be my son — with, come to think of it, similar tastes in nomenclature: Jesse has a booking agency called “Bad Man Booking” and he has a band called “The Big Fatt.” I ask him, “what do you think of me writing a pop song that has a recipe in it, and making a video?”

Jesse introduces me to Chocolate Rain.

He sends two versions, labeled “The Original” and “The Money.” (The latter is actually “Cherry Chocolate Rain.” I learn a lot from this. Like maybe my idea isn’t so stupid.)

Sunday, Nov 2 — Jesse sends me a five-page memo explaining scheduling and costs of filming a music video. I take a deep breath. For several days.

Thursday, Nov 6 — The next week is a blur. The business of life, blah blah blah. My YouTube dream remains just that until I decide it’s time to make a batch of cookies.

Thursday, Nov 13 — I take out my own secret recipe. It’s not hard to recruit my assistant, Emily Angell. She is a singer/songwriter, a recent CCNY Music-Production Program grad, and fledging music producer. She is also incredibly smart, with an acute sense of the absurd — and (it turns out) a very big sweet tooth. We become singing dervishes in the kitchen. While my mind is feverishly working on melody and lyrics, the batter splatters. Emily is sneaking chocolate chips and wielding a mean wooden spoon — when she suddenly pipes up, “Don’t let the batter splatter!”

The cookies come out great. And I have a cowriter.

Thursday, Nov 20 — Emily and Jesse and I meet to plan our production schedule. Jesse explains “storyboarding” to me. I can’t help thinking of some maddening form of waterboarding — torture by exposure to your Uncle Sid’s tales of his Florida exploits — but Jesse sets me straight.

Friday, Nov 21 — I am booking December gigs like crazy — more than last year! Who’da thunk it?

Saturday, Nov 22 — Almost done with the song. My kids are home from college for Thanksgiving! As we all ponder plans for the cookie video, the pile of cookies rapidly shrinks. My 21-year-old son Nick says (after politely swallowing): Keep it simple! Just get a camera and record you sitting at the piano singing a song! We then begin discussing his desire to buy a Marshall stack and a $2K electric guitar for a possible band gig after college.

While I am having vapors, Nick and his younger brother Joe (18) wander around the house singing snatches of the cookie song: “…RE-frigerator, RE-frigerator … you don’t know where the sugar ends and the butter and eggs begin … !”

Monday, Nov 24 — Jesse and I concoct the video story in the living room. Jesse’s ideas tend to be a little … out there. All along, both he and Peter have been advocating for weird and goofy and aggressively offbeat. But … how offbeat? I keep saying to Jesse, “That’s sick!” “That’s so cheesy!” He keeps answering, “That’s YouTube!” Joe has wandered in and has been lounging on the couch. I take the fact that he does not throw up or leave the room as a positive sign. In fact, he thinks our ideas are good. I’m not so sure.

Tuesday, Nov 25 — The schedule starts to come into focus: we must shoot next week to get it out by December 6. This allows enough time for my music CD sales pitch for the holiday season — and, if I’m very lucky, time for radio programmers to put the song in their holiday playlists (hey, why not dream big?) . A few small obstacles: We still have no camera, no lights, no location, and no child star.

I email all my filmmaker buddies, and they get right back to me: “Dang, my camera is broken …,” “All our cameras were stolen ….” I am bracing for “My dog peed on my lights … ”

Nada.

Jesse says the song is too long. And the first pre-chorus doesn’t work. I feel storyboarded.

Wednesday, Nov 26 — I conduct a Star Search among the preteens in my apartment building, in the form of an email blast to the moms I know. The response is curiously tepid — except for Lenore and Ken Michaels, parents of Stephen, a delightfully voluble kid we’ve known since his birth, who has had experience in TADA, a children’s theater group of which our son Joe was also a member.

Thursday, Nov 27 — Thanksgiving! I reach Lenore by cell in the morning. The Michaels family are on their way to the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Stephen, it turns out, is involved in tutoring, piano lessons, physical therapy for a broken ankle, Hebrew School, and is taking the Middle School Admissions test on Saturday. But he’s interested. And so are his parents! That’s all I need to hear. I tell them I’ll call later during the weekend, and mentally set up a shooting schedule — including a new “drop date” to accommodate the star: December 12.

Saturday, Nov 29 — Nick and Joe go back to Kenyon. I go back to cookies.

Sunday, Nov 30 — Jesse has suggested I do up a budget. I had imagined it costing about $1,000. But now I realize I cannot borrow a camera and lights. Budget comes in at $1,800.

Oh, damn. November has only 30 days!

Monday, Dec 1 — I get a cold. I spend the day on the phone, tanked up on decongestants, booking more holiday parties. This makes me feel better.

Tuesday, Dec 2 — Emily and I cut a rough song track on my Logic Express rig here at home. I cook up a crunchy piano part, and we end up with a Petula Clark/Elvis Costello/Sarah Bareilles–flavored love song about … cookies. We can’t stop laughing and singing. I think this is a good sign, but still I have my doubts.

Later, in our team meeting, Jesse lays out location needs — a kitchen (ours is so small my husband and sons angle their shoulders to avoid being stuck) and a market. As we go through the song lyrics, Jesse makes a slip and says, “Don’t let your bladder spatter.” We are howling now. The neighbors have begun to worry.

Wednesday, Dec 3 — Jesse and I finish the script. I keep thinking it’s a bit sick, but Jesse reassures me. Jesse is getting very good at reassuring me, and Jesse is an honorable man.... The important thing is, we have nine days till upload and we still need a camera person, a lights person, a track, some clothing, the kitchen, and the market. We start shooting at a market in two days. I have one in mind, but I still have not asked the owners.

Thursday, Dec 4 — I wake up and announce, “My friend Elise McVeigh has a vintage 1920s kitchen!” Peter does not say “Go to sleep.” He is learning. The kitchen is indeed perfect — it’s huge and right across town. I email her and she gets back immediately. The answer is yes!

Emboldened, I go around the corner to our favorite grocer, the Mani Market, whose provenance has turned our swaddling children into strapping six-footers. The Mani is run by the Mastakouri brothers, Taki and Taso, who are celebrities in our neighborhood. Taki says ask Taso. Taso says ask Taki. Taki, it turns out, will be in the shop till 2:00 A.M. My husband, also a Greek, offers to bring along a bottle of Metaxa.

Taki is on board.

We put an ad on Craigslist for a camera person with lights. Craigslist almost immediately takes the ad down — why? The Help menu points us to user groups, which abound with messages that scream “DON’T ASK US WHY YOUR MESSAGE WAS TAKEN DOWN!” Luckily, a couple of quick responders have answered before the blackout.

One Marco Esquivel seems to have everything we need. I call and negotiate a fee. Jesse tells me we will need to transport Marco and his gear, or pay for cabs. Marco lives in Greenpoint. I volunteer Peter’s driving services.

That night, Emily and I cut lead vocals in a wonderful jingle studio in SoHo that employs Emily, Zampol Productions. During a break, I have a sudden panicked realization: in the pressure of a cookie-baking video, how the hell can we expect to make perfect, photogenic cookies?

I call Eve Crenowich. She is not only the mom of my son Joe’s best grade-school pal, but the owner of “Out of the Kitchen!,” a successful restaurant in the West Village that features the best chocolate-chip cookies you have ever tasted. Eve says she’ll drop off four dozen cookies at my house Saturday. Gratis. I adore Eve.

Actor: Check. Market: Check. Kitchen: Check. Cookies: Check.

Friday, Dec 5 — I need a “Ribbon” microphone. You know, the kind Elvis used. The kind Harry Truman used. They look like the front of a car. While brewing my coffee and slouching toward coherence, I call Chris at Dreamhire — who has one for rent at $25 a day! I have to pick it up way out in Astoria, Queens, but what the heck? Opa! I dance the hasapiko back into the kitchen, only to find puddles of hot coffee all over the counter and floor. In my urgent state I had neglected to put the pot in the coffee maker; it is still in the dishwasher, spic-and-span and dying of laughter.

I vow never again to multitask until after my morning coffee.

On my way to voice lessons, I find a ’50s outfit at Goodwill — a pleated, purple-wool Talbots skirt for $11.99! It looks small, but there’s the size on the sticker — 14. Great, that’ll fit!

I get home and check the label more carefully: Petite/14. I am decidedly not petite these days.

Jesse comes to look at locations with me, and says we desperately need a PA. I assure him I have a PA for gigs. He looks at me like I’m speaking Norwegian. “PA,” he explains patiently, means production assistant.

We visit the Mani Market, where Taki agrees to let us start shooting at 11:00 P.M. Saturday, the moment he closes. Jesse is worried that Stephen Michaels will run out of steam. It is, after all, the day of his middle school placement test, an event in New York City with a level of competitiveness akin to that of, say, law school admissions anywhere else in the U.S.

We visit Elise’s kitchen. It is perfect, except for the window. Too much light, Jesse decides. My mission: not only pick up aprons, mixing bowls, a microphone in Astoria, but also take care of tonight’s dinner and find a light-proof curtain.

That night, Jesse emails to say he’s found a PA named Carl who has tons of great credits. Buoyed with this news, I find a huge, heavy vintage “Elvis” mic (a copy of a SHURE 556) in Astoria. I race into Manhattan and stumble into Zabar’s just as they’re closing. Supplies assembled, I grab dinner for Pete and me (“Awl sandwitches mawked down a dolluh!” someone shouts over the PA) and race across Broadway to Laytners Linen. I am shown a blue velvet curtain. “I use it,” the saleswoman says, “And not a ray of light gets into my room. Trust me.” It’s $50.

I slog home. I feel like I need a sleigh, eight tiny reindeer, and a Scotch.

Saturday, Dec 6 — In between my two sold-out shows at the Carlyle, I take a cab to JAM at 43rd and Fifth to buy $50 worth of wrapping and ribbon and holiday tissue spaghetti (my husband Peter, a veteran of many present-openings, swears he has never seen tissue spaghetti. Men ….) I race back to work, laden with boxes and phoning Emily to buy hot rollers.

On my way home from the Carlyle, I stop at my friend Pearl’s apartment to see her and some old friends who have dropped by. We start to joke about control tops and Spanx — Spanx! I could use some of those! Pearl brings a pair of her own, gives it to me, and I leave, Spanx on head, to a chorus of “Do your Spanx hang low … ”

4:20 p.m. I am home from the Carlyle. Shortly thereafter, so are Eve’s cookies. The moment I smell them, I sense the danger. Spanx or no Spanx, they may not last through the shooting.

Nap. Nails. Drycleaners. My buddy Victor the Tailor, senses my panic before he even sees the word “Petite.” Victor, I find, is a miracle worker with elastic panels. And he is a fan. No charge. Thank you, Victor.

Hair. Em and I wield the hot rollers, Mary Tyler Moore style. I put a huge pashmina over the hot rollers and hop a cab to the MAC store to get false eyelashes. I am the only one there with rollers in my hair. Pete pulls up outside the MAC store about a half hour late. I am starting to panic as we drive to Greenpoint to get Marco — but we get there exactly on time. I am a nervous wreck, but Peter acts like he’d timed it in advance with Zeus, or Hermes, or whoever handles these things. The scenic wonders of the Pulaski Skyway, which I’d only imagined from traffic reports on WINS, make the trip worthwhile.

Not to mention Marco, who is an absolute joy. Witty and hard-working and creative. Back home, he confers with Jesse while Emily and I create a monster out of my hair.

Mani Market, 11 P.M.: We set up the camera and lighting gear. After a long day, Taki’s eyes are slits, and he has to be there for several more hours before driving home to Long Island. In this context, Peter is worried about the Metaxa. But Greeks are Greeks, and I get to work taking apart Taki’s shelves, loading up flour, sugar, oats, chocolate chips just where we need them. Stephen is bouncing and bubbly, none the worse for wear after his big test.

Midnight: The lens gets stuck. Taki and Peter, both descended (as they remind us) “from the 300 Spartans,” cannot loosen the thing. Marco manages the task, and the warriors return to their Metaxa.

1:20 A.M.: We finish the market scenes. Stephen proves to be everything we could have dreamed of, and more — we always knew he was funny, high-spirited, and outgoing, but now we find he is a consummate pro. Natural and utterly believable, he makes no false moves and wastes no time. After the shoot, Pete takes him home. We finish up by 2:00.

3:00 A.M.: We get to sleep. I have to be up at 7. I start to understand how Judy Garland got hooked on drugs.

Sunday, Dec 7 — 7:00 A.M.: I am full of energy, watch me roar. But the closer I get to the mirror with my false eyelashes, the less stable the image becomes. I try to find my inner MAC Store Jen, and I get close. I am ready for my Spanx now, Mr. DeMille.

9:40 A.M. I am still not in my outfit, but Marco is ringing the doorbell. Early! From GREENPOINT! To the UPPER WEST SIDE! I must be a sight as I answer the door in my robe. He doesn’t bat an eyelash. I love Latin men!

9:50 A.M. Jesse arrives — also early. From BED-STUY! What do these kids eat?

10:10 A.M. — Now Stephen and Emily are here. Em and I quickly pummel my hair into shape, and we load up the minivan for a drive across Central Park to the McVeigh’s house. We meet Carl there. Elise, who has worked in television, makes sure to show us where the circuit breakers are before hightailing it as far away as possible.

SPOILER ALERT: Make sure to watch the video before reading this.

We have to clear out three shelves to shoot an empty fridge, hang the curtain, set the lights. Not until 6 P.M. do we begin shooting the batter-mixing section to a boom-box track of the song. Marco comments, “This is just like the Food Network!” Aha, I think, they are all getting my concept.

At one point, the bowl flies up in the air, the spoon does a quintuple axel on the way to the floor, and the bowl lands right-side up! Colin McVeigh, Elise’s nine-year-old son, has wandered back into the kitchen and looks terrified. His dad takes him out for pizza, and we break for cleanup and (on my part) sanity.

8:00 P.M.: We are finally done with shoot. Elise, Jim, Colin, and Annie have been so gracious about our “overtime” in their impromptu kitchen studio. They return quietly. We throw out the floor batter, take down the blue velvet curtain, and valiantly return the kitchen to normal. Jesse, Marco, and Carl are meticulous. I put the clean batch of soft batter in a plastic container to bring home.

Pete and I order Chinese food for dinner. We have cookies for dessert … Eve’s.

Monday, Dec 8 — After eyelash applications at the MAC store, Peter turns hairdresser back home and fixes my hair into a credible Tracy Turnblad.

Then, back into Spanx and control tops, soldier. But I can’t get into my skirt without help. Pete hooks it up, crooked. I try to unhook it and I get a cramp in my ribs. I ask Pete to help — he tries, but I am stuck. We start giggling uncontrollably. “Quiet on the set!!!” comes Jesse’s deep voice from our own living room. By this point Pete and I are hysterical, but Jesse is da man, and somehow we manage to wedge me into the skirt. (We have to pin the waist. You can see a bit of the gap in the butter scene.)

Ah, the butter-squashed-into-the-hand scene — our moment of blatant sadism in a family video. I am very reluctant about this — I would never do that to my kid! “It’s YouTube,” says Jesse. The mantra.

After the shoot, as Marco, Jesse, Carl, Peter, Stephen, and I are laughing over Chinese food, Ken rings our bell at 10:00 P.M. to pick up Stephen. He has school the next day. A brief return to fifth-grade life before shooting “B-Roll” and singing backups at the studio tomorrow evening.

10:30 P.M.: Peter gamely agrees to drive everyone home. The 4:00-to-midnight-shift doorman, who has promised us his parking space upon our return, says to Peter jokingly “So ... you’ll be back by midnight?” The two men chortle at the absurdity of such a statement. Midnight is two hours away, acres of time.

We are sad to be saying good-bye to Marco and Carl, whose work is done. But Brooklyn is huge. After a sojourn from the Upper West Side into deepest Williamsburg, Bed-Stuy, and Coney Island, hitting every light along the way, we arrive home at 1:00 A.M. The doorman is long gone, and so is his parking spot.

Tuesday, Dec 9 — I have emailed about 20 kids, potential backup singers. Everyone either has strep or a holiday concert … but Stephen and Colin are on board, and so is my new friend, a beautiful producer/singer/writer named Ebonie Smith. At the studio, Jesse sets Marco’s lights up in the little vocal room, and Stephen and Colin gather on either side of Ebonie, around the microphone. As they sing, Jesse shoots video. Brilliant Emily runs the session from the control room, and she loosens us up by dancing around at the mixing board, hands in the air. Colin, however, is very serious about hitting his notes right. I start to sing about his dimples and he breaks into a huge grin. Later, listening back in the control room, he sits in his mom’s lap and says thoughtfully, “You should make postcards about this YouTube video and give them out at our party on Sunday.” Clearly, an entrepreneur in the making.

Wednesday, Dec 10 — Jesse begins editing the video, Emily the song. I ramp up for 12 holiday gigs in 10 days, wearing my piano/vocalist/private party hat. I want to have “Cookie” available on iTunes and CD Baby, but the former will have a month lag, the latter two weeks. In a blind panic, I write Jesse, who writes back one word (well, a word with a dot): “Bandcamp.mu.”

They will be the first to offer downloads — as a matter of fact, here!

Thursday, Dec 11 — Emily and I cut backing vocals. Then I’m off to a very fancy gig on the East Side. I arrive home in the pouring rain at 12:15 A.M. Emily, having napped while I was singing in a living room with a spectacular view, is just getting to the studio in the rain.

Friday, Dec 12 — At 6 A.M. Em is almost done with the mix, and I race down to join her before my 10:00 A.M. start at the Rainbow Room. My hair is still “done” in spite of last night’s pouring rain. Bleary, I manage to utter a few words of friendly greeting to Em before knocking a cup of coffee off the shelf and into her boot. I am mortified, frantically amassing Kleenex to make amends. She is good-natured, possibly a numbness due to lack of sleep. She has had an amazing night of work, and the mix is warm, clear, and crisp. We’re both delighted as I race back, still feeling guilty about the coffee, into the my parallel Uptown world.

At the Rainbow Room, on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center, I am led to a spot behind the coffee urns, where I’m to play a rickety upright piano that sounds like it came from a New Orleans brothel. In mid-song, one of the waiters races by ... and spills coffee into my purse. I’m stunned. It’s payback! He’s every bit as mortified as I was — and he turns out to be the dad of one of my son’s best high school friends! He is a moonlighting professional clown and manages to make me laugh as we both move the piano to the window. As the sun comes out, I can see my apartment building miles away across Central Park.

That night I play for a gala dinner at the Four Seasons. I call Jesse after the sound check, only to find that he’s had food poisoning. And there’s more bad news: the dialogue in the opening scene is full of pops and needs to be rerecorded. I call Stephen and Emily; Stephen has a sleepover party at the Museum of Natural History, with a window of about an hour on Saturday. That should do it.

Saturday, Dec 13 — I race off to do two sold-out, completely wild Madeline’s Teas at the Carlyle. This is my regular gig, singing jazz for children at the glorious Bemelman’s Bar.

I race home. We fix dubbing, Stephen heads off to the Museum for his sleepover, and Emily agrees to remix and remaster the song, with all my last-minute tweaks.

Jesse starts sending us roughs. They are hilarious.

Sunday, Dec 14 — A show at the Carlyle followed by a Christmas party … at the McVeighs’, my kitchen-donor friends! We raise our voices, alternating carols with Hannah Montana and disco favorites — but I have brought my Mac, awaiting an email link from Jesse to a penultimate final cut of the video. Sure enough, it arrives by the end of the party — and everyone gathers around to cheer Colin’s star turn! By this time, Peter is here to pick me up … and naturally, Jim and Elise have plied him with Scotch. While watching, we take mental note of small last-minute corrections, which Peter conveys to Jesse by phone — and voilà! Jesse is off to make the final .mov file, and he reminds Pete to set up the bandcamp.mu page for download sales.

Back home I collapse, exhausted. The last thing I hear, before visions of sugarplums dance in my head, is Peter muttering curses. It may be a warm winter, but the computer is freezing.

Monday, Dec 15 — Day One. 795 hits!

Mama Bird Flies from the Empty Nest

Reflections on a Concert Tour
New York to Central Ohio

Getting your youngest kid off to college, along with your oldest, is kind of like having a newborn and a toddler with a stomach virus and head lice. Except teenagers are not as cuddly. It is an unimaginable chaos of planning, Sisyphean tasks, arguing, separation issues, and rage. Did I mention rage? And during it all, your heart is about to go over a cliff, thinking about the day you will return from said drop-off to ... what?

“Do you have enough boxers?”

“Yeah, Mom.”

“Do your belts fit?”

“Yeah, Mom.”

“Where are your glasses?”

Silence.

“Please look for your glasses!”

Silence.

“Will you clean up this room before you leave?”

Silence.

“Maybe your glasses are down in the Mesozoic layers of the crap on your desk!”

“Oh, Mom? I’m going to go meet Adam and a bunch of friends.”

“But your rooooooom! Your glasses! Your de-e-e-esk!”

Rolled eyes. The old I-can’t-believe-we’re-even-going-there expression. “It’s our last day, Mom.”

Silence.

Arrrghh. My baby Joseph! He’s ready. Am I? I am too out of breath from these last days to think about it. Does he have everything he needs? How will it all fit in the car? I stagger around, tripping over big brother Nick’s stuff, also strewn about the living room. Nick’s going back to Kenyon College for his last year, Joe for his first — yes, same school. Nick loves it. We trust Kenyon. But will Joe be as happy there as his brother? Will he like it as much? Will they take as good care of him?

Saturday, August 23 — We take, oh, ten hours to load the car (despite three strapping male six-footers, including husband Peter). We drive another ten. Gas is $4 a gallon, and I’m thinking City College, a nice bracing walk from home, would have been just fine. But when we arrive in Gambier — stone-spired buildings, energetic huggings from old friends, white-shingled coffee houses, Amish horse-drawn buggies, the sound of a lazy late-summer Midwestern breeze — it all seems worth it. Joe’s roommate is of a Greek family (Peter approves). We stay with our dear friends, Bob and Buffy Hallinan, who have not yet gotten sick and tired of putting us up.

Sunday, August 24 — A day full of parental fussing over the younger one, collegial squealing and hugging for the older one. (Will Joe make friends like these?) I make my little one’s extra-long college bed for the first and last time. We hug them both goodbye. They are looking ahead, with excitement — away from us. And they are happy, happy, happy.

Peter and me? Don’t ask.

As we head back to NYC, we are full of shoulds. We should be … Relieved. Elated. Devastated. Bawling. Feeling like we’re twenty-two again. Or eighty-three. We are a little of all these things. Mostly we are in shock.

Our smooth-suspensioned Toyota Sienna feels like the Coney Island Cyclone.

Peter is making funny gasping noises. His cheeks are moist. Me? I’m thinking: I’ll be free! But I’ll listen for the key in the door at day’s end. I’ll have time! But it will be way too quiet. I’ll get more writing done! But what will I write about? Will I ever write again? I’ll finally have the energy to strike out and tour with my music!

In fact, I have set up a four-concert tour.

First stop? Kenyon College.

Okay, okay, it’s not only Kenyon; in fact, it’s pan-Central-Western-Ohio:

1. A jazz concert/lecture at Kenyon called “What Makes a Standard a Standard?,” in which I tackle a dozen of the iconic hits in the American Popular songbook. I weave in musical/lyrical analysis and historical anecdotes along with performances of the songs. My trio includes bassist Jerome Harris and drummer Ben Gramm.

2. A children’s concert at a local library in Mount Vernon, Ohio.

3. “Songs From the Mother Road,” an evening of my own original songs as a benefit for New Directions Domestic Abuse Shelter of Knox County.

4. A concert at the Abbey Theater of Dublin, Ohio. I am especially proud of this one. I “four-walled” the space: rented it myself. For months I have been planning this, and I have spent a bundle on PR and advertising.

Of course the days go by without a hitch, right? Wrong. Hurricane Ike blacks out Ohio. The media throw my publicity aside for photo ops with bending trees and horizontal hair. Then it turns out my self-produced baby, the Dublin concert, is the Same Night as the Presidential Debate — you know, that little confab that will decide the fate of the world? How could Barack do this to me?

For the Kenyon concert, the newspapers print the wrong date, then reprint it wrong. Then reprint it wrong again. And I receive a call from Music Professor Ted Buehrer, who has agreed to join us in the performance with a trumpet solo: “Tina, just wanted to warn you, here at Kenyon, the students get up and leave.”

“They, um, what?”

“See, they have so much to do — homework, classes, activities — that usually they leave after twenty minutes. It’s the culture here.”

The culture? Is this normal? Will anybody come? Will anybody stay? If a musician falls in the forest, does anybody give a s**t?

I’m already a mess. In these weeks after drop-off and pre-concert, I gaze at the lovingly preserved chaos in the boys’ bedroom. Ohhhhh, does that ticket stub say “Wall-E” beneath the grime — wasn’t that fun? There’s that missing fleece sock! From 2005! And I thought I told him to take these Legos to the thrift store! Enough. I turn away to un-knot the chords of “God Bless the Child.” I cook dinner, for four. I notice Peter is putting on weight. I print programs for the concert and haggle with Kinko’s about why they should reprint just because one page is upside-down. I hope Obama and McCain will both suffer migraines that delay the debate for twenty-four hours. I vaguely remember what it is like to sleep.

Sunday, September 21 — Peter and I load two guitars, one keyboard, one PA, dozens of boxes of CDs, and speaker stands into the minivan. Ben and Jerome will fly out on Monday night, but to help them avoid airport hassles I am taking some of their stuff too: a guitar, one snare drum in a flight case, and a big bag of Ziljian cymbals. Peter is a novelist and has a manuscript due in ten days, so he packs his laptop, intending to write thirty pages (“Six a day — it’s doable!” saith he.)

Ever drive over potholes with cymbals in the back of your car? I felt like John Philip Sousa had joined us on the ramp to the George Washington Bridge.

Peter wants to listen to Brahms or Bruce. But I want to listen to my rehearsal tapes. Just until the end of Pennsylvania. I win. Pennsylvania, by the way, is a long state.

Pete drives and I listen. And listen. And listen. Ooh — I sound just right there! Ooops — I’m singing ahead of my band (and my hands) there! Five hundred and twenty-seven miles doesn’t ever whiz by (I always say the drive is eight hours and Pete insists it’s ten — he wins; we leave at 4 p.m. and arrive at 2 a.m.), but today it feels shorter. We’re sore but thrilled to be seeing the kids tomorrow. And to be staying with Bob and Buffy once again in their lovely vaulted rooftop guest apartment, which is right out of Architectural Digest.

At the moment I am no longer worrying about the hole Joe left behind. I am obsessed with the first concert: Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin ... will I do these great songs justice? How much analysis is too much? Will people’s eyes glaze? And when I get to the songs — will my hands remember the jazzy voicings, and my voice sail up where I want it to?

God bless Lunesta.

Monday, September 22 — I wake up at 6 a.m., as always. As always, I intend to turn on the AC fan for white noise to blot out the hard-working New York City Sanitation workers, who revel with extra-special brio each morning on West Ninety-seventh Street. But lo! Out the window I see burnished autumn leaves and blue sky stretching over cornfields. Oh yeah, Buffy and Bob’s. No garbage trucks. Just tweeting, rustlings, and the distant plash of a small stone fountain. Ahhhhh. I go back to bed.

BAM! Oh my god. A gunshot?

“Pete …?” I squeak.

“It’s a hickory nut falling on the roof.”

“A wha— ?”

BAM!

I’m starting to miss the Sanitation guys.

That night we take Nick to dinner for his 21st Birthday. He wants only a cheeseburger at Middle Ground coffee shop. Nick is operating under the wise assumption that you don’t soak your parents for dinner if you need to buy lighting, wardrobe, and transportation at Wal-Mart later on. With their charge card. Joe joins us with his own shopping list. He is bursting with good news about his first four weeks of college.

Later that evening, we continue Nick’s birthday celebration, this time with his buddies who are already 21 and eager to help him over the threshold — at the bar of the Village Inn. These days, birthdays are a multi-alcohol event — I watch them buy him a beer, a Cointreau, a single-malt scotch (provided by his dad!), a shot of tequila, a hard cider ...

“Water! Every other drink should be water!”

“Mo-o-o-om, you’ve never been six foot four and 205 pounds!” (Duh is implicit.)

“True. Still — water!”

Tuesday, September 23: Concert Day! — I have been asked to speak to Dane Heuchemer’s Jazz History Class, and am happy to have the opportunity: I get to see that Nick is actually none the worse for wear from the night before. He leaves his backpack hanging open on the back of his chair, so I zip it up, on my way to the front of the class — somehow this gets a laugh. I describe the way Fats Waller taught himself James P. Johnson’s stride piano style by studying piano rolls, literally putting his fingers in the keys of the piano, feeling the song. I find this fascinating. A student, clearly not infatuated with Fats, pointedly asks: “Well, what does make a standard a standard?”

Time to shift gears. “OK, let’s tease apart the song that Johnny Mercer called ‘the greatest American popular song.’” I go to the piano, play and sing the first phrase of “It Had to Be You,” and I pose this question: “What does ‘Had’ actually mean here? Is it ironic, as in ‘Oy vey, it had to be you walking into this party ... ’ Or is it ‘It was inevitable that it would be you?’”

Mostly blank stares. But I love this stuff, analyzing American Standards the way you would a Beethoven sonata, and I will not be daunted. “What about the melody, which slowly but unconvincingly climbs the scale … and those very ordinary rhymes, ‘you, true, blue, who’?” I see two young women stifle yawns, eyes tearing up. But I sail along, describing the song’s climax and complicated subtext, to the point at which the song bursts open, both lyrically and melodically: “Cause nobody else gave me a thrill…” By now they should be hooked. But … dead eyes. Are the students just processing the information or bored to death? Oh good God, what am I doing wrong? What will happen tonight?

7:20 p.m.

In spite of the wrong date being given three times in the local press, Rosse Hall is filling up. Ted Buehrer comes into the green room, where Jerome and Ben and I are stretching, and reprises his little pep talk:

“Just remember, people will leave. They’ll stay for the first twenty minutes or so, and then they’ll leave.”

Silence. My heart leaps for Jerome and Ben. I haven’t broken the cultural news to them.

“So, I just don’t want you to take it personally,” Ted emphasizes.

My stout-hearted sidemen nod amiably. “Of course not,” they say.

Places! I rush to put on my mascara and take the stage. Rosse Hall is a large, friendly concert hall, with a deep stage, high wood ceilings, true acoustics, and good sight lines from everywhere. As I walk out to warm applause, my heart rises: Rosse is at least two-thirds full, with several hundred people, young and old — professors, students, locals — and my sons are in the front row! I feel a mixture of joy and anticipation and dread. And then, my gut sinks to my knees. On the music stand of the gorgeous new Steinway nine-foot concert grand sit my music and script. On my face, no glasses. They are back in the green room!

I feel my self squinting. I pray that I will not resemble Mr. Magoo. Off we go, on a wing and a prayer (and disturbingly fuzzy-looking notes). As we sail through our intro song, “All the Things You Are,” without a hitch, the audience seems hooked. But then I start to take apart “My Funny Valentine,” phrase by phrase. I feel the audience energy start to sag. I am beginning to regret that we billed this as a “concert,” not a “concert/lecture.” The older people in the audience, who just want to hear the old songs and hum along, look as if they have inadvertently walked in on a Senate filibuster. Part of me wants to just scrap the talk. Nahhhhh, I love this stuff.

And pretty soon they do too. The anecdotes and analyses, the glimpses into the art of creation in the context of a magical past, are hooking them: “My Funny Valentine,” with its tiny but bombshell melodic structure and emotionally manipulative lyric, was actually written to be sung to a (not-too-savory) character named Valentine. The decaying diminished chords of “Night and Day” show us Porter’s obsession with the love object as the melody goes lower and lower. Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” caused a wave of near-hysteria in classical music salons of Europe in 1912, and is a tribute to black music. “All the Things You Are” goes on a musical joyride through all the keys of the tonal palette. (Did these guys know what brilliant moves they were making? Did Beethoven, for that matter? Or Holland Dozier Holland?)

Jerome and Ben are in the pocket on every single song. They’ve played the great rock and jazz venues of the world, and to them, Kenyon is no different. We swing! Swing is the holy grail.

Professor Buehrer plays a full-throated trumpet solo that throws even more sunshine on the “Sunny Side of the Street,” to show-stopping applause from adoring students and colleagues. “God Bless the Child” cooks with a tight, funky, rock feel. And nothing quite matches the wailing “St. Louis Blues” on a Steinway Concert grand, with college kids looking up in awe, those impassive faces of the afternoon now wide-eyed as if to say, “Jeez, someone’s mom can play like that?”

We end with a beautiful sing-along of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The audience doesn’t let us leave — they want an encore! We rollick through an unrehearsed “I Thought About You,” which, I explain to my audience, was my one and only “duet” with Frank Sinatra. (He stopped by for a drink at the Waldorf while I was playing that song and briefly chimed in with me, but hey.)

Nobody leaves. For the whole ninety-plus minutes. Fourteen songs. I am having my Sally Field moment. They like me, they really like me!

After the show, Jerome, Ben, and I meet and greet. Jerome holds forth about how, as a young player in Boston, he got a call from Sonny Rollins to sub for one night, which led to his 13-year tenure as Rollins’s bassist. Ben shares stories of playing for Gilda Radner’s Broadway show, and working with “the SNL cats.” The kids are soaking it up. Nick and Joe, my beautiful sons who have given me so much to be proud of, are returning the feeling to me. I am giving them street cred among their friends, and what kind of awesome gift is that?

Wednesday, September 24: A day I will never forget. — As I open my guitar case to rehearse for tomorrow’s gigs, my Seagull guitar looks funny. My right hand brushes the strings. They don’t ping. They splong. My mind slowly translates what my eyes are seeing: The tuning block is bent forward, splinters of wood poke out at the top of the neck. The neck is broken. The neck of the guitar I have used to bring my songs to thousands of people. The guitar that has changed my life.

Numbness shifts to panic. I have three shows on this instrument, starting in about 20 hours.

I race to the music building to find Nick. When he sees the guitar, he turns green. “Put it away, Mom. I feel sick.”

“Can I borrow your guitar for my next three shows?”

“Yeah, okay, of course.”

Problem solved for now, but pain is growing under the numbness, and I haven’t got time for the pain. I have 22 of my own original songs to practice, on piano as well as guitar. I find a good piano in a practice room and hunker down on a Dr. John-inspired groove for my hot-middle-aged-love song, “It Ain’t Goin’ Away.” I practice that same groove for about an hour. It’s blues. And blues is Ibuprofen for the blues.

Thursday, September 25 —

BAM!

BAM!

We rise to Gambier’s hickory nut alarm (oy, why do they only drop in the morning?), and head out to the Knox County Library in Mount Vernon for the kids’ concert. It’s a spacious, gracious building with a tidy basement performing area, and the staff has promoted the event nicely. The crowd of moms and little ones are eager and friendly.

At one point, I put Nick’s guitar in the stand to sing a movement song with the kids. As we gesture with our hands waaaay up over our head, one adorable four-year-old boy decides to reach forward instead, making his way over to my guitar.

“Nooooooooo!” I sing, on a note that swoops unexpectedly into Mariah Carey territory.

I catch the falling instrument before it hits the floor, visions of broken guitar necks dancing in my head. The boy toddles back, happily oblivious to the crisis averted.

By 11:00 a.m. we finish. I wave to the little boys and girls who are walking out singing “A, B, C, D…” and it is all worth it. We take off for a nap.

During the concert Pete has gone up to the library to do some power-writing on his book. How did it go? Well, he had a little trouble connecting to the library’s Wi-Fi. So his six-page-a-day plan now looks like this:

Sept 21, two paragraphs
Sept 22, three sentences
Sept 23, threw out the two paragraphs
Sept 24, rewrote the three sentences

The concert tonight is a benefit for the New Directions Domestic Abuse Shelter of Knox County, and will be held in the B&O Depot in Mount Vernon. A special concert for three reasons:

New Directions is an extraordinary organization that has helped, saved, and taught countless women, children, and yes, men too, over the years.

It is taking place in a restored 19th-century train depot, lovingly refurbished with gambrel wood ceilings arching over the main room, vaulted windows on all sides, an art gallery, and an old equipment room with the original signals flashing a red “STOP NOW”! Best of all for the touring musician, it has gorgeous, huge, solid-oak-door bathrooms.

The third reason: this is a concert of all my originals songs — topics that are closest to my heart, including marriage: “Put a Lock on the Bedroom Door”; this-kid-is-driving-me-nuts: “Girl You Might’ve Been”; body droopage: “Gravity”; and an anthemic tribute to motherhood, “Water Over Stones.”

Curtain is 7 p.m. As I take the stage, the sun is setting through those vaulted windows. Behind me. My audience shades their eyes, which is an odd thing to see as a performer. I sing “There Goes the Sun,” parodying the Beatles, which breaks the ice. By 7:06, as I’m in my second song, the backdrop has become a curtain of purple sky.

The crowd of mostly women seem polite, Midwestern. Unlike a New York crowd, who will scream and cackle if you’re good, or do today’s crossword in the front row if you’re not, they don’t wear their emotions on their sleeves. For a minute I am scared: will I be too off-color for them? Too edgy? Then I hit the reggae-tinged chorus of “Everybody Puts Their Pants on One Leg at a Time,” and the whole place erupts in laughter. “Put a Lock on the Bedroom Door,” a song about sex while the children are sleeping, elicits steamy chuckles, smiles, nodding heads. I relax.

Some women have their heads back, eyes closed. They are smiling. I notice a dad brush away tears. Our friends Buffy and Bob are in the crowd, beaming. They have never seen me perform before. I notice them leaning together, shoulders touching. What I’d seen as Midwestern politeness is a welcoming, warm acceptance.

After the show I meet my audience in the art gallery next to the main room. A local bakery, through the auspices of The Salvation Army, has donated delicious pastries. And New Directions has set up displays about their work at the shelter and in schools and communities all over Knox County, with programs aimed at preventing abuse before it starts.

As I’m chatting, one stylish brunette in her mid-sixties approaches me with a warm smile. She is wearing a turquoise silk Chico’s jacket and would be at home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She takes my hand and looks deep into my eyes. I have no idea what she’s going to say, but clearly it is of monumental importance.

“Just wait,” she says with gravitas, “till you’re a grandmother.”

Friday, September 26 — I am up to give a radio interview with honey-voiced Dan Ramey, DJ on WBEX A.M. Radio at 7:55 a.m. Dan definitely sounds more warmed up than I. I sound like I smoked a few too many Marlboros.

“Okay then, Tina, we’ll begin with — ”

BAM!

“What’s that noise?”

“Nothing. Hickory nuts.”

Pause. “So, tell us what you do, and why we should come hear you!”

BAM! That was my heart.

It helps that I am still high from last night’s concert, so I go with it. I say my shows make people laugh and cry. I answer more questions. I pray my subjects and verbs agree. Dan gives me and tonight’s show an enthusiastic plug. It’s over by 8:00 — time for the news! — and I am done before the next nut falls.

Our time in bucolic Gambier is over. Tonight is my Mom’s Night Out concert in Dublin. We say goodbye to Bob and Buffy, and head over to campus for last hugs for Nick and Joe.

“Remember! Drink lots of water!”

“Yeah, Mom.”

“Practice safe sex!”

“Mo-o-o-om …!”

We head down to Columbus, to the home of our friend Wendy, a college classmate of Peter’s who heads up the de facto street team that helped me pump this concert (“You can’t TiVo Tina!” has been their war cry.). While driving on Interstate 71, we hear a report that Barack and John are going ahead with the debate despite my concert. The jerks.

Wendy is a wonderful host and it’s a joy to be with her and her family. But still I am worried. Will anyone show up? I take deep cleansing breaths as we head over to the theater for load-in. We carefully follow our MapQuest directions, but about a half-mile from the theater, the road — the road on which the theater is located — is under construction. Blocked by barricades. No DETOUR sign, just DO NOT ENTER. We have no idea where we are, or where we’re going. No signs tell us how to get back to Post Road!

Peter guesses to the right. Which is why I married him. Otherwise we’d be on our way to Dayton and perhaps still making our way back. Rattled, we find the place. Our hearts leap at the huge 24’’ by 36’’ posters in the windows — but on closer inspection, none of them are mine. They’re all shows the theater is producing. Where is my poster? Where are my flyers? Oh, there. My flyer, 8½ by 11, is tacked onto a vast tundra of a corkboard, dwarfed by the paper kudzu that has grown around it. My picture barely registers, my name is tiny.

We are heartened by the appearance of the theater manager, a smiling, upbeat fellow named Michael. Peter notices a copy of the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle on Michael’s desk, completed perfectly with only two crossouts, which Peter takes to be an excellent sign of his organizational skills. Michael immediately tells us, “Ticket sales are great! We’ve got about eighty, and we usually only sell about twenty tickets for adult shows.”

I immediately start wondering if the prospect of an “adult show” may have been responsible for the bump in sales, thus conjuring up a certain image of the crowd that I fight to suppress.

Oh, one other thing. The sound engineer called in sick. There is a sub, but she can’t stay for the whole show. And as curtain time approaches, Wendy is getting worried. Her husband has not arrived, and he is always early …

The crowd is indeed large. And none of them are dressed in grimy raincoats. They are my kind of people, eager and open. When the lights go down and Michael announces me, the theater rings with healthy applause. OK. Good.

Halfway through my third song, “Put a Lock on the Bedroom Door,” a couple of latecomers straggle in tentatively. Feeling loosened and cheeky, I call out: “Come right in! We’re singing about sex!”

It’s Wendy’s husband Steve, with their fourteen-year-old daughter. Oops.

Steve’s face is barely discernible through the steam that is coming from his ears. Not because of the lyric. Remember that roadblock? He had gone left.

They join Wendy. It doesn’t take long for the steam to clear, as they’re absorbed by the music and the audience’s friendly vibe. After the last song, the entire house stands. They don’t want me to leave. Whoopee, an encore!

The houselights rise, and Peter mans the sales desk. I join him, signing CDs and getting to know the crowd, most of whom stay to chat and buy. I can’t help blurting out, “This is such a friendly place, we should move here!”

“It’s a great place to raise kids,” someone says. My heart tugs a bit — our kids are raised already. But they are here, not far from this theater, raising themselves in this welcoming environment with the help of a terrific college.

It all makes sense.

Saturday, Sept 27: Homeward bound — Wendy plies us with enough crepes, fruit, and bacon to get us all the way across Pennsylvania. Nevertheless on Route 71 we stop at a place whose billboard we have eyed curiously for years: Grandpa’s Cheese Barn — and we plunge into a Midwestern epicurean Disneyland. We discover Grandpa, an energetic octogenarian dwarfed by a sprawling pavilion of stacked cheese, gourmet spreads, and pickled everything — each with free samples. Peter has lost his composure. “How does the Ohio cheddar compare with the Vermont?” he says, toothpick at the ready — and I join him on a tour through concoctions involving horseradish, onions, garlic, and blueberries. We leave with two bags of goodies, supplemented by a chocolate “pizza” and assorted caramels and fudge. This kind of side-trip has been a ritual for our family — as much for the absurdity as the food, with Nick sneaking more than a human can possibly eat and Joe quietly finding the most ridiculous item in the house.

Only we’re doing it together now, just the two of us. We laugh as we get into the car, fortified with our bounty — plus an ice cream cone for the road. It feels so familiar. But it’s different.

On Route 71, we fall silent, each in our own worlds. I can tell Peter is still a little wistful, but I have a feeling I haven’t experienced in a long time.

It isn’t one thing but a combination. Peace. Calm. Accomplishment. Focus.

As a mom (and a musician), you feel each of these from time to time, peeking up out of the chaos of life. How often do you feel them all at once? Do you ever?

When I was a little girl, my elementary school in Massachusetts had a year between kindergarten and first grade. It was called Transition. You moved from Miss Parker’s class in the green-shingled cottage to Mrs. Baum’s in the big brick building across the yard. You practiced not being in the way when the boys jumped off the tables. You listened as Mrs. Baum read stories. For years, I thought that was what “Transition” meant: a year with the beaming Mrs. Baum, whose perfectly wrapped golden braid reminded me of Heidi. A year before joining the big kids.

I realize I have had a new Transition.

During last spring and summer, when people asked me, “How will you feel about empty-nesting?” I would shoot back, “I’m a songwriter! I have hundreds of babies to care for: the songs I write, pitch, play.”

I was saying it to be funny. But after this tour, I see how serious I really was. I wasn’t just making conversation. The nest is full. Full of music. And still, in the music, full of Nick and Joe. My biggest inspirations.

Sunday, September 28 — No hickory nuts. The Sanitation guys will return tomorrow.

I sleep very late.