Lila Nelson, Audio-Biography

I write songs—agonize over them, delight in them, perform them, record them and am occasionally shy about that fact.  I shouldn't be, I know.  It's part of who I am.  But I didn't decide to do it.  I mean, like kids do, I always made up songs.  But at about 11 years old, after listening to Loudon Wainwright III's Attempted Mustache LP, I developed a nagging notion.  “I could attempt this.” Not the mustache.  But the songs.  And I set out on my new path.  At that point my parents should have intervened—should have given me the talk.  However, they, being artists themselves, were quite encouraging and supportive.  And nearly 20 years later... In other words, where fate meets poor planning (and don't they always meet?) the seed of my career was born.

I left home in a white Toyota Corolla with my new boyfriend who was somewhat older, as I was 17 at the time, which is not the illegality I'd intended to describe.  We were heading for Seattle, Wa.  On the way, I got excited about learning how to drive (fast) and got a speeding ticket for exactly the amount of money in my bank account.  At which point it occurred to me that life is hard.  No...that was earlier.  That was when I knocked out my front tooth (the first time around) trying to pull up a willow shoot to feed my horse.  No, no... it was before that.  Anyway, the ticket thing was a lesson about money.  I learned that money is part of life.  Which is hard.

I spent several months in Seattle at the height of the grunge era, but too young to frequent the clubs, and too thin to look good in a flannel shirt, and then, after a dramatic split with my beau--he gave me the gold ring off of his ring finger and I gave him a tooth that I had moments earlier knocked out of the front of my smile on the fus ball table--I decided to crawl back home to my parents in San Diego County, betoothed and bedraggled.  There I worked making dough in a local pizza shop.  I was too shy to wait tables.  So the money was crap.  Every time they tried to get me up front they'd find me in the back again proofing dough.  Each glob of dough was supposed to be so many oz.  I would make sure to make each one a hundredth of an oz.  heaver or lighter than the mark—this to avoid banality.  And, like I had been doing now for years, I would write songs in my head, kneading along, creating heartrending numbers that I'd later go perform...  to myself alone in my bedroom.

I wanted to be on stage, though.  While shy at school, I had been quite mouthy at home.  I'd sung in the high school girls’ choir--the height of my singing career having been a solo at the local country club Sunday brunch.  I wanted to get back there (if not just to tune up a pitchy high note or two).  And long before that, in 4th grade, I'd won the Jr.  Toastmaster's speech contest with a riveting numbered exposition of all of the pets my mom had been hiding from my dad.  I remember the pleasant if not subtly nauseating flutter of butterflies in my stomach before stepping up to the podium.  I saw my dad's jaw drop at the award winning recitation.  And I got to eat a donut on the way home.

I knew I was made for the stage.  I started finding coffee shop [and donut shop] gigs and open mics.  People liked my occasional flute solo.  People liked my words.  They liked how revealing they were of my family.  And of their own families.  They liked my shy sing-songy voice.  And even if they didn't.  I didn't care.  They couldn't have stopped me.

I moved to Santa Cruz one day.  I dropped in on some old friends, sublet a room, and started playing on the street, busking.  This is where I learned the “million dollar drum beat” and learned that if I stayed focused and sang all day I could make decent money and make up songs as I went along.  I waited tables, too, which I found victorious, and went door to door canvassing for a water rights organization, where I learned about SOT (oh, the merits and non-merits of highly politicized “sex on turf”).  I was even performing for local events.

I had arrived.

And then, I ended up back home.  One night, however, distraught over the same love I had left behind in Seattle, and determined to find him, I drove out to Idaho.  Spring in CA, and therefore warm, I failed to pack for snow.  I failed to pack my guitar case.  I failed to alert my parents.  And three years later, still living in Pocatello, Idaho with a string of failed loves now behind me, (and some dear friends with whom I still correspond), I failed to find a reason to stay, and moved out Northern, CA to reunite with sisters who had since migrated north.

By now, I had hundreds of songs.  Some that I would keep.  Some that I would forget.  I wrote them for food.  I wrote them for friends.  I wrote them for lovers.  I wrote them because I was bored.  Because I was scared.  Because I wanted to learn.  Because I wanted to tell you something.  To show you something.  To stay safe.  To stay sane.  I even wrote a couple to hurt somebody.  And a few to help somebody.  I'd spent years performing, had been to jail (albeit for a night), had lost friends to dangerous situations and unexpected horrors.  When Dylan's “You're a Big Girl Now” played on my cassette player, I knew it was for me.  “You're a big girl all the way.”

My sister was studying theater at the state college in Humboldt County.  I dropped in on some projects.  Added music.  Started acting, along with singing, and ended up with a degree in theatre.  I waited more tables.  Wrote more songs.  Made new friends.  And in 2000 released a CD, Live From Arcata.  Somewhere in there I met my husband.  A renaissance guy.  Together we got gear and musicians together and in 2004 released Still Got The Farm and toured it up and down the west coast.

In 2005 I started deejaying at a freeform radio station in Ferndale, CA, KHUM.  I released an EP called High Gloss, Low Sheen.  And toured it all over the country.  I met Kenny Edwards who, after years of playing with and producing all kinds of folks (Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris among many), had begun to write and perform his own songs.  And then in 2007 I started working on a recording with Kenny and Freddy Koella (K.D. Lang, Bob Dylan), which I released in September.  Letter Home is just that: one part letter and one part home.  It's a letter that never got sent.  To a version of home I am still trying to find.

I feel like I am forgetting to tell you something.  But after all, it's my story.  And thankfully, I can leave out anything I like.  Anything can be oversimplified.  Likewise, anything can be overcomplicated.  When I write songs I like to do both at the same time.  This makes for tension.  I get to decide if it gets resolved, or not.  This is one arena in which I have control over that fact.  In life, resolution is unpredictable.

The End.