The Goodwill Store (video)

'97 live version, and memories of EDAs and Living Room Tours

Me and Cindy Lee at Java Joe’s after our first Living Room Tour

Here I am 25 years ago in 1997, singing “The Goodwill Store” in an Orange County living room. I wrote this song three years before then and put it on my first CD, so it was already well known.  During the 1990s, I was living in San Diego, part of a wild and wonderful folk music scene that included Lisa Sanders, Cindy Lee Berryhill, Jewel, Steve Poltz, Gregory Page, Frank Lee Drennon, Joy Eden Harrison, Mary Dolan, Peggy Watson, Carlos Olmeda, Steve Harris, and so many other super talented people.  Many of us still make music.  I wrote this song especially inspired by Jewel and Steve Poltz who were in love at the time and sang together so gorgeously.  I wrote it in the days right before the limos from LA started pulling up for Jewel after her shows and she shot into big fame.  Steve sang harmonies on the studio version of this song on my first CD, The Cauldron. 

Steve and Jewel in 1994, photo by Gregory Page

But I also wrote it for all my friends, including Christopher and Margot and Loretta and Julia and all the fans who were part of the magic, including Java Joe and Marcos who provided the spaces, including Emmit and the other beautiful old-soul baristas.  It’s about the goodwill between all of us scraping by and singing our songs, wearing our funky decade-blending, gender-bending thriftstore outfits on stage, writing songs and jumping in the ocean together at 2:00 am.  “I found these really cool boots that zip up the side with a little bit of fur on the Naugahyde.” 

It was one of those times of enchantment, when wonderment surrounds. 

One of the gifts that came out of this scene towards the end of the 90s was Living Room Tours and shows like this one.  The seed of the concept came from my mother: “why don’t you all just play in people’s living rooms?” she asked me.  “Why do you need these clubs?  That’s how music used to be!”  I learned to play guitar in our living room, so it made some sense. 

Eight months before this 1997 performance of “The Goodwill Store”, I was on tour with Cindy Lee Berryhill as her opening act and driving partner.  We were way into our “velvets,” velvet dresses, velvet pants, velvet headbands, just anything velvet.  Purples and browns and deep reds.  We sang back vocals to each other’s songs.  I loved singing on her song “Radio Astronomy.”  She was great on my songs too, especially “Sour Grapes,” a song with wine in the chorus, which we would drink theatrically mid-song to illustrate the song lyrics.  We had a blast as you do when you are young and drive around the country playing music night after night, to town after town.   I could still stay up very late.  I could still drink a glass of Jack Daniels.  (I still gargle with it before recording vocals, but that’s the limit nowadays.) Some cool shows, but also plenty of lame-o shows in bars singing our hearts out to the sound guys, donned in our shimmering velvets.  (Always a guy, never a gal in those days.  Glad to hear that’s changed in the last quarter century.)

One day we found out that Cindy Lee’s scheduled show in Albany was cancelled.  Big bummer.  We were staying at Cindy Lee’s boyfriend Paul William’s mother’s house in Boston to save hotel costs.  (Lots of apostrophes but bear with me.)  Cindy Lee and Paul got married, but this was before then, before he and Cindy Lee had a son, before Paul’s devastating brain injury, before his death.  Paul was a genius writer of books about people like Bob Dylan.  When he was still a teenager, he started the first rock and roll magazine (even before Rolling Stone) called Crawdaddy.  Paul achieved great things and was acknowledged for them by the world.  But Paul’s mother wasn’t impressed with her own son.  “I never bought into Paul’s fame,” she told us bitterly during our stay there.  I think she wanted him to be a nuclear scientist like Paul’s dad, but he used his big and gentle brain in other ways, to shape the field of rock criticism.  She couldn’t understand that Paul lived the life he wanted to live, a writer’s life, a bohemian life.  I have no doubt that she loved him, but it was hard to hear that she felt that way. 

Cindy Lee and I were kind of glum in this downer atmosphere.  I remember sitting side by side on some steps with our heads down in pondering mode, wondering what to do since the gig was cancelled.  I brought up my mother’s idea about the living room show.  I wondered if a group of internet fans (remember, very early days, 1997, no social media!) who had been showing up for a few shows on the tour might be interested in a casual “show” like this.  Maybe some of them were in Boston too. 

Cindy Lee was way more experienced in the music biz than me.  She had a booking agent who had booked this tour.  Ten years before, she had a vinyl album of her songs put out on a prestigious label.  Way back when it was not retro cool, before CDs even.   She knew oodles of famous people.  She knew Beck when he was a kid and she was a New York City punk-ish yet folky fringe celebrity.   Cindy Lee and I are the same age, but I started performing later than she did.  I put out my first tape and my first CD on my own label.  As all my friends know, I was (still am) always idealistic and unpragmatic and clueless about the actual music business which pretty much repelled me.  So my opinion was admittedly suspect. 

At first, she thought the idea was crazy.  She’d played in a lot of prestigious clubs and theaters and on TV, so it seemed downhill and depressing to play in some random schmo’s living room.  But because in my experience my mother is very often right, I kept bugging her.  “It could be a free show,” I said.  “Sounds more fun than doing nothing!”   Finally she caved: “OK, fine.  What do we have to lose?”  No cell phones yet, so we used the phone there at Paul’s mother’s house and a calling card as we did back in the olden days.  I called up Larry Greenfield, who was part of this early internet fan group.  They called themselves the Everyday Angels (EDAs), based on a line from Jewel, who they loved with fervent devotion.  They were a big part of Jewel’s enormous success, harnessing the early potential of the internet.  Here is an archived internal listserv post about that call:

Hey all Boston-area EDAs!!

I just got a call *from the road* from Elizabeth Hummel:

The Cindy Lee Berryhill/EH performance this weekend in Albany was scrubbed, and these angels are remaining in the Boston area for some part of the weekend.As a treat for the EDAs, they asked me to convey to y'all that they would like to have an "open house" performance to which all EDAs are invited, probably some time Friday night. 

As a result, the first living room show happened at Chris Snyder’s apartment in Boston 48 hours later, filled with this wonderful group of people, the Everyday Angels. 

We stepped into magic when we stepped into that first living room in Boston.  Apparently, we played for four hours straight! It was the best show of the entire tour, and one of the best shows in my life.  After that show, Cindy Lee and I went on to do the first Living Room Tour (LRT) through multiple states, organized and hosted by these early internet music fans.  More LRTs followed with our other friends from San Diego.  Rolling Stone even interviewed Cindy Lee about the phenomenon.  

These days, House Concerts are a total thing in the music business.  They weren’t before the Living Room Tours.  And it’s all because of my amazing mother’s down-to-earth and outside the box idea.  A quintessential example of being an “everyday angel.” These days I still love to do Living Room Concerts—in fact they’re the only kind of show I will consider besides singing for my elders.

John Castro was the bass player for Steve Poltz’s band the Rugburns, and he sings with me here.  Beautiful harmonies.  We were always backing each other up in those days, so John jumping in to sing with me during my set was not unusual.   

Thanks to archivist extraordinaire Alan Bershaw for this video from 1997.  25 years later, Alan is still the archivist for Jewel and many other artists.  Alan is the beating heart of the Living Room concert phenomenon.  He filmed and recorded many of the living room shows, including that first one.  We artists are all indebted to Alan for his footage and audio, but even more for his spirit of immense, deep and broad musical appreciation. 

After that first living room concert in Boston, Alan wrote a rave review of the event to the Everyday Angels listserv. He ended with: “This kind of stuff needs to keep happening…”

25 years later, and I couldn’t agree more.