Back to the Blog: Part 1

It’s been a while and a lot has happened in 5 months. In October 2023, we had recently moved from Santa Monica to the Valley in Cali, had songs on streaming services with more on the way. We knew we wanted to play live and after Michael reconnected with Faith Kelly on IG, she and I became fast friends, virtual workout buddies, and modern pen pals. We noticed she was playing Sidepony Music Festival in Bisbee, AZ  Nov.10-12 (about a 10-hr drive from where we live) and I wanted to go see her and Caswyn Moon play live there.“You guys could play too,” she encouraged us and sent us the info. When I mentioned it to Michael, he was a bit apprehensive, but said “Fuck it, what’s the worst that could happen?” filled out an online form and a few hours later we were in. Then we said, “Oh shit. This is really happening”. Our first instinct was to put a band together. To our surprise, Nathan Roberts from the old Flaming Lips days who played drums on Priest Driven Ambulance and Hit to Death in the Future Head said he would play drums and David Jablonski from Marmoset said he could play guitar. David came out a few days before and we went over the songs that we had emailed them and rehearsed with Nathan on Facetime. It’s all kinda funny to think about now. I was so nervous playing with all of them because I look up to them and there I was, lil ole me, the very first rock show that I’ve ever played AND music heroes such as these. The day before our first show, we picked Nathan and Nancy (his partner) up in Phoenix on the way to Bisbee, AZ for our Sidepony adventure. Seeing Michael reminisce with his long time friend and hearing tales of yore made my heart melt. I was seeing Michael in this other element of happiness that I had never witnessed before. We arrived in the magically haunted town of Bisbee around midnight.

The Bisbee Grand Hotel gave us the opportunity to rehearse with each other for about an hour (our one and only rehearsal altogether the day of the show) which also happened to have an audience of people dining for brunch at the same time. We were and are still so thankful for them. By Saturday night, we saw the potential of how awesome this configuration could be. Nathan flew back to OKC for other obligations, but Michael, David  and I played one more show together and I got to play the drums while singing. It was terrifying. It was tough without Nathan, but we did it! Sometimes you gotta just throw yourself into something to get the ball rolling and assess what needs to happen next. I was physically sick with anxiety before getting on stage and with the help and support of Faith, Caz, and bandmates, I was able to keep going. It’s one thing to play in your living room or family gatherings when there’s not as much pressure, but on stage playing our songs that are so close to our hearts is like sharing personal diary entries while trying to emember lyrics, chords, and singing in tune. My body was tensing in ways that I never felt before. Very different than acting on stage or singing in a choir which is what I am used to. At first I was like, Oh! I got this!  How different can it be?  And then I was like Oh shit! WTF was I thinking. I experienced stage fright like never before. I remembered lyrics okay, but the chords turned to alphabet soup in my head, and I felt like Michael J Fox’s character - “Marty” in Back to the Future  - when he is being erased from time on stage. I questioned why was I even trying to do this? With the words of Bisbee wisdom around me, I realized that I had a choice. I could either get caught up in the complete mind fuck and jump ship OR climb back up on that pony and ride it like the wild stallion that it is. Michael and I kept at it when we returned - and in December met Nathan and David in Indy to rehearse more at David’s studio before playing a last minute show at The Mag Bar in Louisville, KY my ghostly old stomping grounds.  Most of my friends and family showed up which was so great, but that too came with a next level anxiety that I wasn’t prepared for. The show was getting better, but we still needed time to develop our sound and tighten up as band. We were beginning to feel the financial constraints of being able to make the band a more frequent occurrence since we we live in different parts of the country. Without any forthcoming financial support, Michael and I had to figure out how we could best make use of our time until we would figure out a way to get the band together for rehearsals.

When we returned home after the holidays, Michael and I decided to play as much as we could as a duo in front of people. But how???  We played our first Instagram Live ringing in 4 different New Year’s Eve time zones to kick ourselves off. The next day, Faith once again got us started (she’s my Fairy Angel Friend) If you know “Silver Faith”, you know how awesome of a person she is. We set up a virtual “live” open mic that she and Caz hosted and they played us over the speaker as part of their Food Bank Awareness open mic. We did one more Instagram Live during rehearsals in preparation for our first open mic on Jan 3, but decided we wanted to go to an IRL (In Real Life) open mic to see what it was all about. It would give me more experience playing in public. Before we knew it, we were playing 4 nights a week at various open mics in the LA area. I remember looking at Michael thinking how sweet he was to do this for me. It makes me cry to think that he loves me this much that he isn’t “above” doing open mics. Michael said that it leveled the playing field in a way because he had never played an open mic before himself.  (Just places like Sydney Opera House, The Red Rocks, Madison Square Gardens to name a few…It wasn’t always like that for the Lips. They played dive bars and places that only had a few audience members and played to no one, dug for change in the sofa and all slept in the same hotel room- but that’s a blog for another day. They weren’t handed anything on a silver platter in beginning and had to work hard for where they got). With me, Michael was all in with doing these open mics for me- so I could get more experience on stage and he knew that these were the steps that we needed to take to further our musical journey as The Lolly Bombs. If you’ve listened to our songs, they are big production songs that sound one way on Bandcamp or whatever streaming service you are listening to vs the stripped down band version vs the even more stripped down duo version that Michael and I are honing in on and having fun playing around with our foot pedals for fun effects. We decided we didn’t want to play live with any tracks or autotune - that it would be “what you see is what you get”- true, from the heart- not always perfect kind of songs. It’s what makes us human. Some people want to go to a show where everything is beautiful and perfect and that’s fine too. But that’s not us. We are real and human and hopefully getting better. Some shows will be better than others and that’s ok. It’s true, and real and this is how we like to connect with our audience.