Jamie Anderson Video Biography: Singer-Songwriter, Parking Lot Attendant

Jamie Anderson, the singer-songwriter who is doing a benefit house concert at Heathcote Community on May 22, has a fun video biography on youtube. Please take some time to get to know this artist if you’re not already a fan. Her work runs a wide continuum from comedic to sensual, employing many musical styles along the journey.

In the biography, she talks about how having a musician for a dad influenced her life’s path. I can totally relate. My dad was an insurance executive and I to this day have the compulsion to get paid for telling people that things could go very badly, we should all prepare for calamity.

My dad, Bill Dolen, was also a professional musician who played saxophone in the big band days. I felt deeply connected to him when I learned sax as a kid. Of course, I didn’t pick sax out of all the limitless instrument possibilities; I wanted to play flute. Nice, lightweight, girly. But my family had a saxophone in the house, so rather than renting a band instrument for me, we went with what we had. Of course, the frugality of that was slightly offset when my parents had to buy a luggage carrier with wheels because this petite eight year-old couldn’t lug her alto sax onto the city bus to go to school.

The weight of that sax in comparison to its new player was the ultimate killer of my musical career. Even with the wheels, I so hated the burden of dragging Dad’s alto sax to and from my downtown alternative school that I took to leaving it in the band closet with all the other instruments. I like to think it made friends, ala Toy Story or Brave Little Toaster. So that when someone broke into that band closet and stole the school’s wind instruments, my brass Bundy bravely went along, out of solidarity.

I felt crushed. I had lost my dad’s saxophone. This is when I learned that the one I’d been playing in the school band was not one he’d used in the big bands, but one that Mom had bought him as a gift. Uggh. Worse.

My parents got me a flute. I took private lessons. But that flute was not brave. It wasn’t Dad’s. I was never going to be the same pre-sax kid again. Hmm. Did Dad’s butch saxophone make me queer? Hmm…

What’s your musical biography? Post in comments here, or on our HCD facebook fan page!

See you all on Sunday, May 22 at 7pm at Heathcote Community for Jamie Anderson! RSVP at 410-458-2310. The event will include a fundraising dinner beforehand and a silent auction, details to come! And check out Jamie’s video biography below! I will be posting links to several of her songs in the weeks leading up to the concert.   —WT

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In my world, Permaculture education and comedic Lesbian folk music are a luscious combination, like chocolate and peanut butter. Remember those Reese’s commercials in which one person is walking down the street eating a chocolate bar and someone is walking towards them eating from a jar of peanut butter and they’re both so self absorbed that they don’t see the other, collide, and their food gets combined, thus delivering them to a higher level of Nirvana? Well, Jamie Anderson probably has a song about that.

I’ve been keeping it in the back of my mind that I’d like to get Jamie to Heathcote Community for our House Concert Series, and now that chocolaty muse has collided with Heathcote’s exciting new opportunity: An adjoining piece of land which we’ve always held dear is for sale, giving us a chance to greatly expand our organic farming and Permaculture education programs. Oooh! Peanut butter!

The Anacker Land

Heathcote Community was founded in 1965 when Bill and Margaret Anacker, members of the School of Living, sold  a 37 acre parcel of their land to SoL as a headquarters for the magazine Green Revolution and as a  homesteading demonstration site. As a 1960’s & 70’s style hippie commune sprouted and grew on the land, Bill and Margaret were very involved, mentoring young folks in homesteading and sustainability skills. The community overlapped onto other parts of the Anackers’ land and the community evolved into a wimmin’s land  through the 80’s and eventually a mixed queer & straight community of settled members. Over time, Heathcote acquired parcels we call the Farmhouse land and Cabin land, or, Back 70, both of which had previously been the Anackers’, and which helped us expand our membership and unify our little valley.

Now with Margaret passed on and Bill needing eldercare, the Anacker family is selling the 24 acre parcel on which Bill and Margaret homesteaded for so long. This land would give Heathcote our first substantial ridge top acreage, suitable for gardening/farming we haven’t been able to do down in our narrow valley and flood plain. This would allow us to expand our Permaculture education, internships and community membership, and provide crops for donation, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and/or market gardening, as well as allowing Heathcote to increase our food self-sufficiency.

We have some substantial pledges from large donors, starting us on our way. We’re partnering with Fusion of Baltimore as our fiscal sponsors. We’ve formed a fundraising committee and seek broad community support for bringing the Anacker land into the community.

Jamie Anderson

Award winning singer-songwriter/parking lot attendant Anderson plays tunes that go from sexy to silly, witty to whimsical.  She first hit my radar when Louisville DJ and Yer Girlfriend vocalist Laura Shine played her music at a time when we were first launching our Fairness Campaign there. She’s been on my playlist ever since!

She draws from many influences. As her website explains: She’s country without the big hair, bluegrass without the whiny tenor, blues without selling her soul and rock without the dirty t-shirt.

Besides songs that range from laugh out loud to tugging on your heartstrings, Jamie is adept at improving witty, thoughtful intros and stories. Her shows are great entertainment on many levels!

More nibblets from her site:

When Jamie isn’t touring, she’s taught songwriting, guitar and other classes at Duke University, arts centers, privately and at festivals all over the country. She has a chapter in Songwriting and the Guitar, a book that also includes Paul Simon, The Indigo Girls, Joni Mitchell and others. Jamie is a freelance writer whose articles and CD reviews have appeared in Acoustic Guitar, Curve, SingOut! and more.

Anderson’s awards include Finalist (USA Songwriting Competition, “Your Mama Scares Me,” 2008), the Jane Schliessman Award for Outstanding Contributions to Women’s Music (Women in the Arts, 2006), Best Folk Album (The Independent, A Promise of Light, 2005), Honorable Mention (Great American Song Contest, “Beautiful,” 2005), and others that only her mama cares about.

Save the date: May 22, 7pm. And stay tuned to Hippie Chick Diaries for more articles with links to Jamie’s songs and details about our silent auction and plant sales!

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One thing that is the same at Heathcote, my Intentional Community, as in the wider world is our tendency to over-schedule and over-commit.

It’s a predictable comedy when we whip out our calendars at meetings and try to find a date for any outing, celebration or committee work. We’re certain to settle on some compromise date that leaves some people falling off the edges, “I can’t be there, but you all have it without me…”

Even as I shift my own projects, saying good bye to Open Classroom and selling off our fair trade retail venture Heathcote Earthings, my freed-up weekends have somehow gotten scheduled.

Nature abhors that vacuum; Wherever it appears, here comes stuff flying in!

Last summer, I kept the Communities Conference at Twin Oaks on my calendar for months. Finally I would get to go, represent Heathcote, market ZEGG Forum to Communities, network, play, eat, etc.

But wait! Along came Mother Earth Harvest Fair, holding an organizing meeting on the same weekend, conflicting with a great gathering at which I could have marketed…Mother Earth Harvest Fair.

Notice the subtle difference in saying, “This is when the meeting is,” versus, “When can you meet?” In either case, I expect you’ll have people dropped off the edges. But if I’m invited to find a date that works for me and that becomes difficult, I can opt to serve the higher good with my, “You all meet without me.” If I’m informed of a date and I have a conflict, I’m faced with breaking one commitment or the other. It’s a subtlety of inclusion and empowerment, I know.

So…I had low expectations when I opened my Netflix in the Heathcote kitchen and announced to the random Heathcoters within earshot, “Hey, I have season one of The L-Word! Who wants to watch?” Karen, my sister in queerness, zoomed up to answer me. “I’ve always wanted to watch that but I haven’t gotten around to it!”

That was the case with me, as well. Two over-scheduled gurrls, living in the woods who haven’t gotten around to checking out the now-canceled L-Word since it first aired in 2004…Ah…Sad.

“Can you watch it tonight?” I cringed, not daring to hope. I could see this collaboration log jamming my Netflix queue for the next month.

“Well, I have one thing I really have to do, but after that, maybe eight o’clock?”

What just happened? Did she say tonight?

She was clearly trying to calm the series of faces I was making, but I took the offer. And it only took until half way through dinner for Karen to warn me of her second thoughts. “I’m really feeling tired,” And, on schedule, half way through dinner cleanup she recanted, “I really want to see it but I know I’m not going to make it through. I’m just wiped out…”

You can put the tea in Ellie, my favorite mug. It has a band of runes that spell the four elements. I don't see that on The L-Word...

Watching on my own, I found out this land dyke wasn’t missing anything. I bailed after three episodes; I just wasn’t hooked. I can’t relate to rich lipstick sisters and their suburban problems. I’m still hoping for some Princess Charming who doesn’t know she has motor oil behind her ear (so cute) to saunter over here and haul this goat chow up the hill, and then make me some ginger nettle tea and massage my aching joints…between her many committee meetings.

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Relationships, polyamorous or monogamous, are complicated enough. Imagine if all your friends had to reach consensus on whether you and your sweetie(s) could move in together. Well, actually, your friends might relish that power. Anyway, welcome to the alien terrain in which my partner and I find ourselves. I live at Heathcote Community and in order for my partner to share my home, he has to apply and be accepted as a member of the Community, a process that can take eight months or more to be finalized.

Even though Heathcote is a mixture of couples and singles, this is not an issue we’ve often faced, considering a membership application from an existing member’s lover. It’s a very different dynamic than welcoming a couple together or an individual. What happens if someone doesn’t like this new partner?

In our tried and true process, we invite an applicant to visit for 21 days, either consecutively or over time. We get acquainted and discuss the Community’s values, systems, etc. Either the applicant or a Heathcoter can decide at any time that things don’t seem to be a match. But if all seems cozy, we approve the applicant to move in and begin a seven month provisional membership period.

But what if there is an issue, and it’s a community member’s lover? The stakes get much higher. If the Community rejects this applicant, they stand a good chance of losing an existing member, too. Will people feel pressured, in that case, to ignore problems?

My partner, C.T., has unique worries. He’s a consensus trainer and writer. Will Community members feel self conscious practicing consensus around him, or will they be resistant to his thoughts on our process, assuming that he expects us to do things his way? How to tread lightly and lovingly when you’re something of a big wig in your field…

Mostly things are smooth sailing so far. But I know everyone’s aware of the new dynamic. We did dance here briefly before when a former partner of mine applied. That was quite a minefield, as that partner truly wasn’t a fit for Heathcote, despite being likable on many levels.

Now C.T. and I aren’t the only ones. Nick’s partner Rachel has applied for membership. Previously, I experienced that moving to a small, rural Community as a single person was a decision to remain single. It seemed very hard to make, maintain and grow connections.

Did something shift? Has the internet negated that isolation? I have had good luck with GreenSingles… Whatever the case, along with the singles and couples interested in Heathcote, we also have partners coming to roost!

—WT

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Purple Dawn on the hill
would open orchids
with mental jaws-of-life,
boldly blazing,

But a quiet moment
has Venus flytrapped her,
mirroring her brovada,
leaving her limp.

Wilted! Just add water
and she’ll daisy dance,
teaching Crayola-cheeked children
the sublime cartography

of tripping on joy,
of squashing trailers,
of walking on hot coals
with matches between your toes.

It’s a vision worth
open eyes
every time she climbs down
here.

—WT

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You’re a cheap shoe,
a K-Mart ingenue,
white sole, synthetic smile,
sloppy laces fated to fray,
sloppy canvas that bleeds my socks.
Always complications!

I’ve been lucky enough
to find just my size
and then the surprise of
an enjoyable fit.
A one season shoe,
no presumptuous spring
in your step,
bouncing back from
the perils of pavement.
You give in at the toe, heave ho.
And I out grow, and,
Dear John, move on…

—WT

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Now Blindness asks, What’s in a photograph?
That bending scent–your garden, ripe with dew…
Your softball scar! My gawky dyke giraffe!
Some laughter echoes, tracing down our youth.

The card’mom ghosts that clung to kitchen air…
House renovations–rainbow gingerbread…
The peachy rinse that clouded your roped hair…
Accordion folds…your grin, the sheets, our bed…

Apartments old and brittle; photographs.
So clingy to the touch…Prints left behind…
Your book unshelved, you cradle it–new calf.
Between the slips you visit wilder times

Without me. I turn off light’s waterfall–
Your skin my album…my state…sweet recall.

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It’s a brute and it’s abrupt,
concrete step, cold in summer,
4 a.m. Geneva. Sterile gowns are
being unloaded beside me.
I guess they’ve learned to leave
the grieving alone on this shift.

It’s the most complete thought I’ve
had in an hour. If I don’t take the next
breath, the next moment won’t have
to come, the one without you in it.

And I might go back upstairs, slide my
palm under your fingers like a plate, wait
for the quiver that comes, might come
if I don’t breathe.

Why isn’t everyone screaming their
heads off? Why don’t the floors
buckle and the walls bleed? I should
have stayed longer, held you longer.

Simone, Simone. If I mantra your name
you’ll freeze with me. We’ll think of
something. I’ll think of something.
The doctors will think of something.

I’ve made it as far as the loading dock.
Simone, if you’re not going to breathe,
I’ll have to. The baby only knows
breathing and screaming.

—WT

This poem is a character sketch for the dramatic climax of the comedy screenplay, My Second Simone. The story is set in Baltimore and Geneva, Switzerland.

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Bathwater Tea

Let’s banish Earl Grey in
favor of darjeeling
but bring back the
bergamot when the
window moon sings
lavender, orange peel and steam.
Candles from your “used” box,
red, peach, lime, cobalt colors,
sit on saucers from the
set your mother gave–
If she only knew.

It’s a clawfoot kettle,
a tapwater Niagara
spills, rage into resignation,
passion into peaceful
poolfullls of surrender.
Nowhere to go baby!

Rose petals bob and wash
up, saved, on the shore of your skin.
I know that shore and
I shadow it again
in the flickerlight, where your
everyday worrylines soften,
surrender, still oil shining on your
surfaces,
rocking in pastel paisleys on the
water’s lip,
kissing your crevices,
and I climb in.

I sip from your darjeeling
and it pools on my tongue
and I laugh, still self conscious
after all these moons. Your
full breasts surface as
you accommodate me
and I dive into a fragrance,
a fleshy bubble and a
cavernous mouthful of
darjeeling, bathwater and you.

—WT

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Addah Belle’s pocket watch stands open
on my desk like a sandwich board
advertisement.

I want to shrink down and crawl under it,
camping in my ticking tent. Constellations and
bug spray.

Addah Belle knew me. She could
look at me and tell. She could tell my
future. In her time women married.

Addah Belle chose door number two
and taught at a girls’ finishing school,
finishing them off for marriage.

Retirement came abruptly. Bourbon and
ceremonies. The stillness of her room
in the farmhouse. And no Marion.

Two twin beds, like a dormitory, and her
married sister downstairs and grandkids on
long weekends.

So I, her grand niece, tracked in
with pocket frogs, too-close best
friends and notebooks. She noticed.

Mom cut my unattended hair short.
Strangers took me for a boy. A boy
with notebooks. Listening to Auntie.

And the pocket watch tent would ticka tick,
flashlights and ghost stories on her desk while
she advised I could be a writer, plan a career.

In her time pocket watches were for men.
That might be how it came to her. Tom,
the last at bat who walked home

lost, wondering why she wouldn’t
marry him, why remaining at school with
Marion was preferable. The watch

forgotten on a wash stand, a library shelf,
a parlor bridge table. Tempus abire tibi est.        [It’s time for you to go away]
But the watch she kept and wound, for the sound.

I was a writer when she died.  I was a lesbian when
I found her love letters. I hope I am memory as I ticka
tick away at a career, our career.

Tempus vitam regit.            [Time rules life]

—WT

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