Between a Heart and a Rock Place (28 page)

I should also say here that I am personally a pretty political person. I have strongly held political beliefs. But I don't talk about them publicly, and I certainly don't try to influence anyone to think like I do. For one thing, I don't want to put people off just because we think differently on one thing or another. For a second thing, it's not my job to go onstage and be political. I don't like the idea of people picking their politics because of a favorite star. For me to give a speech was the most remote of possibilities.

But this was not about politics; this was about the collective loss that America had just suffered. When I spoke, I tried to be as honest as I could. I'm not a big talker onstage. I'll introduce songs and tell a story now and then, but I'd much rather be singing. I told them that I didn't know what to say. I didn't have a plan. I was feeling just like they were—shocked, confused, and afraid. I told them that doing this
show was going to be very difficult for us, but we would do our best. We might make mistakes, choose songs that might be inappropriate, and that we'd stop if we felt weird.

We began the show with “America the Beautiful” they all joined in, and the words never seemed more fitting. As I looked at their upturned faces on that pristine early fall evening, I began to feel strong and defiant. I was sad but I was angry. Who were these people who did this, who'd murdered civilians? I told them we must stand up against the ones who did this. People who threatened democracy and freedom. This was the United States of America and we would not stand down. That our forefathers had a dream of freedom for all and
nobody
was going to destroy that. They could crash planes and knock down buildings but not our spirit. The people who died that day didn't die for nothing.

As I said the words, I could feel a shift taking hold. Everyone started to rally; the energy was changing and we were moving from fear to pride. And just as the transformation of the crowd seemed at its pinnacle, we launched into “Invincible,” and the lyrics took on a whole new meaning: “We can't afford to be innocent / Stand up and face the enemy / It's a do or die situation / We will be invincible.”

We continued in that way for the rest of the evening, playing songs and discussing how everyone was feeling. So many of them worried that we wouldn't be able to get back to normalcy any time soon. They worried about the upcoming holidays, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and whether we'd be able to celebrate as a country.

“How are we gonna have Christmas? How will anyone feel like celebrating?” one person called out.

“Oh, we're gonna have Christmas,” I shouted back. “We're going to do what we do best: pick ourselves up and move forward. We are
going
to have Christmas!”

That night, when we got back to the hotel, the genesis of a song started rolling around in my head. The lyrics would come from the
conversations we had with the audience at the Napa show. I would call it “Christmas in America.” Part of the song goes like this:

 

So keep your babies close tonight

Hug your husband, kiss your wife

Be thankful for this way of life,

We're fortunate to share

And not forget the ones we've lost

Their memory lives on in our hearts

They'll be forever in our thoughts

And always in our prayers

Unto this world a child is born

His gift was meant for everyone

The light of peace shines on and on

And never fades away

America, America indivisible we are

One nation under God

And that will never change

Coz it's Christmas in America

Let the angels sing

It's Christmas in America

Let freedom ring

Let peace resound throughout the world

Especially on this day

It's Christmas in America

God bless the USA

 

That night, I was awed by the healing power of music. It wasn't so much anything I had done as it was the crowd's willingness to go along with me, to open and come together. Standing up there that night, I felt an intense sense of pride that our music had helped ease the pain of
a terrible situation, if even for just a couple of hours. The whole thing was cathartic. I had never done any kind of a sit-down with an audience. To have that conversation on that night was exhilarating and healing.

As fate would have it, we played four more shows in quick succession, and for each of those shows, I repeated the give-and-take. I needed it and the audiences needed it. Every time it was the same, an audience filled with flag-waving, heartbroken Americans who rallied and stood strong as the night went on. What those shows taught me is that we do have a collective American soul. It was important for that audience to have a place to come on the night of 9/11, a place where they could interact and show their love of their country. Even as I write this almost nine years later, the memory of those days is so vivid and uplifting.

Most Americans acted with grace and exemplary behavior in the face of this tragedy, but there is always a group who just can't seem to get with the program. This group usually needs a two-by-four across the face to get the point, and the promoter of our final show was precisely one of these people.

One of the conditions of our summer tours is that we always have to be home and off tour by September 15, because that's when school starts. I'm a hands-on mom when it comes to the girls' schools and so I'd always made that a priority. After those four dates following September 11, we had gone home to California so Hana would be there for the first day of school. We had a few days to unwind, and then we were scheduled for a final show in Florida that would have required us to fly. Of course, after 9/11 there was a ban on flying for several days. This fact was publicized in every newspaper and on every TV and radio station. You would have had to have been living underground
not
to know about it. It was assumed we would not perform, because no one was flying, the skies were not safe, and there wasn't enough time to drive across the country and make the show.

Well, apparently the promoter in Florida didn't care about any of that. The moment the ban was lifted, he demanded we do the gig. When John called me to tell me the news, I was incredulous.

“No way. You tell the promoter we fly with our children, and I'm not getting on a plane with them a week after terrorists attacked our country. Tell him we'll reschedule when things calm down. When we can be sure it's safe to fly. We'll honor the contract and make up the date. This guy has to understand the situation.”

He didn't. He was adamant that we play and threatened to sue us if we didn't fulfill our obligation. What is it about human beings? Disasters either bring out the best in us or show the ugliness that we're capable of. I was stunned but not surprised. So I decided what I
was
willing to do. I told our agent Brad Goodman to call the promoter and ask him if he had children. If he did, I asked him to put his wife and
one
child on a plane, not a private jet but a commercial airliner, so they could fly across the country to California to pick me and my family up. If he was willing to do that, then I would fly to Florida and do the gig.

You know what happened then. That was the end of it. He didn't ask again, nor did he sue me.

One thing that I believe 9/11 did for people was to make them see just how precious and fragile life is, and to make family a priority. At least I hope it did. We'd tried hard to put our family first, and 9/11 simply reinforced the importance of those choices.

 

W
HILE
9/11
LEFT EVERYONE
reeling in emotion, I had no doubt that we would all emerge a stronger, more resilient country as a result of what we'd been through. But as it turned out, it wouldn't be long until my personal resilience was tested again by tragedy.

On December 2, 2002, my brother, Andy, died suddenly of a heart attack at the young age of forty-six. He was driving my father-in-law
and Haley when it happened, and even in the middle of it, he had the wherewithal to slow down the car so they wouldn't crash. The instant Spyder and I heard what had happened, we sped over to my parents' house and told them there'd been an accident. We all rushed to the hospital. I can still see the emergency doors swinging open and Haley leaning forward and shaking her head no. He didn't make it.

My family was heartbroken. Andy had been my best friend since childhood. He was one of the great joys of my life—his humor, his gentle demeanor, his love of family. Just because we were all grown up didn't mean that I'd lost my feelings of responsibility toward him. I was still on the lookout for him at all times, and now he was gone in an instant. Even now, all these years later, I still have dreams about Andy. In my dreams he's alive and laughs at my surprise at seeing him. He's still the joker, still my baby brother. He tells me that he is fine. I miss him every day.

In the aftermath, I just couldn't stand it. Nor could my parents. It nearly killed them. I couldn't make sense of how something like this could happen, how someone so special could be taken from me with such swift resolution. It was so awful that I found myself wanting to spend more time in Hawaii, wanting to get as far from the familiar as possible. When he died we were still building our house there, and though initially it was just meant to be a getaway, it was our dream to live there full-time. After Andy died, I started thinking a lot about the impermanence of life, and eventually Spyder and I agreed that we should stop talking about living in Hana and actually do it. And after all that happened, we decided that it would be the right time to just do it. We ended up staying for four glorious years.

Perhaps it was partly because we were looking for a way to channel our sadness over Andy's death into our music, but in the year following his death, Spyder started wanting to get in the studio again. We hadn't made a studio album since 1997's
Innamorata
. So he said, “Why don't we make a record?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I'm feeling kind of lazy.”

“Come on, come on.”

“I don't know. I've decided now that I'm an old woman in my fifties, I'm just gonna be opinionated and lazy.”

“You were a pain in the ass when you were young! Now you want to be an
old
pain in the ass?”

And so we ended up laughing and making a record titled
Go
. It's a guitar-driven record, something we'd moved away from on
Innamorata
. It was great to be bashing again. It was the first album that we recorded completely digitally—no tape whatsoever. While I was intrigued by the new process, I was a little freaked out as well. All the tracks, all the vocals, weren't on the twenty-four-track tape; they were numbers stored on air. It was strange to think that there was nothing physical that existed to prove what we'd actually made. It was all just space on a computer.

Making
Go
was a unique experience. It was the first time after twenty-four years of recording that we would make a record totally unencumbered. We weren't just musicians anymore. Of course, the workload was enormous at times. There was no strolling into the studio at one
P.M
., Starbucks in hand. We were in charge of financing, distribution, marketing artwork, and while it was a daunting responsibility, it was exciting to finally realize the goal we'd been working toward for so long. All of the lessons we'd learned from our experience with
Innamorata
were put to incredibly good use, and they really supported our decision to learn the indie business from the outside before diving in ourselves.

We worked round the clock, and when we weren't recording, we were doing any number of other necessary tasks, from writing to choosing artwork for the cover to making distribution deals. It was busy but gratifying. The idea that we were responsible for our own destiny was extraordinary. If things went south it was our doing. Likewise, if things
were a success, that would be our fault too. Either way, it was so much easier to live our fate knowing that we weren't at the mercy of someone else's whim.

Recording was fun for me, although Spyder says that he got too deep into making it and couldn't climb out—couldn't wrap it up. Then when he
did
finish it, he scrapped parts and redid them. Consequently, he's not a big fan of
Go,
but I think this all happened in part because our focus was spread out into so many areas. A big part of that record was learning how to manage and delegate duties when we were running the whole show. With a lot of that learning done, we'd have a better sense of things next time. In the end I think we made a good, solid record with some great stuff on it, but more important, we created the model for all future projects. We put “Christmas in America” on as a bonus track, and all the proceeds from the sale of the single were donated to a 9/11 charity organization.

After
Go,
we went on our annual summer tour, of course, but we also took on other projects as we kept ourselves visible. Of these, my absolute favorite was
CMT Crossroads,
a show on Country Music Television that pairs country artists with artists from other genres, and the two come together for a performance. We were set up with Martina McBride, whose work I was familiar with and had high regard for because of her vocal talent. As it turned out, I was even more impressed by her down-to-earth, no-nonsense personality. This was a woman I could relate to. She was much younger than me but was basically dealing with all the issues I'd dealt with throughout my career, save the sleazy program directors (there were laws against that now). But she, too, would pack up her daughters and take them with her, and she reminded me that juggling home, family, and career was alive and well. We spent an interesting and enlightening weekend together, comparing notes and swapping tips. The close bond that we shared ended up coming through in our performance, which went better than I could
have ever anticipated, becoming the second-highest rated in the show's history.