Sunday, no list
but a very real On The Record
I enjoy doing My Sunday List. But doing it honestly requires living it, and I’ve been sick since Monday, so I can’t imagine anything that would be inspiring or interesting in hardly leaving the house. I’m on the mend and it isn’t COVID, but whatever virus it is laid me flat for a few days.
One of those days was yesterday, for whatever reason. I spent most of the day on the sofa feeling a bit out of it, and at one point picked up my phone to check notifications and I saw on Instagram that my 4th album, The Duel, came out on April 13, 2004. 20 years. I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I became almost motionless as I let my mind go back 21 years, to 2003, when the album was recorded.
What song could I bear to listen to?
I clicked on the Spotify app and found the album, then clicked on “Baby Dreamer,” but fast forwarded to the guitar solo, brilliantly played by Adam Landry. I was transported. I was in the control room at House of David studio, just about a mile and half away from where I sit right now.
I was so sad when I recorded that album. You can hear it — I sound haggard and put out. I was 31 years old and my life and art had been hijacked by the guy I had married, and I had no idea how to protect myself from it. I didn’t even realize it was happening until it was too late to save what could’ve been a more successful mainstream career. I was so traumatized, so uncentered, so afraid. I had no confidence, and didn’t realize I was recreating my childhood dramas to the best of my ability at every turn with a person I’d latched onto precisely because of his willingness to do it with me. There’s that stomach punch again. This time it comes wrapped in shame. Wear this, stand like this, say this, sing this. It was all too familiar — so familiar that I didn’t recognize that it was completely dysfunctional and ruining my chance of having a decent life. I lift my head and take a deep breath. I wonder if I should say these things — I’ve never said them — but I’m finding it hard to come up with a reason not to, this far down the line. So what if he doesn’t like it? I think he has some naked photos of me. I don’t care. He can’t say any of this isn’t true.
I didn’t so much leave as flee the marriage. It was abusive and he controlled almost everything I did. I remember feeling, when I was dropped at the airport to board a flight to Amsterdam to join the Steve Earle tour in early November 2004, that I wouldn’t come back in six weeks as the same person. I hoped I wouldn’t come back as the same person. I had a feeling of uncertainty, but also one of excitement. I was going to spend 6 weeks touring in Europe. My intuition ended up being correct. Steve and I had become friends on the US leg of the tour, we sang a few duets together and I was, of course, a major fan of his. But I quickly very much liked his spirit and enthusiasm for the world and the beautiful things in it. I also liked his enthusiasm for me. When I got off the stage after the first show in Amsterdam a few days after I took that overnight flight from Nashville, he was there to tell me how good I was playing solo — I didn’t have a band and he knew I was nervous about playing with zero support behind me, as my experience with that style of show had never been in front of a large audience. The affirmation startled me — praise wasn’t something I was used to hearing after performing. My mind went back to six months earlier when the band and I had performed on The Jay Leno Show — my husband had not been happy with the way I sang, and he told me so immediately after the performance, pouted the rest of the evening, and bad vibed me, the band, the bar we went to to try to be celebratory, and the entire city of Los Angeles. I was rarely allowed to feel good about anything I did that didn’t meet his approval or wasn’t his idea. I, of course, wasn’t familiar with the concept of a boundary. He had me so bamboozled and so convinced I couldn’t even write songs without him that I put up with far too much for far too long. I thought I needed him to tell me what to do. What I needed was freedom and time to become someone. I was so young — he was 11 years older and far more worldly — I was fresh out of college and Alabama and had no idea who I was when we met. I felt I was some sort of artist but didn’t know what kind. I had only sung with my sister at that point. When I began to think about a solo career, he was there to lend his influence. He didn’t like my lyrics most of the time — he’d take what he liked of mine and then “finish” it for me instead of allowing me any time to develop. Some of the first songs I wrote ended up on my first album, which came out when I was 26 years old so I wasn’t even supposed to be a good writer yet because I’m not Hank Williams or another genius — but he even tried to keep me from learning when I started getting the chance. Don’t give them anything good! I remember him shouting at me when I’d leave for a co-write at my publisher’s office. My publisher that had given me a very nice songwriting deal with a monthly draw that we lived on so I would have time to develop as a songwriter. He tried to convince me to keep A Soft Place to Fall off the album because it wasn’t a co-write with him. He said it wasn’t as good as our songs. It’s funny, because one of the main themes of the music business in those days was major label vs. independent label and which one would give an artist the most freedom. I think it’s ironic that my first label, the very major MCA, hardly told me what to do at all. Tony Brown kept me protected from most of the folks at the label who might’ve tried to get me to veer more commercial. But I was very much a puppet for my husband. I had to get approval from him for everything I did if I wanted to have any peace. But I didn’t have any business singing those songs. I wasn’t an atheist and I didn’t even want to portray a character that was. I don’t know why I did. It was so dark. I’m not proud of the way I presented myself. It’s a good sounding record, though, and I like that about it. I’m also glad I got the chance to work with Adam Landry, John Davis, Richard McLaurin, Jon Grissom, Pat Isbey, and Steve Buckingham/Sugar Hill Records.
I could go on, but that’s enough. I’ve kept so much about those years inside and most of it should remain there, but I feel a certain responsibility to say the truth about my own journey and how very rocky my path was for a good, long while. Someone else may feel like I did then. Someone else may need to know that their intuition isn’t lying. Someone else may need to know there’s no reason to feel ashamed about their past behavior, even if the best they could do wasn’t very good. As Dr. Angelou said, When we know better, we do better. I certainly have. But it took me so long to know better. And I’ve been so ashamed to admit this, y’all. But I think one of the main reasons I haven’t been able to really forgive it is because I haven’t been able to say much about it. And I very much seek forgiveness, of myself, and of him. I very hungrily seek to lose my embarrassment about that time of my life. I wasn’t healthy in any sense of the word. Closure isn’t necessary. But acknowledgment is. Because I am a woman who carries inherited trauma from her abused mother. Because she was abused by someone before she even met my father. Because that trauma changed her and the trajectory of her life. And mine changed me and mine. And we as a species can figure out how to prevent a great deal of it, if we want to. But we can’t do it if we don’t talk about it.
Blood came out almost five years ago. I’ve learned a few things since then — things about my Mama that have given me much more to go on about how she became the woman I knew. I’ve learned some things about my father and who he was as well. And if I could go back and add an epilogue to Blood, I would. Not because I don’t know that art is only a record of the time in which it was made, I can make peace with that. But because I want to say more about forgiveness of them, and also more about the things that left such lasting effects on me. I hadn’t even scratched the surface in 2017, when I decided I had to end my work on that book. I understand so much more about their respective generational trauma, and ultimately how little they had individually to bring into their marriage. And I understand so much more about why I’ve struggled in relationships in the same ways they did. I understand so much more about what I have to do not to. I don’t want to do what they did.
I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to do the work to dig down to these things.
And what I find when I get down in there is compassion for us all. Every single one of us. Even the hurtful ones among us — don’t forget that most of us are the hurtful ones, at least some of the time.
I’m certainly not trying to blame anything on anyone, not even myself, for the first time ever. And I’m certainly not trying to kick any sleeping dogs. I think we all do the best we can with what we have to do it most days. It all just leaves me feeling more certain that doing this work is the only way to get through it and ultimately find light. Sooner or later, if we’re lucky, our relationships teach us what we need to learn.
I’m grateful for my teachers. I’m grateful for The Duel. I’m grateful for the clarity I’ve gained from every one of my phases.
I’m grateful for my path, no matter how rocky. It’s smoothing out now that I’m here. I don’t expect it to stay that way, but I also know more about how to take the clearer route now.
I hope y’all have had a good Sunday. Thank you for your love.
Peace. Love. Rock on.
Allison
