Saturday, December 1, 2007
Elsa's Bio: The Long Story of My Life So Far
I was born in Strong, Maine at a birthing clinic inside an old Victorian house. It happened on May 7th 1982, which puts me at 25 years of age.
My parents lived in a trailer in “The Forks” with my 5 year-old brother when I was born. My father was a whitewater rafting guide on the Kennebec River, my mom was an off -and-on stay at home mom. They divorced when I was two and my mother moved my brother and me back to Exeter, New Hampshire, where she grew up, and where her parents still lived.
For quite a few years we lived the “single mom life.
Music has been a part of my life for as far back as I can remember. My mom would always listen to WOKQ, the local mainstream country station. It drove brother and I nuts! She would clean the house every Saturday morning and blast her boom box until we couldn’t stand it anymore.
Stability has never been a part of my world. We moved in and out of my grandparent’s house according to my mom’s financial situation. My grandmother (mom’s mom) is originally from Appalachia Pennsylvania along the West Virginia border. She was like my second mother growing up. I was with her sometimes more than half of the time. We would listen to Tennessee Ernie Ford records (her favorite), and she would tell me what life was like growing up on “the farm.
My mom has always been semi-religious, so for a sense of community when we moved back to Exeter she joined the Methodist Church. This is where my mom met her second husband and it is where I had my first real taste of live music. This particular church had an excellent live band and the congregation was extremely lively, most everyone would sing. The first time I ever sang in front of an audience was in that church. My stepsister, Erika, and I sang a duet during one of the Sunday services when I was 12. Erika and I loved to sing together. We were always annoying the shit out of our brothers. We would sing in the car on family vacations and I can remember singing myself to sleep almost every night.
My brother and I always had rooms next to each other so he would bang on the walls if I was keeping him up with my singing, “Shut up in there!” He would yell. Erika and I were also in a play together at The Leddy Center in Epping. It was called “The Nanny Goats Gruff.” I loved the feeling of being on stage, and most of all I loved the feedback that I would get from people. I’ll never forget the feeling when a woman from the church told me that I brought her to tears when I sang. I can’t describe how that made me feel, I wanted more! This is what made me think perhaps I wanted to act, I guess I didn’t know quite what I wanted to do, but I wanted be on stage no matter what.
In 7th grade I landed the part as Alice in a school production of “Alice in Wonderland.” That was definitely a shining moment for me.
My first instrument was the clarinet. I started playing it when I was in fourth grade, the first year that the school system lets you start playing an instrument. I wanted to play it because my older cousin played it and I looked up to her. I played in the school band and also attended music camp at the University of Maine for three summers, (6th, 7th, and 8th grades). I played for about five years and lost interest, mostly because my home life started to get pretty hectic.
My mother was a recovering alcoholic who started drinking again, along with my step dad when I was 15. My everyday household was centered around getting drunk until I left when I was 18. My mom divorced my step dad when I was 16, which sent us back to my grandparent’s house once again.
My biological father had phased himself pretty much out of life by this time, and I saw him maybe once or twice a year. His only brother had died suddenly when I was almost 13 and he never really recovered from that. He took to taking care of himself and that’s about it. His brother (my uncle Ronnie) was always musical. He had a band at Cony High School in Augusta, Maine, during his teens and loved to play guitar and sing. At his time of death he was in a local band from the Augusta area called The Rockit Band, which he also played guitar in. I have one of his acoustic guitars that my father gave me when he must have been drunk. Strangely, I write most of my music on that guitar.
Uncle Ronnie’s daughter, Ryan, was the one who played clarinet that I looked up to. She was in the Maine All-State Band for a few years in a row, that’s all I ever heard about, she’s also the reason I went to the University of Maine music camp. I wanted to be just like her, hoping I would be noticed by the family.
I only saw my Dad’s side of the family a couple of times a year and I was always struggling through my visits there. My grandmother is a trained singer, one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard. Her parents (from Alfred, Maine) put her into private all-girls schooling the whole way through. She had professional voice lessons from the beginning. She could have traveled around the world with her brother, Bud. He was the head of the music department at Wesleyan University and a wonderful piano player. I have many old vinyl recordings of the Wesleyan Glee club when they were performing together. Instead of traveling, she chose to marry my grandfather.
They had two children and she settled for the church choir.
I always felt musically inadequate around that side of the family. I was chunky and awkward through my teen years and was exceptionally rebellious at times due to my home life with my mother. I will never forget when my grandmother told me that “Everyone in the family hoped one of the grandchildren would inherit her voice, but no one did.” It crushed me.
My mother and dad’s parents never really got along, they were bitter at her for leaving my father back in 1984. I think that bitterness carried over into their relationship with me. I always felt very out of place around the Cross family and I would often make sure everyone was aware of that.
My father has always been a huge music lover. He was always singing in his truck and showing me new music he had found whenever we had visits. The thing is, I always felt that he didn’t know the first thing about my life. It was plain for me to see that he wasn’t the least bit interested in anything to do with me, or my potential talent. I never sang or performed in front of him, still haven’t. Actually, I haven’t seen or spoken to him in over two years.
Talk about a fire under my ass! Proving my musically-inclined family wrong has been a big motivation for me.
According to my mom, she wanted to be Joan Baez when she was a young girl. She has sung and played guitar since she was about 12, but never seriously (due to a bad case of stage fright and insecurity). Which brings us to the me and the guitar. She bought me my first “Alvarez” acoustic guitar for my 16th birthday. I took a couple of lessons at Exeter music and learned how to play a chord or two. I would sit in my room and sing gibberish while playing those two chords over and over. I just loved the feeling of having my voice meet up with the sound of the guitar, still do. It’s is a feeling I can’t describe very well to this day, it takes me to a different dimension.
Most of the time when I sing I don’t feel like I’m on this planet, I’m somewhere else.
I lost interest in the guitar for a few years for the most part. I was more interested in hanging out with my hooligan friends, smoking pot, and talking about boys.
When I was 18 I moved in with my much older boyfriend to get the hell out of my house. My mom was still living with my grandparents and my uncle had also moved in, it was not a very enjoyable situation.
Moving in with my troublemaker boyfriend was not the best idea but it got me out of where I was I guess. It also introduced me to the world of Rockabilly and Classic Country, an important chapter in my life thus far. Troy was his name. A tattooed, greaser heart throb that looked like he was from the wrong side of the tracks and was ALWAYS getting into trouble. (Zombie for his love).
When I moved in with him I was often at home during the day while he was at work. This is when I liked to rummage through his dozens of records, tapes, and CD’s. His collection of music basically consisted of old Punk Rock, Rockabilly and Classic Country such as Hank Williams. I would listen to his records any chance I got and was especially fixated on a double disc Carl Perkins CD. His friend brought it over to the apartment one night while they were sitting around drinking PBRs. He said “Check out the new Carl Perkins CD I got” and handed it to Troy. I remember looking at it and thinking: “Who the hell is that old geek?” They put it in the player and I was instantly intrigued.
Troy had a bunch of Rockabilly friends that wore white t-shirts, cuffed jeans and cigarettes in their sleeves. I loved it! I wanted nothing more than to be part of it. I went to my first Rockabilly show when I was 19. Just the age they start letting kids into T.T. The Bears Place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This particular show was a series of bands including the Raging Teens, and The Kings of Nuthin.’ When I got to the show with my older flamboyantly gay friend Keith, I was mesmerized by what I saw. (Keith loved 1950’s things and Rockabilly boys. He helped inspire my great love for Elvis, we would dance to Jail House Rock in his retro sheik room.)
Keith was psyched to be at any Rockabilly show so he pushed us right up front and crammed me next to the speaker when the Kings of Nuthin’ were about to come on. The band of about 7 guys (guitar, upright bass, drums, saxes, piano and a lead singer) came out in black slacks and shirts with thin white ties. Don’t forget the slicked hair, oh the hair! I was love struck, not only did I instantly love these guys, I secretly wanted to be just like them. Keith snuck me Budwiesers all night by the speaker and I watched in envy as the rockabilly girls danced in their vintage dresses with their greaser boyfriends.
I left that night feeling like a different person, I had a truly unforgettable experience that would change my life forever. That would be the beginning of many, many trips to Boston to tear it up in the small yet exciting Rockabilly scene.
Luckily, there was also my very own home town Rockabilly band that I was able to tag along with during this time. Satans Teardrops — Andy Ulery, Trafton Waldrop, Jason Lara and Zach Shed. The shows that I would tag along to with these guys would be some of my fondest youth memories. My best friend, Amanda, dated the lead singer and I had an on–again-off-again thing with the bass player. We would dress to the nines and go to as many shows of theirs that we could. We would dance all night until they kicked us out. I saw so many different rockabilly/country bands during that time.
In 2003 we went to the “Heavy Rebel” Rockabilly/Psychobilly weekender in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. My mom let Amanda and me take her car down and we met up with the band when we got down there. We all stayed in a tiny hotel room with one bed! It was one of the best and most memorable weekends of my life. I saw Rockabilly, Psychobilly, Punk, Country, and Bluegrass music from all over the world. The whole thing took place in an abandoned courthouse in downtown Winston-Salem, I obviously had never seen anything like it. There was just one problem, I had this unsettling feeling that I just couldn’t get rid of. I was jealous of anyone and everyone on stage. I was not satisfied being a spectator, a fan.
Of course I’m a fan of many musicians, but I wanted more than anything to perform like these bands that I was seeing. It just took me a little while to find my niche, my instrument, and my passion. I needed to live a little more, grow up, and figure out what it is that I have to say with my music.
I picked up the guitar for a second time more seriously towards the end of my 19th year. Troy and I had recently gone through a rough break up, but he had left me with an introduction to a genre of music that moved my soul in a way that was undeniable.
I still had the Alvarez guitar that my mom gave me, so I started taking lessons from Adam Scharff at his studio in Kittery, Maine. This ended up being one of the best things that I could have done. (Adam was a wonderful music teacher and mentor over the years. Although he taught me how to play guitar, he has made sure I know the style of my playing I developed on my own.)
I got my first apartment all to myself during this time. That’s where I started singing old country songs and writing random two chord songs of my own. My good friend Andy had introduced me to the current country music sounds of Wayne Hancock and Hank Williams III. My view on country music was changed forever, I had never heard anything like it and I wanted to sing songs just like them. I would sing at the top of my lungs at all hours of the day and night. (I can remember the downstairs tenant complaining of the noise to the landlord). I would come home every day from my waitress job and look forward to picking up my guitar. I SLOWLY started playing for select friends, but for the most part I kept my singing/songwriting a secret.
At age 22 I moved to Boston to “experience the city.” I got a cheap studio apartment in Jamaica Plain on South Huntington. I only ended up being there for about six months, but it was a huge growing period for me. I continued to play guitar alone in my apartment and wrote “Zombie for his Love,” my first real song. It was an extremely lonely period in my life. I didn’t know a soul, and I found it quite hard to make friends in Boston. (Everyone seemed to be fine with the friends they already had and weren’t interested in any new ones or something.)
I was afraid to be out on the streets after dark, so I spent A LOT of time alone in my apartment - just me and the random roaches. I also listened to an unusual amount of Tom Waits (another huge influence on me). On weekend nights I would treat myself to a bottle of red wine, listen to Tom and write my own wacky lyrics down. His music is comforting and inspiring to me. He is real to me. Even though sometimes I have no idea what he’s singing about, I believe every word that he sings.
I got a job up in Cambridge and would travel back and forth reading books and people-watching. I read all kinds of books about the Rock ‘n’ Roll scene in the south during the 1950’s, including the biographies of Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Elvis. The idea of hanging around Sun Studio in Memphis during that time became such a romantic fantasy to me. Taking the soul of the black Delta Blues players and mixing it with a country gospel twist of the white southerners was a brilliant time in music history.
If I could have one day to spend in the past I would choose to be in Sun Studio when one of the “Million Dollar Quartet” (Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins) guys were hanging out. There is no explanation for my infatuation with this era in time. Perhaps I died young in a flaming hot rod crash in a past life, who knows. Then there is always my theory that part of Elvis’ soul was floating around the universe and entered mine when I was born. I guess the world will never know.
After I threw the towel in on the whole Boston idea, I moved back home to New Hampshire and landed in an apartment with some friends in Newmarket. This is when things really started happening.
One of my roommates, who heard me playing in my room every day, immediately encouraged me to start playing open-mics. I also started hanging out with these guys in a local band who lived above the laundromat. Someone handed me a guitar at one of the party/house concerts they would have quite often. This particular night I had a little whiskey in me so I played “Zombie for His Love.” I think I just about shocked everyone in the room. Especially my close friends, most of them had no idea I could sing and play guitar in that manner.
A couple of weeks later the guys above the laundromat convinced me to record three of the songs I’d been writing on there four track in the attic. They showed me how to work the thing and I made everyone leave the room. The result was my first recording on a lovely little cassette tape! From there I went from open-mics in the Seacoast, to having my first solo show at The Barley Pub on May 30th of 2006.
That was the beginning of about seven months of solo shows around the Seacoast. The public feedback was so positive and gave me the push to keep going. My friends and boyfriend Scott were so supportive, so I started playing any chance I could get. Eventually I met up with some guys in the area that played in a gypsy jazz band together (kazoo and all) called The Vipers. They invited me to come and play at the Stone Church Bluegrass open-mic in the fall of 2006
I started going religiously on Tuesday nights and they would give me my own 20 minutes or so to sing and play. I created quite a name for myself over there, random people around the area started recognizing me from bluegrass night. Although I don’t like my music to be considered Bluegrass, I thought that was pretty cool.
The gypsy jazz band ended up breaking up around December of 2006 and I started playing with Zach Uncles and Josh Fixler. I was petrified to play with other people, I felt like a complete rookie. I thought they would laugh at my lack of musical knowledge. They didn’t. I just played my tunes and they backed me up. When I heard them come in behind me it brought things to a whole new level, I was actually playing in a band! My dream was staring to come true!
Around this time I had a long drawn out breakup with my serious boyfriend, resulting in more material for my broken hearted-album. In February, I moved into a farmhouse with a couple of local Bluegrass musicians I met through the Stone Church. Steve Roy, my present day bass player, being one of those people.
I couldn’t have landed in a better place, the house is always full of music and musicians from all over the country swing through on occasion. Steve came to me one day and informed me, in the nicest way possible, that he thought my back-up band was all wrong. I agreed, and considered the band as a really great starting point. I decided to go out solo again, it was a good decision.
It wasn’t too long before Steve mentioned that if I was looking for a new band, he had a drummer that might be interested in playing with the two of us. Indeed he was — enter PJ Donahue. We practiced at the house a few times, hit it off, and had our first gig at Prescott Park on July 7th of this year.
Amidst all this, I decided back in the winter that I wanted to record an album over the upcoming summer. Several signs pointed to Jon Nolan. I knew him vaguely from the RPM Challenge that he did with The Wire — a challenge to musicians to record an album in one month’s time. (I recorded a sketchy 10 track CD with Adam Scharff for the 2006 RPM- the original “Unavailable”.)
Jon had also written a couple of blurbs in The Wire, including one that declared I am: “Reminiscent of the Legendary Patsy Cline…” I knew he was on my side. He came to one of my shows at The Blue Mermaid about a year ago and mentioned he started up a recording studio. I was aware that Jon and I had similar music tastes, so I felt safe with that in mind. I also felt pretty confident that he would work well with the sound I wanted to convey to my listeners. He originally wanted King Memphis to come down and back me up for the album but the bass player wasn’t available. Luckily, Steve and PJ and I clicked so well I asked them to join me in the studio. It seems that it was meant to be, my ducks started to form a row.
The studio was an unexplainable joyous experience for all of us. I took a seven-day block off from waitressing and spent all my waking hours in the studio with Jon. Steve, PJ and I recorded the whole album facing each other in a small room inside Jon’s recording shack.
Jon was so unbelievably helpful in arranging the whole thing. He told us basically what do at times and we would do it. There was a lot of humor and inside jokes formed during that studio time.
The first day the three of us recorded six of the 10 tracks in a 15-hour span! I will never forget that day in my whole life, it was epic! Afterwards I went home and lay in bed in the early morning hours and thought, “Wholly shit, what the hell did I just do?!”
The three of us banged out all the songs in a couple of days and then Jon brought most of the other musicians in to play on the album. It was a great opportunity for me to meet some more local musicians, and it was so cool to see the album grow into what it is now.
I cannot tell you how privileged I feel to be able to be living out my dream. I also feel as though I’m living out an unfulfilled dream for members of my family who didn’t get to pursue their musical aspirations like I am. Whatever happens from now on, I have already done so much and I’m very proud of myself.
In this life story I have documented for you, I’ve given you a window into my family history and past because it is a key part in what fuels my music. I didn’t have a smooth childhood and it has become my goal to overcome the obstacles that life has thrown my way. The songs I wrote for “Unavailable” have been my way of getting over my past and all my fears of it. I wrote those songs directly from my heart and they basically add up to my frustration of having a father who I am invisible to, one who has always been unavailable to me. The desperate attempt at times in my life to prove myself to him, seeped over into my relationships as a young women. Leaving me with an aching heart that has no choice but to explain itself.
The thing is, I care so much for other girls who might have gone through the same things as I have. I want to tell them it’s going to be okay, you don’t have to run from your misery. If anything, I want the broken hearted, lonely girls of the girls to know they are not alone. I know what it’s like to be a zombie for his love! I know what it’s like to obsess over a love gone wrong, or one that you should have never gotten into in the first place! If I could, I would hug every lonely, confused girl in the world and tell her to hang in there.
So here I am, against all odds, I have made it to where I am now. I have a record and it makes me happier then I have ever been, sometimes it brings me to tears just thinking about it. I have worked so hard to make it this far, now I want to sing for people whenever and wherever I can, for the rest of life. What I want most for this album is for people to see the honesty in my music, I want them to connect with it. When I listen to Johnny Cash and Tom Waits, I believe every word they say. There’s no faking it with them. That’s how I want my listeners to feel, I’m only doing it because I wouldn’t know what else to do. It’s what I was put on earth to do, I’ve got something to say and I want people to hear it.
