Blossom Special,” a fiddle instrumental that got faster and faster, like a runaway train, inciting the dancers to go absolutely mental. Timing was crucial with the “Orange Blossom Special,” and we played it at the end of about the third set. If it were played any later, people would be too drunk and fall over. Sometimes they fell over anyway.
Not only was I given a major tutorial in country and swing music in Austin, I got to hear a whole passel of great Texas songwriters like Butch Hancock, Gary P. Nunn, Willis Alan Ramsey, Joe Ely, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Uncle Walt’s Band with Walter Hyatt, Champ Hood, and David Ball. I still do a song by Uncle Walt’s Band, called “Don’t You Think I Feel It Too,” taught to me by my friends Paul Glasse and Gary Hartman,
We stayed in rank hotels and on people’s floors and paid ourselves twenty-five dollars a night. The rest was for gas, van maintenance, hotels, and travel expenses. We drank too much beer and ate too many burgers and pieces of pie in greasy truck stops. I miss it all. Once when we were in Evergreen, I stopped in a store and bought a pair of Levi’s 501s, the good kind, when they were still shrink-to-fit and felt like cardboard until you washed them. I remember that day and the smell of pine and warm morning sun and the satisfied feeling of being carefree in the mountains and on the road and getting a new pair of jeans. I still have the jeans and have put them in a trunk for my daughter.
The Dixie Diesels had such an influence on me. I would eventually settle in Austin. I learned scads about great music I’d never been exposed to before. I met a man named Buddy Miller in Austin, and he would reappear in my life down the line and ultimately change it. But after two years of hard road work, the Diesels hadn’t really gotten any further than eking out a living, and my voice, while improved, wasn’t really getting better. I still had nodes, and I was going to have to do something about them. The thing was, I just thought I’d always be able to sing. There wasn’t really any space between who I was and the fact that I sang; they were one and the same. My vocal range was getting whittled down to just a few notes, barely an octave, and I’d always thought I could sing anything. Now that notion was toast, and that’s where more trouble began.
I decided to stop singing. I signed up for speech therapy and got a job as a salesgirl at a boutique in Austin called the Bizarre, the place to go if you needed edible undies. Willy stayed with the band and kept touring. I now lived alone for all intents and purposes, for the first time in my life, and wouldn’t you know I didn’t have the first idea how to do it. The main problem was feeding myself. I’ve never been any good at cooking (ask both my ex-husbands), and I was so used to eating with Willy that I couldn’t figure out how to cook for just me. And I was lonely. And bored. So two things happened: I took up running, and I ate less.
I was lean anyway, and young, and before long I looked like Frank Shorter. I liked it. As I lost weight, I noticed that clothes looked better on me, more like the way they looked on models in magazines. I had body issues, of course. If you grow up female in our culture, you just do. For whatever reason, “it” took hold of me. I became obsessed with losing weight, with buying smaller clothes. I stopped at the local supermarket every day, because they had one of those large scales you could put a nickel in and weigh yourself. I was 115. I was 110. I was 105. And so on.
Anorexic 1978—Kay, me, Clay, and Grandpa Colvin
A girlfriend of mine diagnosed me right off the bat when I told her I had counted the number of peas I ate at Luby’s Cafeteria. “Oooooh, anorexia!” she said, but I didn’t care. With no singing to give me identity, this newfound talent for becoming thinner took over. Nothing was more important. The more I lost, the better.
Not only was I given a major tutorial in country and swing music in Austin, I got to hear a whole passel of great Texas songwriters like Butch Hancock, Gary P. Nunn, Willis Alan Ramsey, Joe Ely, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Uncle Walt’s Band with Walter Hyatt, Champ Hood, and David Ball. I still do a song by Uncle Walt’s Band, called “Don’t You Think I Feel It Too,” taught to me by my friends Paul Glasse and Gary Hartman,
We stayed in rank hotels and on people’s floors and paid ourselves twenty-five dollars a night. The rest was for gas, van maintenance, hotels, and travel expenses. We drank too much beer and ate too many burgers and pieces of pie in greasy truck stops. I miss it all. Once when we were in Evergreen, I stopped in a store and bought a pair of Levi’s 501s, the good kind, when they were still shrink-to-fit and felt like cardboard until you washed them. I remember that day and the smell of pine and warm morning sun and the satisfied feeling of being carefree in the mountains and on the road and getting a new pair of jeans. I still have the jeans and have put them in a trunk for my daughter.
The Dixie Diesels had such an influence on me. I would eventually settle in Austin. I learned scads about great music I’d never been exposed to before. I met a man named Buddy Miller in Austin, and he would reappear in my life down the line and ultimately change it. But after two years of hard road work, the Diesels hadn’t really gotten any further than eking out a living, and my voice, while improved, wasn’t really getting better. I still had nodes, and I was going to have to do something about them. The thing was, I just thought I’d always be able to sing. There wasn’t really any space between who I was and the fact that I sang; they were one and the same. My vocal range was getting whittled down to just a few notes, barely an octave, and I’d always thought I could sing anything. Now that notion was toast, and that’s where more trouble began.
I decided to stop singing. I signed up for speech therapy and got a job as a salesgirl at a boutique in Austin called the Bizarre, the place to go if you needed edible undies. Willy stayed with the band and kept touring. I now lived alone for all intents and purposes, for the first time in my life, and wouldn’t you know I didn’t have the first idea how to do it. The main problem was feeding myself. I’ve never been any good at cooking (ask both my ex-husbands), and I was so used to eating with Willy that I couldn’t figure out how to cook for just me. And I was lonely. And bored. So two things happened: I took up running, and I ate less.
I was lean anyway, and young, and before long I looked like Frank Shorter. I liked it. As I lost weight, I noticed that clothes looked better on me, more like the way they looked on models in magazines. I had body issues, of course. If you grow up female in our culture, you just do. For whatever reason, “it” took hold of me. I became obsessed with losing weight, with buying smaller clothes. I stopped at the local supermarket every day, because they had one of those large scales you could put a nickel in and weigh yourself. I was 115. I was 110. I was 105. And so on.
Anorexic 1978—Kay, me, Clay, and Grandpa Colvin
A girlfriend of mine diagnosed me right off the bat when I told her I had counted the number of peas I ate at Luby’s Cafeteria. “Oooooh, anorexia!” she said, but I didn’t care. With no singing to give me identity, this newfound talent for becoming thinner took over. Nothing was more important. The more I lost, the better.
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