My Last Tail Feather

Still Shakin' It

Dressed as Janis for a Halloween gig in 2022.

I joined my first rock band at 40. My bandmates were all much younger than me and all guys. I still had a baby face, but I was shouldering the burdens of a grown-ass woman, including a heavy load of internalized sexism.

Becoming a performer at 40 was tough. I had to learn how to make noise and take up space, to swagger like Jagger, to strut and moan and turn people on. I wanted all of it. As I wrote at the time:

The first time I invoked my inner rock diva, a wobbly-kneed teenager appeared, bracing herself at the lip of a narrow stage and holding her skirt down against the puffs of wind from the opening in the bass drum. I had never felt so vulnerable, despite the fact that the gig was in a tiny basement club and the audience was mostly friends and family. On that little stage, I finally understood that singing live means that there are no do-overs, no stopping to apologize, no going back.

Though I felt like a “wobbly-kneed teenager,” my biggest fear (and deepest shame) at the time was about being too old. Even as I reveled in finally developing my authentic singer’s voice and stage persona, I felt like an imposter, like “mutton dressed as lamb.” (And is there any meaner way to describe a woman than like a tough old piece of meat nobody wants?)

Fronting a band was a brand new skill set for me, a developmental milestone I should have experienced as a teenager but never did. I was terrible at first. I wrote:

I could imitate every nuance of Janis Joplin’s growl, and I had ridden in the wake of Aretha’s mighty instrument many times, but I had never made the interpretive choices that real singers make.  Try singing along to a song you love, then, without stopping, turn off the CD. It’s excruciating. Better yet, find a karaoke machine and discover the weird, disconnected feeling of hearing your own voice amplified. (Or, if you’ve already experienced this sensation, try it sober.) Finally, imagine stomping a fresh melodic path through the virgin forest of a new song. That’s what it feels like to sing with a band.

It was a badge of honor to me that my bandmates accepted me, but I never fully trusted their sincerity. I agonized over what to wear, how to move, and what to say, both at practice and in performance. I was always afraid people would find me ridiculous. Our drummer once described the audience at a gig as, “A bunch of middle aged ladies sucking down margaritas and shaking their last tail feathers.” I laughed along with the guys, but I was secretly mortified. Was I down to my last tail feather, too?

I had long dreamed of being a rock star. As an eight year old I sang “Hard Hearted Hannah, The Vamp of Savannah” for my parents and their friends. I don’t know how I knew how to vamp, but I did, and I’m grateful that the adults laughed with me, not at me, and made me feel proud of the big voice coming out of my little body.

When I was thirteen, Janis Joplin helped me survive a painfully awkward adolescence. I wore out her records, practicing her bluesy runs while I traced with my fingertip the lines of her unconventionally beautiful face, lush feather boas, and wild mane of hair that was so like mine.

Janis Joplin on the roof garden of the Chelsea Hotel in 1970.Credit...David Gahr. Reprinted from the NYTimes.

I read her biography and learned about her painful childhood in Port Arthur, her triumph in San Francisco, and her lonely descent into addiction. I studied the dark alchemy of fierceness and vulnerability within her, longing to be her and to save her at the same time. Janis was dead and the ‘sixties were over, but the bright flame of her legacy helped me to imagine a future for myself.

By the time I was old enough to join a rock band, however, I had suppressed the urge. The glamorous women I saw on MTV left me cold, and, though I continued to sing in the bathtub and at the dinner table and anywhere else I felt safe and comfortable, I could no longer see myself performing on a stage.

I didn’t follow Janis’s footsteps West to California until I was in my 40s. Now, at 57, I am a seasoned performer, largely unburdened by the self-doubt that clamped my voice shut for so long. These days, I am the youngest member of a band called Local Honey, which includes not one but three rock divas.

Me and my bandmates.

Our audiences are mostly older, and together we joyously shake our last tail feathers and don’t give a rat’s ass what young people think about it. Supported but not eclipsed by our male bandmates, my band sisters and I admire each other’s outfits, advocate to lower the key of songs to match our mature voices, and work hard at honing our craft and supporting each other in a pursuit that can be tough on women of any age.

I am a lot less worried about how I look because I’ve learned that singing is storytelling, and we all have stories to tell. When my bandmate Sher sings, “I am an old woman / named after my mother…” she embodies the character and opens my heart with the soulfulness of her voice. When my bandmate Cheryl sings “Unchain my Heart,” I feel the pain of a woman who has been through some shit and really knows how it feels. My own story still includes lots of growling and moaning and moves I learned at Janis’s knee. I’m old, but I’m not dead.

Yes, sex is the lifeblood of rock n’ roll, but what that means is so much bigger now. Walt Whitman wrote, “Urge and urge and urge / Always the procreant urge of the world,” and that’s what I hear in music now, from as diverse a cast of characters as inhabited Whitman’s epic poem, Song of Myself.

We live in a world where there are as many models of womanhood as there are women. Beyoncé (42) celebrates her grown-ass womanhood and motherhood, her Blackness and her Southernness, and finds room to celebrate lots of other women along the way, including my fellow-Obie Rhiannon Giddens (47). Though Queen Bey has been performing since she was a kid, she’s now older than I was when I started, and nobody would tell her to get off the stage. Susan Tedeschi (53) and her (nine years younger) husband Derek Trucks tour with their 12-piece band and model what a lifelong musical and personal partnership can be. Joni Mitchell (80) and Brandi Carlile (42) have formed a different kind of partnership, bridging the generations to perform together, bringing Joni’s gift back to an adoring world. There’s some weirdness - I don’t know how I feel about Dolly Parton (77) dancing with the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders - but I celebrate her right to do it.

The local Santa Cruz music scene is full of badass women, too, chief among them the Queen of Steel, Patti Maxine (85).

As Bonnie Raitt (74) said during her 2000 induction into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, “Let’s hope this [her induction] marks the beginning of lots more women getting out of the kitchen and into the kick-ass fire.”

I think about all the songs Janis didn’t get to sing and all the years I might have left, and I feel so excited to practice and grow. How could I possibly let something as silly as self-consciousness about my age stop me?

At our most recent gig, I overheard our drummer (Mark Falge) and bassist (Gary “Sweetpea” Cunningham) discussing what to sing for our encore. Sweetpea shrugged his shoulders and said, “Ask the boss.” He was pointing at me.

Usually this is where I plug Letters from the Questhouse, but I’d like to plug my band instead. You can learn more about Local Honey on our website and follow us on our Facebook and Instagram pages.