Host: Jay Allison
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]
Jay: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this show. We're bringing you stories from a Moth Mainstage at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, California. It was produced in partnership with the public radio station KCRW. The poet and storyteller, Dame Wilburn, was the host of the night. The theme was Beneath the Armor. Here's Dame.
[cheers and applause]
Dame: [00:00:40] Good evening, Santa Barbara. How are you doing?
[cheers and applause]
Welcome to The Moth. We are so happy, so excited to be here. Thank you, KCRW, for having us. Thank you so much for being here this evening. You look amazing. My reading glasses say that you look amazing.
All right, so, our theme tonight is Beneath the Armor. Even though I'd like to have a conversation with you about Beneath the Armor, something more pressing came up backstage and I had to talk to you about it. So, this is my second time in Santa Barbara. I am from Detroit, Michigan. [audience cheers and applause]
Thank you. So, I bring you greetings from Detroit by saying, “What up, doe?” [audience laughter] That's native Detroit, in case you don't speak it. But you are all spoiled. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]
I don't know if you know it. I don't know if you know it and I don't mean it as an insult. I'm jealous. There are lemons growing at your airport. [audience laughter] Did you know that? [audience laughter] Nothing grows at the Detroit airport, but disdain. [audience laughter] I came off that plane and walked out of the Santa Barbara airport and said, “Are you kidding me right now?” [audience laughter] And they're potted. They're potted lemon trees. They're not lemon trees for lemons selling. These are decorative lemons. [audience laughter] These aren't our people lemons. These lemons are simply to add a touch of yellow to the sidewalk. [audience laughter]
Also, as much as I think that your city is beautiful, and it seems to be like, there's a lot of money in this town, there was also somebody out front scalping Moth tickets. [audience laughter] Like, somehow that means we've arrived? But I don't know. [audience laughter] You're scalping tickets to The Moth? That's got to be the most Santa Barbara thing I've ever heard. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]
That's the kind of thing that I will tell other cities [audience laughter] about you besides the lemons. But again, thank you so much for having us. We introduce our storytellers by asking them a question. And our question tonight is, “When was the last time you felt invincible?” So, I asked our first storyteller, “When was the last time you felt invincible?” And he said, “Riding my bike without using my hands.” And I said, “Why does that make you feel invincible?” And he says, “Because I do it in LA in the middle of the night.” [audience laughter] Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Monte Montepare.
[cheers and applause]
Monte: [00:03:53] So, I'm in my truck driving through the dark across Alaska. If you haven't been to Alaska, it's big. I'm heading toward McCarthy. McCarthy is a redneck hippie town at the end of a 60-mile dirt road in the middle of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, your country's largest national park. Don't feel bad. Nobody's heard of the place. [audience laughter] And the population of McCarthy is 200 people and at least 100 dogs. It's at the toe of a gigantic glacier, the confluence of two rivers, the base of some of the most spectacular mountains you will ever see. It might be the most beautiful place on the planet, and I did not want to go back there.
The night before, I was on a couch in Anchorage, I was excited. I was there to celebrate my second wedding anniversary with my wife. We'd been living apart that summer. I was living in McCarthy, taking people on adventures. I was a wilderness guide for the last decade. She was living in Anchorage, pursuing her own professional goals. She was living with friends. We were sitting on their couch. It smelled like two kids and one dog. That's where she turned to me and said, “I cheated on you two years ago, right before our wedding in McCarthy.”
It was not what I was expecting to get for my second wedding anniversary. [audience laughter] I hear cotton is traditional. [audience laughter] And the more that I found out, the less that I felt like I could deal with it. When I found out that it wasn't once, it was an affair that went on that summer, I gave her a hug and I left. I didn't know where to go. I called my parents in Colorado. I thought about going all the way home. And in all the years of exploratory river trips, 21-day mountaineering expeditions, calling them with frostbite from some glacier that they can't even pronounced the name of, I had never heard my parents so concerned for my wellbeing. I was devastated. But I had to go back to McCarthy, because that's where my dogs were. [audience laughter]
I remember the first day that I got to McCarthy. I moved to Alaska when I was 20 years old in my truck and I rolled into this town and it's all dirt roads and you have to walk across a bridge across the river to get there. It felt like I found Colorado in 1970, as my parents had always described it. And I fell in love immediately. I tell people for the next 10 years that I came for the mountains, but I stayed for the town. And I did. I got addicted to that community. It was so small and tight knit. I worked hard. I treated people with respect. I shared the place with the woman that I loved and I felt protected there. Like, as long as I was respected in McCarthy and my wife loved me, nothing else mattered.
As I rolled back into town, I did not feel either of those things. I felt like I knew that people had known the whole time. I felt like everybody knew. I felt like I was the last one to find out my own secret. I felt like I needed to hide. I didn't want to face anybody. I couldn't face my cabin. So, I went and stayed with my best friend Chris and his wife. Chris and I had moved to Alaska in that truck when we were 20 years old together. We'd known each other since preschool. And now, he cared for me because I was incapable of doing so for myself.
I've never felt an emotional pain that caused so much physical agony. I could barely eat, I could barely sleep, hours felt like forever. The first couple days felt like an eternity. And if this was life, I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep doing it. After a couple of days of that, I wanted to give Chris and Karen a break, because living in a one room cabin with your partner off the grid is complicated enough without having your heartbroken buddy occupying your living room/dining room/only room. [audience laughter]
So, when my buddy Chester asked me if I would crash at his house for a night, I took him up on the offer. I met Chester that first day that I ever got to McCarthy 10 years before. We bonded over punk rock music. Our dogs are sisters. [audience laughter] So, I followed Chester through the woods in the dark to his cabin. Chris and Chester live in the same subdivision, but I feel like that word might be a little misleading [audience laughter] in this usage. Think less suburbia and more collection of cabins, shanties, trailers and permanently parked school buses connected by a dirt road ripped through the woods.
So, I follow Chester to his house and we proceed to pull an all-night heart to heart. I tell him that this whole thing feels like the last act of some bizarre Greek tragedy that's been custom designed to wield my own inner demons as the means of my own destruction. I tell him how I've always struggled with my masculinity and how I feel completely emasculated. I tell him that I've always worried so much about what other people think about me to the point of trying to control people's perceptions. And now, the thing that I would like to be the most hidden is the most public. I tell him I am angry, but I'm afraid to let myself feel it, because it feels so intense and I don't know what to do with it.
I wake up in the morning with my 80-pound husky dog lying on my chest in her most demanding version yet of maybe you'd feel a little bit better if you pet a big furry dog. [audience laughter] Chester and I drink coffee, which I do, and smoke cigarettes, which I don't do. But that morning, it felt like I should. [audience laughter] And I smoked the shit out of some cigarettes. [audience laughter] And then, I went to leave. My phone died and I realized I forgot my sleeping bag. I go back in Chester's, I grab my sleeping bag, I put it over my shoulder. Chester stops me and he puts his hand on my chest and he says, “You have an unlimited well of power inside of you,” which, if you knew Chester, you'd know that's a very Chester thing to say. [audience laughter] And I leave.
I walk into the woods alone, because my dogs bailed on me to go back to Chris' for breakfast. I feel lost in the world. I feel like my marriage was a lie, I feel like my life was a lie, I feel like I died on that couch. And then, I realized that I'm actually lost. I am lost in the woods. [audience laughter] I don't know. And I know, right? I'm a wilderness guy, lost in my buddy's backyard. [audience laughter] Because I'm killing it. But I'm disoriented, trying to get my bearings. I take a step forward a twig snaps under my foot. I look to the left and I'm staring at a 750-pound grizzly bear 20 yards away from me.
I've had a decent amount of bear encounters in my life, some with grizzly bears. I've been mock charged by a grizzly bear, which is when they charge you. It's their form of pounding their chest trying to scare you off. I have never had any animal look at me the way that this bear looked at me, roared and immediately charged. This is worst case scenario, I just scared a bear in the bushes. This is not a mock situation. I'm under attack. I turn my head to run for one instant, which is not what you're supposed to do. But when you're presented with something that terrifying, it can be a difficult instinct to quell. [audience laughter]
And in that moment that my head is turned, I know exactly where my firearm is. It's six miles away in my cabin on my bedside table. [audience laughter] I scan the area looking for maybe a tree to climb or somewhere to hide, which there isn't, because there never is in Alaska. And grizzly bears run 40 miles an hour. So, I know if I try and run for one more second, this bear is going to be on top of me. What you are supposed to do if you're attacked by a grizzly bear is play dead. You're supposed to lie on the ground on your belly to protect your organs, put your hands behind your neck. And only if the attack persists, [audience laughter] then do you fight for your life. [audience laughter]
Well, what this bear didn't know, is that I'd felt half dead for the past four days. I'd felt like I'd been being attacked from all angles. It had persisted long enough. I knew this bear wasn't going to stop. Nobody was going to save me. I turned around, and I looked and I saw this bear barreling at me through the bushes. I planted my feet, and I put my teal and lime green sleeping bag over my head, and I took all of that confusion and pain and directionless anger and I unleashed it in a vein popping, eye bulging primal scream. And the bear stopped. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]
Right? But now, the bear was very close. [audience laughter] So close that this time when it roared, I could see spittle shoot off of its lips and feel its hot breath billow through the cold morning air. But now, I was committed. [audience laughter] I wasn't going anywhere. In fact, I just found out that I don't want to die. [audience laughter] So, I looked the bear directly in the eyes, which you are also not supposed to do. [audience laughter]
I dig down deep, deep inside, past the burst bubble of McCarthy and the shards of my broken heart, down to a place that is not broken, to a place that cannot be destroyed. And from there, I roar and then I charge the bear. [audience laughter] I don't think that's what the bear was expecting to get. [audience laughter] Because it looked at me huffed and ran into the woods. [audience cheers and applause]
Many longtime Alaskans would tell you that the moral of this story is very simple, “Carry your bear gun, you stupid hippie.” [audience laughter] But to me, it felt much more profound. I knew that this experience was going to summon all of my own personal demons in their most violent, intense forms. And if I tried to run or hide from them, it was going to kill me. If I was going to survive, I was going to need to be brave. I was going to need to stand my ground and look them right in the eye. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Dame: [00:18:29] Ladies and gentlemen, Monte Montepare.
[cheers and applause]
You can say a lot of stuff about Detroit, but we ain't got bears. [audience laughter] It's going to be our city motto, [audience laughter] “Welcome to Detroit, Michigan. No bears.”
Jay: [00:18:57] Monte Montepare spends part of his time in the mountains of Alaska, working as a wilderness guide and taking people on adventures of a lifetime. And the rest of the time, you can find him in Los Angeles pursuing his new passion, comedy. You can find out more about Monte and see pictures of him, his dog and the Alaskan wilderness at themoth.org.
[fast piano music]
Coming up, more stories from this live hour in Santa Barbara, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this show. And today, we're bringing you a live event from the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, California. The theme is Beneath the Armor. Here's your host from the evening, Dame Wilburn.
[cheers and applause]
Dame: [00:20:25] When I asked our next storyteller, “When was the last time you felt invincible?’ She said, “I went for an entire flight without using the bathroom.” [audience laughter] I said, “How long was the flight?” She said, “One hour.” [audience laughter] Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Christina Igaraividez.
[cheers and applause]
Christina: [00:20:58] As an only child, I grew up being raised by my single working mom and my grandparents. But if I'm honest, I was raised by my grandma. My grandma and I were like two peas in a pod. Everywhere she went, I went too. I loved listening to her sayings and stories. Some would be old adages in Spanish that I'm sure she brought back from Mexico, like “Ponte un suéter,” [audience laughter] which means put on a sweater that she would say in even 90-degree weather. While others were meant to teach you a lesson, like, “¿No quieres comer? Entonces come cacao,” [audience laughter] which means, oh, you don't want to eat this? Well, then you could eat shit. [audience laughter]
Yeah. I learned a lot of my life lessons from grandma. She taught me my first language, how to drive and even got me out of middle school fist fights, because she just had to be there. I mean, who wants to kick your ass when your grandma's standing right next to you? But out of all her sayings and stories, one always sticks out from the rest. We were always a very musical family. So, I remember my grandma being in the kitchen washing dishes and humming a little song and saying, “¡Cómo me encantó el violín.” How I love the sound of the violin.
I don't remember whatever prompted this, but I do remember in the fourth grade, our music teacher asked us what instrument we all wanted to play. Around the room I heard kids saying, “Flute, clarinet, flute.” When she came to me, I said, “I want to play the violin.” I was so excited, because I knew grandma always kept talking about how much she loved it, and I wanted to make her proud. I ended up falling in love with it too. By the time I was in sixth grade, I could play any song by ear. And by seventh, I was so good that our music teacher at our school on the far south side of Chicago had taught me all that she could. Instead, my music teacher sent me to take classes at the All-City Orchestra in downtown Chicago.
All City was this place that attracted kids from all different backgrounds and neighborhoods, all equally as talented. Once I got through that audition, I couldn't wait to be just like them. But I was also 11 years old. So, when that first practice early Saturday morning came along and my alarm went off, I'm like, “Do I really want to do this?” But just as I started complaining, my grandma got in my face and pumped her fist at me and said, “Échale ganas.” Give it your all. You know, like a coach and a boxing ring. That's all I needed to keep me going every Saturday morning.
She would drive me at first, every weekend. But it was also around this time that her driving became a bit erratic. She started getting into these frequent fender benders and lost her way to a store nearby. So, just to be safe, my mom had my grandpa take over the driving from then on. He drove me 10 miles each way, which may not seem far to some, but for me, going to All-City was like this whole other world. It was my secret too, because to my friends back home, playing the violin wasn't cool.
See, where I came from, it wasn't the worst neighborhood, but I definitely knew what streets not to walk through or not to talk to that kid down the block who always smelled like weed. It wasn't uncommon for a friend's sister to end up pregnant at 16. But practicing for my first big show with All-City at Orchestra Hall took me away from all that. I remember the night of the big show is finally here, and I'm wearing my nice black pants and white shirt, and I get up on that stage and there are these bright lights in my face, and I'm thinking, this must have been what Selena felt like. [audience laughter]
So, I'm squinting, looking for my family filing into their seats. I see my mom, my grandpa, my grandma, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins. Because us, Latinos, travel in packs. [audience laughter] I'm fairly certain I won a prize for selling out the most seats. [audience laughter] So, we get started. I'm playing my little heart out and so hard that the horse hairs on my bowstring are falling off, but it doesn't matter. Every time we get a pause, I'm looking out into the audience, looking for my grandma's sign of approval. It's easy to see her, because she's the only one in the audience bopping her head to a Bach concerto. [audience laughter]
When it's all over, I remember thinking, now that I knew there was so much more to explore outside of my hood, I wanted to go further. And that night, I also remember grandma being overly exhausted, so we had to cut our celebrations early. I went through with my plans of going further. And at 13, I chose the furthest high school I could. It was called Whitney Young Magnet School, and it was where all the cool kids from All-City went to. It was where you had to take a test to get in. And later, I found out it was where Michelle Obama went to high school. [audience cheers]
Yeah. But my mom was like, “Going to All-City was one thing, but going to school that far? No.” But with my determination and mostly the help of my grandparents, we convinced her. Before I knew it, I was a student at Whitney Young. And this time, I proudly bragged to my friends, “I go to Whitney Young. Sorry, I can't hang out tonight.” [audience laughter] I was still part of the orchestra at school. And at one point, I realized the violin had opened up this new confidence in me, and opened up doors for me that I never thought I could walk through. Because I wasn't just playing the violin. I was pushing myself hard and taking honors physics and AP English and math.
I had that voice in my head from my grandma, just saying, “Échale ganas” Give it your all. But I also noticed that I wasn't coming home as often. And one time, when I was home, I was sitting in my room and I remember hearing my mom talking to my grandma downstairs. And in mid conversation, my mom asked her, “Tell me your name, repeat your phone number.” I just picked up the phone to call my friend and ignored I ever heard anything. And that happened pretty often, me ignoring anything off with her. Sometimes I felt guilty, but I didn't feel guilty when I chose to stay in the city to go to college, because I'd be close enough in case my mom really needed me, but still far away, because I chose to live on campus.
But every time I did come home, I started to notice grandma's sayings and conversation became less frequent. And in turn, I started speaking to her less and less to avoid her, repeatedly asking me the same questions over and over again. But one time when I was home, I noticed she wasn't there at all. I asked my mom, “Where's grandma?” And she was like, “I thought she was with you.” And so, we both go downstairs and we see the back door wide open. So, we get in the car and drive around the block and we see her sitting on some stranger's front stoop. My mom gets out the car and starts yelling at her immediately, “No te largues.” Don't leave us.
When she gets in the car, I start yelling too. “¿Qué te pasa?” What are you doing? She kept escaping and forgetting things and losing almost everything. Each time, my mom and I would yell at her for different reasons, my mom, out of frustration from being her caretaker and me yelling at her, as if yelling at her would force her to change her behavior. One of the last times she escaped, when we all got home, I think to calm all of us down, my mom put on Pandora to one of these old Mexican stations. It was like magic. Instantly, my five-foot grandma jumps high from her seat, and starts dancing and belting out every word to these old bolero songs. And in that moment, it was like she was never gone at all. I knew she was sick, but I just never wanted to fully accept it, because she had been so strong her whole life, I thought maybe she could just get over this too.
Sometime later on, I was driving my mom and my grandma to one of grandma's many doctor's appointments. I'm sitting there in the waiting room of the neurology department. And this feeling of uncertainty, and fear and guilt just overwhelmed me to the point where I just couldn't take it anymore. So, when my mom came out of the room, I finally asked her, “What's wrong with her?” She turned to me and told me in a way like it was just another day. He just prescribed her another pill for Alzheimer's treatment. It wasn't until then that I finally accepted it. When I did, I felt angry and useless. I was so angry that I had wasted so much time not speaking to her that I had forgotten what it was really like to be with her.
Because during this whole time, I kept pushing myself further. I was no longer a violin player, but I went after any and all of my dreams of acting and writing and traveling and moving to places like New York, San Francisco and now LA. But as my world was expanding, her world was diminishing. And who knew how long it would be until she would forget who we all were. So, the last time I went back home to Chicago, I decided I had to tell her all the things that I wish she knew. And so, we're sitting on our couch one night, me and my mom and my grandma and my grandpa, and grandma starts talking, like, saying real sentences.
Instead of our usual tell me your name, repeat your phone number, I'm looking through my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary album, and I point to my grandpa next to me and I ask her, “Do you know who he is?” And with this big smile on her face and this confident tone in her voice, she says, “Pues si.” Of course, I know this man is my friend. And without missing a beat, my grandpa just says, “Well, maybe one day you let me take you out on a date.”
Everyone's laughing while I'm sitting there holding back tears, wishing that I could tell her that I got my bravery from her, that I got my determination from her and that her words and her sayings helped shape the entire course of my life. But I didn't think she would understand any of this. So, instead, I just turned to my mom and I said, “I miss her.” I'd like to still think though that whenever she hears the sound of the violins in her favorite mariachi song, she still thinks of me. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Dame: [00:32:09] Ladies and gentlemen, Christina Igaraividez.
Jay: [00:32:14] Christina Igaraividez is a writer and comedian based in Los Angeles. Christina says she feels fortunate to still have her grandmother close. And in moments of clarity, her jokes and sayings continue to bring Christina inspiration.
[Spanish song]
The song you're hearing now is one of her grandmother's favorite songs. It's included in the playlist that Christina put together for her grandmother. You can see pictures of Christina and Pilar and listen to the entire playlist at our website, themoth.org.
[Spanish song]
Coming up, our final story from this live show in Santa Barbara, California, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[Spanish song]
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. We're bringing you stories from a Moth Mainstage we held at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, California. The theme of the evening Beneath the Armor. And our last story comes from Patty Schemel, former drummer of the band Hole, noted for being one of the most commercially successful female fronted rock bands of all time. Here's your host for the evening, Dame Wilburn.
[cheers and applause]
Dame: [00:34:16] When I asked our next storyteller, “When was the last time you felt invincible?” She said, “I found a parking spot at the Trader Joe's in Silver Lake.” Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Patty Schemel.
[cheers and applause]
Patty Schemel: [00:34:44] It was 2014, and I had just started a six-week tour with my new band. We passed a sign that said Grand Canyon. And I said, “You guys remember that Brady Bunch episode where they go to the Grand Canyon and Bobby puts the beans in the flashlight?” And there was silence. Crickets. And then, I thought, Nicole, our bass player did say that Blink 182 was her favorite band when she was in junior high school. And then, it hit me. I was a 47-year-old married, mother of a four-year-old and I was in a pop punk band with three girls under the age of 30. [audience laughter] I was on a six-week tour with millennials. [audience laughter]
The last time I'd been on a tour of this length, this long, was when I was in a band called Hole.
[cheers and applause]
We toured the world and played Madison Square Garden, cover the Rolling Stone. By the end of my five years in the band, I ended up addicted to drugs and alcohol. [audience laughter] But in the 20 years since then, I got clean and sober,- [audience cheers and applause] -fell in love, got married and had my daughter. My days of private jets and tour buses had been replaced with taking care of my daughter, play dates, school drop off and pickup. The old days were kind of a galaxy away. I grew up in a small town north of Seattle. I never really felt like I fit in there until it was farms and football. I started to feel comfortable and fit in when I discovered the drums at 11 years old.
The physical act of playing the drums put me into my body and help me connect with the world. It was my way of expressing myself and my way of being heard loudly. When I discovered punk rock, I wanted to start my own band, which is pretty easy. You just come up with a cool band name like Cat Butt or Green Apple Quickstep or Blisterfist and then you ask your friends to join. [audience laughter]
So, our first show was the high school cafeteria. And then, friends, neighbors, backyard party. And then, you graduate to the Elks Lodge and then the teen rec center. [audience laughter] So, as I grew up, I started playing music around Seattle and opening up for bands like Soundgarden, Mudhoney and Nirvana. And that was right before I joined Hole. But in this new version of myself, this new grownup version, I still have the desire to play drums. I still have the desire to create music and play live.
One day, I got a message on Twitter from my friend Ali Kohler. Ali and I were friends on the internet, not friends in real life or IRL. [audience laughter] She messaged me and she said she was starting a new band and she wanted to know if I wanted to play drums in it. And I said, “Sure, I'll do that.” That's how our band Upset got started. It wasn't like from an ad in a local free weekly or a sign in a coffee shop that said drummer wanted. It was a tweet.
Imagine if the Ramones started like that or Jimi Hendrix. Think about Joey Ramone tweeting. So, we found Nicole, our bass player, and Lauren, our guitar player, and we played some shows around LA and we recorded a record and then we booked a six-week tour to promote the record. Now this is a van tour. This is like us loading our equipment into the van. There is no roadies, there's no buses. We load our gear every night and move on to every city and drive everywhere. So, I packed a small suitcase, and a sleeping bag and six small hand sanitizers [audience laughter] and we headed out to Tempe, Arizona, for our first show.
So, our rules of the road are the person driving gets to pick the music. So, Nicole, our bass player, is driving. She plugs her phone into the stereo and turns on a playlist of music and a Sheryl Crow song comes on. And then, I look up and I see Allie, our guitar player in the passenger seat, lean over and go, “I love this song” and then high five Nicole. And then, I heard Lauren, our guitar player in the backseat, start singing along to it and then they all started singing along.
My punk rock bandmates were having a moment about Sheryl Crow. [audience laughter] I mean, apparently, this song spoke to them when they were six years old when it came out. [audience laughter] Yeah. Also, I noticed that they were really into some serious multitasking. I watched Allie on her phone, like buying dresses and then using her phone's front facing camera as a mirror to apply lipstick and listening to Pearl Jam all at the same time, where I cannot even text and have a conversation at the same time, which they clearly noticed, because any time I was texting, they'd always go, “Shh, shh, shh, Patty's texting.” [audience laughter]
For the whole entire six weeks, nobody ever touched a map. It's all GPS. We booked shows and confirmed shows through our phones and email. And also, our goal is to play as many shows as possible, which met some pretty unconventional places. We played a pizza pit in Boise, Idaho, and in some kid's garage in El Paso, and then the Fun Zone in Santa Barbara. [audience cheers]
It was batting cages and mini golf. [audience laughter] Yeah, there. And also, the bands, it seems today, don't make a lot of money from royalties like we used to. It's mostly streaming and corporations will reach out to bands with a high follower count on their social media in exchange for free stuff and hotel accommodations. Back in the 1990s, that being connected to a corporation was not punk rock. It's not cool. Kurt Cobain wrote, “Corporate Magazines Suck” in Sharpie on his shirt on the cover of the Rolling Stone. Can you imagine like Smart Water presents Soundgarden or Oasis brought you by stamps.com. [audience laughter]
So, when we got back to the West Coast, our first show on the West Coast was Seattle, which is my old hometown. It was good to be there and to play a live show again. Yeah. Being on the West Coast meant I'm almost home. I'd realized that I was really missing being at home. I missed my daughter. I missed the simplicity of our life together, our routine, our rhythm, bath books in bed. And that just a few days away from her was really hard for me.
I couldn't find myself in another line for a bathroom at some club in Williamsburg, listening to two girls argue about the real meaning of the eggplant emoji. [audience laughter] So, just missed it, you know? So, we moved our stuff into this club. It was like a warehouse space and the band started coming in and the show started and we pushed our stuff up against the wall and I started to head out to go get a cup of coffee and take a walk. And this girl introduced herself and said that she was excited to come to the show and see me play, because she started playing drums when she saw me play. She was looking forward to the show.
It meant a lot to me to hear that something I did inspired somebody else that it changed their life and gave her this direction, which she was explaining. So, I went out and I grabbed my coffee. When I came back in, it was time for us to play. So, I went back to my drums and I sat down at my drum kit. This is a view I've seen so many times. I thought about it, from the 70,000 kids at a festival in the English countryside to 10 kids at some club in LA pointing their phones at me. I can't stop playing music now, even though, I'm realizing I can't really support my family like this anymore. I missed my family, and it was a lot different for me now. But I couldn't stop playing, because this is still my voice, this is still the way I express myself. And to be visible is important.
So, I thought about all the kids on tour. I thought about all the girls I'd seen on the past tour, and what was happening in our world today, and what these kids were doing and organizing and playing shows and creating art, and these girls were the women that are going to lead the way for girls like my daughter. So, I had this affection for them and their need to have Snapchat and flash mobs. They might use annoying phrases like self-care [audience laughter] and adulting, [audience laughter] but in the words of the great Sheryl Crow, “If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad.” Thanks.
[cheers and applause]
Dame: [00:46:54] Ladies and gentlemen, Patty Schemel. Santa Barbara, thank you so much for being family,- [audience cheers and applause] -for being on the edge of your seats. I feel like this is a great place to tell truth. So, I want to let you know, I'm taking one of them lemons back to Detroit. Y'all, have a good night. Be safe going home. Good night.
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:47:28] Patty Schemel is known for being the former drummer of the platinum selling band Hole, but she's also a songwriter, teacher and author of the memoir, Hit So Hard. She currently performs with the bands Upset and Object as Subject and is on the board of the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls, a nonprofit that teaches girls all over the world it's okay to be loud. By the way, Patty suggests we play this song by Sheryl Crow to take us out.
[Sheryl Crow’s song]
As we wrap up this live hour from Santa Barbara, I want to remind you of something. At The Moth, the storytellers don't come from backstage. They walk up from the audience. The Moth is all of us. You just have to raise your hand or put your name in the hat and tell us your story.
That's what our pitch line is for. It's the most direct and invitational way we have to find you. And here's how it works. You either call 877-799-M-O-T-H. One more time, 877-799-6684. Or, just go to the website, themoth.org, and make your pitch right through your computer to the site and it'll come to us. We listen to every single one of these pitches and we often find storytellers and work with them and bring them to our stages all around the world. So, remember, when you wonder where we find our storytellers, right here on the pitch line, 877-799-M-O-T-H or right on the web at themoth.org.
So, that's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from The Moth.
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]
Your host for this live hour from Santa Barbara was Dame Wilburn. Dame is a poet, storyteller and writer from Detroit. She's also chief marketing director for Twisted Willow Soap Company. The stories in the show were directed by Sarah Austin Jenness and Meg Bowles. The rest of The Moth’s directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman and Jennifer Hixson. Production support from Nadine Tadros, Emily Couch and Timothy Lou Ly.
Moth Stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the Storytellers. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Thomas Lieb, Eydie Gormé, and Los Panchos and Sheryl Crow. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.