News and Updates

April 19, 2001
Australia

Well, folks, here we are in the land Down Under, and what an amazing month it's been! We started off with Allan La Croix and Susan McMillan flying in from Toronto and Alaska (respectively) to play "Deadheads" on our last run of US gigs. It was all good fun, and we got to sit around the dressing room for a few hours one evening and trade laughter and gig food with them and Tina and Nancy. I walked away feeling so very fortunate to have fans who are respectful of boundaries, yet who still behave like friends. (And of course we all loved them even more when they offered to carry equipment!)

Finale of "On the Other Side"

I had a fantastic birthday. Pat arranged for an evening at our favorite Vietnamese Restaurant with 35 friends. She drove me crazy for two weeks, telling me that there'd be 6-8 more people than I expected, but refusing to say who. Tina and Nancy flew in to do the "dog shoot" (see our merchandise pages for a sad example of good people doing bad things to animals), and we had dinner April 6th together. All through dinner I grilled Pat, and managed to get out of her that my "surprise" was "around 10 feet at its narrowest", too big to fit into the house, might have to stay in the garden, had wheels somewhere on it, and was a combination of animal, vegetable and mineral. Drove me nuts....

	Left: Janis with manager, Karen K. Sternberg
Right: Janis opens her gifts!

The morning of my birthday, Philip arrived with his work gloves in tow, saying he'd come to "help unload". Tina and Nancy also came dressed for work. Pat kept glancing at her watch, then the phone, then the door. I was sequestered on the porch for a full hour while we waited. Suddenly Pat went to the door, came back and said "Do Not Move From This Spot!" So I stayed (hey, she's a redhead) until, an eternity later, I was finally allowed out the side porch.

	Left: Pat, Mary, Karen, Janis, Kurt and Sue (front)
Right: Zac and Janis

Imagine my surprise when I saw a huge Prevost tour bus!! My first thought was "Oh, she bought me a tour bus, she's finally lost her mind". Then I heard "This Train Still Runs" playing from the bus, and I thought "She's got all my friends on there, and we're going to ride around town." But none of that made any sense; she knows I spend enough time driving around to hate the idea of doing it recreationally!

	Left: Max, Sue, Mary, Janis and Kathy
Right: Kathy, Janis and Pat

Suddenly 3 people spilled out, carrying guitars, two of them in curly black wigs and one looking like Mariah Carey. They were all singing "Train" at the top of their lungs. I thought "Oh God, no, she's hired entertainment!" When I got closer I realized it was Mary Fisher, Kathy Mattea, and Sue Shoemaker. Believe it or not, they and Mary's kids Max and Zac Campbell, along with Kurt my favorite chef, had bused down from Nyack NY for my birthday! Kathy joined in the fun, and we spent a wonderful afternoon eating burritos at our friend Troy's Baja Burrito restaurant and catching up. Reba, Janis and Vic
My dinner party was wonderful; Vic and Reba Heyman, the mailing list folks who single-handedly feed and support most of the folk community, were in town to spend Passover with their new grandchild, and they brought me a chocolate seder plate. My friends respected my wishes (I'd asked everyone not to buy me gifts, but instead to give me a "talisman" - something they loved that I could keep in my writing room for luck) and gave me wonderful presents. Everything from a great photo of Philip at 5 years of age, back to the camera, plunking on a piano, to a handmade bracelet Victor Mecyssne's friend had worn in a Native American dance ceremony, and a small Japanese figurine Hobo Jim and Cyndi had kept in their homes for the past 22 years, and my friend Kit Andrew's first pitcher from her amazing pitcher collection... really great stuff. All of it from the heart, which was what I cared about.

	Left: Shawn, Janis and Cyndi
Right: Victor Mecyssne and Janis

Pat bought dinner for everyone, saying when they protested "Make a donation to the Pearl Foundation instead". I love her more every day.

	Left: Kit's still singing!
Right: Tina plans extortion...

And people have been making the most incredible donations! I don't know who started it, but I've been handed literally dozens of $50 checks and bills for the past two months, all of it to the Foundation. (ADD URL) My very first gig in Australia, Mike From New Zealand (you know him from the message board) came up and handed me a $50 note "for the Foundation". Bless him, he flew in just for the show. Way to go, Mike!

Janis with author Anne McCaffrey

Of course, Pat couldn't let the birthday go by without some tangibles, so I got Guide to Quidditch and a few other science fiction books, including several Anne McCaffrey first editions! Now granted, I adore Anne, have visited her at her home, correspond with her almost daily, but I am still first and foremost a fan. So naturally we've sent the books off to be autographed, which she generously agreed to do. I know, it's tacky, but there you have it.

We arrived in Sydney last Tuesday after 22 hours of travel, completely whipped; went out to breakfast, then travelled an hour to pick up some equipment. Lucky us, our Australian tour manager (Kerry Nicholson) had a friend who lives on the edge of a nature preserve. Said friend wasn't home when we arrived, but had very kindly left the door open for us. Sitting by the pool, feeling very much in the lap of luxury, I had a long conversation with a fairly large gekko (at least, I think it was a gekko). I got bored (it was pretty one-way) and started to wander up the garden steps when I noticed something slithering next to me!! I froze in place and whispered "Uh, Philip... Philip? Who's my friend here?" The snake was identified as a six foot python. Not much interested in conversation, apparently. Luckily the sun was high and it was well-fed (I felt like I was re-reading The Little Prince), so I walked away unharmed.

But what an amazing start to our trip! The next day we taped a television show, and I got one of those sore throats singers dread - knives up and down the bottom, plus that too-dry feeling. I put it down to the airplane, but downed a few fistfuls of Vitamin C and echinacea just in case. Of course, by Friday morning it had turned into a full-fledged cold. And as everybody knows, the only thing you can do for a cold is wait out the ten days and hope it progresses quickly and doesn't turn into anything else. The day after we played Canterbury Hurlstone, and I managed to get through the show with a lot of Tylenol (more echinacea, more C). By mid-day I'd added cough and throat lozenges, hot lemon baths, and nasal spray. Pity the poor folk at Sunday's Evan Theatre concert - I got a cough right on the last line of Tea & Sympathy that turned into a 10-minute fit. Fortunately, a yodeller in the audience (I am not kidding) called out "For pity's sake, give the woman a glass of hot water, lemon, honey, and whiskey!!" The manager, Chris (who went home right after with the same thing) brought me my cure, and the show went on. We hit Byron Bay the next afternoon, with me going through a full box of Kleenex every hour. Amazing how much gunk the human system can produce...yuck! I ran into wonderful Jeff Lang, who listened to me freaking out ("Why am I here? there are 10 thousand people out there who never heard of me! I have a horrible cold, I can't hear, can't hit my notes, they'll hate me!") and quietly said "Just be Janis Ian. You'll do great." Ten thousand thanks for that, Jeff. I went back to the trailer, did half an hour of vocal warmups (I detest vocal warmups), sat quietly until showtime, and then had the time of my life!!!

I'm not kidding, that was more fun than I've had in quite a few years. Midway through one of the guitar solos I found myself strutting the lip of the stage, feeling very much like my hero Eddie Van Halen. I almost fell into the audience with shock when I realized I'd just been playing blind, from the heart, with no thought at all.

We flew back into Sydney this afternoon; Philip postponed the press I was supposed to do, I took a long nap, and woke without sore throat. I've only gone through 3 boxes of tissues today, so I have high hopes for tomorrow's gig. We are reading: Laurell K. Hamilton's "Anita Blake" series. SciFan: Laurell K. Hamilton Orson Scott Card's "Maps In A Mirror" (www.hatrackriver.com), on loan from the library - and if anyone knows where to find a copy for less than the $350-$1600 they're charging at ABE, let me know! We are listening to: Neil Finn's new CD, Chet Baker Sings.

We are gloating over: how well behaved the dogs were, much to our astonishment, when we dressed them up in merchandise and had them pose. We thought for sure they'd go crazy, but instead they took one look at Tina glaring from behind the camera and quieted down! Special thanks to our pal Lisa the Alpha Dog Trainer for setting them up this past year to be good dogs in a clinch! (Don't get too excited, Lisa, it ended as soon as the photo shoot stopped...)

Foster and Jake strike a pose

We are wondering: why alchemists bothered trying to turn lead into gold, when if they could just have figured out a way to transmute all this goop in my throat, they could have made anything they wanted! That's it - have a great month, everyone, and see you in May.

Best,
Janis

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