Poem 8: Lacerations

LACERATIONS

i keep trying
to pick up
the shattered pieces
of
        my
                life
but i keep
cutting
        my
                fingers

copyright 2009, Spunky

Money...grab that cash with both hands and make a stash (I hope)!

God bless Dorothy Parker. She was one of the wittiest and most insightful women of all time.

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."

I've had issues with money all my life. I grew up in poverty--the picture-perfect stereotype of "white trash" poverty in Kentucky. My father farmed tobacco and worked in a factory. My sister went to work at the same factory at 17, right as/before she graduated high school to help support us. My mother never had a job--we were old-school like that.

But enough about the past. It teaches us, right?--and makes us who we are to an extent, but it is by no means a nod to any destiny before us.

Recently I've decided I'm in a cage and I need to rattle out of it. It is wonderful I have a job, even if it doesn't pay very well. More people are doing worse than me given the state of the economy, I'm sure. All the same, I ain't getting any better and it seems to be worse, especially since I'm digging my proverbial head out of the sand to try and take steps to get on top of it and hopefully move in a direction of more stability.

The last 6 or so years of my life have been tumultuous. I've been through cycles of employment and unemployment. My current employment pays the least amount of money I've ever made, which is depressing, given I'm at an age where I should be making the most ever (not overqualified or without experience). My husband is doing better pay-rate wise than me but it's not totally steady all the time. Then we spent all this energy on a band that pretty much just ended up frustrating us and taking all our time for no money...as great as it was in many other ways.

I want to go back to school but my past loans are in default so I have to figure that out first before I can get any aid I need so it looks like it will be some work before I can go down that path. Plus I still have credit card debt...place that along with the daily life-to-life crap and every day, someone else is ready to take whatever dime just landed in my hand, even if it's turned into a penny by the time it gets to me.

Then the banks charge you up the ass if you're a bit overdrawn...that just happened again today so I am really anxious for payday to get here. I had to bite my tongue on the phone with my bank today. Can't afford to be rude or say what I really think!

The only thing that I can do to keep from falling to pieces and being melodramatic is just to remind myself that life and these situations are all in passing...take it one tiny step at a time...and not hate myself for past mistakes or dwell in regret. And smile at a quote like that, from the lovely Ms. Parker.

I hope for a lot of strength these days. I need it. My tenacious crab nature will overcome in time.

Get Hip with superstar bluegrass bassist Missy Raines at Swallow Hill

by Laura "Spunky" McGaughey
(Originally published in the June 2009 issue of Pow'r Pickin' magazine, the official publication of the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society.)

A seven-time IBMA Bass Player of the Year Award winner, Missy Raines is a bass superstar. She launched her career playing with the experimental bluegrass band, Cloud Valley, going on to tour the country with masters such as Eddie and Martha Adcock, Kenny Baker, Josh Graves, and Jesse McReynolds. From there she joined Claire Lynch’s popular Front Porch Band, and went on to develop a successful duo with band mate, Jim Hurst.

Now she’s taking the helm of own band, The New Hip, a band that fuses bluegrass virtuosity with jazz grooves. They will make their Denver debut at Swallow Hill on Thursday, June 4 at 8 p.m., and the band just released their debut on Compass records, Inside Out.

"It took time finding the right people," Raines tells me on the phone from her home in Nashville. "I had a lot of ideas in my head and wanted to find a lot of different folks from whom we could have a good song pull," she explains. The project she envisioned was one of pure collaboration: a mixture of hot new talent who could all write new, fresh material.

The time involved has paid off, for she has assembled a unique cast of players. The music is rich and deep, filled with beauty and eloquence, and a stirring expressiveness. Inside Out was produced by Raines, members of The New Hip and Ben Surratt. It also features special guest appearances by Matt Flinner (mandolin), John R. Burr (piano) and Megan McCormick (guitar, vocals). The New Hip members on the album are Ethan Ballinger (mandolin), Michael Witcher (resonator guitar), Lee Holland (drums) and Dillon Hodges (guitar).

For the performance at Swallow Hill, the lineup is slightly different, as Ballinger has moved from playing mandolin to guitar, replacing Hodges. "He's phenomenal on guitar," Raines notes. Travis Burch takes over on mandolin and Robert Crawford will take the spot on drums. Witcher, whose credits have included playing with everyone from Laurie Lewis to Tyler Hilton and Dolly Parton, is still with the band on resonator guitar.

The New Hip's name is a play on words inspired by real life. "I wanted the name to reflect the music as much as it could—new and fresh, with jazz sensibilities," Raines says. "I thought, ‘This band is going to be hip.’ And I had a hip replacement surgery to correct a birth defect earlier in my life that was really life-changing. It gave me mobility, a new lease on life, so I thought it would be fun to call it that: the new hip. It works both ways, whether you know the whole story or not."

Bluegrass is all about innovation to Raines. Inspired by past role models like Bill Monroe, Raines is spurred on by what he did: taking elements of what is around him—in Monroe’s case, blues and early jazz players—and experimenting with them to create something new. “When I’m playing a jazzier piece, do I lose the essence of bluegrass? No,” she says. “It’s important to preserve the culture and tradition. It’s equally important to interpret sounds in your own, new way, taking the past and the present to make something different.”

Her unique trailblazing abilities have earned her many labels as being the best. For Raines, there simply can’t be a best. “I can name off 12 bass players I’d consider favorites, and that’s just to start. There can’t be a ‘best.’ Music is about affecting people at that moment and I’m gratified that what I have to offer has been recognized.”

And Raines never forgets the fans. “We (musicians) have the best job in the world and they’re the reason we can do that,” she says. Interacting with fans on a personal level is important to her and the band. They put work into personally responding to their own emails and maintaining their own online social networks, from blogging to MySpace and Facebook networking, and tweeting on Twitter. “I love playing to faces I recognize, to see those loyal fans, so personally responding to the fans is extremely important to us,” she smiles.

Opening the show for Missy Raines & The New Hip will be the Boston Boys featuring Sam Grisman. Tickets are available online at http://www.swallowhillmusic.org/, or at Swallow Hill's box office at 71 East Yale Avenue, 303-777-1003. CBMS member tickets are for $12 advance, $15 day of show.