STARTING OUT
LAURA STEGMAN: Tell me how you became a singer.
KATE MARKOWITZ: I grew up watching my dad write on his piano, and I'd go to his recording sessions here in L.A. to watch all these musicians record his music. Since I grew up around music, I guess I got my ear for it through osmosis. But my father did NOT want me to go into the music business at all. That was not something he thought his daughter should even attempt.
LS: Did he want you to be a doctor, or was it that he just didn't want you to go into show business?
KM: Actually, when I was in high school my dad recorded little demos for me in his studio. He was supportive in the sense that he knew I had musical ability. I think he thought, "This is kind of cute." But he hoped to God that I would never try it as a profession.
I think he wanted me to be a lawyer, or something more intellectual. My mother passed away when I was ten, so by the time I was thinking about career stuff it was mainly my dad's influence. I really didn't think I was going to go into singing, and I studied other things -- writing, photography, guitar, French, film. I didn't really know WHAT the hell I was going to do. I was so shy that I thought I could never be a singer, even though I always sang. It was kind of like breathing to me. But I never thought I could make a living at it. Then [laughing], as I started to realize I wasn't really that good at anything else, I thought, "Well, maybe I'll try it." And then it kind of became a "proving to my father that I could do it" thing. Not anger, really, but a little bit of spite, like, "Oh, you don't think I can do it? Well, maybe I can."
LS: Is he still alive?
KM: No, he died in 1994.
LS: So he saw you as a successful singer.
KM: He did. He saw a lot of good things happen for me, which I'm really glad about. Our relationship did a real switch once I started making money as a singer. All of a sudden, he realized that maybe I was going to do this, and then he started to be more proud of me. But he wasn't the kind of guy who would express his pride to ME, really, just to everyone else. He was one of those very-hard-on-himself kind of people, and that stretched out to everybody else. He was a critical person -- but a GREAT person. I miss him so much. I miss him all the time. We were really close. He was like a friend to me, more than just a dad. He lived a pretty bohemian life. He was the kind of person you could pretty much be yourself with. And that's kind of rare in parent/child relationships.
LS: Do you have brothers and sisters?
KM: I have one brother, and I have a stepbrother and three stepsisters from my dad's marriages after my mom died. When I was a kid, my brother and I sang together. He plays guitar and many other instruments, and he had a big influence on me as a teenager because he turned me on to a lot of music. My mom was also musical, by the way.
LS: Where did you grow up?
KM: I grew up in Los Angeles, and I went to college for a few years. In 1980, I decided to go to this music school called Dick Groves Music Workshops to really learn about being a vocalist. We studied a lot of classical stuff and music theory, but the main focus was a practical approach to help you earn a living as a musician.
LS: Did they have voice classes?
KM: Yeah. It included sight singing, ear training, performing workshops, studio-singing workshops. I learned a lot of practical things that I've used over the years, like how to write out a basic rhythm chart for a band to read. I learned an overview of basic skills you might need, down to technical stuff like headphones in the studio, things to do to hear yourself, microphone techniques. And our final thing was doing a show.
LS: Was that the first time you'd performed in public?
KM: I had performed with other people. But this "final" was me as a soloist, the talking between songs, all that stuff.
LS: Do you remember the songs that you sang?
KM: Yeah, I do, I'm embarrassed to say. I did a couple of my originals, I did a jazz song, and I think I actually did James Taylor's "Gorilla."
LS: [laughter]
KM: And I don't think I've ever told him that.
LS: [laughter] Of all the songs -- that's hilarious!
KM: [ruefully] I know. I love that song! And I remember that my bass player actually played the bass part like a tuba, blowing into a big, empty water cooler bottle. And he did it like, "Woo hoo hoo hoo..."
LS and KM: [laughter]
KM: [sarcastically] Yeah, it was GREAT show.
LS: [laughter]
KM: [with mock indignation] I don't know if I want you to talk about that.
LS and KM: [laughter]
KM: After that, I started doing vocal work with John Vester, who was my boyfriend at the time, and we started working little clubs. That's kind of how I started.
LS: You sang and he played?
KM: Yeah, he is a singer/songwriter. He played guitar, and we had a group. I played a little piano at the time, but I mainly just sang, and we shared the leads and did duets. I was starting to dabble in some writing. It was something I would do once in a while.
LS: Had you ever written up to that point?
KM: Yeah, I had. But I was kind of a closet songwriter. Which I still am [laughs].
LS: What sort of music did you perform in the clubs?
KM: It was kind of like Dan Hicks' music. We also did John's songs and some novelty songs. But then we did contemporary stuff, too, and songs by artists we liked, like Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder and James Taylor.
LS: So you liked James Taylor's music -- aside from [laughs] "Gorilla" -- back then?
KM: Yeah. I remember that when his first record came out, I was in junior high. My brother and my father and I were dissecting the lyrics to "Fire and Rain" to try and figure out what it was all about. I remember that really well. Then when I ended up meeting James, it was one of those circular things in my life that I couldn't actually believe was happening because some of his music had such a big effect on me at a time when I was so impressionable. I've had that happen a few times in my career, where I got to work with an artist whose work I was really into.
STUDIO WORK AND TOURING WITH SERGIO MENDES AND GEORGE BENSON
LS: How did you start doing studio work?
KM: Songwriters would ask me to sing a demo of their song. I started doing stuff for free just to get experience, and it finally evolved into getting studio work that I was paid for. I started to get called to sing on people's records as a background vocalist.
One of the first records I sang on was for Dave Grusin's brother Don. I met him through his engineer, Geoff Gillette. Geoff recommended me to a lot of people, including Sergio Mendes, who I briefly toured with. Sergio had kind of gone into the pop world a little bit, but still primarily did Brazilian music in his live shows. My dad loved Brazilian music, and I had always loved Brazilian music too. I was a fan of it from early on. A lot of Sergio's music was in Portuguese, but I had never spoken Portuguese, so I had to learn it phonetically. We toured a lot of exotic places all over the world -- Europe, Indonesia. We actually went to Jordan and sang a show for King Hussein. And then I worked with George Benson for a while after that.
LS: How did that come about?
KM: That was one of those random experiences of being at the right place at the right time. A friend of mine heard that they were looking for someone to take the place of a percussionist/vocalist, so I sent in a tape, resume and picture. I found out later that they had a huge stack of people's packages along with mine. They put in the first and second tapes and didn't like either one. Then they put in the third tape -- mine -- and they liked it, so they just stopped. If my tape had been on the bottom of the stack -- who knows?
LS: Were you the only backup singer?
KM: Yes. And I had to play some percussion instruments. I told them from the beginning that I wasn't a percussionist, but since I had replaced a percussionist/vocalist, which is what they liked having, they said, "Oh, can you just pretend?"
LS and KM: [laughter]
KM: So I was out there with all of these real percussion instruments - congas, all these hand toys, and I think I even had a bell tree. It was a challenge, to say the least. But I got to sing duets with George, so although it was really a challenge, it was fun, too. Pretending to be a percussionist, however, was a hard thing
LS: On James Taylor's "Jump Up Behind Me" in concert you got to reprise that role when you played a shaker.
KM: Yeah, I think if I had studied percussion when I was younger, I could have been a really good percussionist because I do have good time. But it's really hard to play timbales or the instruments that really hurt your hands. I had a hard time with that. I'd be like, "Ow, this hurts!"
LS and KM: [laughter]
LS: What did you do after the George Benson tour finished?
KM: I had quit George's tour just before I met James Taylor. At the time, I actually thought I didn't want to tour anymore [laughs].
Taken during the recording of the background vocals for "Hourglass." Frank Filipetti is in the back.
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MEETING JAMES TAYLOR AND JOINING HIS BAND
LS: Tell me how you met James.
KM: I had worked over the years with Lee Ritenour on a couple of records and done some live stuff with him, because he was into Brazilian music as well. In 1990, Lee organized a show in Japan for Earth Day that combined Japanese, American and Brazilian musicians. I had worked with some of the Brazilian musicians, and I'd learned how to sing in Portuguese when I sang with Sergio. So Lee asked me to come to sing background for everybody. There were a couple of featured artists, and James was one of the main ones. So was Patti Austin. When I heard that James was going to go, I said [enthusiastically], "YES, I'll go!" It was a great experience. All of a sudden I was thrown into a situation where I was singing background with and for James!
LS: You had always been a fan?
KM: Yes. I was a huge fan, I had every record. When I was on the road with George Benson, I always brought the Never Die Young album with me to listen to when I was feeling low. It just helped me to have that album.
Anyway, we all met here [Los Angeles] and flew over to Japan. The first time I saw James was at Los Angeles Airport. We were filling out the forms to declare cameras and stuff that you're taking with you, and I was standing behind him in line.
LS: He was just standing in line by himself?
KM: He was standing in line. I thought [re-enacting her surprise], "Hey, that's James!"
LS: Did you say anything to him?
KM: I think Lee introduced us, and I was completely star-struck and shy. I hardly talked to him,. And then [laughs], in Tokyo, on the way to the hotel, I said something really stupid to him. Something like, "What's your sister's name?" forgetting that her name was Kate.
LS and KM: [laughter]
LS: Was he friendly?
KM: Oh, he was so sweet from the very beginning, and really supportive. I had co-written a song with Don Grusin that Patti Austin had recorded. She sang it at the show, and James said something nice about my lyrics. And I felt [sighs blissfully], "OK, I can go to heaven now, I can just die now."
And James just happened to be looking for a background vocalist, so his manager at the time, Peter Asher, asked me, "Do you want to tour with us?"
LS: Just like that?
KM: Yeah! And I was pretty burned out on singing a lot of jazz and pop stuff -- I was dying to work with someone like James. And they said "We'll send you an itinerary when we get home, and you see if it works for you." And I was like, "Yeah, okaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!" [laughs]. But then, I didn't get the itinerary. You know, there are so many things in this business that you think are going to happen and don't happen. So I just thought, "Oh well." And then they finally called, saying, "Didn't you get that itinerary???" And that's how I got the job.
LS: They knew your singing from the Japan show, so you didn't have to sing for them at that point?
KM: Yeah. And if I had known going in that James was looking for a background singer, I probably would have been way more nervous. It was a saving grace that we had so much material to learn in those few days. We were working so hard to get it thrown together. None of these people had actually played together, and I was teaching Portuguese to James and Patti, they were teaching stuff to me. It was pretty intense, and I think that saved me.
LS: So you worked with him on a whole different level before you became his background singer!
KM: Yeah, it was a really good way to meet him. So, I started touring with him in 1990, and it was the first tour that he had four singers. Our very first gig was the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Val [Valerie Carter] and I bonded immediately. I was a fan of hers, I had her records, and I was always hoping to meet her. Now we've shared a dressing room for ten years, and we're like sisters.
This was taken during the filming of the "Enough to be On Your Way" video, for a scene ("round-eyed Buddhists") that never made the final cut.
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LS: Was that the first time you'd met David [Lasley] or Arnold [McCuller]?
KM: I met David for the first time there in Telluride, and he and I felt we'd known each other for years. There's something really spiritual about him, and I think he sometimes has psychic powers. Arnold didn't do that first tour because he was working with Phil Collins, so Philip Ballou did it. But I had met Arnold before, and over the years, we have become really, really close.
LS: I notice that there's a poem written by you on the booklet of Arnold's You Can't Go Back CD.
KM: That was a poem that I'd given to him for his birthday. I didn't know that he was going to put it on the CD. When the CD was released, he handed it to me and said, "There's a surprise on this." When I looked at it, I said, "Oh my God!" because it was kind of a personal thing. But I was really flattered once I got over the shock of it. It's pretty rare that i give somebody a poem.
I guess it's a gradual process of getting as close as we [singers] are now, but we all kind of bonded immediately. I think that's also because James chooses people who he knows are going to work well together. Everybody in the whole organization, from every lighting guy to every sound guy to every crew person, all the band guys, are just incredible.
LS: When you first started working with James, did he give you tapes of his songs, or did he just teach you?
KM: I think we had a list of songs he was going to choose. And they gave us tapes of the most recent live shows. But some of the stuff we were doing had new arrangements because there were four singers instead of two.
James has an incredible ear for harmonies, and even if he doesn't have something already in his head, the stuff he comes up with is great. He has a very distinctive thing he hears, and he really knows what he wants for vocal parts. A lot of times he has a very clear picture of it. So he'll say, "OK, I want you to sing this note," and he's very involved in teaching it to us. When Don Grolnick was alive, he was very involved in helping James figure out vocal parts if James was not sure about what to do. When we worked on New Moon Shine, Don was really involved in some of those vocal parts, like for "Shed a Little Light."
THE "BACARDI GIRL"
LS: What did you do between tours? Did you have enough work with James that you took time off?
KM: No. I think all of us [in the band] are in the same position. We're free lance musicians, and we get hired by a number of different employers all year long. Whenever we're in town, we do studio work. I do backup on other records, I do some jingles, I do some movie stuff. And then we've all had various solo things.
LS: Let's talk about your Bacardi record.
KM: In between doing George Benson and meeting James, I did a tour in France for an artist named France Gall. I speak a little French, I can sing in French, and I have a pretty good accent, so I got this job to do a six-month tour over there. During that time, Olivier Bloch-Laine, a French composer/arranger who did a lot of jingles, hired me to sing a vocal in English for a Bacardi Rum jingle that ran in Europe. It was one day's work, and they paid me a nice sum of money. About a year later, I got a call from Olivier telling me they'd been playing the jingle over this footage of beautiful models, boats and the Caribbean in movie theaters all over Europe.
LS: It was a commercial, right?
KM: It was a commercial, but a lot of the commercials in Europe are played before the movies in theaters. They're like little films. And people were loving this song, and they were bootlegging it and playing my one-minute version in dance clubs. So Olivier asked me if I wanted to join forces with Warner Brothers Records over there and Bacardi and him and re-record the song as a single with my name on it. We would make it a song about summer love rather than getting shit-faced on Bacardi.
LS and KM: [laughter]
KM: I didn't really think about the implications of what could happen, and I said "Yeah, sure!" So a friend of mine named Christina Trulio, Olivier and I re-wrote the lyrics. Olivier came over here, and we recorded the vocals. He took it back to France, mixed it and sent it to Germany. It went to Number One in two weeks, and it stayed at Number One for seven weeks straight.
LS: Wow!
KM: In the first five weeks, it sold something like 600,000 copies. I used my real first name, but as a last name, I used Yanai, a name from my mom's family. I had this fantasy that I could perhaps have this other anonymous solo career, and still continue what I was doing here, because I was making a good living as a backup vocalist and I was working with James. But what happened was that all of a sudden, they wanted me to fly over there and do all this promotion and a tour and TV shows and all these interviews. The press and the public wanted to know, "Who is this person, this Kate Yanai?" So I went over, and did a bunch of promotion, a bunch of TV shows, a bunch of photo sessions and a bunch of interviews with radio stations. Mainly just interviews ALL DAY LONG.
LS: Did you have fans?
KM: I did. And I might still have some fans there, I don't know. But I did have fans, and I got some fan mail. Of course, it was in German.
LS and KM: [laughter]
KM: I also did a video of the song in Jamaica that ended up coming out OK, thank God. Olivier was instrumental in getting me to a real location in a really beautiful place instead of having me serving drinks in a bar, which was the record company's concept.
LS: Oh no!
KM: Yeah, their concept had me fantasizing about some dreamy place. I owe it to Olivier that he fought for going to Jamaica. That was a pretty sweet couple of months, because I was doing some really fun video stuff with James on the Vineyard. We did the "Shed a Little Light" video, the "Copperline" video, and that special in the barn on Squibnocket, after which I flew directly from there down to Jamaica to do my own video.
LS: During the interviews in Germany, did you discuss Kate Markowitz, or was it like you became this whole other person?
KM: They knew I sang with James, but it was very weird. It was a hard dance to do. Plus, there were some definite communication problems between the record company on one side and Olivier and me on the other. I had no management, and I went over there completely blind, flying by the seat of my pants. I got offered a big record deal, and I was going to do it. But it turned out to be a situation where the record company was really close-minded about hearing any of my ideas about what kind of solo career I wanted. The Bacardi song was a commercial kind of pop reggae song, a sweet little song, and it wasn't like I was ashamed of it. But I was already known as the "Bacardi Girl" over there, and the second single they wanted me to do was a coffee jingle redone as a regular song.
I went in without having enough people around me helping me to know what to do in that situation. It all happened so fast, and it was such a dreamlike, surreal experience to be, all of a sudden, semi-well known somewhere.
LS: So they wanted to sign you as a solo artist?
KM: Yes. I was going to do this record with them, and I was going to sign a three-album deal, but I ended up turning the whole thing down in a panic because it got to the point where I realized it was going to be such a fight. Everything they wanted me to record, I hated so much that I wanted to puke. I think they saw me as this modern-day, pop-like Carmen Miranda with fruit on my head. They wanted me to do a song called "Merengue Love." It was kind of like the "Macarena" song. No offense to those guys, but it just wasn't me.
LS: How odd!
KM: And all these interviewers were saying to me, "How do you feel about the song?" And, you know, I'm trying not to laugh. I felt like [chuckles sarcastically], "What do you mean, how do I feel about the song????? It's saying, 'Come on over and dance with me.' How can you feel that much for that??" To me, it was just kind of a lark that then took off, which was so weird,
LS: Yeah.
KM: One of the TV shows I had to do was this BIG live German television interview show. The guests were the mother of the last person who died swimming from East Germany to West Germany, the tennis star of that year, or whatever, and me -- the "Bacardi Girl." I was the musical guest, but you lip sync on these shows. So they had gotten these nice, young guys to pretend to be my band -- one pretended to play steel drums, one pretended to play saxophone, and so on. We did a little rehearsal, and I'm thinking, "Okay, this won't be that bad." So I get dressed and made up, and l come out in the hallway where I discover that they've got my "band" dressed up in these hideous "Lucy and Ricky" blouse-y short shirts, with clamdigger pants, and sandals, and big straw hats.
LS: Oh no!
KM: I looked at them in horror. We had to go on, it was the countdown, like ten, nine, eight, but I walked up to them, and I took off their hats, and I said [forlornly], "I'm SO sorry they did this to you!"
LS and KM: [laughter]
KM: So then we had to go on and perform this song. And there was BILLOWING dry ice. There was dry ice literally covering half my body. And there was a photograph in the back of palm trees and stuff. Somehow we got through the song, pretending to play and sing. Then I was supposed to have my interview with the host -- this big, famous host. He comes over clapping and goes, "YAY, Miss Kate Yanai, Kate Yanai!" And then he says, "Do you like Bacardi rum?" And that was my interview.
LS: That was it?? Oh no. [laughs]
KM: So that kind of gives you an idea.
LS: That must have been very bizarre.
KM: It was SO bizarre, very bizarre. Once in a while I'd meet some radio DJ who really got what I trying to say without really saying it. I didn't want to appear unappreciative of the position I was in. They were flying me first class, they were treating me really well, and I didn't want to appear like a greedy little spoiled brat. But on the other hand, I didn't want to say, "Oh, yes, I love this, this is my dream!"
LS: Despite the negatives of that particular situation, did you like being a solo artist?
KM: It was a great learning experience because it let me start over. It was one of those experiences that taught me SO MUCH about being a solo artist in such a short amount of time.
You know, I've worked for all these other artists over the years, and I've seen a lot of the stuff that they have to go through, both negative and positive. And there have been times I've been glad I wasn't in their position. As a backup vocalist, you get a lot of the glory, and you don't have half the pressure to come up with everything -- to be everything, to be the show. What I love about singing backup on record, and live, is that you're trying to enhance something, and you fit in like the piece of a jigsaw puzzle. I love that! I love the challenge of that technically, and I love the fact that I don't have all that pressure on my shoulders.
But sometimes, you know, you crave to be out there on your own and get some of the glory for yourself. I wouldn't be doing this for a living if I was truly the shy person I thought I was. I mean, I do love the attention sometimes. And, I love music -- it's what's in my blood. So being a performer and getting accolades as a solo artist felt good. It felt really good.
On the other hand, this song was not something that I put my heart and soul into. I had always written and been passionate about writing. So, for this particular song to be what came out as my first solo thing was both good and bad. It got me well known overseas, it made me a bunch of money, and it got my foot in a door, but it also kind of pigeonholed me in a style of music that would never have been what I would have chosen as my own personal statement.
LS: Yeah, I can imagine.
KM: When you're doing interviews and talking about a song, it's one thing. But when the camera's on your face, and you're singing that song over and over and over again, if you don't feel something about that song on a deeper level, how can you keep doing it without feeling uncomfortable? It was difficult, because I was already making a living as a backup vocalist with artists that had integrity. I've been lucky enough to work with artists that I really admire and respect. Their music is really quality music.
LS: What happened next?
KM: After I turned down that whole thing, a different record company pursued me and convinced me to record another single in 1994 called "Cry, Cry Louise." But that was a similar experience in that it was an attempt to take advantage of the success I'd had and do something kind of similar in style. It didn't really work, and it didn't do very well. The record company treated me great, and they were really nice, but I was once again put in a position where their push towards being commerical didn't represent what I wanted. They wanted me to do a techno-house dance mix a la Barry White, or a remake of "Cherokee People." [sarcastically] People compare me to Barry White all the time (not!).
I'm not putting down really commercial music, because I think there's a place for that too. But that experience did push me to write more personal stuff.
LS: I think it speaks for your artistic integrity to be unable to go into that whole thing just to take advantage of something that was there.
KM: That's a really flattering way of putting it, and I appreciate you saying that. I think that accurately it was more that I've just never been one of those performers that can go out on stage, and glue on a smile, and do the whole sort of "beauty pageant" kind of performing style. I've been so lucky to find a niche of music where my style works with that kind of music. Where I don't have to pretend all the time.
LS: Yeah.
KM: Really, it's more about the music than being a performer, or being choreographed. And it's not that I don't think about performing. I do. But I just couldn't keep doing it. I tried. I did these TV shows as the "Bacardi Girl," and I realized what I was going up against, what it was really going to be. I thought, "I can't do it, can't do it." And there have been times I've regretted it, because I've thought maybe it could have opened a window. Who knows, maybe it might have taken off even more. But... [long pause]... it's done.
SONG WRITING
LS: And song writing, you've continued to do that?
KM: Yes. I got more into writing after that whole experience. I'd always written, but I didn't really take it seriously. From that point on, though, I've tried to find a way to write music that I like.
I've collaborated with some really interesting people who've pushed me in a different direction. I've written a few songs with David Batteau. He's a great writer with a real love of language, and I really feel lucky to work with him. He's written a lot of songs that have been cut by a lot of artists over the years, including Bonnie Raitt. He co-wrote a song that was on her last record called "Fundamental Things."
LS: How did you meet him?
KM: We have a lot of mutual friends. We started writing together when I had the "Bacardi Girl" experience. He's encouraged and pushed me to write about more personal things. After trying to write songs for a record company, that felt really good -- even if it was for no other reason than to do it as an exercise. And I've written a couple of songs on my own and a couple with other writers, including a friend named Donny Markowitz (we think we're cousins), who has also encouraged me.
In fact, I'm working on my own CD. I think with the Internet it's a lot easier to do that now, to try to do it anyway. We'll see. I'd like to record 12 or 14 songs and just put a CD out there for the world to decide it they are interested in it.
PERFORMING LIVE AS A SOLO ARTIST
KM: In the last few years, I have done a number of live gigs on my own again. Finally! After years of singing backup for people, I had become completely terrified of singing solo because I'd been singing just backup for so long. One of the shows I did two years ago was with Valerie. We did one night together where she did a set, and I did a set, and we sang backup for each other.
LS: How fun!
KM: And that happened to be a night when James was in town, and he came, and he sang with us at the end.
LS: WOW!
KM: Yeah, he sang. Well, actually, I begged him. I went up to him while he was eating dinner, the poor guy. I said, "Will you sing just one song? Whatever you want to sing, we'll back you up. Do you think you might, maybe????" [laughs] And by the end of the night, he said "OK." He borrowed my guitarist's guitar. I think we did "Wild Mountain Thyme" and "You Can Close Your Eyes." It was a pretty great night.
LS: I can imagine!
KM: It really helped me to perform live again, because it had been so long. And I was so deathly afraid of the talking part. I was afraid I'd get up there and [mimes trying to speak, but nothing comes out].
LS and KM: [laughter]
KM: And it turned out, when I actually did it, that the talking part wasn't nearly as scary as the singing part. It was really petrifying. Silly things like singing for an audience of 70 people when I've been singing for thousands of people.
LS: Why is that so scary?
KM: Because they're people I KNOW, other musicians and stuff. That's the kind of audience that scares the shit out of me. I remember when my dad came to see me singing with James. That was way more terrifying than 20,000 people. An audience of your peers is the scariest thing.
LS: It must have been a great experience to have opened for Shawn Colvin when she played at the Roxy in Los Angeles last March, especially with people like Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Don Henley and Melissa Ethridge in the audience.
KM: Yeah, that was a really amazing experience. To have her ask me to do that was really sweet of her. It was a really, really great "friend" kind of thing. And to have her introduce me was a perfect entree into her audience that night. She really set it up for me to have as nice a welcome as I possibly could. And then to have her come up and sit in with me to close my set was also great.
LS: That was so beautiful!
KM: The song we sang, the Beatles' "I'll Be Back," that's her arrangement. We do it a lot in her show when I'm singing background vocals, but she had opted not to do it that night because she had so many new songs she wanted to do. So I asked if we could do it in my set. It was really moving to have her do that for me. Not to be corny or sappy, but it meant a lot to me. And thank God I didn't know that all those people were in the audience, because I was nervous enough. But I think it turned out OK -- it was a great night. Los Angeles is also my hometown, so it was cool to be doing a show at the Roxy, opening for Shawn.
