Stranger Conversations

On Guitars, Dreams & Ways We Connect On The Highway Of Life

There’s something about traveling alone with a guitar that opens a door to some interesting conversations.

Me & my guitar getting around at SxSW 2016

Take yesterday morning - bleary eyed I tumbled into an Uber at 6am to head to the airport for my show in Brisbane.

My Uber driver was an older gent with a thick German accent. He helped me with my luggage and asked if my guitar was a Fender. I told him it was. ‘Ahhh’ he sighed ‘ I used to play a Fender’. I asked if he was a musician and he laughed and said no, but that he used to be… I pried his story from him bit by bit and was amazed to discover that he had started a popular instrumental surf band in Hamburg in the early 60s and played alongside the Beatles at the famed Star Club for a period of time. He said they were nice boys who needed a haircut.

He went on to tell me that he had moved to Africa some years later, and then eventually to Australia. He didn’t have any particular reason for moving to either country, just thought they sounded interesting. He was some kind of skilled auto engineer or designer and said he could work anywhere in the world quite easily so he liked to explore. He thought it was good for the mind to travel and to learn. He had been teaching himself piano in recent times. I asked him how he was learning, whether it was with a book or a teacher or Youtube. He said just by exploring the keys. He’d already taught himself saxophone by the same method. He liked to invent things, make things. He was long retired but driving Uber a few hours a day because he liked going places he’d never been and talking to strangers.

When I got out he asked if he could get my guitar out for me, he said he just wanted to hold it for a minute and remember.

I returned to LA from recording in Nashville some years ago and wearily poured myself into my Uber at LAX, thinking I might nap on the long trip home. The battery on my phone was similarly exhausted, and I asked if I could plug it in. The driver was young and enthusiastic, happy to help, connected it to power in the front seat and then began grilling me about where I’d been with my guitar and why. He told me he was a musician too. He lived for music.

When I told him I’d been recording he wanted to know if it was my first time. I told him I’d made a few albums and he demanded to know my name and said he was going to look me up on Spotify. I told him and he looked me up right then and there and blasted one of my songs. He loved it and was extremely complimentary about my voice. Said he wanted to make albums too and had been recording all the time at home on Garageband. I gave him advice about releasing music independently and felt like a music industry elder/good samaritan, happy to be able to share this empowering information. He suggested we collaborate on a duet or something cos my voice would really work on his tracks and my heart sank …. I demurred and somehow managed to extricate myself from that awkward conversation and we fell into a brief companionable silence before he asked if he could play me some his jams. Of course! I replied, love to hear them. Aggressive hardcore rap beats pulsed and pounded through the oppressive LA heat as he shouted ‘what do you think?’ over his shoulder and I tried to think of something to say besides can you turn it down? I smiled maternally and gave him a thumbs up, trying to show my appreciation by nodding my head approvingly to the groove. This is the good bit! he yelled and I was hit by a barrage of shake that fat ass and pop that pussy bitch and similar dialogue that made me feel very out of touch and painfully white and unsure of what to say besides gee that bass is really pumping isn’t it, good job and then increasingly uncomfortable as the lyrics got progressively filthier and raunchier which is fine but they weren’t very clever or notable or even enjoyable in any other way and then suddenly he turned off the freeway which you never need to do on the way home from the airport in LA, its freeways all the way baby, and we were in a run down area with lots of boarded up buildings and a gaggle of loud drunk guys passed by sharing a bottle of something and my driver laughed and said they looked like they knew how to have fun and asked me if I wanted to party and I yelled over the still pumping beats that partying was the last thing I wanted to do and I couldn’t wait to get home to my kids and I could feel him staring at me in the rear view and it felt like things had taken a strange turn and he was telling me I looked like I knew how to party so I asked him to turn the music down and he said there was a another really good bit coming up and I said I was sure it was great but I actually had a headache and then he was obviously offended and I asked how far away and where were we cos my phone was still in the front and I felt extremely clueless and powerless and he told me don’t worry its a shortcut and I didn’t know what to think and the air felt thick with thwarted dreams and general LA weird vibes and my heart was pounding with that fight or flight thing and I couldn’t think of anything to say and after what felt like seventeen hours but was probably a solid 20 minutes we were pulling up out front of my house. He got out of the car with a pen and paper as I headed up my steps and was asking me for something that I thought was my number and I was like oh god and began to decline then realised it was the name of the online aggregator he wanted and I felt like an idiot and it was all just weird and I said good luck with the music and he said good luck with yours too and that he’d be listening to me all the time on Spotify and it felt kind of like a threat and we went our seperate ways. When the Uber message pinged asking me to rate my driver I felt weirdly freaked out and deleted the app rather than rate him and I still don’t know if he was nice and I was overtired and suspicious or if my instincts knew he was being really creepy which is what I think happened. Anyway there’s another example of the kind of conversations traveling alone with a guitar can get you into.

A better musical Uber experience occurred one night coming home late with my husband from some event and our driver was not very talkative but we were probably annoyingly exuberant and asking questions and it turned out he was Russian but had moved to LA because there was no hope for him there, conditions were terrible and he hated the government. His accent was strong and he was struggling with English and we bonded over the discombobulation of starting lives again in LA where everyone is from somewhere else and we laughed and shared some stories and then he told us he was actually a very famous opera singer in Russia but had to leave and there was no way he could pursue it in LA so he was just driving to survive and support his family. We asked if there was something of his we could hear or watch on Youtube and he said yes and spelled out his name and the name of the venue and I scrawled it down and we said our goodbyes and stumbled inside and I looked him up on Youtube and sure enough, there he was, the lead singer in a sumptuous opera production singing his heart out in white tights and golden waistcoat and receiving a standing ovation and he was absolutely magnificent and I cried thinking about all the people who were so great at their jobs and had families they loved but their lives had no hope and were untenable and they felt they had to uproot themselves and make their way to California where the streets were paved with gold, or at least gold plated, and invent new selves and sometimes that meant giving up on dreams and facing reality head on. I promised myself I’d remember his name and watch more of his work but by the time I’d remembered my promise I’d forgotten his name and couldn’t find him again and it just felt like thats the way of the world. But for a brief moment we were just three strangers from across the globe thrust together in a fast moving car in the dark winding palm tree lined streets of Laurel Canyon talking about our greatest moments and possibilities and potential and the meaning of life and all the things we do for love and money.

I could write so much more about these strange intimate moments and stranger conversations but it’s time for me to call an Uber and head to the airport.