Revisiting Red and Yellow

My sister-in-law Sydney sent a link to me from her friend's blog, and it meant so much to me. She wrote about one of my songs from an album I recorded a few years ago and it's taking me back, so I'm going to tell this story.

In the freezing months 2006 I was having a hard time. I still wasn’t over the worst breakup of my life—a near-engagement gone wrong because of me and the gradual melt-down of my brain. I cried all the time, I cried until I threw up, I slept through classes and midterms, my grades started falling falling falling, I lost focus at my work, I forgot how to brush my teeth and stared into the mirror for long ticking minutes. I wanted to drop out of school, I thought my life was over. You reach a certain age in your life where your youth and the vortex of memory compounds with the years looming ahead of you. For some, at age 19 and in your early twenties, it just happens that way. Some make it through, and some don’t. My friend Alan, he didn’t make it. I hate that. It’s so dark in there. It would have passed. It always does.

This is a recollection of what I now refer to as a phase. The guitar phase. It started like this.

I was training my replacement at the Instrument Office where I worked. Stuart and I were peeling old labels off the music shelves in the band room. I said I was going crazy. I told people this all this time, but no one takes you seriously when you say you’re going crazy. Isn’t everyone? But this was at a time when I would really lose it. Like I was late for a bus, I dropped an apple on the ground, I chase the bus in my car, I miss it still, I pull over and I am in hysterics. I can’t describe what it feels like to be hysterical. It’s like something in a bad, bad movie where you’re crying so hard you can barely breathe but you’re laughing and yelling and you disconnect from your brain except for the pounding in your head. Something goes out of whack--it’s frightening.

I said I was going crazy and Stuart believed me. Listen, he said, come to this recording we’re doing. Maxfield was recording an EP. Okay. How is this going to make me feel better? I thought. But I went. I took my friend Cathy and we watched a live recording of Maxfield’s 2290, on my list of Top 10 Most Influential Albums.

It was so magical—something I had never heard or seen before. Something pure and moving that almost filled the gash in my aching heart. I wanted to create something too. I wanted to learn how to do that, how to fill a void with beautiful noise.

So that’s where it started—I went home from that recording and I pulled out this guitar I bought for $5.00 at a garage sale. Its name was Gus Kensington. I gave it to my friend Maggie later on. But I took Gus Kensington everywhere I went and I started learning how to play the guitar. Stuart taught me some chords and some picking patterns and some tricks, and I just played and played and played all day. I wouldn’t go to school without my guitar. Sometimes I’d skip class and play and you couldn’t get me away from it. And then I started filling up a notebook with songs. These are the songs from the first composition notebook:

Color Me Purple

Feather Queen

Little Dana

When He’s Away

The Covers

Trees and Beans

Call Me Crazy

To England

Shine and Shadow

Scooters (What I Needed for a While)

And Empty Room

Dr. Tooley

Sugar and Rain

Never Going Home

Summer Love

Something New

Red and Yellow

Frames

He Walks Cold

I feel like I haven’t been able to accomplish anything like this since, but in 6 months I learned how to play the guitar, wrote a notebook full of songs, and started recording my first album. I ran into Aaron Hatch at the grocery store. We were buying watermelons or squash or something. He asked how music was going, and I said it was fun, and we decided to do a joint concert together. I played my first little concert at Spanish Housing in the lounge where we decorated and put up lights and made a whole show out of it.

Aaron Hatch thought I had potential—he had faith in me, and we started recording an album. We started in the Paxman’s kitchen, and then we moved the recording studio to Wildwood, the cabin. In October we recorded, and by December, it was done. It was called Red and Yellow.

I played some shows, I sold CDs. I busked at the SLC Farmers Market--the best I ever did was $90 in one hour. The CD broke even. I made a little profit. I played at Gallery 110 and the Alamo and the Ozz and at houses and at school and I opened for Maxfield a couple times, which was, to me, completely mind-blowing because I was totally obsessed with that band. They're now called Fictionist. Aaron always played keyboard with me and it was fun.

And then . . . I stopped. I got better. I mean, my brain got better, and I didn’t need that specific cure anymore. I’ve written before that I feel most creative when I am depressed, distressed, angry, or sad. I don’t feel that way so much anymore.

Red and Yellow was the product of a dark time when I could not find any beauty in the world. The only balm of Gilead I could find was in what didn’t exist. I had to create something beautiful myself, from inside myself. Something I could understand that made me feel better.

So here’s to Red and Yellow, the product of a phase and the culminating accomplishment of Liz Rhodes before Liz Lambson came along and engulfed her. I don’t play or write or sing much anymore because I am happy. But today I am going to relearn one old song to play with Angela Soffe at Guru’s tonight and at my recital this weekend, for old time’s sake.

And if I can be so ruthless, I’m just going to say that Red and Yellow is still around, and it’s still for sale on iTunes and CDbaby. I hope you’ll give it a listen sometime if you haven’t already. Every once and a while I give it a listen.

And I think it was worth it.