I grew up in Falls Church, Virgina, which is a suburb of D.C. Now it’s just a lot of Bed Bath and Beyond, and Starbucks. But before it was Pet Boys, that autotrack store, and one grocery store. It’s always been concrete. It’s always been kind of boring.
My mom and dad are from Vietnam. My dad was in the south Vietnamese airforce and my mom was working for the South Vietnamese embassy in Laos. And then the war. The direct translation of that period is, they say, “when we lost our country.” They both were redirected to this refugee camp in North Carolina. They met there.
My dad drank constantly while courting my mother. There was one point where he drank so much that his jaw seized and they had to stick wood chips in his mouth so he wouldn’t bite his tongue off. Then they got married and they had my brother and my dad got a job working as an electrician or something with Metro in D.C. They relocated and then I was an accident, but I was born in 1984.
My mom was a big-shot in South Vietnam. I think it’s one of the great travesties in the world, the life she had and the life she ended up with.
My father’s a very reckless human being. He ended up leaving the family when I was 11 or 12 and my mother had to support us. She acquired the money through loans and family and bought a laundromat. She works seven days a week still, 13 hours a day. She never complains. But it certainly is different from when she was traveling around with an entourage and with drivers, holding forth in front of dignitaries and whatever.
My father was silent and invisible for two years, and then he showed up on one of my first days of high school. Since then he’s floated in and out but he never divulges any information about himself. I don’t have his phone number. I don’t know where he lives.
Somehow he and my mother are still civil to each other. He’ll call the laundromat because she’s always there. He still has my phone number. He still has my brother’s number. He showed up to my college graduation and we had dinner and he just left, pretty much, without saying goodbye. My brother is getting married in July and we don’t know if he’ll be around. But, whatever. He was a cool dude.
My father had a whole lot of style. He could smoke a cigarette like no one’s fucking business. And he drank really well. He was always very smooth and very entertaining. He was devastatingly charming sometimes. Or I thought so. I was a young girl. But I would watch him. He was always the funniest one and always the coolest and always the one that cared the least. And that’s about it.
I have no idea how he makes his living. I used to joke that he was in the mafia, but maybe he is. When I drink alcohol I hold the glass the way he does because I watched it so much as a kid. And the way he leans onto, into the table while holding a drink. I do that. I didn’t realize I did that until I realized it.
I started playing music right around the time he left. Those years that I was beginning and becoming immersed in music were so valuable. I don’t know if I could ever return to that level of consumption again. I played music for hours every day. It was my mode of survival. It was my lifeline. I would just sit and play. And be sad.
I think I understood what was happening in our family and what had happened. The whole house basically kicked into survival mode. I didn’t think I allowed room for any sort of resentment or any sort of want for attention. I just knew that my mother was doing what was desperately needed for us to live.
After school and on the weekends I would bring my guitar out to the laundromat. I sat behind the counter playing, working on songs or learning songs, and people would come in and apologize for interrupting me. I’d say, “Actually, I’m sorry that you had to hear this. I will give you change now.” We had a bucket of quarters, there was no machine. There was a time, just based on volume and weight, I could fish out five dollars in quarters. I was really adept at making change and I could just fish it out and it would be exactly however much they needed. I can’t do that anymore.
I thought it was funny that people wouldn’t do their own laundry. But on the same token they put me through college.
In high school I would do open mic nights with middle aged drunk men. My friend and I would sing and my mom would let me stay out late to perform for ten minutes. I got to college and I was approached by these friends who were starting a label in Virginia, which has since collapsed upon itself. They put out my first record which is called “Like the Linen,” which my mom owns a lot of copies of.
Then sometime in college I met up with my manager, Slim Moon, who started Kill Rock Stars.
He was managing an artist i’m a big fan of, Laura Viers, and I had blindly emailed her website to ask to open for her. Which was totally out of character, because I think, and I say this with no shame, I think I am inherently lazy. I hate self-promotion. And also I don’t like to do things.
So I emailed her and Slim wrote back. He said, you know we don’t have any spots right now but I’ll keep an eye out. I had sent a link to my record and he heard that and asked if I’d contribute to a compilation that was being put out. I didn’t really keep abreast of indie rock but I recognized the names on that compilation.
By the time I graduated Slim was my manager, and I was slated to record four songs as sort of a demo to shop around to labels.
I graduated school, the next week I went on tour with Willis, who went to school with me, he’s our drummer, and Adam, who we’d met over the summer. And Frank Stewart who’s no longer in the band. And we went, and then after that tour we recorded those four tracks. And I settled in San Francisco. In theory.
We are on tour constantly and in a way your life is not your own. But you’re doing what you wanted, you think you’re doing what you wanted, you think you know what you wanted. And, so now we’re just kind of going with it. And I’m just now navigating what it means to: 1. Do what you want and 2. Make what I think are pretty significant sacrifices. Or to try and make a real life within a very unrealistic lifestyle that I don’t think is sustainable.
I liken it to a shotgun wedding but we’re not getting it annulled, so we’re just sorting it out. I think i’m incredibly fortunate and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to make music for a living. I think I’d be destitute elsewise, because i’m not really a job holder. As I said before, I don’t really like to do things, I just kind of like to hang out. But it is weird. I’m 24. I’ve been on tour most of the last three years. I had an apartment but I was gone most of the time and then I just gave up the apartment because I knew when the record came out that we would just be on tour.
It comes down to mental health. I think I have been nuts for the past year and a half or two years because I didn’t have anything rooting me anywhere. When I graduated college the notion was very romantic to me. And I thought, “yeah I could go on tour forever,” ’cause what’s holding me back? But really I need something holding me back, because you can get very unhealthy and very reckless. And your personal life is in shambles, your friends don’t tell you anything anymore because who wants to recap the last eight months? It’s really hard to stay relevant in people’s lives and it’s really hard to keep them relevant in your own.
I think I’m more comfortable on stage than I am in real life. There’s the adrenaline of that. But after five weeks of doing it every night you start to feel dishonest. It’s a shame to compromise something that in it’s true form is this beautiful exchange between people. Because if the crowd’s energy is good, then they’re giving it to me and I’m giving whatever I can back. And that is amazing, and I think it’s sacred. But when you start to tax it or when you start to force it, and when it becomes your job, then something is lost. You can try to forge that connection, but really what you want is to be watching a movie or eating dinner or in bed. But all this is just a sidebar because I do love my job.
