I heard about Margaret Murray before I met her: strange rumors about her being a kept woman in LA and a sad, true story of her apartment burning down in San Francisco.

Of course I wanted to befriend her. In the early ’90s we played together in combustible “super-mini-groups”—Job’s Daughters and Heavenly Ten Stems—and I had the chick-bassist slot for two months in (then-named) Caroliner Open Wound Chorale before quitting.

In the late 1980s, Terri Manning and her sister, Barbara, lived in one of San Francisco’s painted ladies near Golden Gate Park. This lady, a huge, rambling Victorian with peeling paint, opened its door to touring bands, local musicians, artists, and whomever else needed a place to crash or a home-cooked meal.