Switching to your personal life… How long have you been with your partner?
I have been with Liz for about eight years.
How did you meet?
She worked at a camp for kids with life-threatening illnesses. Liz was the entertainment director and I was an entertainer who came to play. That’s how we met.
And you adopted a baby recently.
I feel like as a musician I’m in a very unique position among women musicians because I’m a lesbian with a partner who always wanted to be somewhat primary as a mom. She wanted to leave her job and be home with our child. Most women musicians I know are in partnerships with men and don’t have that choice to have their child home with the other mom. I feel like it’s unusual for straight women to be in that position. So I feel very lucky to be able to play music and be a parent. Generally with my schedule I travel just long weekends. I actually feel like I have a great schedule for being a parent because I’m home all day every day for a lot of the time. It’s worked really well for us.
We adopted her in August. Suddenly you have this other person in your family who you are so devoted to, so in love in a way that’s heart expanding. It’s a great life experience to get to have.
I’m somebody who might not have had kids were I not with a person so devoted to the idea. Because as it turns out, I really love it. I don’t know if I would have had the confidence and also the lifestyle to be able to do it myself.
So, your partner stays home?
Yes. She works a little bit, but mostly she stays home. We joke about it. They call her a stay-at-home mom, but she’s never home. She’s like adventure mom. She’s always traveling with the baby, coming to see me and doing things with other people and her family. They do a lot of adventuring around.
Liz and I took Lucy down to the state house and met with some legislators along with a lot of other gay families. We’ve been into pushing for the right to marry here. I’m very excited and very proud to be in the first state that’s allowing gay marriage.
Many lesbians who are in the spotlight, musicians, actors and whatnot are afraid to come out because of their fear of it affecting their career or being labeled a lesbian musician. When and why did you decide to come out?
I’ve always been out. On my debut album on EMI I had a song called Radical that was pretty out. It’s never made sense to me not to be out. And I do think that it’s been a trade off for me in terms of the business side of it because I think that I probably am better known to lesbians then I would have been if I weren’t out. I do think that my audience is predominantly lesbian and I think that can be intimidating to straight people. I think it definitely influences who comes to see me play.
Would you have done anything differently?
No. I wouldn’t have done anything differently. I think it’s a lot easier on me then it was on a lot of the women’s music performers in the 70s when I think they were pigeon-holed to an extreme. And now I think I’m somewhat pigeon-holed, but not as much as they were. And I feel too that there are ways that I can reach a wider audience, like when I open for people like Mary Chapin Carpenter. There are a lot of things I can do if I want to reach a wider audience, but at the same time I really enjoy having a strong lesbian audience because they’re fun to have at my shows.
