04/24/2024
My wild child daughter's firmly on the rise. Atlantic Records, her label, is funding a major US tour this summer which I can't divulge details on, but will be a big big deal.
She kept her musical talents a secret growing up, never singing around me. I tried to keep her supplied with instruments of all shape and form but seldom saw/heard her playing any of them.
I was at a yard sale the other day and crossed paths with my old band mate Peter Alvanos, who plays in Elf Power now. He was WIllow's instructor at a music camp that I enrolled Willow in each summer, and he conveyed a story about asking the camp kids which songs they wanted to cover. Willow apparently raised her hand and asked if they could do an original. When Peter asked to see the material she showed him her phone, on which she had written pages and pages and pages of lyrics. Dozens of full songs hundreds of fragments. I never knew. She kept it a secret.
When she was 16 I bought her a pricey Nord keyboard. I seldom heard her playing it, and one day noticed it was missing so I asked about it and she casually said, "Oh, I took it to a show in town for a friend to play and I'm not sure what happened to it after that. I'll call the club and see if they have it."
Arg!!! That's a $1000 keyboard! Thankfully the club still had it.
A few years later she sent me a photo from her apartment in LA, where she moved at age 17. To pay her bills she'd rent her apartment out by the day to film shoots. The photo was situated in her living room and featured one Stevie Wonder sitting at that selfsame Nord that I'd given her. There he was, banging out a tune with Tito Jackson in the background singing.
You just never know where these damn kids will carry you. High places, low places, dark places, brights places. It appears she's arrived at the high and bright end of that spectrum. Whew.
