Yesterday, after receiving the still-incomprehensible news that Jill Sobule had died in a house fire early in the morning, I pulled her first CD off my shelf, lay on the floor and listened to it just like I used to in my first apartment after moving to Nashville. “Things Here are Different,” released in 1990 on MCA and produced by Todd Rundgren, will forever be a masterpiece as far as I’m concerned. Every song. Every note. And it marked my discovery of the singular and endless talent that she was.
I had moved to Nashville a few years before that record came out, working in an ad agency, and would spend pretty much every night at the Bluebird Cafe. Jill performed often, and I doubt I ever missed a show of hers. She played a little Vagabond travel guitar with a Fishman pickup that made a huge sound like I’d never heard before. I’d study how she played — never using a pick, her right hand making a claw, hitting the strings with her nails. I’d go back to my apartment and practice trying to play like her. I’d bring a tape recorder with a little external mic and record her shows — because nobody told me I couldn’t — and I’d listen over and over in my car to all those new songs she’d have written, some never recorded. I’m sure I still have the cassettes upstairs in a shoebox somewhere.
After I started Performing Songwriter magazine in 1993 Jill was always a part of it in some way. She headlined a “Performing Songwriter” concert at Nashville’s Summer Lights as one of the first events I ever pulled together, showing her support for what I’d created. I remember taking my mom to the Bluebird one night in ’94 when Jill was playing shortly after my dad died. Mom was smitten with her after that show and loved the song “Karen by Night.” Jill made Mom feel so special when I introduced her, and even when Mom’s mind was winding down over 20 years later she still remembered “that funny little Jill and her big blue eyes.”
In 1997 I was part of a writing retreat in Ireland with Jill and a bunch of American and Irish writers with the Music Bridges program. It was crazy fun, all of us staying in a castle in Clifden for a week, brilliant artists writing songs together and then recording them right there. Jill was the center of it all, creating magic with Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin from the Go-Gos, Lamont Dozier, Brenda Russell, and dozens more. One night I remember going downstairs into the bar area and Jill had the whole place singing along as she played Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes.” I stood in the doorway and beamed. She made everything, everywhere, so much fun.
The picture above is one of my favorites from that Ireland trip and it still makes me laugh. She’d just told me that I needed to “let my freak flag fly!” I’m sure it was in response to me telling her we couldn’t do something because it was against the rules or we’d get in trouble. So me. So her.
One of the things that most moved me about Jill was that she said YES to everything. It was never about money or furthering her career — it was about all the possibilities that might be on the other side of ‘yes’ that couldn’t even be imagined yet. No matter who asked or what it was, she was on board and it was going to be fun. From coming up with the book reading/song singing tours with Julia Sweeney, to being one of the first to crowdfund an album, to her off-Broadway play “F*ck Seventh Grade,” to being a part of the early TED conferences — if anyone had an idea she was game to jump in and help see what might happen. I will forever be trying to be more like her.
In 2007 I asked if she would be a speaker at a Leadership Music Artist Day I was the co-chair of, to talk to the group of music industry leaders about what if felt like emotionally to have had a huge hit where she was the product of the industry wheels, and then be dropped from the label when the tide shifted. YES, she said, and flew in for an hour’s talk and performance to a grateful group. Then I asked if she wanted to have a regular column in the magazine. YES, she said, and started her “Underdog Victorious” column that was in every issue of the last two years of the magazine. And when I asked if she’d like to be a surprise guest for a couple of my workshops over the past 10 years she said YES, although we never were able to make the timing and the flights work. It would have eventually happened, though, and she would have shown up and had the whole class singing along, marveling at her spirit, and believing that some kind of magic was just up ahead.
Last night I was lying in bed, completely gutted and not believing the tragic circumstances of her leaving or that she was really gone, and I started thinking about the role some people play in sprinkling their magic pixie dust all over our lives while they’re here. Making things sparkle. Making us laugh. Helping us believe in what we can’t see yet. Convincing us to say ‘yes’ to whatever comes our way. If that’s why we’re here, then Jill had fulfilled her purpose a hundred times over. And oh, my goodness, we were the lucky ones to be in her orbit.
I realize that many of you were close friends of Jill’s and that your grief is immeasurable. Please know that I’m thinking about you and sending prayers of comfort your way. I’m pretty sure you’re all covered with her sparkly pixie dust now, and I have no doubt you’ll continue sprinkling it where it’s needed, her spirit living on through you.
Meanwhile I’m going to dig deep and see if I can find my freak flag so I can unfurl it—even if for a second—and say ‘yes’ in her honor. And then I will get up off the floor, laugh and thank the universe for having gifted us with such a remarkable soul.
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