Jeni Fleming

I’d like to start by stating that I have difficulty with my short-term memory, and my long-term memory, or for that matter my short-term memory.  How many times a week do I find myself standing in a room to get, uh…, something… It’s possible I have rented movies more than once (thinking the plot was familiar but still watching the entire movie because I can’t remember how it ends).  But the real struggle for me are names; remembering names = not my spiritual gift. And I still have senility to look forward to.  However, since Jake and I met I have never, not once, forgotten his birthday (never mind that its 12/24), our wedding anniversary (11 years this August) or Valentine’s Day.

So, Jake woke up one winter’s morning, made himself a pot of tea, and opened his computer to find that it was ALL OF A SUDDEN February 14^th, and further, that he had not readied a gift, box of chocolates, heart-shaped-token-of-his-love, and/or Hallmark sentiment inscribed on paper, intended for yours truly.  He knew it would be at least another hour before I would wake so he went to the office, shut the door, and covertly wrote me a “happy-valentine’s-day” song.

It is true that this was not the first time Jake had written me a song.  Since we met in 1995 there have been many songs collected under the heading Songs For Jeni.  There was an initial “do-you-like-me-check-1-box” song, an “I’m-super-sorry-and-was-clearly-in-the-wrong” song, a “time-out-from-the-fight-du-jour” song, a nervous “will-you-marry-me?” song, several years later a “wow-marriage-is-kinda-hard” song, just to name a few.  One time he wrote a song about us dancing in the kitchen and how the microwave beeped in time with Ella singing on the stereo in the living room.  Inspiration for this man abounds.

So, you would think that yet another song in this catalog would maybe be, what? Typical, expected, routine?

And here’s the thing.  When you’re married to the same person you work with, vacation with, record, tour, perform, volunteer, socialize and live with, there isn’t much of a surprise element left.  And yet, every time he writes a song for me, about me, or with me in mind, I am always surprised.  And flattered and touched and grateful.  With every song I fall in love again, (even if it’s an “I’m sorry” song) and truly, how many times does a girl get to fall in love in one lifetime?  In my mind’s eye I imagine carefully placing that song in the menagerie with the others, like the very precious, fragile thing that it is.

Once when I was 16 I found myself at a luncheon seated next to the Mayor.  Embarrassing moment #1: After introducing myself I asked what he did for a living.  Embarrassing moment #2: The moment he uttered his name, I forgot it, while Mr. Mayor spent the entire luncheon over using my name, clearly trying to prove a point.  “Jeni, could you pass the salt.”  “What do you think, Jeni?”  “…and you know what, Jeni, I said my mechanic…”  “blah, blah, blah, Jeni, blah, blah….”

Embarrassing moment #3: he was the keynote speaker of the luncheon.

I have real anxiety about my upcoming high school reunion (let’s just call it my 10^th) for this exact reason.  Does anyone know if they have self-adhesive nametags at these functions?  Or am I going to have to cram for the reunion?  I’ve always said that names would be so much easier to remember if they were set to music, i.e. lyrics.  Which is probably why I know all the words to all the songs Jake has written for me. Most importantly, I can easily recall how each of those songs made me feel; heard, loved, understood, thought of.  In that way my memory is like a steel trap.

In other ways, not so much.

Some years ago we had a gig in Kona, Hawaii.  From the moment I stepped off the plane, how shall I say, I was Home.  I haven’t felt that way about a place. Ever.

The humidity, the smell of flowers and coconut-scented sunscreen, the grit of salt on my skin… My hair and nails instantly healthy, my shoulders dropped from so many months of hovering near my ears in an effort to keep my neck warm.  A steady diet of fish and fruit and sun was (is) what my poor little Asian body needed.  It was the first place I had been in a long time where it felt safe to relax.

February is a “cool” month according to the Hawaiian locals, so us 6 winter dwellers stood out in all of our pale-faced glory in shorts and t-shirts.  The first night found us around the pool overlooking the ocean, drinking something with rum and playing music.  (By the way, as I write it is 6 degrees outside and I wonder once again, why I haven’t relocated to a warmer climate by now. I conspire with my parents’ friends as if one of them, whose bones ache with the onset of winter, sharing stories of stiff joints and chronic pain, I’m destined to be a Snowbird)  Suffice it to say, a trip to Hawaii in the dead of winter was a joy and a pleasure, and I’m still incredulous that I boarded the return flight when I could have easily lived there for ever more. Amen.

Anyway, that first night in Paradise Jake started fiddling around with a vamp, back and forth between an add9 and a #5, it seemed to fit with the view, this warmer, different point of view. As did the lyrics from a song that all of us had grown up on.  An easy set of lyrics that dissect the emotion so cleanly, and that arrangement was born.

“…free my soul…I want to get lost and drift away….”

That song always gave me an easy feeling as a kid.  Easy like… Sunday morning.  Yeah, I said it.  And while Hawaii was a climate-induced relaxation, the other “place” that felt safe to relax was my childhood.  For every person who’s asked me why I draw material from the pop world, that’s why.  Interesting that this song was written the year I was born.

4 years old sitting in the backseat of Dad’s ’67 Tornado, sans car seat because that’s how we used to roll, on the radio was playing “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac, even now when I hear that song I smile, and relax.  My first overpowering crush on a boy (I still know his name) had a soundtrack by Van Halen.  The first time I got my heart broken in two I spent hours listening to the same sad Journey song on 45.  First time I was grounded was because I dialed (415) 867-5309 just to see who would answer.  When my older sister turned to me at a clothing store and said “that shirt looks awesome on you” and forever more I feel confidant when I hear Flock of Seagulls “I Ran.”

Sometimes I choose material because of a lyric, or because the melody is challenging/cool/unique/whatever.  Most times I choose material because of the way it makes me feel.

Everyday I drive from my house on the west end of Bozeman to our studio on the opposite end of town.  I take a bit of a circuitous route so I can check in on a man I met about 3 years ago. Over this time I’ve witnessed his dwelling grow from just a couple of grocery bags of stuff, to include among other things a tent draped in many, many blankets kind of in a Native America sweat-lodge style, as well as a nifty makeshift propane heater, basically a propane tank with the coils of an electric stove mounted to the top.  He’s what we would call homeless, though he’s had the same “home” for 3 years now.