Singer-songwriter Miriam Clancy departed Auckland for Los Angeles in August and has spent the past few months on an epic road trip across the States, culminating in a New York studio where she recorded her forthcoming third album. From horror movies to Halloween, freeway breakdowns and strange cries in the night, Clancy shares some ups and downs from her travel diary.
SUNDAY 7 AUGUST
Recorded some eerie vocals in Beverly Hills with composer Mario Grigorov for a horror movie. Grigorov wrote the music for the Oscar-winning film Precious and I met him when he was in Auckland composing for The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell. The film's director, Brendan Donovan, gave him a bunch of CDs by Kiwi girl singers. He picked me. He's a full-on dude. We've stayed in touch. After recording I went back to our cute little villa in Hollywood, built by Charlie Chaplin, and carried out an exhaustive Craigslist and eBay search for a new guitar. Finally found one. It's an all-black Fender Telecaster. You can take the girl out of the west but you can't take the west out of the girl!
TUESDAY 23 AUGUST
Played a show at El Cid, an old flamenco venue in Silver Lake. It's the first LA show where my new guitar/amp/vintage synth set-up didn't fail miserably (cheers, dodgy power conversion plug). Au contraire, it went really well. A bunch of people even danced - so not used to that, apart from the fabulous New Plymouth crowd. On the way home I drove past my favourite mural in all the world - the wall outside Solutions Audio on Sunset Boulevard that featured on Elliot Smith's album cover Figure 8. It's become a memorial to Smith. Super love. What an inspiration.
SUNDAY 11 SEPTEMBER
Hit the road with hubby/manager JP Winger in our 1973 GMC camper. We're the kind of people who always run late. We spotted Wallace, Idaho (population 784) from the freeway and just had to turn off. It's a cute little town with a sweet thrift shop. I got a fake fur jacket that I've been thrashing since. I wore it to the zoo in Minneapolis and the antelopes ran away - they thought I was a wolf. We parked up on a dry riverbed for the night. Across the Missouri River there was a crazy, lonely guy yelling for his imaginary friend (we asked). Slept with the baseball bat at arm's reach.
WEDNESDAY 14 SEPTEMBER
Stuck. We broke down on the freeway near Butte, Montana, so we spent the next few days getting acquainted with an amazing, once-flourishing copper mining town. Stumbled across Evel Knievel's grave. It turns out it was less than 100 metres away from the camper where we were sleeping.
