Last night, my friend Kristin and I drove down to Costa Mesa to catch two of our favorite country artists: Sunny Sweeney and Erin Enderlin. They are not household names, and their songs are not played on country radio, but within the industry they are established and respected singer-songwriters. Each woman has released multiple albums, each is a member of the Opry, each is of a certain age that we’ll call younger Gen X, each has written and performed with some of the best in the business.
(Willie Nelson, nearly 91, is releasing a new album in April — and one of the tracks was penned by Enderlin.)
After the first set, I am first in line at the merch table. Erin Enderlin - whose songs have been recorded not only by Willie, but by the likes of Lee Ann Womack, Alan Jackson, and Randy Travis — shakes my hand, and thanks me as I politely and earnestly tell her I’m a huge fan. I point to one of the t-shirts she has for sale, and asks if she has it in a large. This woman who has just ripped my heart out with songs about loneliness, aging, cheating and whiskey now purses her lips. She regards my build with a tailor’s eye.
“Hmm. I only have that in 2x and 3x, and I don’t think you want a mumu.” Enderlin points to a different shirt, one I like a little less, and tells me she has that in my size.
I’ll take it, I say, and the singer reaches under the merch table, pulls out a plastic container, and rummages a bit until she finds the shirt. As I admire a garment that is not really my style, Enderlin pulls out her portable Square credit card reader. I hand over my Mastercard — and oh dear, the card reader isn’t working.
“Never mind,” says the artist whose songs I’ve listened to five thousand times; “I can input it manually.”
Enderlin taps away on her iPhone as I read off my card number, expiry date, and offer my zip code. We wait. The card is approved, the $30 shirt I’ll rarely wear is mine, and I have done what is necessary to support a hero. I ask her for a selfie, and she grins warmly and dutifully as I snap away. I issue one more effusion of praise and thanks, and back away. There are three people in line behind me, all near my age. Maybe — maybe — she will sell $150 worth of merch this evening.
Angelenos know, better than most, that it is possible to be famous and broke at the same time. People whose names you recognize, who have won Emmys and Tonys and Grammys, who have had bestselling novels and hit songs and long-running TV shows, they are frequently struggling to pay the rent. This is a bit of a shock. We live in a culture that knows that not all rich people are famous, but we find it difficult to accept just how many genuinely famous people are decidedly not rich.
(Check out Cameo. Check out autograph shows. The brilliant and talented are hustling not to buy a new Bentley, but to keep the lights on.)
I am very grateful that I am currently making a living as a writer. I was a writer when I wasn’t making any money at it, though, and I know very, very well that there are many others out there who are far more talented and prolific than I who are less well-remunerated. One is grateful for it. I’m old enough and battered enough not to take this current experience for granted.
I do not make enough money to be wasteful. I do use a little, though, to find ways to support musicians whom I know live within tight margins. I contribute to campaigns to finance new records, I send cash to help repair broken-down tour vans, I buy shirts and ball caps emblazoned with the names of the singers whose songs sustain me. My Christmas present to myself? Hand-written lyrics to my favorite Jamie Lin Wilson track, scribbled and mailed by the legendary South Texas artist herself.
Part of me wants to declare this unjust. Why are Erin and Sunny — two of our most accomplished songwriters, gifted performers with extraordinary catalogues — hustling t-shirts in bars? Why do so few recognize their genius? Why does talent not always lead to fame, and why does even justly-earned fame often not lead to wealth?
I remind myself these are old questions. The poets and troubadours and actors of past centuries almost always struggled to eke out a living, and the compensation they received was far less than they deserved, given the joy they brought. If it is unjust that Erin Enderlin must hock t-shirts, it is a contemporary manifestation of an old injustice.
Go hear live music. Buy merchandise from the artist’s website, or better yet, from their hands at the end of a show. Buy poetry chapbooks, vinyl records, and baseball caps you will not often wear. And remember that even those whose names and work are famed and celebrated are— astonishingly often — facing with dread and determination the same precarity as you.
This is the title track off Erin’s last album, a song about growing older and invisible and just how damn hard that is. I played it more than 600 times last year.
Thank you for this. I have a client who needs to read these words. Creative, struggling, and despairing. This will help.