Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter and musician Pi Jacobs is amplifying the concert experience on Live From Memphis, an inventive new album and her first for the Blackbird Record Label that places eight original songs alongside the personal stories that shaped them.
Recorded with a full band, LIVE at the DittyTV studios in Memphis TN, the project offers a sincere and sometimes funny look at her formative years, her family relationships, and even a few lessons she’s learned along the way.
Includes unlimited streaming of Live From Memphis
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
I was four the first time I realized that we were poor. My hippie mom had decided we should “get back to the land” – to a tiny town called Fort Bragg on the coast north of San Francisco. We lived several miles up a long dirt road, grew our own veggies, and attended sweat lodges with the other hippies in the area. To keep me occupied, My Mom gave me three albums, Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. I played them over and over again, singing every song and acting out the stories - to the point where my mom had to put the record player in the basement out of earshot. Being an only child, I was used to playing alone, and I was completely happy to sing in the cellar all day every day.
There was almost no work in town for my mom, who was cleaning houses, so we signed up for food commodities. I remember standing in a long line, and having people walk by and sneer at us. For the first time, I felt shame, dripping down my insides. The food we got was AWFUL: government cheese, and mysterious meat byproducts, but we took it home and made meals with veggies from our garden, which made it all pretty OK.
Eventually we moved back to San Francisco, and then when I was 8, we moved again- this time to rural Sonoma County. This was a shock to my system. It was the first time we had lived in a conservative area with only a handful of hippies, and we stood out. I went to school with wild hair and hippie clothes, bringing carob chips and homemade yogurt in a woven basket for my lunch. The farmers kids thought I was a complete freak, so I became something of a loner.
Our new house was right across the street from my school, and all of the kids could see it from our classroom door. It was a small, neglected clapboard house. The yard was full of weeds, and the paint was peeling. One room even had mold from the floorboards up to waist height on every wall).
I didn’t mind the house too much. I loved being alone, and I was suddenly allowed to go home for lunch. This was the best part of every day. I would heat up a can of soup, read books, listen to records, and watch our tiny B&W TV. Saturday mornings were even better. I’d sit on the floor in the sunny spot and dig into my mom’s extensive record collection. Sometimes she would join me, and we’d dance around – especially if I put on Stevie Wonder’s “Songs In The Key Of Life”. So, in general, I was happy with our house. It had the solitude, books and records that I craved.
One day in class, I got mad (I can’t remember why) and kicked a cupboard door. One of the popular boys said in his loudest voice “That’s why her house looks like that” and the entire class laughed. I was mortified. I cursed the luck that put my house on display, for the whole school to see.
So, I had two worlds: School, where I was the weirdo, picked on, poor kid – and Home, where I was rich with books, music, dancing and fun.
Around this time, my mom, became the first person in our family to graduate college. She got a good job teaching public school, and our financial situation improved. I was able get braces, and we ate better, but we never moved out of that house. Eventually I learned to live with the house, and not care so much about what other people thought of me.
My mother ended up teaching public school for 40 years before she retired. She more than paid back the government for the help they gave us, by teaching over a thousand kids how to read & write.
Pi Jacobs is amplifying the concert experience on Live From Memphis, an inventive new album that places eight original
songs alongside the personal stories that shaped them. Recorded with a full band, live at DittyTV in Memphis, the project offers a sincere and sometimes funny look at her formative years, her family relationships, and even a few lessons she’s learned along the way....more
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