The Moth Radio Hour: Live from Santa Barbara
53:25 Share

Support comes from Zuckerman Spader. Through nearly five decades of taking on high-stakes legal matters, Zuckerman Spader is recognized nationally as a premier litigation and investigations firm. Their lawyers routinely represent individuals, organizations, and law firms in business disputes, government, and internal investigations, and at trial, when the lawyer you choose matters most. Online at Zuckerman.com.

The Moth Podcast is brought to you by Progressive, where drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. Quote now at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary.

Hey there. We here at The Moth have an exciting opportunity for high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors who love to tell stories. Join The Moth Story Lab this fall. Whether for an aspiring writer, a budding filmmaker, or simply someone who loves to spin a good yarn, this workshop is a chance to refine the craft of storytelling. From brainstorming to that final mic drop moment, we've got students covered.

Plus, they'll make new friends, build skills that shine in school and beyond, and have a blast along the way. These workshops are free and held in person in New York City or virtually anywhere in the U.S. Space is limited. Apply now through September 22nd at themoth.org slash students. That's themoth.org slash students.

From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this show, and we're bringing you stories from a moth main stage at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, California. It was produced in partnership with the public radio station KCRW. The poet and storyteller Dame Wilburn was the host of the night. The theme was Beneath the Armor. Here's Dame. Good evening, Santa Barbara! How are you doing? Good!

We are so happy, so excited to be here. Thank you KCRW for having us. Thank you so much for being here this evening. You look amazing. My reading glasses say that you look amazing. All right, so our theme tonight is beneath the armor.

Even though I'd like to have a conversation with you about Beneath the Armor, something more pressing came up backstage and I had to talk to you about it. So this is my second time in Santa Barbara. And I am from Detroit, Michigan. And thank you. So I bring you greetings from Detroit by saying, what up, though? That's native Detroit in case you don't speak it. But you are all spoiled. I don't know if you know it.

I don't know if you know it and I don't mean it as an insult, I'm jealous. There are lemons growing at your airport. Did you know that? Nothing grows at the Detroit airport but disdain. I came off that plane and walked out of the Santa Barbara airport and said, "Are you kidding me right now?"

And they're potted. They're potted lemon trees. They're not lemon trees for lemon selling. These are decorative lemons. These aren't our people lemons. These are simply to add a touch of yellow to the sidewalk.

Also, as much as I think that you all, your city is beautiful and it seems to be like there's a lot of money in this town, there was also somebody out front scalping moth tickets. Like somehow, that means we've arrived? Like I don't know. You know, you're scalping tickets to the moth? That's got to be the most Santa Barbara thing I've ever heard. That's the kind of thing that I will tell other cities about you, besides the lemons.

But again, thank you so much for having us. And we introduce our storytellers by asking them a question. And our question tonight is, when was the last time you felt invincible? So I asked our first storyteller, when was the last time you felt invincible? And he said, riding my bike without using my hands.

And I said, "Why does that make you feel invincible?" And he says, "Because I do it in LA in the middle of the night." Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Monte Montepart. So I'm in my truck, driving through the dark across Alaska. If you haven't been to Alaska, it's big. And I'm heading toward McCarthy.

McCarthy is a redneck hippie town at the end of a 60 mile dirt road in the middle of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, your country's largest national park. Don't feel bad, nobody's heard of the place. And the population of McCarthy is like 200 people and at least 100 dogs.

And it's at the toe of a gigantic glacier, the confluence of two rivers, the base of some of the most spectacular mountains you will ever see. It might be the most beautiful place on the planet. And I did not want to go back there. The night before I was on a couch in Anchorage. I was excited. I was there to celebrate my second wedding anniversary with my wife.

We'd been living apart that summer. I was living in McCarthy, taking people on adventures. I was a wilderness guide for the last decade. And she was living in Anchorage, pursuing her own professional goals. She was living with friends. We were sitting on their couch. It smelled like two kids and one dog. And that's where she turned to me and said, I cheated on you. Two years ago, right before our wedding in McCarthy.

And it was not what I was expecting to get for my second wedding anniversary. I hear cotton is traditional. And the more that I found out, the less that I felt like I could deal with it. And when I found out that it wasn't once, it was an affair that went on that summer, I gave her a hug and I left. And I didn't know where to go. I called my parents in Colorado. I thought about going all the way home.

And in all the years of exploratory river trips, 21-day mountaineering expeditions, calling them with frostbite from some glacier that they can't even pronounce the name of, I had never heard my parents so concerned for my well-being. I was devastated. But I had to go back to McCarthy, because that's where my dogs were.

I remember the first day that I got to McCarthy. I moved to Alaska when I was 20 years old in my truck. And I rolled into this town, and it's all dirt roads, and you have to walk across a bridge, across a river to get there. And it felt like I found Colorado in 1970, as my parents had always described it. And I fell in love immediately.

And I tell people for the next 10 years that I came for the mountains, but I stayed for the town. And I did. I got addicted to that community. It was so small and tight knit. And I worked hard. I treated people with respect. I shared the place with the woman that I loved. And I felt protected there. Like, as long as I was respected in McCarthy and my wife loved me, nothing else mattered. And as I rolled back into town, I did not feel either of those things.

I felt like I knew that people had known the whole time. I felt like everybody knew. I felt like I was the last one to find out my own secret. I felt like I wanted, I needed to hide. I didn't want to face anybody. I couldn't face my cabin. So I went and stayed with my best friend Chris and his wife. Chris and I had moved to Alaska in that truck when we were 20 years old together. We'd known each other since preschool.

And now he cared for me because I was incapable of doing so for myself. I've never felt an emotional pain that caused so much physical agony. I could barely eat. I could barely sleep. Hours felt like forever. The first couple days felt like an eternity. And if this was life, I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep doing it.

And after a couple of days of that, I wanted to give Chris and Karen a break. Because living in a one-room cabin with your partner off the grid is complicated enough without having your heartbroken buddy occupying your living room/dining room/only room. So when my buddy Chester asked me if I would crash at his house for a night, I took him up on the offer. I met Chester that first day that I ever got to McCarthy.

10 years before. And we bonded over punk rock music. Our dogs are sisters. So I followed Chester through the woods in the dark to his cabin. Chris and Chester live in the same subdivision. But I feel like that word might be a little misleading.

in this usage. Think less suburbia and more a collection of cabins, shanties, trailers, and permanently parked school buses connected by a dirt road ripped through the woods. So I follow Chester to his house and we proceed to pull an all-night heart-to-heart. And I tell him that this whole thing feels like the last act of some bizarre Greek tragedy.

that's been custom designed to wield my own inner demons as the means of my own destruction. I tell him how I've always struggled with my masculinity and how I feel completely emasculated. I tell him that I've always worried so much about what other people think about me to the point of trying to control people's perceptions and now the thing that I would like to be the most hidden is the most public.

I tell him I am angry, but I'm afraid to let myself feel it, because it feels so intense and I don't know what to do with it. I wake up in the morning with my 80 pound husky dog lying on my chest in her most demanding version yet of "Maybe you'd feel a little bit better if you pet a big furry dog."

And Chester and I drink coffee, which I do. And smoke cigarettes, which I don't do. But that morning it felt like I should. And I smoked the shit out of some cigarettes. And then I went to leave and my phone died. And I realized I forgot my sweeping bag. I go back in Chester's. I grab my sweeping bag. I put it over my shoulder. And Chester stops me. And he puts his hand on my chest. And he says, you have an unlimited well of power inside of you.

Which if you knew Chester, you'd know that's a very Chester thing to say. And I leave. And I walk into the woods alone. Because my dogs bailed on me to go back to Chris's for breakfast. And I feel lost in the world. I feel like my marriage was a lie. I feel like my life was a lie. I feel like I died on that couch. And then I realize that I'm actually lost. I am lost in the woods. I don't know...

And I know, right? I'm a wilderness guide lost in my buddy's backyard because I'm killing it. But I am. I'm disoriented, trying to get my bearings. I take a step forward, a twig snaps under my foot. I look to the left and I'm staring at a 750 pound grizzly bear 20 yards away from me.

And I've had a decent amount of bear encounters in my life, some with grizzly bears, and I've been mock charged by a grizzly bear, which is when they charge you, it's their form of pounding their chest, trying to scare you off. I've never had any animal look at me the way that this bear looked at me, roared, and immediately charged. This is worst case scenario. I just scared a bear in the bushes.

This is not a mock situation. I'm under attack. And I turn my head to run for one instant, which is not what you're supposed to do. But when you're presented with something that terrifying, it can be a difficult instinct to quell. And in that moment that my head's turned, I know exactly where my firearm is. And it's six miles away in my cabin on my bedside table.

And I scan the area looking for maybe a tree to climb or somewhere to hide which there isn't because there never is in Alaska. And grizzly bears run 40 miles an hour. So I know if I try and run for one more second this bear is gonna be on top of me. What you are supposed to do if you're attacked by a grizzly bear is play dead. You're supposed to lie on the ground on your belly to protect your organs.

Put your hands behind your neck and only if the attack persists, then do you fight for your life. Well, what this bear didn't know is that I'd felt half dead for the past four days. I'd felt like I'd been being attacked from all angles and it had persisted long enough. I knew this bear wasn't going to stop. Nobody was going to save me.

I turned around and I looked and I saw this bear barreling at me through the bushes. And I planted my feet and I put my teal and lime green sleeping bag over my head and I took all of that confusion and pain and directionless anger

And I unleashed it in a vein-popping, eye-bulging, primal scream. And the bear stopped, right? But now the bear was very close. So close that this time when it roared, I could see spittle shoot off of its lips and feel its hot breath billow through the cold morning air. But now I was committed.

I wasn't going anywhere. In fact, I just found out that I don't want to die. So I look the bear directly in the eyes. Which you are also not supposed to do. And I dig down deep, deep inside, past the burst bubble of McCarthy and the shards of my broken heart, down to a place that is not broken. To a place that cannot be destroyed.

And from there, I roar. And then I charr. And I don't think that's what the bear was expecting to get. 'Cause it looked at me, huffed, and ran into the woods. Many long-time Alaskans would tell you that the moral of this story is very simple: "Carry your bear gun, you stupid hippie." But to me, it felt much more profound.

I knew that this experience was going to summon all of my own personal demons in their most violent, intense forms. And if I tried to run or hide from them, it was going to kill me. If I was going to survive, I was going to need to be brave. I was going to need to stand my ground and look them right in the eye. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, Monty Montepart. You can say a lot of stuff about Detroit, but we ain't got bears.

It's going to be our city motto. Welcome to Detroit, Michigan. No bears. Monty Montabar spends part of his time in the mountains of Alaska, working as a wilderness guide and taking people on adventures of a lifetime. And the rest of the time you can find him in Los Angeles, pursuing his new passion, comedy. You can find out more about Monty and see pictures of him, his dog, and the Alaskan wilderness at themoth.org.

Coming up, more stories from this live hour in Santa Barbara when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX.

You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this show, and today we're bringing you a live event from the Lowborough Theater in Santa Barbara, California. The theme is Beneath the Armor. Here's your host from the evening, Dane Wilburn. When I asked our next storyteller, when was the last time you felt invincible? She said, I went for an entire flight without using the bathroom.

I said, "How long was the flight?" She said, "One hour." Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Christina and Gara Vidas. As an only child, I grew up being raised by my single working mom and my grandparents. But if I'm honest, I was raised by my grandma.

And my grandma and I were like two peas in a pod. Everywhere she went, I went too. And I loved listening to her sayings and stories. Some would be old adages in Spanish that I'm sure she brought back from Mexico, like, ponte un sueter, which means put on a sweater, that she would say in even 90 degree weather. While others were meant to teach you a lesson, like, no quieres comer? Entonces come caca. Which means, oh, you don't want to eat this? Well, then you could eat shit.

Yeah, I learned a lot of my life lessons from Grandma. I mean, she taught me my first language, how to drive, and even got me out of middle school fist fights because she just had to be there. I mean, who wants to kick your ass when your grandma's standing right next to you? But out of all her sayings and stories, one always sticks out from the rest.

We were always a very musical family, so I remember my grandma being in the kitchen, washing dishes and humming a little song and saying, "Cómo me encanta el violín," "How I love the sound of the violin." And I don't remember whatever prompted this, but I do remember in the fourth grade, our music teacher asked us what instrument we all wanted to play, and around the room, I heard kids saying, "Flute, clarinet, flute." And when she came to me, I said, "I want to play the violin."

And I was so excited because I knew Grandma always kept talking about how much she loved it, and I wanted to make her proud. And I ended up falling in love with it too. By the time I was in sixth grade, I could play any song by ear. And by seventh, I was so good that our music teacher at our school on the far south side of Chicago had taught me all that she could.

Instead, my music teacher sent me to take classes at the All-City Orchestra in downtown Chicago. And All-City was this place that attracted kids from all different backgrounds and neighborhoods, all equally as talented. And once I got through that audition, I couldn't wait to be just like them. But I was also 11 years old, so when that first practice early Saturday morning came along and my alarm went off, I'm like, do I really want to do this?

But just as I started complaining, my grandma got in my face and pumped her fist at me and said, "Echa le ganas, give it your all!" You know, like a coach and a boxing ring. And that's all I needed to keep me going every Saturday morning. And she would drive me at first every weekend, but it was also around this time that her driving became a bit erratic. She started getting into these frequent fender benders and lost her way to a store nearby, so...

Just to be safe, my mom had my grandpa take over the driving from then on. And he drove me 10 miles each way, which may not seem far to some, but for me, going to All City was like this whole other world. And it was my secret too, because to my friends back home, playing the violin wasn't cool. See, where I came from, it wasn't the worst neighborhood, but I definitely knew what streets not to walk through or not to talk to that kid down the block who always smelled like weed.

And it wasn't uncommon for a friend's sister to end up pregnant at 16. But practicing for my first big show with All City at Orchestra Hall took me away from all that. And I remember the night of the big show was finally here, and I'm wearing my nice black pants and white shirt, and I get up on that stage, and there are these bright lights in my face, and I'm thinking, "This must have been what Selena felt like."

So I'm squinting, looking for my family, filing into their seats, and I see my mom, my grandpa, my grandma, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, because, you know, us Latinos travel in packs. I'm fairly certain I won a prize for selling out the most seats.

So we get started, and I'm playing my little heart out so hard that the horse hairs on my bowstring are falling off, but it doesn't matter. And every time we get a pause, I'm looking out into the audience, looking for my grandma's sign of approval, and it's easy to see her, because she's the only one in the audience bopping her head to a Bach concerto.

And when it's all over, I remember thinking, now that I knew there was so much more to explore outside of my hood, I wanted to go further. And that night, I also remember grandma being overly exhausted, so we had to cut our celebrations early. I went through with my plans of going further, and at 13, I chose the furthest high school I could. It was called Whitney Young Magnet School, and it was where all the cool kids from All City went to. It was where you had to take a test to get in, and later, I found out it was where Michelle Obama went to high school.

But my mom was like, going to All-City was one thing, but going to school that far? No. But with my determination and mostly the help of my grandparents, we convinced her. And before I knew it, I was a student at Whitney Young. And this time, I proudly bragged to my friends, I go to Whitney Young. Sorry, I can't hang out tonight. laughter

And I was still part of the orchestra at school, and at one point I realized the violin had opened up this new confidence in me and opened up doors for me that I never thought I could walk through because I wasn't just playing the violin. I was pushing myself hard and taking honors physics and AP English and math, and I had that voice in my head from my grandma just saying, "Echa le ganas," "Give it your all." But I also noticed that I wasn't coming home as often.

And one time when I was home, I was sitting in my room and I remember hearing my mom talking to my grandma downstairs and in mid-conversation, my mom asked her, "Tell me your name. Repeat your phone number." And I just picked up the phone to call my friend and ignored I ever heard anything. And that happened pretty often, me ignoring anything off with her. And sometimes I felt guilty.

But I didn't feel guilty when I chose to stay in the city to go to college because I'd be close enough in case my mom really needed me, but still far away because I chose to live on campus. But every time I did come home, I started to notice grandma's sayings and conversation became less frequent. And in turn, I started speaking to her less and less to avoid her repeatedly asking me the same questions over and over again.

But one time when I was home, I noticed she wasn't there at all. And I asked my mom, "Where's grandma?" And she was like, "I thought she was with you." And so we both go downstairs and we see the back door wide open. So we get in the car and drive around the block, and we see her sitting on some stranger's front stoop. And my mom gets out the car and starts yelling at her immediately, "No te largas," "Don't leave us." And when she gets in the car, I start yelling too, "¿Qué te pasa? What are you doing?"

And she kept escaping and forgetting things and losing almost everything. And each time, my mom and I would yell at her for different reasons. My mom, out of frustration from being her caretaker, and me yelling at her as if yelling at her would force her to change her behavior. And one of the last times she escaped, when we all got home, I think to calm all of us down, my mom put on Pandora to one of these old Mexican stations.

And it was like magic, instantly. My five-foot grandma jumps high from her seat and starts dancing and belting out every word to these old bolero songs. And in that moment, it was like she was never gone at all. I knew she was sick, but I just never wanted to fully accept it. Because she had been so strong her whole life, I thought maybe she could just get over this too.

And sometime later on, I was driving my mom and my grandma to one of grandma's many doctor's appointments, and I'm sitting there in the waiting room of the neurology department, and this feeling of uncertainty and fear and guilt just overwhelmed me to the point where I just couldn't take it anymore. So when my mom came out of the room, I finally asked her, "What's wrong with her?" And she turned to me and told me in a way like, "It was just another day."

He just prescribed her another pill for Alzheimer's treatment. And it wasn't until then that I finally accepted it. And when I did, I felt angry and useless. I was so angry that I had wasted so much time not speaking to her that I had forgotten what it was really like to be with her.

Because during this whole time, I kept pushing myself further, and I was no longer a violin player, but I went after Annie in all of my dreams of acting and writing and traveling and moving to places like New York, San Francisco, and now L.A. But as my world was expanding, her world was diminishing. And who knew how long it would be until she would forget who we all were? So the last time I went back home to Chicago, I decided I had to tell her all the things that I wish she knew.

And so we're sitting on our couch one night, me and my mom and my grandma and my grandpa, and grandma starts talking, like saying real sentences. And instead of our usual, tell me your name, repeat your phone number, I'm looking through my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary album, and I point to my grandpa next to me, and I ask her, do you know who he is? And with this big smile on her face and this confident tone in her voice, she says, poissy.

Of course I know. This man is my friend. And without missing a beat, my grandpa just says, "Well, maybe one day you'll let me take you out on a date." And everyone's laughing while I'm sitting there holding back tears, wishing that I could tell her that I got my bravery from her, that I got my determination from her, and that her words and her sayings helped shape the entire course of my life.

But I didn't think she would understand any of this. So instead, I just turned to my mom and I said, I miss her. And I'd like to still think, though, that whenever she hears the sound of the violins in her favorite mariachi song, she still thinks of me. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, Christina Ingaravides. Thank you.

Christina Engado-Videz is a writer and comedian based in Los Angeles. Christina says she feels fortunate to still have her grandmother close. And in moments of clarity, her jokes and sayings continue to bring Christina inspiration.

The song you're hearing now is one of her grandmother's favorite songs. It's included in the playlist that Christina put together for her grandmother. You can see pictures of Christina and Pilar and listen to the entire playlist at our website, themoth.org. ♪♪

Coming up, our final story from this live show in Santa Barbara, California, when the Moth Radio Hour continues. Ay, que vida tan oscura

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the public radio exchange PRX.org.

You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. We're bringing you stories from a moth main stage we held at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, California. The theme of the evening, Beneath the Armor. And our last story comes from Patty Schemmel, former drummer of the band Hole, noted for being one of the most commercially successful female-fronted rock bands of all time. Here's your host for the evening, Dane Wilburn. Thank you.

When I asked our next storyteller, when was the last time you felt invincible? She said, I found a parking spot at the Trader Joe's in Silver Lake. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Patty Shimmel. It was 2014, and I had just started a six-week tour with my new band, and we'd passed a

Sign that said Grand Canyon and I said you guys remember that Brady Bunch episode where they go to the Grand Canyon and Bobby puts the beans in the flashlight and there was Silence crickets and then I thought you know Nicole our bass player did say that Blink-182 was her favorite band when she was in junior high school and I and then it hit me I I

I was a 47-year-old, married, mother of a 4-year-old, and I was in a pop punk band with three girls under the age of 30. I was on a six-week tour with millennials. The last time I'd been on a tour of this length, this long, was when I was in a band called Hole. And we toured the world and played Madison Square Garden, cover the Rolling Stone.

And by the end of my five years in the band, I ended up addicted to drugs and alcohol. But in the 20 years since then, I got clean and sober, fell in love, got married, and had my daughter. And my days of private jets and tour buses had been replaced with taking care of my daughter. Play dates, school drop-off and pick-up,

And the old days were kind of a galaxy away. Grew up in a small town north of Seattle and I never really felt like I fit in there until... It was all kind of farms and football. Started to feel comfortable and fit in when I discovered the drums at 11 years old.

The physical act of playing the drums put me into my body and helped me connect with the world. It was my way of expressing myself and my way of being heard loudly. When I discovered punk rock, I wanted to start my own band, which is pretty easy. You just come up with a cool band name like...

cat butt or green apple quick step or blister fist and then you ask your friends to join so our first show was like the high school cafeteria and then you know like friends neighbors backyard party and then you graduate to the Elks Lodge and then the teen rec center um

So as I grew up, I started playing music around Seattle and opening up for bands like Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and Nirvana. And that was right before I joined Hole. But in this new version of myself, this new grown-up version, I still have the desire to play drums. I still have the desire to create music and play live. One day I got a

I had a message on Twitter from my friend Allie Kohler, and Allie and I were friends on the internet, not friends in real life or IRL.

She messaged me and she said she was starting a new band and she wanted to know if I wanted to play drums in it. And I said, "Sure, I'll do that." And that's how our band Upset got started. It wasn't like from an ad in a local free weekly or a sign in a coffee shop that said "Drummer Wanted." It was a tweet.

Imagine if, you know, like the Ramones started like that or Jimi Hendrix. Like think about Joey Ramone tweeting. So we found Nicole, our bass player, and Lauren, our guitar player, and we played some shows around LA and we recorded a record and then we booked a six-week tour to promote the record.

Now this is a van tour. This is like us loading our equipment into the van. There's no roadies, there's no buses. We load our gear every night and move on to every city and drive everywhere. So I packed a small suitcase and a sleeping bag and six small hand sanitizers and we headed out to Tempe, Arizona for our first show.

So our rules of the road are, you know, the person driving gets to pick the music. So Nicole, our bass player, is driving. She plugs her phone into the stereo and turns on a playlist of music and a Sheryl Crow song comes on. And then I kind of look up and I see Allie, our guitar player in the passenger seat, lean over and go, I love this song, and then high-five Nicole.

And then I heard Lorne, our guitar player in the backseat, start singing along to it. And then they all started singing along. My punk rock bandmates were having a moment about Sheryl Crow. I mean, apparently this song spoke to them when they were six years old when it came out. Yeah.

So the goal, also, I noticed that they were really into some serious multitasking. Like, I watched Ali on her phone, you know, like buying dresses, and then, you know, using her phone's front-facing camera as a mirror to apply lipstick, and listening to Pearl Jam all at the same time. Where I can't even, I cannot even text and have a conversation at the same time, which they clearly noticed...

Because any time I was texting, they'd always go, shh, shh, shh, Patty's texting. For the whole entire six weeks, nobody ever touched a map. It's all GPS. And we booked shows and confirmed shows through our phones and email. And also, our goal is to play as many shows as possible, which meant some pretty unconventional performances.

places like we played a pizza pit in Boise, Idaho and some kids garage in El Paso and then the fun zone in Santa Barbara. It was batting cages and mini golf, right? Yeah, there. And also we...

The bands, it seems today, don't make a lot of money from royalties like we used to. It's mostly streaming and corporations will reach out to bands

with a high follower, influencers with a high follower account on their social media in exchange for free stuff and hotel accommodations. And back in the 90s, being connected to a corporation was not punk rock. It's not cool. Kurt Cobain wrote...

Corporate magazines suck in sharpie on his shirt on the cover of the Rolling Stone and can you imagine like Smartwater presents Soundgarden or you know Oasis brought to you by stamps calm So when we when we got back to the west coast our first show in the west coast was the Seattle which is my old hometown and it was good to be there and to play a live show again and

Yeah. And, and also it meant, you know, being on the West coast meant I'm almost home and I'd realized that, um, I was really missing being at home. Um, I missed my daughter, you know, I missed our, the simplicity of our life together. Again, the, the, the, our routine, our rhythm, um, you know, bath books in bed. And, um, and that just a few days away from her was really hard for me. Um,

And I couldn't find myself, you know, in another line for a bathroom at some club in Williamsburg listening to two girls argue about the real meaning of the eggplant emoji. So, just missed it, you know. So, we moved our stuff into this club and, you know, it was like a warehouse space and

the band started coming in and the show started and we pushed our stuff up against the wall and I started to head out to go get a cup of coffee and take a walk. And this girl came up to me and said, you know, introduced herself and said that she was excited to come to the show and see me play because she started playing drums when she saw me play. And it was, she was looking forward to the show. And

It meant a lot to me to hear that something I did inspired somebody else, that it maybe changed their life and gave her this sort of direction that she was explaining. So I went out and I grabbed my coffee, and when I came back in, it was time for us to play. So I went back to my drums and I sat down at my drum kit and

And this is a view I've seen so many times. And I thought about it, you know, that from the 70,000 kids at a festival in the English countryside to, you know, 10 kids at some club in L.A. pointing their phones at me. And I thought, you know, it's... I can't stop playing music now. Um...

Even though, you know, I'm realizing I can't really support my family like this anymore. And I missed my family. And it was a lot different for me now. But I couldn't stop playing because this is still my voice. This is still the way I express myself. And to be visible is important. So I thought about the, you know, all the...

kids on tour. I thought about all the girls I'd seen on the past tour and what was happening in our world today and what these kids were doing and organizing and playing shows and creating art. And these were the women, these girls were the women that are going to lead the way for girls like my daughter.

So, you know, I kind of had this affection for them and their need to, you know, have Snapchat and flash mobs. They might use, you know, annoying phrases like self-care and adulting, but in the words of the great Sheryl Crow, if it makes you happy, it can't be that bad. Thanks. Ladies and gentlemen, Patty Schimel. Santa Barbara, thank you so much for being family, for...

Being on the edge of your seats. I feel like I should, this is a great place to tell truth, so I want to let you know I'm taking one of them lemons back to Detroit. Y'all have a good night. Be safe going home. Good night.

Addie Schemmel is known for being the former drummer of the platinum-selling band Hole, but she's also a songwriter, teacher, and author of the memoir Hit So Hard. She currently performs with the bands Upset and Object as Subject, and is on the board of the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls, a nonprofit that teaches girls all over the world it's okay to be loud.

By the way, Patty suggested we play this song by Sheryl Crow to take us out. It can't be that.

As we wrap up this live hour from Santa Barbara, I want to remind you of something. At The Moth, the storytellers don't come from backstage. They walk up from the audience. The Moth is all of us. You just have to raise your hand or put your name in the hat and tell us your story. That's what our pitch line is for. It's the most direct and invitational way we have to find you. And here's how it works.

You either call 877-799-MOTH, one more time, 877-799-6684, or just go to the website themoth.org and make your pitch right through your computer to the site and it'll come to us. We listen to every single one of these pitches and we often find storytellers and work with them and bring them to our stages all around the world.

So remember, when you wonder where we find our storytellers, right here on the pitch line, 877-799-MOTH, or right on the web at themoth.org. So that's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from the Moth. ♪

Your host for this live hour from Santa Barbara was Dame Wilburn. Dame is a poet, storyteller, and writer from Detroit. The stories in this show were directed by Sarah Austin Janess and Meg Bowles. The rest of the Moss Directorial staff includes Kathleen Burns, Sarah Haberman, and Jennifer Hickson. Production support from Nadine Tadros, Emily Couch, and Timothy Liu Lee.

Most Stories Are True is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Thomas Lieb, Aidy Gourmet and Los Panchos, and Cheryl Crow. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts,

The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.