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HOMETOWNS (0:56)
COURTNEY: Boys were coming toward us. Three boys. Running after the ball. I shook. I was
shaking. I would fall because these boys, oh, these boys, lean muscles and throats scratched
with shouting boys. Soft waves of unkempt hairs. Black-haired boys. Dirt under fingernails,
skin stained dark, boys with ripped fabric from playing hard. These boys, where did they
come from these boys running toward us.
NARRATOR: Courtney's a hell of a writer.
This particular short story is filled with rich sensory details, exists in a fully realized
universe, and is centered around an intense scene that involves the unbuttoning of a blouse.
It's fantastic.
It speaks to my own biases that it surprised me to learn that a writer of this caliber
is from a town with a population of two thousand people.
COURTNEY: My past. Oh damn! Queen of Pentacles. That is a powerful card! Opulence, generosity,
security, magnificence, and liberty. Those are good words.
NARRATOR: Oh, for the record, my reading had words like "reversal, degradation, and destruction."
Yeah. I'll let you guess who had the happier childhood.
COURTNEY: My brother and my sister and I we lived on a creek. In the summer it was pretty
much free rein and we'd just run up and down it and go fishing and lots of sunburns and
cockleburs and stuff.
NARRATOR: Nothing is ever as cut-and-dried as that, of course. There's a reason Courtney
doesn't live in her hometown anymore.
COURTNEY: Small towns aren't as wholesome and, I don't know, idyllic as people kind
of think they can be. Not to say that they're bad but just a lot of stuff people don't like
to talk about. There's a lot of racism and there's like just as much crime there. When
it says "opulence, generosity, and security" I don't think it's necessarily talking riches.
I think it's more about the relationships that we have. Erin's like my best friend.
NARRATOR: Erin is her little sister, and also a member of The Villettes. The truth is for
all the, let's say, philosophical differences that Courtney and Erin have with their hometown,
I imagine there's a comfort in being able to occasionally go back to the house they
grew up in. Some of us aren't so lucky.
ACROSS THE SEA (4:09)
COURTNEY: When I was working in a hotel, I was working the graveyard shifts, and I just
decided to bring my guitar up there one night and this song just came out.
KATIE: This is actually one of the first songs Courtney ever brought to me. I remember hearing
it and thinking like, "Wow!" The counterpoint and everything was really interesting and
super cool. When I write a song it's just kind of like chords and words but this seemed
like a really well plotted out song. I was impressed.
ERIN: I think that it really shows off Courtney's writing skills.
COURTNEY: When I write songs it's very much based on the words and I sort of shape the
words around that. I haven't actually listened to the lyrics in a long time. But yeah it's
all about England, everything in there but I didn't want to just say it was about England
so I made it sound like a love song. This is all about remembering things and wanting
things that you used to have.
KATIE: I think first and foremost before we were really were ever in a band together we
just sort of figured that our voices sound really good together even though they sound
different. Like if you hear me sing on my own, if you hear Courtney sing on her own,
it's completely different. But for some reason when we sing together it sounds like kind
of one voice, I guess.
ERIN: She sings the harmonies so beautifully. And her voice goes down like butter. I always
think that.
COURTNEY: For the most part everyone does their own thing in their room secluded and
then we bring it together in practice.
KATIE: I think it sounds so great with the drums, too. That's a new thing for us and
it sounds so awesome.
ERIN: I love Katie's piano part.
KATIE: I never wrote any keyboard parts ever in my life until I was in this band and I
think I don't know if I would have if Courtney hadn't kind of, I don't know, she does a good
job of making you feel like you can do something.
COURTNEY: Also, I'm really glad we have Katie in the band. I'm listening to her piano part
right now. She always comes up with really cool parts.
KATIE: These are just like some of the best people in the world. I love those girls so
much.
EVEN IN MY SLEEP
COURTNEY: Presents, gifts, gratification. Another account says, "Attention, vigilance,
now is the accepted time, present prosperity, etc."
KATIE: You know how you were saying you don't have that childhood home anymore? I do, and
I feel really lucky that I do. My parents live in the house I grew up in. I'm so glad
that I can go back there. Most of my friends, their parents have moved or are going to move
from their childhood homes or whatever. And I guess that's pretty normal, that's pretty
standard, but to me it seems like it would be totally devastating.
NARRATOR: I think some people will always move away from home, even if their homes are
as seemingly perfect as Katie's.
KATIE: When I moved down here I was like, "Yeah, no, no, no, just be a musician, it'll
be great!" But I'm afraid of everything like I said so I never really did it.
NARRATOR: Then she found Courtney.
KATIE: She came over here and played me one of- I guess she had sort of just written this
song. And she was like, "Oh, I think I want some harmonies on this. What do you think?"
Once I got over being afraid it felt pretty organic. It was like, "Yeah, all right. Let's
do this."
NARRATOR: Not that Courtney or anyone else could wipe out all of her anxiety and self-doubt.
KATIE: I used to have like- oh god I'm getting really personal. I used to have really bad
anxiety troubles where I was just terrified all the time of nothing. I mean, it was particular
things but it was nothing rational. I would wake up in the middle of the night, every
single night, like multiple times gasping for breath because even in my sleep I was
afraid that I'd stopped breathing.
NARRATOR: It doesn't help that she carries around this memory.
KATIE: I guess also I have completely screwed up before. The one thing that I really blew
was my friend asked me to sing at his wedding. And I just bombed. Oh god it was so awful.
I even had the lyrics on the ground and I just couldn't process- I was like just sheer
terror going on, no thought really happening, so I couldn't make the words come out of my
mouth. And my hands were shaking so I couldn't really play guitar either. It was just so
bad! Oh man, I still to this day when I hear that song it makes me cringe.
NARRATOR: Katie is a hell of a songwriter. I asked her to play me a song, any song, and
she chose an older one. It's strange, isn't it? How people with such obvious talent and
ability can be racked with such insecurity. I think for some of us, it boils down to this.
Everything means everything. There are no small performances, no mistake that goes unnoticed,
no failure that is forgivable. Of course, that's ridiculous. The simple truth is everyone
will mess up a chord once in a while. All you can change is how you react to it.
SHOEBOX
NARRATOR: I
lived in Champaign, Illinois, with my mom before I moved to Austin. This was right after
college. I worked at a distribution center of a shipping company and played online poker.
I was good at both jobs. I had a lot of time to myself so I watched about three movies
a day. There was a video rental place called That's Rentertainment. I wanted to work there
so badly but instead I worked at a distribution center of a shipping company and played online
poker. I was good at both jobs.
My mom and I lived in a small apartment. She would get mad when I didn't do the dishes.
I never did the dishes.
I managed to fit most of my belongings into my Honda Fit, which - contrary to popular
belief - is the best car ever manufactured. I stopped by my mom's salon to say goodbye.
She cried but I somehow managed not to. I didn't want to seem weak. We said goodbye,
and I started my fifteen hour drive to Austin.
She called me a few minutes later and told me to go back to the apartment. She said to
look under her bed. Look for a shoebox, she told me. I went back to the apartment and
found the box. It was filled with money. She had been saving up for a trip to Korea. She
demanded that I take all of it. I felt weak.
GLEN ROSE
ERIN: She's like my best friend. But yeah, I would say we're pretty close.
CHRIS: Well, it's good you said that because she said you were her best friend.
ERIN: Oh yay! We're on the same page!
NARRATOR: Erin and Courtney are from Glen Rose, Texas.
ERIN: The land that we live on has been in our family for - since at least mid-1800s.
There's so much wrong that people think is okay there. It took me a lot longer to realize
it than it did Courtney. I like it for the fact that it's where I grew up and I have
good memories there but there's just no way I could ever really live there again.
NARRATOR: I wondered how they managed to find their way out.
ERIN: A lot of it is our parents and especially our dad, I think. Because our dad was like
a hooligan. And our mom was always telling us, "You have to get out of here. You're not
going to stay here. You're going to go to school somewhere else."
NARRATOR: And so they did. But nothing is ever as cut-and-dried as that. Your home is
your home, even if it isn't always somewhere you wanted to be.
ERIN: Yeah, when I first started going to school for the first month, I would get anxiety
about walking around campus and seeing all these people I didn't know. Because growing
up in Glen Rose there's like between two thousand and four thousand people that live there so
you hardly ever see a face you don't know. It was really scary and I didn't like it and
I was like, "I gotta go back." I talked to my mom and she convinced me to give it another
semester and I was like, "Okay." And I did and eventually it's like kind of awesome to
realize there's all these people living a different life than you.
NARRATOR: But even if you manage to find a way out, even if you go to the other side
of the world, it seems inevitable that you'll find yourself back home.
COURTNEY: I had graduated from college, I had lived abroad, and I had just come back
a few months before. When I first got back I was really happy to be back because I really
missed my family when I was gone. When I was in England it was just like a fairy tale,
and coming back from that is quite a wake-up call.
NARRATOR: You meet people with stories, real stories. You go on grand adventures. You shake
off the weight of your past. Then what?
ALLERGIES
COURTNEY: A card of memories and of the past. For example, reflecting on childhood, happiness,
enjoyment but coming rather from the past, things that have vanished.
NARRATOR: But of course some things you can't shake. Courtney lost someone close.
COURTNEY: She was like a second mom to me.
NARRATOR: Her best friend's mom.
COURTNEY: Looking back on it, it's just kind of strange. It just hits you at weird times.
I know that everyone that's lost someone feels like but just like, "Wow I can't talk to that
person." And especially for Erica, she's like, "My mom's never going to be at my wedding,
and she doesn't get to see me graduate from law school," which is happening right now.
NARRATOR: And Katie, well, I'll let her tell you.
KATIE: He passed me a note that said he had a gun and he wanted me to give him all the
money I had. This is actually the part where I got most terrified. I was reading the note
and I kind of couldn't believe it. I kept shaking my head and starting over. I was like,
"Wait, wait, wait. Let me start from the beginning." Yeah, he asked for all the money and I looked
down and I only had like one one-hundred dollar bill and like three fifties, then a bunch
of twenties and tens and ones, you know? And I was like, "Oh my god, this guy's going to
think I'm holding out on him or something!" They caught him a little while later and he
had robbed like thirteen banks or something.
NARRATOR: Some things you can't shake but you have to keep pushing on, anyway. What
else is there to do?
ERIN: I never knew that I could love an animal so much. It's kind of a big responsibility
and we're both like, "Okay, we can do this." And that's kind of nice to know that about
yourself.
COURTNEY: It's almost like everything gets torn down and then put together in a different
way that's stronger, hopefully.
KATIE: My brother, my older brother, is a comedian and an actor but he does a lot of
improv comedy. There's kind of like a lot of philosophy behind it. First of all you
have to trust your teammates with your life, basically. But one of the things that they
say is you have to say, "Yes, and..." to anything anyone says.
NARRATOR: Well, it's fortunate that Katie's adopted this philosophy because I totally
made her play the song she blew at her friend's wedding in front of all of us. Was that mean?
After our studio session, Courtney, Erin, and their newest member Kathryn, sat down
in front of Katie.
CHRIS: So what's the name of this song again?
KATIE: It's "That's How Strong My Love Is." I played it at my friend's wedding at his
request, and I was honored and I wanted it to be good so bad but it was just awful. I
blew it. And I still feel bad and this was years ago. (chokes up) I'm getting all weird.
CHRIS: Go when you're ready.
KATIE: All right, all right.
NARRATOR: My mom moved to Austin a couple years after I did. This was an annoying development.
It's hard to build up an image of yourself as a self-made man if your mom cuts your hair.
Granted, she's professional hair stylist but you understand what I'm saying. But this attitude
changed when I was let go from my first real job. After my last day, I went to the salon
where my mom was working. I sat down and she started cutting my hair. She asked me how
work was going. The tears fell despite my best efforts. She wiped them off, turned a
little towards her coworkers and said in a slightly-too-loud voice, "These damn allergies.
They're so bad in this town." See, people like that make wherever we are, home. People
like that remind of this simple truth: everyone messes up a chord once in a while. All you
can change is how
you react to it.