R E S T A U R A N T P O L L B A L L O T P . 4 6 - The Austin Chronicle

MUSIC“That’s who I’ve been. That’s the kid that is me.“A lot of it is Liz. She’s not going to let me be the kid on theside of the pool. It’s taking me a long time to let go of that –that I’m not good enough.”A clatter outside the room of hanging lamps is accompaniedby the voices of workers who fill every room in the hotel. Cookrises and tiptoes to the door, shutting the noise out as she playfullypresses a slim index finger to her lips.“Let’s close the door. Lampland should be more private.”Chasing AmyAmy Cook lets the light inBY MARGARET MOSERAmy Cook seats herself on the basement floor of the notyet-openHotel Havana in San Antonio. The room is paintedwhite and minty blue-green, with disembodied lamp basesstrung wall to wall. Dressed in a fire-red jumpsuit, a catlike tiltto her sky blue eyes, Cook drapes slender arms over crossedlegs. Any other musician with an album scheduled for imminentrelease would be in the frenzy of preparation. Amy Cookis cool, calm, and has collected herself by doing somethingunrelated musically.Above her, on three floors overlooking this more peacefulsection of the River Walk, the Havana buzzes. At the centerof this hive of activity is attorney-turned-hotelier Liz Lambert,Cook’s lover and the remarkable visionary behind Austin’sSan José and Saint Cecilia boutique hotels, as well as Marfa’sThunderbird. This latest addition comes with its own honeyedcachet, built on Navarro Street in the late 1800s as a Europeanstyleresidential hotel. In Lambert’s capable reimagining, theambience is pre-Castro Havana in the Alamo City with a touchof Hemingway cool.Cook went to work as a painter for Lambert in Marfaaround 2005, at the Thunderbird. She later swathed the wallsof the Saint Cecilia bar in a rich jewel blue, achieved usingVenetian plaster. At the Hotel Havana, amid minibar refrigeratorsin tropical colors and cigar-friendly balconies, the singerrefurbishes the beautifully crafted lamps. Dangling above her,they’re in the grayish primer stage. Soon, they’ll be glossyblack. Amy Cook gestures sweepingly.“Welcome to Lampland!”It’s the perfect greeting from someone whose new recordingis titled Let the Light In.California GirlHer official biography offers little about Amy Cook’s lifebefore age 25. It’s not that she’s cryptic; now 35, she boastsroughly 15 years in the business and is still exploring thebounds of her talent. It’s a gratifying journey for both thelocal musician and her passionate fan base, one increasinglyaccompanied by the press, which delights in hyphenateddescriptives. “Indie pop singer-songwriter” comes closest tothe slippery realms where Cook’s music resides.“It’s weird, like nothing happened to me before then,” notesCook about the absence of her history with a faint smile.She grew up in the Bay Area’s Silicon Valley, learning to playguitar in the fourth grade for the church choir she sang in. Shedabbled in songwriting then and kept it up throughout highschool, moving to open mics when she started college in LosAngeles. At 22, she recorded her first disc.Who were your parents and what did they do?“I’m adopted.”The question becomes the elephant in the room. Cook herdsit graciously, frankly, philosophically.“My dad worked at IBM, and my mother was a homemaker.”The Cooks had no other children.“I know my birth mother though,” she volunteers, “andhave a sister.”Do you have a relationship with yourbirth mother?“If I’d had a different relationshipwith my adopted parents, it could havebeen fine, but we came from totallydifferent planets. It may be that way[in biological families], but it’s complicatedwhen you’re adopted becauseyou don’t know that.”Another pachyderm lumbers on the sidelines.Did you always know you were gay?She nods, the smile that so easily slides across her angularface tugging at one corner of her pink mouth.“I had a girlfriend when I was in high school,” she offers.Rainbows weren’t where her religious adoptive parentsplanned their daughter’s search for gold in life, yet those lookingfor evidence of psychic scarring or a lost soul in her music willhave to keep moving along. Cook is well-balanced with the statusquo, though she’s aware of the emotional effort involved.“David Garza sent me a message the other day: ‘When I askyou to come up onstage, come up onstage! Don’t be the kidsitting on the side of the pool!’JANA BIRCHUMShe nods, the smilethat so easily slidesacross her angular facetugging at one cornerof her pink mouth.Sky Observations“I lived in L.A. for 12 years, and I really liked it. But I justkinda thought I wanted to live somewhere else. Maybe it wasthe traffic.”Cook returns from the door and sinks back down again to theconcrete floor, crossing her ankles and leaning back on her hands.“It seemed like a grind, and I couldn’t figure out who I wasas a songwriter. When you’re in L.A., people tell you what youshould do and how it’s gonna work for you. After so manyyears, I wanted to go somewhere quiet so I could figure outwhat songs I wanted to do and who I was. But I don’t thinkthat was L.A.’s fault.”That’s a first for the City of Angels, long damned andcondemned as evil incarnate, the siren’s call responsible formore misfortunes than fortunes. For Cook, those years in LosAngeles were the proving ground, trying her wings at suchplaces as Hotel Cafe before heading to Texas. By some standards,she was becoming successful, especially if you countthe touchy-feely soundtracks on shows like Dawson’s Creek andFelicity. Even with her song “Million Holes in Heaven” on criticallyacclaimed series The L Word, advancement was relative.“I couldn’t get people out to shows,” she admits.A trip here for the Austin City Limits Music Festival got toher. She arrived in town and called Liz Lambert at the behest offriends. The two arranged to meet at the San José, but Lambertwas running late.“So I went to the Continental Club first. It was Tuesday night.”Cook displays a fill-in-the-blank grin.“Toni Price. Hippie hour. Pot-smoking out back and peoplebeing so nice. It was my first introduction to Austin music, andit was fucking awesome. I loved it right away.”She and Lambert met up later that night. Cook’s day jobattracted the attention of the hotelier notorious for her handsonapproach. Cook learned the Venetian plaster method froman L.A. pro.“A couple months later Liz called me and said: ‘I needa painter. Do you want to come work [in Marfa] at theThunderbird?’ I was like, ‘All riiiiight!’ Shegot me there, and I never left. Went back toL.A. and got my stuff.“In Marfa, I stopped thinking about whatI was going to write and just wrote. It feltlike I was doing it just for me – I didn’t carewhat was going to happen with the songs.It was so liberating, like doing this,” shesays, waving at Lampland.“I can paint lights, and I can go on tour. In L.A., I felt pressuredto be successful, but being happy is not about thosethings. Like when you’re traveling and finally going home, andyou get to the gate at the airport with all the other people goinghome to Texas. Moving here just felt right.”The Escovedo FactorTwo years later, the Austinite released The Sky Observer’sGuide, songs of starry introspection and wry observations. Itsexquisite packaging included art by Amy Adler, Joni Mitchell’scurator, and grabbed the attention of Out magazine, whichCONTINUED ON P.5654 T H E A U S T I N C H R O N I C L E APRIL 9, 2010 a u s t i n c h r o n i c l e . c o m