When I got started in New York, it wasn't like it is now. If you were different from Miles and Dizzy, it was very difficult to make gigs and make money with your own style.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I worked hard all my life as far as this music business. I dreamed of the day when I could go to New York and feel comfortable and they could come out here and be comfortable.
The first time that I came to New York to work properly was the mid-'80s, but I was doing eight shows a week. You have no life. Going to a punk rock club - or whatever the music was at that time - would not have been on my agenda.
It took us two years to get our first real gig. That was a big dream. We ended up booking a lot of our own gigs and putting on a lot of our own shows. We were trying to get our actual music across, trying to make a connection there.
My first job in NYC was playing a gig in the early nineties at CBGBs.
When I was in New York, I put together a show; I put together this really great band and performed at this place called Littlefield in Brooklyn. It was really fun. I did, like, 10 standards, and then I just hopped around different bars like Mona's and different jazz clubs in New York just singing because I know all the standards so well.
I actually started playing in little cafes around New York, and I have a lot of good friends of mine who are musicians who are struggling in New York.
The early gigs were pretty panicky - and great, sweaty fun. We were brand new to most people, and they were willing to take anything brand new, for the first time in years.
I was a good amateur but only an average professional. I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled at New York University.
I had a band with a girl in New York, and we would go around and do gigs. And then I happened to start getting work as an actress.
When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that's how I really got into the music business. But I didn't like what I was doing when I got there, so I left, and I never did a record there.